Here are some thoughtful comments from Bruce Breslow, Executive Director, Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects

You will appreciate that Nevada approaches the question, “How Should America Handle Its Commercial Nuclear Waste?” with great concern. We don’t have nuclear power plants but the Energy Department selected Nevada’s Yucca Mountain for the country’s repository for commercial nuclear waste, despite the State’s objection and the site’s obvious safety deficiencies. We support an independent reexamination of the waste issue because we are confident DOE’s gargantuan and misdirected project cannot withstand independent scrutiny.

The beginning of wisdom on this issue is captured in Marvin Fertel’s statement that “with interim storage, we have sufficient time to examine the country’s used fuel policy.” As their storage pools fill up the nuclear plants are putting their older fuel in air-cooled “dry casks” stored on the surface. NRC has judged such storage as safe and secure for a hundred years. In time some form of regional storage of spent fuel will make sense. By then much of the spent fuel will be cooler and easier to handle.

In other words, it’s not so complicated. The trouble is that there are several widespread notions that get in the way of sensible thinking about the subject. First, there is the idea that lack of a waste “solution” is holding up the construction of new nuclear plants. In fact, nuclear plants aren’t selling in this country because they are extremely expensive. That is why the industry says it needs loan guarantees. I am pleased that none of the bloggers are saying, as it used to be said, that Yucca Mountain licensing was essential to expansion of US nuclear power. That was just an excuse—nuclear power plants will succeed or fail on their own merits.

Another misleading notion is that a “closed” fuel cycle—reprocessing spent fuel and recycling the extracted plutonium as the French and Japanese do—will simplify waste management. It doesn’t, in fact it complicates it, and it doesn’t reduce the required repository volume. The small amount of additional energy extracted during recycling comes at an uneconomic cost. The industry can’t afford it without major government subsidies and it’s much cheaper to use new fuel. Nevada’s specific concern is that a reprocessing center—there are lobbyists touting such a thing for Yucca Mountain—could become a way of backing into a repository. It’s a bad site. I’m confident that science will evolve a better solution to our nuclear waste in the future.

Finally, there is the idea that even though Yucca Mountain will not operate, we should still continue its NRC licensing review. I can understand the desire for a dignified end to this unfortunate project, but surely there is a less expensive way of doing this. It seems to me the nuclear industry could direct its concern over spent fuel storage in more constructive directions than to threaten the federal government with lawsuits if it pulls Yucca Mountain’s license application.

I want to make clear that Yucca Mountain is not coming to grief merely for political reasons, nor was it “repeatedly delayed” by legal maneuver. The fundamental problem is that DOE picked a bad site. There was much more dripping water (which promotes corrosion) and it was moving faster than expected, which violated DOE’s own siting criteria. Instead of abandoning the site DOE abandoned its criteria and invented what they call a “drip shield”—the name says it all—to protect each waste package. To meet the NRC’s radiation dose standard, DOE’s design requires 11,000 drip shields, each 5 tons of exotic alloy. Without them, DOE’s calculations show the repository would exceed the NRC standard by about a factor of ten. But, presumably because the shields are so expensive, DOE is putting off installation for at least 100 years (when it may not even be physically possible). In short, they are asking for a license on the promise they, or somebody, will install the crucial drip shields in a hundred years or later. That is a bureaucratic farce that should not continue.

Disposing of radioactive waste from nuclear power plants, which will remain hazardous for millions of years, presents a major challenge to the nuclear power industry. A Union of Concerned Scientists report concluded that if expanding nuclear power is ever going to be a viable option for combating global warming, the industry and the federal government need a credible solution for radioactive waste disposal.

The Nuclear Energy Institute’s blue ribbon panel proposal is heavy on reprocessing – a process that can separate spent nuclear fuel into several components, including nuclear weapon-usable plutonium. Relying on reprocessing would kick the radioactive can down the road while creating an even bigger problem. At the end of the reprocessing cycle, the United States would be left with an even larger amount of radioactive waste requiring secure disposal. Taxpayers and ratepayers would be saddled with the huge costs of constructing and operating reprocessing plants, and the associated expenses of moving, handling and protecting sensitive nuclear materials. And we would provide other countries a greater incentive to develop their own reprocessing facilities, which could be misused to produce nuclear weapons.

The United States should reinstate the Ford- and Carter-era ban on reprocessing and actively discourage other nations from pursuing their own reprocessing plans.

The best long-term solution for nuclear waste is a single national nuclear waste repository. The Department of Energy (DOE) originally looked at eight sites that could house waste, but in 1987 Congress forced it to consider only Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has only just begun to review DOE’s application for a license for Yucca Mountain and the repository’s future remains highly uncertain. Because the process for reviewing potential repository sites can take decades, DOE should begin now to assess other sites based on their technical and political acceptability. Some may argue that doing so isn’t possible, but there really is no alternative. Nuclear waste will be with us for a very long time, and there is no technological magic bullet that will avoid the need for a repository.

Fortunately, there is no immediate need to open a permanent repository. Nuclear power plants can store nuclear waste on site economically and securely for at least the next 50 years. With modest safety and security upgrades, storing spent fuel in concrete containers, known as “dry casks,” can minimize the risk of an accidental radiation leak and the effectiveness of a deliberate attack on a nuclear facility.

There is tremendous potential for rebuilding the U.S. economy on green jobs, particularly as energy companies gear up to meet rising electricity demand. The nuclear energy industry already is creating tens of thousands of American green jobs in the first wave of this transition.

Nuclear energy is one of the few bright spots in the U.S. economy – expanding rather than contracting. That’s due to a growing consensus that any credible program to address climate change must include carbon-free technologies like nuclear energy.

The U.S. electricity industry faces an unprecedented challenge. It must invest up to $2 trillion in new power generation and distribution technology to meet rising demand by 2030. And it must do so assuming that there will be a price on carbon, currently a byproduct of 70 percent of the nation’s electricity production capability. Of the carbon-free sources, nuclear energy dominates today and has the most potential for large-scale expansion.

A single nuclear plant will create 1,400 to 1,800 jobs during construction and a permanent workforce of 400 to 700 during the 60-year operating lifetime of the plant. Based on economic studies of 22 U.S. nuclear power plants, each year a new reactor will produce $430 million in local expenditures for goods, services and labor; generate more than $20 million in state and local tax revenue; and produce at least $75 million in federal tax payments. Construction of a new reactor also will provide a substantial boost to suppliers of commodities and manufacturers of hundreds of components.

Financial stimulus for wind, solar and advanced nuclear plants is appropriate to jumpstart this economic shift. For example, the federal loan guarantee program for carbon-free energy sources will lower the cost of building new electricity supplies that will in turn keep consumer costs down.

However, $18.5 billion in loan guarantee volume approved by Congress in 2008 was swamped by applications from 17 companies seeking a total of $122 billion in loan guarantees for new nuclear plant projects. The loan guarantee program alone doesn’t address the real need for $2 trillion in financing for the electricity sector over the next 15 years.

Additional loan volume of up to $60 billion was added in the economic stimulus package for renewable energy sources, but Congress rejected $50 billion for all energy sources that avoid, reduce or capture carbon. Nuclear energy projects, which have created 15,000 jobs in the last two years, should have been included in the package to create near-term jobs.

The economic and energy challenges facing our nation are daunting. We must have a national energy policy that develops carbon-free technologies, drives innovation to supply reliable electricity and creates jobs to help stimulate the U.S. economy. Additional loan guarantee volume for nuclear energy projects as part of the Department of Energy’s program or a clean energy development bank is both necessary and beneficial to the nation.

Here are some thoughts on the nuclear waste issue from an outside expert: Ken Metcalfe, President of The Kenrich Group

To compound the many problems that have already been posed by the other contributors regarding the Department of Energy’s failure to meet its contractual obligations to dispose of spent nuclear fuel, many utilities and/or their ratepayers have been forced for years to incur additional costs to mitigate the monetary damages they have suffered and will continue to suffer because of the DOE’s breach.

As has been pointed out in the previous responses, in accordance with their “contracts” with the DOE, nuclear utilities have now paid nearly $30 billion in fees and interest to the “nuclear waste fund”. Those utilities, based on a per kilowatt-hour fee of 1/10 of one cent for nuclear generation sold, collectively continue to pay nearly $1 billion per year into that fund. Yet that “fund” is only such on paper. Like payments into the social security “fund”, those hard-cash nuclear waste fund payments (made quarterly) are applied to the general fund of the U.S. Government. Those monies are indeed already spent, but not on the problem of what to do with our country’s spent nuclear fuel. To add insult to injury, the DOE’s annual appropriations requests for Yucca Mountain, etc. are routinely underfunded—despite the fact that the nuclear waste fund was allegedly established for just such a use. (This is an issue repeatedly raised by the DOE and others, as yet to no avail. (See, e.g., Deputy Director Theodore J. Garrish congressional testimony of March 10, 2005;

And not obtaining any of the promised performance from DOE, beginning “not later than January 31, 1998”, virtually all of the country’s nuclear power plants have now had to address more spent nuclear fuel at their plants than they had ever anticipated. The majority now, confronted with full or filling spent fuel pools, have collectively had to incur or will incur several more billions of dollars to handle the additional spent fuel not picked up by DOE but instead remaining at each nuclear plant’s site. These significant additional costs have primarily been for the building of dry fuel storage facilities, the related dry fuel storage casks and the numerous major plant modifications required to implement dry fuel storage systems.

Armed with rulings that the DOE is liable for the impacts of its breach, many utilities have already pursued claims for damages against the DOE in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims to recover the additional costs they have incurred. And with over 60 dockets pending, many more are utilities will follow. Yet despite numerous, very large awards of damages to the utilities to date at that Court, virtually no payments have actually been made related to those disputes, as the government continues a long process of appeals and other time-taking processes, on numerous issues—old and new.

Additionally, there is no provision for any penalty against the DOE in the contract for its not performing its obligations. And most of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims rulings to date have held that the utilities may not recover the very significant financing costs incurred by the utilities and/or their ratepayers in paying for these additional, unexpected spent fuel storage costs. Thus, with no imposed obligation to pay any penalties to the utilities or reimburse them for the substantial financing costs incurred, the government has no significant financial disincentive to continue to delay these matters.

The nuclear utilities, in contrast, have every incentive to aggressively pursue the recovery of these additional costs as quickly as possible. Given the situation as it exists today, without some judicial or legislative assistance, the utilities and/or their ratepayers are collectively incurring tens of millions of dollars per year in financing costs that will never be reimbursed by the DOE, even if the underlying expenditures to address the additional spent nuclear fuel are ultimately reimbursed.

In many respects, it is these significant economic impacts that represent the real nuclear waste...

Nuclear power simply must play a continuing role in our nation’s efforts to de-carbonize electricity generation; we can’t get to where we need to be without at least some additional nuclear capacity. That said, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 established a number of important incentives for the construction of new nuclear plants, including an extension of the Price Anderson Act through 2025, protection against cost-overruns at new plants and a nuclear electricity production tax credit. For this reason, it is appropriate to concentrate for the time being on incentives for non-nuclear renewables, including solar, wind, biofuels and other potential sources.

One thing the government can and should do is work to open up Yucca Mountain. The last time I checked, though, it’s still located in Nevada…..

NO! We do not need to subsidize everything we think is useful. Still, it would have been nice had Obama said something like, “While maintaining necessary safeguards, we will clear out regulatory roadblocks that have little purpose but to thwart a nuclear renaissance.”

It doesn’t cost billions of dollars to streamline permitting processes and limit frivolous lawsuits.

If President Obama hopes to hit the goals of the cap and trade proposals, or even have a shot, nuclear absolutely needs to be funded and the permitting/sighting process streamlined. In fact, America must encourage the growth of all energy sources. A diverse energy portfolio helps to achieve the goals of the cap and trade proposals that have been circulated, as well as offer American consumers and businesses the opportunity for the most reliable, efficient, and cost effective means for powering the American economy. What was conspicuously missing from last night’s speech was an honest assessment from the President about the critical role American oil and natural gas will play to help boost the economy, to develop clean energy, to provide a secure energy future and to reduce the amount of American dollars that are poured into foreign coffers every day for oil imports. The global energy situation is a complex puzzle and cannot be completed without an honest commitment to see that all the pieces are available to make the clear picture of America’s energy future come together.

In last night's speech to Congress, President Obama promised to spend $15 billion a year to develop wind, solar, advanced biofuels, clean coal, and cleaner transportation technologies. But NOT nuclear. Should the government invest more money or promise more loan guarantees to the nuclear industry in an effort to get new nuclear plants built?

We cannot be serious about cost-effectively addressing climate change without advanced nuclear power as an option, and development of that option is going to be frustrated absent a national policy that permanently provides adequate and safe methods to dispose of commercial nuclear waste.

More than 25 years ago, Jimmy Carter said that resolving civilian waste issues should not be a problem that is simply passed on to future generations. However, that is precisely what has happened with spent nuclear fuel rods. After the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 was passed, state regulators, and ratepayers across the United States, bought into a plan that called for two things:

• Relying on the federal government to provide a safe and permanent method to store spent nuclear fuel.
• Utilities -- and their customers -- that produced the spent fuel would pay a fee to cover disposal costs.

So far, only one side has held up their end of the bargain. To date ratepayers, more importantly, have shelled out more than $27 billion in fees and interest to the Nuclear Waste Fund – with little return on that investment. While the federal government’s failure to uphold its end of the bargain made with power companies may seem unfair, it is likely to prove costly under a carbon regulation scheme. Virtually all economic modeling of compliance responses to cap-and-trade legislation includes increased levels of “advanced” nuclear, and modeling that places an artificial constraint on full cost-effective deployment of nuclear tends to show much higher national cap-and- trade compliance costs. The general wisdom on cost-effective compliance with a carbon cap-and-trade program is “all of the above.”

However, absent an effective program permanently to dispose of nuclear waste, investments in “advanced” nuclear plants will languish, and nuclear will effectively be removed from available compliance options. Perhaps more troubling, when I am asked whether the country can really get where it needs to be on carbon emission in the next twenty years, my invariable response is that if all else fails, we can get there with nuclear and a shifting of transportation emissions to the grid if we have to. It would seem imprudent to constrain what I, perhaps naively, presume is our “fail-safe” option for carbon compliance simply because we cannot agree on a plan to permanently dispose of nuclear waste.

Nuclear power companies are asking the Obama Administration to set up a blue ribbon panel to consider new ways to handle the 58,000 metric tons of U.S. commercial nuclear waste now piling up at power plants across the nation. A number of states either have or are considering taking steps to enhance their ability to site, finance and construct baseload generation, including nuclear.

So where does this leave us? My former colleague at NARUC, Anne George, testified before a subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee last summer and made the following points, which I believe address the issues we must face:

• The federal government needs to meet its obligation under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as amended, to accept spent nuclear fuel from utilities and other nuclear generators for safe disposal in a timely manner.

• The Nuclear Waste Fund should only be employed for its intended purpose and that the monies in the Fund should be utilized, along with appropriations from the Department of Defense budget, for the sole purpose of supporting the opening of the Yucca Mountain facility in a timely fashion.

• There is a critical need to address the financial basis for the program that will offer greater certainty than the year-to-year suspense of the current appropriations process.

• All parties, especially non-governmental organizations, need to improve public understanding of what will be involved in nuclear waste transportation for the repository program and to continue the dialogue between the Department of Energy and hazardous materials transportation planning agencies designated by States and tribal organizations.

In closing, the federal government has failed to uphold the bargain it struck with the utilities and their customers 25 years ago. We have talked enough. Let’s not wait another 25 years for someone to take action.

This question gets to the heart of one of the most pressing energy challenges we face as a country. With all the momentum toward a renewable portfolio standard, Congress and the Administration must ensure that all fuels can be part of the equation.

Nuclear is a key part of this scenario. But until we figure out the waste problem, it will be difficult to move forward.

As of now, nuclear utilities and their consumers have paid more than $16.5 billion to the federal Nuclear Waste Fund, and another $13 billion in interest that has been credited to the Fund, totaling $29.5 billion. State regulators have allowed the utilities to pass through these costs to electricity consumers under the Federal government’s long-standing promise that the spent-nuclear fuel from the country’s commercial nuclear power plants would be safely moved and stored at a permanent repository.

Yet the Yucca Mountain, Nev., facility—approved by Congress earlier this decade as the only site to be considered suitable for this kind of storage—is so far off schedule that even under a best case scenario, it won’t open for another 10 years. In the meantime, the billions of dollars of ratepayer money keep piling up, and Congress over the past several years has seen fit to use it for other purposes.

NARUC was pleased when the Energy Department, after long delay, filed the Yucca Mountain license application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission last summer. We would like the review process to go forward, as the NRC is the only agency capable of determining whether the Yucca repository is safe.

NARUC has a longstanding policy in support of finding a permanent repository for nuclear waste. In fact, at our recent Winter Committee Meetings, we reiterated our position and urged Congress to fully fund DOE’s and the NRC’s efforts to move the licensing process along. Moreover, if any actions are taken to curtail or effectively cancel the project, Congress must address the almost $30 billion ratepayers have already contributed to the program.

If the U.S. is going to seriously expand its energy portfolio, nuclear generation must remain a key part of the mix. Resolving the waste question is paramount to ensuring this occurs.

As it relates to reprocessing, the U.S. since the mid 1970s has opposed reprocessing, which is why the country has focused exclusively on burying the waste in a central repository. Other countries, like Russia, Japan, and France currently reprocess their nuclear waste, but eventually all of these countries will need a geologic repository because reprocessing produces waste byproducts that require long-term isolation from the human environment.

Accordingly, reprocessing will also require a repository, perhaps of different size and specifications. Moreover, there are questions about the economics of reprocessing, compared with future prices of fresh fuel and concerns among some who foresee potential for nuclear weapons proliferation.

Both the Bush Administration and Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, in his Senate confirmation hearing, expressed interest in further research and development of recycling. NARUC supports further research into reprocessing, but a geologic repository is required in any scenario.

How about pricing the waste? Then we can see whether reprocessing makes sense. Of course, the waste will have a negative price that varies according to how “hot” and long-lived the waste is.

My colleague, Jack Spencer, makes just such a proposal here: http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/bg2149.cfm

The basics work like this:

Yucca Mountain would be run by a private entity that charges a fee reflecting the scarcity of storage capacity. Reprocessing and reusing nuclear fuel reduces the amount of spent fuel that needs to be stored and the associated costs. If the price is high, there is more incentive to reprocess the waste. The price would also provide a signal as to how valuable additional storage sites would be, which could lead to additional repositories.

A mandate to process or not to process provides little incentive for helpful innovation and no accommodation for differing circumstances. Without eliminating safety regulation, inserting market incentives can best guide the nuclear-waste disposal process.

To begin with, in the nuclear debate the real question is: “In a world where global competitors are beating us to the draw in accessing nuclear energy, when is America going to expand this neglected resource?”

We’ve ceded the competitive advantage in this area to the EU, who figured this out a long while back. So, as a society, we need to decide if we are going to allow the rejectionists, who’d rather live in the past, to be emboldened with a stick-our-head-in-the-sand approach to nuclear power. It is an important issue – some faction or another of the rejectionist camp seems to oppose almost every option for the greening of the grid.

If we are ever going to actually build all of those “clean” electric cars, we are going to need both clean electrons to power them and a way to deliver the electrons to consumers. But the rejectionists oppose transmission lines for aesthetic reasons, nix wind farms for disrupting birds or the views from their oceanfront homes, and make adding domestic natural gas capacity difficult because they don’t want to extend pipelines in the country’s interior or drill for it in offshore locations where the supply is plentiful. If we want a future with “non-emitting” electric cars, then we are going to need to use non-emitting nuclear power to generate the electrons that will power those cars as a part of the electricity mix until other low or non-emitting technologies can be deployed on a commercial scale. Nuclear is the best mid-term option.

The federal government has failed in its obligation to take responsible action to dispose of nuclear waste. Right now we have 104 mini Yuccas across this country handling storage that was not designed to be long term. Expansion of clean nuclear power should not suffer because the federal government is now significantly overdue in taking responsibility for proper and safe disposal of this waste.

Since Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1982, our nation has been pursuing a path for the ultimate disposal of used nuclear fuel using a once-through fuel cycle.

Given the clear need for expansion of nuclear energy programs in the United States and worldwide, the nuclear industry proposed two years ago that our nation should revisit the decision to use a once-through fuel cycle. Instead, we should pursue a closed fuel cycle that includes recycling. This integrated approach includes at-reactor storage, private sector or government-owned centralized storage, research and development on recycling technology and continued development and licensing of a federal repository.

It is clear that President Obama may not support opening the Yucca Mountain repository even if it receives a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Given federal government’s legal obligation to fulfill its responsibility under the law, the industry believes the NRC’s review of the Yucca Mountain license application should continue.

In parallel, the administration should convene an independent panel of the best scientific, environmental, engineering and public policy leaders to fully investigate the critical issues and make a recommendation to President Obama and Congress on how best to proceed with managing used nuclear fuel.

NEI’s approach to developing an integrated nuclear fuel management program includes the following concepts:

First, we recognize that since used nuclear fuel can be safely and securely stored for an extended period of time, interim storage represents a strategic element of an integrated program. Therefore, we can continue on-site storage of used reactor fuel while candidates are identified for volunteer private or government-licensed sites for consolidation of used nuclear fuel.

Consolidating used fuel at private or government centralized storage facilities is necessary for the federal government to begin meeting its legal commitment. Initially, centralized facilities should provide storage for reactor fuel from power plants that have been shut down. DOE also needs to address its obligation for the removal and disposal of high-level radioactive waste from government sites.

Second, the federal government should collaborate with the private sector and other countries on a research and development, demonstration and deployment program to recycle reactor fuel in a way that is safe, environmentally acceptable, enhances the worldwide nonproliferation regime and makes sense economically. France, the United Kingdom and Japan recycle used nuclear fuel and the United States should be constructively engaged in this technology development. Through recycling, we can reclaim and reuse a significant amount of energy that remains in uranium fuel and reduce the volume and toxicity of radioactive byproducts that ultimately will be placed in a repository.

Third, even with recycling, a geologic repository will be needed for the ultimate disposal of the waste byproducts. However, the characteristics of the waste form requiring disposal will influence the design of the repository. Although licensing of the Yucca Mountain repository should continue, the results of an independent commission’s strategic assessment of the overall approach to used fuel and defense waste management should provide direction on the characteristics of the repository program.

If the administration unilaterally decides to abandon the Yucca Mountain project without enacting new legislation to modify existing law, it should expect new lawsuits seeking further damage payments as well as likely requests for refunding at least $22 billion already collected from consumers that has not been spent on the program from the Nuclear Waste Fund. State regulators last week warned that if administration or congressional actions curtail the Yucca project, they will take legal or legislative action to protect the balance of the fund and escrow future consumer payments.

Further, given the uncertain path forward for the Yucca Mountain project and these difficult economic times, Energy Secretary Steven Chu should reduce the fee paid by consumers to cover only licensing costs incurred by DOE, NRC and Nevada local units of government that provide oversight on the program.

Secretary Chu pledged to use the best possible scientific analysis to determine a path forward on nuclear waste disposal. With interim storage, we have sufficient time to examine the country’s used fuel policy. Regardless of whether this is done by a blue ribbon commission or by Congress, this step must be taken now.