Feds Creating Nuclear Sacrifice Zones To Store Over 71000 Tons Of Nuclear Waste video and pictures NSFW

 by Monica Davs

Nuclear  waste storage and processing continues to be a dangerously vulnerable process for the United States. These facilities are vulnerable to weather, earthquakes, tornadoes and even terrorist attack. Last week’s tornado hit on a nuclear processing facility in Paducah, Kentucky shows how vulnerable those facilities are.

Very little information has come out about this tornado hit, specifically damage. See my articles here    and here

Nuke waste  storage and transport

Despite the proven risk of storage and processing this waste, the governent is trying to find was tto store more than 71000 tons of nucke waste that is stored at nuclear plants around the country. Residents around the proposed long term sstorage facilities, and those who live near the urban nuclear sacrifice zones, continue to educate themselves about the dangers of the facilities, as well as protest about current and future storage plans.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) generated a report on one plant in California:

Included in the NRC’s review is research into whether on-site storage facilities at nuclear power plants throughout the country, including the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, have the ability to safely house nuclear waste.

The report looked at short-term storage options, of 60 years beyond the licensed life of a nuclear reactor, first in spent-fuel cooling pools and then in dry-cask storage. It also addressed long-term storage, of an additional 100, as well as housing waste at shuttered plants permanently. MOREHERE

As noted above, nuclear plants are licenesed for 60 years. Then what? Few communities want the waste stored anywhere close, and the Native American communities, whose remote lands the government considers ideal for storing nuclear waste long term, have sued.

The Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository as designated by the NWPA Amendments of 1987, was to be a deep geological repository storage facility for spent nuclear reactor fuel and other high level radioactive waste. Federal funding ended in 2010. It was to be located on federal land adjacent to the Nevada Test Site in Nye County, Nevada, about 80 mi (130 km) northwest of the Las Vegas Valley. The proposed repository was within Yucca Mountain, a ridge line in the south-central part of Nevada near its border with California.

Although the location has been highly contested by both environmentalists and non-local residents in Las Vegas, which is over 100 miles (160 km) away, it was approved in 2002 by the United States Congress. However, under the Obama Administration^[2] funding for development of Yucca Mountain waste site was terminated effective via amendment to the Department of Defense and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, passed by Congress on April 14, 2011. The US GAO stated that the closure was for political, not technical or safety reasons.^[2] This leaves United States civilians without any long term storage site for high level radioactive waste, currently stored on-site at various nuclear facilities around the country, although the United States government can dispose of its waste at WIPP, in rooms 2,150 feet (660 m) underground.^[3] The Department of Energy is reviewing other options for a high-level waste repository. The Blue Ribbon Commission established by the Secretary of Energy released its final report on January 26, 2012. It expressed urgency to find a consolidated, geological repository, but also that any future facility should have input from the citizens around it.^{[4] WIKIPED9A}

The Yuccca Mountain facility continues to attract the attention of the nation’s federal courts. According to media reports, 

An appeals court decision has re-opened the possibility that the nation’s alarmingly large and growing piles of nuclear waste might someday be stored inside Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, a decades-old political and regulatory football.

Though U.S. taxpayers, according to the General Accounting Office (GAO), have already spent $15.4 billion on this repository, it has sat idle, empty and unfinished ever since the Obama administration in 2010 stopped funding for it. Its re-activation is opposed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and virtually every other major politician in Nevada. MOREHERE

The feds want a fairly secure, geologically stable place to store nuclear waste for the long term. Native Americans want the facility closed on religious, legal and health reasons. They object to being used by the government as a “nuclear sacrifice zone”  for the nations increasing stockile of nuclear waste.

Nuclear sacrifce zones, such as the one in Paducah, Kentucky, are a haven for environmental and health catastrophe:

“In 1988, radioactive contamination was found in the drinking water wells of
residences near the federal government’s uranium enrichment plant in
Paducah, Kentucky. In response, the Department of Energy (DOE)
connected local residences to municipal water supplies and began a
cleanup program to identify and remove contamination in the groundwater,
surface water, and soils located within and outside the plant’s boundaries.
Sources of the hazardous chemical and radioactive contamination included
spills, leaks from contaminated buildings, buried waste, scrap yards, and
waste lagoons. From 1988 through 1999, DOE spent about $388 million on
these cleanup efforts.
 - This is a quote from United States General Accounting Office (USGAO) Report to Congress in August 2000   youtube comment

Contaminated drinking water, plant wokers with all kinds of cancers, environmental contaminatin–and so much nuke waste that some of it has been sitting around for decades.