[ASSURAS] What it means for the U.S. This is "energyNOW!"

Hello, I'm Thalia Assuras. Welcome to "energyNOW!", a weekly look at America's energy challenges and what we're doing about them.

One of the most controversial challenges is where to put the radioactive waste from U.S. nuclear power plants. There are more than 71,000 tons of nuclear waste stranded at the nation's 104 reactors. Put all those spent fuel rods together, and you'd get a pile as big as a football field and more than 20 feet tall. U.S. regulators say the spent fuel rods can stay at power plants safely for decades. But after an earthquake and tsunami destroyed the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan last spring, the 30-year push for a permanent storage site in the U.S. intensified. Some of that's political, but it's also because a lot of the radiation that escaped at Fukushima came from spent nuclear fuel rods stored there. That brings us to the debate over using Nevada's Yucca Mountain as this nation's nuclear dump site.

It started during Ronald Reagan's presidency, when the Department of Energy was looking for a permanent storage site big enough to hold about 77,000 tons of nuclear waste. Congress intervened and told DoE to consider only Yucca Mountain, a remote desert location about 90 miles outside Las Vegas. Opposition in Nevada delayed the process. Critics feared radioactive leaks, saying the mountain wasn't geologically sound, that it was too wet for long-term storage and too vulnerable to earthquakes. There was also concern that it would scare away tourists.

[SEN. HARRY REID (D-NV) MAJORITY LEADER, SEPTEMBER 24, 2008] It will never happen. Yucca Mountain will never come to be.

[ASSURAS] President Barack Obama essentially killed the project when he cut off funding and set up a blue-ribbon commission to come up with a new plan.

[BARACK OBAMA, FEBRUARY 16, 2010] We need to accelerate our efforts to find ways of storing this waste safely and disposing of it.

[ASSURAS] The government has already spent $15 billion at Yucca drilling a five-mile long tunnel. Most of that money came from rate payers throughout the country. Now, with Yucca shut down, proponents are fighting back.

[REP. DOC HASTINGS, (R) WASHINGTON] As far as I'm concerned, Yucca Mountain is the repository.

[ASSURAS] But Republican presidential candidates are singing a much different tune.

[FORMER GOVERNOR MITT ROMNEY, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE, OCTOBER 18, 2011] The idea that 49 states can tell Nevada we want to give you our nuclear waste doesn't make a lot of sense.

[GOVERNOR RICK PERRY, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE, OCTOBER 18, 2011] He's hit the nail right on the head.

[ASSURAS] Well, while all that political back and forth goes on, there's one place in the U.S. that's already running a nuclear waste storage depot, using something you find on your kitchen table. Lee Patrick Sullivan took a tour of what could be a potential solution to the nuclear waste problem, in this "energyNOW!" Spotlight.

[SULLIVAN] There's a place in Carlsbad, New Mexico, that's been successfully taking shipments of nuclear waste for 12 years. It's called the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP for short.

[ROGER NELSON] Inside that shipping container is up to several kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium.

[SULLIVAN] Now, not all nuclear waste is the same. It's put into three categories. Low level -- that's mostly the stuff from your local hospital or dentist's office; high level waste -- this is where the spent fuel from nuclear power plants comes in; and in between there is TRU waste, which is short for Transuranic waste. It's the hats, boots, and tools used during the U.S. government's weapons program. You know, the folks that made the atomic bomb. And it's that TRU waste that's being deposited here at WIPP.

[Alert sounding] Most of the material isn't harmful unless it's touched, but about 5% is what's known as "hot waste," meaning it puts out airborne radiation. Still, Chief Scientist Roger Nelson says, these shipping containers are safe.

[NELSON] That canister could have parked right next to a school bus full of children in a traffic jam, and it's perfectly safe in that configuration.

[SULLIVAN] I'm going to the dentist next week to have this back molar looked at. When I get x-rays will I get more radiation at the dentist's?

[NELSON] Much more.

[SULLIVAN] Once trucks are done unloading the containers of nuclear waste, the process of disposal begins.

To give you an example of how this material is contained, this is the lid of the outer shipping container. There's another lid right there, and inside that are these barrels right here. Think of it as a radioactive matryoshka doll.

From there, the barrels are taken down to the WIPP salt mines. And it's those salt mines that make WIPP a great place for storing nuclear waste. Salt continually seals its own cracks, making it essentially nonporous. It's those properties that got the attention of the National Academy of Sciences in 1957, when they said salt caverns are the best disposal sites for nuclear waste.

We were invited down to the salt mines for a rare look. We're taken down on a freight elevator, about a half-mile underground, into one of the largest salt deposits on Earth.

The roof, the walls, everything is made of salt. Even what we're driving on.

[CONCA] Yes, it's all sodium chloride, table salt salt.

[SULLIVAN] There hasn't been water here for more than 250 million years. That predates dinosaurs and, of course, humans. And geologists say it will be the same, well after humans are gone from the Earth.

So this is normal salt that you would find on a table.

[CONCA] Right, sodium chloride.

[SULLIVAN] Tastes like salt.

[CONCA] Yep, it tastes like salt.

[SULLIVAN] It doesn't taste like nuclear waste, though.

[CONCA] No, and it never will.

[SULLIVAN] Miners have carved out enough space for 600,000 drums filled with radioactive material.

The star of the show.

[CONCA] Yes, so this is why we're here. This is nuclear waste.

[SULLIVAN] The walls and ceilings of these salt caverns actually close in at a rate of 3 inches every year.

These drums will stay here. The salt will come around and encapsulate them.

[CONCA] Right. It will basically reach the drums and start crushing them in about 10 to 15 years, so it's fairly quick.

[SULLIVAN] This is Mother Nature's trash compactor.

[CONCA] Yes, it's a big, natural trash compactor.

[SULLIVAN] WIPP employs about 1,300 people. Recent polls suggest those jobs, coupled with a sense of civic duty, has the majority of Carlsbad residents supporting the nuclear storage site. That support has some nuclear waste experts wondering if WIPP could take the place of the controversial Yucca Mountain site.

[RICK McLEOD, SAVANNAH RIVER SITE REUSE ORGANIZATION] We believe Yucca is the right place for nuclear storage. If not, we hope maybe the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant out in New Mexico could be another alternative.

[SULLIVAN] For now, federal law blocks WIPP from accepting highly radioactive spent fuel rods, which continue to build up at the nation's nuclear reactor sites. First, they are cooled in deep pools of water and later transferred into giant canisters called dry casks.

To learn more about dry cask storage, we came here to Virginia, to the Surry nuclear facility. And the folks here at Surry just don't practice dry cask storage, they invented it.

They sit on concrete slabs, just a short distance away from the reactor building.

[JERRY BISCHOF, SURRY POWER STATION] We had expected that at some point, the federal government would take receipt of the nuclear fuel and a number of years of construction at Yucca Mountain certainly looked like that would be feasible in the immediate future, but that has not come to fruition.

[SULLIVAN] As for WIPP, they're looking for Congress to expand their mandate to accept other forms of low-level waste.

But what about these canisters? Why can't they be brought to New Mexico?

Is this a good spot for it? Is that a political question?

[NELSON] That's a political question that has lots of controversy associated with it.

[SULLIVAN] As a scientist, could it?

[NELSON] As a scientist, the waste throughout the entire complex, all nuclear waste, salt is the best disposal option.

[SULLIVAN] There is a drawback. Once encased in salt, it's very hard to go back and retrieve nuclear fuel rods. That's something the U.S. might want to do in the future because spent fuel rods can be reprocessed and used again.

Back at the Surry nuclear plant in Virginia, folks have been waiting so long for a place to send their nuclear waste, they've come up with a new generation of dry casks.

[BISCHOF] The great thing about the horizontal storage modules is that inside this bunker is the canister that we could actually use for shipment.

[SULLIVAN] Now, all they need is the shipping address. In Carlsbad, New Mexico, Lee Patrick Sullivan, "energyNOW!"

[ASSURAS] The WIPP site in New Mexico just got its 10,000th shipment of radioactive waste. Plus, officials told Lee Patrick they will complete their mission of collecting DoE defense-related waste by 2015, and that's 15 years earlier than the deadline set by Congress. And, as Lee Patrick told us, they've got lots of room for more and would be happy to have it.