Federal panel seeks big changes to ‘broken’ nuke waste policy

“The Obama Administration’s decision to halt work on a repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada is but the latest indicator of a policy that has been troubled for decades and has now all but completely broken down,” the report states.

It makes the case that waste policy became over-reliant on the congressional selection of Yucca Mountain as the site for a permanent repository, although the commission doesn’t offer an opinion on the White House effort to scuttle the project or whether Yucca is a suitable site.

“The United States has traveled nearly 25 years down the current path only to come to a point where continuing to rely on the same approach seems destined to bring further controversy, litigation, and protracted delay,” adds the report.

The report says the Nuclear Waste Policy Act should be amended to allow a new “consent-based” process to select and evaluate storage and disposal facilities.

It calls for changing the law to allow construction of interim storage sites even before a permanent repository is licensed.

“One or more consolidated storage facilities will be required, independent of the schedule for opening a repository. The Act should be modified to allow for multiple storage facilities with adequate capacity to be sited, licensed, and constructed when needed,” it states.

However, the panel also says that permanent geologic disposal sites will be needed, recommending “Prompt efforts to develop, as expeditiously as possible, one or more permanent deep geological facilities.”

The commission’s seven principal recommendations also include taking nuclear waste management away from the Energy Department and creating a new, congressionally-chartered organization to handle the job.

“The central task of the new organization would be to site, license, build, and operate facilities for the consolidated interim storage and final disposal of civilian and defense spent fuel and high-level nuclear waste within a reasonable timeframe,” the report states.

The commission also argues that legislation is needed to ensure access to dedicated funding for federal waste disposal efforts, noting that current rules make it too difficult to access fees that utilities have long paid into the federal Nuclear Waste Fund.

“The Fund does not work as intended. A series of Executive Branch and Congressional actions has made annual fee revenues (approximately $750 million per year) and the unspent $25 billion balance in the Fund effectively inaccessible to the waste program. Instead, the waste program must compete for federal funding each year and is therefore subject to exactly the budget constraints and uncertainties that the Fund was created to avoid. This situation must be remedied to allow the program to succeed,” the draft report notes.

The commission is helmed by former Brent Scowcroft, national security adviser, and Lee Hamilton, the former congressman who helped lead the commission that probed the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. A final set of recommendations is slated for release in January.

The report makes the case that failing to alter U.S. policy will have profound consequences.

It states:

Put simply, this nation’s failure to come to grips with the nuclear waste issue has already proved damaging and costly and it will be more damaging and more costly the longer it continues: damaging to prospects for maintaining a potentially important energy supply option for the future, damaging to state–federal relations and public confidence in the federal government’s competence, and damaging to America’s standing in the world — not only as a source of nuclear technology and policy expertise but as a leader on global issues of nuclear safety, non-proliferation, and security.

Continued stalemate is also costly — to utility ratepayers, to communities that have become unwilling hosts of long-term nuclear waste storage facilities, and to U.S. taxpayers who face mounting liabilities, already running into billions of dollars, as a result of the failure by both the executive and legislative branches to meet federal waste management commitments.

An Energy Department spokesman said that Energy Secretary Steven Chu appreciates the commission’s work to create a “thoughtful report,” but steered clear of weighing in on specific recommendations.

“The interim report issued today is a strong step toward finding a workable solution to the challenges of the back end of the fuel cycle,” said spokesman Damien LaVera.

He said the Obama administration believes nuclear energy is an important part of a “clean energy future.”

“As part of our commitment to restarting the American nuclear industry and creating thousands of new jobs and export opportunities in the process, we are committed to finding a sustainable approach to assuring safe, secure long-term disposal of used nuclear fuel and nuclear waste,” LaVera said.

—This post was updated at 10:30 a.m.