Reactors will always have waste on site
April 11, 2011 - 1:02 am
To the editor:
Tyrus Cobb's Thursday commentary, "Japan shows need for spent fuel storage," seriously misrepresents the issue of spent nuclear fuel stored at nuclear power plant locations.
The risk involving spent fuel at reactor sites is the water-filled cooling pools. You could have 100 Yucca Mountain repositories up and operating, and you would still have the same risk at reactor sites, because as long as you have a reactor, you must have a pool to cool the waste for five years or more. And there will always have to be at least five years' worth of accumulated spent fuel in those pools. The only way to avoid this risk is to shut down the reactors.
The answer is not shipping dangerous spent fuel thousands of miles through major population centers to an unsafe site in Nevada. Rather, the nation should mandate that all utility companies do what many are already doing: moving whatever spent fuel they can to safe, passive dry storage. Once the spent fuel is in dry storage, the risk of something happening like the accident in Japan is virtually eliminated. The only reason this is not being done is because it's cheaper for utilities to continue to pack spent fuel rods into pools.
Not only is Yucca Mountain unsafe and unsuitable as a spent fuel disposal or storage location, it is emphatically not the answer to risks involving spent fuel in pools at reactors. A Yucca Mountain repository would only compound the overall spent fuel risks. It would do nothing to mitigate them.
Joseph C. Strolin
Carson City
The writer is acting executive director for the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects.
Fat bureaucracy
To the editor:
In response to your April 5 article, "School district sends out notices to teachers about potential layoffs":
"The district employs 38,500 people, including 18,000 teachers," the article reports.
So less than half of the employees of the Clark County School District are actually teachers? I can see where there's just no more fat left to cut, other than teachers.
When you look up the word "bureaucracy" in the dictionary, it says, "see Clark County School District."
Curtiss WIlliams
Henderson
Layoff strategy
To the editor:
I think that if Clark County School District employees are going to be cut, then the first cuts should be the people who voted for Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval.
These are obviously the people who don't care about education anyway.
JoAnne McMaster
Las Vegas
Shutdown? Yeah, right
To the editor:
So, if the federal government does shut down, will the IRS still be taking in taxes?
To me, all this chest-thumping by those crying the sky will fall if the government doesn't get more money to spend is just that --chest-thumping.
Do you really think the IRS would shut down? That is comical!
The government can't and won't ever be shut down.
Mike Smith
Las Vegas