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That plus the spent fuel pools need to be be continually filled with cool water at all costs otherwise the spent fuel burns and potentially spreads radioactive
by bottlepalm 4y ago
That plus the spent fuel pools need to be be continually filled with cool water at all costs otherwise the spent fuel burns and potentially spreads radioactive ash over an area the size of a small state.
The NRC itself made the report - https://www.science.org/content/article/spent-fuel-fire-us-soil-could-dwarf-impact-fukushima https://www.science.org/content/article/spent-fuel-fire-us-s...
- jakobson14 4y agoThat's only needed for a few years as they wind down. After that they can go into regular dry storage.
- bottlepalm 4y agoGood point so even if all the nuclear plants are decommissioned, it will still be a few more years until they are all passively ‘safe’.
- consumer451 4y ago> NRC has long mulled whether to compel the nuclear industry to move most of the cooled spent fuel now held in densely packed pools to concrete containers called dry casks. Such a move would reduce the consequences and likelihood of a spent fuel pool fire. As recently as 2013, NRC concluded that the projected benefits do not justify the roughly $4 billion cost of a wholesale transfer. But the national academies's study concludes that the benefits of expedited transfer to dry casks are fivefold greater than NRC has calculated. Utter insanity. Regulatory capture is a hell of a thing when it comes to nuclear. This is why I file nuclear power under "nice things" - and we can't have nice things.