nuclear-news

No confidence in USA’s “Waste Confidence Rule” – so nuclear licensing stopped

puts waste where it belongs, front and center in the debate over the future of nuclear power in this country

NRC elevates nuclear waste to front and center of debate http://www.thereporteronline.com/article/20120815/OPINION01/120819748/nrc-levates-nuclear-waste-to-front-and-center-of-debate&pager=2  08/15/12 BECAUSE THE U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is a part of the federal bureaucracy, it can make even groundbreaking news seem mundane.

Take this understated sentence in its ruling Aug. 7 delaying the final issuance of any nuclear permits, for existing or new power plants:

“Waste confidence undergirds certain agency licensing decisions, in particular new reactor licensing and reactor licensing renewal.”

Translation: The country cannot continue to talk about building new nuclear plants without figuring out what it is going to do with the dangerous waste that literally is stacking up at sites all over the country, including at Ameren Missouri’s Callaway County plant.

That means that because Americans can have no confidence that the NRC has seriously dealt with the growing problem of nuclear waste, the NRC will stop making the problem worse by extending nuclear plant licenses. The moratorium will remain until there is some reasonable
plan to dispose of waste that “will remain dangerous for time spans
seemingly beyond human comprehension.” Those are the words of the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, which ruled in June
that the NRC’s decision to allow nuclear plants to continue to store
waste at their facilities for another 30 years (beyond the 30 years
that were envisioned originally) needed further study. The NRC’s
decision to delay issuing any licensing permits is a response to that
court ruling. THECOURTRULING,and the NRC’s response, resulted from
lawsuits filed by numerous environmental groups, including the
Missouri Coalition for the Environment. The decision is monumentally
good news for Americans who simply want the nuclear industry to behave
more responsibly before the federal government doubles down on its
investment in an energy source that has never made financial sense.
For too long, the nuclear industry, with a wink and a nod from
government, simply has stacked spent nuclear fuel rods in cooling
ponds or concrete storage casks. A national repository for the waste
was being built at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, but politics,
specifically the presidential election in 2008, helped scuttle that
reasonable proposal. When Nevada became a swing state, no presidential
candidate in his right mind was going to support putting decades’
worth of nuclear waste there. But the waste must go somewhere, and
until we as a nation deal with it, any discussion of new nuclear
energy is foolhardy. That’s one reason why we steadfastly have opposed
attempts to build a second Callaway County nuclear plant — of whatever
size. For all the talk of jobs, and despite the greenhouse gas
advantages over fossil fuels that nuclear power offers, any talk of
building new nuclear plants must await a safe, reliable long-term
solution to the problem of nuclear waste.
DON’TTHINKit’s real? Read a little bit about Fukushima, Japan, and the
very real radiation problems stemming from the devastating earthquake
last year. The actions by the Court of Appeals and the NRC don’t
guarantee that our nation’s politicians or nuclear providers will get
their acts together and once and for all deal with the nuclear waste.
But it puts that waste where it belongs, front and center in the
debate over the future of nuclear power in this country. — The St.
Louis Post-Dispatch

August 16, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, wastes