<P> Starting in 2009, the Obama administration attempted to close the Yucca Mountain repository, despite current US law that designates Yucca Mountain as the nation's nuclear waste repository . The administration agency, DOE, began implementation of the President's plan in May 2009 . The Nuclear Regulatory Commission also went along with the administration's closure plan . Various state and Congressional entities attempted to challenge the administration's closure plans, by statute and in court . Most recently, in August 2013, a US Court of Appeals decision told the NRC and the Obama administration that they must either "approve or reject the Energy Department's application for (the) never - completed waste storage site at Nevada's Yucca Mountain ." They cannot simply make plans for its closure in violation of US law . </P> <P> In May 2009, then United States Secretary of Energy Steven Chu stated: </P> <P> "Yucca Mountain as a repository is off the table . What we're going to be doing is saying, let's step back . We realize that we know a lot more today than we did 25 or 30 years ago . The NRC is saying that the dry cask storage at current sites would be safe for many decades, so that gives us time to figure out what we should do for a long - term strategy . We will be assembling a blue - ribbon panel to look at the issue . We're looking at reactors that have a high - energy neutron spectrum that can actually allow you to burn down the long - lived actinide waste . These are fast - neutron reactors . There's others: a resurgence of hybrid solutions of fusion fission where the fusion would impart not only energy, but again creates high - energy neutrons that can burn down the long - lived actinides...</P> <P> "Some of the waste is already vitrified . There is, in my mind, no economical reason why you would ever think of pulling it back into a potential fuel cycle . So one could well imagine--again, it depends on what the blue - ribbon panel says--one could well imagine that for a certain classification for a certain type of waste, you don't want to have access to it anymore, so that means you could use different sites than Yucca Mountain, such as salt domes . Once you put it in there, the salt oozes around it . These are geologically stable for a 50 to 100 million year time scale . The trouble with those type of places for repositories is you don't have access to it anymore . But say for certain types of waste you don't want to have access to it anymore--that's good . It's a very natural containment...whereas there would be other waste where you say it has some inherent value, let's keep it around for a hundred years, two hundred years, because there's a high likelihood we'll come back to it and want to recover that . </P>

Where is the united states nuclear waste stored