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Senate panel seeks new nuclear waste repository
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Lee Hamilton
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Brent Scowcroft
STEPHENS WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON -- With Yucca Mountain politically unviable, energy policy leaders in the U.S. Senate are working on an "action plan" to address the urgent need to find a permanent disposal site for nuclear waste.
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee held a hearing Thursday to consider a report from the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future that stressed the need for a "consent-based" approach to selecting a disposal site.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the ranking Republican on the panel, complained that billions of dollars have been spent and decades lost to secure Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the repository but that the political reality requires a new approach.
"I have long been a supporter of Yucca but I guess if you look at the writing on the wall, it is out. If that's not going to happen, we've got to get moving on another solution," Murkowski said.
Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., who chairs the committee, said that Congress short-circuited the siting process in 1987 and focused all its efforts on Yucca Mountain.
"That has now proved to have been a mistake. The Blue Ribbon Commission has provided us with a road map for putting the program back on track," he said.
Murkowski and Bingaman joined several months ago with the leaders of the Senate Appropriations energy subcommittee -- Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn. -- to form a group to determine what actions Congress should take on nuclear waste. The bipartisan foursome was given a briefing on a draft of the commission's report in December.
Lee Hamilton and Brent Scowcroft, the co-chairmen of the Blue Ribbon Commission, told the Senate Energy Committee that it was a costly mistake to dictate Yucca Mountain as the nation's nuclear waste repository.
"You have to have the buy-in of the local community or it's not going to work," Hamilton said. "Consent is difficult and hard. but we think it is the only way to go."
The interests of all stakeholders must be "adequately protected and enhanced," Scowcroft said.
Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho, questioned whether a consent-based approach would work given that opposition to Yucca Mountain came from outside Nye County.
"Nye County commissioners were fully on board with it. and we won't do it," Risch said.
Scowcroft and Hamilton pointed to successes in Finland, Sweden and Spain as examples of where communities are on board with hosting nuclear waste depositories. They also noted that in Carlsbad, N.M., the community has embraced a low-level nuclear repository.
Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., who is a member of the committee, arrived about an hour into the hearing to deliver a strong statement in support of the commission's recommendations and against disposing of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Calling it a decades-long boondoggle, Heller said Yucca Mountain has been plagued by mismanagement and safety questions that have left many Nevadans distrustful of the federal effort to force the depository on them.
"I feel Nevadans have a right to feel safe in their own backyards," he said.
Heller said he supports a consent-based approach that includes a broader constituency than local officials. Nevada's congressional delegation, governor and the majority of the state Legislature oppose Yucca, Heller said.
Hamilton said it would probably take Congress several years to turn the commission's recommendations into legislative action. But, he urged them to start.
"What I don't want to see happen is for everything to come to a stop," he said.
Contact Stephens Washington Bureau reporter Peter Urban at purban@stephensmedia.com or 202-783-1760.
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Tom, thanks for that defense.
Pete, sorry you feel I have betrayed you and others, but the reality is that the forces arrayed against Yucca are insurmountable. The planned repository would have been safe. We made that case and we made it well. NRC staff agreed with us. But the cost is much higher than it needs to be because we are fighting dripping water (whether real or not, it was assumed) and oxygen in Yucca. Those expensive engineered barriers are not necessary in clay or salt because there is no oxygen, nor is there much water movement in clay, and there is zero water movement in salt or the salt wouldn't be there.
I got in big trouble in 2002 telling MSNBC we'd be better off in a clay bed in North or South Dakota. The only thing that has changed is that I now work in a salt repository, and that made me realize that what I always liked about clay is also true for salt, maybe even more so. This salt has been here for 250 million years, since before the dinosaurs! It will be here a while longer without water, oxygen, or fractures, and it is easy to mine and requires no special-metal engineered barriers. Plus the state and locality are willing to discuss disposal of higher-level wastes here. The country should jump at this opportunity and not continue to fight the Yuccca fight, in my opinion. I feel bad for my former Yucca colleagues. I went through foreclosure to get out from under my house (which sold for 40% of what I owed!) to be able to 'start over' in New Mexico. Starting over means something very different at my current age than it did the last time I had to move to find work (in 1991 when I was a young 46 and came to Las Vegas to work on Yucca).
Fortunes are made when paradigms change. The unquestioned cliché that this material is “waste” needs to be challenged.
The fact is, there remains vast amounts of energy in this once-used LWR fuel. The decay heat being given off by the 3% of the material that are fission products is reliable and predictable to a fraction of a calorie per gram. In fact it is so reliable that no one knows how to turn it off. This “problem” is in fact a solution to any process that can utilize a constant source of low-grade heat over a period of several centuries. Get the fear-mongerers out of the way and send in the engineers.
The remaining 97%, consisting of fissionable uranium or transuranic isotopes, is capable of producing massive amounts of energy in Generation IV fast-neutron spectrum reactors. There is enough fissionable material already mined, processed, and refined already on US soil to supply the country with electric power for more than a century if it is utilized properly, and not just buried in a ludicrously expensive desert tomb.
It has been estimated that the value of electricity that could be generated from this “waste”, if utilized in a Gen IV reactor, would be $30 Trillion: http://bravenewclimate.com/about/faq
If Nevadans are smart, they will not only charge a hefty fee for accepting the “waste”, but will insist on taking title to it, thereby positioning themselves as the Saudi Arabia of Gen IV atomic fuel.
@ Pete: No, I don't think Abe has "sold out". Although I agree that Yucca Mountain is still the best solution to the nuclear waste problem that is CURRENTLY AVAILABLE, the first priority is simply solving the nuclear waste problem. With or without Yucca Mountain. Personally, I think Abe et al are simply looking ahead. And while we're at it, we should be solving our nation's larger energy problems. Coming up with a coherent, rational national energy policy BEFORE we go broke trying to import too much foreign oil, and WITHOUT allowing that energy policy to be hijacked by radical environmentalists who want to force it in directions that involve too much reliance on costly technologies that do not yet exist, to exploit unreliable intermittent energy sources (solar and wind). Not to mention the real environmental risks of those supposedly clean, environmentally friendly intermittent-energy-source technologies.
@ Alvinjh: Absolutely right. Well spoken. When I was living in LA many years ago, I used to have very similar thoughts - wondering how so many people could be so worried about earthquakes, and not give a second thought to driving on LA freeways every day!
One more thing JR--if you are afraid of the nuclear waste passing by your place--or living a 100 miles away from it while it is under Yucca Mountain for long term storage--here is something infinitely more practical for you to obsess and worry about that is literally 1000's of times more likely to harm or kill you or your family--and it is something you can take action on to protect yourself--I realize that some people NEED to have something to fear in order to maintain a sense of self--so ready? The thing that may likely kill you is not nuclear waste. It's your car. But then..you need to get milk form the store occasionally right? Kids to soccer practice? So you're willing to chance it I bet.
Same with nuclear power--except the odds are much much much more favorable...
Jr--it wouldn't bother me to live on top of Yucca Mountain with the stuff stored there. Believe me--I've been there many many times--and I been to many nuclear power plants--and ground zero at Trinity. I'm not worried in the least. But I've not been affected by many other chicken little stories either.
JR--no--I don't think moving the stuff will cause any problems. We have been moving for close to 55 years now. I do think in the next 200 years there may be some problems if we don't move it from where it is now though. There is 5 inches of concrete separating these radionuclides from mankind. Yucca Mountain would add 1000 feet of volcanic tuff as an additional barrier. That translates to a lot more time before this material is exposed.
Tom: You are correct; you apparently know little of the Machiavellian actions of the nuclear industry prior to the Screw Nevada bill being rammed down the throats of the people in this state. Suffice it to say, that whatever "offers" of compensation were dangled before the people in this state, they NEVER really existed (there was no legislation passed which would have guaranteed any money), but most importantly this pie-in-the-sky was dangled only AFTER the state had made it clear that it would FIGHT the legislation ramming the dump down the throats of the people in this state, as a mechanism of appeasement to try and buy silence. Well, clearly, Nevadans couldn't be bought. Finally, people wouldn't trade their health, and their childrens health, for cash. Nice wouldn't you say?
Abe, now that you've left Las Vegas, I suppose your sudden epiphany to store HLNW in New Mexico (combined with employment opportunities there for yourself) is somewhat understandable. However, I can't help feeling you have sold out. All the justifications you formerly declared for Yucca Mountain now appear to have conveniently shifted to a site in New Mexico. Is this confirmation that DOE employees will support any project that issues them a paycheck?
After many years of supporting your fellow employees at Yucca Mountain, you are now abandoning them for your own personal gain.
I used to trust you and your opinions, Abe. No more. Enjoy that award from Chu.
I think Yucca was the place to put it, sooner or later, it has to go some where but the minority of people and lawmakers decided after 10 years and billions of dollars, they wouldn't store it there after all. So if they pick some where else, there should be some way of making it so that different lawmakers don't come along 10 years later and say STOP.