At the present time, most of this waste, in the form of ceramic pellets encapsulated in zirconium alloy fuel rods, is stored in large enclosed pools at nuclear power plants. After the waste has cooled for some years, it can be moved to dry casks. This is how some waste is currently stored. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has declared dry cask storage to be safe for up to a 100-year period. Given the inherently dangerous nature of spent nuclear fuel, such a claim must surely be regarded as relative. But currently, there is no other approach to interim management of nuclear waste that presents environmental or safety advantages over on-site storage.¹ So why are the proponents of a repository and/or a centralized storage site at Yucca Mountain² in such a rush to move the waste?

The answer lies in the artificial deadline created by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982. This "inside-the-beltway" compromise between the nuclear industry (including nuclear utilities), the Department of Energy (DOE), and arms control advocates mandated that a repository for spent fuel and highly radioactive reprocessing wastes from military plutonium production be opened by 1998. One of nine western and southwestern sites already under investigation by the DOE was to be selected.³ This schedule was decades faster than the repository program of any other country. The following factors heavily influenced the 1982 deal:

The potential for use of commercial plutonium as a fuel was declining because of its high cost relative to uranium, and it was also posing an increasing proliferation liability. (Spent fuel contains about 1% plutonium that can be extracted for use as a reactor fuel(separated plutonium can also be used to make nuclear weapons.) Early spent fuel disposal seemed an economically advantageous way for nuclear utilities to get rid of a growing environmental liability.

Nuclear power plant manufacturers felt that they could sell more plants if they could point to a "solution" to the problem of spent fuel management. The rush of the nuclear power plant manufacturers was partly motivated by a 1978 California decision not to allow more nuclear plants to be built in the state until there was a clear solution to the problem of nuclear waste, insofar as this waste represented an economic liability for utilities.

Arms control advocates and others felt that a quick opening of a repository would make permanent the no-commercial-reprocessing policy of the Carter administration, which was threatened by the Reagan administration's stated desire to reverse it.

After political pressures eliminated all other potential sites, the DOE was directed by Congress to investigate Yucca Mountain in Nevada. (See table in Centerfold, "The Road to Yucca Mountain.") However, the geology of the site is not well suited for high-level waste disposal, and the land is claimed by the Western Shoshone people. Further, while the site is still undergoing studies to determine its suitability as a repository, on numerous occasions, standards have been made more lax in order to accommodate its deficiencies (see editorial). Should it be declared suitable, the earliest opening for a Yucca Mountain repository is the year 2010.

Another part of the 1982 deal, was a commitment by DOE to take charge of the spent fuel from the utilities by 1998. In 1996, a US Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with many utilities and states that DOE's contracts with utilities are binding and that DOE will be liable for damages arising from breach of contract if it does not take charge of the fuel at that time.

Since the passage of the act, the DOE has bungled its repository site selection process, both politically and scientifically. In so doing, it has wasted a good deal of the nuclear utilities' ratepayers' money, who, under the 1982 law, are financing the site selection process by a charge on electricity rates. The poor DOE performance and utility desires to get rid of the waste as early as possible have combined to create an artificial urgency that is unrelated to the technical issues at hand.

Of the three reasons for the 1998 deadline for a repository, two are clearly associated with narrow special interests. The third has been made moot by events. We will examine each more closely.

Utility interest in reducing liabilities

Shifting the liability of spent fuel from utilities to the DOE is not going to reduce nuclear dangers posed by spent fuel. In fact, given the influence of those who favor reprocessing in the DOE, transferring spent fuel to the DOE only increases the chances that nuclear industry lobbyists will be able to persuade the US government to consider reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel. Reprocessing will not only aggravate proliferation risks, but will also increase the problems of waste management (see SDA Vol. 5 No.1 on reprocessing). Legislation considered (but not enacted) in 1996, had, for the first time in a decade-and-a-half, provisions reconsidering reprocessing as a method of spent fuel management. Interestingly, 1996 was also the year in which a committee of the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences found that reprocessing was a poor way to address waste management issues (see article on Transmutation).

Since 1982, nuclear utilities have been charging their ratepayers a fee which they then pass on to the federal government's Nuclear Waste Fund. Utilities and the state regulatory commissions are right to be aggravated that despite the large sums paid into this fund, the DOE does not yet have a viable waste repository program. Perhaps this is reason enough to use the fund to cover the utilities' costs for extended on-site storage(provided the utilities agree to a restructured and sound repository program.

In insisting that DOE take charge of this fuel next year, utilities are only behaving like intransigent NIMBYs. This attitude was epitomized by a utility executive in a DOE-sponsored public meeting in 1991 when he said that the government should take charge of the spent fuel and that "I don't care where you put it" -- hardly a sentiment conducive to a sound repository program. Real solutions will require a far more thoughtful approach

The futile hope of new nuclear power plants

Wall Street has rejected nuclear power quite independently of the nuclear waste issue. There are no US utilities lined up to order new power plants should the DOE take charge of commercial spent fuel. Indeed, some nuclear power plants are closing prematurely due to unexpectedly high operating and maintenance costs. Moreover, by urging the government to take charge of this liability before a scientifically sound long-term management program has been put into place, the nuclear industry is simply asking for private liabilities to be transferred onto the shoulders of government, and hence onto ratepayers and taxpayers. (It is not at all clear that the Nuclear Waste Fund will provide sufficient funds for a sound repository program.)

Non-proliferation goals

The Reagan administration was singularly unsuccessful in interesting US private industry in reprocessing. While economic problems and proliferation risks stopped reprocessing in the US, global commercial reprocessing has grown considerably since the early 1980s, especially in France and Britain, where it is essentially operating on taxpayer and ratepayer subsidies. Thus, despite the US policy of no commercial reprocessing, global stocks of separated weapons-usable plutonium have been growing. This is increasing nuclear dangers around the world. But the US is doing little or nothing to stop this commercial reprocessing, even refusing to use its leverage, for instance, on Japanese contracts with French and British reprocessing companies.

The global inventory of separated commercial plutonium is increasing rapidly and it will soon exceed all military plutonium.⁴ Plutonium reprocessing also continues in Russia. Thus, the most effective strategy for stopping reprocessing and the proliferation dangers arising from it would not be aimed at US spent fuel management, but at the policies of other countries. Hence, the urgency argument as it relates to proliferation has become irrelevant.

Finally, the US schedule for opening a repository by 2010 is still far faster than any other country, and no significant non-proliferation goal is being accomplished by adopting this breakneck pace. The rush to open a repository not only fails to achieve any significant non-proliferation goal, but has also led to selection of a technically flawed site that could result in unacceptably high doses to future generations. This haste is buying society nothing, but is jeopardizing a great deal in terms of protecting the health of future generations.

It is true that the delays in the repository program together with legal challenges to the DOE to take charge of the waste have created pressures for examining reprocessing again in the US. However, the need to fend off an unwise policy on reprocessing cannot and should not be reason to settle for a repository program that is fundamentally flawed.

The Unreasonable Rush

The arguments for a centralized Monitored Retrievable Storage (or MRS) are even more parochial than those for a repository. Transporting waste to a central storage site well before a repository is due to open incurs needless risks. Many of the radionuclides that pose serious risks in waste transportation have half-lives of about 30 years or less. Extended on-site storage would allow time for development of a sound repository program. It would also greatly reduce the consequences of any transportation accidents, because some of the most dangerous radionuclides would undergo considerable decay during the storage time.

The time during on-site storage can also be used to develop transportation casks that would be more resistant to accidents, and to provide adequate emergency training and equipment to fire and police departments of communities along transportation routes. All of these goals are compromised by a rush to build an MRS facility, as are non-proliferation goals: if a large portion of spent fuel is consolidated at one site, the pressure for and risk of reprocessing is likely to increase.

MRS and repository proponents argue that storage at one centralized site is far safer than storage at dozens of reactor sites. This argument has been presented without any serious analysis. No assessment has been done comparing the risk of transport of relatively fresh fuel aged only a few years to transport of spent fuel when cesium-137 and strontium-90 have substantially decayed. No account has been taken of the risk of transporting the waste again should Yucca Mountain be found to be an unlicensable site. Moreover, it is quite mysterious that the proponents of nuclear power should at once argue that reactors are safe and secure, and at the same time claim that on-site storage of spent fuel is somehow so risky that a vast program to transport it to a centralized location must be undertaken before a reasonable repository program is in place. Finally, no coherent argument has been presented for why the DOE can be trusted to be a good environmental steward of this waste when its environmental record in other areas is, shall we say, undistinguished. Or does the nuclear industry mean to imply that its stewardship of things nuclear is inferior to that of the DOE?

The sense of urgency that the nuclear industry has created around the issue of spent fuel management is an artificial construct of its narrow legal and political battles with the government. Utilities that own nuclear power plants are right in asking the federal government to take responsibility for spent fuel because the government made a commitment to do so, and because leaving waste containing so much plutonium in private hands for the indefinite future represents an unacceptable security problem.⁵ But a federal guarantee to take the waste cannot extend to new power plants. And it is patently unjust that nuclear utilities should use arguments regarding liability for waste to further a demonstrably flawed repository program, to perpetuate an injustice upon the Western Shoshone people, or to impose needless risks on the public along transportation routes to an unnecessary centralized storage site.

1. By the term "on-site storage" we mean storage at the reactor site or, in some cases where this may not be prudent (relatively speaking) for periods of several decades, storage as close to the reactor site as is compatible with safety.

2. The proposed Yucca Mountain repository is located in southern Nevada, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas on the edge of the Nevada Test Site.

3. A second repository chosen from among eastern sites was supposed to be opened at a later date, but the DOE abandoned the search for this second repository in 1986. (See "The Road to Yucca Mountain")

4. At the end of 1995, the global inventory of separated commercial plutonium was 195 metric tons, and separated military plutonium stood at 270 metric tons. Worldwide, about 20 metric tons of plutonium are being separated from commercial spent fuel each year. See Energy & Security (IEER's global newsletter) Issue No. 1, 1996.

5. It is also noteworthy in this context that nuclear power is more a creature of Cold War competition than sound economics, so that the government does bear the responsibility for spent fuel from existing power plants. See IEER's report, The Nuclear Power Deception.