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Excerpt:

How Not to Find A Nuclear Waste Site

by Don Hancock,
Nuclear Waste Program

On May 28, 1986, President Reagan announced that sites in three states — Washington, Nevada, and Texas — would be investigated as possible locations for the world's first permanent high-level nuclear waste disposal facility and that, in time, one of them would be chosen to house repository long sought by the federal government.  At the same time, Department of Energy (DOE) secretary John Herrington announced that he was postponing indefinitely any site-specific work on a second nuclear waste repository, a program that in recent months had raised storms of protest in seven targeted states. Secretary Herrington stated: "We have reached an important milestone and taken a significant step forward. It is a clear sign that this nation will have the capacity for safely storing and disposing of high-level nuclear waste well into the twenty-first century."

Rather than signaling an important step forward for safe disposal of nuclear waste, the announcements seemed to serve a less lofty purpose – a political one aimed at substantially reducing the number of states where citizens are in a uproar about the nuclear waste program. Rather than reducing opposition to the DOE's program, the announcements should fuel public outrage as more people come to understand that the statements were political in nature — subject to change at any time — and that they represented decisions about nuclear waste management that could lead the country toward a nuclear disaster.   Rather than promoting public confidence in the waste program, the announcements should cause alarm among citizens in the dozens of states along transportation routes from East, where approximately 85 percent of U.S. nuclear waste is now stored, to a repository somewhere in the West. Those citizens and their elected officials will learn what people in the repository states already know, that DOE will allow them the role in decision making, and federal-state conflicts could produce a serious crisis in government relations.

To support that interpretation of the May 28 announcements, this article will discuss the announcements from a historical perspective, describing how states, Indian tribes, and citizens have so far responded to DOE's waste program, and it will outline some possible alternatives and propose a way to develop and implement a scientifically sound, publicly acceptable program for high-level nuclear waste disposal.

THE NUCLEAR WASTE PROBLEM

National public opinion polls have shown that nuclear waste – radioactive materials will be dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years – is one of the most feared hazards in our society. Wisconsin voters spoke clearly on the issue in 1983 when almost 90 percent rejected the idea of a nuclear waste repository in that state. But along with the fear and loathing of radioactive waste, there is almost also continuing public concern about its eventual safe disposal, and the federal program is failing badly. While the U.S. has been producing nuclear wastes from its weapons program for almost 45 years and from commercial nuclear power plants for almost 30 years, any permanent disposal site for those wastes is more than a decade away, even in the unlikely event that DOE's program proceeds on schedule. One aspect of the program does appear to be firmly settled — nuclear wastes will be buried 1,000 to 3,000 feet underground. Geologic entombment is the only solution the nation has seriously pursued in the past 30 years of its search for an answer to the waste problem, and it is now enshrined in law.

THE LAW

After years of congressional debate, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) was passed in 1982 and signed into law by President Reagan on January 7, 1983. While supporting geologic disposal as the preferred alternative, the NWPA also found that "federal efforts during the past 30 years to devise a permanent solution to the problems of civilian radioactive waste disposal have not been adequate."

Designed to improve on past efforts, the NWPA required the development of a waste disposal program with: (1) new site selection criteria; (2) a strong role for state and tribal governments directly affected by the program; (3) a schedule for siting, constructing, and operating at least two repositories; (4) a provision for financing through fees assessed to ratepayers of nuclear utility companies (previous funding came from U.S. taxpayers); and (5) development of interim waste storage facilities, if they are needed.

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