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Why would anyone attack that facility? Its extremely easy to secure - If you somehow neutralize everyone protecting it you still wont get in and out with any meaningful amount of material before a military response comes in and removes your ability to actually do anything.

Note that Yucca Mountain doesn't just have piles of fissile material - all the waste is in the same concrete capsules they arrived in. The ones that need a crane to be moved[1][2].

You could argue that these will fail before we know what to do with them and that they will leak radioactive material over time, but that still wouldn't make it a good terrorist target.

[1] https://www.nwmo.ca/en/Canadas-Plan/Canadas-Used-Nuclear-Fue...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_cask_storage

NOTE: Sources don't say that you cant move these without cranes, they just say that these are larger than a person and made of steel and reinforced concrete so I thought it would be a safe assumption these are a pain to move.



So if someone bombed that facility with large conventional weapons, or detonated a low-yield nuclear device there, the casks wouldn't leak?


At this point you are talking about blowing up part of a mountain and if someone can do that you are already in trouble.


I would also make them big enough to be movable only by crane. It's cost effective and secure enough to deter potential looters.




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