On January 24, 2011 a new rule was put in place by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission with respect to the storage of spent nuclear fuel. The new rule covered the storage of spent nuclear fuel in pools near the reactor, onsite in temporary storage casks or offsite in independent storage facilities. The NRC made changes in 1990 to the Waste Confidence rulemaking procedures to allow for the extension of temporary storage. The new Waste Confidence report included the following five findings.

1. The Commission found that there is “reasonable assurance” that safe disposal of high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel in a geologic repository is technically feasible. While this may be true in theory, finding a safe repository site has turned out to be difficult to say the least.
2. The Commission found that there is “reasonable assurance” that at least one such repository will be available in the United States by the year 2025 and that there will be sufficient capacity within thirty years beyond the licensed life of any operating reactor to accept all the waste generated by such reactors. Considering that the Yucca Mountain Repository was cancelled in 2010 and that it is estimated that it may take twenty years or more to site and develop a repository, it would appear that we are already behind schedule.
3. The Commission found that there is “reasonable assurance” that safe temporary storage of nuclear waste and spent fuel will be carried out until the repository is available. We can only hope that this is true.
4. The Commission found that there is “reasonable assurance” that until the repository is ready, waste and spent fuel can be stored safely for up to thirty years beyond the licensed life of thirty years for any reactor without adverse environmental impact. This means that the NRC feels that it is reasonable to allow temporary nuclear waste and spend fuel storage for up to sixty years.
5.  The Commission found that there is “reasonable assurance” that safe temporary onsite or offsite storage will be made available if needed. This better be true because it is estimated that at current levels of spent nuclear fuel generation, all the spent fuel pools in the United States reactors will be full by 2017.

 

           In 1999, the NRC reviewed the findings from the Waste Confidence study of 1990 and concluded that experience with nuclear waste storage since 1990 had basically validated the 1990 findings. Therefore the NRC decided that it was not necessary to carry out a comprehensive reevaluation of its 1990 findings. It further stated that it would consider such a reevaluation after the current repository developments and regulatory activities had been completed. Or, of course, if there were serious unforeseen events at some time in the future. Well, the Yucca Mountain Repository has been cancelled and there was that disaster at Fukushima. The Unit 4 spent fuel pool at Fukushima is a threat to the whole world right now. Perhaps that reevaluation is now due.

           In the previous post, I talked about the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future. On December 12, 2011 before the release of its final report, the BRC sent a letter Secretary of Energy and President Obama.

           One of the things that the letter emphasizes is that the President should move as soon as possible to makes changes with the Nuclear Waste Fund collected as fees on nuclear utilities. The letter says that the Commission learned in its investigation of the NWF that the fund is not working as intended. They charge that actions by the Executive Branch and Congress have made the twenty seven billion dollars in the NWF unavailable for the current nuclear waste management program. The intent of the creation of the NWF was to reserve money for nuclear waste management and keep it out of the annual budget fight for funding that most Federal programs are subjected to. Without access to the NWF, nuclear waste management now does have to fight for a share of the Federal budget to do its work.

         Under the current contract, the government is collecting seven hundred fifty million per year from nuclear utilities. Since the passing of the deadline for a U.S. nuclear waste repository in 1998 to take spent nuclear fuel, utilities have successfully sued the U.S. government for violation of contract and government liabilities may climb to sixteen billion dollars under the present contract.

         The Commission letter suggests that the President move to amend the standard nuclear waste contract with nuclear utilities so that the utilities are only required to pay a fee to cover the current temporary storage of spent nuclear fuels. At the same time, Congress should change the budgetary treatment of the fees collected from nuclear utilities to divert them from a permanent disposal solution to temporary disposal management. The Commission requests that these actions be undertaken for the Fiscal Year 2013 budget proposal.

         The Commission recognizes that there would be an impact on the national deficit because the current seven hundred fifty million dollars being collected is used to decrease the annual deficit. On the other hand, the Commission points out that the mounting costs of fines and litigations from utility lawsuits are increasing the deficit. If these changes are made to the NWF, then current nuclear waste management could be reliably funded and the lawsuits from nuclear utilities would end.

          The Commission letter mentions that it worked with both advocates for the taxpayers concerned about the permanent disposal of spent nuclear fuel and the industry associations that are advocating for expanding nuclear. Both of these groups support the recommendations outlined in the letter and detailed in the final report from the Commission delivered on January 26, 2012. Even though the report lacked specifics for dealing with permanent spent nuclear waste disposal, the recommendations in the report and the letter are an important first step.

Spent nuclear fuel cask on a railcar:

           Before the Obama administration moved to cancel the Yucca Mountain Repository Project for permanent storage of high-level nuclear waste in March of 2010, the President created the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future to study the problem of permanent spent nuclear fuel disposal on January 29, 2010. The Commission was co-chaired by former Congressman Lee Hamilton and former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft. The Commission was not told to select a site or to prefer one type of solution over another. As the saying goes, “everything was on the table,” except for Yucca Mountain, of course.

            In the words of the memoranda establishing the Commission, “The Commission should conduct a comprehensive review of policies for managing the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle, including all alternatives for the storage, processing, and disposal of civilian and defense used nuclear fuel and nuclear waste. This review should include an evaluation of advanced fuel cycle technologies that would optimize energy recovery, resource utilization, and the minimization of materials derived from nuclear activities in a manner consistent with U.S. nonproliferation goals.”

                The Commission was charged to consider scientific, environmental, budgetary, economic, financial and management issues. The Commission was also supposed to consider any important statutory changes that it deemed necessary. The Commission was told to come back in 18 months with a draft report and to make that report available for public review and input. A final report was to be delivered within 24 months. These activities were to be carried out under the authority of the Department of Energy.

           There is some boilerplate in the memoranda to the effect that no agency or business is required to disclose sensitive information protected by law. The Commission’s work also was not intended to create any right, benefit or penalty for any entity with respect to the U.S. Government, its agencies, officers or employees.

            The Commission met dozens of times over the next two years to hear testimony from experts and stakeholder. They visited nuclear waste management facilities in the United States and abroad. Many different organizations, interest groups and individuals came to the Commission to offer their perspective on the issues before the Commission. Copies of all the submissions and all reports issued by the Commission are available on the Commission’s website.

            The draft report was turned in on July 29, 2011 and was almost two hundred pages. The final 180 page report of the commission was presented to the Secretary of Energy on January 26, 2012. The report was accompanied by a letter to the Secretary summarizing the key points of the report and the Commission’s recommendations.  Some critics have charged that the Commission spent too much time dwelling on the failure of the governments efforts to solve the nuclear waste disposal problem to date and not enough on finding new solutions. They have also charged that the Commission’s recommendations are too broad and do not offer details on a viable disposal alternative.

 

          In 1982, The U.S. Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.  Included in the Policy Act was the provision that the U.S. utilities would pay a tax on the radioactive waste being generated by the U.S. utility companies operating nuclear reactors. The money in the fund was to be used by the U.S. government to create a safe permanent disposal facility by 1998. The Yucca Mountain Repository was the intended solution to permanent disposal. The Yucca Mountain Project ran behind schedule and encountered environmental concerns and public backlash in Nevada. In 2010, the Obama administration moved to cancel the Yucca Mountain Project. There has been opposition to cancelling the project. A federal court is going to rule on the effort to cancel by the end of 2012. At this point, there is no plan in the U.S. for permanent nuclear waste disposal.

           The fund receives about seven hundred fifty million dollars a year and now contains twenty seven billion of dollars collected from the utility companies. The fund is restricted to only be used on a permanent disposal solution. It cannot be used on an interim solution such as enclosing the spent nuclear fuel in steel and concrete and storing them onsite at the reactor facilities. Since the government cannot use the fund for this purpose, the utilities have been doing it themselves. They have also been suing the U.S. government for breach of contract. Billions of dollars in lawsuits have been filed and over a billion dollars has been paid out. Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent by the U.S. government just to defend itself. There are estimates that the lawsuits may eventually reach sixteen billion in claims.

          The U.S. Nuclear Energy Institute and sixteen utilities joined together in 2010 to file a lawsuit to force the U.S. Department of Energy to stop collecting the tax because of the move in 2010 by the Obama administration to cancel the Yucca Mountain Repository Project. The lawsuit said that the fee which is passed along to the public in at the rate of one-tenth of one cent per kilowatt-hour on monthly electric bills should be canceled until the government has a new plan in place for permanent disposal of nuclear waste. The office of the U.S. Secretary of Energy responded that the fee was a federal mandate and would eventually be used for permanent disposal. A blue ribbon commission was being appointed in 2010 to explore alternatives for permanent waste disposal .A few utility companies said that they were not going to invest in any more nuclear reactors until the nuclear waste disposal problem was solved. The commission delivered its report in January of 2010.

Some critics charge that the Obama administration has made it almost impossible for the fund to be used for its intended purpose. They also say that the U.S. government is hoarding the fund to reduce the apparent budget deficit.

Photo from ourenergypolicy.org:

           I have already written about the Yucca Mountain Repository Project in a previous post including mentioning the cancellation of the project. The cancellation was complex, confusing and politically charged. I decided that I needed to dig deeper into the subject.

           Yucca Mountain was first considered as a site in 1983, was selected as the final sole site in 1987, the application for a license was filed in 2001 and was supposed to open in 2020.The selection was made partly on a political basis with a government committee choosing the site from three finalists because it was very “dry” and very “remote.” After the decisions, further studies found that ground water moved through Yucca Mountain much faster than thought and raised the concern of possible leaching of waste materials into the water table in the area.

            There was serious public backlash by the citizens of Nevada about the location of the Repository in their state and they fought the Repository in court and in the Congress. Harry Reid, the Democratic Senator from the state of Nevada, was strongly opposed to the repository project. Barack Obama had promised to shut down the repository project if elected President in 2008. When Obama assumed the Presidency in January 2009, in league with Harry Reid as the Senate Majority Leader, he moved to end the Yucca Mountain Repository Project.

          In March of 2009, The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) tried to withdraw its license application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for the Yucca Mountain Repository. Obama’s budget request for 2010 cut off most funding for the Repository Project. In July of 2009, a bill to not defund the Yucca Mountain Repository for 2010 was passed 388 to 30 votes in the U.S. house. A panel of judges at the NRC ruled in 2010 that the DOE could not withdraw its license application for the Repository because it lacked the authority. Congress had ruled to create the Repository and only Congress could cancel the license request. In the fall of 2011, the NRC accepted the Obama administration’s request to shut down the site, citing “budgetary limitations.” This decision was challenged in Federal Court. In August of 2012, the Federal Court said that they would not rule on whether the NRC could cancel the Yucca Mountain Repository Project until the end of 2012.

           U.S. Senate Committee on Environmental and Public Works reported in 2008 that if the government did not deliver on contractual obligation to have a working repository, it could cost eleven billion dollars by 2020. The United States promised to start accepting spent nuclear fuel from commercial reactors in 1998. Utilities have recently sued over this failure and it could cost the government millions. The U.S. government was supposed to have a repository open by 2035 to accept military waste now in Idaho and Colorado. If it does not do so, the government could pay fines of over twenty seven million a year until it does have a repository. Also, failure to have a repository ready could interfere with the refueling of nuclear powered craft and impact national security.

         There are solid arguments for and against the Yucca Mountain Repository but one thing is certain. The cancellation of this project will cost the U.S. taxpayer a lot of money and will put increased pressure on the U.S. government to come up with an alternative site for permanent storage of high-level nuclear waste as quickly as possible.

Yucca Mountain Repository:

 

         We have been covering a lot of issues involving disposal of nuclear waste. There is a process called “vitrification” that helps prepare nuclear waste for disposal. The specific meaning of the term is the process of turning something into a glass. For substances that have a glass phase, vitrification would consist of causing the substance to undergo phase transition to its glass state. Chemical processes can also result the creation of a glass. A more general use of the term can apply it to embedding a material in a glassy matrix. This is the sense in which the term is used when referring to the vitrification of nuclear waste.

         Nuclear waste is mixed with chemicals/materials that form glass such as sand. Then calcinating chemicals are mixed in to remove the water which would negatively affect the glass. Next, the mixture is continuously fed into a heating furnace and melted along with pieces of glass. The resulting molten glass is then poured into canisters where it solidifies into a hard material resembling obsidian. The glass should be stable for thousands of years and will prevent leaching of waste by ground water. Vitrification can also significantly reduce the volume of the waste which is very important because space is at a premium for temporary or permanent storage.

        There is another technique called bulk vitrification in which electrodes are inserted into soil contaminated with nuclear waste. Sufficient electrical energy is fed to the electrodes to heat and melt the soil and the waste it contains. It hardens in a glass which stabilizes the waste. If left in the ground, the glass is less dangerous than the original contaminated soil. If necessary, the glass can be dug out and in much easier to handle that the contaminated soil would have been. This would be very useful in seriously contaminated areas such as the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.

         Bechtel National, Inc. is currently designing, constructing, and commissioning the largest radioactive treatment plant in the world at the Hanford Reservation. The United States Department of Energy contracted the creation of the plant, in part, to deal with the enormous amount of waste currently stored at Hanford in leaking underground tanks. The Bechtel plant will be using the vitrification process and heat the vitrification mixture to over two thousand degrees Fahrenheit.

         Recently, a memo, written by Gary Brunson to Hanford DOE officials, “listed 34 instances in which Brunson believed Bechtel provided design solutions or technical advice that was factually incorrect, not technically viable, not safe for future vitrification plant operators or otherwise seriously flawed.” The memo called for Bechtel to be immediately replaced as the agency responsible for writing the design requirements for the plant. Bechtel and DOE have managed to agree on the resolution of the issues raised in the memo and the project is going forward.

         Although vitrification is a useful treatment for nuclear waste in theory, in practice, as always, the devil is in the details.

          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:

           Some elements are transmuted to other elements in nuclear reactors. This process is called nuclear transmutation. One of the options discussed for disposal of some radioactive materials is to intentionally convert them to other less radioactive elements in a reactor or with another source of radiation.

           The set of elements referred to as “actinides” are 15 metallic elements that range in atomic number from 89 to 103. All the actinides are radioactive. Uranium and thorium are naturally occurring members and there is a little natural plutonium as well. These three actinides are by far the most abundant of all the actinides. Radioactive decay of natural uranium will temporarily produce small amounts of actinium (for which the actinide row of the periodic table is named) and protactinium. Other actinides such as neptunium, americium, curium, berkelium and californium can be produced in tiny amounts from transmutation processes in uranium ores. The remaining five actinides are einsteinium, fermium, mendelevium, nobelium and lawrencium. They are synthetic elements that are only produced by human activities.

          The hundreds of light water reactors scattered across the world produce waste in the form of uranium, plutonium, actinides and fission products. Uranium constitutes about 96 percent of the waste and contains about one percent of U-235 which can be refined back into fuel. Another one percent of the waste is plutonium that can be used as a fuel. Actinides are about one tenth of one percent of the waste. Neptunium and americium are each about one half of the actinide waste with a few additional percent of curium. These three are very radioactive and toxic. There are also rare earth elements in the waste which are chemically similar to the actinides but mostly non-radioactive. The final 3 percent of the nuclear waste from reactors contains a mix of fission products which include iodine, technetium, neodymium, zirconium, molybdenum, cerium, cesium, ruthenium, palladium and other elements.

         The first step in transmutation of actinides in waste is to separate them from lanthanides which are not radioactive. This is very difficult because they are chemically similar. The lanthanides have to be removed because they efficiently absorb neutrons and would prevent the transmutation of the actinides. Once separated, the actinides are bombarded with neutrons inside a reactor or linear accelerator and forced to fission which produces an assortment of fission products. The reason that this is attractive with respect to waste disposal is the fact that most of the actinides in the waste have half-lives of thousands of years as opposed to the half-lives measured in decades in most of the radioactive fission products. Other fission produces are stable elements.

          Iodine-129 is a dangerous radioisotope produced by fission processes. It will dissolve easily in water and move through the environment. It is concentrated in the human thyroid when ingested and can cause thyroid cancer. Subjecting iodine-129 to neutron bombardment will convert it to stable xenon. Similarly, technetium-99 is very soluble, mobile and toxic. Neutron bombardment will convert it first to technetium-100 which immediately decays to stable ruthenium.

         While theoretically a method to dispose or at least make radioactive waste less long lived, nuclear transmutation will require extensive research and development of practical solutions to a number of technical challengers to be a serious option for treating large quantities of nuclear waste.

Proposed French nuclear transmutation system from irfu.cea.fr:

        As we discussed in a previous post, one of the standard solutions for getting rid of things that we do not want is to bury them. While nuclear waste depositories for the most part utilize existing exhausted mines, an alternative is to drill extremely deep holes into the earth to dispose of nuclear waste.

          First, a hole is drilled more than 3 miles crystalline basement rock like granite deep in the crust of the Earth using modified technology from the oil and gas industry. Some designs call for lining the storage segment of the hole with cement or a type of aluminum phyllosilicate clay called bentonite to help prevent leakage of waste out of the borehole into the surrounding rock. Next high-level nuclear waste such as spent nuclear fuel and transuranics, is sealed into strong steel cylinders. The cylinders are lowered into the borehole to fill up about a mile of the hole. Once the storage segment is filled, then the hole is sealed. Some of the materials that might be used to seal the hole include clay, cement, crushed rock or asphalt.

          In some disposal scenarios, young and very hot nuclear waste is lowered into the hole and radiates enough heat into the surrounding rock to melt it. As the waste ages and cools, the rock solidifies and forms a hard shell around the waste, isolating it.

         Any amount of waste could be disposed of with the borehole solution. Unlike a underground repository which has a maximum capacity and a huge investment, drilling additional boreholes would increase capacity and each borehole would cost far less than a repository. Another advantage of the borehole approach is the fact that the boreholes can be drilled in many places where geology favorable layers of crystalline basement rock are located. This makes them especially attractive for countries which do not have a lot of nuclear waste and do not want to invest the enormous cost for a repository that would not be filled. Because the boreholes could be placed near nuclear installation that were generating the waste, all of the problems and dangers of transportation of nuclear waste could be avoided.

         The amount of land needed for borehole disposal is quite small and the environmental impact would be minimal. The well head, waste handling installation and a security zone could all be contained in one square mile. After the repository is filled and the borehole sealed, the land could be returned something close to its original condition.

         In 1957, the United States Academy of Sciences first considered the possibility of deep borehole disposal. Since then, much more attention has been focused on repositories but the attractiveness for the deep borehole alternative has steadily increases. Periodically, studies are made about the possibility of deep borehole disposal. Current estimates suggest that about one thousand deep boreholes would be required to contain all current high-level nuclear waste and projected waste to be generated in the United States. The cost would be roughly the same as the projected cost of a repository such as the one at Yucca Mountain. The deep borehole would be preferable because their drilling could be spread out in time and geography, reducing concentrated costs and transportation problems. Deep borehole disposal is a very viable alternative to all other suggested methods of high-level nuclear waste disposal.

          Another option for burial of high-level radioactive waste such as spent nuclear fuel rods is burial at sea where it would not be disturbed by geological processes or human activity.

          The appeal of ocean floor disposal consists of several different feature. For one thing, in the sediment of the ocean floor, while there is water, it does not flow. If wastes leaked and dissolved, they could take ten thousand of years to migrate through a meter of the dense clay of the ocean floor. Any waste that made it to the open ocean would be very diluted and decayed. In addition, large areas of the ocean floor are geologically stable and unlikely to be disturbed by human activity.

          On the other side of the equation is the fact that it would be very difficult to recover the nuclear waste from the ocean floor should it ever become desirable or necessary. And, it would be very difficult to establish an international authority to effectively monitor such activity and enforce adherence to agreed upon rules.

           Any waste being disposed of would be encased in shielded canisters and covered with thick shells of concrete. Once the waste has been packaged, it could then be placed in torpedoes which would increase penetration of the ocean floor. An alternative would be to drop the containers in shafts that could be drilled with existing underwater drilling techniques.

           Another solution would be to dump containers of waste into subduction zones which are places where one tectonic plate slides under another tectonic plate. The theory is that the containers would be carried deep into the crust of the Earth’s mantle away from the ocean floor and all human activity.

         All of these solutions would be vulnerable to natural disasters at sea as well as terrorists during transportation. .

         In 1972, the Convention on the Prevention of Marine by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter was drafted. It is commonly referred to as the London Convention and was put into force in 1975. Currently, over eighty countries are signatory of the London Convention. The Convention is an agreement to control pollution of the sea by dumping and to encourage regional agreements supplementary to the Convention. The Convention only covers deliberate disposal at sea of waste from ships, aircraft and platforms. It does not cover discharges from sources on land from pipes and outfalls, wastes generated from the normal operation of vessels or placement of materials in the ocean for purposes other than disposal. The Convention is currently set to be in force until 2018. If signatory countries want to dispose of nuclear wastes at sea, they will have to pull out of the Convention, lobby for major revision of the Convention or wait for the Convention to expire in 2018.

         However attractive disposal at sea might appear for nuclear waste, there are a number of technical and political difficulties that must be overcome before such disposal is a viable option.

Diagram of a design for a nuclear waste disposal torpedo from wattsupwiththat.com: