Today’s Goldberg File (as if you didn’t know) had an item about Yucca Mountain in it. Interesting email in response:

Jonah:
As a long-time Nevada resident I’ve spent a decade trying to bang into the heads of Nevada politicians (and people who will actually listen) that there is an opportunity to turn Yucca Mountain into a boom for Nevada. Just agree to stop opposing the facility in exchange for an industry-funded reprocessing facility at the site. Reprocessing is currently outlawed in the US due to a Jimmy Carter presidential edict. Repeal it! It was intended to prevent nuclear proliferation. Ha! Even your couch knows how well that has worked.
Reprocessing would break down the spent fuel rods, remove the plutonium (about 3% of each rod) then reprocess the remaining U235 and U238 into new rods. The technology is well known – it was invented here, and the French have been doing it for years.
Incidentally, the opponents always cite the size of the nuclear waste problem in terms of weight – 78,000 tons sounds like a lot. But don’t forget Uranium and Plutonium are among the heaviest of minerals – a ton of this stuff is approximately 1 cubic foot in volume. All of it would fit into a football field, end zone to end zone in a pile stacked 5.2 feet high. About halfway up to the goalposts. And the 3% that needs to be sequestered (the Plutonium) amounts to 2340 cubic feet. Of course that has to be broken into smaller pieces and vitrified (encased in molten glass), but the point is, its a solvable problem.
Building the reprocessing plant would provide construction jobs for all those out-of-work Las Vegas construction workers, and the plant itself would provide lots of jobs and ongoing economic benefits to Southern Nevada. There are $50+ Billion in the fund the electric utilities have been paying in to for the disposal of nuclear wastes. Nuclear is the ultimate renewable energy source.
I also propose building a large Nuclear Power Plant in Southern Nevada. Make Power and sell it to California. No NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard), because all of Nevada’s backyard is BLM land. Pump sea water from the Gulf of California to cool the plant, then condense it into fresh water to supply Las Vegas. After careful calculation I have determined the optimum location of the plant to be the town of Searchlight, Nevada. Ring a bell?

Update: From a reader:

Jonah,
Pretty good email by your Yucca mountain guy, but his math is wrong. I will assume as given that the fissionable material weighs a ton per cf as he states. If you put it on a football field, it’s going to 1.35 feet high, not 5.2 as he states.
He likely used 50 feet instead of 53.3 yards for the field’s width.
If we’re going with sporting visuals, it’s more instructive to think of a basketball court stacked 16.6 feet high with the stuff. That’s a few feet above the top of the backboards, and a much more compact package than a whole football field of it.
Hope that helps.