With Pandora's Promise in Hand, CNN Shining Light on Politics of Yucca Mountain

I'm a Washington policy professional but also a Washington native, and so over the better part of four decades I've developed a distinct appreciation for how policy in this city is covered by the fourth estate. To cut to the chase: I'm pretty much underwhelmed/infuriated by a wide swath of the Washington press corps on pretty much a daily basis. But not today.

For the better part of the past month I've worked closely and in most rewarding fashion with the producer-reporter tandem of David Fitzpatrick and Drew Griffin of CNN. Tonight of course that outlet is airing the magnificent documentary 'Pandora's Promise.' In support of the documentary CNN has devoted extraordinary resources this fall to informing the public about nuclear energy. In sprawling digital and broadcast news and commentary this week, CNN has covered nuclear's voices pro and con, academic and activist, political and wonkish. Nuclear power in the United States has known both triumph and struggle in recent years, and it's all well detailed in CNN's reporting this week. As a result, the American public knows more about our technology and about our nation's energy policy.

A number of CNN reporters have weighed in on nuclear energy this week, but David and Drew especially have traveled the country to visit our sites, talk to our engineers and executives, and richly record the workings of our industry. They even ventured into places far more frightening and dangerous than any nuclear plant: the offices of Washington lawmakers. It's been good old fashioned gumshoe journalism emanating out of Atlanta, and for me it's been a powerful reminder of what journalism once was and seldom is any more.  

Within CNN's extraordinary coverage breadth this week there have been treatments I've positively cheered, while in other instances I've frowned and sighed as the outlet gave air time and bandwidth to tired and outdated anti-nuclear sentiments. In other words, they've struck a pretty fair balance in their coverage of a contentious topic. I don't often get to make such a claim about the reportage my media manager colleagues and I try and help shape.

I'm most particularly struck by CNN's report on Yucca Mountain. Instead of the usual ping pong-partisan back and forth we see all too often in policy coverage, CNN's reporting on the failed Nevada project focuses, in fair and unsparing fashion, on the dogged obstructionist efforts of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his former henchman at the NRC, Greg Jaczko. Of the former NRC chairman CNN said, "You might call him Yucca Mountain's hired killer." [Emphasis mine] Watch it below ...


The American public, I submit, has a right to know who specifically ought to be held accountable for the waste of $10 billion in taxpayer dollars associated with the termination of the repository project. In this report we get straight-talk to that.      

     

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Rep. John Shimkus on Yucca Mountain: Can You Hear Me Now?

Rep. John Shimkus

You can't find a more passionate supporter of the Yucca Mountain repository on Capitol Hill than Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.). For years, Shimkus has been a champion of electricity rate payers who have been dutifully contributing to the Nuclear Waste Fund only to see the Federal government continually fail to fullfill its obligations under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.

Earlier today, the Chicago Tribune published an op-ed by the dogged Rep. Shimkus entitled, "Nuclear waster: The name is Yucca Mountain." Though the full text of the article is behind one of those dreaded paywalls, we've excerpted a few choice passages for your reading pleasure.

After spending $15 billion analyzing it [Yucca Mountain], the Department of Energy in 2008 finally filed with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission an application for a license to build and operate the project. Numbering nearly 10,000 pages, the application addressed every imaginable question of safety and environmental protection. 

Later that year the tide turned. Then-Sen. Barack Obama promised to do what he could to halt Yucca Mountain. Procedural maneuvers in Congress and at the NRC helped Obama make good on that promise, even though the votes were still there to support the project in the House and the Senate. 

Since then, some stakeholders and policymakers have asked, "Why don't we step back from the Yucca Mountain standoff and start looking for an alternative?" Because we share a sense of urgency to resolve the issue, my colleagues and I who have spent years working on this issue have carefully reviewed these ideas.

However, a close look confirms our belief that building a repository at Yucca Mountain would still be the fastest, best and most viable solution.

{...]

We are all frustrated by the failure to dispose of nuclear waste on the timetable provided in current law. However, assessing the pros and cons of interim storage, it does not seem to offer either economic or safety benefits. It would divert time, effort and resources away from actually solving the waste problem once and for all. Citizens want a sound nuclear policy and a safe solution for spent nuclear fuel disposal. The current law focusing on the Nevada project remains the best solution and, in time, the most likely to succeed.

Rep. Shimkus doesn't only deal with Yucca Mountain in print, he also makes a point of talking about it on the floor of the house with some frequency. Here's one statement from March 20, 2013:


There are others that you can find on the congressman's YouTube channel.

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Fair and Unfair Nuclear Editorials

Two recent editorials grapple with nuclear energy issues relevant to their states. The York (Penn.) Record becomes disturbed about some corrosion discovered on used fuel containers.

A Nuclear Regulatory Commission report said that some of those casks could leak. It cited water-damaged containers that held spent fuel from both of our local nuke plants - TMI and Peach Bottom.

It's nothing to be too alarmed about right now.

No radiological material leaked.

The terse style is unusual – feels like someone on the board has internalized Hemingway. Anyway, its recommendation:

Leaving this radioactive material lying around at hundreds of sites across the country is just not an acceptable disposal solution.

Do we have leaders capable of making the tough political decisions to resolve this issue?

Well, it’s not exactly lying around and, of course, the problem with the containers was found and fixed without further incident. But, it’s true. Whether by following the recommendations of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future or some other set of policy directives, the development of an integrated fuel cycle, one that would include end-to-end management of uranium-based fuel, is a needed thing. It feels closer to realization than I’ve ever seen it, but that’s a relative judgment. 

NEI has an interesting page on this topic. Many of the policy prescriptions on the page have been taken up by the federal government or mirror the commission’s findings.

But we shouldn’t leave the impression that York has an animus on for nuclear energy.

Nuclear power has some huge benefits. It can produce a tremendous amount of electricity - and it does not produce greenhouse gases, a huge benefit as we grapple with climate change.

It goes on to list perceived drawbacks, but it’s judicious all-in-all.

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A short glimpse of an op-ed over at the Newark (N.J.) Star-Ledger, written by Joseph Mangano, the executive director of the Radiation and Public Health Project. Get the idea this one might not be positive?

The reason given by [Exelon CEO Christopher] Crane and other executives for closing nuclear plants is that they are too expensive, and more costly than growing sources of power such as natural gas and wind. But nowhere can one find any explanation of why reactors are expensive. The reason — reactors are unsafe and dangerous.

It’s certainly true that natural gas has put price pressure on other types of generating facilities, but no nuclear facility has closed – or will close to date – for that reason. Could happen, I suppose, but nuclear facilities tend to be relatively inexpensive to run once they’re operational. I think Mangano just needs a way to get around to “unsafe and dangerous.” He’s smooth enough doing it, but of course, he doesn’t explain why his configuration of “expensive” has only now resulted in closed plants.

It gets worse:

Oyster Creek has had several near-miss meltdowns. Routine emissions may have raised local cancer rates; Ocean County experienced a child cancer cluster in the 1980s and 1990s, and still has the sixth-highest child-cancer incidence of the largest 306 counties nationwide.

Should we point out that this is New Jersey we’re talking about? Beautiful state in many places – even a garden state – but you can create correlations all over the place for increased incidents of illness. Nuclear energy facilities really don’t spew radiation all over the place in the course of operation and many, many studies have not found causal links. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has a good page, though it’s a little dated.

Mangano’s an old hand at this kind of thing – see this earlier post about his antics. Hint: It’s about 14,000 deaths caused by the Fukushima Daiichi accident – here in the United States.

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Why the Leaking Underground Tanks at Hanford Have Nothing to Do With Used Nuclear Fuel at US Nuclear Power Plants

Late on Friday night Washington Gov. Jay Insleee announced the following news:

Six underground storage tanks at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation along the Columbia River in Washington state were recently found to be leaking radioactive waste, but there is no immediate risk to human health, state and federal officials said on Friday.

The seeping waste adds to decades of soil contamination caused by leaking storage tanks at Hanford in the past and threatens to further taint groundwater below the site but poses no near-term danger of polluting the Columbia River, officials said.

The newly discovered leaks were revealed by Governor Jay Inslee a week after the U.S. Energy Department disclosed that radioactive waste was found to be escaping from one tank at Hanford.

Inslee said he was informed on Friday by outgoing U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu that a total of six of the aging, single-walled tanks were leaking radioactive waste.

"There is no immediate or near-term health risk associated with these newly discovered leaks, which are more than 5 miles from the Columbia River," Inslee said in a statement released by his office. "But nonetheless this is disturbing news for all Washingtonians."

While most of our readers understand that there's no connection between these tanks full of defense waste and the used nuclear fuel that's stored safely at plant sites around the country, that hasn't stopped some members of the media from coming to that conclusion -- something that James Conca at Forbes ably pointed out over the weekend.

To recap some quick takeaways:

• Commercial reactor fuel is solid material, not liquid like the material at Hanford.

• Commercial reactor fuel is securely stored in steel-lined concrete vaults or steel and concrete containers above ground.

• Storage facilities at nuclear energy facilities are licensed and inspected by independent regulators.

In order to help dispel the confusion, we've published a fact sheet on the topic and made it available on our website a few minutes ago. Click here to read that document, "No Similarity Between Commercial Reactor Fuel Storage, Leaking Underground Waste Tanks at DOE’s Hanford Site."

For more on how the industry safely stores used nuclear fuel, please check out this interactive graphic.

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Where Used Nuclear Fuel Is Wanted

The WIPP facility

Sometimes, it just takes a little push. For example, The Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future (whew! – let’s call it the BRC) made a number of recommendations on how to proceed with used nuclear fuel without Yucca Mountain.

One recommendation still promoted the use of one or more permanent repositories just like Yucca Mountain, but the interest here – and the push - is on a second, related suggestion: interim storage sites. However many of these there would be, they would be many fewer than the nuclear facilities now holding used nuclear fuel – if the idea is to decrease the number of sites with used fuel, then this is an especially plausible idea.

Even better, the BRC said that communities could suggest themselves as hosts for these interim sites. The federal government could then negotiate terms with the communities, assuming there are viable locations to put the sites.

This idea arose from a visit the BRC members took to the Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, N.M., where it held a hearing on how the site was determined and how the townspeople like having it there. WIPP stores defense-related transuranic waste, not domestic used fuel, but otherwise it is a model for a community-based storage site. And the community loves WIPP.

Offering the community’s insight, Carlsbad Mayor Dale Janway told the BRC the Department of Energy’s openness has been essential to the project’s success.
"They have kept their promises. I can honestly say they have kept us informed from the very beginning,” he said.
New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez told the BRC the keys to WIPP’s success have been the area’s geological composition, sound science, transparency and citizen engagement.
“WIPP has been vital to the nation and is responsible for major, significant economic impact to the community,” she said. “WIPP’s local support has never wavered.”

And that’s the push – WIPP has been a boon to its community and the BRC recommendation put its success up for public review.
So…

Local leaders here are polishing their pitch to attract a type of business most places would shun: storing the nation’s high-level nuclear waste.
They’ve already teamed up with an international nuclear company to get an edge on any competition. They’ve bought land and built a Web page. They’ve even met with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

It’s still New Mexico – in this case Eunice, which is near Carlsbad – but they’re really pushing to be considered. Here’s a little information about Eunice:

Today Eunice boasts an estimated population of 2,606 (in July of 2005) and growing currently with 9 choices of places to dine-in or carryout, 2 drinking establishments with one requiring membership, health clinic, an inn and motel, lumber yard, seasonal tax office, 1 convenience store, towing and auto service, a bank, a grocery store, a discount store, insurance shops, organizations and many more businesses are popping up. Things are growing and the future in Eunice is going to be something to behold.

Now, in Eunice’s case, or more properly, Lea and Eddy counties, there is a possibility that they can turn that part of the state into a used fuel megamall – their term, not mine:

The growing nuclear complex includes the $3 billion enrichment plant [run by URENCO], the federal nuclear-waste repository at the Waste Isolation Pilot Project in Carlsbad and the new Waste Control Specialists’ low-level radioactive waste site just over the New Mexico-Texas border, across the highway from the enrichment plant. In addition, federal regulators have just approved a depleted uranium de-conversion plant [run by International Isotopes in nearby Hobbs, N.M.].

Some of Eunice seems to poke into Texas, so this looks like a two-state effort.
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Eunice may be kind of an obvious place to host a site, given what its neighbors are up to. But others are at least poking their noses under the tent.

Although there are no formal proposals to create a nuclear waste facility in South Carolina, it is an issue that must be evaluated, said Rick McLeod, the executive director of the SRS Community Reuse Organization, an economic development consortium unrelated to Areva’s presentation [about interim fuel sites] in Columbia.
“Right now, it’s just a topic that’s out there,” he said. “Everyone’s discussing what it could or could not be, and not just here. A lot of other communities are looking at it, too.”

So what’s AREVA up to?

The Thursday presentation is one of several signs that behind-the-scenes interest in the Palmetto state remains high as Congress and the U.S. Energy Department try to forge new solutions for spent fuel now stored in pools and casks at the nation’s 104 commercial power reactors.

And although McLeod is being cautious, his group has put serious money into exploring the issue:

McLeod’s group launched a $200,000 study in June to explore Savannah River Site’s potential role in spent nuclear fuel solutions and the role of surrounding counties.

I think there will be a lot more to say about this over the next year. Congress hasn’t really moved on the BRC recommendations, but they are likely to do so – and there are communities waiting for it to happen.

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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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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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