Other LanguagesAG McKenna's guest op-ed about the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository appeared in the Tri-City Herald on Sunday:
[I]n Washington, D.C., the federal government is trying to unilaterally pull the plug on development of the nation's only scientifically studied and Congressionally approved high-level nuclear waste repository, putting families and communities that have already sacrificed at even greater risk.
That's why the Washington State Attorney General's Office is working on several fronts - through the courts, through the regulatory process and through testimony before the federal government's Blue Ribbon Commission - to stop the Department of Energy from putting politics before people and the promises made to find a safe, permanent home for the nuclear waste the federal government generated.
Why is this important to our state's work to clean up the Hanford nuclear reservation? McKenna explains:
In a worst-case scenario, termination of the Yucca Mountain repository could mean tearing down and rebuilding portions of Washington's waste treatment plant to implement design and engineering changes to meet another repository's waste acceptance criteria. This would result in significant costs and delays in Hanford's entire tank waste clean-up mission.
Read more about our work on Hanford cleanup at Hanford.
-Dan Sytman-