Has tech made moving nukes safe enough?

SUMMARY

In the US, a fight is raging in courts and Congress over where radioactive materials should be stored and how to safely get the dangerous remnants of decades of bomb-making and power generation to a permanent resting place.

By APOct 15, 2019 1:58:14 PM IST (Published)

This file photo shows the mushroom cloud of the first atomic explosion at Trinity Test Site near Alamagordo. A fight is raging in courts and Congress over where radioactive materials should be stored and how to safely get the dangerous remnants of decades of bomb-making and power generation to a permanent resting place. (AP Photo/File)

Workmen at Nuclear Engineer Co.'s Hanford, Washington site remove lid from canister holding sealed container of low-level radio-action waste. The waste was transported to the Hanford waste disposal site from the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant, Unit #1 in Harrisburg. (AP Photo/Mason,File)

This photo shows people leaving the south portal of Yucca Mountain during a congressional tour near Mercury, Nevada. Several members of Congress toured the proposed radioactive waste dump 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)

People walk into the south portal of Yucca Mountain during a congressional tour of the proposed radioactive waste dump near Mercury, Nevada. (AP Photo/John Locher, File)

The first load of nuclear waste arrives at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant site in Carlsbad from Los Alamos National Laboratory. (AP Photo/Thomas Herbert, File)

After radioactive waste is vitrified and sealed in large stainless steel canisters they are stored under a five-feet of concrete in a glass waste storage building at the Savannah River Site near Aiken. (AP Photo/Stephen B. Morton, File)

Barrels of radioactive waste are loaded for transport to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, marking the first transuranic waste loading operations in five years at the Radioactive Assay Nondestructive Testing (RANT) facility in Los Alamos. (Nestor Trujillo/Los Alamos National Laboratory via AP, File)

This undated file aerial view shows the Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos. (Albuquerque Journal via AP, File)