Interesting piece in yesterday's Seattle Times about nuclear waste from the site in Hanford. Basically, it's just sitting there with no place to go since President Obama decided to pull the plug on Yucca Mountain - a decision that hasn't sat well with those in Washington State and other places around the country (like Aiken, South Carolina) who were counting on science winning out over politics:

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., angrily challenged Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, in a public hearing: "What seems to be missing [in the decision] is the why."

In a rambling answer, Chu said, "Other things, other knowledge, other conditions as they evolved made [Yucca Mountain] look increasingly not like an ideal choice."

When Murray asked for scientific evidence, Chu said, "It's an unfolding of issues that continued, and I would be happy to talk to you in detail about some of the issues."

Yucca had legitimate problems, said Tom Cochran, a nuclear physicist with the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council. The site rests above a water table, and moisture leaks through. It might not have been big enough to hold all the waste.

Still, "I wouldn't have done it the way Obama did it," Cochran said. "He came in saying he was going to make decisions based on science. In this case, I think it was a political debt to Harry Reid."

--------------------------------------------
Follow the RCP Blog on Twitter.
Become a fan of RCP on Facebook.
--------------------------------------------