Nuclear waste storage is an issue that concerns many. Some worry that if storage facilities at Yucca Mountain aren't completed soon enough, above-ground storage will have to be employed. (Photo courtesy of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission)
Some federal officials say work on a nuclear waste storage facility at Yucca Mountain isn’t moving fast enough. So they want the government to start developing above-ground storage sites. But one private firm says above-ground storage is already available. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sandra Harris
reports:
Transcript
Some federal officials say work on a nuclear waste storage facility at Yucca Mountain isn’t moving fast enough, so they want the government to start developing above-ground storage sites. But one private firm says above-ground storage is already available. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sandra Harris reports:
House Energy and Water Development Committee Chair David Hobson has put ten million dollars in an appropriations bill to find interim above-ground waste storage sites.
But the CEO of private fuel storage says a temporary site his groups worked on for more than ten years will hold all the country’s waste.
John Parkyn says Hobson may not be aware of it.
“I’m certainly communicating to him exactly where we are, but the idea that we would spend significant amounts of taxpayer money to replicate something that has already been funded with non-taxpayer money would certainly involve a lot of political scrutiny, as to why you would ever replicate it and add another six or seven years on.”
Parkyn says the Nuclear Regulatory Commission could soon approve or deny his company’s license for its site on the Skull Valley Indian Reservation in Utah.
For the GLRC, I’m Sandra Harris.