March 24, 2026 The main end-product of nuclear power — its reason for existence — is to create incredibly toxic nuclear waste, known as Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF). Electricity is just a by-product. If electricity was the main product created by nuclear power plants, no one would use nuclear power: Its electricity is too expensive, too dirty, and far too risky (hence, the Price-Anderson Act, a betrayal of the common citizen's right to compensation for harm done by industrial accidents). Pro-nukers call their hobby-horse "green energy" by ignoring the environmental damage of the whole nuclear fuel cycle, the environmental cost of accidents, and especially the unsolved (and unsolvable) problem of nuclear waste. Time has proven accidents are inevitable, as predicted from the beginning by those who studied such things. And physics and chemistry have proven the waste problem unsolvable, also as predicted from the beginning of the nuclear age by those who studied such things. And thus, communities around the world have become de facto nuclear waste dumps. The electricity produced by nuclear power can easily be replaced with cleaner, cheaper, safer alternatives. So what's so valuable about nuclear waste? A small fraction of SNF is the isotope Plutonium-239, which is considered a valuable commodity by some very aggressive nations (including mine) because it can make a very "good" bomb (That is to say: A Plutonium bomb (like the one used in Nagasaki) can make a huge explosion that leaves a legacy of poison afterwards, that kills and maims uninvolved humans (and other living things) that weren't even near (and/or weren't even born) when the bomb exploded somewhere, a bomb that violates all limits of civility to use against anyone. That kind of "good".) Because of its radioactivity, Pu-239 is so toxic that a nearly-invisible speck barely the size of a pepper flake, if diabolically or accidentally deposited in a human lung, would be almost guaranteed to cause lung cancer. On the other hand, there is no known minimum dose that is guaranteed to be safe (Radiation is generally accepted to have a "Linear, No Threshold" (LNT) health effect). How many bombs does a country need? Certainly not MORE than we have ready for delivery by air, land, and sea already (thousands)! The problem is that as a nuclear bomb ages, sitting unused year after year, it become less effective and more likely to just fizzle when finally used, thus becoming a "dirty bomb" (i.e., a radioisotope dispersal device). Nasty, but not what bombs are "good" for. Making new Plutonium bomb cores (known as "pits") is very expensive, and requires SNF, because that's the only place in the world (besides older pits) you can get Pu-239. All Plutonium is man-made in nuclear reactors and needs significant processing before it can be used in a bomb. That's dirty, expensive and difficult, but not insurmountable for any large country. Processing is much harder for a terrorist organization; they would probably prefer to steal Plutonium after it's been processed. So forget the idea that nuclear power is green. It's not. It exists just to manufacture Plutonium. OF COURSE there are many truly clean alternatives for making electricity (wind, wave, solar, geothermal, heat pumps, water wheels, etc.). Nuclear power is far too prone to sudden failure, causing costly temporary or long-term outages (or worse: meltdowns). Nuclear is far too susceptible to sabotage, terrorism, natural phenomena, improper training or inattention, manufacturing errors, and war. And it's far too centralized to be reliable (when one reactor goes down, a million homes suddenly need an alternative power source). It's also far too slow to respond to population shifts, let alone the sudden build-out needed for temporary bubbles (I'm looking at you, AI). Whenever and wherever nuclear power is used, the whole world is left with the waste. Our descendants a thousand generations from now will still be dealing with OUR waste one way or another (either in their environment (YUK!) or still trying to keep it away from humanity — something that the nuclear industry says they'll do, but truly has never done (because, truly, it's impossible). "Consent-based siting" and/or "interim storage" prior to whatever permanent solution they claim might happen (some day) is often promoted as a way to move the SNF "waste" away from locations that are particularly dangerous due to factors such as nearby population density, earthquake risk, danger to groundwater, rising sea-levels, and extreme weather events such as tornadoes. But virtually all discussions about finding a safer storage method and/or location ignore a simple reality: If we continue to produce nuclear waste (about 50 tons per day globally, 10 tons in the U.S. alone (plus military waste), then even if we "solve" today's waste problem, we'll have the same problem tomorrow! Unused nuclear fuel pellets made from natural Uranium are only slightly radioactive, and comparatively, have very few fission products, and no Plutonium at all. So-called "commercial" (highly subsidized, poorly insured) nuclear reactors each produce an average of several hundred of pounds of unmanageable, highly toxic nuclear waste every day, starting the moment they "go critical" the first time, because the same process in a nuclear reactor that produces heat to boil water also creates radioactive fission products (created when heavy atoms are split) and activation products (created when stray neutrons are captured by other heavy atoms). Protecting humanity from nuclear waste has proven to be an unsolvable problem. It's not just hard to solve, it's impossible — due to the laws of chemistry, physics, geology, health and human nature! Any so-called "safe" solution has been utterly elusive because nuclear waste is an extremely complex problem that has technical, political, military, humanitarian, and economic difficulties, to name just a few. This is exactly why every piece of proposed nuclear waste legislation brings up the same solutions that have been suggested (in one form or another) for nearly a century: Because trying to do the impossible is both very difficult and very expensive. Problems start right at the beginning: Every city between the current waste dump (such as a nuclear reactor site) and the proposed interim waste site will rightfully complain about dozens, hundreds, or thousands of toxic trips through their location. That's a lot of complainers! Attempts to make SNF transportation "safer" present impossible tradeoffs. For example, "thick-walled" canisters and "transportable" canisters are incompatible requirements: There are weight and size restrictions for every bridge in America, so thicker canister sides means fewer fuel assemblies per canister inside them, which means more trips per site. Each trip has security risks as well as risks from bridge failures, tunnel fires, rolling down the side of a mountain... an endless list of risks, including avoiding major population centers "just in case" (or maybe just to avoid being told "no way, don't go there" which happens whenever people find out nuclear waste will be transported through their town or city). There are many potential catastrophic event scenarios for SNF which have no possible solution, not on the horizon, not on the drawing boards, not at any price, which is why discontinuing the manufacture of nuclear waste is the only reasonable solution. Until we do that, an interim storage location might be useful at some point, but if operating such a storage location convinces society to continue using nuclear power — or worse: enables expanding its use — then creating an interim storage location should be considered an utter failure! In America, any proposed nuclear waste site will be on Native American land because it's all Native American land. A humble suggestion: Offer the destination state a deal: The source state agrees to stop making more nuclear waste forever, so it's a final solution to a huge problem. Of course, that won't be enough incentive, so the source state will need to also offer the state taking the waste a bribe — oops, I mean pay the destination state "rent" for taking the waste "temporarily". Still doesn't sound like a good deal? Of course not! Perhaps the source state should agree to pay these bribes, sorry: storage fees as long as the waste remains at the "interim" storage site in another state, even if it's a long, long time. But pay who, for what? Pay local residents so they never have to work? If they move away will the payments (bribes) stop? And what if the "donor" state breaks its promise to never make more nuclear waste? Will it take back the waste another state already accepted? Not likely! And how do we define "consent" anyway? People living within X number of miles of the proposed site? (Good luck with that!) But accidents can spread globally.And the worst types of accidents — spent fuel fires — although very unlikely, are extremely hazardous if they do happen. They can't be put out with water — although getting close enough to put water on a spent fuel fire wouldn't be very easy anyway. Who gets to vote (to consent) to have a waste site? Each household within a few blocks? Within ten miles (like an evacuation zone for nuclear reactors)? 50 miles? The same payment for every person? A distance-based payment? Woman and children are much more vulnerable to radioactivity than adult males — do they get extra votes on whether they want a nuclear waste dump, and higher payments if they choose to have one? Can children vote on the world they want to live in? What percentage of the voting pool has to approve the site? Do newborns get immediate payments? Will pregnant women and young girls be banned from the area just in case there is an accident? Will they be evacuated first since they are the most vulnerable? The federal government proposes to pay for any and all potential interim storage solutions by robbing the Nuclear Waste Fund -- which exists to pay for a permanent solution. They especially like to rob the interest on the fund, which is the only thing that keeps the fund from depreciating in real value as inflation rises. If a "permanent" federal repository existed, or was planned, then no one would feel that interim sites would be worth the additional risks entailed by moving the waste an extra time (since every move is risky), let alone going through the political hassles described above. So why can't America find a permanent nuclear waste dump site? Let's look at what really happened last time we tried in earnest (or sort of in earnest): The Yucca Mountain project, which was started in 1983... became the only site to be considered in 1987... and was halted permanently by President Obama in 2010. People often dismiss the failure of Yucca Mountain as political. Indeed, there was strong political opposition to it in Nevada -- but there was strong support for it in many other states. Many people worried about transportation risks, and about enabling the production of even more nuclear waste if Yucca Mountain was opened (since it was only expected to hold about as much waste as already existed at the time). But none of THOSE concerns were going to stop it. The real problem was that there were more than 300 technical problems with the site that still had not been resolved when they gave up trying! Some of the unresolved issues (such as water intrusion) were never going to be solved. Titanium shields a half a foot thick? That might have worked...for a while...maybe. But that leaves 299+ other problems. Claiming that Yucca Mountain was canceled due to "strong political opposition" is just the excuse for the fact that there is NO safe solution anywhere. The thousands of scientists working on Yucca Mountain were allowed to advocate for technically better solutions. The only thing that was off the table was doing basically the same thing somewhere else. The scientists looked at rocketing the waste into space and many other ridiculous solutions, as well as several that were at least somewhat more plausible than flying expensive, polluting and unreliable rockets through a man-made (mostly) debris field already orbiting earth. A lot of people call for "hardened" storage of nuclear waste. That can mean a lot of things, but nothing it might mean is likely to be "hardened" against various kinds of modern missiles, large airplane strikes, asteroids that find their way to earth... the list is actually very long! Only deep underground storage can protect against those things, but if anything goes wrong underground, there may be no way to do anything about it. A large number of incredibly strong buildings is the next best thing, with the significant advantage that the waste can be monitored. Lastly, it is possible to use lasers to actually fission the U-235 and Pu-239, but it has not been done at scale, and more importantly, the nuclear industry doesn't WANT to destroy those isotopes, and the nuclear weapons industry doesn't want to either. But it's the best thing for humanity! Humanity needs to stop making more nuclear waste. There's never, ever going to be a safe solution to all the problems it creates. Ace Hoffman, Carlsbad, California USA ###
Contact information for the author of this newsletter:
Carlsbad, California USA
Author, The Code Killers:
An Expose of the Nuclear Industry
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Email: ace [at] acehoffman.org
Founder & Owner, The Animated Software Company