Not In My Backyard, Nuclear Waste Crisis

Riddle me this: Why is the U.S. importing 1,000 tons of German nuclear waste for processing, and yet Americans have thousands of tons of our own nuclear waste piling up in the backyards of our 103 nuclear reactor plants? 


President Obama established the White House Blue Ribbon Commission to come up with a permanent geological disposal method, but today California's Sen. Dianne Feinstein explained that

"It is clear that we lack a comprehensive national policy to address the nuclear fuel cycle, including management of nuclear waste."

What happens is that fuel rods power nuclear reactors to generate steam which in turn powers millions of households across the country, but once the fuel rods are spent there's nowhere to put them, except temporary underwater storage pools - not a sustainable or desirable solution (see, Fukushima disaster). 


Now granted we're importing "low-level" nuclear waste from Germany, so we're not exactly disposing of their spent fuel rods; however, it's troubling that U.S. companies have incentives to process waste for foreign countries, yet lack incentives to develop solutions for handling our high-level waste here at home. The reason folks in Oak Ridge, Tennessee don't mind importing and processing waste is because the plant supplies jobs and generates revenue for the local population, and has for sixty-some years.


I question opening up the floodgates for foreign waste, let alone nuclear waste, when the powers that be should be focusing on devising a solution for domestic permanent disposal. Currently utility companies are sitting on tons of our nuclear waste, but why isn't the White House Blue Ribbon Commission creating incentives for those companies to come up with permanent solutions for our waste, instead of just sitting on it. In addition to all this, we're throwing caution to the wind and opening doors for potential nuclear disasters by importing nuclear waste.