It’s not even close to top dog. Even freeways are actually documented in epidemiological studies to have quantifiable negative effects on the health of those living nearby. A fertilizer plant explosion a few years ago killed 15 people and injured dozens more. A metals coating business located near downtown in my area a few years ago resulted in an emergency evacuation of nearby residents when it caught on fire due to the chemicals present there. This isn’t even scratching the surface of hazards one might live near. Real, serious hazards abound and kill thousands of people per year just in US workplaces. This waste facility would not scare me any more than the guy driving the truck that collects the waste fryer oil from the cafeteria at my workplace.
Researchers following the residents around Three Mile Island have struggled to even quantify difference in thyroid cancer rates, the most likely risk (but also, fortunately, one of the most easily treated cancers), and have been unable to clearly correlate the differences in some nearby counties to the accident rather than normal variation or confirmation bias due to closer scrutiny.
Of course, none of that is to suggest that accidents like Three Mile Island are acceptable, much less what happened in Japan. The risks of that and worse can and need to be controlled if we want to continue using nuclear power.
But whether to continue use of nuclear power is a separate topic. We have 60+ years worth of waste now that needs to be dealt with. This Andrews, Texas interim storage facility is being built directly due to the decision made by a certain politician a little over a decade ago as one of his first acts in office to cancel the long term storage plan the country had funded and been working on building for 20+ years. It was openly understood as a return favor to the senator who had been instrumental in getting him their party’s nomination.
There is unfortunately no more accurate description of his replacement plan for the waste except, “Our grandchildren can deal with it.” He didn’t say that, but that simply is what the replacement plan amounted to. Because the current plan was not perfect, we knowingly and deliberately as a country switched to a plan that was far worse.
It was particularly frustrating to me to watch this all take place, since during the lead up to this, I lived down river from Hanford, which was struggling to get their plan to deal with all the weapons production related waste from the Cold War into action. On the one hand were my neighbors, friends, and even family members among the tens of thousands of people working to fix the problems from the last time we fell back on “our grandchildren can deal with it.” On the other hand were politicians making a big deal about uncertainties in the plan on 100,000+ year time frames, when the primary risk period (due to decay over time) is 10,000 years, as a justification for choosing a plan that requires a follow-on plan within 50 years.
So this Andrews interim storage facility is the DOE getting a head-start on part of the needed follow-on plan The temporary storage casks that currently exist in 81 locations around the country that have to be kept safe and secure will be consolidated to 2 locations, and then left for future generations to deal with.
The fuel removal was completed 31 years ago. I think it is all in dry casks, including the partially melted assemblies. Decontamination of the radioactive water from the reactor was completed 28 years ago. The structure of the reactor vessel remains. I don’t know the planned time frame for removal, but eventually it will be removed, wrapped, and moved to a greater than class C low level waste facility for burial and additional covering.
Much of the world has regular 3.5 earthquakes. This area in question has fairly frequent, but low level earthquakes. The USGS shows an M2.9 in that area today. But the worst recorded earthquake in the area was M5.0. The USGS believes a fault roughly 100 miles away in the panhandle could produce M7+ quakes with similarly intense shaking in Andews as an M5.0 locally. I looked up an example of the safety analysis of one of the cask designs to be used at the interim facility, and was not surprised to find they are not designed for local earthquakes. Rather, they are designed for the worst earthquakes anywhere. The design basis for the model I’m looking goes up to 2.25G - imagine a quake so strong cars are sliding back and forth on their tires as if they were on ice, and semi-trucks potentially tip over outright (pending the dampening effect of their suspension).
The material is still hazardous 500 years from now, although in the ballpark of 1/10,000 as hazardous as when it was removed from the reactor.
However, it is not supposed to still be at this interim facility in 500 years. The initial license is for 40 years. Knowing how politics goes, but also a little bit about the design of the storage casks, I expect in about 25 years, the casks are still going to be in perfect condition, and they’re going to start the process requesting an extension, because Congress will view the next step as not urgent. Unlike Hanford, where there was no design for extended storage of waste, and no good monitoring, so the problem got critical before anyone noticed, I expect routine inspections to start to create pressure to do something in the 100-200 year time frame.
However, I would love for Congress to prove me wrong and give the DOE the authorizations they need to have a deep geological repository ready to start accepting waste before the 40 year initial license is up. There should still be enough money left from the waste tax on nuclear energy to finish Yucca Mountain, but if the DOE is forced to start over from scratch, the federal government’s decision to waste the half the money already collected for this project will presumably necessitate further funding.