US won't use Yucca Mountain to store unrecycled waste:
Domenici
Washington (Platts)--16May2006
The United States will not store unrecycled spent nuclear fuel at the
proposed Yucca Mountain, Nevada, repository and must instead work to develop
recycling and interim storage plans, Senate Energy and Natural Resources
Committee Chairman Pete Domenici said Tuesday.
Speaking at a hearing on Yucca Mountain legislation, the New Mexico
Republican said it would be difficult to craft a bill addressing problems that
will take so long to solve. But he said reprocessing and interim storage
programs will have to be in place before the Nevada repository is opened, and
estimated that it could take the country 25 years to develop the programs. The
senator said a short-term solution is to leave the waste at reactor sites,
where it is currently stored.
"We are not going to be putting the spent fuel rods in Yucca Mountain to
me it is quite obvious," Domenici said. "We are kind of kidding ourselves but
we don't want to give up" on building the repository.
Domenici, who is developing his own legislation after introducing earlier
this year an administration proposal at the White House's request, said Nevada
will likely not object to Yucca Mountain after the waste has been recycled. He
said the administration's bill falls short because it doesn't present a
complete solution to the nuclear waste problem.
"Confusion is rampant, time frames are all out of whack and the
administration's bill has a big vacuum in it because it does not address
interim storage," Domenici said. He added that the licensing process
envisioned by the Department of Energy in the administration bill "may not be
relevant" because of the different characteristics of waste that would be
stored there once waste is recycled.
---Dan Whitten, daniel_whitten@platts.com
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