Wasting Time on Waste     
    
   If you could bury deep all our spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste, where would you put it? Your choices are limited to U.S. territory.

   If not in your state, whose state?

   The effect of two earthquakes in California this month shook - not the ground - but those who debate Yucca Mountain 108 miles to the east. 

   On federal land in Nevada's desert, YM was to be the deep repository for deadly nuclear waste from electric utility power plants and the government's bomb material sites. 

   Politicians and environmentalists in Nevada and elsewhere fought it, either out of fear of radiation, or opposition to nuclear power, period. Proponents still believe Yucca Mountain is a secure choice.

   Spent nuclear-reactor fuel is temporarily stored at 121 sites in 31 states. Maybe in your state. It's already located near people. Fuel rods cool in pools of water outside reactors, and eventually are placed in steel and concrete casks. 

   According to Nevada, the state is fourth in seismic activity, and has recorded hundreds of quakes within a 50-mile radius of Yucca Mountain over 43 years. That doesn't prove YM is unsuitable. Maybe. Maybe not. I knew a Westinghouse manager who said we could store radioactive waste safely in Manhattan. (?)

   My final full-time job was at the Savannah River Site (SRS), in South Carolina. President Truman authorized DuPont to build five reactors and reprocess the spent fuel into material for nuclear weapons. 

   All to stay ahead of the Soviet menace. 

   I've seen fuel rods in a pool. I've seen 10-foot steel casks. SRS also stores spent fuel returned to America by foreign utilities who purchased the fuel. I rode the last few miles on a train delivering this from a port on the coast. Waste is real. 

   We needed a political solution when I retired 20 years ago. We are no closer.

     Jimmy