Nuclear Waste Storage: An Intermediate Option

Robert Bryce, a successful author on energy policy, recently wrote an op-ed in Politico encouraging the U.S. to store nuclear waste on government land.

His thesis is that, given the post-Fukushima Daiichi danger of storing spent nuclear fuel (SNF) on the grounds of reactors, the federal government should move it to regional collection centers on federal land, which is what people in the nuclear industry have been saying for awhile. This gets rid of the problems of moving the waste long-distance to Yucca Mountain (in the middle of the desert), which is a bad idea anyway, and would save the federal government billions of dollars in lawsuits.

I don't disagree with Bryce, but I want to clarify a couple of key points. First of all, the meltdown at Fukushima Daiici was exacerbated by spent nuclear fuel storage, yes. But there are two kinds of fuel storage. After being removed from the reactor core, nuclear fuel rods typically spend around five years in a pool of water, called the spent fuel pool, cooling off. After they're cool enough to handle, they're packed into giant casks and kept on the grounds of the plant from whence they came. Bryce's plan would fix the problem with the casks, which definitely needs fixing, but the pools are what went wrong at Fukushima and they're non-negotiable. There's not another practical way to cool down the waste, and there's not really another place to put it for the five years it needs to cool off. In this sense, his plan would lessen, but not remove, the danger of having waste on the grounds of each reactor.

Secondly, regional waste collection centers reduce the dangers of transporting waste by reducing the distance each cask has to travel, but they do not eliminate it. Any plan to relocate the waste from its current scattered state (at all 104 currently operating reactors, plus several other sites) has to take that into account. The casks are tested against falls, fires and floods, but they are not invulnerable (particularly to periods of extended heat; a truck crashing and catching on fire in a tunnel, for example) and should not be treated as such in the planning process.

Finally, waste collection centers are a first step, not a longest-term solution. The next step should be the construction of reprocessing plants to turn SNF into mixed-oxide fuels, which can be fed back into nuclear reactors and used to generate power. Because of the low price of uranium, there is little financial incentive to do this right now, but a reprocessing plant is the only known way to get rid of nuclear waste permanently. They will be expensive and hard to fund while the price of uranium remains low, but if nuclear power is still a part of the U.S.'s energy generation when the price rises, we will definitely need reprocessing technology. The time to make a start on that is now.

Yucca Mountain Is A Bad Idea (Redux)

Hello, everyone. The last time I tried to write about this topic, I waxed way verbose (you would, too, if you'd written a 44-page paper on it). So I'm going to try and write, in as few words as possible, why long-term deep geological disposal of nuclear waste is a bad idea and what we should do instead.

Why Not?

1. Yucca Mountain, even if completed to specifications, can only hold a certain tonnage of nuclear waste (63,000 metric tons according to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982). The present stockpiles of nuclear waste, plus the expected rate of waste production (approximately 2,000 metric tons/year), mean that sometime in the mid-2010s we will exceed the storage capacity of Yucca Mountain. This necessitates the search for a second long-term geological repository, which means we'd have to start the whole dreary 30-year, $9 billion+ search over again.

2. Yucca Mountain is a bad place to store waste in the longest terms (planners envision the waste being stored there for up to 1,000,000 years in the future). It is riddled with cracks, more full of water than the desert around it would suggest, and is difficult to access with trucks and heavy equipment. This is a big deal, because...

3. Establishing one national repository means that the waste from 104+ separate sites around the U.S. would have to be relocated there, a task that would require hundreds of separate trips by truck (with the waste encased in specially made containers). Furthermore, since our road system is designed to connect population centers, it's likely that most (if not all) shipments would run through one or more major metropolitan areas. The casks do not leak 'casual' radiation in harmful amounts, but if an accident were to happen, it could result in massive radioactive contamination of an American city.

4. Yucca Mountain was conceived as a "fire-and-forget" facility, which we (read: humanity) can dump the waste into and then forget about forever. However, the expectation is that we can build a facility which will remain secure for one million years in the future. For comparison, one of the oldest confirmed man-made structures on Earth, the Great Pyramid at Giza, is a mere 4,571 years old. Yucca Mountain would have to not only survive, but remain absolutely sealed and not release radiation, for 218 times longer than that. It would have to outlive the lifespan (to date) of the country that created it by 4,255 times. I respectfully submit that if humanity cannot forecast tomorrow's weather with certainty, how can we hope to predict local conditions (no volcanic activity, not much erosion, etc.) a million years in the future?

5. How exactly do you tell people, a mere 10,000 years in the future, to stay away from a given place? How can you communicate with them, knowing that the language future denizens of what is now Nevada will speak will be massively different from modern languages?

In short, Yucca Mountain is not a viable place to store nuclear waste, either in the short (next 30 years) or long (10,000 years) or longest (500,000 years) terms.

So... What Do We Do Instead?

Finding another repository site is out of the question. Yucca is the best site that the U.S. has for a geological repository, in terms of its isolated location, its (predicted) geological stability and its political defenses (Senator Harry Reid being one). If Yucca is inadequate after thirty years of study, it's likely that any other site would eventually be found inadequate as well.

We need a two-part solution.

However inadequately, Yucca would at least be able to fix two real problems by consolidating the spent nuclear fuel. The Yucca plan reduces the risk of both a terrorist attack and an accidental spill or leakage by consolidating the waste in one location. I don't disagree with this, but with the dangers of moving the waste by transport all the way to Nevada, I suggest a different solution. Set up regional waste collection centers at points throughout the U.S. where there's a high concentration of nuclear plants. The waste from Georgian plants can be moved to a center in the Southeast, the waste from Wisconsin's plants goes to a Midwest center, and so on. By doing this, we can reduce (though not eradicate) the risks associated with transporting the waste.

The thing about regional centers is that, unlike Yucca, they would not have to store the waste for a ludicrous target of one million years. Seventy years would more than suffice. The centers can simply be extremely large, well-guarded, well-sealed-off warehouses; they don't have to be mountains. Above all, they would allow us to eventually retake and reuse the waste, instead of throwing it into a mountain forever.

Wait... Reuse?

The second part solves both the issue of nuclear waste and the U.S.'s dependence on freshly mined uranium. Waste reprocessing plants can refine the nuclear waste, remove the material (lots of U-238, some smaller amounts of U-235 and Pu-239) that can be reused, and sell it back to commercial plants. Furthermore, the introduction of fast breeder reactors could allow the U.S. to adopt a closed nuclear fuel cycle, where our plants run on plutonium (which works just as well) and there is no need for new fuel, as it is created by the reactors. 

If I were Energy Secretary David Chu, that is what I would recommend. Create regional waste collection centers, repeal the parts of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act that require the repository at Yucca Mountain to be opened, start construction of reprocessing plants (or incentives for their commercial construction) and start research into and development of fast breeder reactors, with the intention of creating a closed nuclear fuel cycle within 50 years or so. 

The downside is the initial cost of closing Yucca, of building reprocessing plants and breeder reactors, is considerable. However, this will pay for itself in savings on new uranium once the closed fuel cycle is adapted, and in the removal of nuclear waste from the vicinities of dozens of American cities. Currently, the closing of Yucca has been blocked by lawsuits from Washington and several other states; however, they are motivated by a desire to prevent any eventual repository from being placed in their state (a site in Washington was a top contender after Yucca). I am positive that a commitment to regional centers and reprocessing plants would end their desire to block the closing of Yucca. 

Conclusion

Yucca Mountain should be closed permanently, regional collection centers should be constructed and waste transported to them as soon as possible, and reprocessing plants and breeder reactors constructed as soon as funding can be found for them. If successful, this program will minimize the risks of transporting nuclear waste, and eventually eliminate our current stockpiles of waste entirely. It will also protect domestic nuclear power against future scarcity of uranium (current reserves are predicted to last about 100 years, and Fukushima notwithstanding, there is still something of a nuclear boom taking place worldwide), in the event of the adoption of a closed fuel cycle. In addition, it will eventually lower costs for the ratepayers who consume electricity generated by the breeder reactors, and allow the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to focus its energies on strengthening our nuclear fleet instead of dealing with the waste. The only drawback is the initial cost, and the only obstacle is political will.

What We Should Do About Yucca Mountain

The last time I checked, there was no funding for the continued development, study of and construction of nuclear waste storage facilities at the much-debated Yucca Mountain in President Obama's fiscal year 2011 budget. The Department of Energy has chosen to try and shut down the site altogether, but as of this writing, it's being blocked in court by lawsuits from the states who would probably be next in line to have the nuclear waste repository in their territory if Yucca falls through.

The idea of a permanent nuclear waste repository is not only a bad one, it is something that humanity is fundamentally unable to build. Instead of trying to determine whether Yucca Mountain will be able to safely store nuclear waste for the next million years, we should be putting the time and money earmarked for Yucca into research into spent nuclear fuel (SNF) reprocessing technologies.

Here's my train of thought on the subject:

1. The U.S. government has spent north of $9 billion, as well as over three decades' worth of scientific reports and research, on studying Yucca Mountain and trying to determine whether it will be safe to store nuclear waste there for up to a million years in the future. Yucca was originally selected from a list of the nine most promising sites in the continental U.S., using the criteria of long-term tectonic stability, distance from major population centers, and political will. We have spent an amazing amount of time and money to learn as much as we can about Yucca Mountain, and we have found that it is probably unsuitable for the requirements we've asked of it (for example, the mountain is supposed to be dry and solid, but geologists' boreholes found it to be full of water and honeycombed with cracks). After $9 billion and 33 years of study on the best candidate for long-term storage, if this place isn't suitable for a repository, it's reasonable to ask if anywhere is.

2. Nowhere is. It is a crazy thing to think that we can build a facility that will last for a million years. The hubris of it is staggering.


We simply don't know how to build for that length of time. Most consumer goods aren't supposed to last more than five years. Buildings, levees, bridges and so forth rust, rot and decay within a hundred or so years. Even dams and seawalls will eventually break down if untended in, say, the 235 years that the U.S. has been a country.

Let me say this plainly: the idea that we can design something that will still exist and perform its original function 1,000,000 years in the future--4,255 times the lifespan to date of the nation that created it--is sheer folly. We just don't know how to compensate for a million years of erosion.

How exactly do you design for the Colorado River?

3. That's the thing about Yucca. It's not that it's unsuitable for so-called short-term storage (say, a mere fifty or a hundred or a thousand years). The plan for Yucca Mountain has always been what I like to call a fire-and-forget storage facility. We throw the waste in here and then we never have to worry about it ever again. It's the political and scientific equivalent of lifting up a carpet and sweeping the mess underneath. Oh, you've invested trillions of dollars in a form of electric power that produces an unavoidable and dangerously lethal by-product? Never mind. We can just dump it in this mountain and forget about it.

Also, be sure not to think about the fact that existing plants have produced enough waste since they came online in the 1950s and '60s to fill up the not-yet-built repository by 2014. The politicians who came up with the idea for the repository seem to be thinking in the longest term possible, but ironically, they're not thinking about what happens a mere fifty years in the future. What happens to the waste that's produced after Yucca is full? Do we go through this whole weary mess again, research and design and wrangle over and finally build another repository, or do we simply throw up our hands, cry "Fuck this!" and launch it into the sun?

No, seriously. That's one idea that Congress considered before Yucca was authorized.

4. Fine, a permanent repository isn't the answer. So what should we do?

My answer is twofold. First, instead of one centralized repository for all the waste in the U.S., build several regional storage facilities around the country. This would minimize the distance that the waste travels (since there are very real risks in transporting waste any distance) and, by moving the waste from 104+ separate sites to, say, 10 facilities, it would make the waste that much more secure against theft or terrorism. These facilities don't have to be inside mountains, for their purpose is not to store the waste indefinitely. Rather, they would store the waste until we have the technology to recycle it and turn it into power.

Sound fanciful? We could do it today if the proper facilities were set up. Reprocessed waste can yield up to 25% of the energy of the original fuel, through recycling of unused uranium-235 and plutonium-239 in an ordinary nuclear reactor (not to mention the U-238). This greatly reduces the volume of waste, leaving behind only volatile fission by-products. Even those could potentially be reused with the adoption of a closed nuclear fuel cycle.

So if it's that easy to reprocess waste, why haven't we done it? There are three main reasons. The first is President Carter's policy decision in the 1970s to curtail reprocessing technology in the U.S., in an effort to convince the world to do the same (which did not work). Every succeeding President has followed this policy. They did this because of the second reason; P-239, produced as a by-product in nuclear plants, can be used in nuclear weapons. However, inside the U.S., the risk of this is extremely low.

Reason III is good old economics. Right now, it is much cheaper to mine natural uranium than to reuse SNF, so there has been no real civilian push to build domestic reprocessing plants (although many foreign ones exist). But remember that $9 billion we've already spent on Yucca Mountain? The U.S. government has been willing to spend taxpayers' dollars to try and find a solution for the problem of nuclear waste. Let's start spending that money where it will do the most good: in further research of reprocessing technology and construction of reprocessing facilities. We can remove an environmental and national security threat by reprocessing the waste, we can generate power while we're doing it, and we can help find a permanent solution to the problem of waste. It's a win-win-win for everyone involved.

And the U.S. map can stop being pockmarked with nuclear zits.