Future resting place of Iowa’s nuclear waste still in question

A showdown’s shaping up in Washington and Nevada over storage of nuclear waste from states including Iowa.Iowa’s only nuclear power plant could be sending its garbage to Nevada, under plans to build a long-awaited repository for all the nation’s nuclear waste. Maureen Brown’s spokeswoman for Nuclear Management Company, which manages the Duane Arnold plant in Palo, Iowa. She says federal researchers have spent years and billions of dollars researching Yucca Mountain. The governor of Nevada’s given his own veto to the plan, but NMC, the nation’s sixth-largest manager of nuclear power plants, is urging swift congressional approval.She says it’s stored now at temporary locations. Iowa’s Duane Arnold plant stores spent fuel in a concrete pool, but space is running out is and managers are considering adding some of the dry-cask storage as well. It’s all temporary, and Brown says the nation’s nuke plants need something permanent. And she says customers of the electricity generated by such plants are already paying for the permanent storage site.She says utility ratepayers have paid 17-billion nationally, one-point-seven billion in the upper Midwest. Opponents say radiation from fuel at the Yucca Mountain site could leak into the water and air if it’s disturbed by earthquakes or even rainwater. The company has more “nuclear facts” online, at www.nmcco.com