It's actually more layered than that. Nuclear Power Plants in the US, over 40 of them, have a service life of roughly 50 years, and they are all starting to reach that service life. They also provide approximently 25% of our electricity today. There are insufficient sources of green energy close enough to population centers to fill the gap. So, basically without building new nuclear, natural gas or coal plants we are proverbially "fucked".
What's worse it that those 40+ plants have waste products sitting in open air pools that if those pools drained you would have massive localized nuclear catastophies.
Lastly, if you recall, the San Anofrie (sp) nuclear plant received a new core that cost billions to manufacture to only have it fail some months later due to design flaws. The last bit of this world wide catastrophie is that the engineers that know how to build this stuff are dying off.
The IAEA and the Nuclear Regulatory Authority granted the plants the authority to store that spent fuel for 100 years in those pools. One long haul storage facility had to be cemented shut cause a cheep contractor used kitty litter for dry cask. It's a nightmare to think it only takes one fuck up to blow a multi-million dollar storage project like that. Yukka mountain is super important. Get that shit out of those pools ASAP.
It's actually more layered than that. Nuclear Power Plants in the US, over 40 of them, have a service life of roughly 50 years, and they are all starting to reach that service life. They also provide approximently 25% of our electricity today. There are insufficient sources of green energy close enough to population centers to fill the gap. So, basically without building new nuclear, natural gas or coal plants we are proverbially "fucked".
What's worse it that those 40+ plants have waste products sitting in open air pools that if those pools drained you would have massive localized nuclear catastophies.
Lastly, if you recall, the San Anofrie (sp) nuclear plant received a new core that cost billions to manufacture to only have it fail some months later due to design flaws. The last bit of this world wide catastrophie is that the engineers that know how to build this stuff are dying off.
The IAEA and the Nuclear Regulatory Authority granted the plants the authority to store that spent fuel for 100 years in those pools. One long haul storage facility had to be cemented shut cause a cheep contractor used kitty litter for dry cask. It's a nightmare to think it only takes one fuck up to blow a multi-million dollar storage project like that. Yukka mountain is super important. Get that shit out of those pools ASAP.