Yucca Mountain future being debated
By Conor Shine, Las Vegas Sun
Major progress is expected in the coming year toward resolving the outstanding questions and legal challenges surrounding Yucca Mountain’s potential as a repository for the country’s high-level nuclear waste, members of the state Legislature were told during an interim committee hearing Friday.
During a four-hour hearing, a range of experts and state officials laid out the road map for decisions in the upcoming year that will seriously affect Yucca Mountain’s future.
The hearing also laid bare the confusion and tension that still surround the project three decades and $15 billion after it was first considered, with a contingent of rural county officials and residents urging the state to reverse course and consider the potential economic impact the repository will have. Fully developing the Yucca Mountain site is projected to cost in excess of $100 billion.