The United States and many other advanced nations, such as France and the Republic of China on Taiwan, have long used nuclear power safely, and without producing the “greenhouse gases” that environmentalists blame for “global warming.” Nuclear energy is also more efficient than windmills or solar panels.
So it should be encouraging that President Barack Obama is saying there should be more nuclear power production to meet our nation’s growing energy needs.
But at the same time, the administration has placed off limits a major nuclear waste repository in Nevada after the United States spent $14 billion to develop it over more than two decades. The site is known as Yucca Mountain and is in a remote, barely populated part of the Nevada desert. It would be used to store radioactive waste produced by nuclear plants.
But the president is “done with Yucca,” an administration official told The Associated Press. That may be because it would harm the re-election chances of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. Sen. Reid is trailing his potential Republican rivals in polls leading up to the November elections, and proceeding with the Yucca Mountain project might hurt his prospects even more.
Instead, the president is appointing a “blue-ribbon commission” to study ways to dispose of nuclear waste. The commission will not produce a final report for two years.
But long years of study already had settled on Yucca Mountain as the most sensible option. Now, all the billions of dollars used to develop that site will be wasted, and we’ll have to start over from scratch.
That’s an odd strategy for an administration that claims to be concerned about reducing budget deficits.