Recently, Donna Gilmore of San Onofre Safety has documented numerous concerns, and raised many serious questions, about the safety (or lack thereof) of Holtec containers.

Holtec storage containers have been deployed at some three dozen U.S. atomic reactors, including, most recently, at the permanently shutdown San Onofre nuclear power plant in southern CA. Remarkably, the Holtec storage containers have been located immediately adjacent to the Pacific Ocean, in a seismically active zone that is also vulnerable to tsunamis!

Beyond Nuclear advocates Hardened On-Site Storage (HOSS), as safely as possible, as close to the point of generation as possible. In the case of San Onofre, Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base is literally right across the highway, to the east. San Onofre's irradiated nuclear fuel could be moved a short distance inland, and to higher ground, away from Pacific coast earthquake faultlines, and out of the tsunami zone. The Marine Corps itself could provide security. This makes much more sense than shipping the wastes nearly a thousand miles, across multiple states, to admittedly "interim" storage in southeastern New Mexico (itself vulnerable to natural disasters, terrorist attacks, etc.)!