Advanced recycling offers a new path in the debate about a long-term repository. President Obama’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future can help build a more sustainable energy future for America by embracing a new technology that will help move the country forward on used fuel storage issues and make nuclear power safer, more efficient and more secure: advanced nuclear fuel recycling.

GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) is developing an advanced recycling technology solution that can recycle used nuclear fuel – without creating dangerous weapons-grade nuclear materials – and generate more electricity while dramatically reducing the long-term radioactivity of the used fuel. Today’s used nuclear fuel could take about 300,000 years to return to the low-level radioactivity of uranium mined from the earth. But, after advanced recycling, the waste product would be less radioactive than the naturally occurring uranium ore in only 300-500 years.

The advanced recycling technology is also extraordinarily efficient. It can extract up to 99 percent of the energy content from used uranium reactor fuel, compared to the 1-2 percent extracted by America’s current reactor fleet. Moreover, since advanced recycling also extracts energy from used fuel, the United States could meet its electricity needs for 100 years simply by recycling the existing stockpile of used nuclear fuel stored at U.S. commercial nuclear power plants.

We believe nuclear power is an important part of a safe and sustainable energy future for America. The President’s Blue Ribbon Commission should seize the opportunity to advance this critical recycling technology solution in its interim report next month.

Five Reasons Why Yucca Mountain Is the Wrong Answer

1) Politics, not science or safety, drove the initial choice.

When Congress designated Yucca Mountain as the site for a permanent nuclear waste repository, it didn't have before it scientific evidence or consensus that Yucca was the best site. It simply responded to the political reality of 1982 – that the easiest state to roll was Nevada. None of the states with possible sites wanted to be the national sacrifice zone, and Nevada had the least power.

2) Subsequent scientific assessment revealed that the Yucca Mountain site was neither dry enough nor stable enough for a permanent repository. As Victor Galinsky points out, the site has too much water migrating too quickly and cannot meet the safety standards established by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for the length of time that the waste to be stored will be highly radioactive, toxic, and hot.

Yucca lies near earthquake faults and is expected to experience quakes of up to 6.5 on the Richter scale. DOE rejected Holtec's proposal that the nuclear waste casks undergoing the four-year "cool down" period before being stored permanently should be tied down with seismic anchors. Now in San Francisco, where I live, gargoyles on office building are seismically anchored. It seems clear that nuclear waste casks should be as well. But DOE wants to save money and, as Holtec said, in an earthquake "pigs will fly before the casks will stay put."

3) The entire design process was driven by reckless and sloppy short cuts designed to get the repository licensed regardless of whether it was safe. In 2008, when the NRC filed for the license, the State of Nevada found 250 legal flaws in the permit application. One of the major contractors on the project, Holtec International , called Yucca a "doomed undertaking" and said that the safety procedures proposed by DOE were a "fool's errand."

4) Even if Yucca were safe, it still can't solve our current waste problem. We have enormous quantities of spent reactor fuel stored in insecure swimming pools at the nation's 104 nuclear power plants. This spent reactor fuel, as we learned at Fukushima, is as much of a lethal safety hazard as the reactors themselves. Yet under the plans developed for Yucca, it would take 50 years to move the nation's current backlog of nuclear waste into the facility. We simply can't afford to wait for Yucca.

5) We don't need to wait for Yucca. We now understand, unequivocally, that the safest thing to do with high-level nuclear waste is to store it, temporarily and retrievably, in "dry" concrete caskets while it cools down. After 100 years, the waste will be much easier to handle and store -- if a permanent, geological repository is the best solution. We will have many more scientific options, so a permanent geological repository might no longer be the best solution. And if we then decide that a place like Yucca Mountain is the best bet, we can secure the waste far better because, although still highly toxic, it won't be putting out nearly as much heat.

There will be a dispute about how many retrievable, dry-casket repositories we ought to build – a network of regional repositories means more sites to be protected, but less need to ship waste across the country and perhaps less regional divisiveness. But there's no doubt that we could get a retrievable storage system in place much faster than Yucca, AND it would keep our options open for the future.

(These comments were submitted by Duncan Robinson, President, North American Young Generation in Nuclear.)

As a member of the young generation of nuclear science and technology workers, we have grown up with lingering unanswered questions about the used fuel issue that remain today. The industry has continued to develop solutions to the problem, and has demonstrated the ability to store and manage used fuel safely at their individual sites. However, there is general agreement on the need for a centralized monitored retrievable geological site, yet policymakers still have been unable to provide a resolution.

While the nuclear industry is certainly capable of managing used fuel on-site for years to come, the fact that there is no long term solution continues to be a ball and chain on the growth and success of an energy source that is already 20% of America’s electricity and emits no greenhouse gases. Those of us in the young generation wish to see this policy question resolved so that the prospects for new nuclear development are strengthened. If this country is committed to reducing our carbon emissions, expansion of nuclear generated electricity must be a significant part of that future energy mix. We are eager to meet that demand and provide the workforce for future new nuclear plants. As a nation, we must stop dragging our feet on putting in place a solution to the used fuel issue.

We are hopeful that the recommendations laid out by the President’s Blue Ribbon Commission will provide guidance for a policy solution that is bi-partisan in nature, technically informed, and most-importantly, can be implemented without being subject to the prevailing political winds of the moment. US ratepayers have already contributed billions of dollars into the Nuclear Waste Fund only to see the government make progress and scrap that progress. Looking again at Yucca Mountain as an option may be a wise decision that could recoup some of that investment. Allowing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to complete review of the license application would certainly confirm that it is a safe and suitable location as multiple previous studies have indicated. However, whether or not the solution is Yucca Mountain is potentially less important than ensuring we provide a process now that will allow us to move forward on developing a geological repository without the political climate damaging its access to support and funding.

We the young generation in nuclear simply ask that the government fulfill its commitment to resolve the used fuel issue, by utilizing the knowledge and efforts of the previous generation, in such a way that this generation will not have to tackle the issue all over again in the decades ahead.

North American Young Generation in Nuclear is a professional society representing over 7,000 members and 90 chapters of young professionals working in nuclear science and technology. www.na-ygn.org

(These comments were submitted by Jack Spencer, a research fellow in nuclear energy policy at The Heritage Foundation.)

The Obama administration should unequivocally reverse course on its decision to close Yucca Mountain. When Secretary Chu withdrew the DOE’s permit application, he ignored the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act, as amended, which clearly states that Yucca Mountain should be the location of America’s used fuel repository. As if disregarding the law was not enough, by withdrawing the application Chu also dismissed the extensive research that established the technical foundation of the DOE’s application. Making matters worse yet, NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko picked up right where Chu left off by seemingly ignoring established NRC protocol. Jaczko unilaterally ordered his staff to stop work on all Yucca-related activities without the consent of his fellow commissioners. He justified the action based on the budget guidance President Obama proposed which sought to eliminate funding for Yucca. There’s one slight problem with Jaczko’s logic, Congress hadn’t passed the president’s budget into law.

Despite the Administration’s and Jaczko’s best attempts to permanently shutter Yucca Mountain, it is absolutely still feasible to restart the Yucca project. The first step is to require the NRC to complete its review of the Yucca construction permit. Once completed, the nation can then determine the best policy to move forward with a used fuel management program, which will benefit our nation’s energy future.

An integral component of this new approach should include transferring the Yucca license – at least responsibilities and benefits there of – to a third party, such as a private sector non-profit or even the state of Nevada. The new license holder could then negotiate a workable solution directly with the nuclear industry that would fully represent the interests of all parties. In other words, get the federal government out of the nuclear waste business.

There is no reason for Washington to be in charge of nuclear waste management. The nuclear industry is fully capable of managing its own waste. Indeed, all evidence shows that the private sector is far better at managing nuclear operations than the federal government. Additionally, today both fuel related activities and nuclear plant operations are fully privatized. They operate efficiently and safely, attract significant investment and are generally profitable enterprises. Almost without exception, the further industry has moved from government, the safer and more efficient it has become. Unfortunately, one sector of the nuclear industry remains under Washington’s purview, and that’s its waste management. Like the rest of the commercial nuclear industry, waste management should also be privatized.

Opening Yucca Mountain along with transferring responsibility for waste management to nuclear operators would allow a market-based system to emerge. This would allow nuclear waste producers to take into account the cost of geologic storage and prompt the development of different waste management mechanisms. Whether that entails building a reprocessing plant or building a new reactor technology with a less costly waste stream, the waste producers should be the ones making the decisions. Even with a new system in place, a geologic repository is essential. Given the certitude that Yucca Mountain is a sound repository scientifically and technologically, there is no reason for the Obama Administration to close Yucca.

Sadly, the Administration has already reversed course on Yucca Mountain. As a result the nation’s nuclear waste policy, developed almost 30 years ago, is at a standstill.

At this point, we realize restarting the Yucca Mountain program is unlikely. This is unfortunate -- all the time, energy, resources, and money that went into the project’s development are for naught. For our nation’s consumers, who’ve paid more than $30 billion (counting interest) since 1983 into the Nuclear Waste Fund, the failure of the Federal government to successfully manage this project is beyond unfortunate.

Restarting the license review process may require reassembling and reassigning personnel from the Department of Energy and Nuclear Regulatory Commission who have since been taken off the project. Still, letting the NRC complete its review of the Yucca application is important as it can offer important lessons when a new nuclear-waste strategy is proposed.

Moving forward, we need to carefully review the Blue Ribbon Commission’s report and determine what is feasible. We suspect most of their recommendations will need congressional legislation, and given the current makeup of Congress, this could take a considerable amount of time.

What the Administration should do immediately is suspend payments into the Nuclear Waste Fund, which it has the authority to do. The fund currently has approximately $24 billion and is earning more in interest than in collections from consumers. This is more than enough to sustain the stalled program. Once a new direction is implemented, a new fund can be established.

NARUC is suing the Administration over its continued assessment of the Nuclear Waste Fund fees, and we are hopeful that the courts will side with us.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission should continue reviewing the license application for a used nuclear fuel repository at Yucca Mountain and complete the scientific process of determining whether it is a safe and suitable location for such a site. Then, policymakers should determine whether to move forward with developing the facility informed by policy insights from the President’s blue ribbon commission.

Nuclear energy produces 20 percent of America’s electricity, and 104 commercial reactors have a unique combination of reliability, low-cost production and environmental attributes that make them a vital part of our energy portfolio. Electric companies that operate these reactors have safely and securely managed used fuel at their plant sites for decades. However, under law, the federal government has responsibility for long-term stewardship of this material. Yucca Mountain has been studied by hundreds of independent scientists and supported by Congress and Democrat and Republican administrations alike. There are no scientific showstoppers at Yucca Mountain after more than two decades of research. The NRC’s licensing process will determine whether the site is suitable for a disposal facility.

Scientific consensus is that geologic disposal is the best and safest way to isolate this material over the long term, even if uranium fuel recycling is viable in the longer term. Regardless of what nuclear fuel cycle is used, there will be a byproduct requiring permanent isolation. A repository will take decades to develop, and the exact characteristics of a specially designed facility will be determined by federal policy going forward.

The nuclear energy industry believes that the nation’s used fuel management policy should include three key elements: central interim storage of used fuel, closing the nuclear fuel cycle in an appropriate manner, and a permanent disposal facility for used nuclear fuel and/or the byproducts of used fuel recycling. Centralized storage at volunteer host communities is a necessary near-term step in this process, and it is an option that is being considered by President Obama’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future. It is a strategic component of the nuclear fuel cycle providing time for the nation to develop an advanced nuclear fuel cycle. Storage at regional sites is needed regardless of the fate of the Yucca Mountain project; it does not eliminate the need for eventual disposal of used fuel.

While used reactor fuel can be safely managed at fuel storage vaults or in steel-lined concrete containers, recent events in Japan remind us that nuclear power plants should not be permanent used fuel storage sites. We should take steps now to develop centralized storage facilities for used nuclear fuel, building upon a proven safe transportation network that exists today.

No he shouldn’t, but he needs to explain why, which neither he nor his Energy Secretary have done. Otherwise, it is just politics.

Yucca Mountain is a bad project that should not have been pursued by DOE after it became clear in the mid-90s that the site failed DOE’s own geologic criteria. There was much more water in the Mountain than expected and it was moving much faster, too. Water promotes corrosion and transports leaking radioactive substances to inhabited areas. Instead of returning to Congress to get new instructions, as the law required, DOE tossed its inconvenient geologic criteria and tried to muscle its way to a license. The fact is that the site, as it would be loaded with spent fuel canisters, could not meet the basic radiation dose limits set by EPA and adopted by NRC as the licensing standard.

DOE’s claim of compliance with the NRC’s standard depends entirely on each of the 11,000 waste canisters being covered by a 5-ton titanium “drip shield” (DOE’s own name). The catch is that DOE does not plan to install plan to install the drip shields until 100 years after closure. This would have to be done remotely, in the hot and radioactive underground environment, by yet-to-be-designed robots. In short DOE wanted a license on the promise that it, or someone, will install the drip shields 100 years from now. It may not even be physically possible to do it in collapsed or even rock-strewn tunnels, but DOE insists that the NRC cannot in its review question the promise of another federal agency. As Dave Barry says, I am not making this up.

One doesn’t expect the President to get into this detail, but you would think the White House science office might have helped him. There is also no sign that his Nobel Prize-winning Energy Secretary understands any of this. DOE’s request to the NRC Licensing Board to withdraw the Yucca Mountain application still claims—I suppose to protect the waste bureaucracy responsible for the submision—that the site and application were fine. It's not surprising then that in these circumstances the NRC Licensing Board ruled that DOE could not withdraw the application.

Had DOE told the NRC Board that on closer examination they had decided the project was technically flawed the Board result would surely have been different and its decision would have spiked the current efforts to revive the project. In short, the administration is more than a little to blame for the continuing controversy.

Should the administration reverse course on Yucca Mountain? Is that even possible at this stage of dismantling the project?

I think it is too late, as a practical matter, to reconstruct the scientific teams to support the existing project. A new group would probably have to start from the beginning.

What are alternatives for storing America’s long-term nuclear waste?

There is basically one technical option—dry cask storage, either at plant sites or at central locations. Of course, the spent fuel has to remain in water pools for some time, perhaps three years, after it is removed from a reactor core.

For the foreseeable future geologic storage is off the table. After the Yucca Mountain fiasco I don’t believe the country has the ability or the political energy to develop a new geologic site, and won’t for many years, perhaps decades, perhaps never. In any case, it can’t be done with the Energy Department in charge. Its arrogance and managerial incompetence contributed heavily to Nevada’s resistance to Yucca Mountain.

What does the fight over Yucca Mountain mean for the nuclear industry’s future in the United States?

At this point, it doesn’t mean much, if anything.

It’s important to understand that the Yucca Mountain project was never about public health and safety. From the beginning it was about protecting nuclear licensing. In its last days the AEC planned for surface storage of waste. The first NRC chairman was afraid that environmentalists might use NEPA to stop nuclear power plant licensing on grounds that the cradle-to-grave plan for nuclear fuel. He convinced DOE’s predecessor, ERDA, to shift to geologic storage. I recall him saying that when the first spent fuel rod was lowered down we declare victory, and nuclear power would be secure. The environmentalists liked it, too, because they thought they could stop repository siting and thereby kill nuclear power. It turned out they were both wrong.

What was originally a modest project took on a life of its own as it acquired contractor forces and a dedicated bureaucracy until the price tag approached $100 billion. Like all grandiose projects its purpose was simply to grind forward. The so-called reasons for it were just rationales that, it seemed to me, no one really believed in. I raise this because I think deep down this demoralized the project and contributed to the poor quality of the work.

What are the environmental and safety concerns that Obama’s blue-ribbon commission on nuclear waste should consider as it prepares to release its interim report next month?

With one exception, everything the Blue Ribbon group will say could have been said on day one. But I suppose the country had to wait for General Scowcroft to get up to speed. The one exception is the added urgency that the Fukushima disaster lends to moving spent fuel out of spent fuel pools at reactors. Such pools at US reactors generally contain more spent fuel than those at Fukushima and as we have seen could pose serious safety problems. Some pools are packed so tightly that they are almost as dense as reactor cores. The process of moving the older spent fuel into dry casks should be accelerated. The plant owners resist this on cost grounds and unfortunately the NRC is too timid to press them. It will take an external force to effect a change.

(These comments were submitted by Navigant Economics Managing Director Cliff Hamal.)

The question of whether to revive Yucca Mountain is important, but fundamentally suffers from a conceit that has interfered with the development of a comprehensive spent fuel management program in this nation for decades. The conceit is the belief that decision makers at each point of time can chart a course for long-term disposition of spent fuel without further controversy or course changes in the future. The alternative is to ask, what should be done now in an environment where we fully expect controversy to plague implementation of our long-term strategy? And the answer is to look beyond a repository alone at the flexibility and cost savings that could result from the concurrent pursuit of interim, centralized storage. While the Yucca Mountain question is important, we have passed the point where spent fuel management can be limited solely to the pursuit of a permanent repository.

We know a permanent repository is needed, but we have no certainty when it will open. Meanwhile spent fuel continues to build up at reactor sites around the country. When those reactors begin retiring en masse, the cost of monitoring that fuel is going to skyrocket. Collectively, utilities are going to be seeking hundreds of millions of dollars a year to recover these costs from the Department of Energy (DOE) because it has breached its obligation to collect this fuel. This wave of costs is going to begin around 2030, but what is not recognized is that action is needed NOW to head off this wave. DOE cannot start accepting waste until it has a place to put it, and there is no certainty over when a permanent repository will open. At the transportation rates being assumed for a national repository, it will take roughly 50 years to move all of the spent fuel away from the reactor sites. Nothing is quick or easy in spent fuel management.

We need to pursue a centralized, interim storage facility regardless of what decisions are made about Yucca Mountain. A large, secure, centrally-located parking lot for dry cask storage would introduce tremendous flexibility in the nation’s spent nuclear fuel management program. We could start moving fuel from the reactors, lowering costs, meeting DOE’s obligations and allowing the reactor sites to be decommissioned and used for other purposes. Once a centralized facility is put in operation, other options become available for the management, re-packaging, maintenance, storage and processing of spent fuel. And following the painful lessons of the Fukushima Daiichi accident, placing the fuel in a facility with tighter controls and specifically designed for this purpose just makes sense.

Centralized storage also could significantly lower the costs of managing spent fuel over time. Like everything else concerning spent fuel, there are enormous uncertainties about how much a total centralized storage program would cost and what savings could be achieved. But here is the one area where there isn’t much uncertainty: the effort needed to locate a site, design a facility and get it licensed is not particularly expensive. Don’t get me wrong—there will be enormous challenges in getting a site fully license and ready for construction. Heck, it might even prove to be impossible. But, on the scale one must use to evaluate spent nuclear fuel decisions, the action taken to see if we can find and license a site is not expensive. The challenges are not technical, but political, and the resolution is not one of cost, but of national will and creativity. And we won’t know what it takes to get it done until we do it. And that is what is needed today: a national commitment to expand our spent nuclear management program to make a centralized interim storage facility (or two) an integral part of the solution.

As for Yucca Mountain, I have not heard any sound reasons for abandoning our multi-billion-dollar investment. Regardless of what actions are taken at Yucca Mountain, however, these delicate eggs called spent nuclear fuel need more than one basket.

As a recent Government Accountability Office report<http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2011/05/10/10greenwire-gao-death-of-yucca-mountain-caused-by-politica-36298.html> reveals, there’s a vast gulf between what the President should do and what he will probably do regarding nuclear waste. The watchdog discovered that science didn’t prompt the administration’s 2009 decision to shut down the Yucca Mountain waste repository; instead, political motivations (ie. pandering to environmental zealots and winning Nevada in 2012) drove the decision.

Less than a decade ago, activist groups<http://activistcash.com/organization_overview.cfm/o/145-union-of-concerned-scientists> dedicated a great deal of energy to accusing the Bush administration of politicizing science. Their indignation, however, doesn’t appear to cross party lines.

The reality is no better alternatives to storing the waste deep in underground caves currently exist.

Storing nuclear waste in barrels at nuclear plants is an accident waiting to happen. The nuclear industry has done a good job with what was supposed to be temporary storage but shouldn’t be burdened with it indefinitely. Their available means consist of casks or cooling pools like the Japanese used at Fukushima -- neither of which is as safe or economical as Yucca Mountain, which is in the area of an abandoned nuclear test facility and, hence, has no higher value use.

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 gave DOE the responsibility to construct and operate a geologic repository for high-level waste and endowed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) with the responsibility for oversee the disposal process. In 1987, Congress directed DOE to focus solely on Yucca Mountain. Yet in March 2010 the agency formally moved to withdraw its application to construct the facility.

Three months later, the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board rejected the request, noting:

When Congress selected then site, it reinforced the expectation in the 1982 Act that the project would be removed from the political process and that the NRC would complete an evaluation of the technical merits.

Researchers have exhaustively studied Yucca’s storage. The NRC staff even determined wastes could be safely stored for up to a million years. Taxpayers have funded something on the order of $8 to 10 billion in study and design work on this site. It’s a case of an issue being over analyzed and under-decided.

Despite this, politics have dominated the decision making about Yucca Mountain.

The Yucca repository is to hold about 77,000 tons of high-level waste. Approximately 57,000 tons of commercial spent fuel are already in temporary storage at nuclear power plants across the country.

In addition, utilities under government mandate have been contributed in excess of $27 billion to the Nuclear Waste Fund starting. So we have a situation where the government extracts payments from taxpayers for a service that it refuses to perform yet shows no inclination to return those funds.

In the private sector, this kind of behavior would lead to convictions for fraud.

We are faced with a situation where environmental radicals oppose coal fired electric power and lobby against nuclear power too. Now that we have discovered a way to unlock enough natural gas to meet our electric power needs for the rest of this century, these same groups are raising objections to “fracking” -- the process necessary to extract those resources.

Wind and solar seem to rank as their only sources of “acceptable” electric power. Both of those remain uneconomical and technically impractical for large power generation.

The none-of-the-above approach to power generation favored by some environmentalists has serious economic consequences for our economy. There is a very strong correlation between electrical power consumption and economic growth. To support a strong, robust economy we need abundant and affordable electricity. And we are only going to get that if arbitrary obstacles and political mandates are removed.

Whether nuclear power can compete with natural gas is an open question, especially in the aftermath of the Fukushima accident. Long term, nuclear should continue to play an important role in our energy mix. Unlike Germany, we are not going to shutter our nuclear plants, which provide 20 percent of our electrical power. As long as they operate, they are going to generate waste that has to be stored in the safest manner possible. Today, that is Yucca Mountain.

If President Obama is not willing to reverse a bad decision, Congress should do it for him. Nuclear power faces enough challenges without the administration and its NRC enforcer creating another roadblock. The Yucca Mountain situation is clearly an example of abuse of power.