Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise to introduce legislation to help address one of the glaring issues our domestic nuclear industry faces-- what to do with the used nuclear fuel being stored at over 100 sites across the country. I am pleased to be joined by Senator Mary Landrieu in introducing this bill. Typically, a nuclear power plant stores its used fuel in a spent fuel pool located within the reactor site's exclusion zone. When there is no more room in the pool, and the used fuel is sufficiently cooled, the fuel can be moved to dry cask storage nearby the plant in what are called independent spent fuel storage installations. Although there are 104 nuclear reactors producing power across the United States, not all have been in operation long enough to fill their spent fuel pools and require dry cask storage. So at present, the are 63 independent spent fuel storage installations at 56 sites in 33 States. Of those, 7 sites are from decommissioned plants. Two decommissioned plant sites still have fuel in their spent fuel pool. That means there are 9 sites, from 10 decommissioned reactors, with 2,800 metric tons of used fuel that is being stored and guarded, whether in dry cask or fuel pools, but no operating power plant nearby. These are orphan sites, and but for the remaining spent fuel the land could be used for other purposes.…”