Ken Silverstein | Oct 28, 2013

Resolving the issue of long-term nuclear waste storage seems impermeable. Yucca Mountain is alive, but barely. Other ideas are plausible, but remote.

Right now, used nuclear fuel rods are cooled in pools for up to five years before they are stored in above-ground concrete-encased barrels. That was to be a temporary solution until a permanent storage site was found. Yucca Mountain was picked in 1987 and $12 billion later, engineers have been unable to prove that water would not leach into the burial site. That has forced designers to keep developing new barriers that have made the project cost-prohibitive.

But better options may exist. Consider: the U.S. Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Program (WIPP), a massive salt formation in southeastern New Mexico that has been accepting waste from nuclear weapons for 14 years. But it is not permitted to take in low-level spent fuel from commercial nuclear reactors.

“WIPP already has the logistics solved, is environmentally safer, faster and cheaper than any alternative, has the infrastructure and workforce already in place, and has regional community acceptance of about 90 percent, says Jim Conca, director of the Center for Laboratory Sciences for RJLee Group. “There would have to be changes made to various laws, statutes, permits and agreements, but those would be much easier and faster than either resurrecting Yucca Mountain or starting from scratch to find a third location.”

Salt formations are better repositories than the hard rock at Yucca Mountain, he adds. Rocks can fracture. Salt does not. And the best such salt formations are in New Mexico and Texas. As for WIPP: It is 16 square miles of a 10,000-square mile, 2,000-foot thick salt layer, which is the tightest rock on earth.

Still, obstacles abound: Administrative changes are necessary to allow the transport and disposal of spent fuel from the current interim sites to WIPP. And, political resistance is also omnipresent. Moreover:

“Many scientists for decades have considered salt to have serious deficiencies in comparison to some other geologic formations ... because such heat-generating waste can rapidly deform salt and create instability that could endanger workers and release radioactivity,” says the Southwest Research and Information Center in New Mexico. “In addition, the WIPP site is surrounded by active oil and natural gas production facilities and reserves underlie the waste disposal area, which can result in breaches and releases of radioactivity.”

About 70,000 tons of nuclear waste is now present in 30 states. Illinois, New York State, Pennsylvania and South Carolina are the biggest hosts. Reactors, meanwhile, are generating about 2,000 additional tons a year.

Legally Alive

The D.C. Court of Appeals ruled in a 2-to-1 decision earlier this year that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission must follow the law and continue its analysis into whether Yucca Mountain would be a safe permanent repository. Legally, the project is alive but politically, it stands little chance of becoming permanent repository, especially because the Senate Majority Leader opposes the deal and he represents Nevada. 



Meantime, Canada is in the midst of making a choice that could affect millions of  Americans. Ontario Power Generation wants to store its used nuclear material near Lake Huron’s shorelines. A panel there will issue its finding so that the Canadian government can decide whether it would proceed. The facility would be more than 2,200 feet below the earth in a layer of limestone, reports the Detroit Free Press.

The paper says that Canadian residents favor the long-range disposal site over the current interim storage sites. But it is the American side that opposes it, largely because residents and commercial operators fear that such a project would severely disrupt their lives.

But the general debate over disposal of spent nuclear fuel has infused other compelling ideas, namely reprocessing: It separates the uranium and the plutonium from the rest of the nuclear waste, allowing plant operators to get between 20 percent and 30 percent more use from the uranium. The concern is that some of the materials could be re-used to make nuclear weapons.

However, Electricite de France and Areva reprocess irradiated fuel and about 17 percent of France’s electricity is recycled from such nuclear waste. Kansai Electric Power Co. in Japan, meanwhile, uses reprocessed nuclear fuel from France. Both countries mix uranium and plutonium, or MOX. That is an alternative to low-enriched uranium.

“The need for a new strategy is urgent, not just to address these damages and costs but because this generation has a fundamental, ethical obligation to avoid burdening future generations with the entire task of finding a safe, permanent solution for managing hazardous nuclear materials they had no part in creating,” says the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future formed in 2010.

The political divide, though, is bigger than the scientific split. Until those sentiments are addressed, nuclear waste won’t leave its current home. 


Twitter: @Ken_Silverstein

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