Written by William F. Pickard   

Obama Administration Kicks Can on Nuclear Waste

or

The Alchemists’ Dream of Transmutation Fulfilled:
Turning Due Process into No Progress



A wonderful article entitled “As the world expands nuclear power, US grapples with decades of waste” appeared in the March 25th Christian Science Monitor, just one day after Ernest Moniz, America’s Secretary of Energy, outlined the progress made in implementing the recommendations of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future for a phased, adaptive, consent-based strategy for finding a safe, permanent solution for managing nuclear materials. [A video of his talk can be found at http://bipartisanpolicy.org/events/a-look-back-on-the-blue-ribbon-commission-on-americas-nuclear-future/ ]. In fiscal 2016, the Administration is asking for around 175 megabucks for preliminary investigations related to the permanent disposal of nuclear waste. In terms of America’s gross expenditures on energy, this is chump change. But once you realize that starting over on permanent waste disposal means writing off the many years and the many gigabucks already poured into our Yucca Mountain repository, then you will see that the gross expenditure is much much larger: the real costs just don’t show up on this year’s balance sheet. And, the way things are going, it seems likely like we will get the benefits of nuclear-generated electricity while our grandchildren will get the burden of coping with our radioactive mess: the Administration’s new target date for opening a permanent depository for our civilian fission waste is 2048.

As a graduate student at Harvard, I had the pleasure of taking a Laboratory Course in Nuclear Physics given by the great Kenneth Bainbridge, who was chief engineer for the Trinity Test (July 16, 1945) that exploded mankind’s first nuclear bomb and ushered in the Atomic Age. The first self-sustaining nuclear fission reaction was December 2, 1942; while the formal decision to make an A-bomb had been made on 9 October 1941. I make it roughly 2½ years from controlled fission to a working A-bomb, and 3½ years from project launch to the bomb.

In contrast, we are now SEVENTY years into the Atomic Age. In contrast, commercial generation of electricity by means of atomic power has been a reality for FIFTY SEVEN years (since December 2, 1957 at the Shippingport Atomic Power Station). In contrast, our progress on safe permanent disposition of our nuclear waste is and has been pathetic: the task has been clear from the start of the Atomic Age, but our performance of that task does not pass muster. In contrast, it is now three entire years since the Blue Ribbon folks made their report, and I can scarcely detect the progress made implementing its recommendations. Yes, I full well understand that significant frictions impede progress on creating permanent nuclear waste repositories. But no, I do not categorize as acceptable our Government’s past and present performance on permanent waste disposal.

Having spent billions on the Waste Isolation Pilot Project for military nuclear waste, we now find ourselves with a shuttered facility that is a year away from reopening (after an eminently avoidable accident), and perhaps three years away from renewed normal operation.

Having spent billions on the Yucca Mountain repository, we now find it mothballed as a result of what some might call partisan political bickering and administrative actions of questionable legality.

And the poor devil who wins the presidency in 2016 will have the waste hot-potato dumped into his lap because of arguably ineffectual past policies, policies over which he had little or no control. He risks, in effect, being pilloried for the nuclear waste challenges sidestepped by the our governments of sixty years ago, and fifty years ago, and forty years ago, and thirty years ago, and twenty years ago, and ten years ago.

The reasoned step-by-step due process envisioned in the Blue Ribbon report was crafted to avoid the pitfalls encountered along the way to our present impasse. But if the seventy year history of the waste problem is any indication of its future development, it will take at least a generation to approach completion. Meanwhile, the waste will continue to pile up at operating nuclear plants, and our government may well continue to sidestep its duty to dispose of this waste. So let’s try for a TWO-PRONGED COMPROMISE that would get things moving. As far as this citizen is concerned, the time for kicking the can down the road has long since passed: an INPUT of many billions of dollars has already been made, and now it is time for some decent (and long overdue) OUTPUT.

PRONG 1. Commission the nearly completed Yucca Mountain repository to serve as the “larger interim storage facility” envisioned in the Blue Ribbon report. It can always be decommissioned just as soon as Prong 2 is complete. Meanwhile, it could absorb a fair fraction of our accumulated civilian waste. This would be Verifiable Progress. What we have done to date could be mistaken for No Progress at All, or, more charitably, the discovery of fiascos we don’t want to repeat.
PRONG 2. Let the Blue Ribbon process play out with all deliberate haste, but meticulously. In 2013 the DOE floated a target date of 2048. That’s a bit too much time for process. Kenneth Bainbridge would have done better, much better.

And always remember that July 16, 2045, the Trinity Test centennial, is only thirty years away. If we haven’t gotten a firm grip on the waste situation by that time, our abused descendents will have every right to be apoplectic!



William F. Pickard, older ‘n’ dirt, is a retiree (from Washington University in Saint Louis) who specializes in energy matters. He’s pretty much clueless as to how to how the crises confronting America might be surmounted. But at least he has had the good grace not to stand for public office.