Tennessee is getting 1,000 tons of nuclear waste from Germany

[n2doc]

by MATT SHAFER POWELL


The city of Oak Ridge, Tenn., is anticipating the arrival of nearly 1,000 tons of nuclear waste from Germany. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved a plan in June for an American company to import and burn low-level nuclear waste from Germany.

Radioactive residue left over from the process will be sent back to Germany for disposal, but opponents have voiced concerns that the U.S. will become the world's radioactive waste processor.

But, very little of that opposition is coming from Oak Ridge.

Located just outside Knoxville, Oak Ridge was created from scratch in 1942 to help build the atomic bomb. The city is home to a 59,000-acre military area and two giant plants where the bomb was produced.

more

http://www.npr.org/2011/07/22/138478701/tennessee-awaits-tons-of-german-nuclear-waste

[MichiganVote]

1. And Michigan took Canada's trash.

[Dawson Leery]

2. Send it to Williamson County.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williamson_County,_Tennessee#Demographics

[Lars39]

3. Not everyone in that county is wealthy.

Germany needs to deal with their own nuclear waste.

[Dawson Leery]

6. It's a right wing area

(where most of the country clan lives)

[TNDemo]

9. There's some great lefties too.

Know many of them. Some of them are on DU.

[TNDemo]

8. Hi Lars!

:hi: How are you?

[asjr]

4. I lived there in 1943/45. Housing at that

time were little boxes made of ticky tacky.

[valerief]

5. Well, what's a little nuclear waste when you've already got the world's biggest coal ash spill

loaded with highly toxic substances?

And when you've got this Congress.

http://www.iwatchnews.org/2011/07/13/5222/impact-house-committee-limits-epa-ability-regulate-coal-ash
House committee limits EPA ability to regulate coal ash

[patrice]

7. Oklahoma has imported hazardous waste for about 10 years that I know of.

When I was there, they wanted to burn it in a 40 year old cement factory owned by some citizen of the UK, which factory had originally been designed to burn natural gas, which Oklahoma has an abundance of.

[Kolesar]

10. "There's a lot of controversy in burning regular garbage, let alone radioactive garbage," Safer says

Burn it? Exhaust it up a smoke stack? wtf?

[Nihil]

11. Par for the course with that state administration.

They don't give a shit about putting tons & tons of crap up a smoke stack
(including radioactive materials) day in, day out or in putting tons & tons
of crap (including radioactive materials) into the water table (for decades
if not centuries).

What on earth makes you think that they will even blink at the thought of
importing radioactive garbage (low-level or otherwise) for the sole purpose
of burning it when there is profit involved?

:shrug:

[BridgeTheGap]

12. How do you dispose of "past their prime" chemical and biological weapons? That is the question

faced by the Bluegrass Army Depot in central Kentucky. They were going to burn them, but area residents put the brakes on the initial plans. I think the conversation is still happening (and has been for years). When the Feds first put forth their plan, they said it was completely safe. It didn't take much digging to find out that this wasn't exactly the case.