Operated from 1972 to 1996 and produced 119 billion kilowatt hours of energy
Dry cask storage is a method for safely storing spent nuclear fuel after it has cooled for several years in water pools. Once the fuel rods are no longer producing extreme heat, they are sealed inside massive steel and concrete casks that provide both radiation shielding and passive cooling through natural air circulation—no water is needed. Each cask can weigh over 100 tons and is engineered to resist earthquakes, floods, fire, and even missile strikes. This makes it a robust interim solution until permanent deep geological repositories are available. The casks are expected to last 50–100 years, though the fuel inside remains radioactive for thousands. Dry cask storage reduces reliance on crowded spent fuel pools, provides a secure above-ground option, and buys time for nations to develop long-term disposal strategies. In essence, it’s a durable, self-contained “vault” for nuclear waste
I have been growing up with the outlook that one day we might find these yet somehow this promise/hope still sounds exactly the same many many years later
I think the main reasoning why permanent solutions haven’t been “found” yet is because we still closetedly believe that we will find a better use for the waste if we just wait a few more decades.
it would be a shame to bury all that waste under 1000 meters of concrete now only to find out you can re-use these spent fuel rods for another round in the reactor in 2050.
In Germany we already found suitable places but lobby work and local governments worked against it and now it’s in moist mines in leaky barrels.
The problem with DGRs is the resistance from uninformed locals and environmental groups, on a technical level we know how to build them and how to make them safe.
I thought the problem was SEP fields. Because as soon as you’ve found an ideal location for a facility all the locals come out (probably in part funded by oil companies) and are like “this sounds great but not here”.
Americans also know how sloppy US contractors get.
Why not just mix it to trace amounts with sand and deposit in a biologically dead zone?
Outside the environment you mean?
Well, it’s usually planned deep underground (and in rock that’s unlikely to have water or earthquakes running through) in hopes of it remaining undeterred for as long as possible. If you were to dump it in the desert, then winds or the occasional rain might still carry it all over the place.