this post was submitted on 05 May 2026
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TBF, historically most nations allow "temporary" storage of spent nuclear fuel cells in perpetually filled pools or running water, which have the potential to run out and cause a nuclear apocalypse via irradiating everything on the surface of the earth. Currently millions of spent rods are stored "temporarily" in such pools which all together contain as much Cesium-137 as 30 Chernobyls in the USA alone.
It gets talked about a lot in "what if" scenarios about human extinction, because if Humanity died out then those pools will dry up and everything else will die alongside us.
some sources on this?
https://www.nrc.gov/waste/spent-fuel-storage/pools
https://www.pogo.org/reports/spent-nuclear-fuel-pools-in-us-reducing-deadly-risks-of-storage
Thank you