Nuclear Waste Still Troubles Industry
Blue Ribbon panel gives suggestions
If Americans think Congress is at at impasse now, just wait until lawmakers return to tackling the disposal of nuclear waste. That’s pretty much what a commission appointed by President Obama has said.
After two years, the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future just came out with its final report to the U.S. Energy Department as to what to do with nuclear waste. That radioactive material is a hot potato and one that needs needs to find a permanent home or a way in which it can reprocessed and re-used.
Right now, the spent fuel from nuclear operations is stored on site in above-ground, steel-encased concrete caskets. Those places were meant to be temporary and Yucca Mountain in Nevada had been authorized to be the ultimate repository. But the Obama administration nixed that idea, leaving the utilities that had already helped fund that site in the lurch.
The blue ribbon panel said that the standoff between utilities and those opposed to the Yucca Mountain location only typifies the troubles that have befallen the nuclear sector over three decades. To top it off, Japan’s nuclear accident in March occurred because the back-up power systems there had failed, allowing the spent fuel rods to be exposed and damage the reactor’s core. Radioactive material escaped.
“The need for a new strategy is urgent, not just to address these damages and costs but because this generation has a fundamental, ethical obligation to avoid burdening future generations with the entire task of finding a safe, permanent solution for managing hazardous nuclear materials they had no part in creating,” the commission wrote.
The panel is not charged with promoting nuclear energy, which is the collective decision of Congress. Rather, it is to ensure that existing nuclear facilities are safely addressing their waste issues. Larger interim sites may be necessary before the spent fuel would find a permanent home, it says.
To that end, the commission is recommending a “consent-based approach” when it comes to the permitting of waste facilities, particularly where local populations are skeptical of having them near their backyards. Secondly, the commissioners are saying that the management of nuclear waste should be transferred away from the Department of Energy and to a new organization -- one whose sole function is to deal with this issue.
“We believe actions can be taken to encourage and achieve consolidated interim storage in a willing host community within the next 10 years, well before a repository could be opened,” says a joint statement by industry concerns that includes the Nuclear Energy Institute. The group adds that a new form of oversight would help “insulate the program from political interference.”
Long Term Solution
The United States currently has more than 65,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel stored at about 75 operating and shutdown reactor sites around the country, according to the commission. More than 2,000 tons are being produced each year.
While the report focused more on finding long-term storage for radioactive waste, it also considered the reprocessing of such fuel. Panelists held out hope for the eventual re-use of those byproducts but concluded that any real solutions are decades away. The U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board concurs, adding that reprocessing may reduce nuclear waste but it does not yet eliminate it.
Simply, reprocessing separates the uranium and the plutonium from the rest of the nuclear waste, allowing plant operators to get between 20 percent and 30 percent more use from the uranium. The technique is now used in France and Japan, where some nuclear professionals say it is working well.
“Reprocessing is very real," says Dave Nulton, a nuclear engineer and former energy department official, in a prior talk with this writer. “A new plant could be up and running in the United States in five years. And new technologies can make it impossible to use the plutonium in advanced weapons.” Essentially, the technology to which he speaks would mix the plutonium with other compounds and thereby make it impractical to use for nuclear weapons.
Reprocessing, however, will have to take a backseat to finding a permanent nuclear waste storage facility, which itself is a long shot given the billions already spent on the ill-fated Yucca Mountain site. Nuclear operators may not be pacified but they are prepared to keep their spent fuel on site for years to come.
EnergyBiz Insider is the Winner of the 2011 Online Column category awarded by Media Industry News, MIN. Ken Silverstein has also been named one of the Top Economics Journalists by Wall Street Economists.
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Comments
A few things to think about...
Nuclear power plant waste is dwarfed by nuclear weapons waste. What exactly is our government doing about weapons waste, and Why can't long term storage of nuclear power plant waste "tag along" with the final disposition of nuclear weapons waste as was originally intended?<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
The planned method of long term storage for nuclear power plant waste is a process called "vitrification" which immobilizes the waste in a solid block
of material in a sufficiently low density so that it can never become reactive (able to increase its energy via a nuclear reaction), and so that the
heat it generates as it decays will not be of any concern. Even if water were to come in contact with the solid block, it could not "leak", and the candidate sites for long term storage are geologically chosen to make contact with water extremely unlikely, even considering the length of time of storage.
Nuclear power plant wastes has a very long half-life (the time it takes to self-decay by half). Other toxins we regularly put in landfills and less secure storage facilities have no half-life (never decay away), and many of these have similar biological affinities, and can effect heath in such low doses that they are as "invisible" as radiation (part of the public perception concern).
We already live in a "sea of radiation" (cosmic rays, TVs, cell phones. microwaves, radio waves, granite buildings, medical radiation, flying in planes, living in Denver).
The US nuclear power plants are in a constantly increasing nuclear safety regulatory and requirements environment with "lessons learned" from "what if" extrapolations of any event that takes place in any nuclear power plant ratcheting up regulations, safety requirements and plant designs. For example, for many years US nuclear power plants have already been updated to meet "station Blackout" (loss of both offsite power and all emergency generators, as occurred recently in Japan) requirements, and many more lessons and upgrades from recent events in Japan and many other much less serious events will also follow.
Based on a US led collaborative FOAKE (First-Of-A-King-Engineering) effort, the new nuclear power plants that are planned include much more passive designs that do not need restoration of power for a much longer period of time, and rely many less active components to maintain safety.
Nuclear power remains the best alternative we have for a low carbon and environmentally friendly future!
Repositioned as Reply
Repositioned as Reply
Pointing the Finger
Nuclear power plant "spent fuel" is not reprocessed and reused in the US because an Administration (Carter) decided it should not be done, citing proliferation risks. The proliferation has now occurred anyway, so the risk of proliferation occurring is no longer an issue.
Nuclear power plant "spent fuel" is not permanently stored underground in the US because US DOE failed to follow the will of the Congress and develop and operate a long term storage facility. This situation was finally acknowledged by an Administration (Obama).
The industry has paid designated fees to the federal government for decades to fund the long term storage of spent fuel. The industry has had to move spent fuel from short term storage under water to intermediate term storage in dry casks because the federal government has failed to perform.
Congress would be within its rights to demand an accounting of the funds collected from the industry and the funds expended on the still non-existent long term storage facility. It should do so as a first priority.
Seconding your sentiments
Failing to reprocess fuel is one of the most ridiculous failings of the governmental agencies responsible. We are supposed to be the most technologically advanced country in the world but have failed to implement this when other countries have already done so. And, you are correct that the nuclear weapons proliferation argument is (and probably always was) moot.
One error both in the article and in the comment above--the nuclear power industry may have paid the storage site fees to the government but, in the end, you can bet these costs rolled down to the electrical consumers who also happen to be the taxpayers who also paid for the Yucca Mountain Repository. It is funny that the government is willing to give up public lands for wind and solar developers and is willing to come on privately owned property to tell the owners they may not use land for their own purposes but are unwilling to tell Nevada that they (the government) will not use a repository on federal lands that are within the boundaries of a former nuclear test site because Harry Reid does not want it used. I would bet the citizens of Nevada were more than happy to put taxpayer money in their pockets in payment for the jobs that came with constructing the facility and I would bet Nevada businesses were more than happy to take taxpayer dollars in payment for the goods and/or services provided to build the site.
Reprocess spent fuel and open Yucca Mountain to store the considerably reduced waste.
All "industry funding"...
comes from customer bills, just as all "federal funding" comes from taxpayers, sooner or later.
No argument there, just an unstated truism.