The tsunami-induced nuclear disaster at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex has sparked renewed debate about nuclear power’s future. Countries such as Germany and Switzerland have decided the risk ain’t worth the juice and have announced plans to end their nuclear power programs. No such decision appears imminent in the United States although it is unclear if any new plants will get built.
History as Prelude?
Should nukes be part of our energy future? That question will surely be debated for some time. But what about the spent fuel from reactors? Where is that in the debate?
The leaked radiation at the Fukushima plant didn’t come from the reactors alone. A failure to keep water circulating in pools storing spent fuel rods led to meltdowns, fires, and ultimately sizable releases of radioactivity. And today, some 87 days after the disaster began, plant operators at the Tokyo Electric Power Company are still struggling to stabilize the spent fuel pools.
The storage pool failures at Fukushima are highly relevant to America. The United States currently has about 65,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel. More than two-thirds of that waste is stored in storage pools [pdf] much like those at Fukushima. The rest is locked up in dry cement casks that are generally deemed safer because they are air-cooled (not water-cooled) and less susceptible to sabotage.
