Located on the federally owned Nevada Test Site, Yucca Mountain is one of the most hotly contested sites in the United States.

Soon after World War II, the United States Government created the Atomic Energy Commission to oversee both military and peaceful uses of Atomic power. Central to this was the production of electricity through the use of nuclear fission. By the late 1950s, power plants in the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union began operation using this process, and although creating electricity through nuclear power proved both efficient and cost effective, one major limitation was long-term storage of spent reactor fuel rods.

In an effort to alleviate this problem and to store high-level radioactive waste from military applications, in 1982 the U.S. Congress enacted the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to find a suitable storage location. Under this legislation, the Department of Energy selected a narrow, six-mile long, flat-topped mountain ridge at the Nevada Test Site for an underground laboratory and a geological repository for the storage of nuclear waste.

Almost immediately this decision sparked controversy and heated debate. Between 1987 and 2002, environmental protection groups and area residents, including the Shoshone Nation, protested plans to store nuclear waste in the mountain. Reasons for opposition included the long lifespan of nuclear waste--often thousands to millions of years, concerns over the mountain's geology, and the region's seismic activity.

In 2002, over ongoing protests and the objection of Nevada's governor, President George W. Bush signed legislation finalizing Yucca Mountain as the nation's nuclear repository. Despite this bill, numerous lawsuits ensued to prevent the transfer of waste to the site. In early 2010, President Barack Obama further stalled the use of the facility by ending funding for the project and promising to search for another suitable location for waste.

Currently the site is no longer a potential repository, and the future of Yucca Mountain remains unclear.

Credits and Sources:

Researched and written by UWF Public History Graduate Student Grant Czubinski