The urgent need to deal with nuclear waste goes beyond safety issues. France safely gets 70 percent of its electricity from nuclear power, which doesn’t contribute to climate change. Advocates of using nuclear energy to address the climate emergency include Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace International, renowned atmospheric scientist James Lovelock and Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog. But the failure of the United States to address the issue of safe containment of nuclear waste undercuts the case for adding nuclear plants. It also illustrates that few elected leaders have the proper sense of urgency about the severe heat and drought that are the new norms for the Southwest and other parts of the world.
July 23, 2021
By: San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board
Source: San Diego Union-Tribune
San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board: Opinion: San Onofre nuclear waste needs somewhere to go. Rep. Mike Levin is pushing for a solution.
Since Mike Levin was elected in 2018 to represent northern San Diego County and southern Orange County in the House of Representatives, the Democratic lawyer from San Juan Capistrano has kept a welcome and much-needed focus on pushing the federal government to live up to its responsibilities to safely store the radioactive waste from the decommissioned San Onofre nuclear plant located 20 miles north of Oceanside.
Some 1,600 tons of spent nuclear fuel is stored in 123 canisters at the oceanfront plant, within 50 miles of 9 million people. The risks of disaster from an earthquake or a tsunami have long been obvious. But cynical maneuvers by past presidents and, in particular, former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, have kept the federal government from following through on building a nuclear waste repository in a remote part of Nevada.
This week, Levin launched a new effort to force the government to take this problem seriously. He announced the formation of a bipartisan Spent Nuclear Fuels Solutions Caucus in Congress to pressure the Biden administration and congressional leaders to help 34 states deal with the nuclear waste at about 80 plants around the nation.
By: San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board
Source: San Diego Union-Tribune