Policy/regulatory structure

• Waste should be reclassified to reflect longevity and hazard.

• Wastes that threaten to exacerbate environmental contamination in the short- and medium-term, such as buried TRU waste and liquid high level waste, should be stabilized and retrievably stored pending long-term disposal.

• Irradiated reactor fuel (also called spent fuel), TRU waste, and military high-level waste should be stored as safely as possible on site or as close to the point of generation as possible for an interim period (several decades) that would be long enough to allow a long-term management plan to be implemented.

• The federal government should pay for additional on-site storage necessitated by delays in the repository program but only for wastes covered by existing license periods for presently operating reactors. The funds should come from the Nuclear Waste Fund and not from general taxpayer revenues.

• A firm commitment should be made against reprocessing of spent fuel.

• Currently the United States does not have an adequate program or institutional framework to handle long-term management of highly radioactive waste. We believe the best approach to solving this problem is a federally chartered non-profit corporation which would develop and implement a long-term waste management program, and would take ownership of spent fuel after reactors are shut under existing reactor licensing lifetimes. Most or all of the necessary R&D work would be contracted out to universities, non-profits, and industry on a competitive basis. The Nuclear Waste Fund would be used to finance the operation of the corporation. The rate payment into the Waste Fund by nuclear utilities should be such that it will cover all the costs of the program.

• Spent fuel from existing nuclear power plants beyond their presently licensed lifetimes or from new nuclear power plants should be excluded by law from federal assumption of waste management liabilities. Liability for waste generation attributable to future production of nuclear weapons or weapons-usable materials should be borne by the Pentagon or the Defense programs part of the Department of Energy.

Research and development

• Research should be conducted into development of engineered barriers that mimic natural materials and structures that retard the migration of radioactivity for millions of years or more.

• It is clear that before any method is chosen for permanent disposal of radioactive waste, additional research on disposal techniques is required. A great deal of work has already been done at WIPP and Yucca Mountain and these sites should be converted into research centers for research on geologic disposal, engineered barriers, testing of materials for engineered barriers, etc. using only non-radioactive analog materials. This conversion should be subject to approval by the state of New Mexico for WIPP, and by the state of Nevada and the Western Shoshone people in the case of Yucca Mountain. WIPP and Yucca Mountain would be permanently off the table as potential repositories because they are poor sites. Waste already put inside the WIPP repository should be removed from it. This will allow long-term research to proceed in an unfettered and complete fashion.

• Various kinds of repository types and environments should be studied for ten to fifteen years without any attempt to identify, rank, or screen specific locations as potential repository sites.

• Significant resources should be devoted to investigation of sub-seabed disposal, given that there are no ideal options for long-term waste management. These resources should not be used to add radioactive materials into the oceanic or sub-seabed environment.

• Upper mantle disposal (deep disposal beneath the biosphere) has enough merit as a concept that it deserves significant financial resources, even though the technology to implement this approach does not exist and the technical viability of this approach is questionable at the present time.