The Fight Against Yucca Mountain

Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto is dedicated to continuing the fight against the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. The state's official position is that Yucca Mountain is a singularly bad site to house the nation's high-level nuclear waste and spent nuclear fuel for several reasons:

GEOLOGY and LOCATION: There are many unresolved scientific issues relative to the suitability of the Yucca Mountain site. These issues include hydrology, inadequacy of the proposed waste package, repository design and volcanism. The Yucca site is seismically and volcanically active, porous and incapable of geologically containing the waste. Yucca's aquifer drains to the Amargosa Valley, one of Nevada's most productive agricultural regions, is adjacent to a busy and growing Nellis Air Force Base, and is only 90 miles from our largest metropolitan area, Las Vegas.

LIMITED SPACE: Yucca isn't big enough to store all of the nation's nuclear waste. More than 70,000 metric tons of high level nuclear waste and spent nuclear is stored in more than 77 reactor sites across the country. That number increases by more than 2,000 tons each year. Yucca's statutory design capacity is only 77,000 metric tons. By the time Yucca would be filled to capacity in 2036, there will still be at least the same amount of spent fuel still stored at the reaction sites, even if no new plants are built.

TRANSPORTATION: Transporting waste to Yucca Mountain puts the American public at risk. More than 123 million people live near the proposed truck and train routes which would be used to deliver waste to Yucca Mountain. Those routes travel through 703 counties in 44 states. An accident or attack along those routes could hurt or kill thousands of innocent people.

NATIONAL SECURITY: Contrary to DOE arguments, building the Yucca Mountain repository will not make America safer. Instead, it will give terrorists more attractive and vulnerable targets. The DOE expects more than 100,000 shipments of spent fuel to be transported to Yucca Mountain-thus creating 100,000 mobile targets. Furthermore, the DOE plans to store high-level nuclear waste and spent nuclear fuel above ground at the Yucca site for at least 100 years. This creates the largest new spent fuel storage target in the world.

The Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects

Yucca Mountain-Nevada's Perspective