US Nuclear Waste Dump

The federal government has more than $44 billion collected from energy customers since the 1980s specifically to be spent on a permanent nuclear waste disposal in the United States.

Currently, nuclear waste is mostly stored in dry casks on the locations of current and former nuclear power plants around the country.

On Nov. 30, the Office of Nuclear Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy took a preliminary step towards establishing an interim repository for nuclear waste. Some see this as a reason for optimism, others as kicking the can down the road.

This undated image obtained 22 February, 2004 shows the entrance to the Yucca Mountain 

nuclear waste repository located in Nye County, Nevada, about 100 miles northwest of 

Las Vegas.AFP | AFP | Getty Images

The federal government has a fund of $44.3 billion earmarked for spending on a permanent nuclear waste disposal facility in the United States.

It began collecting money from energy customers for the fund in the 1980s, and the money is now earning about $1.4 billion in interest each year.

But plans to build a site in Yucca Mountain, Nevada, were scuttled by state and federal politics, and there’s been a lack of political will to find other solutions. The result is that the U.S. does not have the infrastructure to dispose of radioactive nuclear waste in a deep geologic repository, where it can slowly lose its radioactivity over the course of thousands of years without causing harm.

However, with the effects of climate change becoming more obvious, investors and some political activists are renewing interest in nuclear as a source of energy that does not emit climate-warming carbon dioxide. That is forcing proponents to confront the thorny problem of waste again.

How Nevada became the nexus of the waste story
Congress established the Nuclear Waste Fund in 1982, requiring anyone who was getting some of their electricity from nuclear energy to pay a small amount of money to deal with the waste.

From 1982 through 1987, the Department of Energy explored nine sites for permanent waste disposal, and eventually whittled that list down to three. Yucca Mountain in Nevada was the first choice, with sites in Washington and Texas rounding out the top of the list. Some members of Congress were concerned that analyzing multiple sites would cost too much, and so in 1987, Congress amended its 1982 law to focus all of its attention on Yucca Mountain.  READ MORE...