MANCHESTER – Like the U.S., the U.K. is holding off on defining the term “community consent” in its most prominent nuclear waste storage project, the Geological Disposal Facility (GDF).
“Standing here right now, I don’t have in front of me a formula which addresses those issues,” Ivan Stone, stakeholder engagement and communications director for U.K. Nuclear Decommissioning Authority subsidiary Radioactive Waste Management (RWM) Ltd., said Wednesday during his appearance at the 2016 Nuclear Decommissioning Conference Europe in Manchester.
Instead Stone pointed to the 2014 white paper that lays the framework for long-term management of high-level radioactive waste and the GDF, which is expected to be in operation by 2040. That document says the Department of Energy and Climate Change will establish a working group to address the issue, but Stone stopped short of saying the group would define the term, calling that a “real challenge.”
In January, when the U.S. Energy Department kicked off the first of several public meetings this year concerning its consent-based siting effort. Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy John Kotek said President Barack Obama’s nuclear waste advisory group, the Blue Ribbon Commission for America’s Nuclear Future, wisely chose not to define the term “consent.”
Both the U.S. and U.K. have claimed that the siting process will not move forward unless the host community consents, but neither government has explained precisely how they will confirm consent. In the U.S., companies in Texas in New Mexico have offered to host interim storage facilities in their respective states. Waste Control Specialists has already submitted its operating license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for its site in West Texas, and Holtec International expects to submit its own this summer for a site in southeast New Mexico.
Kotek added that potential host states can opt out of consent up until the time the operating license application is submitted. The American consent-based siting program — Obama’s alternative to the cancelled Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada — envisions a pilot storage facility by 2021; one or more larger, interim facilities by 2025; and at least one permanent geologic repository by 2048.
Stone said the U.K., a nuclear nation since the 1940s, can learn much about the geological process from the international community. Repository projects are underway or planned in Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, and Switzerland. The U.S., Finland, and Sweden all have operating repositories.
“There is a wealth of experience from our international colleagues,” Stone said. “What is clear is that none of that provides one straightforward, simple solution. There isn’t a golden bullet in this issue.”
