Nuclear Energy - another Obama Failure

The Obama Administration quietly put the spike in America's nuclear energy program. The US Senate (under the direction of majority leader Harry Reid) voted to deny resources needed to complete a review necessary for the Yucca Mountain storage facility to open.

The US needs an additional 35 nuclear power plants to meet the anticipated 45% jump in demand by 2030 but without Yucca Mountain, it won't happen. To date, the 104 reactors in the US have prevented the emission of billions of tons of greenhouse gas.

It's interesting that the Obama Administration touts "green energy producing jobs" from one side of it's mouth and destroys the option to make it happen with the other. Not that any of us will be surprised at that.

Note: The US Department of Energy studied the rock at the planned Yucca Mountain Repository to assess how it would perform over tens of thousands of years. After 20 years and $9 billion, DOE found Yucca Mountain to be both safe and stable. The containers that were to bring spend nuclear fuel to Yucca Mountain were virtually indestructible based on EXTENSIVE tests conducted at Scandia National Laboratories. Tests included:

• An 18 wheeler carrying a transport cask being smashed into a 700 ton brick wall at 81 mph;
• Dropping a cask from 2,000 feet onto hard ground;
• Having a 120 ton locomotive train ram a cask at 80 mph.

In each case the containers survived with no significant damage. So transporting spent nuclear fuel to Yucca Mountain was not "risky".

It's simply another of many examples of the Obama Administration's failure to lead the nation in safe and reliable clean energy production.