“In 2009, LS Power, a New York private equity company, tried to build a power line over Minidoka. Thankfully, the Department of the Interior moved LS Power’s Southwest Intertie Project (SWIP) power line away from the park. Today, LS Power seeks approval from the Bureau of Land Management to build the giant Lava Ridge wind project on federal land within two miles of the park’s visitor center.” — Friends of Minidoka

In Episode 329 of District of Conservation, Gabriella speaks with two leaders behind the “Stop Lava Ridge” movement, Diana Nielsen and Dean Dimond, to discuss the significance of the proposed Lava Ridge Wind Project in Southern Idaho. This proposed project is endorsed by the Biden administration as part of their goal to generate 25 gigawatts of onshore wind energy by 2025. This interview ties with today’s release of Conservation Nation Episode 12 on the very subject. Tune in to learn more!

Virtue-signaling politicians don’t want wind turbines like Lava Ridge near them. They let others pay the price of their energy fantasies. //

If all goes according to plan, Magic Valley Energy will soon be installing up to 400, 740-foot-tall wind turbines, 485 miles of new roads, miles and miles of transmission lines, and buildings filled with half-ton battery modules on upwards of 197,000 acres at Lava Ridge in southwestern Idaho.

The company is named after a beautiful valley that soon won’t be nearly so magical.

The acreage is equal to 15 percent of Delaware, and the turbines, at 740 feet tall, are larger than the Washington Monument — an appropriate comparison because the project is being advanced in cooperation with a climate-obsessed Biden administration determined to replace fossil fuels with “clean” energy.

For the administration, saving the planet from computer models of manmade climate disasters is far more important than saving land, scenery, habitats, wildlife, and ways of life from the ravages of wind and solar installations.

In fact, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, along with other federal agencies, is preparing to expedite wind and solar permit approvals, no matter the effects on Mother Earth. They’ve even decreed that bald and golden eagles killed by wind turbines are merely “incidental takings” — unintentional losses due to otherwise lawful activities — and thus irrelevant in permitting decisions. Nor do they consider the incomprehensible amounts of mining (in faraway lands with lax environmental standards) required to produce the metals, minerals, and concrete those installations will need.

U.S. Department of Energy released the below-linked article that discusses the utility of "droop" or frequency/voltage-based regulation to manage active & reactive power flows (respectively) without the need for communications between power sources. If put it briefly, the author suggests that with droop control they can avoid the need for an EMS for a hybrid microgrid site. https://cleantechnica.com/2022/10/03/microgrids-for-anyone/ //

Let me start by agreeing that the droop control technique is an essential tool in any modern Microgrid control strategy. Not because it's the “be all and end all” of control methods, but rather it’s a very effective fallback strategy. No Microgrid control system supplier worth their weight in salt, wants to deliver a system that cannot manage communications failure events and whilst redundant communications are a solution, droop control is superior in terms of cost-benefit outcomes. //

Whilst the utility of this technique is apparent, the point that I return to is this is by no means a complete solution offering. A holistic Hybrid Energy Management system will provide:

1. Overall power management of both dispatchable energy sources and loads
2. Coupling and decoupling from grid tie-in point including support of:
   • Re-synchronisation
   • Seamless transition during network disturbances
   • Import/Export and Network firming functions.
3. Quality of Service management - ensuring the microgrid provides grid quality power (or better), to energy off-takers at all times.
4. Energy Shifting – utilising renewable energy collected during the day to offset peak consumption during the night; and
5. Microgrid Optimisation both in terms of:
   • Minimising levelized cost of energy (LCoE) in isolated systems; and/or
   • Maximising return on investment potential for grid connected systems.

The net takeaway is this – not only are we far more progressed in terms of control methodology for hybrid microgrids, but the cost of ownership is significantly less than what most, including the article writer believe possible.

For the week of December 12th to 19th, 2022, the state of South Australia (home to 1.8 million people and ComAp Australia’s head office) had its entire state’s energy supply generated from renewable energy. This is not just a significant milestone for South Australia (SA), but also clear indicator of the pace in which renewables have become integral to Australia’s national power system. As recently as 2020, it was then considered exceptional for renewables to power SA’s demand for an HOUR, so to have this leap to a week within two years is quite incredible. Better yet, it is predicted renewable energy (backed by firming storage) will be able to exclusively supply the state for up to a month by early 2023! 

Will the small modular nuclear reactor community be able to find an optimized point on the physics vs modularity curve? I don’t think so, and discussed it with Bent Flyvbjerg, global megaproject expert.

By Michael Barnard ///

He claims Germany has the most stable and cheapest electric grid in Europe, but that is contrary to all the info i have seen.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued its final rule in the Federal Register to certify NuScale Power’s small modular reactor.

The company’s power module becomes the first SMR design certified by the NRC and just the seventh reactor design cleared for use in the United States.

The rule takes effects February 21, 2023 and equips the nation with a new clean power source to help drive down emissions across the country.

In 2011, another meltdown happened in Fukushima, mere months after the extension decision had been made. This caused large anti-nuclear power demonstrations across the country, the CDU to lose power in the state of Baden-Württemberg – a state which had been governed by the CDU since the 1950's – and the Green party to end up ahead of the SPD in that state, leading to the first Green minister president and Green-led state government (although other issues specific to Baden-Württemberg also influenced the state election in favour of the Greens). The Baden-Württemberg election was a mere two weeks after the Fukushima incident.

Merkel's government attempted to meet public sentiment by walking back on the decision to extend nuclear power phase-out deadlines, and in the summer of 2011 the Bundestag voted with 513 out of 600 votes to increase the phase-out speed. The vote was by name (meaning every member of parliament went on record with their aye, no or abstention) and if I recall correctly it was also declared a decision of conscience rather than subject to party discipline. Anti-nuclear power sentiment in the general public was at its highest.

There has essentially been no further attempt to revise the legal situation. Opinion polls have, as far as I am aware, consistently recorded a clear majority against using nuclear power to generate electricity. Except for the AfD, no party in parliament currently supports extending nuclear power use or building new plants.

The New Scientist calculated the number of deaths per kilowatt-hour question based on the data from International Atomic Energy Agency in 2011.

• https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20928053.600-fossil-fuels-are-far-deadlier-than-nuclear-power/
• https://www.iaea.org/

According to the New Scientist:

The agency examined the life cycle of each fuel from extraction to post-use and included deaths from accidents as well as long-term exposure to emissions or radiation.

They concluded that "fossil fuels are far deadlier than nuclear power" and that "the large number of deaths [related to fossil fuels] are caused by pollution."
[https://i.stack.imgur.com/uglxE.jpg]

Another, more recent, report supporting these numbers can be found at the World Nuclear Association, here. http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/energy-and-the-environment/environment-and-health-in-electricity-generation.aspx

An article in Forbes gives the following numbers, which I reproduce here in their simplified form: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#571bf970709b

Petroleum producers know that there are not many opportunities to make major new discoveries so they are focused on maintaining their current production levels. In many cases, there is a growing supply of unused capital waiting for an appropriate place to invest.

Oil executives would be wise to consider investing their human and financial resources in nuclear reactors, which can be considered to be modern, near zero emission energy wells. When nuclear reactors are used as advanced heat sources to produce synthetic fuels and hydrocarbons, a substantial portion of the capital infrastructure and core competencies are directly transferrable from the conventional petroleum industry. //

Fossil fuel companies have the necessary assets to make successful investments in nuclear energy wells. They can raise capital from investors that are comfortable with risk, work their way through the regulatory wickets, buy the steel and concrete, develop the necessary agreements with local governments and ensure that their suppliers meet exacting specifications. They live and breathe safety based on long experience with massive quantities of volatile materials. After their new energy wells begin operation, they can look forward to many decades worth of reliable production and sales – energy is not a fad and people will always find new ways to use whatever quantity is available.

Sea-going or floating nuclear plants are especially well-matched to the current infrastructure and skill set of fossil fuel companies. They will be produced in the same shipyards that currently produce off-shore platforms, tankers, support vessels, and barges. In some cases, the production platforms will closely resemble floating petroleum or natural gas processing plants.

There are increasing pressures on fossil fuel companies to slow or stop their contributions to greenhouse gas emissions. Fossil fuel companies can legitimately meet their fiduciary responsibility to maximize their investor returns by directing their capital budgets to a new generation of energy production and distribution capability.

That new energy production capacity should include:

• Systems using heavy metal fission to directly supply heat and power
• Installations that use fission to produce heat and power for synthetic fuel production that combines hydrogen from water and carbon that is captured from the atmosphere.

At Nucleation Capital, we are focused on investing in advanced nuclear energy, synthetic fuels and macro energy integration systems that can all help decarbonize our energy and power sources. The transition from hydrocarbons to clean energy will be challenging, but nuclear energy investments will enable its success with lower costs than attempting to complete the transition without nuclear energy.

An important new study in the journal Energy (Weißbach et. al. 2013, paywalled) focuses on energy return on investment (EROI, or sometimes ERoEI), which is the ratio of electrical energy produced by a given power source to the amount of energy needed to build, fuel, maintain and decomission that power plant. //

Here's the idea in a nutshell: in the US, a kWh of energy (unweighted) costs about 10 cents but it produces about 70 cents worth of GDP, a ratio of 7 to 1. //

But the big winners in non-fossil energy are run-of-river hydro (Weißbach allows a 100 year plant lifetime, which may be generous) and nuclear (at a 60 year plant lifetime, in line with other studies). And by the way, this is one reason Weißbach's study is better than some earlier works: he includes plant lifetime in his computations, which can make a big difference. Wind turbines, for example, are subjected to large physical stresses which limits their lifetime to about 20 years, both in this study and according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. In effect, you have to build a windfarm two or three times over during the lifetime of a nuclear plant, and that adds up.

Two cases were analyzed for coal, one hard coal (EROI 29, EMROI 49) and one brown coal (EROI 31, EMROI 49). These were averaged to an EROI of 30 as shown. In the US we have plenty of hard coal reserves and don't use brown coal. Also, the authors omitted from this study the energy cost needed to transport coal, apparently because that varies by country. Using EIA data, this amounts to 244 KJ per tonne-km for rail transport. So in the US, where a lot of coal is moved from mines in Wyoming to end users far away, a typical 1000 mile trip would lower the EROI of coal from 29 to 28, while EMROI remains unchanged at 49. //

So if you ever wondered why climate scientists like James Hansen are pro-nuclear, this is one reason. Yes, wind is fine if it can be grid-buffered against a non-fossil generating source. And absolutely we need more hydro, especially run-of-river hydro where it's feasible. But there are limits to the amount of river where it is feasible. So if we want to eliminate fossil fuels from electricity production (and we do), and if we want to manage that transition so that it doesn't hurt the economy (and we do), nuclear has to be part of the mix. And in fact, it has to be a much bigger part of the mix than it has been in the past. In the next part of GETTING TO ZERO, I will address the safety issues of nuclear power in detail, but for right now what you need to know is that even after accounting for latent deaths from Chernobyl (and non-deaths from Fukushima), nuclear is still one of the safest forms of energy.

Finally, if you'd like to take a detailed look at the calculations, Weißbach's spreadsheet can be found on Google Docs. I used the spreadsheet to compute some of the numbers above.

To boldly consider a future with clean energy for all

Cheap energy is essential for human prosperity. Always has been. Molten salt reactors have the potential to deliver the cheap, clean and safe energy that is needed to lift billions of people out of energy poverty, without endangering the climate. //

In 2007, Google took up an ambitious plan. Google believed that the most effective way to terminate the use of fossil fuels is by outcompeting them. Google’s RE<C plan was targeted at developing strategies to achieve this goal. After investing $850 million, Google terminated the program because it failed. In their article ‘Today’s renewable energy technologies won’t save us. So what will?’ RE<C project leaders Ross Koningstein and David Fork explain why they are convinced we need new technologies to outcompete coal. http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/renewables/what-it-would-really-take-to-reverse-climate-change

Placing all eggs in the basket of wind and solar increases the chances of a sustained victory of today’s big winner: fossil fuel.

It looks like we have to choose between lowering CO2-levels and improving social justice.

Unless we take a fresh look at present developments in nuclear. Over the last decade, molten salt reactors have become the focal point of a quickly growing number of business startups, researchers, and investors, supported by an also quickly growing number of supporters. Even though they presently only exist on paper, molten salt reactors have managed to create the first pro-nuclear grassroots movement since the early sixties.

The enthousiasm can be easily explained: molten salt reactors have the potential to produce cheap, abundant, safe and clean power. Some companies claim this can be done starting in 2021.

The key to the MSR’s techological advantages the liquid fuel. This technique makes it possible to take sixty to hundred times more energy out of the same amount of fuel. This brings the radical new perspective of cheap, clean, safe and abundant energy for all of us.

In nuclear reactors as we know them, the fuel is solid. Present day reactors are engineered to be safe, and they are: even if we take accidents like Fukushima into account, nuclear reactors are by far the safest means of producing energy. But in many European countries, there is a strong but unfounded fear of radioactivity. Opponents have kept the industry in a stalemate for about forty years, leading to a virtually halted development.

Sorensen has remained firmly convinced that his thorium reactor, fully named liquid fluoride thorium reactor, is short lftr (pronounced ‘lifter’), is the ultimate in clean, safe and abundant energy. //

A lftr in its full form will be a superb energy machine. This machine can burns thorium and may do so with 99% efficiency. This means a lftr-powered electricity plant will deliver a year of electricity for a western city of a million, with one single tonne (1000kgs) thorium. The resulting ‘waste’ can be worked up as precious (rare earth) metals or can simply be stored for about 500 years – nothing compared to a regular nuclear power plant. The Earth has plenty of thorium, enough to last us for tens of thousands of years.

This thorium reactor is very safe: the core consists of a vessel of a molten salt mixture at high temperature (650C) at nearly atmospheric pressure. There’s simply nothing that can explode, and the smart design makes sure that if anything goes wrong, the machine shuts itself down without human interference. In case of any malfunction, the hot melt drains away safely into passively cooled drainage tanks.

Wood gas vehicles: firewood in the fuel tank

During the Second World War, almost every motorised vehicle in continental Europe was converted to use firewood. Wood gas cars (also known as producer gas cars) are a not-so-elegant but surprisingly efficient and ecological alternative to their petrol (gasoline) cousins, whilst their range is comparable to that of electric cars. Rising fuel prices and global warming have caused renewed interest in this almost-forgotten technology: worldwide, dozens of handymen drive around in their home-made woodmobiles.

Wood gasification is a proces whereby organic material is converted into a combustible gas under the influence of heat - the process reaches a temperature of 1,400 °C (2,550 °F). The first use of wood gasification dates back to 1870s, when it was used as a forerunner of natural gas for street lighting and cooking.

In the 1920s, German engineer Georges Imbert developed a wood gas generator for mobile use. The gases were cleaned and dried and then fed into the vehicle's combustion engine, which barely needs to be adapted. The Imbert generator was mass produced from 1931 on. At the end of the 1930s, about 9,000 wood gas vehicles were in use, almost exclusively in Europe.

Second World War

The technology became commonplace in many European countries during the Second World War, as a consequence of the rationing of fossil fuels. In Germany alone, around 500,000 producer gas vehicles were in operation by the end of the war. //

"Park an Italian sports car next to a wood gas car and the crowd gathers around the woodmobile. Nevertheless, wood gas cars are only for idealists and for times of crisis. //

Another problem of wood gas cars is that they are not particularly user-friendly, although this has improved compared to the technology used in the Second World War. See the second part of this pdf document (page 17 and further) for a description of what it was like to drive a wood gas car back then:

"...experience at the Wurlitzer organ could be a distinct advantage".

When it comes to choosing which types of energy technology to prioritize and build in order to address climate, we need to stay focused on low-carbon sources, or what we now call “clean” energy. Many people may not realize that all of what is “renewable” is not “clean.”

Renewable energy is defined to focus on types of energy that come from “sources that cannot be depleted or which naturally replenish,” an appealing concept but actually a red herring with respect to carbon emissions. Clearly, some types of renewables are low and non-carbon-emitting energy sources, such as wind and solar. But some renewables are highly emitting sources of energy, namely bioenergy, which includes burning ancient forests, also called biomass energy. //

Lately, the large and growing bioenergy industry has been seen as contributing massively to deforestation. Yet, bioenergy has the burnish of appearing to be “green” because it’s made the political cut and is included as “renewable.” This means that companies cutting down trees have benefitted from the subsidies and incentives intended to increase clean energy. Fortunately, many are starting to be more discerning and are specifically excluding ecologically-damaging types of bioenergy as unsustainable and not worthy of prioritization with climate-focused subsidies.

Politics, lobbying and powerful ideologic preferences are what have brought the term “renewable” into vogue in the first place. This also means that what’s included as renewable differs from place to place. California specifically excludes large hydro power but includes small hydropower stations. Not because large hydro emits more carbon or doesn’t rely on the renewing resource of rain but rather because California policymakers decided dams posed too great an ecologic impact and didn’t want to prioritize building more large dams. In other places, renewables includes large hydro. The fact that the definition of what’s renewable varies from place to place, contributes to confusion and lack of clarity. When folks in California hear that there are Canadian provinces running almost entirely on renewable energy, they may think that means they’ve succeeded in building out lots of wind and solar. In fact, it’s predominantly large hydro—which isn’t counted as “renewable” in California.

Nuclear’s Contributions to Clean Energy are Sidelined

The biggest problem by far with using the term renewable, however, is that it is invariably defined to exclude nuclear power. This causes the entire nuclear industry—which for decades has produced more clean energy than all other low-carbon sources combined—to be discounted and even sometimes excluded. Not surprising since nuclear has long been maligned and even demonized. Even so, the omission of nuclear as a renewable energy source, whether intentional or not, causes significant problems for those trying to use good data to address climate change.

We cannot make good decisions about how to invest in new energy generation if we don’t get good information about where our clean energy is coming from. Most energy agencies now include reports on levels of Renewables, because they are politically potent. They don’t create reports based on carbon intensity (such as by grouping the low-carbon energy technologies and the high-carbon energy technologies). Thus, people are not shown that their nuclear power plants are contributing to the clean energy being produced. This may induce them to think that nuclear is carbon-emitting—which it isn’t. They will think biofuels are a good thing for the climate—they aren’t. They will also think we have less clean energy than we actually do and agree to pay for more renewables. In certain areas, nuclear power plants are not even credited with producing carbon-free energy that counts towards the region’s clean energy goals! //

We need clear and accurate information on climate impacts as we make increasingly large investments in transitioning our energy systems, commiting us to energy projects that will have 20, 30, 50-year and longer life-spans. For this, we definitely should avoid anything that hints at ambiguity and stick with what we mean: clean energy. So, in 2023, let’s work to reject use of the word “renewable” and demand that we focus on the distinction that does matter: carbon intensity. Without clear language and understanding, neither the public nor those negotiating our future world agreements can be expected to make good decisions.

• Winter Storm Elliott has highlighted the vulnerabilities of U.S. energy systems, with energy providers having to resort to rotating outages.
• Natural gas production plunged during the storm, sending lower volumes to power generation units and causing gas prices to spike.
• The Texas power grid managed to avoid the catastrophic failures it experienced in 2021, but energy systems remain vulnerable.

The cold blast this holiday weekend across the eastern half of the US exposed the fragility of power grids as soaring heating demand spiked peak total loads to record high in many areas while supplies were tight. Grid operators and utilities told tens of millions of Americans to conserve power -- some conservation efforts are still ongoing Christmas morning. Christmas Eve was a mess for many customers in the Southeast states, including North Carolina and Tennessee, as utilities implemented rolling blackouts.

Fossil fuels and nuclear power generation mix across the eastern US saved grids from collapse. Unreliable renewables, such as solar and wind, were just a tiny fraction of the power mix.

What's idiotic is the decarbonization campaign to decommission nuclear and fossil fuel generators for renewables. This weekend's grid chaos is a wake-up call. America has a severe grid problem sparked by the 'green' movement. Thank the climate alarmist, woke corporations, and progressive politicians for ushering in so-called green reforms that have transformed once-stable grids into a third-world country prone to rolling blackouts anytime temperatures fall below freezing.

Readers have been well informed of our view that advanced nuclear reactors will play a critical role in decarbonizing electricity in the US by providing carbon-free energy, and it is a much better form than solar and wind assets.

In terms of specifics, the lasers of the National Ignition Facility deposited 2.05 megajoules into their target in that experiment. Measurements of the energy released afterward indicate that the resulting fusion reactions set loose 3.15 megajoules, a factor of roughly 1.5. That's the highest output-to-input ratio yet achieved in a fusion experiment. //

Before we get to visions of fusion power plants dotting the landscape, however, there's the uncomfortable fact that producing the 2 megajoules of laser power that started the fusion reaction took about 300 megajoules of grid power, so the overall process is nowhere near the break-even point. So, while this was a real sign of progress in getting this form of fusion to work, we're still left with major questions about whether laser-driven fusion can be optimized enough to be useful. At least one DOE employee suggested that separating it from its nuclear-testing-focused roots may be needed to do so. //

Which gets into all the other problems that laser-driven fusion faces. Kim Budil, director of Lawrence Livermore National Lab, mentioned the other barriers. "This is one igniting capsule one time," Budil said. "To realize commercial fusion energy, you have to do many things; you have to be able to produce many, many fusion ignition events per minute. And you have to have a robust system of drivers to enable that." Drivers like consistent manufacturing of the targets, hardware that can survive repeated neutron exposures, and so on.

So, while laser-driven fusion may have reached major energy milestones, there's a huge list of unsolved problems that stand between it and commercialization. By contrast, magnetic confinement in tokamaks, an alternative approach, is thought to mostly face issues of scale and magnetic field strength and to be much closer to commercialization, accordingly.

Truth says:
November 26, 2022 at 1:50 am

there is zero plans for dealing with the fantastic amount radioactive waste
Watch a 2010 documentary film called “Into Eternity” about the Onkalo waste repository at the Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant on the island of Olkiluoto, Finland. It should have enough storage space for one hundred years of waste. The “hot” waste after it has been allowed to “cool” for 30 years stored under water will be stored using the Swedish KBS-3 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KBS-3 ). The facility should start to store waste starting in 2023.

Or read “Deep Time Reckoning” (How Future Thinking Can Help Earth Now) by Vincent Ialenti which uses Onkalo waste repository as a case study.

I’m not even pro-nuclear, but you have to admire when something is done right. And if you can’t admire that then you can at least admire the engineering and actual long-term thinking. //

Rybec Arethdar says:
November 26, 2022 at 6:46 pm
The big elephant in the room everyone seems to ignore though, is that pretty much all active nuclear power plants have sufficient space built into them to handle centuries of their own waste. The reason we don’t see much effort going into nuclear waste management technology is that it is a problem that is over 100 years out. And thus far every reactor commissioned has been decommissioned before running out of space for nuclear waste storage, so it’s just as far out as it was 50 years ago. Until and unless we start taking nuclear power seriously as a long term solution to our energy needs, nuclear waste disposal never will be a real problem. And countries that are taking long term nuclear energy seriously are already starting to work on solutions, despite the fact that they have at least a century to do it in. //

BrendaEM says:
November 26, 2022 at 8:40 am
SL-1/ Argonne Low Power Reactor Nuclear Accident, was a small reactor, that killed 3 people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1

One person was missing for days before they found him pinned to the ceiling. Here’s another rod: https://radiationworks.com/photos/sl1reactor2.htm

They used a C-clamp on a round control rod: https://www.osti.gov/sciencecinema/biblio/1122857

The entire building had to be dismantled: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0zT9ARfsT4

I believe that the area is still radioactive. “The primary remedy for SL-1 was to be containment by capping with an engineered barrier constructed primarily of native materials.”

Where in your neighborhood do you want the reactor?
https://radiationworks.com/photos/slreactor9.jpg

As far as small reactors being green, here an Indian video which shows tailings ponds from yellow-cake production, which is used to make the green-sand, which makes the nuclear metal for reactors.

https://youtu.be/MJ6667Noex0

Steven Naslund says:
November 29, 2022 at 8:10 am
Also fail to note that SL-1 was a research reactor which was built on a test range. The SL-1 was not really a failure of hardware as much as the incompetence of personnel (there is also rumor of a murderous love triangle underlying the story). The nuclear industry could be much safer but not if we keep using 50s-70s technology. Anyone who is really upset about the nuclear waste issue needs to go see a decommisioned reactor with fuel casks stored on site. It is amazing how little space is taken up. I am not sure about the desirability of burying encased waste, it seems much safer to me to have them stored in casks on pads above ground where they are easy to monitor and maintain. The reprocessing of this waste could reduce it tremendously.