STORAGE SEARCH: The U.S. government continues to search for a safe geologic home for the spent nuclear fuel from the nation's nuclear power plants.
Image: markwgallagher, courtsey Flickr
The embarrassing and damaging failure of U.S. policy on spent nuclear fuel can be repaired if the administration and Congress begin work now on new strategies, the co-chairmen of a presidential commission said yesterday.
"The basic choice here is whether or not we're going to continue a system that has not worked for 40 or 50 years ... or do you try going toward with a new approach," said former Indiana Rep. Lee Hamilton (D), co-chairman of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future (BRC), which issued its final report yesterday.
The BRC proposes establishing one or more interim storage facility for spent reactor fuel and beginning a search for a permanent geological repository.
Both would be managed by a new federally chartered organization like the Tennessee Valley Authority, and would require the consent and support of the host states, tribes and communities, the BRC proposes. The Yucca Mountain waste fuel repository in Nevada was approved by Congress without such comprehensive state support and has been sidetracked by the Obama administration at the behest of Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.).
That has left operators of U.S. reactors and decommissioned nuclear plants no alternative but to store spent nuclear fuel on-site and has exposed the federal government to costly lawsuits for breaching its contractual commitment to remove and store it.
"This is an urgent matter. It is a problem the government has not solved. It is creating all kinds of negatives for the U.S. in many different ways," Hamilton added. "We think we have a way forward."
Hamilton and co-chairman Brent Scowcroft, a former national security adviser, said in a joint interview that the Energy Department and the administration can initiate parts of the new policy now, even though Congress would have to rewrite the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to carry out the plan's fundamental changes.
A legislative and financial challenge
New legislation would be required to create the proposed new nuclear waste management organization, and to create interim waste storage facilities before a new permanent geological repository is opened. Both the interim and permanent facilities should be developed simultaneously, the commission said.
"That is probably a year at a minimum, or two years, to achieve that," Hamilton said of the proposed new federal corporation. "We certainly don't want the DOE to stop in its track to wait until the new organization is in place." DOE can continue discussions with communities that may volunteer to host interim or permanent storage sites and begin work on the challenging issues of transporting spent fuel, he added.
The administration should also act to secure the roughly $750 million that utilities and their customers pay in each year to the Nuclear Waste Fund. It was intended to finance a permanent federal storage program, but now goes into general government funds to fund current spending, leaving the industry and ratepayers with a congressional IOU, the BRC said.
"The commission is putting pressure on to try to straighten out this financial challenge," said Richard Meserve, a commission member and former Nuclear Regulatory Commission chairman. "The $750 million disappears into the Treasury. It should be held instead by a reliable custodian to make sure that money is available when needed and doesn't have to be appropriated for the federal corporation."
Congressional attention on spent fuel has been riveted on the Yucca Mountain controversy, particularly after Energy Secretary Steven Chu shut down the program and NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko halted the NRC's licensing review. "In light of the current $15 trillion federal debt, I'm not sure why this administration and Senator Reid insist on spending even more money trying to find alternatives to something that is already in place," said Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.).
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21 Comments
Add CommentLol, these idiots are going to repeat the nonsense of yucca mountain again? So 40 years from now they will have completed their new study and we will still have no storage.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSenator Reid sir, I think I might have a site where you can stick those rods!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the Koch brothers bedrooms.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA much better option is to build on-site liquid Flouride Thorium Reactors (LFTR) that can turn nuclear waste into power and burn up the long-lived 100K+ and most dangerous nuclear toxins into a teaspoon of moderately dangerous wastes that is toxic for about 300 years. see energyfromthorium dot com or see the groups on facebook for more info.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe so-called "blue ribbon" commission was just a whitewash, using incompetent persons with zero qualifications to rubber stamp an illogical plan, that was in reality designed specifically to constrain the expansion of Nuclear Power by limiting the supply of Nuclear Fuel.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou will note that Moniz, has cowardly refused to debate the report with others, in spite of being challenged repeatedly. The administration, trying to earn that Big Oil/Coal/NG graft just doesn't want to resurrect the IFR (killed by the corrupt NG puppet - clinton) or reprocessing which would reduce Nuclear Waste and extend Nuclear fuel supply by at least 3 fold. Read the sordid story here:
uvdiv.blogspot.com/2010/01/nuclear-blue-ribbon-panel-i-dont-like.html
"...this panel isn't suited for its task -- the purely technical issue of spent nuclear fuel. I only count: one engineer, two physicists, and one geologist, out of 15 experts. Most of the rest are politicians and business suits. I fear this is more of a political game than a legitimate conference of nuclear waste experts..."
atomicinsights.com/2011/09/responses-to-brc-on-americas-nuclear-future-from-fast-reactor-experts.html
Moniz is scared to debate the report in a public forum because he knows he knows damn well he will get his butt kicked:
bravenewclimate.com/2011/07/25/fukushima-ifr-mit/
atomicinsights.com/2011/07/update-on-fast-reactor-group-challenge-to-mit.html
A solution to Nuclear Waste that NG shill Clinton killed:
atomicinsights.com/2012/01/cloistered-nuclear-scientists-needed-sun-tzus-advice-know-your-enemy.html
bravenewclimate.com/2011/09/28/why-obama-should-meet-till/
Here is two solutions to the problem: (1) The states that have nuclear power plants provide their own storage. (2) If the states that have nuclear power plants cannot provide their own storage then the plant is shut down and they find another source of power.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYou cannot expect other states to take care of your radioactive garbage for you...take care of it yourself or shut it down.
Regional community/owner consent for very long term storage of potentially dangerous nuclear material would most likely be granted on the basis of short term economic benefits. Extrapolation of this model globally would make the Sahara desert, Bangledesh and Northern China primary candidate storage sites. How can informed consent be obtained from current and future populations?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSounds like the best idea so far.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPolluters should be held accountable for safe waste disposal or shut down.
Also...Congress needs to be held more accountable for toxic pollution policy.
These problems did not exist as much in the old days of less people.
Bad policys costs more money.
We need to re-use it in some way.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCould we mix it with something safe and bury it for heating?
Let the federal government take charge of the waste and put it somewhere safe. And let those generating it pay for it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat's a good idea too.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHope we find a way to re-use it somehow.
Here's an idea, why doesn't the federal government stop involving itself in technologies that are more than 60 years old and let them stand on their own merits? If this technology is so promising, why does it need the federal government to handle its waste? Shouldn't the nuclear industry have to pay for its own repository with its own money and just satisfy federal standards? How come we allowed the industry to finish over 100 reactors before a WORKING solution to the waste problem was available? And no, molten salt reactors that can supposedly eat nuclear waste don't count because they obviously didn't grow along with the LWR industry.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow come the federal government has to pick up the nuclear industry's liability insurance through the Price Anderson Act? This is a $100B+ subsidy that just keeps growing year after year. How come ALL energy sources don't get their liability insurance covered by the feds?
The government needs to stop supporting energy technology that should have succeeded or failed on its own merits by now. The fact that the feds still have this level of involvement propping up the industry means that maybe this whole "too cheap to meter" thing didn't quite pan out. The government can drop its support for renewable energy and efficiency once they have had the level and length of time of support that nuclear and fossil fuels have enjoyed.
Once again the prize for the stupidest most ignorant poster on SCIAM. You know folks this idiot claims to have a BS and MS in engineering. This is typical of the troll.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA simple Google search would tell the nit in his usual no information spew that the DOE collects a .1 cent a kwh toll for nuclear waste - a fund now up to $35B and unlikely to ever be spent as the waste is fuel for Gen IV reactors like India's new 500Mw unit first of 5 to 2020.
Actually the industry carries far higher indemnity/insurance then does any other industrial energy facility in America. Big Oil for example is limited to legislatively limited $75M per spill. With the worst imaginable nuke accident caused by criminal activity in an fragile ancient 50's designed reactor leaving no dead and the long term damage limited to the reactor itself Fuku shows us how small the potential liability is.
On the other hand, it would be impossible to build wind/solar plant if the families of the thousands of citizens murdered every year by deadly fine particulate air polluting radioactive gas spewing fracked natural gas plant required to backup wind/solar at 100% nameplate, could sue.
Given that a single terrorist with a shoulder fired missile could wipe out many American cities in a nuclear bomb sized LNG storage or tanker explosion, while the zero death meltdown risk in a modern nuke reactor is now certified by the NRC at 1 such accident in every 5 million years of plant operation, nuclear is far safer insurance bet than any alternatives.
In fact rather than receiving subsidy the nuke industry is $80B in the black subsidizing the federal government with funds that will never be used.
Not so renewables get $10's of billions in subsidy yet to this point have produced little or no energy and have no prospect of ever doing so even at almost a hundred times the cost of nuclear.
The notion of 'long-term storage' is silly at best. Consider that one of the requirements for any storage facility would be to guard the repository... for the next 10,000 years. So paying just ONE rent-a-cop $10/hour 24 hours/day, 365 day/year for the next 10,000 years would cost about $0.87 BILLION. (for one guy with a segway and can of mace). I'd sure like to get that contract though. LOL.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo lets take a BUNCH of low-level waste and spend a BUNCH of money to reprocess it into high-level fuel, creating less volume, of MUCH more dangerous waste. And then guard that for 10,000 years. [Since it's more dangerous we'll hire 10 rent-a-cops. ($8 Billion)]
So Answer me this: If you could build these magical on-site reprocessing plants in an timely fassion, and they could actually convert the stored waste into usable fuel: how long does it take to recoop your invstement for building them, and retrofitting your existing plants to use the new fuel?
Perhaps I'm wrong, but I thought the existing fleet of Nuke plants built in the 60's and 70's was nearing thier practical lifespan. So chop chop. Let's see the design. Who picks up the bill for that episode of "Who Pimped my Nuke-plant"?
Either way, I still want that "Guard the glowing trash" contract. Gonna get me a Segway.
We can learn how easy it is to deal with spent nuclear fuel, by looking at natural nuclear reactors that went critical around 1.8 billion years ago, at Gabon, Africa. Thousands of pounds of Plutonium was produced, and it barely migrated through the rock it formed in. This in spite of it being unclad, uncontained, unvitrified, in spite of it not being surrounded by bentonite clay, and in spite of boiling water flowing over it for around half a million years. *A solved problem.* Of course, it's an even better idea to not bury the waste, but rather reuse it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe best solution for high level waste (other than burning it in LTFR reactors) might be to insert it a few miles deep into one of the descending continental plates, where it will pushed down into the Earth's mantle, not to return for millions of years. (I am not the first to propose this - David Brin used a mechanism similar to this for other purposes in one of his novels, and I'm sure others have proposed it for nuclear waste.) The low level waste may be a larger problem - thousands of tons of very slightly radioactive gloves, tools and parts would be too expensive to dispose of that way.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMatthew, let me point out the fallacies in your comment. First off, Spent fuel is not all that dangerous, comparable to thousands of other industrial toxins present in storage in MILLIONS OF TIMES greater quantities. To put that in perspective, an example of a typical industrial waste dump, the the Canadian Federal Govt is going to freeze in place, right on the shores of Great Slave Lake - 240,000 tonnes of carcinogenic, poisonous Arsenic Trioxide, which will have to be maintained FOREVER. CANDU nuclear waste has the same radiation level as natural Uranium after 500 yrs. And that spent fuel replaced 2.4 billion tonnes of CO2 emissions, so 6X the total Spent Fuel in Canada, just for some residue from one mickey-mouse Gold Mine.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAbout Spent Nuclear Fuel:
depletedcranium.com/why-you-cant-build-a-bomb-from-spent-fuel/
So please explain how is Nuclear Spent Fuel somehow different to protect "for 10,000 yrs" your erroneous claim, vs the MILLIONS OF TIMES more nuclear weapons, biological & chemical weapons, conventional weapons, sporting rifles & ammo, chlorine, arsenic, mercury, propane/NG/LNG deadly bomb loads in rusty storage tanks or underground storage bunkers, millions of tons of military ordnance, bombs, ships, submarines, planes, rockets, land mines, tanks. Who's protecting those for "10,000 yrs"?
"...hey could actually convert the stored waste into usable fuel: how long does it take to recoop your invstement for building them, and retrofitting your existing plants to use the new fuel..."
That is no problem. Fuel is a minor cost for Nuclear Power plants, that's why they often don't bother reprocessing. The "stored waste" is 95% uranium (less radioactive than natural uranium), 1-2% plutonium, so reprocessing to burn in reactors is being done and has been done and is no problem whatsoever.
depletedcranium.com/what-is-spent-fuel-anyway/
HAZARDS OF HIGH-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTE — THE GREAT MYTH, by Bernhard Cohen:
www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter11.html
"...The low level waste may be a larger problem - thousands of tons of very slightly radioactive gloves, tools and parts would be too expensive to dispose of that way..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYep, the radioactivity of those items is about equal to the radioactivity of NG Fracking waste-water which is dumped into rivers, lakes and into municipal waste-water treatment plants that are not equipped or capable of processing the same. This is thousands of times greater amounts than Nuclear low & medium level waste. And Coal solid and gaseous waste is also more radioactive that the low & medium level nuclear waste and that is millions of times greater volumes. Also just dumped into our air, land and water, virtually without regulation. And oil waste is also just as radioactive.
It is inexcusable stupidity to bury or dispose of the spent fuel since it is 97% fuel for other reactors, France, Japan and others reprocess the waste at a cost about equal to buying new fuel, no reason it can't be done here, except for Government apathy. And the USA, at considerable expense developed the IFR, quite capable of burning spent fuel, until it was killed by the Big Oil/NG sleazoid puppet, Bill Clinton:
www.skirsch.com/politics/globalwarming/ifr.htm
atomicinsights.com/2012/01/cloistered-nuclear-scientists-needed-sun-tzus-advice-know-your-enemy.html
80-90% of the residue from Spent Fuel, after taking out the low radioactivity uranium & plutonium is valuable as medical, industrial, agricultural, security, geophysical radioisotope sources. What is left amounts to about 0.2 oz of material to supply the average American's lifetime TOTAL ENERGY consumption.
Spent LWR fuel can also be burned in CANDU's as is being done in China, and if you are really PARANOID, deep seabed burial is dirt cheap, and permanently effective:
www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/96oct/seabed/seabed.htm
That method was blocked by Paid-by-Oil ENGO's like Greenpeace, who knew blocking any solution to the minor Nuclear Waste issue is vital to their protection of their Big Oil sponsor's Energy Hegemony.
"Fuku shows us how small the potential liability is"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAre you kidding me? They basically blew up $20B when they had to douse the smouldering reactors with sea water and evacuating 100s of 1000s of people out of the exclusion zone, condemning the properties, demolition and cleanup is going to cost another few 100 Billion $$$$. You are delusional, but since you're paid to be that way I can't blame you.
Blaming "big oil" of nuclear power's poor performance in the 20th Century is just a conspiracy theory until you can show evidence that it happened. Where are the investigations or the lawsuits? The nuclear industry has a lot of (government) money, so how come they never ONCE exposed this (supposed) conspiracy between "big oil" and the NRC, or "environmentalists", or whatever boogeyman fits into your paranoid theories?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow come this conspiracy isn't even necessary to explain the nuclear industry's abject failure in the 70s and 80s when poor project management, bloated budgets, and lack of attention to safety issues provides a sound explanation? Show me one paycheck from "big oil" to greenpeace or whatever (good luck) and I'll believe you. Otherwise, keep your nutty conspiracy theories off SCIENTIFIC American please!
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