I have often blogged about the nuclear waste problem in the U.S. Currently the US has about seventy five thousand tons of high level nuclear waste including spent nuclear fuel, waste left over from the development and manufacture of nuclear weapons and plutonium awaiting disposal.
There are about seventy five locations in the U.S. where nuclear waste is stored. There are one hundred nuclear power reactors operating in the U.S. and they keep producing nuclear waste. All of the spent fuel cooling pools are filling up and, if the spent fuel cannot be relocated soon, some reactors will have to be shut down.
The U.S. was planning on a permanent geological repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada but that project was shut down in 2009. It is now estimated that there will be no permanent repository in the U.S. before 2050. Here is a listing of the amounts of waste and the number of waste storage sites per state:
State Metric Power Waste Tons Reactors Sites
Alabama 3840 5 2
Alaska 0 0 0
Arizona 2390 3 2
Arkansas 1530 2 1
California 3390 2 9
Colorado 30 0 2
Connecticut 2250 2 2
Delaware 0 0 0
Florida 3330 4 4
Georgia 3030 4 2
Hawaii 0 0 0
Idaho 130 0 4
Illinois 10180 11 8
Indiana 0 0 0
Iowa 530 1 1
Kansas 770 1 2
Kentucky 0 0 0
Louisiana 1470 2 2
Maine 540 0 1
Maryland 1550 2 4
Massachusetts 720 1 5
Michigan 3050 5 5
Minnesota 1390 3 2
Mississippi 1010 1 1
Missouri 790 1 3
Montana 0 0 0
Nebraska 1010 1 2
Nevada 0 0 0
New Hampshire 660 1 1
New Jersey 3020 4 2
New Mexico 4.9 0 4
New York 4180 6 6
North Carolina 3760 5 4
North Dakota 0 0 0
Ohio 1330 2 3
Oklahoma 0 0 0
Oregon 350 0 3
Pennsylvania 7330 9 6
Rhode Island 0 0 0
South Carolina 4680 7 5
South Dakota 0 0 0
Tennessee 1970 4 3
Texas 2610 4 5
Utah 0 0 0
Vermont 710 0 1
Virginia 2850 4 3
Washington 750 1 3
West Virginia 0 0 0
Wisconsin 1490 4 4
A few states have no waste at all, and a few have a great deal of waste. Some states no longer have nuclear power reactors operating but still have waste. Some states have more waste sites than operational reactor because some power stations have multiple reactors and some states have waste left over from shut down reactors or weapons development.
Even if we create a permanent geological repository somewhere in the U.S., the task of transporting all the existing waste to the site of the repository would be monumental. Aside from the expense, the trucks carrying the waste would be vulnerable to accidents and to deliberate attacks by terrorists.
Perhaps the best disposal method for a lot of the waste would be to drill holes five miles deep into bedrock, fill a couple of miles of the hole with nuclear waste and filled the rest with concrete, crushed rock and/or soil. The holes could be drilled on reactors site by moveable drilling rigs at a fraction of the cost of a permanent geological repository and transporting all the waste.
