Panel urges centralized storage facility and permanent repository for nuclear waste

A recommendation has been made by the commission formed to advise the Obama administration on what to do with the spent nuclear fuel from the nation’s commercial reactors: The material should be consolidated at an above-ground storage facility while a new search is carried out to find a permanent geological repository.

In a draft of its interim findings made public on 13 May, the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future called for the US to establish one or more interim storage facilities for the consolidation of spent fuel that is now stored on-site at each of the nation’s 104 operating reactors and at commercial reactors that have been decommissioned.

Although it found no unmanageable safety or security risks with current spent-fuel storage practices at reactor sites, it cautioned that ‘rigorous efforts will be needed to ensure this continues to be the case.’ Spent fuel that is stored at decommissioned reactor sites should be the first in line for transport to consolidated storage, it said.

Chartered by Energy Secretary Steven Chu in January 2010 after President Obama terminated construction of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada, the commission also urged creation of a new government agency with the sole purpose of selecting the locations of the proposed interim storage and repository facilities. The proposed agency should be given the necessary financial and institutional resources, as well as sufficient authority, to make its policies stick.

The panel said that the new agency must be allowed to tap the Nuclear Waste Fund, the reserve financed by a levy on the electric bills of nuclear utility ratepayers. The fund has been accumulating monies since it was established under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 to pay for the construction of a repository. Including interest, the fund currently stands at $35 billion, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute.

The commission called for a transparent science- and consent-based process to be used in the selection of new storage and disposal sites. That would contrast with the political process that resulted in the 1987 selection by Congress of the Yucca Mountain site. Over the years, the Department of Energy spent more than $10 billion performing scientific and environmental studies of the Nevada site as it fought off repeated legal and legislative challenges from the state.

Nuclear utilities also have sued DOE, which was supposed to begin accepting waste into the repository in 1998. The panel looked into reprocessing, advanced reactors, and other fuel-cycle technologies as potential alternatives to storage, but it concluded that no reasonably foreseeable technologies could change the waste management problem for several decades.

It did recommend that the government continue to fund R&D and demonstration of advanced reactors and fuel-cycle technologies, with a goal of improving their economics, safety, and nonproliferation characteristics.

David Kramer