Blue Ribbon Commission Urges Overhaul For US Waste Programme
Written by NucNet
Friday, 27 January 2012
A commission appointed to find alternatives to a failed plan to store nuclear waste in the Nevada desert said yesterday that the US would have to develop a “consent-based approach” for choosing a site because leaving the decision to Congress had failed.
By securing local consent, the panel said, the government might avoid the kind of conflicts that led to the cancellation of plans to create a repository at Yucca Mountain, a site about 150km from Las Vegas, in 2010. It noted that local willingness had been crucial to decision-making on sites for nuclear waste depots in Finland, France, Spain and Sweden.
The panel, the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, also suggested that the government take the job of managing the waste out of the hands of the Energy Department and give it to a federally chartered corporation created for that purpose.
The commission acknowledged that the programme must include safe and secure consolidated storage, transportation, and geologic disposal. The Nuclear Energy Institute said in a statement that it agreed with the commission's key recommendations.
The NEI said action can be taken to encourage and achieve consolidated interim storage in a willing host community within the next 10 years, well before a repository could be opened.
“This facility would permit the federal government to begin meeting its contractual and statutory obligations under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to remove used reactor fuel from decommissioned and operating nuclear power plants while reducing the taxpayer liabilities associated with the government's delay in accepting used fuel.”
The report the commission sent to energy secretary Steven Chu is “showing a way forward”, he said.
President Barack Obama established the commission in January 2010 to provide recommendations for developing a safe, long-term solution to managing the nation’s nuclear waste and spent nuclear fuel.
