Colorado and nation face 70,000-ton nuclear waste burden
May 31, 2016 8:16:50 GMT -6
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Post by Nugget on May 31, 2016 8:16:50 GMT -6
The federal government stepped up efforts to deal with the nation’s growing, heavily guarded stockpiles of nuclear waste Tuesday, convening westerners in Denver to search for a path to a locally accepted site somewhere for deep burial.
That radioactive waste — 70,000 tons, increasing by 2,000 tons a year — comes from nuclear power plants that provide one-fifth of the electricity Americans use, twice the share the wind power industry expects to provide by 2020. More nuclear waste comes from nuclear weapons. Decades of failure to find a central disposal site has backed up spent fuel at 99 commercial plants and 14 shut-down plants, including Fort St. Vrain north of Denver, and forced the government to pay utilities $4 billion as court-ordered compensation.
The Department of Energy is providing $40 million to spur efforts to design smaller “modular nuclear reactors” that could provide greenhouse gas-free electricity with less risk of the nuclear disasters seen in Japan, Chernobyl and at Three-Mile Island.
Other nations relying heavily on nuclear energy, such as Sweden and Finland, also are working toward deep burial of radioactive nuclear waste, a task for which the United States has stashed $30 billion.
While enabling more nuclear power as part of the nation’s electricity grid “is not the primary purpose” of the government-led forums in Denver and other cities, he said, “having a waste disposal path would make nuclear more acceptable … It’s really essential to have state-level buy-in.”
A federal commission for dealing with spent fuel, including current Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, in 2013 hatched a new strategy that prioritized seeking local consent for a “deep-mined geological repository.”
Local resistance to nuclear waste remains fierce. The recent plans to drill an exploratory bore hole three miles deep under North Dakota were scuttled this year as residents objected. Federal energy officials say they’re now looking at bore hole sites in South Dakota to test geological conditions.
The only nuclear power plant in Colorado operated from 1979 to 1989 at Fort St. Vrain, 40 miles north of Denver near Platteville — a center for Colorado’s oil and gas drilling boom. Xcel closed this gas-cooled reactor in 1989 after facing technical difficulties. Federal armed guards lugging machine guns patrol the spent fuel, stored behind barbed wire in a special concrete building encased in protective casks.
Some of the Colorado nuclear waste moved by truck to a facility in Idaho until Idaho’s governor refused to accept it. Today, more than 14 tons remains at Fort St. Vrain.
Forums in Denver and seven other cities are designed to give federal officials a sense of what matters most in communities where leaders might want to embark on nuclear waste disposal. It would be done deep underground, where rocks conditions are right to isolate the radioactive waste for hundreds of years.
Federal regulators have said the waste in Colorado can stay until at least 2030, or until a permanent disposal facility is built.
That radioactive waste — 70,000 tons, increasing by 2,000 tons a year — comes from nuclear power plants that provide one-fifth of the electricity Americans use, twice the share the wind power industry expects to provide by 2020. More nuclear waste comes from nuclear weapons. Decades of failure to find a central disposal site has backed up spent fuel at 99 commercial plants and 14 shut-down plants, including Fort St. Vrain north of Denver, and forced the government to pay utilities $4 billion as court-ordered compensation.
The Department of Energy is providing $40 million to spur efforts to design smaller “modular nuclear reactors” that could provide greenhouse gas-free electricity with less risk of the nuclear disasters seen in Japan, Chernobyl and at Three-Mile Island.
Other nations relying heavily on nuclear energy, such as Sweden and Finland, also are working toward deep burial of radioactive nuclear waste, a task for which the United States has stashed $30 billion.
While enabling more nuclear power as part of the nation’s electricity grid “is not the primary purpose” of the government-led forums in Denver and other cities, he said, “having a waste disposal path would make nuclear more acceptable … It’s really essential to have state-level buy-in.”
A federal commission for dealing with spent fuel, including current Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, in 2013 hatched a new strategy that prioritized seeking local consent for a “deep-mined geological repository.”
Local resistance to nuclear waste remains fierce. The recent plans to drill an exploratory bore hole three miles deep under North Dakota were scuttled this year as residents objected. Federal energy officials say they’re now looking at bore hole sites in South Dakota to test geological conditions.
The only nuclear power plant in Colorado operated from 1979 to 1989 at Fort St. Vrain, 40 miles north of Denver near Platteville — a center for Colorado’s oil and gas drilling boom. Xcel closed this gas-cooled reactor in 1989 after facing technical difficulties. Federal armed guards lugging machine guns patrol the spent fuel, stored behind barbed wire in a special concrete building encased in protective casks.
Some of the Colorado nuclear waste moved by truck to a facility in Idaho until Idaho’s governor refused to accept it. Today, more than 14 tons remains at Fort St. Vrain.
Forums in Denver and seven other cities are designed to give federal officials a sense of what matters most in communities where leaders might want to embark on nuclear waste disposal. It would be done deep underground, where rocks conditions are right to isolate the radioactive waste for hundreds of years.
Federal regulators have said the waste in Colorado can stay until at least 2030, or until a permanent disposal facility is built.
There are SO many laws,rules and regulations blocking solar/wind and alternative energy. I guess the power companies are 'too big to fail' even if it destroys the planet.
Among all CEOs employed in the United States in 2012, the average salary was $176,840 per year. This includes more than 255,000 chief executives employed. Chief executives in public electric companies earned approximately 11 percent higher wages than all industries combined, according to the BLS.
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Isolating radioactive waste for 'hundreds of years' is just a political pipe dream. I'm a down-winder from Hanford, and it has NEVER been safe. Their containment takes-designed to last indefinately- have been leaking into the Columbia river for decades. How do they deal with it? Cover-ups and falsifing records. Our government is spending $34,040,000 to deal with the nuclear waste issue 'someday'. How about they give each citizen solar panels/wind turbines instead?
I'm just waiting for laws to be passed making it illegal to collect energy from the sun, to go along with the laws already passed making it illegal to collect rain water on your own property.
Sounds like you're lucky you lived to recieve a spanking!