The common threads of openness, and community and state engagement, were woven through many of the presentations the commission heard as it starts to evaluate how the US should proceed with a new strategy for managing utilities' spent fuel and the US Department of Energy's highly radioactive nuclear defense waste.

The Obama administration established the commission to evaluate alternatives to the proposed nuclear waste repository project at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, roughly 95 miles outside Las Vegas.

The state of Nevada and its congressional delegation spent decades fighting the Yucca Mountain project, which had some support from rural counties, including Nye County, where the site is located.

Though the administration is moving toward termination of the Yucca Mountain project, the US will eventually need a repository to dispose of radioactive waste even if spent reactor fuel is reprocessed and used to make new nuclear fuel.

A new federal program will need support on all levels in order to succeed, but "keeping political support for 20 or so years is not easy," Seth Kirshenberg, executive director of the Energy Communities Alliance, told the commission. The ECA is an organization of communities near DOE nuclear facilities.

A community, he said, should be able to veto a nuclear waste facility it doesn't want. Maryland Delegate Sally Young, representing the National Conference of State Legislatures, said she believed that states also should have that right. Like other speakers, both Kirshenberg and Young stressed the need for a transparent process and for early interaction with communities and states.

Kirshenberg also urged the commission to consider Yucca Mountain, which the Obama administration has said is not part of the commission's mandate. "Whether you select it or not, you need to look at the lessons learned," he said.

Though the blue ribbon commission is not a siting commission, it has the option of recommending a new siting process. The commission is to present its final report with recommendations on a new national strategy for managing nuclear waste to Energy Secretary Steven Chu in January 2012.

Commission Co-Chairman Lee Hamilton said in his opening remarks Tuesday that three subcommittees have been established. Those panels will focus on reactor technologies, nuclear waste disposal, and nuclear waste transport and storage.

One nuclear industry official at the meeting said the reactor technologies subcommittee might evaluate what role some advanced reactor technologies would have in a closed nuclear fuel cycle--that is, one in which spent fuel is reprocessed.

--Elaine Hiruo, elaine_hiruo@platts.com