Staff Reports
WC Monitor
5/1/2015
The United States has an opportunity to start disposing of defense nuclear waste sooner and at less cost by abandoning a one-size-fits-all approach, said Mary Louise Wagner, senior adviser to the energy secretary, at a regional forum arranged by the Bipartisan Policy Center this week. But separate disposal of high-level radioactive defense waste from defense programs was met with skepticism by other panelists gathered by the center for a regional workshop near Hanford. The center held the meeting as part of its initiative to expand the national and regional conversation on nuclear waste and develop policy options that could lead to a workable nuclear waste strategy. Conditions have changed since the 1985 decision to comingle commercial and defense waste was made based largely on the reduced cost of building a single deep geological repository, Wagner said. With the end of the Cold War, the amount of defense waste is finite, and the siting of a repository has proven more controversial and costly than expected, Wagner said. An inventory of defense waste completed a year ago, covering volumes and types of waste, presented the opportunity to take on different pieces of a largely heterogeneous inventory in more manageable pieces, she said.
A simplified repository design could be used and disposal might start sooner if a waste repository accepted only defense waste vitrified at Hanford or Savannah River, Wagner said. The work on the first repository could inform work on the next repository and reduce the cost, she said. The capsules of cesium and strontium stored underwater in central Hanford could be disposed of down a deep borehole drilled with commercial technology, she said. DOE officials now are starting to look at what the steps should be taken to implement the new plan, Wagner said.
Wash. State Wants DOE to Continue to Move Forward With Yucca Mountain
Deep borehole disposal may sound promising, but Oregon has learned that if it seems like DOE has a cheaper, faster, better way to fix a problem, it won’t happen, said Ken Niles of the Oregon Department of Energy. It’s a lesson that those watching Hanford have learned, but DOE officials in Washington, D.C., have not and must make sure it is an option that would live up to its promise before proceeding, he said
The state of Washington believes it is fine to explore other disposal options, but the federal government must also move forward with the Yucca Mountain repository and judge it on its merits as the law requires, said Andy Fitz, assistant attorney general for the state. He also recommended more state control if siting is based on consent, including state regulatory authority. State law has required a vote of the people since 1986 if Hanford is nominated to become either a permanent repository or temporary storage facility, said Gerald Pollet, executive director of Heart of America Northwest. A statewide ballot initiative was passed when Hanford was being considered as one of three sites for the nation’s high-level nuclear waste repository before Yucca Mountain was named by Congress.
Pollet is concerned that Hanford could be named a temporary storage site, which would bring more waste into the state, he said. Hanford has nothing to gain, with its high-level waste decades away from being ready for disposal, he said. He called the proposal to spend billions of dollars on permanent repositories and interim storage a charade to hide the lack of progress on emptying Hanford’s single shell waste tanks and the little money available to move cesium and strontium capsules out of the Waste Encapsulation Storage Facility.
Tribal Officials Express Trust Concerns
Representatives of tribes based in Idaho, California and Washington said there is a lack of trust between DOE and tribes that makes them leery of the consent-based siting DOE has said would be used to reach agreement on temporary and permanent sites. Better government to government consultation is needed, they said. If the Idaho National Laboratory is proposed as a repository site, waste would be transported through Shoshone Bannock land, said Willie Preacher of the tribe. “What happens if the state wants it and the tribes say no?” he asked. “How do you decide what is consent-based and how do the tribes fit in?” Getting a tribe to give consent to something that would be devastating to the environment will be difficult, said George Gholson of the Timbisha Shoshone, of Death Valley, Calif., which is close to Yucca Mountain, Nev. “The tribes are not moving. These are (their) homelands,” said Jean Vanni, representing the Yakama Nation.
