Could decommissioned nuclear missile silos be a viable, short term repository for nuke plant wastes?

[pinto]

Here in California, the ongoing debates about nuclear energy - it's continuation or any expansion - often revolve around spent fuel and its storage. Currently, the process is in a sort of limbo between federal regulators, state agencies and the federal government.

That's understandable for any thorough discussion on this issue.

I'd like to add another twist to it all.

The Yucca Mountain site seems clearly a no go. And that makes sense to me, personally. Yet the production of waste from nuke plants continue. What are we to do?

Would utilizing dormant missile silos, which previously housed nuclear weapons, be a workable interim approach?

[Xipe Totec]

1. One could argue, they already are n/t

[ddeclue]

2. Yucca Mountain is a much better solution than decommissioned missile sites

which were never designed for this purpose.

Either choice would require transport of the spent fuel to the storage location. Missile silos are NOT uniformly distributed in the U.S. but tend to be mostly in the Northern Plains states so it would do nothing to minimize the transportation risk and might even serve to increase it. The only "advantage" might be that there would be multiple missile silos that are geographically dispersed so that the risk resulting from an event at one would not necessarily affect another. On the other hand it would also create a logistical disadvantage in having to provide security to multiple distributed sites.

[madrchsod]

3. actually they make cool homes if ya have the money

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/16730

http://www.silohome.com/

[ddeclue]

5. I've seen those before I just always imagined the electrical bill to be ridiculous..

I guess it makes a really good tornado storm cellar.

[Statistical]

4. Most of the unused silos were collapsed

As part of treaties w/ Soviet Union.

They spy on us, we spy on them. Visible sign from space that the silo has been decommissioned.

A few are intact as museums but likely not enough.