Congressman Jason Lewis is part of a renewed push in Washington D-C to open a federal repository for spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The Republican says he wants the waste out of Prairie Island and the Second District and into a safe storage facility. But George Crocker with the North American Water Office says, “It’s not a comprehensive nuclear waste management program, and that’s what we need. This is just another iteration of the same failed proposals that we’ve seen for decades now.” Crocker says the first step is to stop producing nuclear waste, then establish a site that can store it. The spent fuel is currently in dry casks outside the Prairie Island plant.
Crocker says, “We will not solve the nuclear waste problem so long as nuclear industry people continue making more money by making more waste that nobody knows what to do with.” He says once the U-S stops producing nuclear waste, we can establish what he calls a “sacrifice zone,” deploy technology to contain the material and adequately compensate those currently living there.
More in this interview with Crocker: