Uncertainty Underground

Uncertainty Underground

Author: Allison Macfarlane

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 457

ISBN-13: 0262633329

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Experts from science, industry, and government discuss the unresolved scientific and technical issues surrounding the Yucca Mountain site as a geologic repository for high-level nuclear waste.


Technical Bases for Yucca Mountain Standards

Technical Bases for Yucca Mountain Standards

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 1995-07-28

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13: 0309176336

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The United States currently has no place to dispose of the high-level radioactive waste resulting from the production of the nuclear weapons and the operation of nuclear electronic power plants. The only option under formal consideration at this time is to place the waste in an underground geologic repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. However, there is strong public debate about whether such a repository could protect humans from the radioactive waste that will be dangerous for many thousands of years. This book shows the extent to which our scientific knowledge can guide the federal government in developing a standard to protect the health of the public from wastes in such a repository at Yucca Mountain. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is required to use the recommendations presented in this book as it develops its standard.


The Road to Yucca Mountain

The Road to Yucca Mountain

Author: J. Samuel Walker

Publisher: University of California Press

Published: 2009-09-02

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 9780520260450

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In The Road to Yucca Mountain, J. Samuel Walker traces the U.S. government's tangled efforts to solve the technical and political problems associated with radioactive waste. From the Manhattan Project through the designation in 1987 of Yucca Mountain in Nevada as a high-level waste repository, Walker thoroughly investigates the approaches adopted by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). He explains the growing criticism of the AEC's waste programs, such as the AEC's embarrassing failure in its first serious effort to build a high-level waste repository in a Kansas salt mine. Clearly and accessibly, Walker explains the issues surrounding deep geological disposal and surface storage of high-level waste and spent reactor fuel. He analyzes the equally complex and divisive question of fuel “reprocessing.” He weaves reliable research with fresh insights about nuclear science, geology, politics, and public administration, making this original and authoritative account an essential guide for understanding the continuing controversy over an illusive and emotional topic.


Yucca Mountain Dirty Bomb

Yucca Mountain Dirty Bomb

Author: Wendell A. Duffield

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2007-04-11

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0595885349

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Welcome to the year 2025. Following a lengthy approval process seemingly driven more by politics than science, the nation's inventory of high-level radioactive waste is finally stored in underground passageways dug into the guts of Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Two years later, the unexpected and unthinkable happens a violent volcanic eruption blasts its way through the mountain. Because Yucca is saturated with the percolating abundant rainfall brought about by climate change, explosive steam bursts add to an already destructive eruption as two-thousand-degree magma mixes with water. Radioactive waste is erupted along with volcanic ash, creating the ultimate dirty bomb. The deadly mixture is blown downwind where it settles out over Las Vegas and Lake Mead. The city must be evacuated and the lake drained, displacing and disrupting the lives of millions of people for long into the future. Yucca Mountain Dirty Bomb invites the reader to live vicariously through a scenario that experts consider unlikely, as measured by carefully calculated probability (popularly called "the odds") the very mathematical construct that sustains the gambling mecca of Las Vegas. Nonetheless, unlikely events can and do occur, and in this novel "the house" loses!


About a Mountain

About a Mountain

Author: John D'Agata

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2011-02-07

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 0393076695

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Named One of the 100 Best Nonfiction Books Written by the New York Times Magazine, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year, and a New York Times Editors' Choice. When John D'Agata helps his mother move to Las Vegas one summer, he begins to follow a story about the federal government's plan to store nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain; the result is a startling portrait that compels a reexamination of the future of human life.


Too Hot to Touch

Too Hot to Touch

Author: William M. Alley

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 1107030110

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A fascinating and authoritative account of the controversies and possibilities surrounding nuclear waste disposal, providing expert discussion in down-to-earth language.


The Tainted Desert

The Tainted Desert

Author: Valerie L. Kuletz

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-04-29

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 1134954263

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For decades, nuclear testing in America's southwest was shrouded in secrecy, with images gradually made public of mushroom clouds blooming over the desert. Now, another nuclear crisis looms over this region: the storage of tens of thousands of tons of nuclear waste. Tainted Desert maps the nuclear landscapes of the US inter-desert southwest, a land sacrificed to the Cold-War arms race and nuclear energy policy.