Congress Needs to Wake Up to Nuclear Waste Disposal, Part 1

By James Finch

Over the past 24 years, each time your house or business consumed a nuclear-generated kilowatt-hour of electricity, you were billed – by mandate of the U.S. government – one-tenth of one penny to pay for the storage of nuclear waste. And those pennies add up. Since 1982, the Nuclear Waste Fund has grown to more than $28 billion. The plan back then was to safely dispose of the nuclear waste left over after providing 20 percent of the nation’s electricity through nuclear energy. Instead, like a ticking time bomb, about 40,000 metric tons of spent fuel rods are chilling out in 141 concrete cooling ponds never intended for long-term use. Many are within a few dozen miles of large cities, such as New York, Philadelphia, Washington and Miami.

Now, at least nine states are heating up over the localized nuclear waste issue. On September 13th, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan joined state attorneys general in California, Connecticut, Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Vermont and Wisconsin in calling on Congress to reject legislation enabling the federal government to designate nuclear waste storage facilities in all states with nuclear power plants, superceding objections by the state’s governor or state and local zoning and environmental laws.

The endless merry-go-round of deciding upon a final resting place for nuclear waste has been studied for more than two decades, has cost taxpayers more than $9 billion and has actually been solved. Unless of course, you are talking about an ideal solution which is required to be as satisfactory for up to one million years from now as it might be some 10,000 years into the future. That appears to be the most recent verdict – let’s keep nuclear waste in temporary storage scattered across geologically challenged locations, some near major cities, for decades to come, because a minority of environmentalists are “uncomfortable” with a well-studied, scientifically satisfactory centralized disposal site in a remote location. Instead of moving forward with a site, which will reportedly store the waste safely for 10,000 years (and probably up to 80,000 years), the environmental lobby would prefer a toxic risk for tens of millions of Americans from ‘overcrowded’ temporary storage sites. They would like to stall matters until scientists can prove a centralized storage site can survive all potential abuse for up to one million years.

Unfortunately, even if Congress acts in early 2007, the best-case scenario for a centralized nuclear waste repository brings us to 2017. And that would require quite a few politicians and bureaucrats coming to their senses. While they haggle over whether the nuclear waste can be safely stored for 10,000 years (which a number of scientific studies confirm that it can), or whether the waste site must store the spent nuclear fuel for one million years, electricity consumers are annually paying $1 billion for temporary storage.

The amount of nuclear waste accumulating since U.S. utilities began powering our homes with nuclear energy comes to about 54,000 metric tons over the past forty years. To put this in perspective, it would take up the size of a football field with a depth of less than 10 yards. Nuclear energy does not generate carbon dioxide emissions. By contrast, the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere through fossil fuels is enormous. According to one of the world’s leading environmental scientists, James Lovelock, who recently authored “The Revenge of Gaia” (Basic Books, 2006), one could freeze the annual carbon dioxide emissions and create a mountain one mile high and twelve miles in circumference. And that’s each year. Using the same yardstick since the 1960s, we would have 40 such mountains of carbon dioxide, but one small football field of nuclear waste.

A Mountain Which Can Solve the
Current Waste Disposal Issue

After passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) chose nine locations in six states as potential permanent repository sites. The DOE whittled this list down to five sites after various technical studies and environmental assessments. After intensive scientific study, the DOE chose its finalists: Yucca Mountain, Nevada, Deaf Smith County, Texas and Hanford, Washington. Following lengthy environmental studies of all three sites, Congress amended the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1987 and designated Yucca Mountain to be studied as the final destination for nuclear waste.

“We’ve been studying Yucca Mountain for 22 years,” Steven Kraft told us during a recent telephone interview. Mr. Kraft is mechanical engineer who serves as the senior director for Used Fuel Management at the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), and was part of the Recovery Team following the Three Mile Island accident in March 1979. “It is the most studied piece of real estate on the face of the earth. There isn’t anything we don’t know about it.”

Why didn’t they pick someplace far away like Mongolia, Siberia or Greenland? “You’re making the assumption that somehow the remoteness of a location makes it okay,” Kraft responded. “You’re talking about places where there are geologic instabilities or the geology is very difficult to understand.” There are also proposals suggesting ice sheet disposal, deep ocean disposal, or simply blasting the waste into outer space. “Yucca Mountain meets all of the requirements, and I can’t think of a better site,” Kraft explained. “They have an awful good rock body down there that has withstood a lot of scientific scrutiny. It is by happenstance of geology they have a good location.”

And what is the key to geology? “What makes Yucca Mountain such a good site is, in the formation below the repository, are naturally occurring zeolites,” Kraft pointed out. Water softeners rely upon zeolites as ion-exchange beds. “Zeolites strip out a lot of the radionuclides and belays the flow of water,’ he explained. “By the time you get to the accessible environment, the dose rate stays well below EPA standards.”

No location is perfect. Even if all nuclear power plants were turned off today, more than 108 million pounds of nuclear waste would require disposition. You can’t burn nuclear fuel pellets. Nuclear waste is not flammable; it is too weak to explode. Each year, the nation’s 103 reactors produce another 2,000 metric tons of waste. It has to end up somewhere. The Yucca Mountain area is geologically stable. The last volcanic eruption – a small one – occurred 80,000 years ago. About 12 to 15 million years ago, large eruptions north of Yucca Mountain laid down the sturdy bedrock which formed this mountain.

The Yucca Mountain area only receives about seven inches of rainfall per year. Ninety percent runs off the side of the mountain ridge and mostly evaporates or is absorbed by vegetation. The proposed repository is 1000 feet underground. And the site is 1000 feet above the water table. Rainwater seeping through rock fractures is negligible and would likely be trapped inside the mountain.

James Finch contributes to StockInterview.com and other publications. His archived articles can be read at www.stockinterview.com. His latest 304-page book, Investing in the Great Uranium Bull Market, was recently endorsed by one of the world’s top scientists, James Lovelock: www.stockinterview.com/book_offer_visitor.html

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