Despite its dependence on nuclear power plants to generate about a fifth of the nation's energy, the United States never decided on a coherent plan for what, exactly, it should do with its radioactive waste. As a result, Bloomberg reports, some 70,000 metric tons of spent fuel are being temporarily stashed at the plants that produced them.

That makes Illinois, which has more reactors than any other state, America's biggest nuclear dump site. The state is currently storing 13 percent of the country's radioactive waste. Following closely behind are Pennsylvania, South Carolina and New York. Inadvertently and without their consent, experts said, the states “have become de facto major radioactive waste-management operations."

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The lack of a long-term solution (as in, long enough to cover the thousands of years radioactive material takes to decay) is both unsafe and expensive, according to Bloomberg: