The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is simultaneously pursuing two inappropriate geologic repository projects for disposal of highly radioactive waste:

• The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico, which is supposed to "solve" the problem of wastes containing high concentrations of transuranic radionuclides, such as plutonium, mainly arising from the US nuclear weapons production program.²
  
• The Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada, which is being explored for its suitability for disposing of irradiated nuclear reactor fuel (also called spent fuel) and the high-level radioactive waste that results from the reprocessing of irradiated fuel. These two categories of waste, which often go under the single rubric of "high-level waste," together contain over 99 percent of all the radioactivity in all nuclear waste.
  

For a host of reasons, that IEER and others have addressed elsewhere, both of these repository projects are unsuitable, driven not by environmental protection but by politics and artificially-created legal deadlines.³ They are subverting environmental goals instead of promoting them. For instance, the most environmentally threatening transuranic (TRU) waste is that which was dumped in shallow landfills prior to 1970 at various DOE sites. These leaking waste dumps have contaminated large volumes of soil and are threatening important water resources. But because of the focus on WIPP, the buried waste problem has festered for lack of funds, research, and sufficient interest.⁴

While critics, including the present writer, have often pointed to the flaws of the current program, they have, at best, presented only sketchy alternatives for the long-term management of these wastes. If these problematic projects are to be stopped, it is essential that there be wide public debate on a detailed alternative now. The DOE's failure to meet two politically-driven deadlines has created increasing pressure to do something with the waste, even if it increases long-term risks:

• Nuclear utilities have filed lawsuits against the DOE for failing to begin taking charge of their spent fuel in January 1998, despite a commitment to do so as part of its implementation of the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act. In the utilities' view, a "solution" is simply to take the waste or at least the liability for it immediately out of their hands.⁵ If the DOE is forced to pay even part of the billions of dollars of civil penalties that utilities are asking in these lawsuits, there will be even more political pressure for the government to assume liability for the waste now at operating nuclear power plants. Given the mess that the DOE has made at the nuclear weapons sites and its problems with managing its own irradiated fuel, this would be a grave step backward in nuclear waste management.
  
• The DOE made a commitment to take transuranic waste out of Idaho, where most containerized TRU waste is stored, to a repository by 1980. Missing that deadline has given rise to a series of political crises, such as a governor of Idaho threatening to close down its border to incoming waste. Among other things, spent fuel from naval nuclear reactors is sent to Idaho for storage. The DOE has now put transuranic waste in WIPP, even though it aggravates rather than solves problems relating to TRU waste management (see accompanying article, Considering the Alternatives).

Storage of spent fuel and TRU waste on site for a few decades is feasible and can generally be done relatively safely, if the industry and regulatory authorities pay due attention to the safety issues involved. Current practice leaves a good deal to be desired. The design and licensing of casks should take account of the need for on-site storage for a period of several decades, possibly up to about 100 years.

But on-site storage is not a sound strategy for the long term. It risks a host of problems, including the possibility of reprocessing, social instability, leaks and accidents, or destruction of waste storage containers by natural disasters or terrorism. There is also a high potential for neglect in economically difficult times. The problem of neglect may become more serious after the utility has shut down the reactor since the plant would not be generating any more income.

Policy framework

We take as a starting point that WIPP and Yucca Mountain will not be used as repositories, because they are inappropriate technically and environmentally. Moreover, Yucca Mountain is on disputed territory. It is on the land of the Western Shoshone people that the US government claims it has obtained from them. But the Western Shoshone National Council does not recognize the US government's ownership claim as valid. Yet the DOE, Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Environmental Protection Agency have failed to address this crucial issue.

Stopping WIPP and Yucca Mountain as repository projects need not be equivalent to throwing away the investment in them. These two facilities, along with several others around the world, could be used for scientific investigation of problems central to the concept of geologic repository disposal of waste (see below). But it is essential to stop poor repository programs and quick-fix approaches like hastily putting or exporting the waste somewhere if resources are to be freed up for a sound program of long-term waste management.

The need to separate long-term management from short-term political pressures is illustrated by the triumphalism that has accompanied sending some Los Alamos waste canisters (which contain wastes from a National Aeronautics and Space Administration program of plutonium-238-powered thermo-electric generators) to WIPP. The claim is that such placement represents a "solution" to the TRU waste problem. However, the only problem it "solves" is the creation of physical and political room for the DOE to create more TRU waste from new weapons production.

The technical goal of any disposal program is to isolate radioactive waste as completely as possible from the human environment for periods for which the waste is expected to remain dangerous. Depending on the criteria adopted, the relevant periods for high-level wastes are likely to extend to hundreds of thousands or even millions of years.

The goal of protecting human health and the environment for very long periods must be achieved within a specific non-proliferation constraint. Technologies that result in (or could easily be modified to result in) the separation of weapons usable materials, such as accelerator transmutation of waste, should be rejected. Even if the intent of these technologies is to manage nuclear wastes, their development involves proliferation risks that are too great.⁶

In order to separate the controversy of the future of nuclear power from waste management policy, 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. Future nuclear power plant owners and licensees should bear the full liability for the waste they produce. Similarly, the Pentagon as well as the Defense Programs portion of the DOE should bear the full liability for waste generation attributable to future production of nuclear weapons or weapons-usable materials.

The development of a long-term management approach that will be technically sound is likely to take several decades. Therefore, measures to manage the wastes are needed in the interim. Necessary interim management steps are:

1. Stabilization of threatening wastes, such as buried TRU waste and liquid high-level waste.
   
2. Reclassification of waste to reflect longevity and hazard so that wastes of comparable hazard can be managed similarly.⁷ This will result in joint management in a single long-term program of TRU waste, spent fuel, high-level reprocessing waste, and certain other highly radioactive wastes, such as some reactor internal parts after decommissioning.
   
3. Scientific and technological investigations of alternative long-term disposal approaches to a degree sufficient to make comparisons for the purpose of elimination.
   
4. Development of engineered barriers that mimic natural materials and structures that retard the migration of radioactivity for millions of years or more.
   
5. A firm commitment against reprocessing of spent fuel.
   
6. Storage of spent fuel, stabilized TRU waste, and other waste of comparable hazard and longevity as safely as possible on site or as close to it as possible for several decades.⁸
   

Financial, legal, and non-proliferation concerns

Of the steps cited above, the last, storage of spent fuel on site or close to it, may be the most controversial in the context of a restructured long-term waste management program. Nuclear utilities have pushed hard for a Monitored Retrievable Storage (MRS) site away from the reactors.9 The arguments in favor of a remote site that are put forward are:

1. It is safer to store spent fuel at one site rather than at dozens.
   
2. Neglect, poor management, or lack of funds may cause unforeseen problems with on-site storage once the reactors are no longer in operation.
   
3. The US government promised to begin taking charge of the waste by 1998 and has not done so, despite the billions of dollars that nuclear utility ratepayers have paid into the federal government's Nuclear Waste Fund.
   

The first statement is often made by industry as if it is so obvious that it needs no analysis or proof. However, the reality is that there will be many storage locations for decades even if an MRS is built because many reactors are likely to remain in operation for over ten years. Fuel must be stored at the reactor site for at least five years prior to transport. Moreover, moving the waste before any long-term management solution is decided upon carries a host of new risks arising from:

• transportation of the wastes to an MRS location
  
• greater pressure to open an inappropriately-located repository at the MRS location
  
• the possible need to transport wastes again should a repository not be opened at the MRS location
  
• temptations to reprocess the spent fuel that will all be at one location, causing more pollution and proliferation risks
  
• safety problems associated with loading, unloading and reloading canisters
  
• hasty decisions regarding canisters that should be far more carefully made
  
• greater pressure to re-license reactors because storage space is available for spent fuel.
  

These risks are both unnecessary and are qualitatively more serious than storage of spent fuel at reactor sites, which have, after all, been licensed for operation of reactors that generally carry far greater safety risks than spent fuel storage.

Some of the financial and legal arguments of the utilities do have merit. The DOE did sign contracts with them to begin taking charge of the waste in 1998, although it was done as part of deadlines in the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act that were set without reference to environmental protection or sound nuclear waste management. Moreover, the problem of spent fuel management after a reactor is shut down is a serious one.

These issues can be addressed within the framework of on-site storage. First, the federal government should use monies from the Nuclear Waste Fund to pay for additional on-site storage necessitated by delays in the repository program. The time at which a nuclear power plant runs out of storage space for spent fuel is an appropriate time to consider alternatives to its continued operation, since building new storage requires significant new regulatory and economic decisions. The issue of management of highly radioactive waste (existing and that in the "pipeline" from current reactor license lifetimes) after reactors are shut down can be addressed by the creation of a federal corporation for management of highly radioactive waste. This corporation would take charge of all spent fuel at closed reactor sites and safeguard it until a long-term program is in place. The same corporation would be responsible for the development of the long-term program. (See accompanying article, Institutional Reform for Long-Term Nuclear Waste Management)

Finally, some of those who put a high priority on non-proliferation have suggested that opening the Yucca Mountain repository is desirable to preclude reprocessing in the United States and to limit the build up of plutonium stocks. This argument would have more merit if the opening of a repository were tied to a phase-out of nuclear power. However, that is not the case. In fact, it has been suggested that Yucca Mountain be kept open for 300 years in order that the plutonium might be extracted in case it was required as a nuclear fuel.¹⁰ Further, the current build-up of plutonium stocks is occurring outside the United States, almost wholly due to commercial reprocessing in France, Britain, Japan, Russia, and India. Stopping reprocessing in these countries is one of the more urgent non-proliferation tasks at hand; however, opening a repository in the US would do little to address the problem. It is inappropriate to pit short-term non-proliferation goals against the protection of future generations from gross environmental harm since it implies a discounting away the interests of people far into the future compared to those who are now alive.

It is noteworthy that those who stress non-proliferation over environmental concerns have not clearly addressed the serious non-proliferation dangers connected with the WIPP program. With the lion's share of resources for TRU waste management going to that repository, the problem of buried wastes is festering. The DOE has no comprehensive plans to remove these wastes, even though these near-surface dumps could become future mines for plutonium and possibly other weapons-usable materials. For instance, there are estimated to be over 1,000 kilograms of plutonium-239 in the buried wastes at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory alone - enough to make 200 or more nuclear bombs. (See Table below)

Conclusion

So long as the politically expedient Yucca Mountain and WIPP programs command the lion's share of resources available for long-term management, no sound solution can be developed for nuclear waste. Hence, it is essential that the US government step back from these repository programs and initiate a much broader effort (see accompanying article, Considering the Alternatives). In the meantime, it is essential that an interim management strategy be implemented that addresses the issues of safe storage, the legitimate complaints of nuclear utilities regarding the federal government's obligations, and the research and development that will be essential for a long-term program. The investment in Yucca Mountain and WIPP need not be thrown away. These facilities could be used for research on repositories using non-radioactive materials, pending 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.