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Paralysis over nuclear waste disposal costs federal government billions
July 24th, 2009, 6:00 am · 24 Comments · posted by Teri Sforza, Register staff writer
So. Decades upon decades worth of spent nuclear fuel sits in storage at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (and more than 100 other nuclear plants nationwide).
So, SanO’s operator - Southern California Edison - is suing Uncle Sam for $146.5 million for failing to provide permanent storage for said nuclear waste, as promised in an agreement inked in 1982 (and other nuclear plant operators are suing as well - for a bill of some $1.4 billion.)
So, Yucca Mountain is pretty much dead as a doornail as a national repository for nuclear waste (after an investment of some 30 years and $10 billion); the Bush-era push to fast-track a commercial nuclear fuel reprocessing facility was torpedoed last month; and U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu is appointing a blue-ribbon panel of experts to hash out just what the heck to do next, as the radioactive stuff piles up all over America.
Yikes! Each year’s delay in meeting the federal responsibility adds another $500 million or so to the federal government’s liability, according to testimony at a recent Congressional hearing. Payouts to nuclear plant operators - to essentially cover their costs for storing the spent nuclear fuel that the government was supposed to handle - could total as much as $50 billion.
Ouch. While one can understand why folks near Yucca Mountain didn’t want the nation’s nuclear waste buried in their backyard, all this has left us at The Watchdog wondering precisely why the heck do we do things the way we do them.
The spent fuel we sent to storage in America still contains about 95 percent of its usable material. So why don’t we reprocess it, as they do in France, Great Britain, Japan and Germany? Wouldn’t that cut down on what you’d have to stick in a place like Yucca Mountain? If it’s good for the bottle, and good for the can, shouldn’t it be good for the nuclear fuel, too?
RECYCLED CANS CAN’T KILL
Reprocessing was once an integral part of the nuclear plan in America, ever since World War II. Technology to chemically separate and recover fissionable plutonium from used nuclear fuel was developed, and “in the early stage of commercial nuclear power, reprocessing was thought essential to supplying nuclear fuel,” according to a Congressional Research Service report.
Thing is, reprocessing produces material that could easily be used in nuclear bombs, while regular old spent fuel does not.
“When you have spent fuel, you have enriched uranium and plutonium intermingled with all these other fission products, all these other hazardous isotopes,” said Scott Burnell, spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. ”It’s not possible to easily use that enriched uranium or plutonium for either fuel or weapons. But if you set up technology for reprocessing, you are separating out those useful elements. The concern, in effect, was that the material could get into the wrong hands.”
After India started showing off its nuclear muscle in the 1970s, America got spooked. In October 1976, President Gerald Ford suspended commercial reprocessing and recycling of plutonium, to stave off nuclear proliferation. A year later, President Jimmy Carter issued an executive order that etched the policy into stone.
FAILURE TO RECOVER
President Ronald Reagan reversed Carter’s order, but the work never really ramped back up, Burnell said. Congress soon passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act - committing the federal government to accept and store spent commercial nuclear fuel in exchange for payments from the nuclear plant operators, so there was not much more impetus for reprocessing.
(In the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the feds promised to start accepting spent fuel for storage by 1998. That hasn’t happened. And that’s why the nuclear plant operators are suing.)
In 2006, the Bush administration started pushing anew for commercial reprocessing, but the Obama administration just put the kibosh on that. Reprocessing is not off the table, energy department officials have said - but the approach would certainly be different. And more distant, time-wise.
LESS WASTE, OR MORE?
W
ould reprocessing result in less stuff to stick into storage? It’s a matter of debate.
Many of those in favor of reprocessing say that yes, it would not only be a more efficient use of fuel, but would also cut down on the volume of highly radioactive waste that must be stored, and result in waste that is mostly more stable.
The Union of Concerned Scientists and others, however, strongly disagree, saying the volume of waste would actually increase.
According to an environmental non-profit in the United Kingdom, ” Reprocessing of spent fuel increases the volume of radioactive waste by up to 160 times. The amount of actual radioactivity is not changed - the industrial process of reprocessing just spreads the radioactivity over a vastly greater volume. Most of the waste is low-level, but there is also plutonium-contaminated intermediate-level waste and a small quantity of high-level waste which is so radioactive and hot it must be continually cooled for at least 50 years before anything can be done with it.”
SO WHAT NOW?
The feds’ new Blue Ribbon Panel on Nuclear Waste Management will hopefully sort all this out. We’re waiting for details on who will serve on this panel, and what its schedule will be, from the DOE. We’ll keep you posted.
In the meantime, two high-power academics say an entirely new approach is necessary, charging individual states and regions with disposing of their own nuclear waste.
“Going forward, efforts should be directed at locating storage facilities in the nation’s northeastern, southeastern, midwestern and western regions, and states within a given region should be responsible for developing solutions that suit their particular circumstances,” according to an article in the July 10 issue of Science by University of Michigan geologist Rodney Ewing and Princeton University nuclear physicist Frank von Hippel.
“Transportation of nuclear waste over long distances, which was a concern with the Yucca Mountain site, would be less of a problem because interim storage or geologic disposal sites could be located closer to reactors. “This regional approach would be similar to the current approach in Europe, where spent nuclear fuel and high-level nuclear waste from about 150 reactors and reprocessing plants is to be moved to a number of geologic repositories in a variety of rock types.”
Read a release about their article summarized here.
Someday, we’ll figure out where to put all that stuff in dry cask storage at San O. Right?
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Your photo is deceiving and irresponsible. The article is about spent fuel, yet you show a picture of transuranic waste. If the article is about spent fuel being stored at San Onofre, then you should include a picture of the dry storage systems SCE has invested in to safely store the spent fuel until the feds start meeting their contractual obligations to take it away. The picture does not portray how the spent fuel is stored at San Onofre. I doubt that photo is even at San Onofre.
Carly - the photo is not of San Onofre. It’s a US Dpt of Energy photo, and all the details of what and where are written there on the photo itself.
The point is that it’s not just San O’s waste that is piling up; it’s everyone’s, everywhere.
Obviously, the photo is not of the nuclear plant, and I realize that the details are on the photo itself. But to put that photo there in an article about spent fuel “piling up” is deceiving. You use the term “piling up” then show a photo of drums “piled up.” Spent fuel is stored safely in robust, NRC-certified concrete and steel containers, and they aren’t “piled up.” I agree that the waste is accumulating at reactor sites around the country and that the government should live up to its obligations and dispose of it, AND that this country should reprocess its spent fuel to reduce the volume and toxicity of that spent fuel. No disagreement here with those ideas. I am just saying the photo you chose to use in this article is deceiving. I’m sure Southern California Edison would have gladly provided you with a photo of the dry storage casks they are using to safely store the spent fuel.
OK, uncle. I’ve moved the DOE photo down into the body of the story, and replaced it at the top with an illustration of dry cask storage.
Better. Thank you.
How much more boring can you possibly be?
The waste scare still does not mitigate our need for nuclear generated electricity. Then again, relying on government to do what it promises is a recipe for disappointment.
We will continue to have coal miners dying in mines, underground coal fires that can’t be put out, politicians using the phony climate change myth to scare us into lowering our standard of living, radioactive coal ash ond other problems from coal burning if we do not go nuclear. There is not enough solar and wind to supply anywhere near our energy needs either.
Very good history lesson of the politics of reprocessing in the United States. Reprocessing does not have to produce clean plutonium, but the resulting fuel product would have to be remotely handled by design, driving up costs in infrastructure, transportation, and risk.
Nuclear power is very exciting and should continue to be researched for solving these security and profitability issues. I expect this power source will be on the table for a long time.
Forget Yucca Mtn. we have the Great Park in Irvine, we should be able to store lots of the stuff there and maybe charge the feds a good price to do it.
Problem solved
The NRC even went as far as issuing a license to Private Fuel Storage, LLC, in 2006 to store non-reprocessed waste casks like those stored at SONGS. The centralized location would be only interim and result in a few acres of concrete, lighting, and a small maintenance/security force. All packaging was to be done at the reactor. But the US government told the hosting reservation, The Skull Valley band of Goshutes, they actually aren’t sovereign and need to comply with the wishes of the state.
Good eye Carlyn Greene.
We need nuclear power if we are ever going to be energy independent. Wind mills and solar energy is good, but it only accounts for 1% of our energy needs. Our current president wants us to check the pressure in our car tires and insulate our homes, which is good, but its only a feel good solution.
I suggest we send engineers to France to help us recycle spent fuel like they do, but please no Senate junkets. We need people that are trained in the field. Second I would get congress off its you know whats and find a permanent storage location. We need at least 40 new Nuclear power stations now, if we really want to be energy independent.
The project is not “as dead as a doornail” as claimed in the article. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act is still the law of the land and because of that the license application, which has already been docketed, will continue to move forward. If Nevada Senators Reid and Ensign are so committed to the closure of this repository, then why doesn’t one of them simply introduce a bill to repeal the Act? They can starve this project all they want by helping to reduce its funding, but the LA will still move forward.
@Brown Eyed Girl: beg to differ with you. Obama carried Nevada because of his promise to kill Yucca Mountain. The most powerful senator in the USA is from Nevada and will fight ’til his last breath to stop it. Everything is gone now except for the license application which will be withdrawn soon. They have even had massive layoffs and are already looking at breeder (fuel reprocessing) nuclear reactors to deal with the spent fuel.
There are 1.3-1.7M folks in Southern Nevada breathing a bit easier (it wasn’t so much the storage as it was the transport which involved dragging it in box cars through train-tracks that run through the best suburbs.) Now’s the time to go pickup a condo (they’re down around $70K) or a huge house (for $170K) out there, assuming you bring your own income.
“Transportation of nuclear waste over long distances, which was a concern with the Yucca Mountain site, would be less of a problem because interim storage or geologic disposal sites could be located closer to reactors”.
One more reason why stationary hydrogen fuel cells for very localized power generation is the smarter choice for our energy needs.
Solar power can be used to split oxygen atoms from water leaving hydrogen atoms for conversion to an energy source. During conversion/combustion, the oxygen atoms are recombined so that the waste product is again…water.
You can’t store solar power, you have to use it or lose it. BUT, you can store it in potential energy (hydrogen), for use anytime you want it.
Cells can be of modest size and can fit into urban environments where the power is needed, rather than far away using long expanses of wire connected to a grid.
More plants means more security as well since it would much harder to shut down large swaths of the country by attacking the grid.
Forget the fuel cell in the BMW. Think more about powering our cities using hydrogen.
Let me expand, briefly on something I said earlier.
In many parts of the world, including here, in the U.S., two things are always in short supply; Energy and Clean Water.
Hydrogen Fuel Cells don’t create water, since water is used to produce hydrogen, but it does purify the water they use and on an atomic level.
So, a device that gives you electricity and pure water and can be basically trucked in and set up, isn’t that a GOOD thing?
Wouldn’t a simple solution be is to lanch most of it into space. Place several loads toward the sun and let it burn up a way from earth.
Yeah, but you gotta truck it to a launch site, put it in a “space capsule” and hope it doesn’t blow up on launch, tossing a big bunch of radioactive debris over a wide area.
Anything you do with spent fuel involves getting it from point A to point B…then the storage thing kicks in.
You could build the power plants on the same site where the long term storage is but who is going to allow that in their backyard?
You could always launch the rocket over the ocean. I still think sending it into space is the best answer for now.
it won’t “burn up” because there’s nothing to burn it, unless you consider friction while leaving our own atmosphere, which is imprecise at best, highly dangerous (not to mention quite expensive) at worst.
the amount of fuel required to get a very small amount of that material anywhere close enough to the sun to burn up would be in the billions or trillions of dollars. maybe a solar-powered rocket of some sort might help, but who knows. it would still have major problems to be overcome.
there are better current technologies available to help deal with the nuclear waste. this will work especially well for the recycled stuff which is less concentrated, but as mentioned in the article the volume is much higher, which means you have a much bigger quantity to deal with.
Once it’s moving in space, you don’t need anymore fuel….there’s no gravity. It will burn up once it’s close enough to the sun.
Let me repharse that, once it’s in space and directed toward the sun, the pull of the sun will take care of it. No need for fuel once it’s headed that way.
aaaggghhh! You STILL have to truck a boatload of dangerous spent nuclear fuel to a launch site, which means driving it through many cities and towns, hope that it actually launces and then repeat over and over again because of the sheer volume that needs to be dealt with.
Shooting our nuclear garbage at the sun is absolutely THE most impractical idea on the face of the planet. Look at the uproar that was caused when they were going to launch a nuclear powered satelite. People went nuts. And that was just a tiny little amount of plutonium. You think voters will actually warm to the idea of blasting tons of the stuff over their collective heads on a daily, weekly, monthly basis????
John, no offense, but I want some of what you’ve been smoking.
Your opting for the “out-of sight, out-of-mind” approach to dealing with a very, very, very serious issue, so we need serious discussion and serious solutions.
Rockets as atomic garbage trucks don’t fit that bill.
“Once it’s moving in space….”
The hard part, the DANGEROUS part, the wildly impractical part is to get it into space.
First; The Union of concerned scientists either don’t know what they are talking about or they are spreading misinformation. In this case they stated that reprocessing would result in more waste. That’s true if we used the methods we used in 1944! Just a look at what the French have been doing for over fifty years.
Second; Spent nuclear fuel is a very valuable commodity. It can be reprocessed six more times. That means we have roughly two hundred years (at the current generator level) of fuel in storage that just needs to be reprocessed. Why would we even consider throwing that away.
Third; Someday will be be using liquid homogeneous reactors. They have a better neutron economy, do not produce any fissionable material that is separated, and can’t melt.