Failing to understand proper science, the Obama administration killed the Yucca Mountain project that would have safely stored all of the United States’ nuclear waste for thousands of years. Yucca Mountain is considered by most scientists to be the safest, most easily managed location in the United States to be used as a nuclear waste repository.
Thanks to the Obama administration’s political machinations, millions of Americans will continue to live right next door to growing stockpiles of poorly secured nuclear waste that may potentially contaminate the environment, water systems, and our own communities. The Fukushima disaster in Japan should have served as a wakeup call to President Obama and his administrators. Instead, they chose to put American lives and welfare second behind their political objectives.
But the American citizen still has options for influencing nuclear regulations. After all, thanks to another initiative by the Obama administration, the Nuclearly Regulatory Commission participates in the Open Government process. Citizens can monitor commission activity and policy development and provide feedback and input.
Creating a waste storage facility at Yucca Mountain is literally more important to our safety and well-being than funding 25 years of new roads, hospitals, and schools. If we don’t take action to manage the growing stockpiles of nuclear waste in a safe, responsible manner soon, we will inevitably have to evacuate one or more large communities when nuclear waste breaks out of inadequate containment and threatens our lives and damages our local environments for thousands of years.