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Energy chief defends Yucca Mountain determination
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STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU
Updated: Apr. 10, 2012 | 10:52 a.m.
WASHINGTON -- Energy Secretary Steven Chu on Thursday defended the decision to terminate the Yucca Mountain program, telling senators at a budget hearing the Nevada repository plan is being set aside in a search for "better solutions."
Chu encountered push-back from several Republican senators on the decision during a hearing on the Energy Department's fiscal 2011 budget.
In his first appearance before Congress since announcing he would withdraw a construction application for the Nevada site, Chu said ending the repository program is a turn, and not an end, to the government's efforts to managing radioactive spent fuel from nuclear plants.
"We are still going to move forward," Chu said. "We don't think the pulling of the Yucca application means we are at a standstill, but I do believe there are better solutions."
Chu told senators he would rely on a 15-member commission that was named last week to recommend a path forward after a two-year study.
But Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., questioned the need for a panel. He also questioned whether banks will back the construction of new nuclear plants if the waste issue is unsettled.
"We have to pick a path and go for it," Burr said. "We either know something and we should do it, or we are going to kick this can down the road, which I am tired of doing."
Chu said solutions would be found. "Given that, there is no reason to be a little bit tepid" about building new reactors, he said.
Chu said "we have decades" to decide because the Nuclear Regulatory Commission thinks that keeping radioactive waste at power plants is safe for at least another 50 years.
Burr and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, challenged the decision to continue charging nuclear power consumers fees for repository construction. The nuclear waste fund has raised $33 billion in fees and interest since 1983.
"You are the one who will have to tell ratepayers there is not a plan for permanent storage but they are going to continue to be soaked by the federal government," Burr said. "They have been paying into this for years, and they have nothing."
In answer to a question from Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., about the potential to reprocess nuclear waste, Chu said current technology is not the answer because it is too expensive and because the process creates nuclear weapons-grade byproducts.
There might be other answers, Chu said, including the possibility of extracting more energy from nuclear fuel as it initially is burned to generate electricity.
"It is not clear what the path is, but that is what research is about," he said.
Contact Stephens Washington Bureau Chief Steve Tetreault at stetreault@stephensmedia.com or 202-783-1760.
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"The nuclear waste fund has raised $33 billion in fees and interest since 1983."
If you think Nevadans could use some of that money right now, go sign up at Nevadans for Carbon-Free Energy:
http://nv4cfe.org
PS -
Please let me be clear that I am not necessarily advocating that Yucca Mountain be kept alive. I am advocating that we do what's best for Nevada and our country. If someone else has a better idea than Yucca Mountain, let's hear it now.
Recently the Weather Channel has been running a documentary on the possibility for a devastating earthquake in Las Vegas. While this possibility technically exists, the program presents absolutely no evidence to support it's title: "It Could Happen Tomorrow." That fact alone, that it could happen tomorrow, does not prove that it WILL happen tomorrow.
Senator Reid: Sir, I respectfully suggest that you listen to your constituents. I suspect you will find that the majority of them are far more worried about the possibility of losing their jobs or their homes, under the current economic conditions, than they are of some theoretically possible natural or man-made disaster.
Thank you all for your time.
Senator Reid has said that it is safer to store nuclear waste in containment pools at reactors than to store it at Yucca Mountain. Secretary Chu says the waste can safely be stored in those pools for potentially another fifty years.
I agree with other commentors in this thread, that no evidence has been presented to support these claims. Presumably "safer than Yucca Mountain" means that the pools would take longer to leak than Yucca Mountain. Since Yucca Mountain was supposed to be without leaks for at least a million years, does that mean those pools will take much longer than a million years to leak? Are there any documented studies to back that up? Can we show that no existing containment pools have ever leaked?
For the sake of reducing global climate change, we are supposedly interested in reducing our dependence on burning fossil fuels. I'm still waiting for someone to explain how we are supposed to do that without nuclear power. If I understand Senator Reid and Secretary Chu correctly, we will do it by developing some as-yet non-existent solar technology. What if it takes fifty years? All the current thinking is that the climate will be irrevocably damaged by then.
I completely agree with Secretary Chu that cleaner burning reactors are a great idea. Let's make as little new nuclear waste as possible. But what about the nuclear waste that already exists? If reprocessing is off the table, then new reactors will do nothing whatsoever for it.
Finally, it sounds like we will continue to buy more expensive foreign oil than we can afford, for potentially as much as fifty more years. I suggest we will be flat broke long before then.