For decades, the federal government has struggled with the issue of storing waste from commercial nuclear reactors and defense-related nuclear activities. The government has spent billions of dollars planning for nuclear waste disposal, but the creation of a permanent storage site is years behind schedule due to federal mismanagement and safety concerns. A new report confirms that the current proposed site, Yucca Mountain in Nevada, is safe for use.
The United States has more than 65,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel with the volume expected to double by 2055. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 aimed to create a permanent disposal site for radioactive waste by 1998. After many studies, Yucca Mountain was chosen as the single national disposal site in 1987, and engineers and construction crews went to work. Between 2001 and 2007 the project’s total life-cycle cost estimate increased from $77 billion to $106 billion, measured in constant 2012 dollars.
To fund the project, the 1982 Act created a fee or tax on all nuclear electric utilities charged on the basis of kilowatt hours generated. The fee generated $750 million annually for the Nuclear Waste Fund, which accumulated a balance on paper of more than $25 billion.
In 2010, the Obama administration, with strong urging from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat from Nevada, decided to close down the Yucca Mountain site. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) said that the administration did not cite any “technical or safety issues” for the closure. The administration also did not include other options for storage, but instead set up a committee to study the issue. Apparently, Reid did not want the site in his state under any circumstances, regardless of any previous agreements between the nuclear industry and the government.
The abrupt closure created a bizarre situation; electric utilities and their customers were paying $750 million annual tax to store nuclear waste at Yucca, but those storage plans were halted. In November 2013 an appeals court ordered the Department of Energy to stop collecting the Nuclear Waste Fund fee and resume planning for the site. Energy Secretary Moniz suspended the fee in 2014.
The appeals court also ordered the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to resume the site’s licensing process. Now, the long-awaited safety report confirms that the Yucca Mountain site meets project requirements. The New York Times summarized the report saying that it “concluded that the design had the required multiple barriers, to assure long-term isolation of radioactive materials.” Storage is expected to be safe within the site for one million years.
The administration must now decide how to proceed. It can ignore the report and try to push the issue of nuclear storage onto the next administration, or it can reopen the permitting process and ignore the wishes of Majority Leader Reid.
The issue of nuclear waste is complex, but federal mismanagement and the actions of the Obama administration have delayed a long-term solution.