Produced by:
KBOO
Program::
Air date:
Mon, 05/31/2010 - 12:00am
A conversation with author John D'Agata about the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository
In recent years a wide range of voices has been promoting nuclear energy as the solution to climate change. While it’s true that the actual nuclear processes within reactors produce no carbon emissions, nuclear boosterism overlooks a number of serious issues with nuclear power. Probably the most critical one is the still-unsolved problem of where to store all the nuclear waste. For many years it looked like the permanent repository for all of our country’s nuclear waste was going to be Yucca Mountain, 90 miles north of Las Vegas. But a few months ago, shortly before President Obama announced plans to restart the nation’s commercial nuclear reactor program after a thirty-year hiatus, he essentially pulled the plug on using Yucca Mountain as a storage facility, by cutting off further funding for the project. On this episode of Locus Focus we talk with John D’Agata, author of a book about Yucca Mountain, called About a Mountain.
About A Mountain looks at how Southern Nevada’s peculiar culture advanced Yucca Mountain as the favored site for the nuclear waste repository. But it’s also an incisive look at how we all live without looking closely at the consequences of our decisions. John D’Agata is an author who teaches creative writing at the University of Iowa. A few years ago he spent time in Las Vegas, after his mother moved there. Through his mother's network of activist friends, he became intimately familiar with the controversy brewing over creating the nation's permanent nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. His book challenges the rationale for relying on currently known technologies to manage the problem of storing nuclear waste, a toxic substance that will persist in nature for a quarter of million years.
- KBOO
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