For nuclear power to have a future, we'll either need more Yucca Mountains or a way to decrease the stuff we put there.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
We as taxpayers have put in well over $12 to $15 billion of investment in a repository for high-level nuclear waste... if we're ever to recoup that investment in the future... then we're going to need some money to reopen Yucca Mountain.
Research and development activities to support Yucca are permitted. This will ensure that we keep Congress in the driver's seat for nuclear waste policy.
We have every interest in seeing that the military use of nuclear power will be contained.
If we're going to be serious about decarbonizing the bulk-power system, nuclear has to be part of the conversation.
With a fourth generation of nuclear power, you can have a technology that will burn more than 99 percent of the energy in the fuel. It would mean that you don't need to mine uranium for the next thousand years.
We must take steps to prevent further nuclear weapons development or modernization.
We have to get rid of those nuclear weapons.
The only thing that really scales up apart from nuclear is solar power from other people's deserts.
In shuttering Yucca Mountain, Obama makes it extremely likely that nuclear power in the United States will continue its long, slow, and extremely welcome death.
Nuclear power is here to stay, and we need to support a strong domestic uranium industry.