Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on Wednesday called on the nuclear industry to support multiple solutions for dealing with America’s commercial nuclear waste storage impasse.
The Obama administration in 2011 canceled plans for a geologic repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, eventually opting for a plan that prioritizes interim nuclear waste storage through a consent-based approach prior to building one or more final storage sites. Many Republican lawmakers have taken the stance that the country should follow the law as laid out in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which through an amendment designated Yucca Mountain as the only site for a national repository.
The Nuclear Energy Institute, the industry’s lobbying arm, offered comments this summer on the Energy Department’s consent-based siting program, suggesting DOE separate itself from private interim nuclear waste storage efforts, while also demanding the agency request congressional funding to complete the Yucca licensing review. Waste Control Specialists and Holtec International are pursuing the private efforts for interim storage of what is now 77,000 metric tons of spent fuel held at nuclear sites around the country. Those efforts are currently separate from DOE’s siting program, but the assumption is that the sites will eventually fall under the program’s umbrella.
“I plead with the industry to help us get a permanent waste facility, and one won’t do it, and there have to be a number of them,” Feinstein said during a hearing Wednesday of the Senate Appropriations Energy and Water Development Subcommittee. “Why wouldn’t the industry want (that)? We have no nuclear waste policy in this country.”
The hearing addressed the future of America’s declining nuclear industry, with key topics including the development of new nuclear reactors and the nuclear waste stalemate. Feinstein said it makes no sense to discuss building next-generation reactors when the country hasn’t figured out what to do with its nuclear waste. All four of California’s nuclear plants have shut down or are scheduled to close, the latest being the Diablo Canyon Power Plant, California’s last operating nuclear plant, which is set to close by 2025. Utilities there are shifting toward what they see as cleaner, more cost-effective energy sources. San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station owner Southern California Edison plans to store 3.6 million pounds of nuclear waste 100 feet from the Pacific Ocean shoreline.
“To me, until you’ve got a methodology to properly harbor this waste for the millennium, it’s ridiculous to talk about any of this because something is going to happen one day and it’s probably on the Pacific coast,” said Feinstein, the panel’s ranking member. “Some kind of Fukushima is going to happen, and all the probabilities of a big quake are up.”
Subcommittee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), however, noted that there has never been a death connected to commercial operation of nuclear reactors in the U.S. No one was hurt even during America’s most significant accident, the partial reactor meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979.
“So based on the safety record, no other form of energy has a better safety record, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission which has extensive, careful regulation, has determined that the used fuel is safely stored for many years (on-site),” Alexander said. “I agree that we need to move it, and I would like to get it out of California, too, but we have a place to put it, and the place is Yucca Mountain in Nevada.”
Despite his preference for Yucca Mountain, Alexander and Feinstein, who opposes Yucca Mountain, agreed the U.S. needs to move on “all tracks” for nuclear waste storage, meaning both Yucca and interim storage. The duo introduced in the fiscal 2017 Senate energy and water budget bill language supporting DOE’s interim storage efforts.
Alexander during Wednesday’s hearing sparred with Matthew McKinzie, nuclear program director and senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a nonpartisan group that believes Yucca Mountain is unworkable, given its complications in the licensing process.
Alexander, however, made sure to voice his preference for Yucca, citing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s determination that the repository could safely store all 77,000 metric tons of U.S. spent nuclear fuel for 1 million years.
“The process of restarting Yucca Mountain would begin with the licensing application, and the resolving of over 200 contentions, new and significant information that may necessitate starting from scratch in terms of the license,” McKinzie said, suggesting it’s more feasible and possibly faster to develop another repository. “We believe that Yucca Mountain will likely fail.”
“It would fail because groups like yours don’t support doing it, even though the science says it’s safe there for a million years, and the law says we should do it,” Alexander responded. “My view is that we should open Yucca Mountain. Put the fuel there; move it out of California, other places where it is, and open new repositories, maybe a private repository and solve our stalemate.”
