Report urges backup storage
Las Vegas Review
Dec. 9, 2004
WASHINGTON -- The government should build storage farms where nuclear waste can be stockpiled, at least temporarily, in above-ground canisters as a backup to Yucca Mountain, energy experts said in a report Wednesday.
A 16-member commission studying the nation's energy future concluded a new generation of nuclear reactors is needed but will not be built until utilities and the public are convinced the government can take control of radioactive spent fuel.
"No effort should be spared" to complete a Yucca Mountain waste repository, but the government should develop an interim plan, the privately funded National Commission on Energy Policy said in a 128-page report.
It proposed at least two government-operated "dry cask" storage sites, one east of the Mississippi River and one west, "to reduce spent fuel transport burdens."
"This is a proven, safe, inexpensive waste-sequestering technology that would be good for 100 years or more," the commission said.
The storage sites would provide "an interim backup solution against the possibility that Yucca Mountain is further delayed or derailed -- or cannot be adequately expanded," the commission said.
The suggestion got a lukewarm reception from nuclear industry leaders.
"We'd like to move the fuel once, to where it is going to finally stay," said John Kane, senior vice president of government affairs for the Nuclear Energy Institute.
More than two dozen nuclear power plants have built "dry cask" storage facilities on their sites to supplement reactor pools that hold spent fuel assemblies.
The Nuclear Energy Institute said it projects 83 of 103 active reactors will have dry storage by 2050.
Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., said nuclear utilities should use dry cask storage as an alternative to Yucca Mountain.
"This group is acknowledging that dry cask storage is possible, and if it's possible and safe for 100 years, then why go forward with a multibillion project to put waste at Yucca Mountain," she said.
Industry executives said Wednesday that they expected new efforts when Congress meets in January to pass bills to propel the Yucca Mountain Project forward.
Kane said he expects congressional hearings on the federal court ruling in July that invalidated Environmental Protection Administration radiation health standards for the Nevada repository.
The hearings could spur legislation to reinstate the EPA standard, clearing an obstacle that has hampered the Energy Department.
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