Fuzzy minded thinkers say the technological advances of tomorrow will solve the nuclear waste problem. When nuclear power generation started, there was little concern about nuclear waste. “We’ll take care of that tomorrow,” was the attitude. Their tomorrow is our today. The nuclear waste pile-up continues without a viable solution.
- In the late 1960s and early 1970s 1,000-megawatt Pressurized Water Reactors came on line. Instead of building adequate storage for the lifetime waste product, they provided cooling pools that would accomodate 20% of the predicted spent fuel waste. “Tomorrow we will build reprocessing plants that will reprocess waste at a rate equal to the spent fuel discharge.” That tomorrow never came. Pools fill up with no closed cycle and no permanent place to put the waste.
- The Spent Fuel discharge continued under the promise that the answer is in deep geological disposal and the federal government would provide a National Repository by 1998. That tomorrow is past and there is no solution.
- Right now, billions of dollars later, the vision of the natural and engineered barriers necessary for deep geological disposal has not materialized. No one knows how modern metals will behave over tens of thousands of years. Yucca Mountain has natural faults, risks from volcanos, earthquakes, water intrusion diminish its promise. Is anyplace suitable?
Given the extreme danger posed by nuclear waste, the answer must be found before the pile gets deeper. We cannot stand on the stage of history like Little Orphan Annie and keep singing, “Tomorrow, Tommorrow...” while the pile of spent fuel becomes a heap of trouble for the next 25,000 generations.
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