"...More than 50,000 tons of spent fuel now sit in cooling pools that were never intended for long-term storage. Companies like Entergy, Nappi rightly notes, had expected the U.S. government to take title to this waste and bring it to a permanent repository. But Congress has stood at an impasse over the siting of such a repository since 1998. In the interim, the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) has authorized U.S. plants to follow the easiest and cheapest storage path available: namely, to pack their pools ever tighter and add boric acid to the water in order to absorb neutrons and limit the likelihood of a nuclear reaction caused by the increased proximity of fuel assemblies. EVEN WITH THESE SO-CALLED RE-RACKING AUTHORIZATIONS, THE NRC SAYS THAT ALL THE NATION’S NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS WILL RUN OUT OF SPACE IN THEIR POOLS BY 2015." READ WHAT YOU CAN DO: MAKE CONGRESS ACT ON SAFER, DRY CASK STORAGE. (This may not be an option for those of us near San Onofre in southern California, which used a very high-burning kind of fuel rod, but most nuclear plants across America could better protect our citizens with dry cask storage for plutonium waste.)
Posted on: Sun, 07 Jul 2013 01:51:12 +0000
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