Congress should create a new agency, separate from the Department of Energy, to manage American nuclear waste, the Bipartisan Policy Center recommended in a report released Tuesday.
“The failures of the past decades are widely acknowledged and have been extensively documented,” former U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), co-chair of the think tank’s Nuclear Waste Council, said Tuesday at a public event. “Indeed, if there is a single point on which everyone involved in the nuclear waste policy debate can agree it is that the approach to date has not delivered results.”
Forming a new agency was one of seven recommendations that BPC’s Nuclear Waste Council listed in its 36-page report. Roughly 74,000 metric tons of spent fuel is now stored at about 100 American nuclear sites as a result of DOE’s failure to take title to the waste by 1998, as dictated by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. The federal government has paid more than $5.3 billion in damages to utilities holding the waste, and DOE estimates the remaining liabilities at $23.7 billion.
The department is developing a consent-based siting process to manage nuclear waste, which could serve as one alternative for the canceled geologic repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The process was recommended by the Obama administration’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, which also suggested “a new organization dedicated solely to implementing the waste management program.”
Assistant DOE Secretary for Nuclear Energy John Kotek said earlier this month the department plans to establish a new office dedicated solely to the Integrated Waste Management System (IWMS), which encompasses consent-based siting.
Dicks said the council has not taken a formal stance on Yucca Mountain, but believes consent-based siting is the right approach. Former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, BPC council co-chair, addressed the concern that consent-based siting is simply applying lipstick to the nuclear waste management pig.
“We’re under no illusions that pursuing a consent-based path is going to be easy, or much less guaranteed to succeed, but we do believe it is the right path to go forward on,” Perdue said.
