Spent Fuel An Extra Problem: A Canadian Initiative

摘要

One of the most damning criticisms of the ethics of nuclear power generation has been that, despite a history that now extends more than 60 years, the industry has no long-term, permanent solution to the problem of managing spent fuel and other highly radioactive waste materials. From an ethical point of view, it was scandalous that this problem was allowed to continue for 60 weeks after the first peaceful reactors began to operate, let alone 60 years. The world over, nearly all these materials are stored beside the reactor from which they came and they stay there indefinitely. This practice contributed substantially to the size of the disaster at Fukushima, demonstrating that even as a short-term stopgap, it is attended by major risks. As a long-term response to the need to manage and protect the biosphere from these materials for the thousands of years that they remain significantly radioactive, the practice is clearly hopeless.