What To Do With America's Nuclear Waste?

Nuclear power plants generate about one-fifth of U.S. electricity, and don't release the greenhouse gases scientists have linked to climate change. But tens of thousands of tons of spent fuel rods are stranded at the nation's 104 commercial nuclear reactors. They can't be moved because construction of a proposed nuclear waste dump outside Las Vegas has been halted, and the state of Nevada is fighting to make sure it will never be completed. So where else could all that nuclear waste go?

Correspondent Lee Patrick Sullivan visits one community that's already home to a nuclear waste storage site that could one day also accept spent fuel rods from America's nuclear power plants.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Fukushima Dai Ichi
• Nevada
• New Mexico
• nuclear
• nuclear power plants
• nuclear reactor
• nuclear waste
• radioactive waste
• WIPP
• Yucca Mountain