Nuclear waste safe on site
Tuesday, 19 September, 2006
by Ben Lando
M&C News
Adm. Frank L. 'Skip' Bowman, U.S. Navy, retired, president and chief executive officer of the Nuclear Energy Institute, said storing highly radioactive nuclear waste at the plants, where it was produced, poses no threat.
'Leaving used fuel exactly where it is right now ... is perfectly safe,' Bowman said Monday at a Defense Department program on energy policy.
Still, he is in favor or a more progressive approach to storing the 2,000 metric tons of byproduct produced at the 103 civilian nuclear plants across the country each year in a geologic repository and, until that opens, at interim sites.
Bowman spoke to industry, government and military officials, and others interested in 'Energy: A Conversation About Our National Addiction,' a monthly speaking series on various energy topics hosted by the Naval Postgraduate School`s Cebrowski Institute.
There are about 54,000 metric tons of nuclear waste cooling or being stored now, an amount growing not only in size but in importance in the debate over nuclear power in the United States.
By late next year, the first of what could be applications for about 27 new nuclear reactors are expected to be submitted to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (no new nuclear plant has been approved since 1978 and none have come online since 1996).
Alan Beamon, director of coal and electrical power forecasting at the Energy Information Administration, the U.S. Energy Department`s data arm, said an annual prediction made late last year that U.S. nuclear capacity will increase by 9,000 megawatts by 2030 -- 6,000 megawatts from new reactors -- is probably too low an estimate (a fresh forecast will be released soon).
What to do with the waste is a question seen as a costly roadblock to adding more nuclear power to the U.S. energy feed -- four hearings on aspects of the issue were held last week by four different congressional subcommittees.
'It is clear to me that our nuclear energy strategy must not only address new plants, but must solve the waste problem as well,' said Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., at a hearing Thursday. The chairman of the Senate Energy and Commerce Committee is one of Congress` most pro-nuclear advocates.
Although Congress in 1954 took ownership over nuclear waste produced at U.S. plants, eventually deciding it should be stored deep within Yucca Mountain, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, the waste is far from heading there.
After 20 years and $10 billion later the U.S. Energy Department, fighting legal challenges and internal incompetence, has yet to apply to the NRC to open the site. A timeline recently set to open Yucca Mountain by 2017 is somewhat of a new joke in Washington -- especially after Edward Sproat, director of the Energy Department`s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, told a House subcommittee last week the timeline is 'the best achievable, not most probable.'
While the NEI`s Bowman is 'not Yucca or bust,' he says it should be opened -- and remain open indefinitely -- and viewed as an ever-evolving repository for nuclear waste, improving as new technology is applied, including innovations in storage and reprocessing.
In the meantime, interim storage sites should be set up, but not using the same method used to choose Yucca Mountain. 'No more picking a state and forcing it down somebody`s throat,' said Bowman, adding states could see it as an economic boon and wouldn`t put up the fight Nevada has. (Nevada`s congressional delegation and its state government oppose Yucca Mountain as is, fighting it in the court system, legislative and bureaucratic process, a battle Bowman said anyone in their position would wage.)
Still, keeping the waste at the nuclear plants -- whether temporarily or permanently -- is a safe option, Bowman said. But it`s not viable for the industry.
A survey by Bisconti Research Inc., conducted for NEI in May, found 68 percent of the public 'favors' nuclear energy (the survey had a 3 percent margin of error), an approval rating Bowman said would erode if there was no plan to move the nuclear waste.
(A study conducted in July by Deloitte & Touche USA LLP, however, found only 49 percent of the public 'favor' nuclear power and only two-thirds of those support a new plant within 20 miles of where they live. It had a 3.1 percent margin of error.)
Gilbert Brown, director and professor at University of Massachusetts Lowell`s Nuclear Engineering Program, also thinks on-site storage of nuclear waste is safe, but the waste issue isn`t a business blocker for new nuclear plants.
'It`s not going to hamstring the industry in any greater or lesser way than it already does,' Brown told United Press International. 'I don`t view it as a show stopper.'