Unfunded Weapons Liability

Interestingly there is another casualty in the "debt crisis" - nuclear waste disposal (see this).

Turns out that utilities, since about 1982, that produce nuclear power have been contributing about 1/10th of a cent per kilowatt hour to a "fund" whose purpose is to dispose nuclear waste, e.g., to fund things like Yucca Mountain.

This fee generates about $750 million USD per year giving the fund a value of about $25 billion USD.

Sadly, government bureaucrats discovered this fund and have bled it dry using the fees instead for "the general fund."  Just like Social Security and Medicare which are also full of empty IOUs.  Quirks in laws and the handling of these payments allow government officials to grab the cash without concern for the consequences.

So, instead of the federal government working to clear up the nuclear waste stored at the local nuke, nothing is happening and the utilities that own the plants are piling up waste (they have to because the government tells them what to do with it).

The next time a terrorist cooks up an idea to crash an airliner into the local nuclear waste pool you'll be able to thank the glad-handed bureaucrats in Washington for giving them the opportunity.

Today states like Illinois and Pennsylvania are leaders with 8,000 and 5,000 metric tons of waste - and no where to put it.

Which brings us back to Fukushima.

As I wrote in "US Nukes and Geological Faults" there's plenty to be concerned about here in the US. Many reactors are near faults and the issue of stored waste further compounds this however because not only is the reactor itself endangered by the fault but also the stored waste.

And since the waste is radioactive - often at very high levels - no one is going to clean it all up with just a mop and broom.

Now the mess in Fukushima as had a number of unpleasant consequences - recent discoveries of cesium in beef and things like that (see this NY Times article).

Sadly in the US the need for use of monies in the "general (slush) fund" outweighs safety concerns.

Quite honestly I think its abhorrent that government officials, who, by the way, must take an oath of office, can affect transfers of billions of dollars of funds from necessary purposes to who knows what.  And sadly, it unlikely we will ever even know the names of those responsible much less where the money went.  The utilities involved are suing but that will no doubt take years and, with government's interests in the case merely one of removing money from other "funds" to pay this problem in the end the only losers will be the US citizens.

Had a similar shell game occurred at a private company, say like Enron, the there would be a very large hew and cry - arrests, trials, jail time.

Not so with well meaning bureaucrats - surely leaving the country full of tens of thousands of tons of nuclear waste was not as important as whatever they were doing at the time.