There are many reasons they are choosing Yucca Mountain.
1) Salt. Yes, salt is what they are burying the waste in. This does a couple things, first it prevents water from seeping in and dragging the waste to drinking water. Second it will re-close itself completely as the ages go on with more salt without a collapse which would damage the storage barrels as rocks would do.
2) Desert, quite simply no one lives there and no rain to drag off the waste to groundwater
3) It's an old site for nuclear tests, it's been soaked in radioactivity already in the past.
4) It's government property with very few natural resources. Very few people are there, and there's no incentive to move there anytime soon.
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