Radioactive Waste

Since 1954, the United States has been generating electricity from nuclear power and storing the subsequent waste. Once a highly publicized concern, disposing and securing the waste no longer receives the attention that it deserves. 80,000 tons of highly radioactive waste is cooling outside nuclear plants waiting for a destination. Politicians, engineers, and corporations have suggested myriad solutions, such as exporting, burying, or sinking the waste. And while numerous countries are developing final repositories sealed vaults buried deep in the earth no one is sure of its future effects on the environment.

Unclear About Nuclear?

Shift Happens - Already more than 80,000 tonnes of highly radioactive waste sits in cooling pools next to the 103 US nuclear power plants, awaiting transportation to a storage facility yet to be found (this info is from 2004). This dangerous material will be an attractive target for terrorist sabotage as it travels through 39 states on roads and railway lines for the next 25 years. But the long-term storage of radioactive waste continues to pose a problem. The US Congress in 1987 chose Yucca Mountain in Nevada, 150km northwest of Las Vegas, as a repository for America’s high-level waste. But Yucca Mountain has subsequently been found to be unsuitable for...

Dowbrigade Living on Radioactive Waste

dowbrigade - And now, after three years we discover that we are living atop a nuclear waste dump! And that the area in which we live is undergoing “close scrutiny” to see how badly contaminated it is! And we thought the reason the walls glow at night is that the previous tenants had used that luminescent “Glowz” paint. The Watertown Arsenal is a huge red-brick conglomeration stretching almost a half mile along Arsenal St. in Watertown, which abuts Cambridge on the east and the Charles River on the south. Part of the wave of urban arsenal construction during the buildup to WWII, it is being converted piecemeal into retail and high-tech rental...

12.10.07

12:21 AM -

Export

Conrad - Of all the options my favorite by far is export. Why dispose of this vicious stuff in our own lifeless desert when we can leave it the lifeless desert of our neighbors. We could send it to china were it would be much cheaper to build an impenetrable desert repository and then they could deal with it. Why not?

12.8.07

11:04 AM -

Options

StickyWicket - It seems like there are three options: The space option (I mean, really?), the Yuka Mountain option (i.e. transport it to one mammoth underground lair in the mountains of Nevada (awesome!) or toss it over the side of a ship in the deepest trenches in the oceans (maybe not so pretty a million years from now, but who cares if we have trench fish with three eyes and a lightbulb hanging off of their head). Those are the options folks. Break out a Wheel of Fortune and let's start spinning. But, what is not an option is to leave this nuclear waste in temporary cooling pools right next to the nuclear plants.

12.7.07

10:58 PM -

Remember Outer Space?

AZP - We're going to blast it off to outer space.... Oh mamma...... First we have to bring it from all over the country to the rocket ship on highways through all sorts of precarious, civilian laden territory. (Which, by the way, is why so many oppose the the Nevada landfill.) Then we need to pay for rockets (those are a little expensive) to take small quantities of radioactive waste at a time - we have 80,000 tons.... Like paying for the Iraq war.....

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