My mom had it right when she said, "Before you start anything else, you
have to clean up your mess!" The United States entered the nuclear age
more than a half-century ago, but we haven't resolved what to do with nuclear
waste. Closing down conventional fission-based nuclear power plants, reprocessing
used fuel or even expanding our nuclear power capacity are unrealistic options
until and unless we clean up after ourselves.
The Bush administration has proposed adding 50 new nuclear reactors by 2020.
Currently, the nation's roughly 100 operating nuclear power plants produce 20
percent of our electricity (8 percent of our total energy consumption). France
obtains 80 percent of its electricity from nuclear generators, and French oil
consumption is 10 percent lower than three decades ago. U.S. oil consumption
is 16 percent higher.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), cited in the Sept. 27 USA
Today, calculates that one-third of global greenhouse gas production is
from electrical power production. Power generated by nuclear plants cuts annual
carbon emissions by 600 million tons, about twice what the Kyoto agreement is
designed to save. The United States currently accounts for 23 percent of greenhouse
gas emissions, with China close behind.
Nuclear fusion reactors conceivably will be able to generate almost unlimited
energy with no greenhouse gases or long-lived high-level radioactive waste,
but the technology probably will not become feasible for decades, if ever. But
the waste generated by nuclear plants in the United States already is high —
more than 30,000 metric tons of spent fuel rods, increasing by 6 tons per day.
This waste is temporarily stored in water-filled basins, steel containers and
on concrete pads at or close to the sites where they are produced. The entire
batch would almost fill Yankee Stadium (not a viable option unless you are an
avid Red Sox fan).
U.S. Cold War efforts produced another 400,000 cubic meters of high level radioactive
waste, a byproduct of manufacturing plutonium for nuclear weapons. Largely in
liquid form, it is also temporarily stored, kept in huge aging tanks at government
sites in Washington, New York, South Carolina and Idaho, among other states.
It could be permanently stored in an area smaller than Central Park (also probably
not a sensible option).
Collectively, this nuclear waste is stored across about 40 states within 120
kilometers of 160 million people, almost two-thirds of our total population.
Patrick Bailey, president of the Institute for New Energy, argues in a chapter
about nuclear waste in The World's 20 Greatest Unsolved Problems that
"the problem is not about how to store the waste — the problem is
in the willingness to get the waste stored."
Two decades of analysis and more than $5 billion have narrowed the choice of
a permanent nuclear waste repository to two sites: NIMBY ("not in my backyard")
and Yucca Mountain, which is 160 kilometers northwest of Las Vegas, Nev. (with
a population approaching 2 million people). This uninspiring 2,045-meter ridge
in west-central Nevada has gradually taken on Everest-like proportions.
The area surrounding Yucca has been fairly stable seismically and volcanically
for the past several million years. The probability of either moderate earthquakes
or eruptions for the next 10,000 years is very low. The slightly deformed stratigraphic
unit underlying Yucca Mountain destined to house all the waste — the 8-million-year-old
Paintbrush Welded Tuff — has very low porosity and permeability. The region
has exceedingly low precipitation, and the hydrologic setting is almost ideal,
with one of the deepest water tables known (700 meters). A 60- to 80-kilometer
grid of tunnels is to be drilled through the mountain core and the waste housed
in hermetically sealed containers.
But legal barriers to this permanent storage site continue to crop up (see New
York Times, Aug. 23, "Roadblock at Yucca Mountain" and Geotimes,
October, 2004, "Energy Issues Take Center Stage in Senate Races").
A three-judge panel threw out a previously agreed upon standard that any permanent
repository safely contain all wastes for 10,000 years, lengthening the time
to hundreds of thousands of years.
Congress unfortunately paved the way for this roadblock in 1992, when it passed
a law requiring a repository time standard that complied with recommendations
of the National Academy of Sciences. The New York Times described that
standard as "so outlandishly stringent it may not be achievable."
Additional serious objections have arisen over how nuclear waste is to be transported
safely and securely from disparate sites around the country to Nevada.
The bottom line is that the public, outside of Nevada, has not been seriously
involved in considering nuclear issues. In the 2004 election campaign, most
voters spent far more time examining decades-old Swift Boat battle actions and
who served where and when in the National Guard during the Vietnam War than
our nuclear legacy. Only Nevada residents seemed fully and honestly rather than
philosophically engaged in this debate. After all, the New York Times editorial
offices are about 4,000 kilometers from Yucca Mountain.
And now, the election is over. Nevada reelected Sen. Harry Reid, a Democrat
who like most Nevada politicians strongly opposes using Yucca Mountain as the
nation's nuclear repository. At the same time, newly reelected President Bush
has reaffirmed Yucca Mountain as the permanent repository, Congress has yet
to fully fund the project, and lawsuits and licensing challenges continue to
delay it (see Geotimes Web Extra,
Dec. 6, "Yucca on Hold").
While the country delays making a decision without serious science-based debate,
nuclear waste accumulates daily. After attending many of the roughly three dozen
talks on the geologic disposal of radioactive waste at the annual meeting of
the Geological Society of America last fall, I'm now convinced that enough reliable,
robust science has been done to provide the solid data on which such an important
decision must be based. It's time to collectively bite the bullet and proceed.
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