Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant: The WikiBook/orphaned pages/Waste storage issue gaining momentum nationally

Even before the Fukushima crisis, the nuclear waste storage issue had been gaining steam. "We haven't found a solution for the 100 nuclear power plants operating," said Stephen Smith of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. "And waste is building up on-site, with no solution." During Housae budget hearings in July, the financial ramifications of the thwarted Yucca Mountain nuclear waste depository had already begun generating political heat for the administration.South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, a Republican, said the president's decision was "spectacularly misguided, and breaks a promise" made "decades ago" by the federal government to handle the waste.

Obama

Shortly before Fukushima, Obama had come under heat as politicians from states which anticipated utilizing Yucca Mountain and others accused him of a "Chicago-style" political ploy to help Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nevada, where opposition to Yucca Mountain is entrenched. The dispute has spawned online satirical videos and warring animations However, Reid brushed aside such remarks with the contention that transport to a central site increases risks. "Leave it on-site where it is," he said last year. "You don't have to worry about transporting it. Saves the country billions and billions of dollars On May 24, 2011, the Institute for Policy Studies came out with a new report ranking various spent fuel sites and contending that spent nuclear reactor fuel needs to be moved en masse into safer dry cask storage rather than the current liquid pool system.

Union of Concerned Scientists

Earlier in the month, the Union of Concerned Scientists had, in testimony before Congress, pointed out that there were dry cask nuclear waste storage units at Fukushima which had survived the earthquake and the tsunami, and that the problems were confined to the storage pools.

"Virtually nothing has been reported about the fuel stored in dry casks at Fukushima Dai-Ichi. It

experienced the earthquake. It experienced the tsunami. It experienced the prolonged power

outage. It did not overheat. It was not damaged. It did not produce hydrogen that later exploded.

It did not cause the evacuation of a single member of the public. It did not cause a single worker

to receive radiation over-exposure."