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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Trump Transition Team Explores Restarting Yucca Mountain Nuclear Dump

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Tuesday, December 13, 2016   

YUCCA MOUNTAIN, Nev. – The Trump transition team raised a few eyebrows in Nevada this weekend when they signaled an interest in restarting the project to put in a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, a hundred miles northwest of Las Vegas. They asked the Department of Energy about any legal barriers to reviving the repository for high-level nuclear waste, which has been mothballed since 2011 when the Obama administration cut off funding.

Matthew McKinzie, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council, said there were more than 300 challenges to the license application the last time around, and more would be on the horizon.

"That's a huge amount of time and money to do that legal work to address those challenges," he said. "And I don't think the Yucca Mountain Project will prevail in court."

McKinzie said the new administration would have to reconstitute a huge team of experts across multiple agencies and submit an entirely new application since the design has changed. The project has faced stalwart opposition from many leaders in Nevada, including local tribes and Senator Harry Reid, who is retiring.

Supporters of Yucca Mountain point to the billions already spent on the project and say failing to secure our nuclear waste is not an option. McKinzie said the decades-old project is still in its infancy, lacking the actual tunnels to store the waste and the rail system to bring it in.

"It's not as if those billions have produced a facility that is ready to go if it wasn't for some politicians," he added. "That's not the case. There's a long way to go to develop the site if it can be licensed. Which I don't think it can be licensed."

The Department of Energy first began studying Yucca Mountain, which is adjacent to the Nevada nuclear test site, back in 1978.


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