Expert Recommendations On Nuclear Waste May Fall On Deaf Ears – Yet Again

For decades now the United States government has been bamboozled by how to handle a very serious responsibility: how to “permanently” dispose of highly radioactive nuclear waste generated by atomic weapons programs as well as spent nuclear fuel from civilian nuclear reactors. You may recall plans to bury it all under Yucca Mountain, Nevada, or entomb it in salt layers 800 feet underneath Carlsbad, New Mexico.

The process of siting a permanent repository is as slow as plutonium decay. The United States Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board (NWTRB) just put out six overarching recommendations for the Department of Energy’s nuclear waste management program. These are to help in the development of a successful deep geologic repository program. They include:

1) Ensure an Integrated Organizational Approach

2) Anticipate Required Infrastructure and Personnel Needs

3) Expand the Research Paradigm to Embrace Hypothesis Testing

4) Apply an Iterative, Adaptive Approach in Developing and Managing the Nuclear Waste Management Program

5) Expand Engagement with the International Community to Benefit from Lessons Learned

6) Embrace Openness, Transparency, and Engagement

I don’t want to rain on their parade but we gave the country basically the same recommendations 10 years ago and we were ignored then. I’m sure these will be ignored yet again.

And it’s not like we scientists in this field haven’t always done 2 through 5. And numbers 1 and 6 are more of a bureaucratic thing.

President Obama stopped the Yucca Mountain disposal project in 2009, which was fine since it was a lousy choice of rock to put nuclear waste. But the President appointed a Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future to reassess nuclear power in this country and make recommendations.

Which they did. The BRC re-iterated the long-held decision by the scientific community that a deep geologic repository is the best option for permanent disposal of nuclear waste. I love the Pyramids, but only Nature makes things like rock formations that last millions of years, humans don’t.

The BRC drafted nine recommendations addressing nuclear energy and waste issues but a few of the recommendations, in particular, provided a new strategy to dispose of high-level nuclear waste and to manage spent nuclear fuel in the United States:

1) interim storage for spent nuclear fuel 

2) form a quasi-government entity to execute the program and take control of the Nuclear Waste Fund in order to do so

3) use a consent-based approach to siting these facilities that includes local, regional and state buy-in.

You might notice that both sets of recommendations, a decade apart, are more about how to deal with political and sociological issues, not science. The science is easy, has always been easy.

But getting the public and their elected officials to believe in science and to do the right thing, to put this waste in the right place geologically, is the primary hurdle to our disposal program. That’s why consent is the new buzzword for nuclear waste.

I understand the idea, but it is unlikely there will ever be full consent on such a technical subject in a country so divided in an era of growing anti-science. Of course, public consent on technical issues isn’t necessarily possible. We didn’t get public consent for how to get to the Moon. I don’t want public consent on how to treat cancer using a cutting-edge method. And the public doesn’t know enough about nuclear to tell the difference between waste from nuclear weapons and nuclear power.

That’s why we spend decades training experts.

The United States has the largest inventory of commercial spent nuclear fuel in the world, although it still totals a very small volume, less than a single high-school soccer stadium. We know what to do with it, and how much it will cost. We’ve already been disposing of nuclear waste since 1999 in the only operating deep geologic repository in the world, called the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, near Carslbad, New Mexico.

WIPP has been successfully disposing of nuclear weapons waste, including some very hot waste, 700 meters (2,130 ft) below the surface in the massive salt of the Salado Formation in southeastern New Mexico. It is the right rock in which it takes a billion years for water to move an inch. The project has been so inexpensive because it is the right rock.

This is what makes New Mexico’s strident opposition to a spent fuel interim storage facility nearby to WIPP so bizarre. ISF’s are the safest thing you can do. No one has ever been harmed from spent fuel in storage and no environmental effects have ever occurred from spent fuel in storage. It’s the only reasonable thing to do with old spent fuel waiting to be permanently disposed.

Besides, the state has benefitted greatly from WIPP and the people of the region really want the next phase. They know the unmatched safety record and high wages of nuclear-related industries are an even better economic boom than the region’s Oil&Gas boom and bust.

But the political winds in the state’s capital mean that the Governor, Attorney General, the Congressional delegation, and every other major political position, must be opposed to anything nuclear however much it hurts that part of the state.

There are no measureable risks from spent fuel stored in dry casks. Statistically, it’s much safer to store spent nuclear fuel in dry casks than it is to cross the street in a crosswalk with the light. Much safer. It’s also what both the BRC and the latest NWTRB recommendations support. Plus, it’s the best thing to do with this waste while we wait for the ultimate disposal site to be chosen.

Which should be near WIPP anyway, in the same salt formation which is so perfect for this purpose. It’s what the National Academy of Science chose decades ago, and what we’ve found still to be the case ever since.

But we as a people don’t seem to care about science anymore, nor whatever experts recommend, so NWTRB’s recommendations probably won’t move this issue forward either.