Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

SUN EDITORIAL:

A nuclear boondoggle

Congress leaves taxpayers on the hook instead of using nuclear waste fund

As Japan works to contain radiation at a nuclear power plant badly damaged by a massive earthquake and tsunami, American officials have been expressing concern about the safety of nuclear waste in the U.S.

Japanese officials have had problems containing radiation from spent fuel that is kept in cooling pools, which sit next to the reactors. The systems to cool the pools failed and explosions in the containment buildings left the pools open to the elements.

Nuclear industry officials say the best answer to prevent problems like this is to get the spent fuel away from the reactors, and they think they have an answer. The industry renewed its call to haul the nation’s nuclear waste across country and stuff it in Yucca Mountain, a porous volcanic ridge 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. As we have pointed out for years, the Yucca Mountain plan is faulty, dangerous and expensive.

And pushing ahead on Yucca Mountain wouldn’t address the problem of waste in cooling pools. As long as nuclear plants are operating, they are bound to have spent fuel in those pools. When the spent fuel comes out of the reactor, it is so hot that it needs to sit in a cooling pool for at least five years before it cools enough to be moved.

Instead of pushing the foolish Yucca Mountain plan, the industry should be talking about interim storage methods that are used in many plants in the U.S. and around the world. Many plants take waste, once it is cool enough to move, and put it in huge concrete-and-steel containers known as dry casks. The casks are then safely placed in a secure site away from the reactor.

The troubled Japanese plant has waste sitting in dry casks and hasn’t reported any problems with them. So why not make them standard here?

The U.S. nuclear industry has complained about dry cask storage because of the cost. A 2003 report by the Energy Department said it would cost up to $7 billion to move all of the movable spent fuel then at U.S. nuclear reactors to dry casks. That is a fraction of the cost of the Yucca Mountain project, which has been estimated at $100 billion.

As the investigative journalism site ProPublica.com reported recently, the federal government has $24 billion set aside from utility ratepayer fees to pay for nuclear waste storage, but by law, it can’t use it for anything other than Yucca Mountain. In 2007, Nevada’s senators tried to change the law but their proposal went nowhere. The nuclear lobby is powerful in Congress, and the industry is determined to forge ahead with Yucca Mountain, despite the fact that President Barack Obama moved to shut it down.

In the meantime, many utilities have had to pay for dry cask storage out of their own pockets. Many have sued the federal government for failing to live up to its promise to take nuclear waste off their hands. There is more than $6 billion of claims pending against the government, which has paid out nearly $1 billion in claims and spent more than $170 million defending itself. The claims, which officials say could total more than $16 billion, and legal costs come out of the Treasury because of the restrictions on the nuclear waste money.

So, just so we’re clear: Utility ratepayers are paying into a fund to store nuclear waste, but the government can’t touch that money to pay for dry cask storage. And taxpayers are on the hook for billions of dollars because Congress won’t change the law.

This is ridiculous.

Even the nuclear industry’s supporters in Congress, many of whom claim to be fiscal conservatives, should see the folly in this. Lawmakers should end this nonsense and release the nuclear waste money to pay for dry cask storage.

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