A bit of background on Yucca Mountain

Although the proposed high-level radioactive waste deep geological repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, remains canceled, it was never legal in the first place. It sits on Western Shoshone land, illegally seized by the U.S government, and breaking the 1863 Treaty of Ruby Valley which did not cede land claims to the federal government. As Ian…

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Reprocessing– the dirty end of the nuclear fuel chain

Alongside uranium mining, reprocessing is considered the dirtiest phase of the uranium fuel chain. Reprocessing — the cutting up of irradiated reactor fuel rods in a chemical bath to extract plutonium and fissile uranium — releases larger volumes of radioactivity, typically by a factor of several thousand, than nuclear power plants. It also results in…

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