Japanese Crisis Highlights U.S. Atomic Waste Safety Problem

Thursday, March 24, 2011

Japan's nuclear disaster has thrown a spotlight on an atomic security and safety problem in the United States -- the massive quantities of radioactive spent fuel housed across the country in cooling pools similar to those at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, the Associated Press reported on Tuesday (see GSN, March 18).
The United States has 71,862 tons of nuclear waste that are temporarily stored in more than 30 states, according to data collected by AP. Some 75 percent of the radioactive material in cooling ponds located beyond thick containment walls that are intended to keep reactor emissions from atomic energy plants from entering the environment (see related GSN story, today).