Across the country, nuclear power plants are running out of room to store nuclear waste. The GLRC’s Brad Linder reports temporary storage at some plants is decades old:
Transcript
Across the country, nuclear power plants are running out of room to store
nuclear waste. The GLRC’s Brad Linder reports temporary storage at some
plants is decades old:
With no consensus on a plan to store the nation’s spent nuclear fuel in
one location, power plants are storing the waste onsite. For example, in
Limerick, Pennsylvania officials say they’re concerned about the plans to
build concrete casks to store nuclear waste outside a power plant. For
decades, they’ve been using storage pools inside the plant.
The proposed casks are described as temporary, but Assistant County
Planning Commissioner Mike Stokes says temporary storage at the plant
doesn’t mean much:
“They’ve been the permanent storage facility for every ounce of fuel used
at the power plant since it was first opened 20 years ago. So we can’t
always believe that things will be temporary.”
A spokesperson for Exelon Power, the owner of the Limerick plant and many others, says
the concrete casks are safe. Exelon says the casks are designed to withstand tornado-
force winds, or strikes from projectiles.
For the GLRC, I’m Brad Linder.