nuclear-news

Project 2025 agenda revives Nevada’s Yucca Mountain fears

By Judy Treichel, Thursday, Aug. 21, 2025, https://lasvegassun.com/news/2025/aug/21/project-2025-agenda-revives-nevadas-yucca-mountain/ Judy Treichel is the executive director of the Nevada Nuclear Waste Task Force.

A meeting was held in Las Vegas last month, paid for by a Department of Energy grant and hosted by Mothers for Nuclear and Native Nuclear .

The host groups tried to put a friendlier slant on the DOE message, but it was clear that the government and commercial nuclear industry have never gotten out of the rut they have been in from the start: advertise the glory of nuclear power and never get very far into the problem of what to do with the waste.

The purpose of the invitation-only event was to “elicit public feedback on consent-based siting and management of spent nuclear fuel…”

But my takeaway was that they hoped to get the audience to love new nuclear power more than we hate its waste.

The presenters sang the praises of nuclear power and shared frustration with many audience members about how the public was frightened of or opposed to nuclear power after watching “The Simpsons” on TV! There was a brief mention of the disastrous events at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, but the impression left was that those were now over and that current public fears arose from “The Simpsons”!

Thirty years ago, the DOE was a huge presence in Nevada, studying Yucca Mountain 80 miles northwest of downtown Las Vegas, as the site for underground disposal of the nation’s high-level nuclear waste. Public meetings at that time brought out many longtime residents who related stories about the damage older family members or friends had suffered from widespread exposure to radiation from nuclear weapons testing at the Nevada Test Site. They described how they had been lied to about safety and how there was a lack of accountability for human and property damage. They wanted no part of any future nuclear experiments, be it nuclear power plants or a disposal site for the nation’s high-level nuclear waste.

The Yucca Mountain nuclear waste disposal program was determined to be “unworkable” by the Energy secretary in 2010. It has remained unfunded by Congress since then, but it has not been terminated by law.

When the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 became public, my colleagues and I were dismayed when we saw the recommendation to resume licensing the “unworkable” Yucca Mountain project. It was as if a switch could be flipped and the site’s safety flaws and the long-enduring opposition of Nevadans could be ignored.

Independent scientists determined that Yucca Mountain could not isolate the dangerous radiation for the long time period necessary. Those findings are reflected in the more than 200 contentions filed by Nevada that would have to be adjudicated during any future licensing proceeding.

Project 2025 would give us two unwanted nuclear-related gifts: a nuclear waste repository and a restart to nuclear weapons testing, side by side! The assurances we heard from the DOE at those long-ago meetings were that it had learned lessons during weapons testing. The DOE claimed that safety comes first now. But I’m not so sure.

Were Project 2025’s nuclear goals to be realized, there would be an operating repository at Yucca Mountain. It would have above-ground facilities and a decadeslong national nuclear waste transportation campaign flowing into Nevada on a currently nonexistent 200-plus-milelong rail access corridor to the repository site. Next door would be ground-blasting nuclear weapons testing. and flying over both of those operations would be the training and testing of military planes and drones from Creech Air Force Base. This would surely be a dangerous and untenable combination.

Project 2025 was not friendly to Southern Nevada. In addition to its calls for increased use of nuclear power, it also calls for — and President Donald Trump has largely followed through on — removing federal government support and incentives for solar power. This is shortsighted, as rooftop solar shades the underlying buildings while generating power and drastically reduces the power bills of consumers. Perhaps most importantly, solar power generation does not leave a legacy of lethal waste.

The Department of Energy was right 16 years ago when it announced that a national high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain was unworkable. It still is. Convention attendees and visitors come to our great hotels and meeting venues. Nuclear waste shipments on the railroad tracks behind the hotels and through our downtown area may make some of that business choose other locations. If there was any sort of accident or incident on the tracks within Clark County, the national news services would blast out the images far and wide, and economic damage would occur whether there was radiation released or not.

Las Vegas has a fragile economy, and it is highly dependent on fun and enjoyment. We are becoming a major sports destination, continuing to be home to important conventions and putting on the best shows in the world. We must find ways to make our precious resources available for the worthwhile activities we have, with no backdrop of dreaded nuclear contamination and waste. We need to apply a compatibility test that honors our past and preserves our future.

September 9, 2025 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, wastes