again, storage for their own use at a later date, storage for short term cooling before disposal etc are NOT long term disposaal entombment, or vitrification, and low level waste (which includes rags used to wipe down anything more radioactive than a colour tv's screen if it's in a nuclear facility) is NOT the hot rods and highly radioactive by-products of powerplants. low level radioactive waste is NOT what i was talking about and you well know this. forther, yes, britain MAY if they so desire, abrogate their eresponsibility, the CAN if they wish stop keeping spent nuclear rods and whatnot, and the COULD if they wished let the IAEA handle their fissionable wastes for them.
and thats the key FISSIONABLE MATERIALS not empty soup cans from the reactor facility's cafeteria (which yes are sometimes classified as low level waste) or contaminated silt from uraium mining operations, or that tiny nugget of slightly radioactive shit in your smoke detector.
fissionable materials are what i was talkng about, what i was referring to, and exactly the issue, not the low level mildly radioactive, barely higher than background radiation bullshit you keep dragging up.
fissionable materials are handled by VERY few nations, despite MANY nations having nuclear reactors that use fissionable materials. one small load of fissionable materials being sent to britain resulted in riots when word leaked out, one large shipment through the east bay of fissionable materials from several asian countries(again not low level waste incidentally used at a nuclear facility, but actual nuclear waste) resulted in months of protests and berkeley declaring itself a "nuclear free zone". thats why the NRC the IAEA and the various national nuclear agencies around the world dont put out press releases on every shipment of new nuclear fuels, or spent ones when they transfer them.
australia, a nation with no nuclear arms, DOES mine and manufacture nuclear fuel rods, and other fissionable materials, and they are careful to ensure that they ONLY send the shit out to nations who will NOT be making weapons, and with the IAEA's help they try to ensure that the spent material (not the fucking rags, paper towels and paint chips) are sent BACK to australia when they are used up (so that it does not get diverted into nuclear weapons programs or the hands of terrorists) or some other responsible agency (which almost invariably winds up being the US). the website you referenced makes a LOT of discussion of short term storage, the issues of transportation and discussion of fissionable materials being sent from one nation to another, but they neglect to mention where the stuff goes when it is finished, and past it's useful life, save for those specific instances that are already public record (such as britain's reprocessing deal with japan or the US lend/lease fuel program) they keep the rest of the facts on the low-low with good reason. the closest they get is discussing the HUGE numbers of fissionable materials brought into and out of the US every year, but the details are conspicuously absent.
where the used fuel rods we get so much of here in the us come from is the dirty little secret of the IAEA the NRC and the DOE. where they wind up is even more secret. most people in the sacramento valley have no idea that rancho stinko's colling and holdign pools and cask storage is full. theyassume since rancho stinko only ran for a few years at very low capacity, that theres nothing in there but dust, cobwebs and a few mice. nothing is further from the truth. that facility is maxed out. and since we dont have many nuclear plants in the US, much of the stuff in rancho seco is probably from foreign lands, but the details are classified.
to prevent public outcry.
The US alos has a large fleet of nuclear powered vessels in our navy. much of the fuel and the resulting waste is handled internally, but they are also known to act as a shipping service for spent fuel rods from several nation, and to have brough the spent fissionable materials into the US from foreign lands through their bases in Port Chicago, Newport, oakland long beach and new jersey.
