When the President's budget request zeroed out funding for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository [right, artist's concept with geologic cutaway. Credit, DOE], the initial conventional wisdom was that the project was dead.
But there's growing debate that "Yucca isn't dead yet. It has formidable backing in the House and from probably a majority of members of the Senate. Legally, it remains the nation's only approved long-term nuclear waste storage site," according to an extensive analysis in the New York Times.
An editorial on the Chicago Tribune's Web site today entitled, "Keep Yucca Mountain project alive," said killing the Yucca Mountain's repository "would leave Illinois with the shaft" of storing nearly 7,000 tons of nuclear waste.
Similar arguments are coming forward from other areas where spent nuclear fuel is temporarily stored while waiting a permanent home.