Jeremy L. Dillon
WC Monitor
2/27/2015
President Barack Obama this week authorized the separation of defense high-level nuclear waste from commercial high-level waste and spent nuclear fuel, otherwise known as “de-comingling,” paving the way for a defense waste-only repository. De-comingling would be the best solution for nuclear waste issues due due to the differences in the waste characteristics, Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz said in remarks at the Bipartisanship Policy Center. Defense waste has a finite inventory, as well as easier repository design requirements and cooler temperature ranges that could make siting and construction easier. “However, what I have emphasized is that the [defense] high-level waste repository has significantly lower challenges—again finite, small amount, much of it rather cool, and heterogeneity providing the opportunity for some selected alternative pathways,” Moniz said. “We think that this can go as fast as any nuclear facility can go. That remains to be demonstrated what that timeline is.”
The issue of co-mingling deals primarily with whether defense-related high-level waste and commercial spent fuel should continue to be managed together and ultimately go into the same repository. Of the current supply of DOE-responsible waste that would go into a repository, defense waste constitutes 15 percent of the total inventory, according to a DOE official. One of the major reasons cited for the separation is the difference between 1980s, when the policy of managing both types of waste together was originally established, and now. “Back then, it was assumed that the production of new nuclear weapons would continue indefinitely, so a combined repository seemed natural,” DOE Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Nuclear Energy John Kotek said in a blog post this week.
The Department of Energy produced a report late last year that endorsed the safety and political case for dividing the two waste streams. The report said that such a move would build confidence in a repository disposal process, to meet local state cleanup agreements, and to eliminate the political stalemate surrounding the disposal of commercial waste. “Among other things, as the United States is no longer generating defense high-level waste associated with weapons production, today the inventory and composition of defense high-level waste is finite, which creates opportunities to look at separate disposal pathways for some waste streams,” Kotek said. “In addition, some defense waste is less radioactive, cooler, and easier to handle than commercial waste, which means a simpler design and potentially fewer licensing and transportation challenges for a defense repository.”
Both types of material had been planned to be comingled together in the now shuttered Yucca Mountain geological waste repository, but by separating the two, the Department of Energy would not be limited by the parameters of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and have more flexibility in design and implementation, which could keep costs down, Kotek said.
Announcement is a Red Herring, House Republicans Say
House Republicans, meanwhile, voiced concerns about separating the two disposal streams, mainly questioning its ability to divide DOE’s attention. “I have real concerns with pursuing a secondary site for military waste,” House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) said in a statement. “Doing so is likely to cast aside the Yucca site with years of work and billions of dollars spent. We passed bipartisan legislation some 30 years ago, and starting from step one looking for another site seems likely to delay a solution for years to come. Yucca Mountain remains the most viable solution for our nation’s nuclear waste policy and it comes with the scientific community’s seal of approval. We remain committed to finding a path forward that works best for the country.”
Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), Chair of the Environment and the Economy Subcommittee, echoed Upton’s statement. “DOE’s plan to spin off defense waste from the broader nuclear material storage debate is a red herring,” Shimkus said in a statement. “It’s no coincidence that this announcement comes after a major op-ed by Nye County Congressman Cresent Hardy (R) and a marked shift in momentum toward continuing the licensing of a central geologic repository. States – particularly states like Washington and South Carolina – who have waited 30 years for DOE to fulfill its legal responsibility to permanently secure their defense waste on federal land, in the desert, under Yucca Mountain should not be fooled by the administration’s latest move to avoid complying with the law.”
Moniz, though, assured stakeholders that the defense repository would run on a parallel track with a commercial repository. “To be clear the administration strongly supports moving forward on a parallel track to address storage and disposal of commercial spent fuel,” Moniz said in remarks this week. “As I already mentioned, we plan to move in parallel to site a full-scale, consolidated interim storage facility that could accept used fuel from shutdown reactors and potentially from other nuclear reactor sites.”
