The 2019 Energy and Water Appropriations bill that President Trump signed early last month provides no funding for Yucca Mountain. In doing so, it officially extends by another year the U.S. government’s failure to implement a portion of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 whereby the government would accept responsibility for managing the spent fuel from commercial nuclear reactors.
In the 1950s, when public faith in government was high, a decision to entrust a federal agency with safely managing waste from the country’s commercial nuclear reactors was relatively uncontroversial. Today, the idea is almost unthinkable. In all likelihood, Yucca Mountain will never be approved as the repository for spent reactor fuel, even though the government has already spent $15 billion designing and constructing the facility.
More than 81,000t of nuclear waste is stored at 61 current and former reactor sites across the country. In over 70 judgements, the courts have ordered the government to pay the utilities’ storage costs dating back to 1998 when the government was supposed to have taken possession. The bill to date is over $6 billion, and the DOE estimates the cost to taxpayers will total $29 billion by 2022. While there has not yet been an environmental accident or security incident, the storage facilities require constant security and were never designed to be more than a temporary solution until the rods were turned over to the U.S. government for long-term disposal.
The first step to ending the stalemate is for the Administration and Congress to accept that trust cannot be restored to the process that selected Yucca Mountain. A new “consent-based” process needs to be started that will enable the public, local communities, states, and government officials at all levels to trust in the fair and transparent selection and development of a long-term repository site.
A key question is asking the once-unthinkable: should the U.S. government have primary responsibility? Several organizations have recommended that the government must be distanced, or even removed, from the political process surrounding waste storage. It pains me to conclude that the government’s role in this matter must be reduced, due to the trust deficit. The failure to restore trust is a guarantee that the current political standoff will continue and taxpayers will be forced to pay billions each year for a temporary solution.
Adapted from a piece originally published by The Hill on 10/18/2018
Just to start this conversation, it is quite clear that the Yucca Mountain project was killed not by lack of trust of the scientists, geologists, engineers, and regulators who have… Read more »
I would like to hear more form those who know about this waste itself. How much of it can be reprocessed? Why would we need to have a single site… Read more »
Jane, all of that spent fuel (“waste” is a real misnomer) can be recycled using an electrochemical pyroprocessing system that was demonstrated in the Nineties at what is now Idaho… Read more »
Thanks for the good information … Is there anyway that the processing could be set up at several places around the country? And what about some combination that would be… Read more »
Hi, Jane – Absolutely, there are options for spreading out spent fuel reprocessing/safing and similar work, but down that road can lie very expensive and dead-ended boondoggles. Where I used… Read more »
Jane, the containers for hauling the stuff around are incredibly robust and there’s virtually no chance of any accident releasing any radioactive material. That said, the recycling facilities will be… Read more »
The long half-lives of some of nuclear wastes has been an argument against nuclear power for decades. Yet comparatively little has been said about a far more serious energy waste,… Read more »
I’m trying to come at this with a long-view, reductionist perspective so my response is reflective of that mindset. From almost its inception, nuclear power in the United States never… Read more »
One should not expect too many effective actions by the federal or state governments in dealing with real or perceived long term issues like nuclear wastes, climate change, mine tailings,… Read more »
One needs to back up and look at the program from the beginning. 1957 NAS chose Permian salt, particularly the basin where WIPP is located, as the ultimate disposal rock… Read more »
The failure of the federal government to build a commercial repository goes back decades—it’s not a recent development. The MIT Future of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle report recommended a… Read more »