Nucleus of a Dilemma: Reactors Closing as Disposal Sites Wane
Half of U.S. reactors go off line within 30 years, but states will have no place to ship their most toxic waste after 2008.

The obstacle-strewn odyssey of San Onofre's decommissioned reactor is just one piece of a looming dilemma: what to do with the remains of America's aging nuclear power plants.

That problem will escalate, with more than half of the nation's 103 commercial reactors facing mandatory shutdown in the next three decades, according to U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission data compiled by The Times.

"We are now about to enter the era where large reactors are going to be coming off line," said Daniel Hirsch, director of the nuclear watchdog Committee to Bridge the Gap. "A reactor gives you maybe 50 years of energy, and 500,000 years of waste."

Yet a tangle of competing state and federal laws leaves California and 35 other states no place to ship their most toxic low-level waste after 2008. If the problem isn't solved, operators of decommissioned nuclear plants might have no choice but to keep radioactive waste on site for hundreds of years.
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