The following comments were submitted by Peter Bradford, former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and professor at Vermont Law School:

I'm shocked - shocked! - to find politics dictating outcomes in the field of nuclear waste.

H.L. Mencken or Mark Twain might comprehend today's invocations of "sound science" to denounce President Obama's decision to abandon Yucca Mountain. Yucca, after all, was not designated the waste site through any scientific process.

In 1987, political backlash over evaluating sites in many states threatened more political careers than Congress or the Reagan administration could stand. Nevada's Congressional delegation was small and weak beside those of Texas and Washington, the other two leading contenders. The multibillion dollar multistate search came to an end. Yucca it was! Geology be damned!

Then Harry Reid grew up. Barack Obama needed even Nevada's few delegates in his campaign against Hillary Clinton. The multibillion dollar show trial that DOE was contriving as the final act in shoving the stuff into Nevada came to an end. Yucca it wasn't! Geology be damned!

Oh, and the 15 member Blue Ribbon Commission that is now to sort it all out. Has anyone noticed the ratio of politicians to scientists in that group? It's 4-3. Of the three, only one has credentials in a science having to do with what goes on under the earth's surface.

Or the ratio of members committed to the proposition that more nuclear power is crucial to combating climate change to those who doubt that less than universally accepted notion? Try 15-0.

So by all means deplore the absence of scientific rigor in our national approach to disposing of nuclear waste. But don't pretend that it started with President Obama, Secretary Chu and Senator Reid. You can trace it as least as far back has the Atomic Energy Commission's early 1970s designation of a Lyons Kansas salt dome as the ideal site until Kansas state geologists pointed out that the site was riddled with boreholes from oil and gas exploration.

For those who must still denounce the President's decision, new grounds and a touch of class are needed. Here's a sample opening address for Nuclear Energy Institute head Marv Fertel to deliver to the new commission based on a speech composed fourteen strontium 90 half lives ago:

I come to bury Yucca not to praise it;
The evil that spent fuel does lives after it,
The good is often transform’d to energy,
So let it be with Yucca… The noble Barack
Hath told you that Yucca was dangerous:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Yucca answered it…
Here, under leave of Barack and the rest,
(For Barack is an honourable man;
And so are they all; all honourable men)
Come I to speak in Yucca’s funeral...
It was our friend, all but open to us:
But Barack said it was dangerous;
And Barack is an honourable man.
It hath paved the way for new reactors,
Whose donations did the Congress’ coffers fill:
Did this in Yucca seem dangerous?
When water seeped, Yucca hath wept:
Danger should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Barack says it was dangerous;
And Barack is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Barack spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know….
Oh judgement! Thou art fled to brackish beasts
And men have lost their reason…Bear with me:
My heart is in the coffin there with Yucca,
And I must pause till it come back to me.

If Shakespeare declines this writing opportunity, try Jonathan Swift:

A modest proposal: Assign the human beings to the repository; leave the surface to the wastes. After all, humans have much shorter half lives. Properly encased, they are incapable of harm.

But perhaps this scheme too clearly reveals our guiding priority: Most humans should serve energy resources. Matters proceed more smoothly when people believe the opposite.

As my organization outlined in an economic modeling study, The Balancing Act, nuclear power is a critical component of any serious proposal to reduce emissions and enhance U.S. energy security. Along with a robust portfolio of traditional and renewable sources, nuclear will play a central, emissions-free role in our nation’s transition to a stronger and cleaner energy economy in the coming years and decades. President Obama recognizes this. He recently called for “a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants,” and I’m encouraged by his forward-leaning position on this issue. He understands that, as a nation, we simply cannot meet ambitious climate targets – much less meet our growing energy needs – without putting nuclear in the mix.

Yet, for nuclear to work, we need a permanent disposal facility to safely and effectively manage the spent fuel. Yucca does not necessarily have to be that facility. However, the federal government must clarify its plans and move forward on the licensing and construction of a new site as soon as possible.

For now, nuclear plants should continue to store waste on-site – as they have done safely and effectively for decades. But this can only go on for so long. Without a viable long-term strategy, it will not be possible for the President to realize his laudable goal of increasing the role of nuclear in our national energy mix.

The following comments were submitted by Victor Gilinsky, a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission who was recently a consultant to the State of Nevada in relation to Yucca Mountain:

No. As a practical matter the battle is over and the issue is moot. DOE has dismantled its Yucca Mountain organizations, and if it has not already passed the point of no return it soon will have done so. DOE’s license application to the NRC is just the summary of what was in the heads and files of DOE’s contractors. Once these people found other jobs and are not there to provide competent answers to the questions of the NRC safety reviewers, the project cannot be revived. As the governor of South Carolina put it: “even if Congress does continue funding Yucca Mountain, given the staff reductions and relocations already under way, the project's intellectual infrastructure simply won't be there to support it.”

A deeper problem concerns DOE’s design for the proposed waste repository. Few people, even those opposed to the repository, understand that DOE’s own calculations show that the repository filled with waste packages failed to comply with NRC’s licensing standard—the allowed radiation dose limit. Moreover, this would happen in less than a thousand years. DOE did not argue with this conclusion. Rather, it claimed it would achieve compliance by installing a five-ton titanium “drip shield” over each of the 11,000 waste packages. The catch is, DOE did not plan to do this for a hundred years, until repository closure. In other words, DOE was asking for a license on the promise that a hundred years from now someone will send yet-to-be-designed, remotely-operated equipment into the hot, radioactive, and possibly collapsed underground tunnels, and will succeed in installing thousands of interlocking drip shields. Faced with some skepticism, DOE insisted that the NRC licensing board couldn’t question a promise of a federal agency. All I can say is that I am not making this up.

Should DOE’s new commission consider Yucca as an option for long-term nuclear waste disposal?

They should consider Yucca Mountain sufficiently to understand why it is not an adequate site and what was wrong with DOE’s handling of it. At their first meeting, the BRC chairmen seem to have given this suggestion a pat on the head, apparently because Secretary Chu ruled it out. They should take it more seriously. The BRC members can’t look forward clearly unless they understand what went wrong in the past. If they fail to do so they risk looking like the Secretary’s puppets.

How should the Energy Department handle such critical inquiries?

It would be best if DOE did not handle these inquiries at all, in fact, if it got out of the waste business altogether. Its long record of poor management and highly politicized decision-making has engendered a lack of respect for the agency on all sides. It is time to consider a new independent organization to deal with nuclear waste. France has one and it seems to work pretty well.

Whether or not Yucca remains off the table, what are some viable options for nuclear waste?

Surface storage, which the nuclear generators are already implementing, is in the cards for the indefinite future. It would make sense to collect the spent fuel from “orphan” sites—the ones at which the power plants have shut down—at a federal site. I don’t believe anyone has the stomach to start again with another geologic site, and won’t for a long time.

Secretary Chu, in his characteristically fey manner, is pushing the BRC toward new fuel cycles involving reprocessing and fast reactors, and the commission members seem to have the bit in their teeth. It is unfortunately all pie-in-the-sky, as it was when proposed by the Bush administration in its GNEP program. It also undermines long-standing US policy on restricting use of bomb-capable plutonium, as originally formulated by president Gerald Ford, whose words are worth recalling: “I have concluded that the reprocessing and recycling of plutonium should not proceed unless there is sound reason to conclude that the world community can effectively overcome the associated risks of proliferation.” BRC co-chairman Brent Scowcroft was national security advisor at the time and presumably approved the statement. Our ability to cope with proliferation has not improved since then.

I’m glad this question has come up because it is critical to our nation’s energy future, particularly as the Obama Administration embraces new investment in nuclear power. We are heartened by the signals from the White House demonstrating their support for nuclear energy, but we are frustrated by their efforts to take the country back to square one in terms of disposing of nuclear waste.

To get straight to the point, it was Congress that selected Yucca Mountain as the repository site, and accordingly, only Congress can remove that determination unless the facility fails to meet regulatory licensing requirements.

We made that point to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in our recent petition to intervene in the Yucca Mountain license application proceeding. Given the substantial ratepayer contribution ($17 billion since the early 1980s) along with the decades of study and analysis, we believe the NRC should proceed with its review. In 2008, DOE presented its case that its license application will meet the NRC’s standards. Now it’s time for the experts do their jobs.

For the Administration to simply withdraw the application in a way that removes Yucca from future consideration without an articulable reason is not only a waste of ratepayer money, but it is likely unlawful. It also is another considerable hurdle that will delay this process even further. We support the new Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future as this impressive group begins its work to develop a workable solution. But the waste-disposal issue has been studied for years, and most internationally acclaimed scholars conclude that geologic disposal is the best option.

Remember, no matter what happens with Yucca, some kind of repository will be necessary. Even if Yucca were to open in the next 10-15 years, the country could need a second or even third disposal site unless we develop a reprocessing capability. So the Blue Ribbon Commission, regardless of the Yucca situation, has an important mission.

Still, State regulators are concerned that the longer we wait, we will never reach a conclusion. Although the nuclear utilities are contractually obligated to contribute to the Nuclear Waste Fund, our members are responsible for passing these costs through to consumers. They’ve done so since the 1980s with the understanding – grounded upon the Federal government’s explicit promise -- that the money will be used for the Energy Department to take title to the waste and dispose of it in a safe and timely fashion. Given the challenges now facing the Yucca Mountain project, State regulators can no longer make that assumption.

We believe it is folly for the NRC to grant DOE’s request to terminate the Yucca proceeding. We’ve spent too much ratepayer and taxpayer money and too much time to simply throw the application away – when there is simply no finding that it is deficient or that the facility is unsafe -- and start from scratch.

The Obama Administration’s decision to retreat on Yucca Mountain is disgraceful. It boggles the mind to try and understand how a person of Secretary Chu’s scientific stature could go along with such a wrong headed action. Where is his courage to take a stand on principle (and science)?

This proposed action clearly qualifies as a case of political pandering to the President’s liberal environmental base. It’s also another example that this Administration saying one thing and doing another. So much for being guided by science.

Either the President’s talk about encouraging a expansion of nuclear energy to meet our growing need for electricity is just talk, or he believes that storing waste in drums at nuclear facilities is safer that burying it at Yucca Mountain. Given the outcome of the healthcare debate, there’s no evidence that Congress is willing to say no to the President. But on this proposal, it should.

The proper handling of nuclear waste has been studied exhaustively. Appointing a commission is just a political trick to stack the deck against a true scientific consensus. In 1990 a report, the National Research Council stated that there is “a world wide consensus that deep geological disposal, the approach being followed by the United States, is the best option for disposing of highly radioactive waste.” Nothing has transpired in the last 20 years to change that conclusion.

Yucca Mountain serves as a near perfect geological repository, located at the site of an old nuclear test facility in a desolate part of Nevada where there are no trees or water. If the large quantity of fission material under the ground from decades of nuclear test poses no hazard, why would putting nuclear waste in a secure repository do so? It wouldn’t. And Secretary Chu and the President know that.

Currently, America stores about 57,000 tons of nuclear waste above ground at nuclear power plants. This amount would only cover a single football field -- 7 feet deep. If Congress allows the White House to close the proposed nuclear waste repository site at Yucca Mountain, we’ll be left with the very serious question of where to story these wastes long term. Above ground storage is surely not the answer. That question will become even more pressing if the Administration is also serious about expanding loan guarantees for more nuclear power.

When the Nuclear Waste Policy Act was passed in 1982, utilities became obligated to pay into a Nuclear Waste Fund. Rate payers so far have paid over $27. Does the Obama Administration plan to return it to rate payers or just claim it and use it for some other purpose?

This proposed action by the Obama Administration raises questions about the sincerity of its commitment to energy policy that is prudent, cost-effective, and in the long term economic interests of our nation. Unless we embrace a serious alternative to waste storage, such as recycling, nuclear power will continue to languish as an electric power source that never achieved its potential and energy policy will continue to be all talk and no action beyond wasteful subsidies.

The administration’s decision to withdraw the construction license application for the Yucca Mountain repository is not a repudiation of the government’s legal obligation to dispose of used nuclear fuel from commercial reactors and defense applications. The White House and Energy Secretary Steven Chu have acknowledged DOE’s statutory and contractual obligation to manage and dispose of commercial nuclear used fuel.

NEI supports the work of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, but strongly recommends that the NRC continue technical review of the Yucca Mountain license application to completion. The licensing work can inform discussions among commission members.

The industry does not support termination of the Yucca Mountain project. Any effort to shut down the site and remediate it is premature. Numerous state and local governments and the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners are seeking admission to the NRC licensing proceeding to oppose DOE’s withdrawal of the application. Several stakeholders also have brought suit to stop this action. The project should proceed and be funded so that the technical review of the license application is completed.

If the NRC licensing proceeding for the project is terminated, it should be done in a manner that would permit it to be restarted and all scientific, technical and environmental data gleaned from more than two decades of research into Yucca Mountain should be preserved for future reference. Also, consumer payments into the Federal Nuclear Waste Fund should be suspended for the period of time for which there is no waste management program against which to assess costs. Consumers should no longer contribute more than $750 million in annual payments until there is a definitive used nuclear fuel program being implemented.

Given that most analyses of America’s energy and climate goals rely on a significant expansion of nuclear energy, it is appropriate that the Obama administration is reexamining a long term program for nuclear fuel stewardship. Included in this policy review should be the use of centralized storage as a near term method for managing uranium fuel and development of advanced technologies that could reuse the vast energy content that remains in the fuel after one use in the reactor. Regardless of the approach, a repository will be needed for long-term management of nuclear energy’s byproducts.

The administration’s funding request for FY11 will continue important technology research and development on advanced fuel technology and support private sector partnerships to achieve better definition of the program. DOE’s R&D plans should be brought into compliance with any recommendations of the blue ribbon commission that Congress ultimately accepts.

Science and politics are often at odds; so when they are in accord, we should accept the decision and celebrate it. Yucca Mountain is, in my opinion, the worst site that has been investigated in the United States for a high-level radioactive waste repository. I should note that I support a sound geologic disposal program for spent fuel (without reprocessing) and defense high-level waste – my accent is on the word “sound.” Whatever the politics behind Presidential Candidate Barack Obama’s promise to end the Yucca Mountain program, as President he has made a scientifically sound decision. His Blue Ribbon Commission should accept it and waste no more taxpayer money trying to put it back in the mix. $12 billion is enough money thrown into a bad hole in the ground.

Yucca Mountain was known to be a poor site before Congress narrowed the search to Yucca Mountain alone 1987. The National Research Council of the National Research Council produced a study in 1983, at the request of the Department of Energy (DOE), entitled A Study of the Isolation System for Geologic Disposal of High-Level Radioactive Wastes. It was chaired by one of the most eminent nuclear engineers in the United States, the late Dr. Thomas Pigford. The study estimated that groundwater doses to individuals could be 10,000 times greater than the dose limit adopted in the study as the public health exposure limit (p. 237). While this was true of several sites, it noted that there is no surface water in the Yucca Mountain region. The groundwater in the area is therefore likely to be used and the suggested dose limit (of 10 millirem per year) could be greatly exceeded in comparison with less arid sites where there is surface water (see discussion in Chapter 9 generally; for Yucca Mountain see Sections 9.7.5 and 9.10.8 of the 1983 report). Indeed, the groundwater is being used for irrigation just 20 miles away in Amargosa Valley.

The study’s cautions about Yucca Mountain were ignored. Political expediency trumped everything else in 1987 when it was named as the only site to be characterized.

The Yucca Mountain site is unsaturated and oxidizing. There is moisture in the rock pores. Putting thermally hot wastes in such an environment invites corrosion. Various evaluations of the metal containers that DOE chose have come up with drastically different results for corrosion – some estimating a lifetime in decades, others thousands of times longer than that. The site is seismic and difficult to characterize. And DOE’s own calculations show that if the containers leak, the geology of the site would do almost nothing to hold back the radioactivity and keep it out of the groundwater. In other words, the container is supposed to be the silver bullet. There was no effective back-up system to contain the waste. Yucca Mountain meets none of the criteria for a sound repository location.

Those who admire the Swedish repository program for its public acceptance should note the quarter century of simultaneous geologic research and container development (with the metal container tailored to the reducing, saturated environment, which is the opposite of Yucca Mountain) prior to the start of the site selection process. It might also be relevant to note that the Swedish repository program was developed when Sweden had a moratorium on new nuclear power plants. It will be interesting to note the evolution of public acceptance now that that moratorium is being reversed and new reactors may be built.

In sum, the Blue Ribbon Commission should leave Yucca Mountain behind as a repository location and learn as many lessons as possible from its many technical and political failures. The Commission should focus its efforts on developing the criteria for a scientifically sound program. The container materials, the repository sealing materials, and the geologic rock types should be complementary in containing the waste. The geologic setting should be the backup for containing the waste in case the containers fail. Various combinations should be studied

Rushing into site selection or even into site selection criteria ignores the central importance of the other elements of geologic isolation – notably the containers and the backfill to seal and close the disposal drifts and the whole repository. Ten or more years of study of the fundamentals could lead to a faster ultimate result, and certainly to a fairer one, than convincing some poor, rural county someplace that the financial payoff from accepting a repository would be worth having 100,000 tons of highly radioactive material containing about a million kilograms of plutonium in their backyard.