The nuclear crisis in Fukushima, Japan shows, beyond a doubt, the time has come to open existing, secure nuclear storage facilities in the United States to avert a similar tragedy. Stored fuel is the biggest concern in Japan. We currently store spent nuclear fuel rods at power plants in above ground facilities in secure Transportation, Aging, and Disposal Canisters (TAD). These canisters can be shipped and stored without opening them. There are currently about 71,000 metric tons of spent fuel and high level radioactive waste stored at 121 nuclear power plants and non-military government sites. All of this waste, minus shipping containers, could be stacked forty-one feet high on one football field. Waste grows at a rate of 2,000 metric tons a year. It is time for Congress to authorize opening the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste storage facility on an emergency basis.
In 1982, Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act requiring the federal government to provide a high security, permanent, underground storage site and began charging a fee of 1 tenth of a cent on every kilowatt-hour of nuclear power produced to pay for it. According to recent Department of Energy reports, the Nuclear Waste Fund totals $25 Billion and is increasing by $750 Million a year in payments and $1 Billion a year in interest.
The federal response to the act was to build the Yucca Mountain, Nevada, underground storage facility for $13.5 Billion. The initial facility is complete and ready to accept up to 70,000 metric tons of waste and only requires final licensing. The storage capacity of Yucca Mountain could be tripled. Despite being incredibly safer than current storage options, licensing has been stalled by complaints it is not secure enough. The site has passed every safety review and is called by some the most studied piece of real estate in the world. Transporting existing waste would require about 7000 tractor trailer and rail shipments. There have already been an estimated 9000 shipments of radioactive material without incident.
The Obama Administration has tried to close Yucca Mountain by executive order. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is suing to continue the licensing application as an executive order cannot overrule established law. There are elements of the environmental community who do not want this problem solved as they prefer to keep the lack of permanent storage as an argument against building new nuclear power plants. Delayed opening of Yucca Mountain could require refunds on the Nuclear Waste Fund totaling as much as $11 Billion.
We also have a second storage option, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) located 25 miles east of Carlsbad, New Mexico used to store military grade nuclear waste. It is already open and the storage of a backlog of military waste is almost complete with only a small portion of the available space consumed. There is an existing list of civilian waste sites classified by their relative level of security. Congressional legislation should allow immediate use of WIPP for civilian waste starting with the most at risk waste until such time as Yucca Mountain is ready to receive waste.
An additional option would be to reprocess spent fuel rods as only one third of the uranium in a rod is used before re-fueling. Reprocessing is used in other countries, such as France, which produces 75% of its electricity at nuclear plants. Current EPA rules have made reprocessing impractical in the United States. There will be access to materials stored at Yucca Mountain for fifty years before the facility is backfilled.
http://www.caesarrodney.org/pdfs/Time_to_Avert_a_Disaster2.pdf
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