Yucca Mountain is still breathing. It's been 24 long years since Congress first designated the desert locale in southern Nevada as the best place to store the nation's nuclear waste.
While opponents have gained the upper hand in trying to block the project in recent years — in 2009, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said that "Yucca Mountain as a repository is off the table" — a group of House Republicans is fighting back. They want to revive the site as part of a broader plan that calls for building 200 new nuclear plants by 2030.
Under that plan, the nation would begin building nuclear plants on an unprecedented scale: Currently, the nation gets 20 percent of its electricity from 104 nuclear reactors. But there's one big problem: There's no place to put the waste.
The Republican legislation would take care of that. It would require the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to complete its review of the Yucca Mountain site "without political interference."
That would be difficult, with top Democrats trying hard to scrap the project.
In a speech to the Nevada legislature last month, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada boasted that Congress had "killed Yucca Mountain" because of fears it would hurt the state's tourism industry. And President Barack Obama, who campaigned against the proposed repository in 2008, has included no money for Yucca Mountain in his 2012 budget.
Obama, though, has become a fan of nuclear power, reflecting how much things have changed since the "no-nukes" days of the 1970s. He regards nuclear power as an important part of his push for "clean energy."
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