POWER June 2020 - 9

GLOBAL MONITOR
waste-regional hubs deploying Deep
Isolation's solution under an NRC interim
storage license could be ready
within five years, it says. Assuming a
project could secure a license from the
NRC, it would take just a few months to
mobilize and drill the disposal drillhole.
And despite the new research focus on
advanced nuclear reactor siting, Deep
Isolation says its technology is available
now, and it could potentially deal with
the nation's entire SNF inventory: " With
horizontal disposal sections [of up to 2
miles long], it would take 300 such horizontal
drillholes to dispose of 80,000
tons of commercial spent nuclear fuel, "
it says. However, the solution would still
be barred from accepting waste inventories
unless the NWPA is amended to
allow the DOE to seek licenses for alternatives-and
that's because a 1987
amendment to the law specifies Yucca
Mountain as the nation's sole repository
option. So, " Rather than viewing ourselves
as competitors, we view Deep
Isolation's solution as a supplementary
approach for those sites and states that
have suitable geology and a community
that prefers local or in-state disposal, "
the company says.
Though it was founded to provide solutions
to the U.S. nuclear waste impasse,
Deep Isolation is now also eyeing other
markets. " Nations with smaller inventories
of waste may find that horizontal
drillhole disposal is especially cost-effective, "
it says. In these countries, with the
right customer and government support,
the company says it could begin safely
disposing of commercial waste within
two to three years.
The company took more concrete
steps this May to establish itself in
Europe, the Middle East, and Africa by
publishing a white paper for policymakers
to inform them of the alternative
disposal method. In the paper, it notes
that despite consensus that deep geological
disposal is the preferred solution
for the long-term disposal of nuclear
waste, no countries have yet succeeded
in fully implementing the approach,
owing mainly to high costs and difficulty
in obtaining community consent.
The company's analysis of repositories
planned separately by Canada, Sweden,
the UK, and the U.S. found that
they would cost a combined $172 billion
(in 2020 dollars)-not including the
costs of interim storage-and construction
could take about a decade. " The
alternative, deep horizontal boreholes,
can be deployed in less than a year and
provide the benefits of deep geological
disposal for a fraction of the cost of a
mined repository, " it says.
If compared with existing temporary
storage solutions such as dry cask storage
or spent fuel pools, Deep Isolation
would be competitive over the mediumterm
(after 10 to 20 years), depending on
factors such as type of waste, location,
and geology. " After this time, [the solution]
is significantly more economical,
with potentially a 50% or greater saving
over 20 to 40 years, " it says. The key benefit
that the company underscores is that
it offers communities flexibility to shift
from storage to disposal. " This change
is fundamentally one about regulatory
approval and community consent rather
than technical implementation, " it says.
-Sonal Patel is a POWER senior
associate editor.
June 2020 |POWER
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POWER June 2020

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