Acrobatics with high-level radioactive waste required to free up space in Indian Point Unit 3 storage pool

This NRC graph shows that in a few years, almost all high-level radioactive waste storage pools in the U.S. will be filled to capacity. Operating reactors will then have to install on-site dry cask storage to provide "overflow parking" for ever more high-level radioactive waste.As reported by LoHud.com, Indian Point Unit 3's crane is not strong enough to lift standard sized high-level radioactive waste transfer casks. Therefore a convoluted procedure is required, first placing IP-3's irradiated nuclear fuel into a small sized transfer cask that the crane can lift, then moving it into the IP-2 storage pool, then transferring the waste into a standard sized cask, which the stronger IP-2 crane can handle, before moving the cask to outdoor dry cask storage. All of this is required because there is not any more room in IP-3's pool for any more waste storage, so the oldest, most radioactively decayed and thermally cooled wastes must be removed in order to make more room to receive hotter, more radioactive wastes just generated by IP-3's atomic reactor. Newly discharged high-level radioactive waste must be stored underwater for a minimum of five years, before it can be transferred to dry cask storage.