Lessons from the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Storage Debate
But these options have a limitation: Neither reprocessing alone nor a bunch of new, advanced reactors can eliminate the need for a permanent underground storage site. "I would say there is no possibility of avoiding geologic repository somewhere, regardless of your fuel cycle," says Ewing. Joonhong Ahn, a nuclear engineering professor at the University of California-Berkeley, agrees: "In any case, you are going to need a geologic repository."
All this leaves the Obama administration and Congress with a difficult decision. By abandoning Yucca Mountain, the administration is essentially walking away from $8 billion of investment and 25 years of research and study, although experts say that as long ago as the early 1990s, there were already serious doubts that the repository would ever be built. For that reason, the nuclear industry's reaction to the administration's decision has been relatively mild.
Fresh off his victory, Reid last week said that he is forming a "blue-ribbon panel" of experts to examine alternatives to Yucca Mountain and expects its findings in about a year. According to most experts, finding a new permanent site could take up to 20 years, maybe longer. This time, the search may be different. Says Ewing: "In the U.S., we've learned that the local community can be very effective if they don't agree."
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Reader Comments
Nuclear Energy is needed
The need for energy is a given. Nuclear is just one means of electrical energy generation and has proven itself. The government is pushing green energy great, but will fall short of needs. America needs to manufacture to improve and stabilize the economy and create growth, this requires energy, electricity is the best current available energy source.
The politicians need a plan that includes:
1. Standardize Nuclear generation types and sizes
2. Standardize construction &(permits) to expedite
3. STORAGE, transportation, and reprocessing of spent fuel
4. EDUCATION of the public (and Reid).
Not in my back yard RIED, 8 billion at YUCCA, it is the bending of the facts and scare tactics. A bullet train to Las Vegas is how we spend money wisely?
Yucca has had so much scrutiny I feel it is unwise to fill in the hole and put our head in the sand. Wake up America, just look at Europe and Japan.
The US needs a "Bottom Up" Nuclear Waste Plan
I am a long time lawyer and advisor to WTS, the operator of WIPP,and wrote about this subject this week (3/16) at abqjournal.com.There are many lessons to be learned from the world's only functioning deep geologic nuclear waste depository-WIPP. The most important is that Washington should make no new storage or displosal plans without including states and localities in the site selection process from the very first day. State govenment support is far more difficult to obtain that local approval.Before a presidential commission makes new national nuclear waste disposal policy once again without knowing if it has any viable storage or disposal sites, it should reach out to communities and states to determine where opportunities for storage or disposal really exist. Instead of selecting pottential sites and then trying to "foster local support", states and localities should first be asked what they want and under what conditions.
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