Friday, 15 September, 2006

by Ben Lando
M&C News

WASHINGTON, DC, United States (UPI) -- Washington was debating this week how to address the U.S. nuclear waste issue as permanent storage plans were criticized and a short-term storage strategy was both promoted and panned, while the nuclear industry waits to build more plants.

Reactors at the 103 U.S. civilian nuclear plants churn out about 2,000 metric tons of highly radioactive byproduct a year while about 54,000 metric tons are cooling or being stored now. The waste has been waiting for a geological repository in Nevada to open, now eight years after its deadline.

In 1954 Congress took over the responsibility of waste from commercial nuclear plants with the goal of storing it until it becomes safe -- tens of thousands of years.

While the idea first was that two repositories, in either side of the country, would be ideal, Congress, absent completed scientific study (still ongoing) and without federal nuclear regulator approval, decided in 2002 that the only place to store the waste is deep inside Yucca Mountain, nearly 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Congress held four separate hearings on various aspects of the nuclear waste debate this week, while the nuclear industry lobby urged it to fast-track a Yucca solution and the Senate`s leading nuclear energy proponent said he`s given up on legislation this session but plans to unveil the ultimate compromise after January.

While the approach Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., favors, tacked onto an appropriations bill, would clear both current plants of their waste holdings and a path for new nuclear plants, it isn`t getting the best reception.

Domenici calls for interim storage sites throughout the country to hold all current and future nuclear waste until a permanent site is ready -- an obligation of government set in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 and something necessary for the nuclear industry to move forward on new projects (transportation issues notwithstanding since how to get the waste where is an as of yet unresolved problem).

But 10 state attorneys general sent a letter this week to Domenici and provision co-author, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., voicing complaints it would violate local jurisdiction of land and environmental laws, among others. (In a move unrelated to the legislation but fully connected to the debate, the Interior Department last week shot down an interim storage site in Utah over doubts of a permanent repository being completed).

And many members at a House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality hearing Wednesday rallied around a promise that interim storage would never be approved by them, questioning if interim storage would take away from Yucca.

The pro-nuclear Nuclear Energy Institute is in favor of a mixed-bag approach that is Yucca-heavy, but any debate is good debate, spokesman Steve Kerekes told United Press International.

'We`re quite pleased that the issue is before congress, that there are hearings and people are talking about solutions to the used fuel challenges that confront the country.'

The NEI purchased two-weeks worth of ads in major Beltway newspapers pushing a 'Fix Yucca Mountain' agenda as both a responsibility of the government and one that will reduce the 'uncertainty' surrounding new nuclear projects.

'A lot of people are looking at waste as the thing that is going to make or break the expansion prospects in the United States over the next decade or so, and so they`re focusing on it,' said John Holdren, director of Harvard University`s Science, Technology and Public Policy program.

Holdren, co-chair of the National Commission on Energy Policy, said 'it is conceivable that Yucca Mountain will never go,' which means if there`s no interim, off-site storage, the waste will stay at the plants.

'That`s the one problem that has to be solved if nuclear energy is going to play a bigger role is waste.'

Paul Gunter, director of the Reactor Watchdog Project at the anti-nuclear group Nuclear Information and Resource Service, said any talk of new nuclear plants is putting the cart before the horse.

'The first step in responsibly managing nuclear waste problem is to stop generating it,' Gunter said. 'If I was a plumber looking to fix your toilet, the first thing you have to do is stop using it.'

While federal approval is necessary for any new nuclear plants, money may be the key decider between a Yucca-only or interim-also plan.

At the House hearing Wednesday, both Luis Reyes, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission`s executive director for operations, and Edward Sproat, director of the U.S. Energy Department`s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, said they`d need more funding to simultaneously work on and approve interim storage and Yucca Mountain.

Sproat said the department will issue a funding scheme for Yucca by November, to match its timeline for an application to the NRC by 2008 and opening by 2017, which he said was just 'the best achievable, not most probable' schedule.