Yucca advocates remain resolute on nuke storage

Suzanne Struglinski

Friday, Sept. 23, 2005 | 9:30 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- Yucca Mountain's destiny as the country's final resting place for used nuclear fuel, either in its current form or after reprocessing, has not changed, site supporters say.

Utah Sen. Robert Bennett, a Republican, pushed Yucca into the congressional spotlight this week, calling for the country to move away from storing waste in the West and to rethink nuclear waste reprocessing or storing it onsite, in an 18-minute speech on the Senate floor.

Discussions on interim storage and reprocessing nuclear waste can -- and should -- take place, but nothing will substitute for the country's plan to store nuclear waste inside rock, according to one House member and one nuclear industry expert.

"At the end of the day, something has to go somewhere and that somewhere is Yucca Mountain," said Steve Kraft, director of waste management of the Nuclear Energy Institute at a nuclear conference in Washington Thursday.

Kraft said it could take years for a reprocessing plan to be researched, developed, located, built and actually implemented while nuclear waste would continue to pile up at nuclear power plants.

"The federal government must remain committed to moving the program forward," Kraft said.

Kraft said the department should stick to the current plan, stick to the current design and get the licensing process at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission going.

For two decades, the Energy Department has been figuring out a way to store 77,000 tons of used nuclear fuel, also known as nuclear waste. It was supposed to take waste in 1998, with another target set for 2010 but several obstacles have pushed the department to no longer declare any specific opening date.

Rep. David Hobson, R-Ohio, who is head of the House Appropriations Subcommittee that writes the energy and water spending bill, said Yucca still needs to be funded and still needs to move forward.

"This is more important than building any stupid little bunker buster." Hobson said.

He supports reprocessing - which he prefers to call recycling -- and is the catalyst for renewed interested in interim storage, but he insists Yucca will still be needed.

"We are going to need more than one repository," Hobson said.

There will be enough waste at nuclear power plants by 2010 to fill the legal limit of 77,000 tons inside Yucca. Hobson said it will be just as difficult to find another repository, let alone the estimated eight needed to hold all future nuclear waste so reprocessing needs to be explored.

But reprocessing still produces radioactive waste that would eventually need to go to Yucca or some type of repository, Hobson said, so the need for one is not gone.

Kraft said the industry has longer argued that without progress on the country's proposed repository at Yucca, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, it would be hard to build new nuclear powers plants.

Now, Kraft said Thursday, the argument is changed.

"We've got to solve the nuclear waste problem, because new nuclear plants are coming," Kraft said. "It is now reversed."

He said the Nuclear Waste Policy Act already allows for high level nuclear waste and spent fuel to be stored at Yucca. If spent fuel was reprocess, high level waste would be left. It could be treated and still sent to Yucca.

"These are not new concepts," he said.

Hobson said it would be "folly" to move forward with new nuclear power plants and not have the waste problem solved.

"I think people need to face reality and not hide in fiction," Hobson said, referring to the fact that Yucca is already full once it opens.

Blocks away from the nuclear conference, a consortium of nuclear power companies held a press conference announcing that it will apply for new nuclear power plant licenses in Mississippi and Alabama, partially funded by the Energy Department. Known as NuStart, the consortium will work on the license applications and aims to turn them into the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by 2007 or 2008. There is no decision to build a new plant yet.

Entergy, another power company, also announced its plan to prepare a license application for a new plant in Louisiana.