NUCLEAR WASTE: The U.S. still lacks a repository for used nuclear fuel, leaving old fuel to linger on the site of former nuclear power plants, like the dry cask storage pictured here on the site of Maine Yankee.
Image: Courtesy of Maine Yankee
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Nestled more than half a kilometer deep in a salt mine, the plutonium slowly decays, taking some 250,000 years to become uranium. As the U.S. debates what to do with the nuclear waste produced by its fleet of 104 reactors, the radioactive legacy of decades of nuclear bomb-making sits entombed in the U.S. Department of Energy's (DoE) Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M.
Now the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future, a diverse group of former politicians, industry representatives and academics, has delivered its draft report on what to do with the rest of the nation's nuclear waste. In it, the commission calls for "prompt efforts to develop one or more geologic disposal facilities," such as the one built at Yucca Mountain in Nevada that has been mired in controversy, as well as "prompt efforts to develop one or more consolidated interim storage facilities."
Since 2009, when President Barack Obama halted work on Yucca Mountain and added it to the list of failed potential nuclear waste sites, such as the one at Lyons, Kans., the U.S. has lacked a long-term solution to its growing stockpile of nuclear waste. So the roughly 65,000 metric tons of waste sits where it has been for decades—in glowing blue pools of cool water (for fresh spent fuel) or in giant concrete and steel casks (for older spent material). For both types, storage means either resting on the grounds of an operating nuclear power plant or on the site of a former nuclear power plant that has been torn down. The meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan this past spring highlighted the risks of such a storage plan when at least one of its spent-fuel pools lost water, causing the stored rods to melt.
The key is making sure the spent fuel stays cool—and finding a local community that accepts the risk of having it around. Such a "consent based" approach has worked well in Finland and Sweden, and highlights the flaws in the process that led to Yucca Mountain, which was essentially selected by congressional fiat in the 1980s.
In its draft report, the commission seems to have learned from the past and in essence is asking one or more communities and states to volunteer to host the nation's nuclear waste. Should such volunteers be found, whether for the short- or long-haul, the process would then begin anew of attempting to site and build a repository.
Possibly, fuel could be stored at existing facilities if they can be expanded. WIPP is one such option, but a problem with it is that its salt walls will slowly ooze down and permanently sequester the radioactive waste. Should future societies come to determine that spent nuclear fuel could be reprocessed or otherwise reused, it will require mining it out of the salt. In fact, Yucca Mountain in Nevada was designed specifically so that the stored spent nuclear fuel could be pulled out and reused if that became desirable. (Of course, some experts see the oozing salt to cover the used nuclear fuel as a positive attribute.)
Answering the questions about reprocessing or recycling spent nuclear fuel remains an open debate, the commission notes. Regardless, deep geologic disposal—either in a mine or a deep borehole—is the only "responsible way" to deal with the issue long-term, according to the commission's draft report, even if reprocessing becomes the norm. After all, the report notes, "all of the spent fuel reprocessing or recycle options already available or under active development at this time still generate waste."
The panel did not address where either an interim or long-term storage facility should be located, nor did it rule out the Yucca Mountain site. More than $9 billion have already been spent to make Yucca ready. Even so, the U.S. already has more nuclear waste than Yucca was designed to hold, so another site must be found—and the commission also suggests that the U.S. might want to take spent nuclear fuel from other countries to avoid nuclear weapon proliferation in future. Regardless, the commission estimates that the security savings from consolidating spent fuel alone "would be enough to pay for that [new] facility," or at least $350 million per year.
The group also recommends that a specific federal corporation take over waste-management duties from the DoE. That corporation would also obtain access to the roughly $750 million collected in fees each year for each kilowatt-hour of nuclear-generated electricity—a $25-billion waste disposal chest that has yet to be used. In the meantime, the DoE should continue to invest in nuclear technology research and development, both to improve existing reactors and to develop new nuclear technologies.
Without a long-term solution to spent nuclear fuel, a much anticipated nuclear renaissance in the U.S. remains unlikely. Nine states have explicit moratoria on new nuclear power until a storage solution emerges, although work proceeds on four new nuclear reactors in Georgia and South Carolina.
The commission will be taking comments on the draft report until October 31.
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16 Comments
Add CommentWIPP was originally designed and constructed with a full "hot cell" for High Level Waste handling. Originally WIPP was supposed to be for all nuclear wastes. 80's politics, not science, required that TRU waste-only be placed here to see how things went. 12 years of full operations and waste disposal without incident or release has shown this operation to be ready for the next step in America's nuclear waste cleanup.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisReprocessing spent nuclear fuel still produces a small amount of waste similar to what is interred in WIPP now. Although spent nuclear fuel might be best placed in an interim storage site (one is planned on land near the WIPP site near Carlsbad) to await reprocessing, America's defense-generated high level waste should be entombed in the salt beds near Carlsbad ASAP.
This waste, much of it in a calcined or glass-log form, cannot be reprocessed and is worthless (and sometimes dangerous) where it sits on the surface or in shallow graves in places like Idaho, Washington state, South Carolina and New York. This was also orphaned when Yucca Mtn. died.
Southeastern New Mexico is very supportive of the nuclear industry and WIPP in particular. We welcome expansion of the DOE waste mission in and around WIPP.
www.DevelopCarlsbad.org
We need to find a way to make the waste useful.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy is the calcined or glass-log form worthless?
Maybe you are "closed minded" to the possibility of re-use, if you can get "lots of money for waste storage"!
Is that the real deal?
The best place to bury nuclear waste is in sinking tectonic plates (subduction zones). Yes you have to go outside national borders to do this.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think Texas should volunteer to store all the nuclear waste. There is enough room and there is enough spent oil wells where billions of tons of nuclear waste can be stored...shoot some ocean water into the spent oil wells and you have your salt to keep the waste until it can be used for other purposes. Texas would be an excellent location for nuclear waste sites because it is center America and Mexico and it would create thousands of jobs there. You could even build two or three hundred nuclear reactors that could supply power for all of America and Mexico.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn anyone's vision, Texas is the perfect location for nuclear waste and nuclear power plants.
Before anyone starts complaining in how do we get the electricity form the nuclear reactors in Texas to the rest of America on the old grid; the solution is simple: You can use the gas and oil pipes, that is underground that carry fossil fuel throughout America, since they will no longer be needed because of the reinvent of the electric car, and run electric wires through the empty pipes and you have solved the problem. You can use the money you get from storing the radioactive waste to help build the nuclear reactors. The biggest winner in this method is Texas since they will be bringing in trillions of dollars every year.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOur city had a debate about having a legal 'red light' district to concentrate activities. there was general consensus. Then a city councillor proposed a referendum with the district and eventually the neighborhood that voted the highest 'for' the proposal getting to have it. End of idea.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt should be the same wit a nuclear waste site.. A polling of stares. Narrow it down to a half dozen and then the state most 'for' it, gets to have it. the county in that state most 'for it' gets it.
Nobody asked the people of Nevada...that was the issue with Yucca. I have friends who have fought it from day 1. Good idea or bad idea, you can't impose this type of facility without strong local support.
Storing Nuclear Waste is like saying, "I'm going to cap the effects of this firecracker after I light the fuse." Get real. Anywhere we "store" it is a joke. So, let's fire it off into the sun and if the one of the (thousands?) of rockets comes down because of a malfunction, will it be any less deadly than storing it to contaminate the region?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDrop the nuclear waste in the Mariana trench. 65,000 tons are just one ship load. Radiation will not escape from 35,000 ft of seawater.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI like the idea of sending nuclear waste to the sun but the cost of sending payload into space is $395 million per ton. 65,000 tons of waste will cost $25.6 trillion.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's cheaper to drop it in the Mariana trench. The freight cost to Guam is only $300 per ton.
Dr. Strangelove,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat you gonna do with your money of Mariana wakes up, and she will.
If buried in, place should be with neither volcanic nor earthquake activity, soil (artificial containers) high on Pb, Au and other elements capable of absorbing high energy radiation.
In general safe storage is more expensive than making safe energy. So just switch to green energy and possibly scarifies your ideas for space,ocean and other none sense places.
Until you can store/control tens of thousands of anti quarks, there is no way that waste is safe outside of safe tankers with the right matter surrounding it. No need for nuclear expansion.
It has always seemed reasonable to me to seek permission from the people who might be affected by waste. Perhaps incentives can be attached...like permanently and heavily discounted power within that district. Putting in a small nuclear unit as a reward for that population would seem reasonable and might even turn the fear and reluctance into a competition. Our nuclear waste problem has always been more educational and political than physical.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe idea of volunteering is very good, but it doesn't go far enough. We are asking communities to accept burden and risk, with a largely unknown process that could possibly make their communities dangerous, less attractive or unsuitable for other purposes. They should be compensated, and, considering what we are asking them to do, they should be generously compensated. At the very least, no waste site should be exempt from local property taxes and business income taxes from the manager of the site.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe should go even further, and provide a trust fund to benefit the members of the community (e.g. scholarships for the children, parks, schools, health care and public improvements.) The volunteering process might become a kind of auction, with each community's bid of how much it would require in annual contributions to the trust fund in order to make having a nuclear waste storage facility minimally "attractive".
The 'safe tankers' you refer to are a few feet of water in cooling pools of nuclear power plants near cities. 35,000 ft underwater in the middle of the sea is a safer place. $300 per ton freight cost is cheap.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisReprocess it! The French and Chinese are already doing this and it is the best approach.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI volunteer my basement for storage of some of it as long as it is inclosed in a layer of lead and then sealed in concrete. I won't charge a dime.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOther Americans and I jointly own an ideal location, and its ready to be put in use immediately; it is, of course, Yucca Mountain.
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