An infrared photo showing the thermal heat of a German CASTOR cask filled with irradiated nuclear fuel being transported by rail to Gorleben. The high-level radioactivity, not the thermal heat, is the hazard to human health, safety, and the environment, however.As trumpeted by its "Gang of Four" co-sponsors (Republicans Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, and Democrats Maria Cantwell of Washington State and Dianne Feinstein of California) in a press release, the Nuclear Waste Administration Act of 2015, S. 854, has been introduced in the U.S. Senate.
Although the devil is always in the details, and further careful analysis and comparison is required, on the surface it appears that this session's bill is very similar to previous attempts in the Senate to open a "pilot" parking lot dump for commercial high-level radioactive waste in less than a decade, followed a few years later by a full-scale parking lot dump. This included Senate Bill (S.B.) 1240, the Nuclear Waste Administration Act of 2013, about which Beyond Nuclear published a comprehensive critique of the scheme's many risks.
On the very same day, Energy Secretary Moniz, speaking at the Bipartisan Policy Center, announced a major reversal of decades-old policy: no longer will nuclear weapons complex and commercial HLRW be "co-mingled," but instead separate permanent dumps will be built. Moniz also expressed full DOE support for the congressional call for parking lot dumps.
The clearly coordinated actions are a case study on the revolving door between industry, government, and academia, or incestuous nature of the nuclear establishment.