Monday, January 28, 2008

Dairy Farmer gives another GREAT reason to stop Yucca Mountain

The LVRJ is doing a series called "On the Road" where they are taking US 95 from South to North and interviewing people in the towns along the way. FIRST we at PRO Nevada are grateful to the RJ for getting out of it's Vegas towers to get into rural Nevada. Their articles so far have stayed away from the quirky and gotten into the true rural Nevadans. SECOND I do believe they are showing their prejudices by who they pick and print but we understand a newspaper trying to stay a bit balanced even though rural Nevadans are pretty predominantly Republican and have counterweighted the predominantly Democratic cities of Vegas and Reno.
Tuesday's "On the Road" stopped at the Dairy farm within a few miles of Yucca Mountain. They interviewed the managers there and talked about Yucca. Read article here.


Can you imagine 45% of Nevada's milk coming from a location near Yucca Mountain? I really don't care if you can find 50 "experts" who will tell me that there is no way nuclear waste can get into the cows system and into our milk. Just the thought of it makes you think twice about purchasing milk. We might have to start getting our milk from China or something. It is kind of like having a drinking fountain right next to a urinal in the men's restroom. It just isn't right!


PRONevada.org

Buried on Page 20

So why does this get buried in page 20 of the LVRJ?

With all the campaign rhetoric on Yucca Mountain you would think something like this would get more play. All we here is: "I will stop Yucca Mountain if elected president!" from every one of the officials but when the BETTER IDEA is put forward no one picks it up. We at PRONevada have been preaching about recycling nuclear waste instead of putting it in a concrete box an burying it under a beautiful Nevada mountain. We (the US taxpayer) have spent TENS OF BILLIONS of dollars on digging a hole under Yucca Mountain to store when that money could have better been spent on turning that nuclear waste into MORE ENERGY or at least rendering it non-radioactive.

So here is one of our representatives touting this plan and the LV Sun doesn't even pick it up and the LVRJ buries it next to the latest casino "double your point" advertisement. So here it is.

Jan. 18, 2008 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal Porter looks at recycling nuclear fuel By TONY BATT STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON -- After inspecting a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in France, Rep. Jon Porter on Thursday said Nevada universities should be at the forefront in researching the reprocessing of nuclear fuel.
"According to the French, there is a shortage of folks in this field; and if we can become the premier state in researching the recycling of nuclear fuel and alternative energy sources, the pressure to open
Yucca Mountain might be reduced," Porter said.
During reprocessing, uranium and plutonium are separated from other materials in spent nuclear fuel. That could significantly reduce the 77,000 tons of nuclear waste which would be stored at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of
Las Vegas.
But for more than 30 years, the
United States has banned reprocessing of nuclear waste in an attempt to limit the proliferation of nuclear weapons material.

"I think we have ignored a viable option for a number of years, and we need to accelerate efforts to look at reprocessing as a way to diversify our energy portfolio," said Porter, a three-term Republican.
Porter said the cost of completing a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain ranges from $80 billion to $90 billion compared to about $15 billion to build a nuclear reprocessing facility.
Porter and Republicans Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, and Phil English and Bill Shuster, both of Pennsylvania, toured the Areva nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in LaHague, France, last week on a nine-day taxpayer-funded trip.
The lawmakers also inspected energy facilities in Azerbaijan and Turkey, including the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan crude oil pipeline, which transports 1 million barrels a day and is projected to reach its capacity of moving 3 million barrels daily next year, according to Porter spokesman Matt Leffingwell.
Although not all of the oil goes to the United States, Porter described the BTC pipeline as a vital U.S. energy resource.
"The pipeline allows us to get oil and gas from that region without Russia and Iran who like to play games," he said.


Pay special attention to the fact that a recycling facility in France cost ONLY $15 billion. We have spent $80 billion on Yucca so far! Let's hear a presidential candidate do his homework on that instead of just reading press releases! I want to hear that dumping waste is NOT going to happen but I want to hear more WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO WITH IT INSTEAD!
Sure, send us your waste. We'll power our state with it! Now that is PRONevada!

PRONevada.org
Filed in Yucca Mountain