From Slate.
The entire discussion was, of course, outlandishly hubristic. It was
made necessary by the outlandishly severe and long-lasting
environmental dangers posed by nuclear waste. Six decades after the
dawn of the nuclear era, the only plausible answer to the question
"What do we do with this stuff?" is "Don't create any more of it."
That, in effect, is what President Obama is saying in fulfilling his
campaign promise to shut down Yucca Mountain. The program, Obama's new
budget states,
"will be scaled back to those costs necessary to answer inquiries from
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission while the administration devises a
new strategy toward nuclear waste disposal." That's bureaucratese for
"Yucca Mountain is dead."
So nuclear waste will not go to the safest place America has figured out. It will stay in place where it is, onsite at nuclear power plants.
People used to say that Obama as was smart and that he wouldn't let politics outweigh scientific reason. Yeah right.
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