The United States needs an all-new organization separated from the federal government if it hopes to overcome the long delay in disposal of tens of thousands of tons of nuclear waste, a panel of experts said Monday.
The steering committee that produced the 126-page “Reset of America’s Nuclear Waste Management” report said it is “unanimous in its recommendation that the United States needs a new, independent, single-purpose nuclear waste management organization.”
While the report acknowledges its findings were not uniformly agreed-upon by the experts, the panel largely backed an entity that would be owned by utilities and operate as a nonprofit entity.
The Department of Energy today is charged with setting the path for storage and disposal of spent fuel from commercial nuclear reactors and high-level radioactive waste. Following the dissolution of DOE’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management during the Obama administration, that primarily falls to the department’s Office of Nuclear Energy. The office’s current budget includes more than $85 million for nuclear waste-related operations, but nothing to advance the designated repository site at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
“The new organization, regardless of its type and structure, must have a clearly stated charge; a structure that embraces public engagement and engenders trust; a focused research agenda; an implementation plan that matches the knowledge needs for geologic disposal; and, most importantly, sufficient and consistent funding over decades,” says the report, led by Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation and George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs.
The entity must also not be dependent on yearly funding from Congress, so it can be sure of sufficient money to pick, analyze, license, and build a repository, the report says. It should also start its work focused only on commercial waste, leaving defense waste with the federal government or an organization chartered by the federal government, the steering committee said.
