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Stored at two facilities. 40 pounds of the stuff is considered to be enough to destroy part of a major city if it were detonated, which would not be the hardest thing in the world to do. so you obviously can t pick this stuff up, throw it in a suitcase and hop on a plane to the united states, u.s. and chilean officials had to extract the uranium racks from this ionized pools they were stored in. they then transferred them into specially designed casks lined with steel. 60 tons of metal were used to secure just 40 pounds of uranium. package and handle this stuff the wrong way and you can set off a spontaneous nuclear chain reaction. time reports it was 12 hours after the team got the uranium into those casks and surrounded it with 1500-pound protective impact limiters, just 12 hours after that the giant 8.8 impact, aka earthquake, hit. well packed for shipping, the uranium was safe in the quake. if there had been a spontaneous ....
Even though obama administration has given the go ahead and loan guarantees to build the first nuclear plants in decades this week it formally ended the government s storage of waste in yucca mountain. that means that radioactive material will pile up at dozens of existing plants across the country. brian todd is getting a firsthand look at what is going on. brian? wolf, i m standing in the middle of 200 tons of nuclear waste, spent fuel that is stored in the dry casks. officials here say it is safe, but they say it makes much more sense for the united states to move away from this type of nuclear waste storage. reporter: they are massive cylinders each holding spent nuclear fuel rods. these casks at the brezden nuclear plant an hour outside of chicago are the symbol of the struggle to store nuclear waste. ....
So that makes the security thing less well flown. reporter: he says that they have transportded spent nuclear fuel for decades and says that a permanent depository is an environmental must. it is the radioactive materials in the casks that require isolation from the environment in a long time, and geological depository serves that purpose. reporter: he says his facility can store this waste for years, but he has other concerns as the administration goes back to square one for a solution. under current law nuclear power plants can operate for 60 years and then they have to decommission them and in plants like this that can t produce power any more. this plant has 20 years before that process begins, but this nuclear storage facility could well be in place well beyond that time, and whoever builds around this would have to build with this in mind. wolf. brian todd, thanks very much. the u.s. military is supposed to defend you, but has ....
reporter: in a plant like this safety is the issue. most of these can hold spent nuclear rods and spent fuel for decades. some of the rods down there have been here since the plant was constructed 40 years ago, but it is a space problem. they have to add new rods every couple of years and lift the rods out that are down there now, and lower some dry casks that weigh 100 tons each into the water and store those rods and take them out and store them outside. more than 40 dry casks full of waste are on the premise. plant officials say there is likely 200 more by the time they have to decommission this plant. it is a scenario completed at dozens of plants across the u.s. white house officials say there were too many concerns about the costs and scientific viability of yucca mountain. homeland security randy larson says that transporting nuclear waste to a common site by train is most likely a risk. what if somebody attacked it or use it to blow something up, ....
So-called casks of steel, concrete and lead, at more than 100 commercial nuclear power plants across the u.s. and other locations. 2,000 tons added to the pile every year. u.s. officials say the spent fuel can be safely stored in these containers for 90 years, but that s storage, not disposal, and it s the disposal problem that s got some in the industry worried. if the nuclear fuel is safe at the sites where it s stored now and if it can be safe almost indefinitely, why do you need a nuclear repository? you ultimately need it because like all wastes in this society, we have to put them someplace. you deal with biological waste, you deal with chemical waste, we deal with trash, everyday trash. reporter: jack edlow runs a company that transports nuclear materials. he s against president obama s decision to cut funding for the yucca mountain project in nevada. that was supposed to be the nation s underground storage facility for nuclear waste. why did the president pull the plug? s ....