1861-1938: Early Building Blocks Toward Yucca Mountain -- 1939-1952: Nuclear Proliferation Begins in the United States -- 1953-1969: Shifting Nuclear Priorities -- 1970-1981: Precursors to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act -- 1982-1987: The U.S. Settles on Yucca Mountain -- 1988-1999: The Yucca Mountain Project Pushes Forward -- 2000-2016: The Yucca Mountain Project Grinds to a Halt -- 2017-present: New Life for Yucca Mountain?
Work on the Yucca Mountain Project began in the early 1980s and lasted about three decades. In 2017, the project was again added to President Trump's proposed budget, breathing life into repository work that had been essentially dead since 2009. In this timeline you will find the dates of historical building blocks to nuclear waste in the United States, and the selection of Yucca Mountain as the nation's only high-level nuclear waste site. You will also find dates of major landmarks in scientific work for the Yucca Mountain Project, with the legislation and legal battles that followed it through the years.