GOVERNMENT & POLICY H I G H A N D D R Y Encased in steel and concrete, a dry cask holds 10 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel. With shielding, a storage cask weighs some 120 metric tons, is about 8 to 12 feet in diameter, and stands some 20 feet tall. Spent-fuel rods must remain in reactorside pools of water for at least five years to lower their thermal heat and radioactivity before they can be loaded into casks for storage.
THE NUCLEAR HOT POTATO As radioactive waste mounts and Yucca Mountain stalls, pressure grows for an interim storage site JEFF JOHNSON, C&EN WASHINGTON
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VER THE PAST FEW WEEKS, EN-
ergy companies and Congress have advanced plans to build a centralized interim storage facilityforspent fuel from commercial nuclear power plants. Such projects are gaining newurgency as radioactive waste grows— because of industry and government support for life extensions for existing reactors and plans for new ones—while work on a permanent repository remains stuck. On May 24, a facility to be built in Utah by a private consortium of energy companies inched closer to reality with approval by an independent panel of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. T h e facility would be located on an Indian reservation and is being fought by the state. A final decision must go to NRC, which is expected to back the facility In the end, a court is likely to decide its fate. So far, the company, Private Fuel Storage LLC, has won every battle in its eightyear quest for construction. Sue Martin, a PFS spokeswoman, says the company hopes to have the site operating by 2007 or 2008. The facility will be mostly a con-
trolled-access slab of concrete, designed to be operated for 4 0 years and house 40,000 metric tons of waste, more than half the capacity of the long-delayed Yucca Mountain, Nevada, federal underground nuclear waste repository Also on May 24, the House passed legislation that would fund a government-run interim spent-fuel storage facility as part of an appropriations bill for the Department of Energy for next year. In legislative language accompanying the bill, Rep. David L. Hobson (R-Ohio), chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy & Water Development and the bill's author, laid out his frustrations with delays at Yiicca Mountain and called for D O E to investigate the legality of a federal interim storage facility Hobson and other House members want DOE to begin receiving waste at a federal site in 2006. The House members also included provisions to encourage reprocessing of spent fuel to reduce the volume of highlevel radioactive waste eventually headed for permanent disposal. DOE is taking a hard look at Hobson's
proposal, Deputy Secretary of Energy Clay Sell says. "We remain committed to Yiicca Mountain. We know we have challenges there, but we are still confident that we can get a license from NRC." But, he adds, even if Yiicca Mountain opened in 2010—the putative goal—by that time, enough commercial spent fuel would have been generated at existing reactor sites to exceed the repository's 70,000-metric-ton capacity. "Other things have to be considered," Sell says. YUCCA MOUNTAIN is in trouble. Early this year, it was learned that science data pertaining to the movement ofwater through the mountain might have been falsified. The FBI and the Offices of Inspector General for the Energy and Interior Departments are conducting criminal investigations. The incursion of water through the tunnels that would hold the spent fuel has been much debated and is key to whether the waste can be isolated for the hundreds of thousands of years that it will be lethal. And last year, a federal court ruled that the radiation standard set by the Environmental Protection Agency to protect the public at Yiicca Mountain is inadequate and illegal. The standard is fundamental to the repository's design, and the court said EPA erred in basing the standard on a 10,000-year compliance period rather than the time of potential peak exposure, which is likely to occur in 3 0 0 , 0 0 0 to 480,000 years. EPA is expected to repropose the standard late this summer or fall. It is sure to be challenged by Nevada attorneys, who brought the successful litigation that negated the past standard. In addition, NRC has said that D O E has failed to adequately provide information to the public. That failing, too, could delay the commission's receipt of DOE's license application.
"Interim shortage gives us a step. It allows us to move fuel earlier, and we've got to start moving material/' 32
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Although the repository has been held up for years, DOE officials remain committed to preparing a construction application by year-end. Considering what they face, meeting that target is doubtful. NRC officials tell C&EN they are reluctant to estimate how quickly they could process an application to license the facility once they receive it, noting only that "the ball is in DOE's court." Speaking at a Senate hearing on May 26, NRC Commissioner Edward McGaffigan Jr. called the NRC license review process for Yucca Mountain "the largest administrative proceeding in mankind," and he predicted the application would be in the neighborhood of 4 million pages. Meanwhile, utilities and nuclear power advocates are pressing hard for nuclear power and claim a "new renaissance" for this source of electricity, mostly because of its ability to generate electricity without C 0 2 emissions. The Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), a nuclear industry and utility trade association, points to a flood of favorable news articles promoting nuclear power as a solution to global warming and quoting advocates from Sen.John McCain
(R-Ariz.) to Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore to President George W. Bush. The Administration upped its R&D budget for nuclear energy and is providing funds to kick-start the next generation of nuclear power by paying half the cost of processing applications for new plants. ALSO, SEVERAL NRC reforms in the 1990s will speed the regulatory approval process. Utilities can now apply for an early site permit at a specific location and separately seek NRC certification of a new design. Once both these approvals are gained, a company can marry the two and apply for a combined construction and operating license, a simpler application with limited opportunity for public comment. Utilities have begun the process by applying for three early site permits and gaining design certification for two new reactor designs. More are in the works. NRC Chairman Nils J. Diaz says he expectsfiveapplications for combined construction/operating licenses by 2007 or 2008. Two ofthem will comefromNuStart Energy Development, a coalition of nine energy companies and two reactor manu-
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facturers, which announced its intention to file two construction/operating license applications with NRC by 2008. NuStart has identified six sites, all ofwhich already have operating reactors, and will include reactor designs byWestinghouse and General Electric, two members of the consortium. Marilyn C. Kray, NuStart president and vice president of Exelon Generation, says NuStart hopes for NRC approval in 2010 and intends to complete construction of a new reactor four years later. She estimates that the costs to prepare the application will run to $520 million—with half to be paid by U.S. taxpayers. Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman goes further. He promised energy executives at NEFs recent meeting that DOE will provide $500 million each in "risk insurance" for construction of the first four nuclear power plants that use new designs at new sites. The $2 billion would help companies recover costs due to legal or regulatory delays. All this aid is intended to shore up investors and give them the confidence to lay down the billions of dollars needed for this long-term and historically risky investment.
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GOVERNMENT & POLICY that D O E is not likely to open the facility ed will still require disposal in a permanent Meanwhile, radioactive waste continuntil at least 2012 and says that "actual op- high-level waste repository. ues to pile up at the existing 104 reactor erations might be delayed until the latter The day after the bill passed the House, sites, and more waste will come. Diaz says half of the next decade." Diaz and McGaffigan told senators at a NRC has given 20-year extensions to ownhearing that it was simply uneconomical to ers of 32 reactors and has 16 extensions He also notes the Yucca Mountain careprocess spent fuel in light of the cheap pending. He estimates that virtually all oppacity problem. Although this could be price of U.S. uranium and the high costs erating U.S. reactors will apply to renew fixed by changing the law that set the and complications in reprocessing, as well their licenses. These power plants are oprepository size, Hobson seeks to encourerating at peak efficiency, and currently as the proliferation and security concerns. age D O E to develop fuel reprocessing and The Senate will take up its appropriation about 54,000 metric tons ofwaste is piling reuse the spent fuel, thereby reducing the up at operating sites, according to NEI fig- waste headed to the repository soon, and although the comparable apures. Something has to g^ve. propriation committee is chaired by nuThe bill appropriates $20 million to purir clear advocate Sen. Pete V Domenici (Rchase transportation casks for the spent We are not going to build new plants to N.M.), his staff says the senator has not fuel and to begin what the bill calls "early create additional waste when it hasn't been made clear his views on Hobdetermined what is going to son's approach. happen to the waste generated But is government support by current plants," Kray says. worth a half-dozen new nu"But we see aggressive action clear plants with the potential going on in waste disposal, and to reduce global warming? we are not waiting for waste DOE's Sell says yes. issues to be resolved before addressing other issues." Her "We are interested in getviews are buttressed by N E I ting new designs certified, and officials who predict that, by we are really interested in prov2008 or 2010, the nation will ing out the new regulatory have made significant progress process." Sell blames much of on waste issues. the past cost overruns for the industry on regulatory failures, But Steve Kraft, N E I diwhich DOE hopes to amend. rector of used-fuel manageIndustry hopes the activities ment, adds that for new plants of the next decade will usher to move ahead, the industry PACK AND SHIP Eventually, each cask will be placed in a in an explosion of new power has to show that progress is be- transportation package and loaded onto a single railcar for plants to replace older reactors ing made. "We don't need an shipment to a permanent repository or an interim storage and expand U.S. reliance on operating waste facility, but we site. The site pictured was not identified. nuclear energy need to be able to look people Others disagree. Worldwide energy needs in the eye—your next-door neighbor, your acceptance" of commercial waste by 2006. and global warming cry out for fast action, mother, and everybody else—and explain The bill easily cleared the House floor on to them in a believable way that we may a 416 to 13 vote. But the debate illuminat- say environmental groups, but nuclear power is not the solution they promote. not be moving waste yet, but we are going ed several problems with gaining acceptto get there, and here is the progress we ance of interim storage and reprocessing. Radioactive waste disposal is just one of are making." many fundamental problems facing nuclear power, says James MacKenzie, a HOUSE MEMBERS from Washington, Kraft stresses that Yucca Mountain is the physicist and senior fellow with the World best solution, but adds: "Interim shortage Idaho, and South Carolina strongly opResources Institute. He points to the unposed provisions that would bring comgives us a step. It allows us to move fuel earcertainty of economics and risks and comlier, and we've got to start moving material. mercial waste into their states. They cited plications inherent in using such a comWe should have started seven years ago." other laws prohibiting such actions. They plex and expensive technology Instead, he stressed repeatedly that the provisions Hobson's approach in the D O E bill urges quick action through greater energy were part of report language without the would require D O E to begin receiving efficiency and much more use of renewforce of law. commercial spent fuel at one of its faciliable and noncarbon energy sources. ties next year. In legislative report language, Several members warned that interim he lays out a scheme in which the federal storage is likely to become permanent storMacKenzie worries that nuclear power government would establish one or more age as Yucca Mountain "recedes into the furequires continuous government subsidies, interim sites at D O E facilities in Hanford, ture." Rep. John M. Spratt Jr. (D-S.C.) including liability insurance. Even then he Wash.; Savannah River, S.C.; or Idaho Falls, added, "We have served notice that we are doubts that Wall Street will risk the large or find another federal non-DOE site. The ready to do battle if someone wants to set sums needed for nuclear power plants. report says locating an interim storage site up interim storage in South Carolina." He warns that, historically, new energy at Yucca Mountain "made the most sense," technologies have taken 60 years to evolve. Spratt and others also warned that fuel but the Nuclear Waste Policy Act prohibits 'This has been the record for wood to coal, reprocessing generates plutonium and siting it there until the facility receives an coal to oil, and oil to gas. For nuclear envoiced fears that it would encourage prooperating license. ergy, the transition was interrupted by a liferation of nuclear materials. Others notseries of safety problems and a rush to build ed the high costs of reprocessing, and alHobson makes clear in report language ever-larger but untested reactors. Today, though usable fuel can be recovered and on the House floor that his first choice the world doesn't have this kind of time." • through reprocessing, the waste generatis to complete the repository, but he notes 34
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