POWER November 2011 - 79

NUCLEAR WASTE POLICY
packages were " both costly and unnecessary, "
extended beyond the September 30, 2010, closure
date, and would require a large expenditure
of government funds for work that DOE
managers found wasteful, such as videotaping
scientists. As a result, the knowledge retention
packages were not approved by the department
and were not prepared by the contractor.
Although the project is technically still in
licensing mode at the NRC and the center of
a variety of lawsuits, the NRC closed access
to the Licensing Support Network (LSN) in
August 2011. The LSN allowed access to information
and historical documents. By now,
the network's contractor will have completed
the process of clearing any filing backlog and
disassembling hardware. The NRC said the
timing of the shutdown was necessary to meet
the September 30, 2011, deadline for decommissioning
the network. To put the network
back online after September 30 was estimated
by the contractor to take two or three years.
Let's Make a Deal
Eighteen months later, the destination of the
U.S. nuclear waste storage policy remains
unchanged: nowhere. Technically, the Yucca
Mountain permitting process continues, because
the DOE had the legal obligation to
submit the application for construction and the
NRC has a legal responsibility to complete its
analysis of the suitability of the Yucca Mountain
site. Those who worked on those reports have
revealed that there were few, if any, unresolved
technical problems, although the final reports
will probably never be formally released.
In fact, as of September 30, 2011, the staff
and contractors on the project were gone, the
work products were boxed and stored, and
further work remained unfunded in FY2012.
For us, that constitutes a good definition of a
project that is dead and gone.
Setting aside the questionable tactics used
to kill the Yucca Mountain project, the question
that remains unanswered is this: If not
Yucca Mountain, then where?
We stand by our earlier conclusions that
there is no site in the U.S. where the full
range of stakeholders will agree on siting a
Yucca Mountain-like facility. The BRC's
draft report also fails to answer that question
but rather suggests a " framework " for " building
consensus " -wishful thinking at best.
Until a new site is firmly identified, Congress
will be loath to address any changes
to the NWPA (in which Yucca Mountain is
named). If a new site cannot be identified, then
the collection of mil per kilowatt-hour fees
will continue indefinitely, and the economic
damage to nuclear utilities will continue to
spur more lawsuits, further driving up costs. It
is a vicious traffic circle with no obvious exit.
The BRC has proposed one audacious apNovember
2011 | POWER
proach that has a chance of success, however
slim, of escaping the vicious circle: provide
sufficient " incentives " to enough stakeholders
to cobble together a deal. The $7 billion
spent on Yucca Mountain, mostly in Nevada,
was obviously insufficient, so the deal will
have to be sweetened. Left undetermined is
who gets to pay for the incentives, who will
benefit from them, and the number of zeros
after the dollar sign required to make a deal.
A large portion of the direct benefits from
such a deal will surely go to individual state
residents, to gain majority support. Any governor
willing to take the politically dangerous
position of supporting a nuclear waste
storage facility will likely demand significant
upfront payments. This approach would allow
a governor to deliver benefits early and
often, keeping state residents appeased.
A model for this approach might be Alaska's
Permanent Fund Dividend Program,
through which a share of oil revenues from
that state is reinvested for future residents and
an individual annual payout is made. Another
benefit of the oil revenues: The State of Alaska
does not currently have a state income tax. We
believe the incentives for a state to consider
hosting an SNF repository must be on par with
the benefits received by the government and
residents of Alaska, at a minimum.
The political downside for any governor would
be to begin negotiations yet fail to gain consensus.
That governor would forever be branded as
an enemy of the environment who was willing
to put a price on the health and welfare of the
state's residents-whether true or not.
So, we end where we began: On-site storage
is the only option for storing SNF. Many
utilities are already upgrading their storage
facilities to reflect that reality, the money
coming from successful lawsuits brought
against the DOE for failing to meet its responsibilities
under the NWPA.
Someday (maybe) the U.S. will close the nuclear
fuel cycle and on-site SNF will have significant
market value. Perhaps, in the end, utilities
will be economically advantaged by continuing
to own their SNF, rather than turning it over to
the federal government for centralized storage.
In the meantime, utilities will continue to
pay for a storage facility that doesn't exist and
will be forced to litigate in order to obtain reimbursement
for onsite storage costs from the
federal government. This non-policy is now
the new normal for the nuclear industry. ■
-Dr. Robert Peltier, PE is editor-in-chief
of POWER, and James M. Hylkois a
contributing editor.
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POWER November 2011

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