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Originally Posted by Boreas
It is true. That's what happens when you retire. And pointing to the permanent risks associated with nuclear waste storage, however it was generated, is not "silly". Or do you maintain that this is a soluble problem?
And there are indications that there are now some double wall tanks, those not built under wartime exigencies, that are leaking. Tanks that are 400 yards from the second largest river in the US.
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Not all "nuclear waste storage" is the same. When one normally speaks of nuclear waste storage in the civilian nuclear industry, they're talking of spent fuel. The contents of Hanford's tanks isn't spent fuel. Conflating the two in making an argument against civilian nuclear reactors shows a lack of understanding of the nuclear fuel cycle and the nature of the mess at Hanford.
That said, cheap natural gas and existing regulatory burdens have pretty much killed the civilian nuclear industry. AFAIK, the V.C. Summer plant expansion in South Carolina is pretty much the only ongoing civilian reactor project and I'm sure its owner, SCE&G, would in retrospect much preferred to have built a natural gas plant considering costs that have skyrocketed to $12 billion.
http://www.thestate.com/news/busines...e41740257.html
The handwriting is pretty much on the wall already. The NRC, which was going great guns 20 years ago with the promise of a resurgent civilian nuclear industry, is downsizing dramatically in recognition of the dynamics noted above.