Robert Alvarez warns about catastrophic risks at U.S. high-level radioactive waste storage pools
Robert Alvarez, senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and former senior advisor to the Energy Secretary during the Clinton administration, has published “Spent Nuclear Fuel Pools in the U.S.: Reducing the Deadly Risks of Storage.”
The report comes in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe, in which one or more high-level radioactive waste storage pools may have already discharged catastrophic amounts of radioactivity into the environment, and several more remain at risk of doing so for lack of cooling water.
Alvarez warns that densely-packed high-level radioactive waste storage pools at U.S. nuclear power plants should be off-loaded into outdoor dry casks as a vital national security measure. But while such irradiated nuclear fuel transfer from pools to dry casks is necessary, it is far from sufficient.
…
