Bush has new nuke plans in store

Benjamin Grove

Monday, Jan. 30, 2006 | 8:12 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration is reportedly planning to float a proposal to accept nuclear waste from other nations, and that could both re-energize the flagging effort to construct the proposed waste repository at Yucca Mountain and rally Yucca opponents.

"This is going to be really interesting," said Michele Boyd, energy and environment legislative director for Public Citizen, which has long been opposed to Yucca. "I think it's going to galvanize both sides."

While the nation doesn't have a place to store its own nuclear waste, the Energy Department reportedly is working on a number of nuclear power-related proposals designed to expand domestic and foreign production of nuclear-generated electricity. Bush-backed legislation is expected in Congress early this year and Bush may outline some proposals in his State of the Union speech Tuesday.

One proposal reportedly centers on leasing nuclear fuel to certain foreign nations, which would ship the highly radioactive, spent-fuel waste back to the United States for reprocessing. America, in turn, would ship fresh fuel to the nations.

France, Japan and the United Kingdom reprocess waste. The United States currently does not reprocess -- not even its own waste -- in part because of concerns that the plutonium by-product of reprocessing could fall into the wrong hands and be converted to weapons-grade material. It also has not been viewed as economically viable.

But the White House and key members of Congress are interested in an undeveloped, highly expensive reprocessing technology -- perhaps 50 years from being viable -- that could lessen the risk of proliferation. Some experts say the technology has the potential to significantly reduce the radioactivity of the waste, which then could be packed more tightly together in Yucca tunnels, effectively expanding its capacity. Critics are skeptical.

"It's a pipe dream," Boyd said.

But any reprocessing technology -- current or future -- ultimately leaves behind some form of waste.

The nation's current high-level waste policy is to bury all of it forever in underground tunnels at the long-delayed, highly controversial proposed repository at Yucca Mountain.

But by law Yucca is only being designed to hold 77,000 tons of waste. With nearly 60,000 tons already piled up at U.S. nuclear plants -- they produce about 2,000 tons a year -- soon there won't be room at Yucca for U.S. waste, much less foreign waste.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he had "serious concerns" about the proposal to accept foreign waste, given transportation and terrorism risks. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said, "This dangerous scheme is a disaster waiting to happen and at the end of the day still calls for nuclear waste buried at Yucca Mountain."

The Energy Department has not addressed the Yucca capacity issue, although in a November speech to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said this nation could offer "cradle-to-grave fuel cycle services, leasing fuel for power reactors and then taking it back for reprocessing and disposition."

Even nuclear industry officials have not thoroughly analyzed how the United States would permanently dispose of waste if it started reprocessing foreign nuclear fuel.

"It's really undetermined right now what would happen on the back end," Nuclear Energy Institute spokesman Mitch Singer said. "Nobody has given it a lot of thought."

After years of controversy surrounding Yucca, Congress has no appetite to pursue the construction of a second repository.

The Bush administration may actually be complicating its effort to focus on Yucca completion by launching a complex, expensive reprocessing program that also represents a dramatic policy shift, one Democratic congressional source said Friday.

The source added, "Why are we creating new waste problems when we can't even solve our own?"

Benjamin Grove can be reached at (202) 662-7436 or at grove@ lasvegassun.com.