The Heartland Institute’s latest Environment and Climate News has a pair of pieces on Yucca Mountain. And whether or not you think the storage facility there is now dead (Max Schulz certainly doesn’t think so), these items argue that it shouldn’t be.

Heartland’s Jay Lehr suggests that the Obama administration let the science — not Hollywood-driven fears of radiation exposure — drive our policy on nuclear-waste storage.

Meanwhile, our own Drew Thornley discusses spent-fuel reprocessing with fellow Planet Gore contributor Bill Tucker.

President Obama has a tough choice ahead of him. He can lift the ban on reprocessing — France seems to be managing its plutonium adequately enough; on the other hand, it would be a shocking development for Obama to govern in any way different from Jimmy Carter. Or he can disturb the anti-nuke portion of his base and open Yucca Mountain. (Or he can pull a Gitmo, and make a big show of closing Yucca and find another place to store spent fuel rods.)

But the fact remains: if nuclear-plant waste doesn’t start taking up less room — soon — it’s going to have to be stored somewhere.

Reached grillside at his home in Texas, Drew Thornley adds:

So, what’s it gonna be? How many years and how many billions will it take — and how much will our energy supply and economy be damaged as a result of the foot dragging — to come up with anything remotely as promising as Yucca? Simply saying Plan A isn’t good enough isn’t . . . well, good enough.Give us Plan B. President Obama has yet to do so.
Or is this even about Yucca? Is the real goal simply to put the brakes on a safe, clean power source that gives us roughly 20 percent of our electricity?