U.S. lawmakers have debated for decades where to put all the spent fuel generated by the nation's nuclear power plants. The dithering means that an unintended site has emerged: Illinois.
About 13 percent of the country's 70,000 tons of radioactive waste is stashed in pools of water or in special casks at the atomic plants in Illinois that produced it, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), a Washington-based industry group.
That is the most held in any state.