The U.S. Congress has been debating policies with respect to the disposal of spent nuclear fuel rods. The pools at U.S. nuclear reactors will all be full in five years if alternatives are not found. Temporary storage such as dry casks on site will require massive investment to be practical. And, after cancellation of the Yucca Mountain Repository, it is estimated that it may require forty years to site and construct a new permanent U.S. geological repository. To make matters worse, the U.S. Nuclear Waste Fund for a permanent repository that was promised in 1999 is under attack by lawsuits from utilities seeking to claw back money that they have already paid.
A Blue Ribbon panel commissioned by President Obama issued its final recommendations in January of 2012 urging action on interim storage of nuclear waste, resumption of the site selection process for a new geological repository and the creation of a quasi-government agency to manage the new program and to take control of the Nuclear Waste Fund. It may be possible for the new agency to use only the Nuclear Waste Fund and not have to get Congressional appropriations. Most of this could be accomplished by revisions to the 1987 amendment to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.
Temporary storage would allow high level waste to be kept readily available for reuse in reactors or allow it time to cool off for permanent storage. The new permanent repository would only be storing waste that could not be reused. It would be cool enough so that different criterion could be used in site selection which would increase the number of possible sites. The new agency would seek consensus from every level of government including local, tribal, state, regional and national in its search for a new permanent repository.
Senators Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska have collaborated to produce draft legislation that would implement many of the recommendations from the Blue Ribbon Panel. Under the provisions of the new legislation, the Department of Energy would no longer be responsible for nuclear waste disposal. Nuclear waste would now be handled by a new agency with a director appointed by the President. The new agency would have authority over the Nuclear Waste Fund. It would create a consent based process for siting new temporary waste storage facilities in communities that would accept them. This new process could be in place as soon as 2021.
The new legislation is certainly welcome and, being bipartisan, should not be controversial. Congress should move quickly to pass this legislation so the new agency can be created and begin its work as soon as possible. The U.S. Government has already spent over two and a half billion dollars on lawsuits over nuclear waste disposal. If nothing is done, these lawsuits could amount to over twenty billion dollars by 2020 which is a substantial portion of the twenty seven billion dollar Nuclear Waste Fund. Passing this legislation should halt the lawsuits. In addition, time is running out. Estimates are that the spent fuel pools at U.S. reactors will all be full by 2019, two years before the earliest implementation of the plan in the legislation. If the full pools necessitate shutting down U.S. reactors, there could be serious energy short falls around 2020 even with the passage of the legislation.
