By Rady Ananda

In a recent interview with The Real News Network, Robert Alvarez, a nuclear policy specialist since 1975, reports that spent nuclear fuel in the United States comprises the largest concentration of radioactivity on the planet: 71,000 metric tons. Worse, since the Yucca Mountain waste repository has been scrapped due to its proximity to active faults (see last image), the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has allowed reactor operators to store four times more waste in the spent fuel pools than they’re designed to handle.

Each Fukushima spent fuel pool holds about 100 metric tons, he says, while each US pool holds from 500-700 metric tons. A single pool fire would release catastrophic amounts of radioactivity, rendering 17-22,000 square miles of area uninhabitable. That’s about the size of New Hampshire and Vermont – from one pool fire. [Image: Spent fuel pool at the top of a nuclear reactor.]

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William John Cox

The failures of the General Electric nuclear reactors in Japan to safely shut down during the 9.0 Tahoku earthquake, following in the wake of the catastrophic Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the deadly methane gas explosion in Massey’s West Virginia coal mine, conclusively demonstrate the grave dangers to human society posed by current energy production methods.

The radiation plume from melting reactor cores and the smoke of burning spent fuel rods threaten the lives of the unborn; yet, they point in the direction of the only logical alternative to these failed policies – the generation of an inexhaustible, safe, pollution-free supply of energy from outer space.

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