Smoke 'em if ya got 'em.

[Madhatterat60]

Holding Tank:
Nuclear waste lingers in dry-cask storage at the Idaho National Laboratory. More than 60,000 metric tons of nuclear waste are in temporary storage at 131 civilian
and military sites around the country.

For those of you who don't know, I grew up in the shadow of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state.  My father worked at Hanford as an electrcian for all of my life.  I don't glow in the dark, nor do my brother or sisters, nor any of their kids.  (My youngest does have MS.  The area around Hanford has 25% more cases of MS than any other similar population base.)

I see the press is now on to begin building nuclear power reactors again.  Frankly, I have only one request before the first shovel of dirt is removed:

Figure out what you're going to do with the waste.

It isn't enough to bury it in the ground, either at Yucca Mountain or in the salt caves.  This waste MUST be kept from exposure for 25,000 years.  Keeping in mind that the last ice age was scarcely 14,000 years ago, that makes burying this toxic mess anywhere on earth a real crap shoot.  So go ahead, plan, set land aside...but figure out what you'll do with the garbage FIRST.

[cynthia Hunter]

I'm not a Global alarmist,but common sense tells you to take care of our planet(as someone once said its the only place that has Chocolate)
I don't want my great grand children trying to figure out how to clean up the mess that we make. We don't throw trash around our homes so why do it to our planet!

[cynthia Hunter]

Excuse me Wanda* you mean there are other Food groups!

[Mark Mentzer]

Yuck. When the hell are we gonna stop this CRAP?????

[Madhatterat60]

process that will be used to turn waste into storable pellets (starting with Hanford).

The "Vitrification Plant" under construction at Hanford is still a few years and a few BILLION dollars away from completion. The worst part about the whole thing is that it is a THEORY, and no one is sure whether it will even work or not. Basically, it takes highly radioactive liquid sludge and turns it into glass rods (pellets). That's the theory at least.

[cynthia Hunter]

Elec cars aren't the answer either. Coal is still the number one source of elec. So its a lose lose not a win. We just need to go back to riding Horses! Then again who's going to clean up the mess they leave?

[Madhatterat60]

Elec cars aren't the answer either.

I dunno, Cyn....look at the old Dick Tracy comics....and how radical and "preposterous" that his TV wrist watch was in the day. And look at the cell phone now. That time will come and we're working on it now. The REAL solution is fuel cell....but until they can make those cells indestructible (hydrogen explosions are SUCH a pain), that technology will have to wait its turn as well.

Coal is still the number one source of elec.

I keep hearing references to "clean coal". Sounds like a contradiction in terms to me...like Military Intelligence.

[cynthia Hunter]

Clean Coal ? I too haven't been able to wrap my mind around either? Coal is dirty my nature. What do they do to it, bleach it?
I know they say its because they can filter the bad stuff before most of it gets into the air. My problem with that is two-fold. 1) the word Most that means some is escaping into the air 2) being what do they do with the poisons that they manage to capture so to speak.
Its all double talk!