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twitterIn D.C., a sea change on dump plan
Obama’s opposition reshapes the conversation on nuclear energy
U.S. Department of Energy
Yucca Mountain is located about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
Thursday, March 19, 2009 | 2 a.m.
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- McCain's Yucca push (3-17-2009)
- Dump plan's key supporters not ready to concede (3-4-2009)
- Yucca funding: Another $100 million cut (2-23-2009)
- Once flatlining, now on life support (2-20-2009)
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Washington — Ever since President Barack Obama promised to significantly scale back the Yucca Mountain budget this year, the question has been a simple one: Now what?
Sometimes the question comes as a genuine line of inquiry about the future of nuclear waste. At other times it is loaded with incredulity.
Either way, Obama’s proposal has caused a phenomenal shift in thinking that would have seemed unbelievable just a few months ago.
Gone are the repeated arguments that federal law requires construction of a nuclear waste storage dump at Yucca Mountain and the extended debates over science and safety. Yes, lawsuits seeking to hold the government accountable for its promise to handle the waste are continuing and many Yucca Mountain supporters say they will fight on. But with Obama saying Yucca Mountain will not be developed on his watch, those long-standing issues seem of less importance.
On Wednesday a Senate energy committee hearing on nuclear power offered a window onto the new day that has arrived in Washington.
“If Yucca Mountain were taken off-line, what’s Plan B?” said Sen. Mark Udall, the Colorado Democrat.
At the witness table, Dale Klein, chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, offered the solution that has been before Congress for years. The waste will stay where it now sits, Klein explained. Spent nuclear fuel pellets will be stored safely in containers at utility companies’ nuclear power sites across the nation for the next 100 years or more.
“Dry cast storage is Plan B,” Klein said.
Moments later Sen. John McCain, the former Republican presidential candidate, asked the same question. McCain is a Yucca Mountain project supporter who has been reluctant to let Obama win this battle.
“What are you counting on for an alternative?” McCain said, apparently aware of the answer.
“For the interim, dry cast storage,” Klein said.
“Dry cast storage,” McCain repeated, incredulous. “Spent nuclear fuel sitting in pools at power plants all over America — is that what you’re talking about?”
But even McCain, perhaps the most prominent Yucca Mountain supporter on the Hill, could see the writing on the wall. He fast-forwarded to his point.
“Any national security expert — amateur — would tell you: You need one place to store it, and that’s not going to happen now because the administration has declared that.”
The way the conversation turned was a public reminder that elections matter. Just a few years ago the Bush administration was trying to bolster Yucca Mountain. Bush championed a nuclear energy resurgence as a means of obtaining carbon-free energy.
But the story line in Washington suddenly changed — as if a rail yard worker flipped a switch and the train jumped to a new track.
Obama and Sen. Harry Reid, the majority leader, are seen by many as an essentially unstoppable alliance in killing the Yucca Mountain plan.
On paper, many past supporters of Yucca remain strong backers, despite the project’s fiscal, political and scientific setbacks.
Yet as one Yucca supporter put it Wednesday, it has been no secret where the Yucca debate is going. Even the utility companies had started decoupling the waste issue from efforts to spur a nuclear renaissance, saying they no longer factored Yucca Mountain into their plans to develop new plants.
Klein said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is considering extending on-site storage to as much as 120 years.
“Yucca has been an interesting sort of thing to be out there,” Sen. Bob Corker, the Tennessee Republican, said this month. “Hopefully there’s another solution they’re focused on that allows us to use the waste in an appropriate way versus putting it in concrete.”
What the Obama administration plans to do with the spent fuel in the long term remains an unanswered question that makes everyone involved uneasy.
Will a willing host community be chosen for a centralized waste storage site? Will the nation embark on a mission to recycle the waste as other countries do, even though many scientists believe the technology remains decades from being financially viable?
The nuclear industry and its supporters most want an assurance that nuclear revival remains on track. At stake are billions of dollars in federal support.
Karen Harbert, president and chief executive of the Institute for 21st Century Energy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, issued a statement Wednesday saying that “while the Institute supports storing waste at Yucca Mountain as required by law ... the operation of Yucca Mountain is in no way a technical or regulatory prerequisite to the growth of nuclear energy in America.”
Obama’s administration is convening an industry-supported committee to consider disposal options. Reid and Republican Sen. John Ensign have a similar proposal in a bill before Congress.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, expressed her frustration Wednesday at the new order.
“So far, this administration has sought to kill Yucca Mountain as a long-term repository for spent nuclear fuel without yet providing alternatives,” she said. Where nuclear stands with the administration, she said, “is a bit of a mystery to me.”
Discussion: 27 comments so far…
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The reporter senses a "shift in thinking" about Yucca and suggests that the law no longer requires construction of the repository. Yes, there may be revised thinking and writing, but I disagree that anything has changed with respect to the law. The law (the Nuclear Waste Policy Act as amended) requires disposal in a geologic repository and the law (P.L. 107-200, the 2002 joint resolution of Congress overriding former Governor Guinn's veto of the site approval) requires the next step to be the decision by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on whether to approve the license application submitted by the Dept. of Energy last June. President Obama's position on the project has not changed the law and it is an open question as to how the project can be stopped altogether other than by the NRC denying a license.
"Will the nation embark on a mission to recycle the waste as other countries do, even though many scientists believe the technology remains decades from being financially viable?"
Doesn't it make sense to recycle the waste to reduce the amount needed for storage even if it is costly?
If other nations are doing this already the costs must be workable for them so why not work with those countries and develop a viable system that will work in America?
It seems [to me anyhow] that corporate America looks to the wide open western states as a solution for disposing their leftovers instead of weighing the costs verses benefits before starting production .. how many toxic sites have been abandoned in the west and are now "super fund" sites?
Much of the west is owned by the federal government .. that means you and me and our children and future generations.. must we leave them a toxic wasteland to go along with the trillions of dollars in debt we are passing on to them?
Obama said "Our government has forced WHAT I [Obama] BELIEVE is a false choice between sound science and moral values"
Obama further said "it is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda and that we make facts, not ideology."
What is Obama doing about the sound science of Yucca Mountain or alternative nuclear waste storage?
Harry Reid and Obama have said that the 1 million year radiation safety standard for Yucca Mountain does not apply to the alternative solution.
Harry Reid and Obama have said that the the national security issues associated with Yucca Mountain waste do not apply.
Harry Reid and Obama have said that the the rail transportation issues associated with Yucca Mountain waste do not apply.
Reid is meeting with Chu so the commission members would be picked by Reid --so you can expect to see Nevada's own confessed crook lobbyist Bob Loux and former Sparks mayor, television sports broadcaster, and baseball card trading business mogul Bruce Breslow.
Reid's primarily study objective is he wants a way to keep the accumulated $22 billion from the utility ratepayers and not return the $8 billion that Reid has already spent.
This continues to be a political 2010 re-election issue for Reid.
This is about Zombie Reid politics and not sound science.
In a world of global warming where we need solutions Nuclear power is dead.
Below is a very good argument.
Does not every agree that is an excellect argument?
"Whether wastes from nuclear powered generating plants will eventually be stored at the Nevada........ site is a matter of current debate and the decision should be based upon fact, not emotion. Opponents of the plan have already raised questions of possible contamination of air and water, loss of tourism and possible sabotage by fanatical groups" there's no question about the economic benefits to the area, although these cannot be allowed to override safety considerations. If further studies show the dangers to be minimal and that adequate safeguards are being taken to protect public safety, the storage project for Nevada should be encouraged."
"It seems [to me anyhow] that corporate America looks to the wide open western states as a solution..."
The government solution was force on America because Jimmy Carter prevented the recycle solution.
Yucca has always been the most expense solution to the electric ratepayer and was Fed imposed
The feds never closed the fuel cycle during the development phase of nuclear power in this country. In France, spent waste is stored,but society has been informed that storage is a "temporary solution" until something better is discovered. French society bought into this explanation. Now maybe the best "temporary solution" in the U.S. is to retain the spent fuel at local plant sites where it is now.
OK, it's not ""Dry cast storage", it's dry cask storage. A reporter with a real newspaper would have taken, say 15 seconds to find out what the terminology was.
I am bothered by the fact that no "Plan B" was established BEFORE shutting down the only viable plan (that btw is Federal Law).
You just can't stop and start technology of this magnitude. This decision has put nuclear power back many years.
Also, as mentioned by the many posts above, SCIENCE has taken a back seat in all these decisions.
Poor Secretary Steven Chu. His Nobel Prize medal is getting soooo much tarnish on it with all this latest disregard for Science.
See more details at http://aBadReid.com
Bad Reid
Bad Senator
While everyone has been distracted by the political controversy over Yucca Mountain since the run-up to the inauguration, the legal controversy has continued uninterrupted, and for those of us who respect rational argument and the importance of the law, this should be the only debate that matters. In other words, political fiat may ultimately (or even soon) spell the end of the Yucca Mountain Project, but that will in no way alter the scientific and regulatory "truth" revealed during the NRC proceedings.
For instance, I have yet to hear mentioned in the Sun or the RJ (or any other media outlet, for that matter) the results of the NRC Staff evaluation of Nevada's vaunted 229 contentions.
Nevada has bragged and strutted about these contentions since filing them, hoping to convince its citizens that the State is "on the case" and has launched a devastating legal counter-argument against DOE and its effort to construct a repository at Yucca Mountain.
Ultimately, however, as with most legal motions Nevada has filed with NRC in its irrational fight against Yucca Mountain, the State has once again revealed how profoundly out of its league, how truly ill-equipped and ill-prepared it is to wage this battle on any level other than a purely political one.
Out of the 229 contentions submitted by the State in its petition to intervene, only 18 were deemed admissible by NRC Staff. 18! The others were savagely deconstructed on virtually every imaginable basis: regulatory, legal, technical, and scientific. For a moment there, I almost felt sorry for the out-of-state "legal dream team" hired by Nevada. They had their keesters handed to them -- again! And this is how our politicians spend our tax dollars....
Now, to be fair, the NRC Staff response remains to be ruled on by the NRC's Atomic Safety and Licensing Board judges, who may take pity on Nevada and reject some (or many) of the Staff's recommendations. Still and all, it is truly an embarrassing performance by our State's crack legal counsel, even if it never translates into a victory for the repository due to political stratagems like the budget cuts authorized by Sen. Reid or the scientific betrayal committed by Energy Secretary Stephen Chu.
And for those of you who will be quick to impugn the NRC as corrupt or partial to Yucca Mountain, remember that the NRC is our Supreme Court when it comes to nuclear issues. They are demonstrably impartial and scrupulous in their opinions, rulemaking, and regulatory decisions.
This much can be seen in the Staff's recommendation to exclude the NEI (the nuclear industry organization) from the proceedings AND to reject all of their contentions.
The bottom line is that there is no Plan B. I heard that the politicians of Nevada called the storage facility "outdated science". Thats intersting, they have the world's best scientists and engineers from all over working on this project for 20 something years. Lets leave it to the experts. We cannot live in a black cloud that looms over Nevada that happened over 5o years ago. Please educate yourself on this subject. Its not green slime oozing out of drum barrels. What is an outdated concept is their proposal for wind and solar. I've heard that rubbish forever and a day. Its all lies. Nuclear is cheaper and just as safe. We just need to cut the Political red tape and let the real scientists do their jobs.
Its totally safe to fly the shipments into LAS via commercial flights in the cargo holds and then drive it up the Beltway and US 95 to Yucca, using camouflaged beer trucks. Its not like NV has any earthquakes or drunks on the highway.
Come on people, Yucca can be to NV like Boeing is to Washington State, which has no state income tax either.
Down to 18 Nevada contentions.
Remember when DEMOCRAT Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto stood next to her BFF confessed lobbyist Bob Loux (who stole real money) and bragged about their submittial?
"Still and all, it is truly an embarrassing performance by our State's crack legal counsel."
And for that Nevada is paying millions of dollars every year.
If science is now king, why isn't Chu in charge? Harry and his ilk are lawyers not scientists. So much for science, transparency, change and fiscal responsiblity.
The lawyers are going to make out like bandits suing the government.
Maybe that's why ex-lawyers are in charge.
This article does not discuss or address the need for disposing spent fuel from atomic energy defense, including Naval spent nuclear fuel, which has significantly different characteristics from commercial spent nuclear fuel.
The Yucca Mountain site is the ONLY site currently authorized by legislation, specifically the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, for site characterization as a geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel, including naval spent nuclear fuel.
Its funny and sad to watch the anti-Yucca press write distorted articles and then quote each other as references for totally erroneous and distorted facts. This article will no doubt be used to that purpose.
What is so great about the NWPA is that while Obama and Reid destroy the American government in the short term, as soon as they are no longer in power the LAW (yes, remember America is run by laws not presidential dictates!) will allow the rightful resurrection and completion of the Yucca Mountain repository, re-election campaigns or not.
Yucca Mountain deserves to die a swift and timely death. The simple fact that no other ALTERNATIVE was ever considered like burying it any other STATE shows what a one sided distorted manipulated process this was engineered by the LIARS from the Nuclear Power Industry. Nuclear Power has NEVER been safe, clean, and cheap. Nuclear Power is unsafe, dirty, and expensive when it is fully costed including waste disposal. To the know it alls, it is funny how you quickly dismiss scientific evidence of faults around Yucca or the simple fact that Yucca was developed with a FINITE CAPACITY that will be exceeded if it ever came on line. Those who point to National Security don't seem to care that these shipments will be passing by our most populous cities and would be easy targets for you know who.
As a Reagan Republican and a longtime Nevadan, I say Goodbye Yucca Mountain.
Thank you Harry Reid.
Thank you President Obama.
Hey nkls3713,
I am sorry if you believe anything you wrote. Five states were considered and Yucca Mountain made the most sense with the 1000 nuclear bombs that were exploded right next door. The faults around YM are well known and pose zero danger to the repository as proven by balanced rocks that have been in place tens of thousands of years. The finite capacity was a dictate of Congress, not of the site. And finally, shipments do indeed pass BY the cities, not through them as well as in very secure nearly impenetrable containers.
This is not a Republican vs Democrat project. This is a Reid re-election payback by Obama and if you think this is a good way to run the US government then you aren't aware of the incredible damage this is doing to America's democratic reputation around the world.
nkls3713, the sky is falling, the sky is falling and you are falling for the garbage that Reid and Obama spew.
Reagan Republican and long time Nevadan?? Who cares. I feel badly if that is all you bring to the ring. READ the studies and come back after you get a grip on reality. Since you claim to be a long time Nevadan, do you even know what is at the test site? (hint, it's not #2 pencils)
Obviously nkls3713 knows nothing about the Nuclear Power industry or the political costs surrounding it.
FWIW:
Recycling Nuclear Waste
Fuel for nuclear power stations comes from concentrated uranium which is made into fuel rods. The average life of a nuclear fuel rod is four years, after which time waste products have built up making it less efficient.
Reprocessing is the chemical operation which separates the useful fuel for recycling from the waste. There are only two commercial reprocessing plants in the world in the UK and France. But Japan is developing its own plant.
The UK's reprocessing center receives waste nuclear fuel from 34 plants around the world. The metallic outer casing is first stripped away and the spent fuel is then dissolved in hot nitric acid. This produces three things:
Uranium (96%) ; Plutonium (1%) ; Radioactive waste (3%).
The reusable uranium is turned into a powdered form, processed into fuel pellets and sent back for use in nuclear reactors. Each 6-gram pellet holds the equivalent energy of one ton of coal. British Nuclear Fuel (BNFL) says three pellets can provide a family's needs for an entire year.
Plutonium can be combined with uranium and turned into a mixed oxide fuel (MOX) . MOX provides a way of using up the otherwise unusable plutonium. But there are fears that if it fell into the wrong hands it would be easy for someone to extract the plutonium for nuclear weapons.
The waste is turned into a powder and mixed with glass to produce a pellet and goes into storage for eventual return to the customer. All customers with BNFL have a clause in their contract to accept back their own waste, but no return date is specified. BNFL processes spent nuclear fuel from nine countries: the UK, Japan, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Sweden, Italy, Netherlands and Canada.
Reprocessing ensures 97% of nuclear waste can be recycled and sent back to customers. Reprocessing one ton
of fuel saves about 100,000 barrels of oil, according to BNFL. It also helps conserve the world's uranium supplies, which are currently estimated to last 175 years.
History of Reprocessing
A great deal of hydrometallurgical reprocessing has been going on since the 1940s, originally for military purposes, to recover plutonium for nuclear weapons. In the UK, metal fuel elements from the first generation gas-cooled commercial reactors have been reprocessed at Sellafield for the last 50 years.
In the USA, no civil reprocessing plants are now operating, though three have been built. The first, a 300 ton/yr plant at West Valley, NY, was in operation successfully from 1966-72. However, escalating regulation required plant modifications which were deemed uneconomic, and the plant was shut down. The second was a 300 ton/yr plant built at Morris, Illinois, incorporating new technology which, although proven on a pilot-scale, failed to work successfully in the production plant. It was declared inoperable in 1974. The third was a 1500 ton/yr plant at Barnwell, South Carolina, which was aborted due to a 1977 change in government policy which ruled out all US civilian reprocessing as one facet of US non-proliferation policy. In all, the USA has over 250 plant-years of reprocessing operational experience, the vast majority being at government-operated defense plants.
As noted above, the USA has considerable reprocessing experience but application of this to civil used fuel has been frustrated by political sensitivities motivated by proliferation concerns based on a perception that reactor-grade plutonium is usable for weapons. Civil reprocessing was stopped in 1977.
In February 2006 the US government announced the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP). GNEP goals include reducing US dependence on imported fossil fuels, and building a new generation of nuclear power plants in the USA. Two significant new elements in the strategy are new reprocessing technologies at Advanced Recycling Centers which separate all transuranic elements together (and not plutonium on its own) beginning with the UREX+ process, and Advanced Burner (fast) Reactors to consume the result of this while generating power.
In mid 2006 a report by the Boston Consulting Group for Areva and based on proprietary Areva information showed that recycling used fuel in the USA using the COEX aqueous process would be economically competitive with direct disposal of used fuel. A $12 billion, 2500 ton/yr plant was considered, with total capital expenditure of $16 billion for all related aspects. This would have the benefit of greatly reducing demand on space at the Yucca mountain repository.
Supporting an Industry that by its nature is dirty, unsafe, and expensive when it is fully costed for waste disposal is the height of stupidity. Future US Energy needs can be met by conservation and the deployment of alternative energy sources.
The Nuclear Power Industry continues to peddle its LIES and PROPAGANDA to the gullible. Yucca has always had a finite capacity which makes it OBSOLETE once it comes on line. Transporting the single most deadly toxin on the planet across our roads past our major population centers is STUPID. Each STATE should be responsible for its own WASTE. Accidents at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island were concerned UNLIKELY. The uninformed should do some fact checking on recent safety violation reports at San Onofre etc. SAN ONOFRE is now ranked the number 3 Nuclear Plant in the world to have a MELTDOWN by the society of concerned scientists.
Getalife sounds like a STOOGE for the Nuclear Power Industry who can't formulate an opinion for himself. If you don't think that Nevada was selected because of the small size of its Congressional delegation than you are deluding yourself. Why don't you educate yourself on the true safety record of San Onofre over the past decade?????? Do you honestly believe that transporting nuclear waste over highways and railways is smart? Do you trust private transportation companies with a profit incentive to ensure convoy safety? Why do Harley, dave, and getalife want nuclear waste dumped in Nevada?
Yucca Mountain is done, over, buried.
Nkls3713, I never said I wanted nuclear wasted 'dumped' anywhere let alone storing it the Yucca Mountain repository.
Like your self we have no say in where nuclear waste is ultimately stored, our lawmakers and scientists do.
However, I have lobbied the NRC successfully for commercial efficiencies which reduce such waste, while making further recommendations with regard to efficiencies which the commission has yet to act upon.
I have reviewed the safety issues cited by the NRC with regard to San Onofre and found nothing that isn't being appropriately addressed by regulators and Southern California Edison.
Your concern regard safe transportation of spent nuclear fuel is unsubstantiated along with your other claims regarding safety and cleanliness of commercial nuclear power generation in America.
Overall, I would conclude your knowledge of the nuclear power industry and the politics surrounding it to be extremely lacking and feel no further acknowledgement of your issues would be productive.
G'Day
Hi, a comment from Finland (Northern Europe): the fate of these big heaps of radioactive waste is undoubtedly a global issue. So the decisions you Americans make about your Yucca mountain obviously concern us Europeans as well. No country has yet solved the waste problem. Look at how Japan's radwaste is shipped to France for recycling, and then MOX is shipped back to Japan:
"The shipment, due to depart from the port of Cherbourg [on March 6, 2009] on British-flagged vessels, contains approximately 1.7 metric tons of plutonium contained in 65 assemblies of MOX (mixed plutonium and uranium oxide) fuel. The fuel, made from plutonium separated from Japanese spent fuel, which was shipped to the French state-owned Areva NC1 for reprocessing, is destined for nuclear power plants of three Japanese electric utilities, Kyushu, Chubu, and Shikoku Electric Power Companies."(see http://www.lovisamovement.eu/post/2009/0...)
In Finland, of all countries, a final repository is being built in Olkiluoto, following the principal decision taken by the Finnish parliament in May 2001. So Olkiluoto is our European Mount Yucca! Read more about the issue in the special anti-nuclear issue of "Miljomagasinet" (The environmental Magazine), whichh was distributed at the European Social Forum in Malmo, September 2008. The issue features articles by Ulla Klotzer, Birgitta Moller and Anneli Lundin on EURATOM and the Lisbon Treaty of the EU (which is fake "constitution" of the EU; nothing like the real constitution of the USA); Per Hegelund on radioactivity in the Baltic Sea; Niels Henrik Hoog on the European Spallation Source project (the project is based on the age-old pipe-dream of transmutation) ; by Goran Bryntze on wind and solar power; Cris Busby on Sellafield health effects; by Klotzer on the Final disposal of spent fuel in Olkiluoto (see above); and a viewpoint from Swedish paleophycisist Nils-Axel Morner about the illusion of "the final solution". You can find the PDF document there:
http://www.folkkampanjen.se/pdf_Anti-Nuc...
All the best.
- Mikael
There is a viable solution to the nuclear waste controversy which is SAFE, ECONOMICAL, and PERMANENT. Patent #7525112 was granted for this process and hardware on April 28, 2009. The concept can be found at www.permanentradwastesolutions.com. For answers to questions not addressed by web page: sengelhardt@earthlink.net.