Yucca Mountain Pros and Cons

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Yucca Mountain Pros and Cons

Nuclear waste is a product of the nuclear power plants and even though we would love not to have it, we still have to deal with it. It can’t just stand in the middle of the streets with us because it wouldn’t be healthy for our population and as such, Yucca Mountain as been proposed as a potential site to bury the nuclear waste. A lot of people feel like this is just barbaric, while a lot of people believe that we really should dump the nuclear waste in there until a better solution is figured out. Let’s look at the pros and cons of the situation:

List of Pros of Yucca Mountain

1. It Is a Solution Needed for an Urgent Problem
Right now the nuclear waste is being stored internally and unfortunately, this type of internal storage can only last for so long. Until a way to completely eradicate this waste is figured out, a temporary solution needs to be implemented. The current solution is Yucca Mountain, since the government already owns the land and it is in a contained area, even if the waste leaks it is very unlikely that it will end up leaking to the oceans.

2. It Isn’t In a Widely Populated Area
Since we dealing with nuclear waste, we want to keep it as far away from our populations as possible. Nuclear waste has a very negative impact on public health and as such, we need to avoid it. Until we can eradicate it, we need to keep it away. Yucca Mountain is an ideal place to keep it away.

List of Cons of Yucca Mountain

1. It Is Unfair for the State of Nevada
So we need to dump our nuclear waste somewhere and we all know that the responsible ones for the waste are nuclear power plants. The truth is, the state of Nevada was actually not responsible for any of the nuclear waste at all, since they don’t even have one single power plant on their territory.

2. It Is Close to Las Vegas
Even though there is no population near Yucca Mountain, there is a lot of population on the proximities. The outcome of nuclear waste on the long term is obviously still unknown and Yucca Mountain is located just around 100 miles away from Las Vegas. It might be possible that the waste destroys the health of the population in the future.

3. Transportation is a Problem
There is a lot of nuclear waste to transport to Yucca Mountain and there isn’t still a clear way to transport all of the nuclear waste to the mountain. A decision still needs to be made and there is certainly no economic way to do it.