Experts Call For Local And Regional Control Of Sites For Radioactive Waste

[bananas]

Storing Nuclear Waste Above Ground May Be Most Viable Solution
By Jeremy van Loon

July 10 (Bloomberg) -- Storing nuclear waste above ground at atomic power plants for as long as six decades may be the best temporary solution in the U.S. for the dangerous refuse, university researchers say.

Leaving spent fuel on the site after the stations close may be the most viable and “safe, short-term option,” University of Michigan researcher Rodney Ewing and Princeton University’s Frank von Hippel wrote in Science. In the longer term, the U.S. will need several geological dumps, von Hippel said in yesterday’s report.

Radioactive waste, which is dangerous for thousands of years, is stored temporarily near the reactors that generate it in countries including Spain. There is no permanent solution in sight. In U.S., which has about 60,000 tons of spent waste from power plants and weapons and produces an additional 2,000 tons each year, the material is now spread among more than 120 sites in 39 states, according to the Energy Department.

“Most people don’t realize what a difficult situation we’re in,” Ewing said in a podcast on Science’s Web site. “It looks like the United States is starting over with its nuclear waste management policy. In the end, we need to have alternatives.”

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Most people who advocate expanding the use of nuclear power should expect that the radioactive waste will likely be stored locally at the plants, Ewing said. There are 104 operating commercial reactors in the U.S., and 17 applications are pending at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build 26 more reactors.

Experts Call For Local And Regional Control Of Sites For Radioactive Waste

ScienceDaily (July 11, 2009) — The withdrawal of Nevada's Yucca Mountain as a potential nuclear waste repository has reopened the debate over how and where to dispose of spent nuclear fuel and high-level nuclear waste.

In an article in the July 10 issue of Science, University of Michigan geologist Rodney Ewing and Princeton University nuclear physicist Frank von Hippel argue that, although federal agencies should set standards and issue licenses for the approval of nuclear facilities, local communities and states should have the final approval on the siting of these facilities. The authors propose the development of multiple sites that would service the regions where nuclear reactors are located.

"The main goal . . . should be to provide the United States with multiple alternatives and substantial public involvement in an open siting and design process that requires acceptance by host communities and states," the authors write.

Ewing and von Hippel also analyze the reasons why Yucca Mountain, selected by Congress in 1987 as the only site to be investigated for long-term nuclear waste disposal, finally was shelved after more than three decades of often contentious debate. The reasons include the site's geology, management problems, important changes in the Environmental Protection Agency's standard, unreliable funding and the failure to involve local communities in the decision-making process.

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There you have it - and we've known this for at least 20 years:

29. From the NYT, twenty years ago: "national sacrifice zones"

From the NYT, twenty years ago:

Dying Nuclear Plants Give Birth to New Problems
By KEITH SCHNEIDER, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: October 31, 1988

<snip>

The Government, say some lawmakers, may have no options other than erecting fences, posting guards and warning people to stay away from the most dangerous plants. Engineers at the Energy Department have privately begun calling such contaminated sites ''national sacrifice zones.'' They grimly joke that some zones could turn out to be larger than many of the 39 national parks. But they also say that failing to address the issue could mean that contamination continues to spread through the environment.

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[phantom power]

1. I hesitate to Go There, but...

doesn't that mean NNadir was right all along? About the efficacy of leaving the spent fuel where at the reactor sites, that is?

[izquierdista]

2. Better yet, put the reactor underground

Yucca is a flawed site, but WIPP is up and running and there is no technical reason why spent fuel couldn't be sent there.

Which begs the question, why not solve the waste problem BEFORE the nuke plant is built by putting the nuke plant in an abandoned mine of suitable geology?

[NNadir]

3. This is actually not my position, although compared to dangerous fossil fuel wastes

it has proved trivial to store used nuclear fuel on the site where it is generated.

There is NOT ONE anti-nuke dangerous fossil fuel apologist who knows how to contain dangerous fossil fuel wastes on the site where they are generated, NOT ONE, in my opinion, who gives a rat's ass where dangerous fossil fuel wastes end up. Where it ends up in the status quo that anti-nukes defend here, is in everyone's flesh.

My position on this point is that used nuclear fuels are an international resource that should be collected and made suitable for reuse at a few international centralized sites.

There are excellent technical and economic reasons for doing it this way.

I favor international control, audited and regulated by the IAEA for these purposes.

I am not, in general, a distributed energy airhead. I don't believe in cowboy approaches that pretend that "small is better." I am not a libertarian. I'm not a dumb dork like Amory Lovins who pretends that having 100,000,000 molten salt tanks in every back yard is a good idea. I, for instance, know how the water table works, and Lovins is well, like the rest of his set, oblivious and uneducated.

If it were up to me, we wouldn't have automobiles in our country, since they represent precisely what distributed energy is, a matter in which small - and often illiterate - people are able to handle systems that they do not understand and cannot have enough knowledge to handle responsibly.

Every surface of body of water in this country has an oil slick. That's "distributed energy" for you.

(Just wait until all those dumb ass solar cells begin leaching, never mind the dumping already going on by manufacturers and distributers. We are already seeing the consequences of oil leaks from wind systems, fires and flying metal, and it isn't even exajoule scale energy yet.)

Nuclear energy is already safer than any other form of exajoule scale energy on the planet, but we can make it safer and cleaner, as safe and as clean as we choose. It seems to me that central handling is the wise approach to doing this. I would like to see used nuclear fuel collected and centralized.