The States and the Blue Ribbon Commission

Expressions of support for moving used nuclear fuel from reactor sites to consolidated storage facilities continue to grow among state legislatures and governments.

Arkansas and Pennsylvania are the latest states to advance resolutions urging Congress to expedite this and other recommendations for managing the nation’s used nuclear fuel from the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future. They join Maryland, Minnesota, Vermont and other states.

The Pennsylvania resolution passed unanimously in the legislature, and the Arkansas Resolution passed in committee. The resolutions, which are virtually identical in language, link consent-based siting of consolidated fuel sites with the nuclear waste fund, suggesting the federal government offer “incentives to interested communities funded by the accumulated Nuclear Waste Fund.” Alternatively, the resolutions say, the government should refund the money in the fund to ratepayers.

Marshall Cohen, NEI’s senior director for state and local governmental affairs, said the unanimous nature of the votes in Pennsylvania and Minnesota itself sends a message. “Not a dissenting vote in either body is something very rare in today’s highly charged partisan atmosphere around the country,” Cohen said.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 requires the federal government to remove used fuel from commercial reactor sites starting in 1998. However, the government has yet to meet its obligation, and used nuclear fuel remains stored at nuclear energy facility sites around the country—including several that are shuttered, such as Maine Yankee, which Maine Gov. Paul LePage references in a letter to the state's congressional delegation.

Maine Yankee closed in 1996 and was successfully decommissioned in 2005. What remains at the site is a storage facility that holds the reactor’s used nuclear fuel while it awaits federal disposition.
LePage said that while he recognizes Maine Yankee is “safely and securely storing the more than 550 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel,” taking the fuel to a consolidated storage site “will likely result in cost efficiencies that flow through to ratepayers by relieving them of the cost burden of maintaining sites that no longer generate electricity.”

In May, Maine’s two senators, Olympia Snowe (R) and Susan Collins (R) signed on to a letter to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, thanking him for restoring funding to regional transportation stakeholder groups planning to assess infrastructure crucial to moving used fuel from decommissioned reactor sites. The letter was also signed by Sens. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) and Herb Kohl (D-Wis.)

LePage’s letter follows a similar one from Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin.

Cohen said the issue of used fuel disposal “resonates in New England,” because there are three decommissioned reactors with used fuel containers awaiting disposition—in Connecticut and Massachusetts as well as at Maine Yankee.

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We have no evidence that any given editorial moves public opinion – or influences policy - one way or another. We do know that editorials keep the conversation on a topic going after the initial news interest dies away and that can make a difference in public opinion and policy formation.

From the New York Times (on July 4th, no less):

That group [the Blue Ribbon Commission] recommended the creation of one or more surface storage sites to accept used fuel rods from 10 reactors that have ceased operating. It would be easier to monitor and inspect the rods and cheaper to guard them in a central location. The group also urged that a permanent burial site be found through a “consent-based” approach in which states and communities might be offered financial incentives to accept the waste.

Those recommendations are sensible, and President Obama and Congress should work with the states to move that ahead. If nuclear power is to have a future in this country, politicians, scientists and industry leaders need to commit to finding a solution instead of just hoping that everything will somehow work out.

To be fair, these are the last two paragraphs – most of the editorial is about Yucca Mountain. Still, the commission’s ideas are really percolating – in the states, in Congress and on editorial pages. Good.

The Arkansas state house.

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NEI's Marv Fertel on Where the Industry Stands on Used Nuclear Fuel

Today at the National Journal's Energy Experts Blog, the magazine is taking a closer look at how the nation will have to confront the issue of long-term storage of used nuclear fuel:

What safety, environmental, and economic factors should Washington consider as it debates the future of its nuclear-waste policy? Should Yucca Mountain be revived, or should Congress stop debating that repository site once and for all? How does the uncertain future over spent fuel affect the nation's dependence on nuclear power, which provides the nation with 20 percent of its electricity?

Marv Fertel, NEI's President and Chief Executive Office, has posted a response. Here's an excerpt:

The nuclear energy industry agrees with many of the common-sense recommendations in the Blue Ribbon Commission’s final report, which was developed after nearly two years of fact-finding, public interaction and intense study. In particular, three proposals should be given high priority:

• prompt efforts to develop one or more consolidated interim storage facilities at volunteer sites,

• assured access by program managers to revenues generated by payments and interest earned in the Nuclear Waste Fund,

• establish a quasi-federal organization dedicated solely to implementing the used fuel management program, with access to the Nuclear Waste Fund.

[...]

The recent ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that the Department of Energy failed to justify continued payments by consumers of electricity from nuclear power plants into the Nuclear Waste Fund should also help to drive the dialog. While the court did not order DOE to suspend the fee payments, the court rejected DOE’s bases for continuing to collect the fees and ordered it to conduct a complete reassessment of this fee within six months. Considering DOE has yet to move one fuel assembly as it was required by law beginning in 1998, the industry sees no justification for further collection of funds until a functioning used fuel disposal program is in place.

[...]

Now, 30 years after Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the development of a long-term solution to managing used nuclear fuel is long overdue. It’s time for policymakers to reexamine the program and develop a new roadmap that will meet these obligations to consumers.

For more on the safe storage of used nuclear fuel, please visit our NEI.org.

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Minnesota Senate Passes Resolution Urging Federal Government to Act on Consolidated storage

Earlier today, the Minnesota State Senate passed a resolution urging President Obama and the U.S. Congress to carry out the recommendations of Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future, especially with regard to consolidated storage of used nuclear fuel.

The resolution passed by a vote of 63-0.

We like to think of it as a great example of bipartisan cooperation that ought to be emulated nationwide. We'll have more later if events warrant.

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Got Nuclear Waste? We’ll Take It!

Over the past few weeks, the people of Carlsbad, N.M., have been busy making one thing known: they want the United States’ nuclear waste and they want it bad.

Their support is being driven by recommendations released last week from the Obama administration’s blue ribbon commission on how to fix the nation’s nuclear waste management program. Most noteworthy for the people of Carlsbad is the recommendation by the commission that the United States pursue a “consent-based approach,” where local communities are engaged in the project from the beginning so that they avoid a situation where politics later trump progress on a much-needed repository (*cough* Yucca Mountain *cough*). My colleague Mark Flanagan explained this approach and the reasoning behind it on the blog last week.

Carlsbad is unique from any other area of the country because it is home to salt beds, an ideal burial place for transuranic waste because of its self-sealing qualities, which is why the U.S. Department of Energy built its Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) there in the 1980s, a project that has garnered a lot of community support. Here’s what a DOE fact sheet has to say about the geologic conditions at the site:

Bedded salt is free of fresh flowing water, easily mined, impermeable and geologically stable—an ideal medium for permanently isolating long-lived radioactive wastes from the environment.

Throughout the 1960s, government scientists searched for an appropriate site for radioactive waste disposal, eventually testing a remote desert area of southeastern New Mexico where, 250 million years earlier, evaporation cycles of the ancient Permian Sea had created a 2,000-foot-thick salt bed.

Because of its unique geologic qualities and growing community support, Carlsbad and Eddy County officials this past Saturday joined together in offering New Mexico’s salt beds as a final destination for U.S. high-level radioactive waste.

"Eddy County has proven that involving local governments and citizens in the planning and oversight process leads to a successful mission. Community support and involvement in every step of the process, especially emergency services and transportation, is absolutely essential." said Roxanne Lara, Eddy County Commissioner and Energy Communities Alliance Secretary. "The BRC recognized the importance of this model. The bottom line is that Southeast New Mexico has the knowledge, the location and the desire to be a solution to this nation's nuclear waste problem. Let's get moving."

The blue ribbon commission, although not tasked with the responsibility of picking a site to hold the nation’s nuclear waste, echoed some of the positive aspects of the Carlsbad site in their report:

The crucial difference in the WIPP case [from Yucca Mountain] was the presence—also from the outset—of a supportive host community and of a state government that was willing to remain engaged. Starting in the early 1970s and continuing to the present, elected officials and other local leaders in and around the WIPP site, particularly in the Carlsbad business community, made it very clear that they approved of the development and use of the facility to dispose of defense TRU wastes. This unwavering local support helped to sustain the project during periods when federal and state agencies had to work through disagreements over issues such as the nature of the wastes to be disposed, the role of different entities in providing oversight, and the standards that the facility would be required to meet.

(They also provided an overview of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant on page 21.)

Not only does the Carlsbad community have the know-how and the right environment to support a nuclear waste repository, but they also view it as a way to boost the local economy, which is a major contributing factor to their overall support. A recent Forbes piece captures it perfectly:

This attitude—“Yes in my backyard,” if you will—has brought near permanent prosperity to this isolated spot that until recently had no endemic economic engine. Unemployment sits at 3.8%, versus 6.5% statewide and 8.5% nationally. And thanks to this project—euphemistically known as the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP—New Mexico has received more than $300 million in federal highway funds in the past decade, $100 million of which has gone into the roads around Carlsbad.

Before WIPP the area’s economy was mostly limited to potash mining, oil and gas drilling, and a passel of tourists stopping on the way to ­Carlsbad Caverns, an hour south. The Department of Energy’s $6 billion program created 1,300 permanent jobs, many of them high-paid engineering positions. Energy’s annual budget for WIPP is $215 million, much of which stays in the community as wages.

The surrounding communities are not only supportive about accepting the nation’s nuclear waste, Forbes said they have “doubled down” on the opportunity:

The leaders of neighboring Lea and Eddy counties have doubled down on the nuke biz, establishing a 1,000-acre atomic industrial park. ­Already uranium fuel maker Uren­co Group has built a $3 billion fabrication plant there, employing 300.

Now they’re seeking to build a surface-level facility to store used nuclear fuel rods in 100-ton, 15-foot-tall steel-and-concrete casks.

Given that the community and local leaders support developing a nuclear waste repository, what’s the hold up? Forbes explains:

Even if the money’s there, and the will, there’s still a lingering question of how the salt would react when in contact with canisters of high-level waste, 600 degrees hot.

Trapped within the salt are microscopic pockets of 250-million-year-old seawater. Because heat increases the solubility of salt in water, the more heat, the more salt dissolved. One theory suggests that high heat will attract nearby water toward the waste canisters, potentially corroding them. Ned Elkins, Los Alamos lab’s chief salt repository scientist, who works at WIPP, says all current modeling indicates that neither the heat nor water should pose any significant problems, “but we have to let the science speak for itself, to erase all doubt.” The DOE has begun a $40 million study to prove it out, but conclusive results will take at least three years.

Letting science dictate policy sounds like a good idea to me, so I guess it’s a wait and see game to determine if the site is technically qualified. Either way, it is encouraging to see that there are American communities out there that are willing to accept the nation’s nuclear waste and stand determined to make their case known.

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(For an interesting read, check out Spiegel Online to see how Sweden was able to build community support for its permanent nuclear waste repository and actually had to choose between two willing host communities. The blue ribbon commission visited Sweden during the course of its two-year evaluation and believes it to be a good example for how a country can sustain public trust and confidence to see a facility through to completion.)

Photo: Photograph taken by Chip Simons and featured in Forbes’ “Nuke Us!”

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Reporting on the BRC Report

The NEI coverage of the Blue Ribbon Commission final report is below this post and gives a good summary of industry response. We’d thought we’d take a look at some of the coverage in the press and see how it is playing around the country. These are news stories, so we’re not gauging reaction, as we would with editorials, just the accuracy and usefulness of the reporting.

And some are better than others. The TriCity [Wash.] Herald, using the AP story as a base, sort of misses the boat with this lede:

The United States should immediately start looking for an alternative to replace the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada, which cost an estimated $15 billion but was never completed, a presidential commission said Thursday.

It’s not wrong exactly, but the stress on Yucca Mountain suggests the commission had something to say about it. In fact, it had nothing specific to say about it and, if Yucca Mountain were determined to still be the best locale for a central used fuel repository, that would be consistent with the report.

Yucca Mountain was picked by a process established by law, but "now the Blue Ribbon Commission suggests we just ignore the law and start all over?" said Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna, who is running for governor as a Republican, in a statement. "That recommendation could set our country back at least 25 years."

Well, he said it, but it isn’t really the case that Yucca has been eliminated from consideration. The report didn’t eliminate any location from consideration. President Barack Obama and Energy Secretary Steven Chu, yes, blue ribbon commission, no.

Here’s what the report says. It’s pretty direct:

The Blue Ribbon Commission was not chartered as a siting commission. Accordingly we have not evaluated Yucca Mountain or any other location as a potential site for the storage or disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste, nor have we taken a position on the Administration’s request to withdraw the license application.

The New York Time’s Matt Wald gets closer to the gist and introduced in the lede the second element that picked up a lot of attention, the consent-based approach to siting a repository:

A commission appointed to find alternatives to a failed plan to store nuclear waste in the Nevada desert declared on Thursday that the United States would have to develop a "consent-based approach" for choosing a site because leaving the decision to Congress had failed.

By securing local consent, the panel said, the government might avoid the kind of conflicts that led to the cancellation of plans to create a repository at Yucca Mountain, a site 100 miles from Las Vegas, in 2010. It noted that local willingness had been crucial to decision-making on sites for nuclear waste depots in Finland, France, Spain and Sweden.

This is true, though it ignores that Yucca Mountain might well be open today if President Obama had not closed it – and neither Obama nor Secretary Chu have offered a definitive reason for closing it, so we not sure if “conflicts” led to its shuttering. One can infer a lot of things, but not really know them.

Here’s what the commission says about the consent-based approach:

By contrast [to a top-down, federal-led approach], the approach we recommend is explicitly adaptive, staged, and consent-based. Based on a review of successful siting processes in the United States and abroad—including most notably the siting of a disposal facility for transuranic radioactive waste, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico, and recent positive outcomes in Finland, France, Spain and Sweden—we believe this type of approach can provide the flexibility and sustain the public trust and confidence needed to see controversial  facilities through to completion.

And it’s right. This has worked to tamp down public opposition in those place – WIPP is almost a case study on how to do it - though it takes more time and effort to engage with local communities and any attempted process may come to nothing. That’s the risk.

Back to Wald:

The panel … also suggested that the government, which assumed responsibility for high-level waste 30 years ago, take the job of managing the waste out of the hands of the Energy Department and give it to a federally chartered corporation created for that purpose.

Such an agency would be more effective than the Department of Energy, which "must balance multiple agendas or policy priorities," it said.

The idea of the chartered corporation appears further down  in a number of stories, so a fair number of writers may have decided it’s a little more arcane a subject for general interest readers but still important.

Here’s the commission on the corporation:

[T]he Commission concludes that a new, single-purpose organization is needed to provide the stability, focus, and credibility that are essential to get the waste program back on track. We believe a congressionally chartered federal corporation offers the best model, but whatever the specific form of the new organization it must possess the attributes, independence, and resources to effectively carry out its mission.

The central task of the new organization would be to site, license, build, and operate facilities for the safe consolidated storage and final disposal of spent fuel and high-level nuclear waste at a reasonable cost and within a reasonable timeframe. In most stories I’ve read, Yucca Mountain and consent based siting have been the biggest subjects.

Even as the third most covered aspect of the report in most stories I’ve read, it’s often buried. CNN has it at paragraph 11:

It [the report] said this congressionally chartered federal corporation should have substantial authority and access to funds to accomplish its mission. A board, nominated by the president and confirmed by Congress, would oversee the organization.

I missed much coverage of interim storage sites, another of the report’s recommendations – that seems germane to various communities – but maybe that will be thought most important to communities where they will be sited.

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The story in the Las Vegas Sun, opposition central for Yucca Mountain in Nevada media, runs through the same subjects as the other stories we reviewed. What I liked was the headline:

Commission: Store nuclear waste where it’s wanted

Yeah, wise guys, where it’s wanted.

It’s a newsboy. I was a bicycle based suburban newsboy back when rather than a wuxtry-wuxtry urban type of newsboy. The former still have some currency – the latter, our boy in the picture, none at all. Count him as among the culturally lost.

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US Panel Recommends New Strategies for Managing Used Nuclear Fuel

The following article was published yesterday by Nuclear Energy Overview, NEI's member-only publication.

Jan. 26, 2012—Enumerating shortcomings of the nation’s used fuel management program, a federal government panel this week recommended eight steps to improve it.

Among them, the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future said in a report issued today, is that levies on nuclear energy that American consumers have been paying for years should be fully available to a new organization created to manage the federal government’s used nuclear fuel program.

The commission also recommended development of at least one consolidated storage facility for used nuclear fuel.

Congressional hearings on a new used fuel management organization should begin “as soon as possible,” the commission said.

The panel also addressed the fund created to manage the program.

Under the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the government has been assessing utilities—which have in turn assessed their rate payers—a fee to finance the government’s used fuel program. The fund, with a balance of $27 billion, has become inaccessible to the program.

Used fuel management “must compete for federal funding each year and is therefore subject to exactly the budget constraints and uncertainties that the fund was created to avoid. This situation must be remedied to allow the [used fuel] program to continue,” the commission said. It recommended administrative actions that can separate fund receipts from the overall federal budget.

In a statement, six organizations—the Nuclear Energy Institute, the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, the Nuclear Waste Strategy Coalition, the American Public Power Association, the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association and the Edison Electric Institute—said they welcome the report. The groups collectively represent nuclear energy producers and suppliers, state public utility commissions, and other public and private organizations interested in used nuclear fuel management.

“After two years of fact-finding and intense study, the commission has officially endorsed a number of strategic used fuel-management initiatives that our members and other experts have long supported and that will reform and re-energize the country’s high-level radioactive waste program,” the statement says.

The commission’s recommendations, which are generally consistent with the industry’s integrated used fuel management policies, are:

• creating an organization outside the Energy Department with a corporate-style board of directors to manage the country’s used fuel program
• making the used fuel levies on consumers fully available to the new organization
• developing one or more consolidated storage facilities
• making decisions on locations of nuclear fuel management facilities based on the consent of the state and local governments
• developing one or more underground disposal facilities
• preparing for the large-scale transport of spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste to consolidated storage and disposal facilities when they are available
• supporting continued U.S. innovation in nuclear energy technology and work force development
• leading international efforts to enhance safety, waste management, nonproliferation and security issues.

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 requires the federal government to remove used fuel from commercial reactor sites. The process was to begin in 1998, but the government has yet to fulfill its obligation, and fuel rods continue to be stored safely and securely at the nation’s nuclear energy facilities, including at reactors that have been shut down. The law also requires the surcharge on consumers to pay for nuclear fuel disposal facilities.

The Department of Energy spent several decades studying and seeking permits to build an underground repository for reactor fuel at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. In 2008, the department submitted a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build the repository, but the Obama administration cancelled the project before NRC review of the license application was completed. The Obama administration created the 15-member commission to study nuclear fuel management in January 2010.

The commission noted that some of its recommendations will require congressional action but said that “prompt action can and should be taken in several areas, without waiting for legislative action, to get the waste management program back on track.” For example, the report says, the Energy Department can take early steps to develop a consolidated storage facility to hold decades-old reactor fuel, particularly fuel from reactors that have been closed.

In their statement, the six organizations agreed, adding that they “stand ready to work with the DOE, the administration and Congress to implement the [commission’s] recommendations to advance the nation’s economic, energy, environmental and national security imperatives by creating a sustainable integrated used nuclear fuel management program.”

The commission report also supports long-term recycling and advanced fuel-cycle technologies, which could reduce the amount of used fuel needing disposal while recovering valuable unused materials for re-use in new fuel. The panel noted, however, that there are “no currently available or reasonably foreseeable reactor and fuel cycle technology developments [that] have the potential to fundamentally alter the waste management challenge this nation confronts over at least the next several decades, if not longer.”

“Nuclear energy is a key component of America’s energy mix. The [commission] recognizes this with its recommendation for stable, long-term support for advanced reactor and fuel cycle technology development that can help address the energy challenges facing future generations,” the statement from the six organizations says.

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BRC Releases Final Report; Japan Invites in IAEA

I’d give you a link to the final report of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future at its site at brc.gov, but that has been flooded and is not responsive. But NEI has you covered. Go here to get a copy of the report.

The BRC says the report hews pretty closely to the draft report released last summer – our coverage of that is here with some useful links. We’ll have lots more to say about the final report, I’m sure, but for now, reading glasses on.

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The Japanese government has asked the International Atomic Energy Agency to stop by and double check the stress tests it has been conduction on its fleet. Specifically, the Japanese want the IAEA to visit Oi, its third largest nuclear facility. Why have the IAEA do this?

Seeking to assuage public misgivings about nuclear-plant safety, government and nuclear industry officials have sought to use "stress tests" that gauge resilience to natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis. The invitation to the IAEA is part of Japan's campaign to validate those tests.

And there’s this, too:

Oi's four reactors have become a focal point in Japan's debate over nuclear energy as the hot and humid summer, with its seasonal peak in electricity demand, draws nearer. Kansai Electric, which supplies power to Kyoto and Osaka in western Japan, relies on its three nuclear plants for more than 40% of the electricity it generates. Oi alone provides about 20%.

Those are actually two different things – getting the plants running to stave off blackouts and regaining public trust. How the government will know that it done the latter is not mentioned in the story, but I guess polling and the opinions of the elected leaders in the towns around Oi and other facilities will act as the gauges.

“The stress tests as currently designed don't seem to factor in the type of worst-case scenario we saw in Fukushima," Mr. [Ryozo] Tatami, the mayor of Maizuru said. "We need evidence Oi's reactors will be safe even if a [Fukushima-scale] tsunami strikes because vague assurances just raise too many doubts in our minds."

Maizuru is about 18 miles from Oi.

One can have an opinion about this approach – it sounds like one the Japanese put stock into, which is good – and about whether Japan should or shouldn’t reopen its facilities – simply, yes – but whether it does or not, whatever the consequences, is up to its people. There’s nothing for us to do but wait and see – and respect the outcome.

The Washington Post has an interesting article about the Japanese decision making approach and its impact on reopening its nuclear facilities here. Long story short: the Japanese really like a broad consensus. Worth a read for insight into how another culture deals with big issues.

The Oi nuclear facility. If you say it enough times, you sound like an annoyed Brit.

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