Why didn’t they pick someplace far away like Mongolia, Siberia or Greenland? “You’re making the assumption that somehow the remoteness of a location makes it okay,” Kraft responded. “You’re talking about places where there are geologic instabilities or the geology is very difficult to understand.” There are also proposals suggesting ice sheet disposal, deep ocean disposal, or simply blasting the waste into outer space. “Yucca Mountain meets all of the requirements, and I can’t think of a better site,” Kraft explained. “They have an awful good rock body down there that has withstood a lot of scientific scrutiny. It is by happenstance of geology they have a good location.”

And what is the key to geology? “What makes Yucca Mountain such a good site is, in the formation below the repository, are naturally occurring zeolites,” Kraft pointed out. Water softeners rely upon zeolites as ion-exchange beds. “Zeolites strip out a lot of the radionuclides and belays the flow of water,’ he explained. “By the time you get to the accessible environment, the dose rate stays well below EPA standards.”

No location is perfect. Even if all nuclear power plants were turned off today, more than 108 million pounds of nuclear waste would require disposition. You can’t burn nuclear fuel pellets. Nuclear waste is not flammable; it is too weak to explode. Each year, the nation’s 103 reactors produce another 2,000 metric tons of waste. It has to end up somewhere. The Yucca Mountain area is geologically stable. The last volcanic eruption – a small one – occurred 80,000 years ago. About 12 to 15 million years ago, large eruptions north of Yucca Mountain laid down the sturdy bedrock which formed this mountain.

The Yucca Mountain area only receives about seven inches of rainfall per year. Ninety percent runs off the side of the mountain ridge and mostly evaporates or is absorbed by vegetation. The proposed repository is 1000 feet underground. And the site is 1000 feet above the water table. Rainwater seeping through rock fractures is negligible and would likely be trapped inside the mountain.