WASHINGTON, Sept. 7 (UPI) -- Several members of Congress have called for intensified action to secure the nuclear waste generated by U.S. civilian power reactors.
Members of Congress led by Rep. Edward Markey, D-MA, joined with the nationwide Nuclear Security Coalition to call for prompt actions to secure the U.S. commercial power reactors' nuclear waste storage system. The Nuclear Security Coalition is a national group of 47 U.S. public interest organizations advocating for improved security at nuclear power plants.
Markey proposed implementation of a storage technology known as "Hardened On-Site Storage", or HOSS, by which over-filled atomic waste storage pools at reactor sites are off-loaded into dry storage casks that have been "hardened" against terrorist attack. A 14-minute compact disc presentation entitled "Nuclear Spent Fuel & Homeland Security: the Case for Hardened Storage" was hand delivered to every member of Congress in support of the joint call, the NSC said in a statement Thursday.
Markey, a senior member of the House Homeland Security and Energy and Commerce Committees, said, "The NRC engages in faith-based nuclear security planning, choosing to ignore expert report after expert report."
The Nuclear Security Coalition identified that 32 boiling water reactors around the United States that, it said, were particularly vulnerable. Those 32 reactors maintained their "spent" fuel storage pools six to 10 stories high their reactor building and outside th protective containment structures that housed the nuclear reactors themselves, the group said.
"These pools typically contain in excess of 400 metric tons of thermally hot and highly radioactive used reactor fuel, which must be continuously cooled in water 40-feet deep in the elevated pools," the NSC statement said.
"None of the nation's reactor fuel storage buildings are designed as containment structures to withstand attack by aircraft, rocket or a variety of improvised explosive devices," it said.
