Yucca Mountain

The Repository: Yucca Mountain, located in a remote desert on federally protected land 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada in Nye County, is the site of a geologic repository planned by the U.S. Department of Energy.  The repository will house nearly 70,000 tons of uranium contained in spent nuclear fuel and high level radioactive waste resulting from nuclear power generation and national defense activities.

Waste Transportation: Movement of the nuclear waste from commercial and government owned sites to the geological repository in Nevada will use the nation’s railway and highway transportation systems.  The waste will be transported in Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)-certified casks along approved transportation routes. For this purpose, a fleet of special rail and truck transportation systems meeting stringent safety and security requirements will be utilized.

General Atomics (GA) provides advanced design truck and rail casks to meet the needs of the Yucca Mountain transportation program.  GA’s truck casks can safely carry higher payloads within the legal weight truck limits, and have been designed with versatility allowing them to carry commercial spent nuclear fuel as well as high level radioactive waste forms.  GA has also teamed with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries of Japan to bring state-of-the-art, high capacity rail casks to the U.S. to provide a total transportation solution to Yucca Mountain.