AP IMPACT: US spent-fuel storage sites are packed

[Kadie]

AP IMPACT: US spent-fuel storage sites are packed

By JONATHAN FAHEY and RAY HENRY, The Associated Press – 6 mins ago

The nuclear crisis in Japan has laid bare an ever-growing problem for the United States — the enormous amounts of still-hot radioactive waste accumulating at commercial nuclear reactors in more than 30 states.

The U.S. has 71,862 tons of the waste, according to state-by-state numbers obtained by The Associated Press. But the nation has no place to permanently store the material, which stays dangerous for tens of thousands of years.

Plans to store nuclear waste at Nevada's Yucca Mountain have been abandoned, but even if a facility had been built there, America already has more waste than it could have handled.

Three-quarters of the waste sits in water-filled cooling pools like those at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear complex in Japan, outside the thick concrete-and-steel barriers meant to guard against a radioactive release from a nuclear reactor.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_japan_quake_us_spent_fuel

[slipslidingaway]

1. knr nt

[d_r]

2. if people were all gone, they would all melt down

This is why shows like "the walking dead" or so unrealistic. oh, wait, never mind that isn't why.

But the thing is, if there ever was some of out of control plague or something that took out 1/2 the population,
these things would melt down because nobody would know how to keep the cooling going.

[slipslidingaway]

3. kick n/t

[spanone]

4. it's not a problem here until it becomes a catastrophe

then politicians will wring their hands and wonder how this ever happened

[slipslidingaway]

5. kick nt