Dear Editor,
Over the past months, there have been several letters to the editor advocating nuclear power’s return to Vermont. Various reasons are given for this view.
Not one of these letters has addressed the issue of what to do with the spent fuel. The casks of spent fuel — otherwise known as high-level nuclear waste — from the decommissioned Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant are still lining the bank of the Connecticut River in Vernon. If anything were to cause one to rupture, entire towns from Vermont to Connecticut could become uninhabitable.
Until I see a letter with a solution to that problem, I won’t bother to read other opinion pieces. The spent fuel is the elephant in the room that advocates won’t address because no one has yet found a working solution.
Howard Dean
Burlington, Vt.
