The Hill News

The March 11 earthquake in Japan led to a tsunami that crippled the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. While a similar situation is not likely at any U.S. nuclear plant, we must use this to look at our country’s lack of a central storage facility for nuclear waste.

The first commercial nuclear power plant began operating in the United States in 1960. In 1982 the Nuclear Waste Policy Act made the federal government responsible for collecting nuclear waste.

In 1987, Yucca Mountain was named the sole site for a permanent repository of nuclear waste. The Department of Energy (DOE) confirmed the scientific side of this decision in 1994. In 2002, Congress and the President approved Yucca Mountain again. In 2008, DOE filed a license application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build Yucca Mountain.

Obviously, the decision to move forward with a national nuclear waste repository has been supported by Republican- and Democrat-contro! lled Congresses and Republican and Democrat presidents for all these years.

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