nuclear-news

USA’s nuclear waste problem more acute, with probable reactor close-downs

with the current glut of natural gas, more [nuclear reactor] closings seem possible, which means leaving the wastes behind — “stranded,” as Mr. Wyden put it — at the sites of defunct reactors………...

Come January, Another Try on Nuclear Waste By MATTHEW L. WALD , NYT, 18 Dec 12, The incoming chairman of the Senate Energy Committee suggests that the Energy Department should stop billing utilities more in waste disposal fees than the department is actually spending on addressing nuclear wastes. And he wants the department to pay for moving some of the wastes out of spent fuel pools at the
nation’s highest-risk reactors and into dry casks. 

Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, will take over as the committee’s
chairman when Congress begins its new session next month. In an
interview on Monday, he pointed out that the department collects about
$750 million a year in waste disposal fees at the rate of one-tenth of
a cent per kilowatt-hour generated by the reactors that feed those
utilities. Yet the government is spending nearly nothing, he
noted……
Mr. Wyden said the committee would have to take a broad look at the
issue of the Energy Department’s nuclear waste fund. “The utilities
are obviously unhappy they’re paying the money,’’ which is being
“hijacked” for other purposes, he said — namely, deficit reduction.
The fund now has a balance of $25 billion. “There is a lot of
frustration” about the money and the lack of progress, he said.

Collecting money at the same rate at which it is being spent has
precedents. “That is how the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is funded,”
Mr. Wyden pointed out. Most of the commission’s budget comes from
licensing fees.

The electric power industry has been pressing for cuts in the fees, as
have some state officials who regulate the utilities. Whether Congress
will go along is not clear, but every part of the nuclear waste
question is now on the table.
The waste disposal fees were enshrined as law in the 1980s and are the
last surviving element of a three-decade-old national consensus that
the Energy Department should evaluate candidate sites, pick the best
one and build a repository for nuclear wastes there. (Congress
eventually told the department not to bother looking beyond Yucca
Mountain — an idea that seemed to meet with the approval of everybody
outside Nevada for a long while.)

A blue-ribbon commission that President Obama appointed after shelving
the Yucca Mountain plan recommended starting over and searching for a
new site in a process based on the host state’s consent, as opposed to
forcing a repository on an unwilling Nevada.

That implies that a permanent repository is many years into the
future, possibly beyond the lifetimes of many of the reactors now
operating. Dominion said in October that it would close its Kewaunee
nuclear plant in Wisconsin. And with the current glut of natural gas, more closings seem possible, which means leaving the wastes behind — “stranded,” as Mr. Wyden put it — at the sites of defunct reactors…………
The military wastes have been dear to Mr. Wyden’s heart for 30 years:
many of them are in leaking tanks at the Hanford nuclear reservation
in Washington, across the Columbia River from his home state of
Oregon. But those wastes would have to be solidified before they could
be buried, and the Energy Department has had great difficulty doing
that.

Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, a Democrat who is head of the
committee until the end of the lame duck session, has already
introduced a bill to reform the process of picking a site, but action
is unlikely this year.
…http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/18/come-january-another-try-on-nuclear-waste/?smid=tw-share

December 19, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, wastes