In the nineteenth century, the British came up with the idea of a public corporation that was a semi-independent organ of government. A public corporation is owned by the government but has a clearly defined goal (or goals) specific to it. It functions independently of the government in its day-to-day operations. The Tennessee Valley Authority is an example of a publicly-owned corporation in the United States. A public corporation may make profits or it may be non-profit, depending on its charter. It may keep some of its profits for re-investment. Since the only "shareholder" is the government, any excess profits beyond investment (either for replacement of depreciated equipment or for growth) would be returned to the government.

IEER has recommended that a public corporation be established to handle long-term management of highly radioactive waste.¹ A public corporation would have many advantages over the present set-up, whereby the Department of Energy (DOE), which has created and continues to create such wastes, is also responsible for site selection and repository development and operation. For a variety of reasons, the DOE has repeatedly failed in its environmental remediation program even when the technical concepts being implemented were along the right lines. Conflict of interest may be only a part of the reason. As an organization historically devoted to pursuing nuclear weapons and nuclear power that still has interests in these areas, the DOE appears unable to change its culture to one of environmental protection.

The idea of a private, profit-making waste management corporation funded by nuclear utilities suffers from serious shortcomings. Its attention to profit would be incompatible with the decades of research and development tasks that are needed before action on final disposal can be taken. A private corporation would lack the detailed accountability that can be built into a public corporation. Private companies can shield their records on the grounds that such information is proprietary, even if it is related to public health and the environment. For instance, cigarette companies kept secret much of their research on nicotine and other aspects of the health effects of smoking for decades on such grounds.

Creating a new government agency is also a poor solution. The vulnerability of the current system to short-term political pressures to the detriment of long-term research and development is a serious defect of the repository program. Setting up a new government agency does not address this problem because it would necessarily be subject to the vagaries of short-term political pressures and annual budgeting.

A federally chartered non-profit corporation appears to be an institutional framework that could have the strengths of both public and private sector approaches, if it is properly set up. It would operate under appropriate independent regulation, and the scrutiny of the public, the federal and state governments, and affected tribes. The corporation could tap into the nuclear waste management experience of the utilities as well as the innovative potential of the private sector by funding research and development (R&D) through a peer-reviewed, competitive process. Such processes are common in some existing governmental research programs. However, transparency and greater accountability to the general public in the grant-making process will be essential.

No institutional set-up can guarantee success or the integrity of the process. The corporation's technical and financial performance and accountability to the public will depend in large part on the methods and terms by which it is established. It is beyond the scope of this newsletter to suggest a detailed organizational structure, but some important criteria and institutional features can be outlined:

• The mandate of the corporation should be clearly specified. It should include the management of wastes on the sites of closed nuclear power plants and contracting and oversight of the R&D needed to understand and compare the different approaches to long-term management. Research would be done at universities, by private non-profit groups, as well as by industry, with proposals being screened by publicly-determined criteria. The corporation could also conduct some of the R&D itself.
• On-site storage by the corporation should be regulated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, as well as state environmental agencies.
• The composition of the board of directors of the corporation should ensure that the interests of states, Native American tribes, and communities affected by nuclear power plants are properly represented.
• The conduct of the corporation's business should be transparent in its financial, scientific, and other aspects, to allow effective public and congressional scrutiny throughout the process. As a general rule, the documents of the corporation would be public.
• The scientific and technological results of the publicly-funded R&D program should be publicly owned - that is, patent and other property rights should belong to the public and not to any private entities that contract to do the work.
• The Nuclear Waste Fund should be allocated to the work of the corporation, which would be strictly accountable financially, and in the accomplishment of scientific and technical goals and schedules (with due regard for the uncertainties inherent in scientific accomplishments of the type under consideration). The Fund will need to be walled off from other parts of the federal budget in order to protect the waste management corporation's operations from short-term political pressures. If the R&D over the next few decades is along the lines we have suggested (see accompanying article, Short- and Medium-Term Management of Highly Radioactive Wastes in the United States ), the Nuclear Waste Fund may be sufficient to cover it as well as on-site storage, but not long-term disposal. The Nuclear Waste Fund would likely need to be augmented through a higher fee on nuclear utilities to recover long-term disposal costs. This recovery should not be delayed since it will be difficult or impossible to collect fees after nuclear power plants are shut, when the disposal would actually be implemented. A higher utility contribution to the Nuclear Waste Fund with the monies being placed in interest-bearing escrow may be one solution. If the money is not needed, it would be returned to ratepayers or their designees.

1. See accompanying article, Short- and Medium-Term Management of Highly Radioactive Wastes in the United States. Also Marc Fioravanti and Arjun Makhijani, Containing the Cold War Mess: Restructuring the Environmental Management of the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Complex, IEER, October 1997, p. 5-7, 259-262.