Panel gets clear message: Rid Maine of nuclear waste

[jpak]

http://www.pressherald.com/news/panel-gets-clear-message-rid-state-of-nuclear-waste_2010-08-11.html

WISCASSET — It has been 14 years since the Maine Yankee nuclear plant generated a watt of electricity. Everything is torn down. All that remains on the grounds are 64 airtight steel canisters, most filled with highly radioactive fuel rods and housed in concrete casks.

The federal government promised to take them away, presumably to a permanent waste repository in the Nevada desert. But the Yucca Mountain plan was scrapped last year by the Obama administration, largely for political reasons.

Now what?

That's what a new federal panel, the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future, is trying to figure out. A subcommittee of the panel that deals with transportation and storage issues came here Tuesday, for its first visit to an interim storage facility at a decommissioned nuclear plant.

The group toured Maine Yankee's five-year-old dry-cask storage facility and heard from local officials and residents. Most of them had a clear message: They want the radioactive waste gone.

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[ensho]

1. the trouble is that it can never be 'gone' where ever you put it

this is a severe problem that everyone should keep and eye and ear on