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Dear Friends:
We
hope to redirect some of the misunderstanding about spent nuclear fuel
(SNF), others call nuclear waste. The facts are that our current U.S.
stockpile of about 72,000 tons has a potential reprocessed value
of about $12 billion dollars. The dilemma with Washington is the
investment into the reprocessing facility. Meanwhile, the shutdown of
Yucca Mountain is costing taxpayers billions in legal suits. We at USNEF
would rather see these funds applied to the construction of a national
temporary storage facility.
Taxpayers
are footing the bill on Washington's failure to offload the SNF fuels
from nuclear power companies nationwide to Yucca Mountain. In this
light, we believe that Nevada would be an excellent site for a national
temporary above-ground spent nuclear fuel storage facility. It could
help fend off the law suits making these costs available for
construction and operation of the facility. Below are some of the
advantages.
Above ground spent fuel rods cask storage system
- There is a degree
for consideration with or without the DOE completing or re-siting a
permanent storage facility at Yucca Mountain. A high probability exists
that the final selection would be located in an expansive desert
location in the Western U.S. This makes Nevada an ideal CENTRAL location
for such a temporary storage/transfer facility. Nevada offers 100%
security as our military test ranges provide a high security profile.
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There
is a push in Washington to move more DOD operations and facility
management to the private sector reducing the costs of military
operations. This same push could be applied to the DOE, NRC and the
management of nuclear technology and its security. The private sector
has developed much of our U.S. nuclear industry and throughout the
world, yet federal agencies manage it through regulation. In most of
these tag team events the public almost always falls short in the
educational process provided by these agencies. Public policy MUST
re-brand education about nuclear energy technology and its waste
repository alternatives.
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The
establishment of an above-ground SNF facility managed by the private
sector would be an asset to all rural Nevada Counties providing jobs,
taxes and spinoff local commerce. Nevada needs to diversify its economy
into advanced high technology.
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Projects
such as this would include business development in rural areas for
robotics, drone surveillance applications, high tech concrete technology
and many other spinoff services.
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The
current above-ground systems we have developed over the past 40 years
have proven their stability. There is no question that moving these
casks to a "national SNF center" from 72 diverse locations around the
country would be a much more secure resolution for the public.
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At
the same time, this program would provide the resolution of removing
these materials from power plants so that they can continue operations
based on their originally designed above-ground storage facilities, not
having to expand locally.
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Another very important consideration
is that we are aware that several of our National Laboratories and
other spent nuclear materials facilities are experiencing leaks and more
overloading. It is only fair to suggest that engineering, materials and
technology we had available for temporary containers 40 years ago are
no longer adequate to provide safety as today's improved products would
be. It is also only fair to suggest that these materials were planned to
be moved to the Yucca Mountain facility 20 years ago. It is this
political dilemma that has prevented our government agencies from
accomplishing a safe, timely management of our radioactive materials. We have to get this educational awareness into our Public Policy.
Please
join this mission, distribute our messages, download our PDF documents
and put these messages out to your grassroots friends
If this recommendation makes "cents" to you, please let us know!
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