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Yucca Mountain - The Walking Dead
 There is a renewed push in Washington to reopen the debate on Yucca Mountain, with the Trump administration and some lawmakers seeing what they think is an opportunity this year to try to advance the project's long-stalled licensing process. Congress required the Department of Energy to find a long-term storage site as part of the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, or as it's often referred to in Nevada, the "Screw Nevada" bill.
Yucca has been the only site on the government's list for "deep geological disposal" of nuclear waste for more than 30 years.
Congress designated Yucca Mountain in 1987 as the sole site for permanent nuclear waste. Failure to develop the facility, or an alternative, has resulted in spent fuel rods and other nuclear waste being stockpiled at power plants; military installations and DOE facilities in 34 states.
The SRSCRO has been involved with and following this topic since 2010, so the debate continues.
During the House Appropriations Committee's Energy & Water Development Subcommittee Member Day this month, several Energy and Commerce Members highlighted the need to find a permanent solution to America's nuclear waste storage problem and resume the licensing process for Yucca Mountain. Specifically, the Members asked for the president's budget request of $116 million for the Department of Energy (DOE) and $38.5 million for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) be fulfilled. However, for the
past two years efforts to resume licensing on the Yucca Mountain application in the Senate have failed.
In opposition to the funding is Nevada Rep. Dina Titus. She argued that the project is unsafe and too expensive during the Committee meeting. She is hoping that including language authorizing temporary nuclear storage will help win support for her bill that would require consent from state, local and tribal governments in order to move forward with Yucca.
However, in Senate testimony,
Energy Secretary Rick Perry said the administration has to press on, regardless of those feelings. "What we all have to recognize here is Yucca Mountain is the law, and I am going to follow the law," Perry said in response to questions from Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.). "It's not an issue of what someone thinks or what someone necessarily desires. I am going to follow the law."
Closer to home, Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC) stressed how American ratepayers and taxpayers are on the hook for billions because the federal government has failed its contractual obligation to establish a permanent nuclear waste repository:
"Because the Department of Energy and the federal government have defaulted on their contractual obligations, ratepayers across the United States - notice I said ratepayers across the United States - have paid around $40 billion in fees for the construction and operation of a permanent nuclear waste repository. The federal law required the Department of Energy to begin disposing of nuclear waste by 1998. Clearly, the federal government has aggressively failed to meet this contractual deadline by over 20 years - unnecessarily costing Americans billions of dollars. In addition to what ratepayers have paid, taxpayers have paid nearly $7 billion in legal damages. In fiscal year 2017 alone taxpayers nearly paid $732 million, which breaks down to about $2 million a day in damages. And for what? Given our rising $22 trillion debt, it's important to remain cognizant of what else this money could be funding."
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According to a
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has published some astonishing data on healthcare jobs. Projections through 2026 include 1.26 million total healthcare job openings per year. This includes technical occupations and medical practitioners of all types, such as the 204,000 registered nursing job openings projected per year. The demand for healthcare services and healthcare workers is driven by the aging U.S. population. Healthcare services needed by the older population are greater, and this translates to more healthcare workers needed. In the SRSCRO region,
