A bipartisan panel of radioactive waste experts are releasing a study today calling for an independent nuclear reactor owner-led corporation to be formed to oversee disposal of spent nuclear fuel from nuclear plants and high-level radioactive waste from weapons production.
The NuCorp, or Nuclear Corporation, would be required by federal legislation and established by reactor owners, according to the study led by retired Department of Energy executive Lake Barrett and former Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chair Allison Macfarlane.
The new entity would be federally chartered with a governing board of directors, according to the report.
“We have an opportunity to make the necessary real progress on nuclear waste disposal in the U.S.,” Barrett said in a statement. “Our bipartisan group feels that we have hit upon a solution that will move the ball forward for our country.”
“While the U.S. has safely stored spent nuclear fuel at reactor sites for decades, such storage is a temporary measure and spent fuel must be moved from the more than 76 sites where it currently sits to one or more deep geologic repositories for final disposal,” according to the introduction to the report.
The report draws from “current thinking about nuclear waste and deep geologic repositories from the US and around the world, including Canada, Finland, France, Sweden, and Switzerland,” according to the introduction.
The report is being posted online.