David Fitzpatrick
CNN Special Investigations Unit

What has cost Americans more than $10 billion in taxes, and $22 billion on utility bills?

Yucca Mountain. But it’s a fair bet that few Americans know why.

Under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, Yucca Mountain is the ONLY place in the United States designated to store tons and tons of nuclear waste that nuclear power plants have been accumulating since we started using atomic energy to generate electricity.

And yet, the amount of nuclear waste stored there is zero. Other states and communities don’t want the nuclear waste passing through their areas. And no one has figured out how to make sure none of the nuclear waste leaks once it is buried there.

So why keep spending so much money on it?

It seems the new Administration has asked exactly that question – and answered it. President Obama’s new budget cuts off most of the money flowing into Yucca Mountain. If you live in an area that gets electricity from nuclear plants, you'll still get those little utility bill charges.

Since it opened in 1983, I’ve been to Yucca Mountain several times to report on this never-ending story. It’s about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas and, yes, it’s in the absolute middle of nowhere. Nearby lies the flotsam and jetsam of America’s nuclear age: rusting sheds and abandoned platforms where the first above-ground nuclear tests were conducted in the 1950s. Some of the control towers are still there, wasting away in the desert sun.

My most memorable trip to Yucca Mountain was as a producer for “60 Minutes.” Morley Safer and I spent a long day wearing hard hats and exploring the facility, which THEN was expected to cost a mere $5 billion.

Department of Energy engineers showed us their gigantic, specially built drilling machine especially built to bore a huge U-shaped tunnel into the mountain. It looked like something out of a science fiction movie, weighing 860 tons and featuring a 25-foot-wide drill bit.

Engineers laid railroad tracks in tunnel to carry nuclear waste more than a mile from the opening. The plan was to store the waste safely – forever – inside the mountain walls. Thousands of engineers and contractors worked there.

But how would nuclear waste get to Yucca Mountain in the first place? The government planned to use highly protected trucks or trains. But in classic not-in-my-backyard “NIMBY” politics, governors and mayors said no way.

Believe me, no politician wanted his or her name on a press release announcing nuclear waste material would be taken through his or her town.

And Nevada politicians didn’t want the waste in THEIR backyard. The state was so adamant, in fact, that it paid state employees to oppose Yucca Mountain. That agency is still alive and kicking: it’s called The Nevada Nuclear Projects Agency, a bland name that belies the enormous amounts of money spent to kill the project.

National politics comes into play, too. In the 2008 presidential race, President Obama had vowed to stop throwing money at Yucca Mountain. And he defeated Sen. John McCain in Nevada.

And Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has been adamant in his opposition to Yucca Mountain: “I am pleased that President Obama and Secretary Chu are holding firm on their commitment to kill the dump.”

Energy Secretary Steven Chu told Senators last week that he would “devise a new strategy toward nuclear waste disposal” and proposed yet another study on how to solve the problem.

President Obama has already made public his desire to see more nuclear facilities operating in the United States. The nuclear industry has also expressed desire to build new plants—none has been built in the U.S. since the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979.

Until the problem of what to do with the nuclear waste is solved, however, it remains unclear whether the goal of Mr. Obama and the nuclear industry will be realized.