Group items tagged

After decades of debate and more than a year of construction, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. workers placed and sealed the first cask of spent nuclear fuel from the Humboldt Bay nuclear power plant into an underground container Friday. Over the next few months, PG&E will be moving five more stainless steel casks into the high-density concrete container designed to be unbreakable by a tsunami or a 9.3-magnitude earthquake. The six 80-ton casks will be sealed with 22,000-pound lids and will contain 390 spent fuel rods total, along with other radioactive waste currently stored in a pool of water on site.

It's being described as a major step forward in the safe storage of the Humboldt Bay Power Plant's spent nuclear fuel as the federal government wrestles with where to store the nation's growing stockpile of radioactive stuff for the long-term. The Pacific Gas and Electric Co. announced Friday that the first of five massive containers of nuclear rods has been secured in the underground storage facility the power company began building at its King Salmon site in April.