LETTER: More Yucca Mountain hysteria

In response to the negative Yucca Mountain commentary on Oct. 16 from Mason Voehl of the Amargosa Conservancy:

Yes, beat that Yucca dead horse into the ground. Just don’t come back and expect any special assistance with infrastructure needs for the ecotourists anticipated. In the minds of many members of Congress is that Nevada — having the most ideal geology within a slightly expanded Nevada National Security Site — would not help the nation with this most essential infrastructure.

Indulging Nevada’s petulant politics would be galling to those representing Washington and South Carolina, with nuclear installations (Hanford and Savannah River) imposing much more ongoing exposure and a higher risk of future contamination from legacy Manhattan Project cleanup. There never has been a popular referendum in our state on the entombment of dry casks under thousands of feet of tuft bedrock, the volume of which could be greatly reduced by recovery of uranium to fuel a new generation of reactors.

Congress is not likely to entertain more funding for desalination pipelines, rebuilding the interior rail network to relieve highways overburdened with lithium shipments and widening the death-trap that is U.S. Highway 95. There is no funding in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act for this work.

Hysterics over contamination of the Amargosa watershed are unwarranted if radioactive plumes anywhere near it have not been detected in the groundwater more than 30 years after the conclusion of nuclear testing. Yucca Mountain sits astride the western boundary of the former Nevada Test Site. Low precipitation to minimize consequential leakage was a criteria for its selection in addition to the bedrock and secure location.

These risk factors are not as favorable in New Mexico or the Permian Basin of Texas, where the spent nuclear fuels are now headed into ersatz storage facilities.