As our casebook authors allude to, of all the NIMBY problems inherent in energy production, consumption, and transmission, the disposal and transportation of the radioactive wastes from nuclear power plants is probably one of the most difficult tasks that energy regulators face.
Currently all of spent nuclear fuel rods in the United States are stored in some sort of facility either at the nuclear reactor site, or very close to it. The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission states that currently all U.S. nuclear electricity generating plants store their spent fuel in massive pools of water.[1] These pools are constructed of concrete several feet thick and have steel lining.[2] Following a dip of anywhere from 3 years to 10 years, the spent fuel can be put in “dry cask” storage.[3] This cask is essentially a steel barrel filled with gases that resist chemical changes.[4] These barrels are contained inside concrete storage areas.[5] These storage techniques are only a temporary plan though.
With the only “permanent” storage site that was authorized for development by Congress no longer an option for the status quo of storage of nuclear wastes will remain in the United States. While this may not necessarily be a bad development, as one of the scholars in our casebook argues, it does beg the question as to what direction possible solutions should go.
A resurgent option is the “recycling” of nuclear wastes by extracting the unused parts of the fuel rods to use as more fission material for generating even more nuclear power. Many other countries have adopted this as a proposed solution to their high level nuclear waste problems, including France, Japan, the United Kingdom, and Russia.[6] The U.S. military also reprocesses nuclear wastes.[7]
Intuitively, the idea of extracting more electricity out of waste seems entirely appealing, especially given that all that it is doing is sitting right in the facilities where electricity is generated. Most people would consider anything besides using the whole amount of fuel as a waste of resources. It is a similar intuition that makes the flaring of uneconomically feasible natural gas at producing oil wells not sit well with so many people. But in the nuclear context, a desire to get every drop of energy out of the spent fuel rods would likely cause more waste problem than it would solve.
In addition to the spent fuel rods, which are considered high-level waste, there are also low-level wastes that need to be disposed of in a proper manner given their radioactive nature. As the Union of Concerned Scientists point out, the U.S. is much better off from a total waste standpoint from not reprocessing high-level wastes.[8] If the U.S. were to implement whole-scale nuclear reprocessing at commercial facilities, the amount of high-level waste would decrease by about a quarter, but the amount of low-level waste increased by six to seven times current levels.[9] Particularly concerning is the increase of a particular type of low-level waste, called greater-than-class-C low-level waste. Under whole scale reprocessing, this type of waste would increase by 160 times current levels.
The recommendations of the Blue Ribbon Commission seem to recognize that nuclear reprocessing is definitely not the solution to the nuclear waste problem.[10] While the Commission seeks to open up new possible sites for a repository on a consent-based model, given recent events involving the Japanese Tsunami and their nuclear disaster, I suspect that the familiar problem of NIMBY will rear its ugly head once again for many proposed repository sites. Since neither the recycling truck or the garbage truck is pulling up the U.S. nuclear power plants anytime soon they will have to continue siting in their own trash.
[1] Spent Fuel Storage in Pools and Dry Casks: Key Points and Questions & Answers, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Comm’n, http://www.nrc.gov/waste/spent-fuel-storage/faqs.html (last updated Mar. 29, 2012).
[2] Id.
[3] Id.
[4] Id.
[5] Id.
[6] Nuclear Waste Mgmt. Org., Used Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing 1 (2010),available at http://www.nwmo.ca/uploads_managed/MediaFiles/1596_used_nuclear_fuel_reprocessing.pdf.
[7] Id.
[8] Reprocessing and Nuclear Waste, Union of Concerned Scientists, http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_weapons_and_global_security/nuclear_terrorism/technical_issues/reprocessing-and-nuclear.html (last updated Mar. 21, 2011).
[9] Id.
[10] See Blue Ribbon Comm’n on Am.’s Nuclear Future, Report to the Secretary of Energy viii (2012), available at http://brc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/brc_finalreport_jan2012.pdf.
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