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Yucca Mountain, Nevada, has been approved by Congress as the site for the nation’s high-level radioactive waste repository after more than 20 years of intensive geological and environmental study. Yucca Mountain was chosen for its geological capacity to isolate the waste for at least 10,000 years; thus, Yucca Mountain has received more detailed study and hazard analysis than any other comparable feature on the planet. The path to development, however, still faces political, technical, and scientific controversy, in part because Yucca Mountain is within the tectonically active Basin and Range province. This volume explains the reasoning and the history for the selection of Yucca Mountain. It presents important results of the site characterization study, including discussion of the tectonic setting, detailed structural geology and stratigraphy, evaluation of tectonic models that have been proposed, and a study of the climate history and possible climate change that could affect the mountain’s ability to isolate radioactive waste. |
