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| In part one of this report, we looked at the danger of catastrophic failures, not only | |
| from nuclear reactors, but from spent fuel pools. | |
| Tonight, we're going to look at the end-of-life issues with nuclear power. | |
| Storage, decommissioning of power plants. | |
| This is the most delicate part of the whole operation, as it involves reopening the building without contaminating the area or staff on the outside. | |
| Not including the reactor building would generate 30,500 tons of waste in need of special treatment. | |
| But the figures remain questionable. | |
| The OECD cites 36,000 tonnes for the total shutdown of a power plant. | |
| Up until now, no site has been entirely dismantled. | |
| Depending on the method chosen, the process can take between 25 and 100 years. | |
| Plants are just now starting to be shut down after about 40 years of operation. | |
| But others are having their licenses extended with little or no public examination. | |
| Sharon Harris near Raleigh, North Carolina has just had its license extended in spite of signs of aging and many troubles at that location. | |
| Between 1999 and 2003, there were 12 major problems requiring the shutdown of the plant. | |
| That's an average of once every four months, as opposed to the industry average of once every 18 months. | |
| Four and a half times the shutdowns as the industry average. | |
| In May of this year, the plant was shut down by the NRC for a couple of weeks when a quarter-inch crack was found inside the reactor pressure vessel head. | |
| In August, an explosion of electrical equipment caused the plant to be shut down. | |
| One week later, the same nuclear power plant was found to have a leaking valve that had released at least 10,000 gallons of radioactive water. | |
| But in spite of that history, Sharon Harris asked for and got a 20-year extension. | |
| That means that it has a license to run for 60 years. | |
| No nuclear power plant has done that. | |
| We're dealing with really old reactors, and they have to be decommissioned. | |
| If we were to follow the advice of the former chair of the NRC and shut down all the nuclear reactors, we would still have a legacy of dangerous materials from the decommissioned plants and spent fuel that threatens life on Earth. | |
| Catastrophic reactor failure during operation, radiation leaks during operation, catastrophic spent fuel fires, and pushing the storage of dangerous waste onto future generations for centuries or millennia, Yet, Obama wants to shut down all coal plants and go nuclear. | |
| In the next installment, we'll look at the global warming narrative and Obama's love affair with nuclear. |
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