Writing this blog has been a very educational experience. I have been aware of the problem of disposal of nuclear waste for a long time but lately I have been delving into the details. I knew that the Yucca Mountain Repository Project had had all its funding pulled recently, leaving the United States without any long term plan for permanent disposal. In addition, I found that the U.S. government is on the hook for millions of dollars in penalties for failing to fulfill a promise to the nuclear industry to have a permanent waste disposal option available by 1998.
Having read several recent analyses of the potential of deep borehole disposal of spent nuclear fuels and writing a blog post about it, I have to admit that it really does seem to be a far superior alterantive than anything else on the horizon. It would be safe, economical, incremental and distributed around the country. The big question is why a good alternative to a repository in a place like Yucca Mountain has not been taken seriously. I suppose that one explanation is that with the size and inertia of the nuclear industry and government oversight, any proposed disposal system would have to have major players in industry and government supporting and promoting it or it would never get the time of day. The problem with deep boreholes is that they would not have the up front cost of a place like Yucca Mountain and a major nuclear contractor would not be able to make as big a profit. But that is just speculation. The fact is that we have a good proposal for disposal that does not seem to be being pursued.
What would be required for deep borehole disposal to move forward? There was a major study by Sandia Labs in 2009 about the deep borehole alternative that was very positive in its conclusions. They provide a detailed model to analyze the deep borehole proposal. One of their conclusions was that it was time for a full pilot project to test this alternative.
There is an excellent slide show that provides a lot of useful information that is an attachment for a 2012 nuclear engineering course at the University of Illinois. They have some estimated cost numbers that will be useful. It turns out that drilling the borehole is the cheapest part of the project by far. They estimate a cost of $20 million. They suggest that it will cost $10 billion dollars for site characterization and license application. (I hope most of that cost is site characterization.) $20 million for operation, monitoring and decommissioning costs. And, finally, $10 billion for transporting spent nuclear fuel. I would think that if a site adjacent to a nuclear reactor with a full spent nuclear fuel pool is chosen, there should be almost no transportation costs so maybe that number goes away. So, bottom line, we should be able to run a full test of a deep borehole disposal installation for $35 to $40 billion dollars.
The other thing that has to happen to permit this is that the Nuclear Waste Policy Act would need to be changed. Currently it limits underground waste disposal to Yucca Mountain. So, in addition to legislation for the pilot project, there would also need to be legislation to change the NWPA. I firmly believe that this pilot project should become a priority for the U.S. Government, the U.S. nuclear industry and the activists who are concerned about disposal of spent nuclear fuel.
Sandia Laboratory Deep Borehole Schematic:
