This Best Describes All Things Nuclear Today

By Hoshi-kou

First the news out of Japan regarding the leaks into the ocean from the Fukushima plant is nothing but bad news. Since day one of the disaster the seriousness about what is going on has been downplayed and lied about. 

"Some 16 months after three of the six reactors exploded at the Fukushima Daichi site, nobody can offer a definitive explanation of what is happening there or how to deal with it." ~ Harvey Wasserman, NukeFree.org

This is Harvey Wasserman's thoughts on this subject:

The Fukushima Nightmare Gets Even Worse

Current news is really not good. Here is a snippet from Beyond Nuclear:

"With Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority admitting that the stricken Fukushima Daiichi reactors have been leaking radioactive water into the sea since the disaster began on March 11, 2011, the crisis now appears orders of magnitude worse. Why? With monitoring sporadic and reporting dishonest, it is open to speculation, but water leaking from the stricken plant is said to be at least 40 times more radioactive than before. As much as 300 tons per day of this radioactive water is flowing into the sea. The water has breached, circumnavigated and flowed over the top of the frozen ground dam wall constructed to stop the leaking." 

• Fukushima Leaks into the Pacific Fukushima Leaks into the Pacific Interview with Paul Gunter
• Chins Syndrome Interview with Kevin Kamps

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Here at home discussions begin on whether to re-open the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste facility. I don't know if Yucca is the solution but I do know we have to decide soon what is to be done with the increasing supply of waste that is building up.

I don't think the answer is to move waste into interim facilities. Transporting nuclear waste is at best risky business and doing it twice just makes no sense. And maybe taking waste from the east coast and moving it all the way to Nevada is not the answer as well.

In the early days the DOE had plans to have a facility located somewhere in the east to supplement the facility at Yucca Mountain. Nobody wants this stuff in their backyards, but it is going to have to find a permanent home in someone's yard. Will the ultimate answer be to require each and every current nuclear power plant to provide permanent storage for the waste they produce?

This approach doesn't appear to be working.