After roughly a year traveling around the country and gathering public input on nuclear waste management strategy, Department of Energy officials on Thursday released an initial version of the agency’s consent-based siting process. The draft document outlines the department’s strategy in establishing the locations for nuclear waste storage and disposal facilities.
Consent-based siting — the Obama administration’s strategy for managing the country’s spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste — is a decades-long process that envisions development of a pilot storage facility; one or more larger, interim facilities; and at least one permanent geologic repository. All facilities would have to be formally welcomed by their host communities. Commercial waste would be stored separate from defense nuclear waste, rather than in one place as envisioned in the Yucca Mountain geologic repository in Nevada.
The Obama administration canceled that project in 2009, though there are rumblings of its revival under the Trump administration once it takes over on Jan. 20. The change in presidents leaves the future of entire consent-based process up in the air.
The Department of Energy also is preparing for its deep borehole field test, a science experiment that would deliver data on whether 16,000-foot boreholes drilled into crystalline rock formations are appropriate for DOE-managed waste. DOE used nuclear fuel disposition office Director William Boyle said this week that the project, which would involve drilling two test holes, will cost about $80 million.
All of these storage efforts are outlined in DOE’s Integrated Waste Management System, which is the department’s method for dealing with the waste. DOE Nuclear Fuels Storage and Transportation Planning acting team lead Melissa Bates, who appeared at the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management’s Spent Fuel Seminar in Washington, D.C. this week, described DOE’s strategy.
“The main purpose of what we’re trying to do is develop a system that doesn’t have a single failure point, that’s flexible, adaptable, and can survive multiple administrations, multiple Congresses, so trying to find a system that can be pieced together, depending on where our future takes us,” she said.
Spent nuclear fuel from commercial reactors accounts for the largest portion of U.S. spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste inventory, totaling about 75,000 metric tons of heavy metal. High-level waste accounts for 90 million gallons of high-level waste liquids, sludges, and solids, which are mostly stored at DOE’s Hanford and Savannah River sites.
The draft DOE document outlines the decades-long, multipart consent-based siting process, which calls for significant community engagement with government and local tribes, and includes a community’s right to withdraw up to the point that a binding agreement is signed. The department provided rough timeline estimates for each phase:
- Community engagement and process initiation: 1-3 years.
- Site assessment: 1-2 years for an interim storage facility and 2-4 years for repository.
- Detailed assessment: 2-4 years for interim storage facility; 5-10 years for repository.
- Signing agreement: 1-2 years for interim storage facility; 2-5 years for repository.
- Licensing facility: 2-3 years for interim storage facility; 3-5 years for repository.
- Construction: 1.5-2 years for interim storage facility; 7-10 years for repository.
- Operation: 40-100 years for interim storage facility; 30-150 years for repository.
The department also listed its principles in the process: prioritizing safety; environmental responsibility; rigorous application of regulatory requirements; relationship of trust with Indian tribes; environmental justice; informed participation; full consideration of all impacts; community well-being; transparency; and collaborative decision-making that is objective and science-based.
DOE is accepting public comments on the draft document through April 14. Feedback and comments can be emailed to [email protected].
House Energy and Commerce environment cubcommittee Chairman John Shimkus (R-Ill.) quickly weighed in against the new DOE document. “Today’s consent-based siting report directly disregards the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and the federal government’s selection of Yucca Mountain as the sole site for a repository in 1987,” he said in a statement. “Under the Obama administration the Department of Energy has wasted taxpayer dollars on distractions like this report and precious time by delaying the Yucca Mountain project.”
Critics Weigh Consent-Based Siting
A number of industry experts appearing at the INMM Spent Fuel Seminar discussed the prospect of the potential restart of Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensing of Yucca Mountain, while offering candid opinions on the department’s consent-based siting efforts over the past year. DOE withdrew its Yucca Mountain license application with the NRC in 2010.
AECOM’s Eric Knox said he regarded consent-based siting as “navel-gazing,” while discussing Yucca Mountain. He said the country needs to stop “being satisfied” with anything less than a complete solution for storage of spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste, which ultimately would be a national repository.
“We store stuff every day, all day, everywhere, safely,” he said. “The solution we’re looking for is disposal.”
Steve Nesbit, Duke Energy’s director of nuclear policy and support, said that consent-based siting has principles that can be applied to nuclear waste strategy in certain instances.
“But it’s trumped by ‘follow the law,’” he said. “You don’t like the law, change it, don’t just ignore it.”
Some have interpreted that the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, which was amended and designated Yucca Mountain as the site for a national repository, precludes any interim storage efforts until final disposal is authorized.
House Energy and Commerce Committee staffer Andy Zach said that while DOE did a good job of maintaining focus on its consent-based siting roadshow, the events primarily served as forums for anti-nuclear activists. He said that lawmakers are no longer afraid to address the ultimate solution: Yucca Mountain.
