Panel on Nuclear Waste Disposal to Propose Above-Ground Storage

WASHINGTON — A commission created to help resolve the impasse over the disposal of the nation’s nuclear waste will propose establishing one or more sites where used reactor fuel could be stored in steel and concrete structures on the earth’s surface for decades, members of the commission said this week.

A draft recommendation for such sites is to be discussed on Friday at a meeting of the panel, which was set up last year by the Department of Energy after President Obama canceled a longstanding plan to bury waste at Yucca Mountain, a site in the Nevada desert.

The commission will also recommend opening a new effort to find a burial site, members said, and suggest that it be led by an organization that is independent of the Department of Energy, which has been working on the waste disposal effort for decades.

Commission members say they will suggest securing the assent of local and state governments before a burial site is chosen. With a selection process that is based more on science than politics and the promise of local economic benefit, a host site could potentially be found, some of them said. Yucca Mountain was chosen by Congress in 1987 after a battle driven by not-in-my-backyard politics.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/13/science/earth/13waste.html?_r=1

They'll store the waste in dry casks for several decades,
then it will leak into the groundwater and we'll declare an "exlucsion zone" around it.

when the containers deteriorate and the spent fuel is still viable?

This is still going to be a "not in my back yard" scenario. Not to mention "get off my lawn" and don't transport it through my town/state/whatever scenario.

And the consensus view is that it's indequate and potentially dangerous. This represents a real failure of imagination, not to mention policy.

what about not making anymore until a permanent solution is found. Oh I forgot there is no long term solutions to be found.

If anyone still has any doubts about the honesty of nuclear energy after whats going on in Japan right this minute they are fools.

In fact it should be stored above reactor, then every few years it's automatically and very economically dispersed into everyone's back yard and front yard. Problem solved send mej my check.