America must wake up to its growing nightmare of radioactive trash

If America chooses not to wake up to this reality, sooner or later it will cost us dearly: A spent fuel accident at San Onofre Nuclear Waste Dump could cost a trillion dollars. The spent fuel will need to be guarded for hundreds of millennia, but right now it is MOST important that it be guarded properly.

Shutting down ALL the reactors now, and properly securing ALL the waste immediately, is the only logical thing to do

A spent fuel accident at San Onofre Nuclear Waste Dump could cost a trillion dollars. Deal with it. Salem News Ace Hoffman July 13th, 2013 ”……..For all intents and purposes Fukushima was a spent fuel accident. While it’s true that the reactors tripped after the earthquake and had only been shut off for a short while when the tsunami struck, it’s also true that even if the reactors had been off for years, the same basic sequence of events could have happened if water wasn’t circulated properly around the used fuel assemblies.

Spent fuel is incredibly deadly stuff, but in fact, Fukushima was not a “worst case scenario” by any means. An even larger catastrophe is still possible at Fukushima because of the fuel that’s still there in the spent fuel pools and dry casks, and because the melted blobs of “corium” (uranium and plutonium) can theoretically go critical again. Massive explosions of the corium blobs are also possible without a new criticality event, when/if they reach the local water table. And more than two years after the meltdowns, nobody knows precisely where the corium blobs are.

There are 23 reactors similar to Fukushima’s operating in America, and all other types of reactors have other dangers which make them just as capable of catastrophic accidents as those were, but in different ways. There are no “safe” reactors, and there is no safe way to store or transport the fuel.

Whatever the “interim” storage solution is — wherever it is — needs to be thought of as “permanent” since it will inevitably be expected to last for hundreds of years. The current, totally ludicrous plan is that, while the fuel is the most dangerous by several orders of magnitude, we plan to store it in the cheapest “temporary” containment system of all. Then we plan to transport it after its fuel cladding and structures have all degraded and are far more likely to cause problems and radiation releases during shipment. THEN we plan to finally move it!

Our current national nuclear spent fuel policy will inevitably result in catastrophic dry cask accidents somewhere — perhaps near large population centers.

Shutting down ALL the reactors now, and properly securing ALL the waste immediately, is the only logical thing to do. http://www.salem-news.com/articles/july142013/san-onofre-bdb-ah.php

Ace Hoffman Carlsbad, CA

The author, an independent investigator, has been studying the problems of nuclear power for many decades. His 2008 handbook of nuclear facts, called The Code Killers, is available for free download here: www.acehoffman.org.