The United States government and Energy Department made a very good decision to store our nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

The first advantage to storing waste in Yucca Mountain is that the science shows it can hold the nuclear waste for 10,000 years. 10,000 years is a very long period of time. The storage facility at Yucca Mountain can contain the waste for as long as our children, our children's children, and so on, are living. The Energy Department stated that if the government were to win all the pending law suits against them they could start storing the waste as early as 2010. So the Yucca Mountain storage site will be active until 12,010. That is a very long time.

Another advantage to storing the waste at Yucca Mountain is that it protects us from many possible accidents or acts of terror. Our waste can be stored in one place rather than at a number of different sites, as is done now. Since 1982, the Energy Department has been trying to locate a place were they can place all of there radioactive waste. Just think about this: there are 38 states that produce electricity by nuclear power. Where are they supposed to store their nuclear waste? To have more than one site per state would be dangerous -- there would be many nuclear waste sites that our country would have to protect. It would affect the nation more if we had multiple sites rather than one. The waste could kill an enormous number of people and could affect our food and water sources as well.

With Yucca Mountain the situation is different. We can put all our focus in protecting this one place. We won't be as vulnerable to terrorists. Yucca Mountain is located in the middle of the Nevada desert. The next biggest city close to it is Las Vegas, which is 90 miles away. Also they are going to store the waste 5 miles under the mountain, where it would be safer from attack.

A third advantage of storing nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain is that the mountain itself acts as a barrier to protect it from elements, such as water. Michael Vogel, chief scientist for the Yucca Mountain Project, stated that this was a beautiful site because of its climate. Because it was so dry it provided an interesting combination of barriers. If there was to be a leak and waste got into the soil there would not be a great deal of water in the soil. Therefore, the nuclear waste cannot evaporate with the water and rise into the clouds, where it could be turned back into precipitation that can fall back to earth and contaminate water sources.

Those who disagree with the government might call what the government is doing "dumping," but they are very wrong. When you say dumping, that means you dump garbage carelessly. The government is not dumping the waste carelessly; they are investigating all of the advantages and disadvantages to storing waste in Yucca Mountain. The politicians who made this decision are not bad people. They have come up with a careful plan. They are interested in making our world a safer and better place.