A new study reveals particles that were released from nuclear plants damaged in the devastating 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami contained small amounts of radioactive plutonium.
"It's not a surprise that no one would support Yucca," says Stanford's Rodney Ewing, who led a 2018 study that recommended moving responsibility for disposing of nuclear waste to an independent nonprofit corporation.
Nuclear waste must be moved to dry-cast storage, which "is probably safe for tens of hundreds of years but shouldn’t be considered a final solution," says Rod Ewing .
Yucca Mountain has suffered from "technical and political disagreement" for decades, says Rod Ewing of Stanford. "There's an understandable pressure to do something with at least some of the waste."
Microscopic particles unleashed by the nuclear plant's explosions may pose an under-recognized health risk – a discovery that has been not very welcomed in Japan, says Rod Ewing of Stanford Earth.
Nuclear security expert Rod Ewing discusses new recommendations for solving the U.S. nuclear waste problem, why conventional risk assessments don’t go far enough and what makes this challenge more difficult than putting a man on the moon.
Expert Rodney C. Ewing discusses how failure to implement a permanent solution for nuclear waste storage and disposal is costing Americans billions of dollars per year.
