Outline Worksheet: Informative Speech

Title: The Failure of Yucca Mountain

Speaker: Michelle Hwang

Specific Purpose: To explain the intended purpose of Yucca Mountain as a potential nuclear waste repository, and the resulting failure of the project due to government inaction.

Introduction

I. Attention-getter:
Imagine your old community swimming pool filled with trash. Now as time passes that trash just keeps accumulating; what would you do with that trash? Where does it go or more importantly where can it go? Well, instead of trash imagine nuclear waste. Currently, 122 power plants across the U.S have spent nuclear fuel and waste that is laying unattended with nowhere to go. Our government tried to tackle this problem by
According to the Nuclear Energy Institute, the fees were accumulating at a rate of $740 million s year, and as of May 2013, more than $29 billion were in the fund.

So all this money is poured into the program, but due to politics and government inaction, taxpayers money was just sitting left unattended.

III. Politics and Controversy over Yucca Mountain

A. The NWPA terms were for the waste to be moved by 1998, but the DOE missed the deadline, or rather were not even close to meeting it.

1. Litigation, bureaucratic inertia, and political controversy hindered the DOE from submitting a recommendation that Yucca Mountain be a permanent repository site.

2. The DOE was sued by taxpayers and power plants because they did not fulfill its promise.

3. According to the Government of Accountability, “the failure of the project cost taxpayers about $12.3 billion in damages through 2020 and could cost $500 million per year after 2020”

Conclusion

I. Summarize (overall theme): Yucca Mountain was a failed project from the start, that cost taxpayers and nuclear power plants money and time.

II. Review (each main point): When nuclear power was quickly rising, so was the amount of waste that was being produced. Finding a way to dispose of this waste was a problem that the government tried and failed to fix with the Yucca Mountain plan.

III. Tie to the introduction: So, like the community pool filled with trash, the 122 power plants are holding