Forming a federal corporation dedicated to managing nuclear waste could further delay efforts to disposition waste, representatives from several Southern states told the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future at a meeting in Atlanta yesterday. Karen Patterson of the South Carolina Governor’s Nuclear Advisory Council told the panel that defense waste at Savannah River Site is “way at the bottom of the list” of the Department of Energy’s priorities, and suggested that it would be more efficient to shift DOE priorities. “In terms of defense waste, is it quicker to set up a new organization, get all that infrastructure set up, policy decisions, get everybody lined up? Is that quicker than getting DOE focused for a little bit of time on getting rid of their defense waste?” she said, adding “For the short term, which is what I’m most interested in because of defense waste, I’m not sure [a new organization] is the solution to getting our waste problem resolved.”
The BRC is holding a series of public meetings to gather input on draft reports it released in July, which includes the recommendation to establish an independent, government-chartered organization that would take over nuclear waste management responsibility from DOE. However, Elgan Usrey of the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency told the panel that political support would be far more important in establishing waste facilities. “We’ve been looking at this for 25 years. I thought when I started on this that I would have this job done by now. I don’t think that we should delay it another 25 years,” he said. “The new organization, I don’t know how that’s going to work, but DOE has tried several organizations and none of them survived because they didn’t have political support. If the leaders of this country are not going to be behind it, then it’s not going to work no matter how good the technical aspect of it is.”