When is it a bad thing? It's a bad thing when your job is to ensure the safety of nuclear waste storage sites. With Yucca shelved -- or at least temporarily tabled -- the government now has to consider training inspectors to properly keep an eye on the nuke waste that looks to be indefinitely stuck at on-site storage. Turns out that according to a government report -- doh! -- they never gave much thought to training them before.
There is no training program for inspectors of American spent nuclear fuel storage facilities, and the frequency of inspections varies from one to six years, “potentially increasing the risk to public health and safety,” according to an audit report by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Office of the Inspector General. Because the Obama Administration has abandoned plans for a permanent storage facility at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, the report addresses the dry cask storage facilities, originally designed to be temporary, that now must receive spent nuclear fuel indefinitely.