From time to time proposals are put forward by various companies and countries to create a nuclear waste dump that other countries could ship their nuclear waste to. There are justified concerns about the transport of waste, the safety of the storage and the security of nuclear materials when this waste disposal option is discussed.

          Normally, nuclear waste is kept in the countries of origin and stored on or near the reactors where it was generated, if possible. There are exceptions to this practice for countries that lack the necessary geology for storage, countries that pose a risk of proliferation and/or countries which have small nuclear programs.

          In 2002, Thomas B. Cochran made a presentation to the MIT Security Studies Program with the title of The Nonproliferation Trust Proposal: Managing Spent Fuel and Nuclear Waste in Russia. The proposal urged the raising of billions of dollars to secure fissile material, end new commercial nuclear fuel reprocessing, build a geologic repository, clean severely contaminated site, provide alternative jobs for nuclear workers and support pensioners and orphans. The plan was to raise fifteen billion dollars by storing ten thousand tons of spent nuclear fuel in Russia that came from other countries (excluding the U.S.).

           Non-Proliferation Trust, Inc. (NPT) would head the project with the participation of several Russian Trusts including Minatom Development Trust. There would be a Russian subsidiary and an international subsidiary which would deal with the contractors who would carry out the actual work. Letters of intent from major contractors were included in the presentation.

            The people involved in NPT include Daniel Murphy, former deputy director of the CIA, Bruce Demars, former head of the Navy’s nuclear program, and William Webster, former director of the CIA. Even though NPT was set up as a non-profit these principles would make a huge amount of money of the project. The head of MinAtom, Russia’s ministry of nuclear power, estimated that the project could yield revenues of over one hundred and fifty billion dollars.

            Critics of the NPT proposal point out that there are alleged connections between MinAtom and the Russian Mob. The NPT proposal which would last for forty years would establish an international market in radioactive waste. Weapons grade plutonium was included in the proposal and could possibly find its way into the hands of private groups which do not have government oversight. With the proceeds from this project, MinAtom would become one of the most powerful entities in Russia, able to operate with little control from the rest of the Russian government.

            Although laws were passed through the Russian Duma to allow for the importation of spent nuclear fuel, the resistance of government agencies and citizen groups in the United States prevented implementation of this project. There are a lot of poor countries in the world and such a business would be worth billions of dollars so it is likely that eventually such a waste disposal facility will be constructed somewhere.

Shady adventures of Minatom and Non-Proliferation Trust…by Anatoly Saman from cartage.org.lb:

    The United States Federal government passed the Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act in 1957. It covers the issue of liability for nuclear accidents and problems for non-military nuclear facilities. Prior to the passage of the act, there was a liability coverage of sixty million dollars per reactor which was considered to be inadequate by the industry.

              Under the Price-Anderson Act, each owner of nuclear reactors in the United States is required to carry the maximum available private insurance for each reactor they own. Currently the private insurance carriers will only provide three hundred and seventy five million dollars per reactor. The Act then requires each reactor owner to contribute a maximum of about one hundred and twelve million dollars per reactor following an accident that exceeds the three hundred and seventy five million dollar insurance threshold. The owners are obligated to pay up to seventeen million five hundred thousand dollars per reactor per year until the ceiling of one hundred and twelve million dollars is reached or until the cost of the accident is paid off.  In order to pay off claims under the Act, the administrators of the fund are allowed to borrow money following an accident.

             When an incident occurs, the NRC has to submit an estimate of the cost of the incident and plan to deal with payments to claimants. If the cost exceeds the insurance coverage and the money in the fund created by the Act, then Congress must submit a plan to recover the additional money from the owners of nuclear reactors. If Congress fails to act, the federal government can be sued by the claimants under the Tucker Act. In this case, or in the case of default on the obligated funds by reactor owners, the U.S. tax payers would be liable for the remaining money owed to claimants.

             The Price-Anderson Act provides for changes in normal civil court proceedings. It moves jurisdiction to federal court, consolidates all claims and claimants for a single incident into one suit, states that companies cannot deny responsibility, allows claimants three years to join the suit and prohibits punitive damage awards to individuals.

              The Price-Anderson Act was considered to be necessary in order to convince the nuclear industry to proceed with the construction of nuclear reactors. It was first intended to last for ten years until 1967. By 1966, it was decided that it was still needed to support the nuclear industry. The Act was extended in 1975 for 12 years, in 1988 for 15 years, in 2003 it was extended to 2017 and in 2005 extended to 2025. The required donations to the pool and the maximum insurance coverage were expanded several times to reach today’s numbers. The Price-Anderson Act has survived court challenges to its constitutionality.

             Critics of the Act say that a major nuclear accident could cost more than five hundred billion dollars. This is over ten times the combine insurance and federal pool of the Price-Anderson Act. There could very well be a domino effect from a major nuclear accident in the United States. First a cost in the hundreds of billions could be estimated. This would have to be borrowed by the Federal government. Insurance would have to be paid out which could result in the bankruptcy of insurance companies, cancellation of nuclear insurance policies and/or steep rises in insurance premiums. Payment to the pool, cancellation of insurance or higher premiums might result in nuclear companies declaring bankruptcy and defaulting on their Act obligations. And when the dust settled, hundreds of billions might be drained out of the U.S. government’s general fund resulting in the cutting of funding to import programs and an increase in the deficit. There could be a collapse in the nuclear industry which would result in the reduction of electrical generation capacity in the United States.

             Fracking has been in the news a lot recently. Basically fracking is the process of injecting fluids into holes drilled into underground zones containing oil and natural gas. The purpose of this procedure is to fracture (hence the name) the rock strata to release the oil or natural gas which is then pumped to the surface. Primitive fracking began in the mid 1800s and was used to extract oil in a number of states. Pressurized fracking began in 1947 in the United States and eventually spread across the world. The modern technique called horizontal slickwater fracturing was developed in 1988 in the United States. Fracking requires huge quantities of water and a variety of proprietary chemical mixtures to aid the fracking process.

              Hundreds of chemicals have been used in fracking including acids, alcohols, ammonium compounds, benzene compounds, formaldehyde, kerosene, nitrogen, potassium compounds, salt, salt, sodium compounds and many other chemicals currently labeled as toxic. These additives may be surfactants, friction reducers, emulsifiers and other things to help get the oil or gas out of the rock. Fracking fluid also contains substances called proppants that are used to keep the fractures in the rock open after the injection of pressurized fluid is stopped.  

              Proponents of fracking point to the huge deposits of oil and natural gas that are now available for exploitation in the United States. The supply of natural gas has rise and the cost has fallen due to fracking. Many people in rural areas are receiving income from fracking operations on their land, bringing much needed economic development to their areas.

           Opponents of fracking point to the environmental and health impacts of the process. The huge amounts of water drawn from the aquifers and rivers to feed the fracking operations are contaminated and cannot be used for consumption and irrigation. Despite efforts to contain and isolate this contaminated water, some of it still leaks out into the environment. Ground water and surface soil is contaminated when the fracking fluid leaks out of the wells. People living in the areas where fracking is taking place are reporting serious health impacts from drinking well water. There is some evidence that large scale fracking operations can aggravate faults in the earth and trigger earthquakes which can expel water from the fracking into the environment. Recently, in Pennsylvania, the issue of radium and radon gas injected into drinking water by fracking has been raised and efforts are underway to measure public exposure.

           The main use of fracking is for gas and oil productions. However, there are a number of other uses such as stimulating groundwater wells, preconditioning rock strata for mining, disposing of waste water and other fluids by injecting them into deep rock strata, measuring stresses in the earth, geothermal generation of electricity and the sequestration of carbon dioxide to reduce global warming.

           Back during the Soviet Union’s flirtation with the peaceful use of nuclear explosions, there were plans put forward that were later abandoned to use nuclear bombs for natural gas fracking.

           Recently a United States company, Uranium Energy Corporation (UEC) in Texas, has announced that it is exploring a solution to the uranium supply problem in the U.S. Domestic production of uranium is down in the U.S. The uranium and plutonium that we have been getting from dismantling Russian nuclear weapons will no longer be available for conversion into reactor fuel. Other countries are competing for uranium on the international market. UEC wants to use fracking to dissolve uranium in rock strata and pump it to the surface for extraction and refinement. Opponents of the plan point out that while oil and natural gas fracking takes place miles down, below the aquifers that supply water to Texans, the uranium fracking would be less than one thousand feet below the surface and would pollute the ground water with uranium and other substances lock in the rock. UEC has responded that it is doing everyone a favor by pumping out water that is already contaminated and injectioning cleaner water into the aquifer. Critics are not comforted by this claim.

Hydraulic fracking diagram from Mike Norton:

              One of the main problems with the debate over nuclear power has to do with the scope of the debate. There are many different issues in the debate and it can be difficult to understand the connections between them and the trade-offs that may be present.

              The debate has to start with the need for electricity. The increasing population of the world and the increasing industrialization of the developing world demands more electrical power for consumer and industrial purposes. There are a number of different ways to generate electrical power. Coal, oil, natural gas, biomass and nuclear energy can all be used to heat water to turn steam turbines. Water and wind can turn turbines. Solar energy can be captured and converted to electricity. Fuel cells can convert hydrogen and other fuels to electricity. There are devices that can convert heat directly to electricity. This wide diversity of sources complicates any discussion of electric generation.

              Because of the many different ways to generate electricity, comparing the cost of any one type of generation to any other type can be very difficult. Some methods require a fuel that must be extracted from the earth but even these types vary greatly in extraction processes. Some fuels must be refined which can be expensive and polluting. Some are renewable but cannot generate power consistently. Some types of generation can be done locally with small infrastructure investment and some require enormous investment to create a centralized generation facility. Some methods generate pollution as a side effect and some create waste that threatens the ecosystem and must be dealt with properly to prevent harm.

             Some sources of energy also have other uses benign and hostile. The petrochemicals used to create fuels are also used as chemical feed stocks and weapons. The radioactive materials created in nuclear reactors have wide uses in industry and medicine but can also be used for weapons.

              When comparing the pros and cons of any source of electrical energy, there are a number of different dimension that can be part of the discussion but any particular type of electricity generation may not even appear on a dimension that is important for the other type being compared. For instance, fuel and waste are not relevant to renewable such as wind and solar but are very important for petrochemicals and nuclear power.

              When different groups with different agendas and priorities are discussing power  generation, they may difficulty even agreeing on what is important in the debate. Environmental  groups will focus on threats to the ecosystem while industrial groups will focus profits and governments will focus on stability and availability.

             It would be great to have a simple scale that would allow you to assign a rating to any given power source so they could all be compared and an informed choice could be made as to which was the “best.” Instead, we have a messy set of dimensions of varying relevance which makes comparison and selection extremely difficult. Nuclear energy may have high positive ratings on some indexes and high negative ratings on other indexes. And, the different interest groups emphasize different dimensions as being important. Nonetheless, it is necessary to do the best we can to compare the pros and cons of different energy generation methods and make the best choice we can.

              There is a Latin phrase used in law – cui bono – which translates as “as a benefit to whom.” This is a good question to raise in the debate over using nuclear energy to generate electrical power. Perhaps another Latin phrase would be useful such as “cui malum” or “as an injury to whom.”

           Who benefits from nuclear power generation? Obviously the people who need electricity would be a quick response. But digging a bit deeper, it is obvious that there is a thriving industry supplying uranium fuel, reactors, waste handling, etc. to nuclear power plant. The companies who own the plants also benefit from the profits made selling electricity.

           Digging deeper still, we find that there are many politicians who benefit from the money fed to their campaigns by the nuclear power industry. These paid for politicians work hard to insure that licenses will be granted for nuclear reactors, regulations will be minimal with poor inspection and enforcement, violations will be met with minimal or no punishment and taxpayers will pick up most of the tab for cleaning up after any accidents that may occur.

           And, finally, governments who are interested in developing and maintaining arsenals of nuclear weapons find it convenient to spread the cost of nuclear weapons development to nuclear power generation and, sometimes, to hide the intent of nuclear weapons programs behind the claim that their nuclear facilities are only intended for the development of peaceful nuclear power.

           Who is injured by nuclear power generation? The people who are exposed to radioactivity that may impact their health is an obvious answer. First in the chain are the indigenous peoples of remote areas of the world where uranium is being mined. They are often exposed to radiation without being educated in the dangers. They are left with a polluted toxic landscape.

            The workers in the uranium refining and fuel production facilities are often poorly trained and work without proper equipment and safeguards. The people who manage the nuclear power plants also have the same problems with poor training, poor equipment and poor oversight. And, at the end of the fuel life cycle, the transport, storage and disposal of nuclear waste can expose the workers and the people in the area to radiation. Without proper long term disposal of waste, people in the future may be exposed to radiation.

            If there is a major accident with release of radioactive materials, ocean and atmospheric currents can carry the radiation around the world, exposing people thousands of miles from the site of the accident to dangerous radiation. Billions of dollars will need to be spent on cleanup from a major accident and much of it will come from the taxpayers. Large areas may be rendered uninhabitable because of a major accident. In the future, the plants and animals may return and people may not know that a particular area is dangerous because of an ancient nuclear accident.

           There are winners and losers in the use of nuclear energy to generate electricity. It would appear that the winners are primarily businesses, politicians and governments while the losers may include just about everyone else on earth in the present and in the future.

             Nuclear reactors for power generation have a lifespan. Older reactors were licensed for about thirty years of operation. New reactors may be licensed for up to sixty years. Recently, extensions have been sought for reactors reaching the end of their licensed lifespan. When a power plant reactor reaches the end of its licensed period, original or extended, it has to be shut down, dismantled, and decontaminated. This process is called ‘decommissioning.’

          Decommissioning is a very complex task. When a nuclear power plant has been successfully decommissioned, the plant has been totally dismantled, any radioactive materials have been cleaned up and there is no longer a risk of exposure to radioactivity. At this point, the site of the plant is no longer under regulatory control and the organization that licensed the plant is no longer responsible for the safety of the site.

          The International Atomic Energy Agency has defined three different ways in which a nuclear power plant may be decommissioned. In all cases, a license must be sought that includes an assessment of possible environmental damage that may be caused by the decommissioning.

           The first option is called ‘immediate dismantling’ or ‘early site release/decon’ in the United States. This process starts within months or a few years of end of operation of the nuclear power plant and is accomplished within a few years. When the facility has been decommissioned, regulation ends and the site is available for other uses.

           The second option is called ‘safe enclosure’ or ‘safestore.’ This process starts with the shutdown of the plant and preparation of the site for storage. The regulatory controls are not removed for around fifty years until the reactor is dismantled and the site decontaminated.

            The third option is called ‘entombment.’ This process prepared the reactor and site to retain some of the radioactive materials and contamination indefinitely. The radioactive material is compacted into as small an area as possible and the building a concrete shell around that area that will permanently prevent the release of radioactivity.

            A number of reactors have been decommissioned in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe, Asia and Russia. Decommissioning is very expensive. There are companies that specialize in decommissioning and they are making a very tidy profit. It is also a long drawn out process accomplished in stages that may last for up to fifty years. A low estimate for decommissioning a nuclear power plant is in the range of two hundred million dollars with a high estimate of up to a billion dollars. Individual plant decommissioning projects have experienced huge cost overruns and incompetent oversight and execution.

           There are decommissioning funds that are supposed to be maintained for the decommissioning of particular plants. The problem with these funds is that they may be insufficient for the projected cost or may be being spent on other projects. The U.S. NRC have demanded that eighteen nuclear power plants deal with problems in their decommissioning fund. A potential major problem with the decommission of nuclear power plants is what would happen if a company that owns an operating goes bankrupt and disappears and there is no decommissioning fund available. In this case, the citizens of the country where the plant is located would be on the hook for decommissioning costs. With some countries in the world on the verge of bankruptcy themselves, there is a very real possibility of a orphan nuclear power plant that would not be decommissioned properly and could pose a public health danger for centuries.

Decommissioning:

           I have posted a number of blog entries about design of nuclear weapons and treaty negotiations to reduce their number. One question that I need to address is what you do with the old weapons when you want to get rid of them. This is referred to as decommissioning. Estimates of the number of nuclear warheads in the world vary but there are tens of thousands. The majority of the warheads are possessed by the United States and Russia with close to ten thousand each. In response to a number of treaty negotiations through the years, some U.S. and Russian warheads have already been dismantled and many more are slated for disposal.

            In order to decommission a nuclear warhead, it has to be dismantled. This does require the proper facilities and trained technicians for handling radioactive materials but such facilities and technicians are available. The biggest problem in disposal involves the disposition of the plutonium core that is the heart of the warhead. If we dismantled all the warheads in the world, there would be tens of thousands of these highly radioactive plutonium cores to get rid of.

            One possibility would be to send these plutonium cores to facilities such as Russia’s Mayak Chemical Combine, Frances La Hague or England’s Sellafield for reprocessing. The goal would be to convert the plutonium into a nuclear fuel call MOX or mixed oxide for nuclear reactors. There would, of course still be useless nuclear waste produced by the reprocessing. There have been problems in the past with leaks from these reprocessing facilities where waste has been dumped into public waterways. Sellafield is currently under attack for just such problems. The problem with MOX fuel is that plutonium is much more toxic and dangerous than the uranium used for fuel. If there is an accident that disperses plutonium into the environment, it poses a much greater health and environmental hazard than uranium fuel

            . A recent U.S. Government report stated that it would take decades to set up a proper reprocessing facility to recycle warheads and spent fuel into new reactor fuel in the United States and there does not seem to be an interest in doing it. Having the reprocessing done abroad in other countries would require the transport of the cores exposing them to accidents and possible terrorist seizure. So it would appear that the U.S. will have to bury the dismantled warheads. We do not have a permanent storage facility yet and it will be decades at best before we have one. Therefore, plutonium from dismantled warheads will have to be stored in temporary facilities with all the attendant problems.

            Part of the problem of disposal is the argument over the funding for the dismantling program in the United States. Given that an estimate for dismantling all our nuclear weapons runs around seven billion dollars a year for ten years, it seems rather silly to fight about it when that would amount to around 1 % of the annual Pentagon budget. In addition, the U.S. has been assisting the Russians in the dismantling of their nuclear warheads and there is a fight about the funding for that program. I would think that this expenditure is definitely relevant to national security.

           The world will be a safer place when nuclear weapons have been eliminated but there are a variety of logistical, technical, safety, political, and economic problems that will impede the elimination of all nuclear weapons worldwide. Still, it is a very important goal for the safety and wellbeing of the human race.

Dismantling a U.S. W56 warhead:

           I have posted a number of blog entries about nuclear weapons held by different countries including estimates of how many each has. The problem with these estimates is that the exact number of nuclear warheads possessed by each nuclear power is a closely held military secret. Nonetheless, I will try to present a good estimate of global totals in this post.

           The world inventory of operational strategic nuclear weapons such as intercontinental ballistic missiles that can reach any spot on the globe in minutes is currently around 4000 warheads. About half of these are on high alert, ready for use at any time on short notice. These have been the main focus of arms reduction talks. The U.S. and Russia are dismantling strategic warheads but the Chinese are manufacturing more and deploying new delivery vehicles.

           Nonstrategic nuclear weapons are shorter range delivery vehicles for smaller nuclear warheads such as artillery; short-, medium-, and long-range ballistic missiles; cruise missiles; and gravity bombs. It is estimated that there are about two hundred such warheads that are operational. They have been deployed in Europe by the United States. Russia no operational warheads deployed but has several thousand retired warheads awaiting disassembly.

           In the category of Reserve/nondeployed combines both strategic and non strategic weapons are being held in reserve or being overhauled. There are about six thousand of these warheads around the world.

           Military stockpiles of warheads in storage, some of which are awaiting decommissioning, contain around ten thousand warheads.

           In addition to the number of warheads in the United States – around eight thousand, there are fifteen thousand plutonium cores stored at the Pantex Plant in Texas and the Y-12 Plant in Tennessee. In Russia, there are around eight thousand five hundred warheads with several thousand warheads awaiting disassembly.

           So the estimated global inventory of all nuclear warheads of all type is around twenty thousand as of December 3012. These numbers are compiled by the Federation of American Scientists from the Nuclear Yearbook of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the appendix of the SIPRI Yearbook and the FAS Strategic Security Blog. The best estimates are for the United States and the worst estimates are for North Korea with the rest of the nuclear nations, Russia, United Kingdom, France, Israel, Pakistan and India somewhere in between.

            Despite reduction of nuclear arsenals from Cold War levels, all the nuclear states seem to be committed to updating their warheads and delivery systems. None seem to be inclined to consider the elimination of their nuclear military capability. International tensions wax and wane. Some countries that were enemies are now allies. But it is still assumed that the possession of nuclear weapons is a strong deterrent to attack from an enemy.

Graphic from nucleardarkness.org. Visit their website to find out how you can contribute to reducing the prospect of nuclear war.

              We have come to the last major subject in the concern about nuclear energy. Nuclear waste may be the end of our list but the big problem is that some of it does not end for millions of years. Waste is generated at every stage of nuclear energy as well as nuclear weapons production. There are high level nuclear wastes that will kill with direct exposure and lower level wastes that may lead to poisoning and cancer. The half life of the radioactive isotopes in nuclear waste can vary from hours to more than a million years with some types of wastes being dangerous for hundreds of thousands or millions of years. It is estimated that there are currently around 250,000 tons of nuclear waste around the world.

             First, there is the problem of the waste tailings left after uranium has been removed for processing.  This waste product is almost as radioactive as the uranium that has been removed. We have already mentioned this under uranium mining. If not properly dealt with it can pollute the air, water and soil posing a threat to human and animal health.

             Processing separates isotopes in order to create a higher ratio around twenty percent of the highly radioactive U-235 to the U-238 which constitutes most of the naturally occurring uranium. This enrichment process produces U-238 as waste which is radioactive and must be disposed of properly.  Nuclear weapons production has to raise the ratio of U-235 to U-238 as high as ninety percent which produces a great deal of waste U-238.

             After the nuclear fuel rods are depleted, they are removed from the reactors and temporarily stored in the spent fuel pool at the reactor. These pools are often outside the containment vessel and more vulnerable to accidents or terrorists. If the coolant in these pools drops below the level of the rods, they can burst into flame spontaneously spewing radioactive particulates into the atmosphere.

            The spent fuel pools in the United States are going to be full in five years. The intent was to have a permanent nuclear waste disposal site built to take spent fuel rods by 1999. Since the cancellation of the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Repository, there is not even a plan for a U.S. waste repository. The fuel rods will have to be stored onsite or offsite in temporary storage casks. These should be safe storage for decades but may still be threatened by accidents or terrorists.

            Most plans for permanent waste disposal focus on digging a deep hole or using an existing hole like a mine. Searches go on for extremely stable geological formation with little movement of groundwater and no fault lines that may cause earthquakes. There are ten waste depositories around the world.  Yucca Mountain in the U.S. turned out not to be so safe after reconsideration. Germany had to shut down a waste depository because there was unexpected leach of waste products by groundwater. If a waste depository is opened, then nuclear waste must be transported by truck, rail and/or ship which will increase the risk of accidents that will spill radioactive materials into the environment.

           Other methods have been suggested for disposing of waste such are processing in reactors, shooting into space, drilling extremely deep wells and other schemes. All of these ideas are untried and will be expensive and difficult to test and verify.

           Nuclear waste is a threat to humanity and a good reason to end the use of nuclear energy for power.

            I have covered some of the problems with nuclear weapons, uranium mining and uranium processing in previous posts. Today I am going to briefly list some of the major problems with nuclear reactors used for power generation. This list is not meant to be exhaustive but if there were no other problems with nuclear power, these alone would be enough to justify shutting it down.

            Many minor accidents with a variety of causes have plagued the nuclear power industry. Though low in probability major nuclear accidents do happen and can threaten the health of millions and large areas of the natural environment. Chernobyl and Fukushima are dramatic examples of what can happen.

            Calculations of the cost of nuclear power often don’t include the governmental subsidies, the wildly fluctuating cost of uranium, environmental degradation, the health costs of accidents, the problem of nuclear waste and the cost of decommissioning nuclear power plants. When everything is taken into account, nuclear power is not cheaper than renewable alternative energy which don’t have the dangers.

            When mining, processing, transport, construction, waste handling and decommissioning are taken into account; nuclear power is not as beneficial to reducing carbon dioxide emissions as has been advertised.

            Huge amounts of water are needed to cool nuclear power plants. Some of the rivers that supply water to cool power plants have insufficient flows to allow plants to operate at peak power all the time and the situation will just get worst. Recently the rising temperature of the ocean due to global warming caused the shutdown of a nuclear power plant that drew cooling water from the ocean.

            The big corporations that run the nuclear power plants are often guilty of incompetence or callous disregard in following proper procedures in the construction of power plants, their regular and safe operation and response to emergencies.

            Government agencies that are supposed to inspect and regulate nuclear power plants and to punish infractions by plant operators are often guilty of incompetence or even deliberately ignoring infractions and handing out light punishment when infractions are recognized.

            The spent fuel pools of nuclear reactors are filling up with spent fuel rods and, without permanent nuclear waste disposal facilities, when these pools are full, reactors will have to be shut down until sufficient temporary storage can be constructed.

            Most of the currently operating reactors are approaching the end of their intended lifespan. Either they will have to be shut down, decommissioned and replaced with new reactors with all the attendant costs and problems or they will have to be relicensed and continue to operate as they age and deteriorate, increasing the danger of a major accident.

           Because the construction and operation of new reactors has been slowing in recent decades, interested in jobs in the industry has been declining as well. There is a shortage of nuclear engineers in the world today to replace the current aging operators at nuclear power plants.

            One of the problems that does not get enough attention is the fact that the nuclear industry is complex and global. Uranium is mined in one country and processed in another country. Reactors are constructed by global companies that source their parts from different countries. Waste may be moved to different countries for processing or disposal. As countries drop the use of nuclear power and companies rethink whether they want to stay in the business of supplying reactors and reactor components, the construction of new reactors and the fueling and maintenance of reactors will become more expensive and meet growing public resistance. One of two more major accidents could seriously impact the global nuclear industry and make further use of nuclear power much more difficult and expensive if not impossible.