The Nuclear Regulatory Commission voted 2-1 Tuesday to restart and resurrect the licensing process for the controversial Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site project.

The decision gives the go ahead for the “information gathering” stage that will eventually allow the Department of Energy to secure the license to build a nuclear waste facility more than 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Finally.  We need a repository for our accumulating nuclear waste, and the bottom of a salt mine is one of the best places extant: given the easy solubility of salt, the existence of this much salt in one place strongly implies a geologically stable area that’s also stable over geologically long time periods.

Hopefully, two things will occur.  One is that we’ll finally get a large, long-lived place in which to sequester all the nuclear waste that has accumulated at our nuclear power plants and other facilities.

The other is that the Yucca Mountain facility will be named the Harry Mason Reid Memorial Nuclear Waste Repository at Yucca Mountain.