Email from Steven Kraft to Alex Thrower

Map-U.S. Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installations

The purpose of this study is to provide a preliminary geotechnical data base sufficient to initiate the development of Long-Term Risk Models (LTRM), for salt domes, basalt and crystalline rock, and identify technical issues requiring additional investigation.

The Department of Energy (DOE) is studying a site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, for a permanent underground repository for highly radioactive spent fuel from nuclear reactors, but delays have pushed back the facility’s opening date to 2010 at the earliest. In the meantime, spent fuel is accumulating at U.S. nuclear plant sites at the rate of about 2,000 metric tons per year. Major options for managing those growing quantities of nuclear spent fuel include continued storage at reactors, construction of a DOE interim storage site near Yucca Mountain, and licensing of private storage facilities.