Nuclear waste piles up, and it's costing taxpayers billions

[ensho]

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0324/Nuclear-waste-piles-up-and-it-s-costing-taxpayers-billions


The Bush administration agreed to store nuclear waste from 21 new reactors. But the federal government still can't meet its commitment to find permanent storage.


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IN PICTURES: Nuclear power around the world

"It was rash for the Bush Administration to sign contracts for new reactors while taxpayers are on the hook for billions due to default on existing waste contracts," Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER), one of the watchdog groups, told reporters at a press conference Wednesday. "These new contracts are likely to add billions more in damages at a time when the federal government is struggling with deficit containment.”

Energy Department way behind schedule
The Department of Energy is more than a decade behind schedule in fulfilling its contractual obligations to remove and permanently dispose of highly radioactive spent fuel from the nation's 104 nuclear power reactors.

By 2020, taxpayers will have paid about $12 billion in court judgments against DOE for its failure to find a permanent storage site for highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel, the Congressional Budget Office estimated last year.

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"Given that after 35 years of searching, the U.S. has failed to license a single repository, it is reasonable to predict that the siting of two new repositories will take at least 50 years, if not 75 or 100 years," the groups said in their report. "Thus, there is a very real potential for defaults on the new irradiated nuclear fuel contracts signed in 2008-2009."

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Millions every year to store nuclear waste
Today nuclear power companies pay about $750 million annually in fees to cover the cost of disposing of nuclear waste, but must store it at their own sites. So far, they have paid more than $16 billion into a fund for long-term waste disposal services they haven't yet seen from the DOE, the CBO reported last year.

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About 63,000 tons of spent fuel has already been generated by existing reactors that will produce another 42,000 tons in the future, the watchdog groups said. Add to that another 21,000 metric tons that could be expected to be generated by 21 new reactors that DOE placed under contract, and the total reaches 126,000 metric tons – enough to fill Yucca Mountain twice.

(enough to fill Yucca Mt. twice!!)

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and

http://counterpunch.com/alvarez03262010.html


After Yucca Mountain
What To Do With Nuclear Waste


President Barack Obama's Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future will have its first meeting this week. The commission, formed after Obama cancelled the Yucca Mountain spent nuclear fuel repository in January, is tasked with rebooting the country's five-decade-plus effort to manage its high-level radioactive waste.

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How should waste left at decommissioned reactors be secured?

Currently there are eight decommissioned U.S. nuclear plants where the spent fuel has been left behind under reduced safeguards. Another 13 reactors are in the process of being decommissioned. The country can't afford to rely on plant operators to safeguard waste left at these sites, given that this material may be there indefinitely. Therefore, it makes sense to consolidate these commercial dry spent fuel casks at one federal site, such as the Energy Department's Idaho National Laboratory, which is already storing commercial spent fuel.

Where should military high-level waste be disposed?

Since World War II, the production of plutonium and other nuclear material has generated about 100 million gallons of high-level radioactive waste that is stored in 237 gigantic underground tanks in South Carolina, Washington, Idaho, and New York. In 1985 the government mandated that such wastes be commingled and stored with civilian spent fuel at Yucca Mountain. With Yucca closed, community and political leaders near Washington's Hanford and South Carolina's Savannah River nuclear weapon sites are now suing to reopen Yucca and force the government to take the material. There is growing interest in placing the waste in the Waste Isolation Pilot Project (WIPP), a geologic disposal site in a salt formation near Carlsbad, New Mexico that opened in 1998 for plutonium-contaminated military waste. Predictably, New Mexico's elected officials are not supportive of the idea.

Despite local political opposition, there may be merit to exploring the potential for defense high-level waste disposal at WIPP. Unlike commercial spent fuel, more than 98 percent of the long-lived radioactive material in defense wastes, such as plutonium, has been removed. It's also roughly 10 times less radioactive and thus produces less decay heat than commercial reactor spent fuel--an important factor because decay heat can corrode waste containers and impact the geological stability of the site. That said, more research is necessary to determine if placing wastes in WIPP is a viable option.

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The tasks facing the commission are daunting, given the renewed pressure to build new nuclear power reactors, maintain a large and antiquated federal nuclear infrastructure, and placate U.S. voters opposed to nuclear waste sites in their backyards. Hopefully the Blue Ribbon Commission will live up to its name and credibly define the safe storage and disposal of one of the most hazardous materials on the planet.
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surely we are smart enough to solve these problems - sanely

[fascisthunter]

1. but it's such clean energy

[ensho]

2. kicking back to pg. 1 where it belongs

nt

[Javaman]

3. You should cross post this in the Energy/Environmental forum...

and watch the pro-nukes heads explode.