Yucca Mountain fades as an option

Secretary of Energy Steven Chu said this week the proposed Yucca Mountain site is no longer an option for storing highly radioactive nuclear waste. For the first time in the 20-year battle against the proposed Yucca Mountain waste repository, Nevada is in a favorable position to stop the project once and for all.

Nevada has a friend in the White House. President Obama has proposed drastic budget cuts for the program and has expressed his commitment to find better alternatives for addressing the nuclear waste problem.

The federal government is finally being realistic and respectful of the scientific findings concerning the site. While I am optimistic that we will see the demise of the project, we cannot relax our efforts until a comprehensive, binding decision is reached.

In the meantime, the administrative proceedings continue to move forward.

The Department of Energy has filed a license application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Nevada has responded with its own serious legal contentions. My office is committed to meeting our state's current obligations in the NRC licensing process and in pending litigation before the federal courts.

Yucca Mountain is geologically too fractured and volatile to contain nuclear waste no matter how the repository is engineered, how many titanium drip shields are emplaced, or how the waste is ultimately encased.

The 77,000 metric tons of stockpiled nuclear waste would have to travel over thousands of miles from its locations at over 100 nuclear power plants around the country. Proponents tell us nuclear waste transport is safe. The truth is the Yucca transportation effort will be unprecedented and fraught with ill-considered risks to population centers throughout the nation.

Until a final decision is reached terminating the Yucca Mountain project, we should not let ourselves be distracted from our responsibility to our state and future generations of Nevadans. Nor should we be distracted by false hopes of minimal monetary benefits that are no longer viable under federal law.

My office will hold the Department of Energy to the requirements of the law. Now more than ever, Nevada is poised to stop the Yucca Mountain beast once and for all. Until that time, we must continue to rise to the challenge.

- Catherine Cortez Masto is the attorney general for

Nevada.