German nuclear waste may be headed to South Carolina site

(Reuters) - The U.S. Department of Energy said on Wednesday it will study the environmental risk of importing spent nuclear fuel from Germany that contains highly enriched uranium, a move believed to be the first for the United States.

I did a search and found no posts. If someone beat me to it go ahead and delete this please.
Now why are we going to get stuck with this?!
And why S. Carolina? This is about 100 miles north west of Charleston where
Sen Lindsey Graham has warned of a nuclear strike if we didn't invade Syria.
Are they going to have a second go at it maybe making a shady deal with Merkel before hand?
Thought it was worth investigating a little anyway...

www.reuters.com...

a reply to: Corruptedstructure

Spent fuel rods aren't capable of going critical and creating a blast. The worst you'd get is a dirty bomb effect, which still wouldn't be as bad as they make it out to be in movies.

a reply to: Corruptedstructure

Ugh!

People think this is a dumping ground just because the DOE owns a lot of land here. It should stay in Germany as far as I'm concerned.

I believe this is all a money game. We make money for holding their garbage.

a reply to: Zaphod58

I was thinking more of them moving all this stuff to this area then using real nukes. Kind of like a Charleston Fukushima (without the whole Tsunami wiping out reactors deal..)

a reply to: Corruptedstructure

Except that it wouldn't get them anything extra. If the fuel rods were anywhere near ground zero, they'd be almost vaporized in the initial explosion.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Exactly! No more rods to deal with! his is already huge holding site anyway..

a reply to: Corruptedstructure

Fuel rods can be recycled into useful things. Some of the plutonium can be used in power sources for space probes, among other things. And there's a test reactor that may finally get built that uses spent fuel rods as its fuel source.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Well let's hope it's not a nefarious act anyway.

Depleted uranium is used in military ammunition, so I imagine it will be put to use.
The connection with increased birth defects in Iraq hasn't been proven, though I believe it bears watching.

Remember.. Where is Germany´s gold which they want back 50 % by 2020. I wonder if dumping nuclear waste is in the "deal"

a reply to: Corruptedstructure

Hmm. Interesting... I thought you Americans were okay with this?

I even remember your President Obama saying (in context of "fracking" shale gas) that while he would respect our reservations concerning the long-term effects for our nature here, the people in the US really wouldn't give a # about it at home (paraphrasing!!!).
I always thought Americans would value profits much higher than nature conservation, no matter if pipelines, fracking, exhaust gases etc... is this is not true?

a reply to: ColCurious
While true that many Americans don't take the time to be bothered about things like this, to say we as a whole, value profits above conservation is untrue. What is true is that those who do value the profits are the ones whose voices sound louder when it comes to making the decisions. It goes back to government at all levels enabling untested profit measures. And nowadays, the only safe measures that government will cave to are misguided social measures which are pretty much irrelevant in the grand scheme. Protesting anti-gay is good, protesting fracking is bad, for example, too many others to list for what is really wrong.

What would be a good idea, maybe, is if there were some sort of clearinghouse for all spent nuke waste for the entire world. Rocket it into the sun or something, LOL.

It's pretty much the 1%er thing, they make the rules and the money and the rest of us, humanity, just have to suck it.

Well some kind of deal was obviously struck somewhere.But one thing for sure is those rods will remain dangerous for hundreds of years.

This is in my backyard. I hate all of our politicians - from the top down.

2nd line

from the Reuters article;

The 310-acre site already holds millions of gallons of high-level nuclear waste in tanks. The waste came from reactors in South Carolina that produced plutonium for nuclear weapons from 1953 to 1989.

Sound like an accident ready to happen anyway.

Why add to the problem with somebody else's problem?

a reply to: dollukka

I logged in to say this basically. Since your federal reserve has sold the gold they were holding for Germany and everyone in Germany knows this perhaps this is part of the deal to allow very slow repatriation of the stolen gold. Kind of like paying the Vig with a loan shark kind of deal.

originally posted by: Lolliek
This is in my backyard.

I hate all of our politicians - from the top down.

2nd line

You too?

It is almost literally in my back yard.

The SRS site is only a few miles from where I live here in SC.

a reply to: eriktheawful

It sounds like they need to change the words on the Statue of Liberty from:

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..." to

"Give me your tired, your poor, and that which glows brighter than my torch!"

a reply to: dfens

Alright, fair enough.
I know very well that a distinction has to be made between the Government of a nation and the people.
Let me ask you, how many Americans do you think really care for their environment?
Because as far as I know your Green-party is pretty much non-existant, and your conservatives even seem to oppose nature conservation, although it should be a very conservative (and also christian) core-value.
Also, I'd be interested to know how widely known or debated this topic is in the US.

a reply to: ColCurious

You raise an interesting point. How many Americans care about the environment? I'd guess 80-90%. How many want something done about it? Probably about 75%. How many are willing to put a few bucks out once in a blue moon for the cause or in a jar at the market counter? Probably about 50% if you count change in those jars.

How many actually care about the environment they live in, as defined by their immediate area and willing to put labor or hours of dedicated time into changing it? Maybe we could drop the 0 off that last statistical guess, and I'd guess that comes about right too.