NUCLEAR WASTE
The Columbia Generating Station nuclear
reactor (formerly WPPSS Nuclear Project 2) produces large quantities of high-level radioactive
waste, with no disposal site. Over three million pounds
of high-level radioactive waste has been generated by the
CGS nuclear plant since it began operation in 1984. All of
it is stored on site at Hanford, and it is roughly equal in
combined radioactivity to the remaining US Department of
Energy defense waste generated by Cold War nuclear weapons
manufacturing there. Despite years of study, no repository
for this high-level radioactive waste, which must be kept
out of the environment for hundreds of thousands of years,
has been established by the federal government.
British nuclear waste plant leaking 2,100 liters of contaminated
water a day At that rate, it would take just over
three years to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool. A
glimpse of our future? The Telegraph (UK), October
22, 2024
SOS - The
San Onofre Syndrome: Nuclear Power's Legacy
(movie)
Filmed over 12 years, SOS dramatically chronicles how
Southern California residents came together to force the
shutdown of an aging nuclear power plant only to be
confronted by an alarming reality: tons of nuclear waste
left near a popular beach, only 100 feet from the rising
sea, that — with radioactivity lasting millions of years —
menaces present and future generations. Interview
with Mary Beth Brangan, producer and co-director of SOS
about the making of the film and its message. June 2024
Radioactive waste from Three Mile Island
sits in unlined trenches at Hanford
Hanford facilities
with massive amounts of radiation could cause large scale
catastrophic releases in an earthquake. By Gerald Pollet,
Heart of America Northwest, April 23, 2020
The Staggering Timescales of Nuclear Waste Disposal
Prospects for long-term storage. By Christine
Ro, Forbes, November 26, 2019
The worst accidental release of nuclear waste in US history
In 1979, just 14 weeks after the Three Mile
Island reactor accident, 90 million gallons of liquid
nuclear waste, and 1100 tons of radioactive solid waste,
broke through a dam at the Church Rock uranium mine and mill
facility in New Mexico. Beyond Nuclear International,
July 16, 2018
The Downside of
High Burnup Fuel The storage risks of
high-burnup nuclear waste. By Robert Alvarez, Nuclear
Intelligence Weekly, July 15, 2016
Former US Department of Energy Official Warns of Radioactive
Waste Hazard at Nuclear Plant on the Columbia River
Robert Alvarez, a former policy advisor to
the U.S. Secretary of Energy during the Clinton
Administration, released a report
entitled
The
Hazards of High-Level Radioactive Waste in the Pacific
Northwest: A Review of Spent Nuclear Fuel Management at the
Columbia Generating Station (PDF). November 19, 2014
Radioactive Waste
No safe, permanent solution has yet been found anywhere in
the world - and may never be found - for the nuclear waste
problem. In the U.S., the only identified and flawed
high-level radioactive waste deep repository site at Yucca
Mountain, Nevada has been canceled. Beyond Nuclear advocates
for an end to the production of nuclear waste and for
securing the existing reactor waste in hardened on-site
storage. By
Beyond Nuclear
Radioactive Waste Project Articles
from the Nuclear Information and Resource Service
Nuclear waste storage is a multi-generational challenge
Alliance for Nuclear
Accountability
Yucca Mountain, Nevada: Proposed high-level radioactive
waste dump Fact sheets and overview.
Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS). Includes:
The role of geology at the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear
waste repository (2014)
Why Reviving Yucca Mountain as a Nuclear Waste Repository
Will Not Work (2015)
Yucca Mountain–a Brief History (2015)
Principles
for Safeguarding Nuclear Waste at Reactors
The principles are based on the urgent threats posed by the
current storage of commercial irradiated fuel. Signed by a
wide range of organizations nationally. March 2010
If not Yucca Mountain, then what? An
alternative plan for managing highly radioactive waste in
the United States. By Lisa Ledwidge, Institute for Energy
and Environmental Research, 2001
