Another Step Forward on Yucca Mountain
Posted September 18th, 2008 at 11.00am in Energy and Environment.
While recycling spent fuel or placing it in interim storage may have a role to play, America’s focus must remain on opening Yucca Mountain in a timely fashion. Despite whatever other technologies are developed, there is an enduring need for permanent geologic storage. Even after used nuclear fuel is recycled, there will still be some left over to be put in a repository like Yucca Mountain. And there’s national defense waste that cannot be recycled and must be placed in a geologic repository; thus, it’s not just an issue for nuclear industries but also for our national government.
Over the past year, however, legislators have taken some steps in the right direction when it comes to opening Yucca. In June, the Department of Energy submitted a license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The plan, a necessary step to open Yucca, details a way to safely store and isolate nuclear waste. But the earliest date it can be open is 2017.
Just yesterday, U.S. Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) and Senator Mike Crapo (R-ID) have filed an amendment to the Defense Authorization bill that would restore $50 million cut in Defense Contribution for Yucca.
Senator Inhofe said,
The United States Senate needs to continue authorizes our contribution to the repository program to cover the costs of defense-related nuclear wastes that require disposal. The request was asked by for the President and included by the House – the Senate needs to do the same. The amendment we filed today would do restore the $50 million dollar cut. The repository should have opened in 1998, but instead, it is over 20 years behind schedule.”
He’s exactly right; it’s the government’s fault Yucca isn’t open. The federal government has collected approximately $27 billion from nuclear companies, but the nuclear waste is still sitting at reactor sites.
Needless to say, the nuclear companies that have paid into the Nuclear Waste Fund with rate payers’ money weren’t thrilled about this. Consequently, they sued the government. As a result, taxpayers have already paid $94 million in lawyer expenses and $290 million in damages. The government is appealing another $420 million award. Long-term liability projections are astronomical, reaching $7 billion by 2017 and $11 billion by 2020.
To make a long story short, the system is broken and the taxpayers are paying for it. And while opening Yucca Mountain is an essential step, overhauling the whole used nuclear fuel management system in the U.S. is also an essential step.
The best way to do it is to get it out of the government’s hands. A free-market approach to managing nuclear waste is the best way to ensure that the commercial nuclear industry will be sustainable in the long run. Among the steps needed to privatize the system, as outlined by Heritage Research Fellow Jack Spencer, include:
• Creating the legal framework that allows the private sector to price geologic storage as a com¬modity;
• Empowering the private sector to manage used fuel;
• Repealing the 70,000-ton limitation on the Yucca Mountain repository and instead let technology, science, and physical capacity determine the appropriate limit;
• Creating a private entity that is representative of but independent from nuclear operators to manage Yucca Mountain;
• Repealing the mil, abolish the Nuclear Waste Fund, and transfer the remaining funds to a private entity to cover the expenses of constructing Yucca Mountain; and
• Limiting the federal government’s role to providing oversight, basic research, and development and taking title of spent fuel upon repository decommissioning.
The full paper can be found here. It won’t be easy. But if we’re serious about nuclear energy meeting energy demands and environmental goals, it is without a doubt necessary.
- Author: Nick Loris
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September 19, 2008 Thomas Gray, South Carolina writes:
Times New Roman September 18, 2008
September the begining of the cold season.
To the north the supply of ,,,[oil and ng ],,, may be sufficent for the coming winter but to secure these limited energy fuel sources so that the supply’s remain safe a ,, higher price must be paid ,, becouse all the other country’s that we compete with directly for oil and ng are not all poor,
and worldwide oil demand is increasing faster than supply. the average person in the U.S.A. does not have the savings to compete for this shrinking energy supply for very long. There are answers to this problem but at this time the people are not willing or not able stop using oil as a transportation fuel,
and so from the upper class to the bottom class we are going to suffer the consaquences for what the majority of the people are doing if a plan is not forthcoming and implemented to stop using oil as a transportation fuel.
Oil is currently being used for both home heating and transportation and in all other parts of manufactured products,, the only part of this problem that can be changed is transportation without increasing air and land pollution becouse ng and coal will soon go the way of oil not,, if,, but ,,,,,,,,when,,,,,,, we start using them as a primary source for heat,
Nuclear energy is the only energy source supplamented by solor wind geo hydro [ and this [ hydro] [can be increased in thousands of places],, but nuclear must be increased simpy becouse it require’s very little fossil fuels to produce, the massive amounts of energy 300 million people consume.
And the fossil fuels are starting to fail and if not soon will be, we can no longer say we have hundreds of years supply of these fuels any more as much as this truth hurt’s we must face it and make changes becouse the consquences are going to be much more painfull than the truth if we do not.
,,,,Lucky for all,,,,, nuclear powered electricity can be used as a transportation fuel source also, trolly transportation is one of the most pollution free and truck transportation can be changed to this also, the things we must do sometimes are not the things we want to do, the high cost of oil will force us to change. ,,, Tom,,,