America's biggest security threat

Nuclear waste, the biggest of all security threats to USA is getting more dangerous day by day. 63000 tons of nuclear waste at the power plants very close to major cities like Washington, Boston, New York City, Philadelphia and Chicago within the 50-mile fallout zone.

If somehow, this waste catches fire it could effectively render an area the size of half of New Jersey permanently uninhabitable. This spent fuel, the greatest security risk, should better be stored away from the main reactors in certified steel and concrete casks, then have those casks placed in fortified buildings or earthen bunkers. Currently, most of these waste sits close to the reactors in large pools that resemble swimming pools. A smaller amount is kept outside in casks that critics say are poorly guarded. Storing the waste in this manner right at the power plant is deadly dangerous, just because government hasn't figured out what to do with it, it is putting major cities at risk. As per government bodies, its safe to store the waste in pools or casks till they hunt down a new long term repository, but finding and building one will surely take decades.

The radioactive spent fuel rods, which rely on circulating water to remain cool, are vulnerable to both natural disaster or terrorist attack. It would be a terrible situation if any of these two occurs creating an permanent desert within a minimum of 50-mile radius.

In a natural disaster, a power outage from an earthquake, hurricane, tornado or other event would cause the water pumps to fail. Yes, there are back up generators, but sometimes those fail too, as is the case in Japan. If that happens, it's only a mater of days until the fuel heats up to the point where it boils off the water and then catches fire.They note that the pools themselves are located outside the reactor's main containment dome. An explosion, like what occurred in Japan, would expose the pools to the open air.

In the case of terrorist attacks, the pools are located several stories above ground, making them easy targets for shoulder-fired missiles or airplane attacks quite possible for terrorists to specifically target the pool. Moreover, US has already seen 11 Sep attacks 10 years back. One more such attack at the nuclear waste pool can destroy everything around the reactors.