As to Yucca being at some risk of "active earthquakes and volcanoes," this is an example of general media reporting that oversimplifies technical issues. The term "active" does not apply to earthquakes (unless one is occuring) but what it does apply to is seismic faults, each of which have geologic characteristics. There are at least two faults in the immediate Yucca Mountain vicinity. They are known and a full seismic evaluation of what risk they may pose will be fully considered by the NRC when it reviews the license application for the proposed repository.

As for volcanos, I do not believe there are any in the same area, although there are some "young" volcanic formations nearby. Once again, the NRC license review will examine volcanic risks even if it is of low probability.

For a Yucca Mountain repository overview of safety issues, see:
http://ocrwm.doe.gov/ym_repository/license/docs/S…

Well said, and to add insult to injury, the proposed answer [ wind and solar ] cannot replace the massive amounts of electricity we currently consume. It will be interesting to see what happens when everbody's light bill starts climbing faster than they can shut down our remaining nuclear power plants.

You wrote:

"Worried about getting it there? Don’t be. Nuclear waste has been transported on roads and railways worldwide for years without a significant incident. Indeed, more than 20 million packages with radioactive materials are transported globally each year — 3 million of them in the United States. Since 1971, more than 20,000 shipments of spent fuel and high-level waste have been transported more than 18 million miles without incident."

I am not reassured. In order to ease my concerns about "getting it there" I would have to see some economic computations on the cost of moving the kinds of packages currently planning from their current locations to Yucca Mountain.

Moving stuff from place to place is not necessarily hard, but it is not necessarily easy or cheap, especially when the destination is a remote site with little transportation infrastructure currently in place.

It may be safe and possible to ship used fuel from Maine or South Florida to Nevada, but there are a lot of miles and a lot of jurisdictions to traverse. There are also a lot of interested parties that can establish cost barriers – the coal dependent railroads, for example are not willing partners in making used fuel transport economical.

I know we continue to have this discussion, but it will continue until I can get some reassurance that Yucca will not be just a giant money sink – with many politically connected beneficiaries. After all, one man's COST is another man's REVENUE and there is still a lot of COST to be absorbed before Yucca could begin accepting shipments.

I still believe there is nothing wrong with storing the used fuel the way we have been storing it – safely and inexpensively – for 50 years. Keep it where it is generated, put it in dry storage containers when it is cooled off, and recycle it when we are good and ready.

There are two solutions, short term ( up to 400 years), and long term ( 1-3 billion years ) when the sun swells into a red giant forcing intelligent life off the earth.

The short term solution is to bury spent fuel under deep seabed mud where it will become less toxic than uranium ore in 0.13 million years. Seawater contains billions of tons of radioactive material naturally, so in the unlikely event of a leak the increase in radioactivity will be insignificant, no one will be harmed.

http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/96oct/seabed/se…

Existing reactors split about 1% of mined uranium. The long range solution is to develop 4th generation reactors that will split 60-99% of mined uranium resulting in a waste stream that becomes less radiotoxic than uranium ore in 270 years, and has commercial applications.

Splitting 1/3 lb. of uranium provides a total 80 year lifetime supply of electricity for an average American. The uranium supply is effectively unlimited. See this comment and the one below it.

http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/4558#comment-41…