Washington (Platts)--26Mar2010/627 pm EDT/2227 GMT

A high-level commission looking at options for radioactive waste in the US will not review the Obama's administration's recent decision to scuttle long-term plans for a waste repository at Yucca Mountain, although it will consider lessons learned from the experience, a key member said Friday.

Co-Chairman Lee Hamilton of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future told reporters in response to a question following the commission meeting that there is value in learning from past experiences. His Co-Chairman Brent Scowcroft, however, responded that while the charter of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future is broad, it does not include making recommendations for specific sites.

On Thursday, during the panel's opening meeting, US Energy Secretary Steven Chu told the group that he wanted it to keep its focus on the future instead of on the past or on the terminated repository project at Yucca Mountain, Nevada.

Hamilton described to reporters the task before the commission as being "daunting" after the panel wrapped up a day and a half of presentations and discussions in Washington aimed at helping it map out how it will proceed.

Commission members will now develop a work plan, Scowcroft said. He was unable to estimate how long that might take but indicated it is important that work be completed as soon as possible.

The panel has to submit its final report and recommendations to Chu in 24 months. A draft report is due in 18 months, a schedule that some members referred to Friday, noting that the commission only has 15 members and 18 months to get the work done.

"We would like to finish before the two years expire, but we don't know at this time if we can make it," Hamilton told reporters about when the commission would complete its work.

It appeared from the discussion Friday that the panel will take an integrated approach to its review of the waste issue. Technology at the front-end of the fuel cycle, such as new reactor technology, likely will be reviewed because the technology used there can affect the waste stream at the back end of the cycle.

Commission member Richard Meserve suggested that subcommittees be established and staffed to help the panel gather and digest information. Spent fuel reprocessing, long-term storage and disposal could be the focus of three separate subcommittees, he said. The commission likely will address the issue of subcommittees as it puts together a work plan. The number of subcommittees established would not necessarily be limited to three.

Other suggestions that commission members offered Friday included having an energy economist on staff and making use of the expertise of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, an independent panel established to monitor technical issues for the US Department of Energy's nuclear waste program.

Jack Spencer, a nuclear energy research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, urged the commission to put the Yucca Mountain project back in play, saying it should use this time to "recalibrate" DOE's approach. Spencer was among the more than 20 members of the audience who addressed the commission during the public comment period.

Nevada should have more control over the project, Spencer said. He added that in order to come up with a solution, the repository program "has to be rooted in the market place" and that more control also should be placed in the hands of the companies that produced the waste. That, he said, should "highly incentivize" them to find a solution.

"We made nuclear waste, and we should be responsible for it. We should not just kick the trash down the road for our grandchildren to handle," said Lake Barrett, a former DOE deputy director of the repository program who was speaking as a private citizen. "Yucca Mountain," he said, "is the legally designated repository site."

Congress in 1987 selected Yucca Mountain as the nation's sole candidate for a deep-geologic repository. Fifteen years later federal lawmakers endorsed President George W. Bush's recommendation that the site be developed for a high-level nuclear waste repository.

In the face of years of opposition from Nevada residents and environmentalists, however, the DOE March 3 filed a motion with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to withdraw with prejudice its repository license application, a move that would preclude that application from ever being resubmitted to NRC.

--Elaine Hiruo, elaine_hiruo@platts.com