Five aging nuclear reactors will be decommissioned, but where should their 26,820 tons of radioactive waste be stored?

I have never liked nuclear power right from the start, so I do not propose to wrack my brains over a problem that the nuclear industry cannot solve.

The best solution I have read is to seal it in special glass casks and bury it deep in a stable environment, if such an ideal place exists.

Like usual, in the pacific ocean, dumping of nuclear waste is an every day routine for the Japanese nuclear village

Addind that..."this should have been a problem to think before building those nuclear reactors"

Citizen. To my knowledge Japan has never consciously dumped nuclear waste into the Pacific Ocean. Water from Fukushima has leaked out, and Teppo would dearly like to release more.

Russia has dumped nuclear reactors from old submarines into the Japan Sea however. (East Sea, looking from SK)

In the living rooms of the people who thought producing 26,820 tons of radioactive waste was a good idea in the first place.

Except that they knew at the time that they wouldn't be around to deal with it when it was time to decommission. Get the cheap power now, let future generations pay for it.

okinawa.. what the heck they complain about everything anyway.

This is simply an inflammatory question. The answer is, of course, is to store it exactly where they had planned to store it. There are plenty of candidate locations and whatever happens as a result of the recent anti-nuclear hysteria changes absolutely nothing.

Cleo, "in the living rooms..." Really? Really? Whatever someone might think about the "fairness" of this, people consumed the electricity and enjoyed all of the social benefits. Simply turning on the community and pointing fingers is entirely irresponsible.

The good news is that the hysteria is so pervasive that people will simply believe that this is a toxic nightmare. And it isn't. Tohoku had far worse CHEMICAL spills that it had to deal with after 3.11 than this radiation business. Remember the iodine? It is all but gone now. The most intensely emitting waste degrades the fastest.

Leave it to the experts. That was the plan and that still should be the plan, right?

Any chance of propelling it towards the sun?

Actually I am serious.

I am also serious about trying hard not to say that all the proponents and experts of nuclear power - and weapons - should know and should have known better. Morons!

The answer is, of course, is to store it exactly where they had planned to store it.

Which is where, exactly? deep in a stable environment, we're told... where exactly would that be, in Japan, land of the eternal earthquake?

Leave it to the experts.

Famous last words.....

all the proponents and experts of nuclear power - and weapons - should know and should have known better.

I'm sure they did. But why should they worry about other folks' grandkids down to the nth generation having to store nuclear waste for thousands of years, when we can have cheap energy now?

Naturally, in the massive no-go zone surrounding Fukushima Daiichi. Since no one will live anywhere near that deadly place for years to come.

Umm, my bad, since I now hear frolicking children are able to chase butterflies and eat locally grown vegetables right next to the plant. So how about directly underneath the diet building?

Citizen. To my knowledge Japan has never consciously dumped nuclear waste into the Pacific Ocean. Water from Fukushima has leaked out, and Teppo would dearly like to release more.

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/04/04/japan.nuclear.reactors/

http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/te_1105_prn.pdf

page 38

That is PRECISELY the point -- there IS nowhere to store it.