Stateside reports that the nuclear power industry has a problem, caused by the Federal government. It has no way to dispose of spent nuclear fuel rods, some of which are high-level nuclear waste.
Since 1987, the Federal plan was a facility in Nevada known as Yucca Mountain. The Obama administration basically put that project on hold. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission completed a safety evaluation report and completed an Environmental Impact Statement last year, both of which favored opening the facility for business.
Now the new administration indicates Yucca Mountain is back on the national agenda. In the proposed budget, $120 million is set aside for finalizing the approval process.
Samuel Brinton, a nuclear engineer with the American Nuclear Society, met with Stateside to explain what happens to nuclear waste and why the public should be concerned.
Spent nuclear fuel is placed at [reactor sites]... along with another 15 to 16 stranded sites around the country becasue the Federal government failed to do the job, Brinton should have said. So, these are sites that had a nuclear reactor on them, but there is nothing left but the stored nuclear waste in containers approved by all Federal agencies.
So we have cleaned up the reactor and plant facility leaving a field grass except for concrete pads supporting dry-cast storage units, which are basically tall cylinders of concrete encasing the nuclear waste. Those sites, along with the other operating and closed reactor sites still manage over 75,000 metric tons of nuclear waste. By volume, this consists of only two football fields some 20 feet high of containers....for all current U.S. nuclear waste.
The problem, he said, is that the nuclear waste is located at so many sites around the U.S. albeit at regulated facilities. That should be managed in one place by the Federal government (i.e., the DoE).
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