An empty hole in the ground dug at a cost of $15 billion is the very definition of government waste. Yucca Mountain is a nuclear-waste repository built in a desolate area of the Nevada desert that has never been used because of the “not in my backyard” attitude of Harry Reid, the Democratic Senate leader. Nuclear-power plants in the United States have generated about 70,000 tons of radioactive waste, and it has to go somewhere.
The president zeroed out Yucca Mountain funding in 2011 for political rather than technical or safety reasons, according to the Government Accountability Office. Since then, the House has kept the project alive by funding a continuing review of the suitability of Yucca to warehouse spent nuclear fuel from the nation’s 104 nuclear-power plants, currently in storage on the plants’ grounds. A 335-81 vote last month preserved $25 million for the review.
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