No Yucca Mountain, No Nuclear Energy in Utah

Nicolas Loris / February 12, 2009

Nuclear energy provides the United States with 20 percent of its electricity, but none to Utah. If the state legislature gets their wish, it could stay that way for the Beehive State:

Lawmakers on Wednesday introduced a bill in the Utah House that would effectively stop any nuclear power plant from setting up in the state.

The measure would prevent nuclear power plants from operating in Utah unless there is a federally licensed facility with adequate capacity available to dispose of any high-level radioactive waste.

The proposed Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada has a capacity limit that is already too low to handle the material expected to be generated by the country’s 104 commercial reactors before they are shut down.

Unless Congress removes the 77,000-ton limit on Yucca Mountain, it would have to approve a search for a second repository to handle future waste.”

Currently, there is a proposal to build two 1,500-megawatt reactors in Green River that would provide the state clean and secure energy while adding diversity to the state’s energy portfolio. (more…)