Opinion: Rep. John Shimkus in the Chicago Tribune: Yucca Mountain is the Fastest, Best, and Most Viable Solution

Our country faces a mounting challenge when it comes to nuclear energy: the safe, long-term disposal of spent fuel from commercial reactors and leftover waste from defense activity. It's a challenge with a decades-long history.

The U.S. Department of Energy, 32 states, nuclear plant operators and millions of consumers have long counted on spent fuel and defense waste being transported away from reactor sites to a permanent repository. Both bodies of Congress, acting in strong bipartisan fashion, consistently voted to develop the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada and even imposed a fee on power generation to fund it. After spending $15 billion analyzing it, the Department of Energy in 2008 finally filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission an application for a license to build and operate the project. Numbering nearly 10,000 pages, the application addressed every imaginable question of safety and environmental protection.