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Nuclear waste threatens the United States
By Deb Katz |
May 28, 2010, Friday
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ALONGSIDE rivers and lakes, on ocean shores and tidal bays, nearly 63,000 metric tons of high-level radioactive waste - which remains dangerous for longer than recorded history - sits in "temporary" storage.
In some cases, it's been there for decades. And it's almost certain to remain for decades longer, scattered around 33 American states.
Some of that waste is squeezed into small pools housed inside flimsy buildings; some sits outside in storage containers never intended to be permanent.
In both instances, the spent fuel from the nation's nuclear power plants is exceedingly vulnerable to accidents and terrorist attacks.
Like so many of society's waste problems, out-of-sight, out-of-mind has become a de facto "solution" - except to the thousands of Americans who live near these high-level waste storage sites.
I am one of them. I reside near two spent fuel pools, one in Massachusetts, at the now-shuttered Yankee Rowe reactor, and another at the troubled Vermont Yankee reactor, only 16 miles (26 kilometers) away.
Together, these pools hold more than 90 million curies of radioactivity. (The bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki released 1 million curies of radiation.)
Recently, US President Barak Obama canceled the ill-conceived and costly Yucca Mountain high-level radioactive waste disposal project. After 35 years, the deep geological repository in Nevada - chosen on the basis of politics, not science - was finally declared unsuitable.
A special blue-ribbon commission has been created to find an alternative. Nobody is even hinting that an answer might come anytime soon. This spring, America reaches an alarming milestone: enough waste will exist to completely fill Yucca Mountain. We are now about to start filling a second repository - if one existed.
So what should this nation be doing with its spent fuel that - like it or not - is going to stay put for the foreseeable future? Instead of ignoring the problem, or choosing expedient "solutions," we need to face it realistically.
Reprocessing is expensive, causes pollution and poses nuclear-weapons proliferation risks. Rather, the best choice is to improve existing on-site storage until a safe permanent solution can be achieved. In no way should our support of these principles be construed as support of nuclear power or the creation of more radioactive waste.
Briefly, this is what we recommend:
1. Require a low-density, open-frame layout for fuel pools.
2. Establish hardened on-site storage.
3. Increase protection of fuel pools to make them capable of withstanding an attack equal to the force and coordination of the 9/11 attacks.
4. Review each storage facility periodically.
5. Fund local and state governments to independently monitor these sites.
6. Prohibit reprocessing.
Even though the storage modifications we recommend are "temporary," they will give us time - and security - while we find the right answers.
(The author is executive director of the Citizens Awareness Network. The views are his own. Shanghai Daily condensed the article. Copyright: American Forum.)
In some cases, it's been there for decades. And it's almost certain to remain for decades longer, scattered around 33 American states.
Some of that waste is squeezed into small pools housed inside flimsy buildings; some sits outside in storage containers never intended to be permanent.
In both instances, the spent fuel from the nation's nuclear power plants is exceedingly vulnerable to accidents and terrorist attacks.
Like so many of society's waste problems, out-of-sight, out-of-mind has become a de facto "solution" - except to the thousands of Americans who live near these high-level waste storage sites.
I am one of them. I reside near two spent fuel pools, one in Massachusetts, at the now-shuttered Yankee Rowe reactor, and another at the troubled Vermont Yankee reactor, only 16 miles (26 kilometers) away.
Together, these pools hold more than 90 million curies of radioactivity. (The bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki released 1 million curies of radiation.)
Recently, US President Barak Obama canceled the ill-conceived and costly Yucca Mountain high-level radioactive waste disposal project. After 35 years, the deep geological repository in Nevada - chosen on the basis of politics, not science - was finally declared unsuitable.
A special blue-ribbon commission has been created to find an alternative. Nobody is even hinting that an answer might come anytime soon. This spring, America reaches an alarming milestone: enough waste will exist to completely fill Yucca Mountain. We are now about to start filling a second repository - if one existed.
So what should this nation be doing with its spent fuel that - like it or not - is going to stay put for the foreseeable future? Instead of ignoring the problem, or choosing expedient "solutions," we need to face it realistically.
Reprocessing is expensive, causes pollution and poses nuclear-weapons proliferation risks. Rather, the best choice is to improve existing on-site storage until a safe permanent solution can be achieved. In no way should our support of these principles be construed as support of nuclear power or the creation of more radioactive waste.
Briefly, this is what we recommend:
1. Require a low-density, open-frame layout for fuel pools.
2. Establish hardened on-site storage.
3. Increase protection of fuel pools to make them capable of withstanding an attack equal to the force and coordination of the 9/11 attacks.
4. Review each storage facility periodically.
5. Fund local and state governments to independently monitor these sites.
6. Prohibit reprocessing.
Even though the storage modifications we recommend are "temporary," they will give us time - and security - while we find the right answers.
(The author is executive director of the Citizens Awareness Network. The views are his own. Shanghai Daily condensed the article. Copyright: American Forum.)
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