Yucca mountain, the 15 billion dollar half-dug hole in the ground. Where is the nuclear waste?

As recent events in Japan rocked the atomic energy community, more attention is being drawn to the United States, and its dozens of above ground repositories of spent fuel rods.

The United States government is bound by laws  that require the spent fuel rods and nuclear waste to be stored permanently deep underground.  In 1983 the US government began collecting money through fees placed on these utilities, with these fees being passed onto the consumer through electricity bills.

In 1998, Yucca mountain was to begun accepting these nuclear wastes, but it hasn’t.  What happened? Welcome to 2011, and Yucca mountain remains empty and half built at a current 15 billion dollar investment.

This means that all the spent fuel rods burned up in every US power plant since their inception are still being stored on site.