In 1967, Glenn Seaborg, a co-discoverer of plutonium, predicted that “handling radioactive waste in a future large scale nuclear economy” would not be “a major problem.”
Impressive as they are, Nobel laureates can be mistaken.
It’s been nearly seven decades since Shippingport Atomic Power Station went critical, but the United States still doesn’t have a reality-based strategy for dealing with spent nuclear fuel (SNF). Don’t blame inept scientists and engineers. Despite Hollywood’s depiction, SNF isn’t green, gooey, or glowing. It’s rather boring — nothing more than bundles of depleted uranium rods, removed from the cores of the reactors that generate a fifth of the nation’s electricity. The quest to permanently dispose of the “waste” — some countries recycle it, which dramatically reduces both volume and radioactivity, but that’s a topic for another day — has been stained by junk science, threat inflation, bad economics, policy reversals, political shenanigans, and wasted expenditures.
In 1954, a National Academy of Sciences committee recommended a geological repository for SNF. For several years, the feds looked at a salt formation beneath Kansas, but the plan fell apart. In the early 1980s, Congress directed the U.S. Department of Energy to investigate fresh prospects. Five years later, the notorious “Screw Nevada” bill focused all study on Yucca Mountain’s volcanic tuff.
Desolate and dry, the site, about 100 miles from Las Vegas, isn’t perfect. But none ever will be, and the Silver State had a history of welcoming nuclear work. Technocrats’ optimism turned to despair when “environmentalists,” aligned with reelection-seeking pols catering to soccer moms’ fears, mounted the Mother of All NIMBY Campaigns. By the time Barack Obama won the presidency, Harry Reid ruled the U.S. Senate, and the Yucca Mountain repository was kaput. After a quarter-century of assessment, and a hastily aborted attempt to obtain a license from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, all was lost. Including $15 billion.
The Swamp shifted toward a “a consent-based process” to build facilities “for the temporary, consolidated storage of spent nuclear fuel.” It was difficult to take the plan seriously, and to this day, results have been zilch. But two similar efforts, neither initiated by D.C. energy bureaucrats, made significant headway. On both sides of the Texas-New Mexico border, profit-seeking entities secured licenses to operate consolidated interim storage facilities. Here, farsighted nuclear wonks recognized, was a way out of the SNF morass. “Temporary” homes for used-up uranium might one day become permanent. And with action by Congress, taxpayers wouldn’t fork over a dime. The ratepayer-funded account (current balance: $47.7 billion) set up to cover the bill for Yucca Mountain could be diverted. Besides, isn’t affordable, monitored storage at or just below to the surface — in a few locations — preferable to a deserted, subterranean, and wildly pricey sole complex?
A solution — well, the start of a solution — was in sight. Then, in the summer of 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission “did not have the requisite statutory authority under federal law to issue licenses for private parties to store spent nuclear fuel away from the reactor site.”
Seriously.
SNF’s costly, convoluted saga now moves to the U.S. Supreme Court, where justices will determine the fates of Interim Storage Partners (Texas) and Holtec International (New Mexico). Fortunately for the companies, their case is strong. As the Nuclear Energy Institute argues, regulators, as well as other courts, “have agreed for decades that [away-from-reactor SNF] facilities are fully consistent” with federal law. The comity “in turn, has spurred industry members to invest in those facilities, which offer enormous efficiency gains and opportunities for economic growth.” The Biden administration concurs, calling the Fifth Circuit’s “approach to statutory interpretation … fundamentally flawed.”
Nuclear ratepayers have an obvious interest in how the High Court rules. But even if you’ve never consumed an atomically generated electron, you’re paying for Washington’s SNF shipwreck. When the January 1998 deadline passed, with no progress, the Department of Energy began to break its contracts with nuclear utilities to haul their leftovers off to Yucca Mountain. Lawsuits ensued, and financial penalties began to pile up, bigtime. The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Judgment Fund has paid out more than $10 billion to power companies.
The lesson, from this mega-mess? Don’t expect the federal government to competently tackle a technically complex challenge. The executive branch has bungled SNF. The legislative branch has bungled SNF. And now, the judicial branch must resolve its bungled interpretation of SNF regulation.
Here’s hoping the Roberts Court puts America’s longest nuclear disaster back on the path to privatization.
I was working at Sandia when all the characterization work was being done at Yucca Mountain. I knew people involved at our lab. Harry Reid caved to the environmentalists and wasted too much taxpayer money as well as the years people put in into the project. You would not believe the amount of testing and paperwork generated for the project just by Sandia. There were many, many other partners involved.
Excellent article. As indicated by your link, the French have done a better job than anyone else on the SNF issue. The French also, wisely, used the same Westinghouse design for the construction of all their nuclear plants. The Chicomms are doing the same today and are also using the same construction crew for each new plant.