Bigger problems: Finding places to store all of the low-level nuclear waste might be just as big of a challenge as finding places for the super-toxic stuff.
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While President Obama's plan to find alternatives to storing high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, Nev., is grabbing headlines, another problem has begun threatening license applications for new reactors.
What can be done with low-level nuclear waste?
There are dwindling places to put low-level nuclear waste – contaminated resins, filters, wood, paper, plastics, pipes, structural steel and pressure vessels that can be hazardous for up to 500 years. And nuclear-power opponent groups are filing and winning legal fights to force utilities to present disposal plans for low-level waste before they can build a new reactor.
"I'm going to argue low-level waste is a bigger issue than high-level waste right now," Edward Sproat, then-director of the Energy Department's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, warned at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event last fall.
While the nuclear industry is unhappy about Yucca Mountain's impending demise, officials recognize it will not immediately threaten the 17 license applications filed for new reactors. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has determined that spent fuel can be stored on-site for the next century and is reviewing a possible extension of that.
But the low-level waste problem is already affecting reactor applications.
The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy this month won a legal contention from the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board against Southern Nuclear Operating's Vogtle reactor license application for Georgia. The same contention has already been granted in reviews of the Tennessee Valley Authority's Bellefonte application in Alabama; Unistar's Calvert Cliffs, Md., application; and Dominion Power's North Anna application in Virginia.
Advocacy groups plan to similarly contest Progress Energy's Levy County, Fla., application and have already filed against Detroit Edison's Fermi application.
Sara Barczak, program director for the Southern Alliance, said the focus on low-level waste represents a significant shift for regulators and utilities. "I think most people, when they see 'low level,' they say, 'Oh, low level of radioactivity,' but the definition of low level is so broad," she said.
U.S. low-level waste comes from a wide range of places, including hospitals and laboratories, but the greatest – and most toxic – volume is produced by the Energy Department and the 104 commercial nuclear reactors.
Toxic for up to 100 years, Class A waste has just three storage options – sites at Clive, Utah; Richland, Wash.; and Barnwell, S.C. Only Richland and Barnwell accept Class B waste, which is toxic for up to 300 years, and Class C, toxic up to 500 years.
But there is another complication: Barnwell closed its gates to all states but Connecticut, New Jersey and South Carolina last summer. And Richland only accepts waste from 11 states in the Northwest and Rocky Mountain compacts.
That means 36 states with reactors, hospitals and other industry with radioactive materials have no place to send much of their waste.
Short-term fixes
Existing disposal facilities have adequate capacity for most low-level radioactive waste and are accessible to waste generators in the short term, but constraints on the long-term disposal of class B and C wastes have become clear, according to a report by the Government Accountability Office last year.
"The nuclear industry has really been hiding their head in the sand about the waste for all issues," said Michael Mariotte, executive director of the nonprofit Nuclear Information and Resource Service, which opposes nuclear power.
Mariotte said utilities that want to build new reactors have known for 10 years that Barnwell would close but failed to include on-site storage or options for handling low-level radioactive waste in their license applications.
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8 Comments
Add CommentMisanthropes hard at work.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEvery legal battle is another cut in the planned "death of a thousand cuts" for the nuclear industry. Keep up the good work. Any obstacle raises the cost and slows them down.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnother excellent way to obstruct the nuclear industry is to hire as many nuclear engineers as possible in the renewable energy industry. This works two ways. (1) It brings talented people in and converts them to renewable energy advocates, and (2) it starves the nuclear industry of qualified personnel.
Kudos to Theodore for disclosing the game plan.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUnfortunately for him, nuclear is renewable energy. It can produce more fuel than it uses.
Here is a modest proposal: a law allowing the winner to collect costs (collectively and individually) from the losers of such contests.
Maybe there should be a way to make low level waste useful. I'd drive a vehicle that ran a turbine off of contaminated reactor pipes, heck, if condensed enough the energy density would be so that I wouldn't have to refuel the vehicle for 100+ years.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe definition of renewable energy is that it is "naturally replenished." Nuclear fuel is like coal, it is mined then burned; it is not renewable.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this<em>"Naturally replenished"</em>. An interesting, if not natural, definition. Restricts acceptable options to solar, tidal, wind, hydro, wood, charcoal, dung, and perhaps a few others. Rejects methane capture, fission, fusion, anything that is recycled (such as composting this article). Limits world population to 1 billion or less.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't actually care whether your definition of renewable includes nuclear or not. Mine doesn't. Giving people nuclear materials to play with is like giving a gun to a monkey. Who do you blame when he shoots somebody? You blame the person who gave him the gun.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe have a world filled with people who are eager to kill each other for any reason you can imagine. They don't need nuclear weapons. Let them use guns. Limit the damage to bullet holes and splattered body parts. We need planet earth to become a nuclear-free zone. The growth of nuclear energy is contrary to that goal.
Couldn't they pump it down into empty oil wells, I think they are deep enough and if they are away from any areas that are inhabited it would be safe, they would have to make sure there is no groundwater nearby. Another option is space; there is a risk if the rocket explodes then it turns into a dirty bomb. Possibly they can put the waste in concrete boxes and place it in the deepest ocean trenches.
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