nuclear-news

If you are an average homeowner, your electric bill includes about 30 to 40 cents each month for a federal fund established 29 years ago under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. Almost every electric customer in America pays the same 1/10 cent per kilowatt. The money now totals about $24 billion dollars and is earmarked for long-term storage of spent nuclear fuel. The problem? No such storage solution currently exists….. Not one fuel rod of the 72,000 tons of America’s spent nuclear fuel has been stored “long term.”At PG&E’s Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant near Avila Beach just south of San Luis Obispo — as well as at every other of the nation’s 104 nuclear power plants — the spent fuel rods are just piling up. Most of the rods are currently stored in pools of water adjacent to reactors.
Operators say they’re running out of storage and some have been forced to stack hot fuel rods closer to older cooled rods than officials would like. Experts tell us that strategy increases the risk of overheating, boiling off cooling water and possibly triggering a catastrophic fuel rod fire……
Nuclear power critics say the risks of moving fuel casks to a central repository far outweigh the distributed risk of attack or earthquake damage at each plant.In July, the Commission is to release a final draft report to include advice from the members. A final report is due January 2012. Nuclear storage is expected to become a major issue in 2012 Federal budget talks that have already begun.