WORLD Magazine | Bureaucracy mountain | Jacob Parrish | Jul 31, 09

WORLD Magazine | Bureaucracy mountain | Jacob Parrish | Jul 31, 09: "The Yucca Mountain project, which is 25 years and $13.5 billion in the making, was on track to begin safely storing at least 77,000 tons of radioactive nuclear waste. But now experts say 155,000 tons of spent radioactive fuel rods will instead remain in already crowded temporary storage facilities beneath nuclear power plants across the country."

"Since the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, energy companies and consumers have been required to pay over $29 billion into a fund that the government promised to use to construct and operate a permanent nuclear waste repository by 1997. Energy companies already have grown weary of government delays and are threatening to stop their payments. By burying the site that was supposed to bury nuclear waste, the government would be in complete default of its 1982 agreement."

What? The government takes money for a project and then goes back on its word? No way!

"One alternative to storing spent fuel rods is to recycle them, as France and Japan do, using them a second time to create nuclear energy. Experts say this would cut 155,000 tons of waste to only about 5,000 tons needing to be stored, however, the waste would then be 50 times more radioactive."f