Waste: not a technical problem but a politcal problem

There are a million things I wanted to talk about this semester, but unfortunately both a limited amount of time and the rise of important events kept me from getting to some of the important issues with nuclear power.  To really address the current state of nuclear power in the United States, I still need to address probably the most concerning issue for many people.  I will admit, it is a problem that still needs to be solved!

I am of course referring to the storage and disposal issues associated with nuclear waste.  In over sixty years of commercial nuclear power in the United States, there has not yet been a solution settled upon.  So the question remains..."What the heck do we do with the stuff?"  Ok, so I exaggerate a little here.  We do have solutions to the problem from an engineering standpoint, but if we have learned anything for this communicating science class over the semester, it has been that science can't escape the human aspect.  In other words, the engineering solution will not suffice here given the extreme amount of controversy surrounding something as scary as nuclear waste.  Politics provide the key to the success of the waste storage issue in the United States.

First, a little bit of history about the nuclear waste issue in the United States.  Back in the 1950's the United States government was a big proponent for this new type of energy.  There was a lot of excitement that this was going to be the method of energy production that would solve all the future energy needs.  In an effort to help the industry grow, the government took on the responsibility of disposing of all waste.  The government didn't want private industry to be slowed in development or deterred by the high costs of dealing with the waste.  It was signed into law that the private industry was to store the nuclear fuel on site until the government had built and opened a permanent repository for the waste.  The original deadline for opening the repository was back in 1998.  Obviously, this didn't happen.

You all have probably heard of a little place in the middle of the Mojave desert called Yucca Mountain.  The funny thing is that nobody had ever heard of it until it became the center of a nationwide controversy.  This was the start of the "not in my backyard" campaign against nuclear waste.  So if this mountain is in the remote parts of the Mojave desert and nobody had ever heard of it before the proposal of this project, then why are so many people against the building of the repository there?  To make a long story short, politics...but I am not one to make a long story short.

When the government first took on the responsibility of building a nuclear repository, they had to identify possible locations for the repository.  The original agreement was that there were to be two repositories built in the United States, one in the eastern part of the country, and one in the west.  Several site locations were chosen around the United States, including sites in Washington state and Texas.  I mention these because these three sites - Hanford, Washington, Deaf Smith County, Texas, and Yucca Mountain, Texas - were the original three sites approved for final research by Ronald Reagen in 1985.  At this point, the western United States had agreed to host the first pilot repository.  This is where the eastern United States kind of forgot about its commitment to build a repository, but no need to cry over spilled milk.

1987 is when the story gets interesting because that is when Congress decided, before the studies of the sites were complete, that Yucca Mountain was proving to be by far the most viable.  Congress was trying to quicken the process and save money by jumping straight to what was proving the obvious answer.  This would be what we would call the engineering solution, but it didn't fly for obvious connotation reasons.  In 1987, Congress decided that only Yucca Mountain would be considered for future study.  This quickly became known as the "Screw Nevada Law."

This launched the career of an at the time unknown junior senator from Nevada by the name of Harry Reid.  He was adamantly opposed to the project, touting that due process was not followed and that the country only wanted it at Yucca Mountain because there weren't enough people to cause a scene over it.  Well, obviously there were enough because Harry Reid soon became one of the most powerful political figures in the United States.  Being that Harry Reid made it his career goal to stop the building of Yucca Mountain, I guess it is not surprising that since he became the Senate majority leader, the project was stopped.

Yucca Mountain was officially ended by President Obama when he took office.  Ending the project was nothing more than a political favor to Harry Reid for his support during the campaign.  With a flick of the pen, 25 years of work and billions of dollars were all killed.

So what now?  Well, the recent events at Fukushima have only emphasized the importance of having a safe place to put the spent nuclear fuel when we are done with it.  It is probably not the best option to have it stored at the reactor sites.  Deep geological storage is a safer and more permanent solution.  When President Obama ended the Yucca Mountain project, he established what is known as the Blue Ribbon Commission to look at further solutions to the project.

In the mean time, Yucca Mountain has been constructed.  It was within about a year of being able to start accepting waste for storage.  From an engineering standpoint, Yucca Mountain is the perfect place to store the waste.  It allows us to put it in a place where it will be safe and away from contact with anything that would be harmed by it.  There is no water there and the geologic formations that the site is built in are some of the most stable formations in the world.  The site would have been the most stable waste repository in the world.  While Yucca Mountain just sits there, the United States government continues to be in violation of its agreement to dispose of the waste.

Nuclear power, despite some controversy, will most likely grow to be a larger source of power production in the future.  For this to happen safely though, a nuclear repository is necessary.  My speculation is that the Yucca Mountain will be revisited in the near future.  Politics are adverse right now, but administrations change.  The good thing about the United States is that politics change.  An administration that does not need the support of Harry Reid might be able to look at the situation more logically.

As of now though, the United States is back at square one when it comes to disposing of the waste.  Fukushima made the disposal issue more urgent, so I think we might see a little more action on the part of the government in the near future.  Really only time will tell.  In the end, the answer is that the waste disposal problem has been solved from an engineering standpoint, but how to implement the solution with respect to the human aspect is causing the difficulty.  It can be done though.  Since we cut Yucca Mountain, Sweden is now going to open the first deep geological waste repository.  Want a little more technical information about how it is being done, I suggest this article.  Note that Sweden does not have nearly as stable of a location to put the waste, but they have been able to engineer a site to perform the task.  We will be watching them closely over the next few years.