Managing the Nation's Commercial

High-Level Radioactive Waste

March 1985

NTIS order #PB86-116852
Recommended Citation:

Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste (Washington, DC: U.S.

Congress, Offlce of Technology Assessment, OTA-O-171, March 1985).

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 84-601154

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents

U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402
Foreword

This report presents the findings and conclusions of OTA's analysis of Federal policy

for the management of commercial high-level radioactive waste. It represents a major update and expansion of the analysis presented to Congress in our summary report, Managing Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste, published in April of 1982 during the

debate leading to passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (NWPA). This new

report is intended to contribute to the implementation of NWPA, and in particular to

congressional review of three major documents that DOE will submit to the 99th Congress:

. Mission Plan for the waste management program;

● a monitored retrievable storage (MRS) proposal; and

● ❁ report on mechanisms for financing and managing the waste program.

The assessment was originally undertaken at the request of the House Committee

on Merchant Marine and Fisheries and focused on the ocean disposal of nuclear waste.

OTA later broadened the study to include all aspects of high-level waste disposal after

expressions of interest and support by the Senate Committees on Energy and Natural Resources and on Commerce, Science, and Technology; by the Senate National Ocean Policy Study; and by the House Committees on Science and Technology and on Foreign Affairs. Additional requests for related analysis were later received from the Senate Committee

on Environment and Public Works and from the House Committees on Interior and Insular Affairs and on Energy and Commerce. The major findings of the original analysis

were published in OTA’s 1982 summary report.

Following passage of NWPA, the House Committee on Rules asked OTA to analyze

the Act from the perspective of the policy conclusions of our 1982 study. The major conclusion of that review, included as chapter 5 of this new report, is that NWPA provides

sufficient authority for developing and operating a waste management system based on

disposal in geologic repositories. Substantial new authority for other facilities will not be

required unless major unexpected problems with geologic disposal are encountered.

In addition, the House Committees on Interior and Insular Affairs and on Energy

and Commerce asked OTA to provide information on the Mission Plan required by NWPA.

OTA concludes that DOE’s Draft Mission Plan published in 1984 falls short of its potential for enhancing the credibility and acceptability of the waste management program. The

summary of this report, included as chapter 1, presents the key findings and options concerning the Mission Plan and the other documents mentioned above.

OTA is grateful for the assistance of the advisory panel for this assessment, as well

as the support and guidance received from many other people and organizations. OTA

has also benefited from the full cooperation of the Department of Energy, the Nuclear

Regulatory Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, and other Federal agencies. OTA assumes full responsibility for the report.

‘Director

. . .

Ill
Advisory Panel on Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

Hans Frauenfelder, Chairman

Department of Physics, University of Illinois

Seymour Abrahamson

Department of Zoology

University of Wisconsin

Frank Collins

Consultant

Floyd Culler

President

Electric Power Research Institute

J. William Futrell

President

Environmental Law Institute

Edward Goldberg

Scripps Institution of Oceanography

University of California

William W. Hambleton

Director

Kansas Geological Survey

Hon. Harriet Keyserling

House of Representatives

State of South Carolina

Terry Lash

Director

Illinois Department of Nuclear Safety

Kai Lee

Institute for Environmental Studies

University of Washington

Hon. Jeanne Malchon

Senate

State of Florida

Peter Montague

Center for Environmental Studies

Princeton University

Glenn Paulson

Vice President for Science

National Audubon Society

Howard Raiffa

Harvard Business School

William A. Thomas

Research Attorney

American Bar Foundation

Mason Willrich

Vice President—Corporate Planning

Pacific Gas & Electric Co.

Donald Wodrich

Rockwell International-Hanford Operations

John Yasinsky

Advanced Power Systems Division

Westinghouse Electric Corp.

NOTE: The Ad\isor} Panel pro~’idcd advice and comment throughout the assessment, but the. mcmbcrs do IIO( ncccssaril}’ appro~c’, disapproic, or endorse the report, for which CYI’A assumes full responsibility.

iv
OTA Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste Project Staff

John Andelin, Assistant Director, OTA

Science, Information, and Natural Resources Division

Robert Niblock, Oceans and Environment Program Manager

Thomas Cotton, Project Director

William Barnard, Assistant Project Director

John Burns, Editor and Writer

Daniel Kevin, Analyst

Kathryn Van Wyk, Editor and Writer

Administrative Staff

Kathleen Beil

Jacquelynne Mulder

Contributing Staff

Prudence Adler Junior Bridge Anne Fenn Linda Garcia

Emilia Govan Barry Holt Peter Johnson Robert Leachman* James Payne

Paul B. Phelps Richard Raymond** Ralph Smalley Lucia Turnbull

Contractors

Academy for Contemporary Problems

American Planning Association

Applied Decision Analysis

Battelle Memorial Institute

Human Affairs Research Centers

David Carr

William Colglazier

David Deese

Forecast Systems, Inc.

William Giese

Harvard University

Barbara Katz

Todd LaPorte

Daniel Metlay

Gene Rochlin

Sanford Strenger* *

Teknekron Research, Inc.

The George Washington University

The MITRE Corp.

Toner & Associates, Inc.

Patrick Windham

David Zellner

Public Participation Working Group

Susan Bistline Alfred Carter, Jr. Mildred Clark

Barbara Jackson Janet Kramer William Pounds

Barbara Ruff Gregory Smith James Stewart

● NR(; (1(,1,111((

““in-h(mw ( (JIIII<i( [(JI
Contents

Chapter Page

I. Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

2. Radioactive Waste: Its Nature and Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

3. Technology of Waste Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

4. History of Waste Management: Setting the Stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

5. Policy Analysis: The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 in Perspective . . . . . . . . . . 99

6. The Mission Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

7. Federal Institutional Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

8. Addressing State and Public Concerns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175

Appendix Page

A-1. Radioactive Waste Management Policymaking. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199

A-2. Major Events in Waste Management History—1944-81 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233

B.

c.

D.

E.

F.

G.

H.

Waste Management System Issues Resolved

in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264

Performance Requirements for a Geologic Repository as Specified

in Nuclear Regulatory Commission Regulation 10 CFR Part 60 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327

Procedure for Establishing a Repository for Commercial Nuclear Waste.. . . . . . . 329

Spent Fuel Projections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331

Repositoryor MRS Loading Capacity Required To Remove Spent Fuel From

Reactor Sites Within 10 and 15 Years After Reactor Decommissioning. . . . . . . . . 334

Glossary, Acronyms, and Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338

vii
—

Chapter 1

Executive Summary
Contents

Overview. . . . . . . . . . . . ***. *,** ***. *o** ... o.*. ... oo. .**. *.** ..o. ..*. ,.. o., ,*. .o

The Mission Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Monitored Retrievable Storage Proposal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Alternative Means of Financing and Management. .., . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Background . . . . . . . ...*.*** ● *O*..*. ● *.*.... ....0.,. . . . . . . . . ● **...** ● *..***. ● . .

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 .*,.**. . . . . . . . . ..*.**.* ● .*.*.*. ● ..*..** ..**

Waste Management Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Relations With States and Indian Tribes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Institutional Measures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Remaining Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..**... ● *..*... .*.**... . . . . . . .

Issues in the Mission Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Issues in the MRS Proposal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Institutional Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

‘3

3

5

6

6

8

8

10

11

12

12

15

16

FIGURES

Figure No. Page

l-1. The Nuclear Fuel Cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

l-2. Mined Geologic Disposal Concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

l-3. Dry Storage Concepts for Spent Fuel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Chapter 1

Executive Summary

OVERVIEW

With the passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy

Act of 1982 (NWPA), Congress for the first time

established in law a comprehensive Federal policy

for commercial high-level radioactive waste management, including interim storage and permanent

disposal. NWPA provides sufficient authority for

developing and operating a high-level radioactive waste management system based on disposal in mined geologic repositories. Authorization for other types of waste facilities will not be

required unless major problems with geologic disposal are discovered, and studies to date have identified no insurmountable technical obstacles to developing geologic repositories.

The 99th Congress will receive three key documents that NWPA requires the Department of Energy

1.

2.

3.

(DOE) to prepare:

a Mission Pkm, containing both a waste management plan with a schedule for transferring

waste to Federal facilities and an implementation program for choosing sites and developing technologies to carry out that plan;

a monitored retrievable storage (MRS) proposal, with designs for long-term Federal storage facilities, evaluations of whether they are

needed and feasible, and analysis of how they

would be integrated with the repository program if authorized by Congress; and

a study of alternative institutional mechanisms

for financing and managing the radioactive

waste system, including the option of establishing an independent waste management organization outside of DOE.

Each of these documents will raise issues of potentially significant concern to Congress and the

Nation.

The Mission Plan

The crucial next step for stabilizing the U.S.

radioactive waste management program, and for

building confidence that nuclear waste can and

ultimately will be disposed of safely, is to develop a credible Mission Plan that is widely viewed

as achievable and responsive to the concerns of

the major affected parties. According to NWPA,

the document to be submitted by DOE is intended

to provide “an informational basis sufficient to permit informed decisions to be made. To do this,

it must identify the key decisions in developing the

waste management system, analyze and compare

the technical and programmatic options, and thereby provide the information that would support

DOE’s choice among the options. In OTA’S view,

the Draft Mission Plan published by DOE in April

1984 does not meet this test. OTA believes that the

preparation of a final Mission Plan offers DOE a

major opportunity to enhance the credibility and

acceptability of the waste management program.

As part of its analysis of NWPA, OTA has identified the elements of a Mission Plan that can meet

the requirements of the Act using only the authority it provides. Comparison between this ‘‘OTA

Mission Plan” and DOE’s Draft Mission Pkm provides a basis for identifying the major strategic decisions in the Mission Plan. Comparison also reveals

several areas in which additional analysis by DOE

would provide valuable information for congressional deliberations during the 30 working days that

the Mission Plan lies before Congress before becoming effective. In general, the OTA Mission Plan

represents an expansion, rather than a redirection,

of the approach in DOE’s Draft Mission Plan.

None of DOE’s ongoing repository siting or development activities need or should be deferred pending development of a final Mission Plan.

The major difference between the two Mission

Plans lies in the measures used to provide confidence that spent fuel will be removed from reactor

sites within a reasonable period, despite the technical and institutional uncertainties associated with

siting and licensing the first geologic repository.

DOE’s Draft Mission PZan is based on a reposi3
4 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

tory loading schedule that allows for no problems

or delays in choosing or licensing the first repository. The repository siting program includes no

backups for the sites that NWPA requires to be

evaluated at key stages of the siting process. To provide confidence that waste can be accepted in the

event that this siting program encounters significant delays, the Draft Mission Plan proposes to ask #

Congress for new legislative authority to site and

license an MRS facility so that one could be constructed as early as 1998, if needed.

The OTA Mission Plan, on the other hand, relies

on the existing authority in NWPA to the maximum extent possible. It recognizes that the first geologic repository required by NWPA is the only facility DOE is now authorized to site and use to

accept high-level radioactive waste. 1 It uses a repository loading schedule that can be met despite

technical or institutional difficulties, and an aggres-

&e implementation program designed to reduce

the risk of extended delays in the repository program. In particular, it adds one backup site to those

required by NWPA at critical siting steps. The

OTA Mission Plan would ask for new legislative

authority to construct MRS facilities or alternative

disposal facilities only as a last resort, if major problems call into question the feasibility of geologic

disposal.

The repository program in the OTA Mission

Plan differs from that in DOE’s Drafit Mission Plan

in three key respects: the repository loading schedule, the repository siting strategy, and the strategy

for developing the first repository. The issues in

these areas are discussed in the remainder of this

section; issues concerning the role of the MRS are

discussed in the following section, which deals with

the separate MRS proposal required by NWPA.

Repository Loading Schedule

A schedule for loading the geologic repositories

is needed as a basis for contractual commitments

by DOE to accept waste from utilities. The crucial

decision concerning the repository loading schedule

is the balance between the degree of certainty that

‘ NWPA requires DOE to site and license a second repository, and

limits the amount of waste that can be emplaced in the first before

the second begins operating. NWPA does not explicitly authorize construction of the second repository.

the schedule can be met, and the promised speed

of the schedule. The more optimistic the schedule

for contractual commitments, the more likely it will

be that they cannot be met using the first geologic

repository, @@@other means will be needed to

meet Federal obligations. DOE’s Draft Mission

Plan uses an optimistic repository schedule that can

be met only if no significant delays are encountered.

If all goes well, loading at the repository (using limited packaging facilities) would begin by 1998, the

year in which NWPA requires initial disposal in

the first repository. Operation of full-scale facilities

would begin by about 2001. DOE does not specify

when loading might begin if there are problems or

delays.

The OTA Mission Plan also uses the 1998 target as a management goal for initial disposal of a

small amount of waste packaged during the technology development program. However, it bases

contractual commitments with utilities on a conservative schedule for full-scale repository operation. This loading schedule can be met despite the

delays that can be expected in the effort to site the

first repository. Specifically, OTA concludes that

use of an aggressive implementation program

(discussed below) can give considerable confidence that the two repositories required by

NWPA can be operating full-scale by 2008 and

2012, respectively, even if significant delays are

encountered. If such delays do not materialize, fullscale loading could begin years earlier, and the actual schedule could match that proposed by DOE.

Repository Siting Program

The credibility of any repository loading schedule

depends on the credibility of the implementation

program supporting it. The major decision concerning the implementation. program is the balance

between the initial costs of the program and the certainty of getting the job done without major problems or delays. This is particularly important in

the repository siting program.

DOE’s Draft Mission Plan uses a reactive approach in its implementation program. In particular, the siting program considers only the number

of sites required by NWPA: that is, for each repository, three sites would be investigated at depth

(“characterized”), and one site would be recom-
Ch. 7—Executive Summary ● 5

mended for licensing. Backups would be developed

only after it is certain they are needed. This strategy is unchanged from the one in use before the

NWPA made a commitment to a schedule for operation of a repository.

By contrast, the OTA Mission Plan uses a preventive approach involving development of backup

sites before they might be needed, to minimize the

delays that could result if there are difficulties with

the primary candidate sites. In particular, it provides for characterization of four sites, and recommendation of two for licensing, for each repository.

Adding one backup to the number of sites

NWPA requires at each stage significantly reduces the risk that the siting process will be delayed by problems at any one site. This approach

may cost more at the start, but over the long run

its financial and political costs may well be less than

those of a program that makes no allowance for major delays or problems. Among those potential costs

is the risk that programmatic failures could damage the credibility of the Federal program. Thus

any extra initial costs can be seen as the price of

insurance against these difficulties. Congress may

therefore wish to ask DOE to analyze the additional

cost of this approach, if any, and its effectiveness

in raising the confidence of the proposed repository loading schedule.

Technology Development Plan

In DOE’s Draft Mission Han, the schedule for

developing the final designs for the repository and

waste package is driven by the optimistic repository loading schedule, which requires rapid construction of packaging facilities at the site after the

Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) construction authorization is granted. This approach makes

initial disposal dependent on the construction schedule of the packaging facilities. The pressure to complete those facilities in time to meet the 1998 deadline may preclude use of one of the new integrated

system designs now under development that have

the potential for significantly reducing the costs and

impacts of waste management.

To avoid this potential problem, the OTA Mission Plan suggests that the first repository be developed in two phases. A small-scale demonstration phase would begin as soon as allowed by NRC

following its approval of a construction authorization. This would involve licensed emplacement of

a small amount of waste packaged during the repository research, development, and demonstration

(RD&D) program using a conservative system design, one that emphasizes certainty in meeting

NRC’s requirements for disposal, rather than overall efficiency of waste management operations.

The full-scale operational phase would begin after

the development and licensing of an integrated, optimized system design that takes advantage of the

most advanced available technology to reduce the

risks, costs, and impacts of the entire waste management operation, from discharge of spent fuel

from the reactor to final disposal in a repository.

Planning for initial licensed disposal before the repository’s own packaging facilities are constructed

maximizes the likelihood that the 1998 deadline will

be met, and allows the schedule for construction

of those facilities to be determined by the time required for an aggressive RD&D program to develop

the integrated system design.

The Monitored Retrievable

Storage Proposal

It now appears that MRS facilities will not

be necessary for safe waste management. NWPA

requires that the utilities themselves provide interim

spent fuel storage until a repository is available.

This storage can probably be provided at reactor

sites, even after the 1998 deadline. OTA’s Mission

Plan provides for MRS facilities to be available as

a long-term backup to repositories, but only in the

event that major unanticipated difficulties are

encountered with geologic disposal.

The major storage issues to be addressed in both

the Mission Plan and the MRS proposal are when

and whether DOE should be authorized to construct a centralized MRS facility, and what role it

would play in the integrated waste management system. OTA’S analysis suggests that, to aid congressional deliberations, the MRS proposal submitted

by DOE should evaluate at least three alternatives:

1. Early siting, licensing, and construction of

an MRS facility. This option, which is implicit in DOE’s Draft Mission Han, would re-
6 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

2.

3.

quire congressional authorization in the near

future. It would allow DOE to accept waste

on a large scale beginning in 1998, even if

there are delays in the repository program. It

involves a commitment of additional manpower and resources over the next decade, above

and beyond those already involved in the repository siting process.

Federal at-reactor storage beginning in

1998. This might be accomplished through

rulemaking, by modifying contracts with utilities to provide that the Federal radioactive

waste program would pay the costs of additional storage beyond the contractual delivery date, thus spreading the costs of delays in

the repository program among all utilities paying the waste disposal fee. If so, no congressional action would be required.

Deferral of the decision on a centralized

MRS facility until at least 1990, when the

first repository site is to be recommended

to Congress. This allows the decision to be

made based on much more information about

storage options, integrated waste management

system designs, and the progress of the repository program than is currently available. It

also avoids the risk that an early effort to site

a large-scale storage facility would delay the

repository program. This option would require no congressional action at this time.

Alternative Means of

Financing and Management

NWPA also requires DOE to submit a study of

alternative institutional mechanisms for financing

and managing the radioactive waste system, including the options of an independent agency or even

a private corporation. A public advisory committee established by DOE to address this subject recommended consideration of a federally chartered

public corporation. OTA’s analysis suggests that

the credibility of NWPA’s commitment to the

development of a first-of-a-kind technological

system on a firm schedule could be significantly

enhanced by the establishment of an independent waste management agency with more funding and management flexibility than is typical

in a Federal program. The more independent the

institution and its funding, the surer the guarantee that a complex program will be carried out on

schedule and will not be disrupted by other fiscal

or political priorities of the Federal Government.

Balancing independence and accountability

is a key challenge in designing an independent

waste management agency. A congressionally approved Mission Plan could serve as the principal

mechanism for balancing effective congressional

control with increased flexibility of operation. In

fact, it may not be possible to gain broad support

for the creation of an independent institution with

independent funding until a generally accepted

Mission Plan—one that spells out exactly what the

agency is to do—is developed. If it were formally

approved by Congress, the Mission Plan could

serve as the main yardstick for overseeing the activities and expenditures of tbe waste management

agency and for measuring its progress. Since approval of the Mission Plan is not now required by

NWPA, consideration of mechanisms for such approval might be included in any congressional deliberations on establishing an independent waste

management agency.

BACKGROUND

When the 97th Congress began considering com- mately 8,000 metric tons (tonnes) of commercial

prehensive waste management legislation in 1981, spent (used) nuclear fuel, containing highly radiothere were 74 commercial nuclear powerplants in active waste products, had already been generated.

operation in the United States, and some 85 addi- Yet the United States still had not decided how to

tional plants were under construction. Approxi- deal with the problem of isolating those waste prod-
Ch. I—Executive Summary ● 7

ucts from the environment for the thousands of

years required for the radioactivity of the waste to

decay to low levels.

Nearly all of the spent fuel produced thus far by

commercial nuclear powerplants is temporarily

stored in water-filled basins at operating reactors.

The original expectation—that all spent fuel would

be reprocessed to recover usable uranium and plutonium, and that the radioactive byproducts would

be separated as high-level waste—has not been realized. It now appears possible that much of the spent

fuel will be discarded directly as waste (see fig. l-l).

The lack of final isolation facilities raised two key

problems for the nuclear industry. First, some critics questioned the continued use of nuclear power,

arguing that the failure to develop final isolation

facilities was evidence that waste isolation might

be an insoluble problem. Second, the lack of reprocessing or disposal facilities to accept spent fuel

left utilities that owned nuclear reactors with a

growing spent fuel storage problem. In the near

term, operating reactors were running out of storage space, and some faced the possibility of having to shut down unless additional storage capacity were made available in a timely manner. In the

longer term, the absence of a firm schedule for either reprocessing or turning spent fuel over to the

Federal Government left utilities uncertain about

how much additional storage capacity they would

have to provide, when they would end their liability for growing inventories of spent fuel, and how

much storage and disposal would ultimately cost.

The storage problem was complicated by increasing opposition to the efforts of utilities and the Federal Government to provide additional storage capacity. This opposition resulted from concern that

the easy availability of interim storage would reduce the pressure for developing a Federal disposal

system, thereby turning interim storage facilities

into de facto permanent waste repositories. This

opposition, in turn, had increased utilities’ fears

that they might not be able to gain approval for

additional storage facilities quickly enough to prevent reactor shutdowns.

The problems facing the nuclear industry, combined with the broader societal concern that nuFigure 1-1.–The Nuclear Fuel Cycle

f

Reactor

/

Interim storage

/

I

UF6 conversion

I

I

Ja

I i

I /

I /

I I

+ I

/’

Milling

A

Front end Back end

Fuel cycle today

Prospective “closed” fuel cycle

The commercial nuclear fuel cycle includes activities for preparing

and using reactor fuel and for managing spent fuel and other radioactive wastes produced in the process. It was originally intended that

spent fuel be stored for 6 months in water-filled basins at reactor sites

to dissipate thermal heat and allow decay of short-lived fission products. The spent fuel would then be reprocessed and the resultant

liquid high-level waste solidified and disposed of in a Federal repository. Since no repository has been developed and no commercial reprocessing is being done, spent fuel will remajn in storage until repositories are available to close the nuclear fuel cycle.

SOURCE: Council on Environmental Quality.
8 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive waste

clear waste be dealt with responsibly, generated

considerable pressure to proceed promptly to develop final isolation facilities. The challenge facing Congress was to develop a comprehensive waste

management policy: one that dealt with interim

storage in the context of final isolation and provided

the stability of purpose and direction that had been

lacking in previous Federal waste management

efforts.

Earlier problems in the Federal program complicated the development of such a policy. First,

some doubted that the existing Federal institutional

arrangements were capable of successfully implementing waste management policy over a period

of decades. Second, the distrust that had developed

between the Federal Government and those States

affected by waste management activities seriously

complicated efforts to reach agreement on a program for siting permanent repositories. On the one

hand, potential host States and other groups feared

that the Federal Government might cut corners,

simply to be able to say that the problem had been

solved. On the other hand, some in the Federal

Government feared that a: least some States might

seek to block any waste management activities

within their borders, no matter what assurances of

safety were provided.

Congress addressed all of these problems in

NWPA by including measures that specify:

1.

2.

3.

a comprehensive Federal policy for high-level

radioactive waste management that spells out

the responsibilities of the utilities and the Federal Government;

relationships between the Federal Government and the States and Indian tribes affected

by waste management activities; and

improvements in the institutional mechanisms

through which the Federal Government will

carry out that policy.

These measures are summarized briefly below, as

background for discussion of the issues that remain

to be resolved during implementation of the Act.

THE NUCLEAR WASTE POLICY ACT OF 1982

Waste Management Policy

Final Isolation of Nuclear Waste

NWPA establishes a schedule for DOE to site,

and for NRC to decide on licenses for, two geologic

repositories (see fig. 1-2) for permanent disposal

of civilian high-level radioactive waste. This schedule requires that DOE begin disposing of waste at

the first repository not later than January 31, 1998.

The repositories are to be able to handle both commercial spent fuel and high-level waste from reprocessing. They are also to be used for high-level waste

from defense nuclear activities unless the President

determines that separate repositories for defense

waste are needed. (A draft DOE study concludes

that disposing of defense and commercial wastes

in the same repositories would be the most costeffective option. )

The two repositories required by the Act appear to be both necessary and sufficient to dispose of the waste from commercial reactors that

are now operating or under construction, as well

as currently projected amounts of defense highlevel wastes. Nearly 30 years of study have revealed no insurmountable technical obstacles to the

successful development of mined geologic repositories, although suitable sites must still be found.

OTA believes that small-scale disposal could

begin by the 1998 target for initial operation of

the first repository, if a suitable site can be selected

from among those under investigation at the time

NWPA was passed. (Measures to increase the likelihood of success are discussed below.) OTA also

concludes that an expanded siting and development program can give considerable confidence

that the two repositories required by NWPA

could be operating at full scale by no later than

2008 and 2012, respectively, even if there are

major delays or if backup sites must be used.2

‘These dates are conservative in corr parison with DOE’s schedule

for the second repository, which sugges s that a repository using a site

and a geologic medium not among the}.e under consideration for the

first repository could be available by 2005.
Ch. I—Executive Summary ● 9

Figure 1-2.–Mined Geologic Disposal Concept

The site

-’

Backfill

,, Overpack

Container

Waste

form

(e.g., salt, basalt, granite, tuff)

The

system

Mined geologic disposal will use a system comprised of engineered

barriers (the waste package and the mined repository) and naturally

occurring barriers (the host rock formation and the chemical and

physical properties of the reposito~ site itself) to provide long-term

isolation of waste from the biosphere. Three decades of extensive

study have revealed no insurmountable technical obstacles to the

development of mined geologic repositories, provided suitable sites

are found.

SOURCE: Department of Energy.

OTA’s review of the history of the waste management program concludes that a commitment in

law to a firm schedule for operation of a Federal

disposal facility (as enacted in NWPA) would play

a central role in a comprehensive, broadly supported waste management policy. This commitment is needed for three major reasons. First, the

history of opposition to proposals for Federal storage facilities suggests that, to satisfy public concerns, it will be necessary to develop permanent disposal facilities (see box). Second, a firm and

believable schedule for a repository decreases concern that spent fuel would remain in interim storage indefinitely, a major source of resistance to past

efforts to provide additional interim storage. Finally, the key measures needed to give that commitment credibility (i. e., an aggressive implementation program involving backup repository sites and

disposal technologies) would address a major concern about the Federal waste management program

in the past—the concern that crucial decisions might

be compromised by the lack of options.

Interim Storage of Spent Fuel

NWPA gives utilities that operate nuclear reactors the primary responsibility for storing spent fuel

until it can be delivered to a permanent repository.

The Act also contains measures to help utilities provide such storage at reactor sites using new dry storage technologies (see fig. 1-3). DOE now expects

that these measures can preclude the need to use

the 1,900 tonnes of ‘‘last resort’ Federal storage

capacity, which the Act makes available to utilities that are unable to provide their own storage

in time to prevent disruption of reactor operations.

The Act also ensures that long-term storage

under active human control will be available, if

needed. It requires DOE to submit to Congress a

proposal for construction of one or more MKS facilities, including an analysis of the need for such

facilities, their feasibility, and how they might be

integrated into the waste management system. The

role of retrievable storage in the waste management

98-948 0 - 85 - 2 : QL 3
10 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Leve/ Radioactive Waste

Figure 1=3.—Dry Storage Concepts for Spent Fuel

—

I --

-W&f?

Each drywell would hold a steal canister containing about 0.5 Each cask would c

tonnea of apent fual (1 or 2 fuel assemblies depending upon 52 assemblies),

the type of reactor).

3“

=

n about 10 tonnes of spent fuel (24 to

II Iiceneed, dry storage lechnologiee like these may provide a relatlvaly Inexpensive, flexible alternative to waler.filled be]ina for m

There appear to be no fundamental technical questions about the ability to design, construct,

and operate storage facilities for spent fuel or reprocessed waste to meet applicable ‘adiation

protection standards, as long as continuing surveillance and maintenance of the facilities is

provided. Safe storage in water basins has already been demonstrated for periods of up to

20 years. New dry storage technologies (storage casks, drywells, and concrete silos) that can

be added in small increments or modules as needed are potentially much more flexible, quicker

to implement, and less expensive for at-reactor use than water basins.

SOURCE: Office of Technology Assessment.

system is an important issue that remains to be

resolved. However, the Act requires disposal in geologic repositories to proceed, regardless of what is

done about MRS facilities.

It now appears that MRS facilities will not be

necessary for safe management of high-level radioactive waste unless major unexpected difficulties with geologic disposal are encountered.

NRC has determined that spent fuel can be safely

stored at reactor sites for at least 30 years after the

reactor is decommissioned. Analysis by OTA indicates that if the two repositories required by the

Act are operating at full scale by 2008 and 2012,

respectively, spent fuel could be removed from all

reactor sites within 10 to 15 years after the reactors

are expected to cease operation. MRS or other

backup isolation facilities, if operating by the same

dates, would provide the same margin of safety.

Relations With States

Indian Tribes

and

State and Tribal Role in Siting Decisions

NWPA requires DOE 1:0 engage in an extensive

process of consultation with States and affected Indian tribes throughout the repository site selection

and development process. The Act gives the State

or tribe the right to veto the President’s selection

of a repository site, a veto that can only be overridden by joint action of both Houses of Congress.

Similar provisions apply to other waste management facilities addressed by the Act. Because of the

distrust that had arisen between the Federal waste

program and the States, legislated guarantees of

clearly specified rights in the siting process were

needed to provide a stable basis for intergovernmental relations during the implementation of the

Act.
Ch. l—Executive Summary ● 1 1

Impact Compensation

Waste management activities will produce many

of the negative impacts associated with other industrial activities, such as the “boomtown” effects

of large construction projects in small communities, as well as less familiar ones arising from the

radioactive nature of the waste. NWPA requires

DOE to make payments from the Nuclear Waste

Fund (see below) to States, affected Indian tribes,

and in some cases local governments, to compensate for the negative impacts of development and

operation of waste management facilities. These arrangements should help assure those States and localities that they will not bear a disproportionate

share of the burden of radioactive waste management. However, there will probably be positive impacts as well. For example, the first repository—

which is likely to be the first such facility in the

world—may become an international research center on high-level radioactive waste disposal. Such

a center would produce long-term benefits for the

community that might offset the more immediate

but short-term adverse impacts of repository construction.

Institutional Measures

Waste Disposal Fee

DOE estimates that the total program outlays for

high-level radioactive waste management through

the year 2028 could range from as little as $16 billion to as much as $114 billion, depending on inflation and technical variations. A middle range,

assuming 3 percent inflation, is from $35 billion

to $64 billion.

To provide the assured source of funds to maintain steady progress over a period of decades,

NWPA establishes a Nuclear Waste Fund financed

by a mandatory fee on nuclear-generated electricity. The fee is initially set at 1 mill (O. 1 cent) per

kilowatt-hour. The rate must be reviewed annually

by the Secretary of Energy and adjusted as needed

to ensure that the full costs of the Federal waste disposal program are recovered. (Studies by DOE and

the Congressional Budget Office conclude that some

fee increase will likely be needed to cover inflation

and possible increases in program costs, ) This arrangement allows funding levels to be determined

by the legislated goals, rather than having the

achievable goals limited by the availability of funds,

as occurred in the past. In return for this fee, DOE

is required to sign contracts with utilities to dispose

of waste after the first geologic repository is available. DOE will take title to the waste at the owner’s

site and transport it to the repository for disposal.

Single-Purpose Waste Management Office

NWPA establishes within DOE a single-purpose

OffIce of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management,

headed by a Presidential appointee and separate

from the other nuclear activities of DOE. This step

will help to insulate the program from the competition for manpower and policy-level attention that

has adversely affected the program in the past. It

could also help to provide the degree of central, integrated planning and management that is needed

to meet long-term commitments on schedule. At

the same time, the Act requires DOE to submit a

study of alternative means of financing and managing the waste management program, including

such options as establishing a private corporation.

Radioactive Waste Management

Mission Plan

NWPA also requires DOE to submit to Congress

a detailed Mission Plan for fulfilling the requirements of the Act. Such a Plan would provide a key

tool for program management and for congressional

oversight of DOE’s waste management activities.

In OTA’S view, development of a highly credible Mission Plan is the crucial next step in building confidence that the job of waste management

will get done in a safe and timely manner. The

issues to be resolved in the Mission Plan are discussed below.
12 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

REMAINING ISSUES

Issues in the Mission Plan

According to NWPA, the Mission Plan is intended to provide ‘‘an informational basis sufficient

to permit informed decisions to be made. To do

this, the Mission Plan needs to identify the key strategic decisions and options involved in developing

the proposed waste management system, and to

provide information and analysis to support a

choice among the options. The major strategic

issues in the Mission Plan concern:

1. the long-term waste management plan—a

plan for transferring spent fuel or high-level

waste from the owners’ storage facilities to

Federal disposal facilities—involving a repository loading schedule, a plan for spent fuel

storage after 1998, and a plan for providing

long-term alternatives if major difficulties are

encountered with geologic repositories; and

2. the implementation program for carrying out

that plan, involving a repository siting program and a technology development program.

The choices among options for the repository

schedule and the technology development and repository siting strategies represent key decisions in

the Mission Plan. Because the implications are

so significant, the Mission Plan should include

a comparative evaluation of alternative repository development and siting strategies, including

those developed in the OTA Mission Plan. This

would enable Congress to evaluate the strategy selected by DOE in the light of a more detailed comparison of alternatives than OTA was able to perform. It would also allow DOE to explain and

justify its choices, thereby increasing the credibility

of the Mission Plan and the entire waste management program. The Draft Mission Plan published

in 1984 does not explain the choices DOE has

made, nor does it evaluate alternatives to those

choices.

In OTA’S view, development by DOE of an

achievable, responsive Mission Plan is the crucial next step for stabilizing the waste management program and for establishing the necessary

level of confidence and support. If the Mission

Plan leaves some affected parties strongly dissatisfied with the way major questions are resolved,

there will be a continued risk of future policy shifts

like those that have characterized the program in

the past, and the credibility of long-term Federal

commitments will suffer. An acceptable Mission

Plan might provide a key tool for program management and for congressional oversight of DOE’s

waste management activities, but dissatisfaction

would probably result in strong opposition to giving the program greater managerial and financial

independence than it already has. In fact, it may

not be possible to gain broad support for the creation of an independent waste management organization until a widely accepted Mission Plan

is developed.

While analyzing NWPA, OTA identified the basic elements of a Mission Plan that meets these requirements. This “OTA Mission Plan” is conservative in goals but aggressive in action, and OTA

believes that it will be widely regarded as feasible

and achievable. Its major elements are summarized

below, in order to support OTA’s conclusion that

there is at least one workable approach to managing nuclear waste using the authority provided by

NWPA. In general, it represents an expansion,

rather than a redirection, of the approach DOE followed in the past and presented in the Draft Mission Han. DOE can proceed with its ongoing repository development activities without precluding

consideration of the strategic options suggested by

OTA.

The following discussion highlights the key strategic choices to be made in implementing NWPA

and identifies areas in which additional analysis by

DOE would provide valuable information for congressional deliberations.

Repository Loading Schedule

Geologic repositories are the only facilities

authorized and required by NWPA for DOE to use

for fulfilling its legal responsibility for waste disposal. For this reason, the repository program is

the heart of the OTA Mission Plan. The crucial

decision concerning the repository loading schedule
Ch. l—Executive Summary ● 1 3

is the balance between the degree of certainty that

the schedule can be met, and the promised speed

of the schedule. Developing a geologic repository

involves many first-of-a-kind technical and institutional steps. The faster the promised schedule, the

less margin there is for delays or problems at any

of these steps, and the less confident one can be

that the schedule can be met.

DOE’s Draft Mission Plan uses a repository

schedule that can only be met if no significant delays are encountered. Initial loading at the first repository is scheduled to begin in 1998, the date

NWPA requires, with full-scale operation expected

by about 2001. DOE does not specify when loading

might begin if there are serious problems or major

delays. Questions about the credibility of the Federal waste management program in the past have

stemmed in part from similarly optimistic schedules

that have not been met. The credibility of DOE’s

Mission Plan would be enhanced if contractual

commitments do not assume that everything will

go right the first time.

OTA concludes that small-scale operation of

the first repository probably can begin by the

NWPA deadline of January 31, 1998, if a

suitable site can be found from among those already under consideration at the time the Act

was passed. The OTA Mission Plan therefore uses

this date as a management target for initial operation, to maintain pressure for steady progress

towards a licensed repository site. It also includes

additional measures, discussed below, to increase

confidence in that target.

Although NWPA establishes a deadline for initial disposal in a repository, however, it does not

specify how quickly the full-scale transfer of waste

from utilities to the repository is to occur. The Mission Plan needs to do so. This repository loading

schedule then becomes the basis for contractual

commitments, in order to give utilities a basis for

planning interim storage. The OTA Mission Plan

uses a conservative repository loading schedule

based on two repositories in full-scale operation by

2008 and 2012, dates that can be met despite major delays or problems. If the contingencies

allowed for in this schedule do not arise, fullscale operation could begin years earlier—perhaps as early

schedule.

as provided in DOE’s proposed

Repository Siting Strategy

The major issue in siting and developing the geologic repositories is the balance between: 1) the

desired degree of certainty that a repository will be

available without major delays; and 2) the initial

costs of the program, both financial and political.

It is impossible to both maximize the certainty

of the repository schedule and minimize the initial costs at the same time. The implementation

program in the OTA Mission Plan emphasizes certainty and places great weight on the importance

of minimizing the risk of major programmatic delays. This approach increases the level of confidence in the repository schedule and perhaps

reduces overall costs, but it may also increase

the initial costs. The repository siting strategy is

crucial to this approach.

DOE’s Draft Mission Plan provides for considering only the number of sites required by NWPA

at key stages of the siting process. Specifically, three

sites would be characterized for each repository, and

one site would be submitted to NRC for construction authorization. This is unchanged from the program that was in place before NWPA made a major Federal commitment in law to operating a

repository on a firm date. OTA’s analysis indicates that expanding that program to include

one additional site at those key stages is both

necessary and sufficient to substantially increase

the level of confidence that the new commitment

made by NWPA will be met.

The siting process is the principal source of uncertainty in the repository program. Because there

is no previous experience with most of the technical and institutional problems involved, there is no

consensus on how much time will be required to

complete each stage or the likelihood that a given

site will be rejected at any stage. The best way to

increase confidence that major delays will be

avoided, in the face of these uncertainties, is to carry

more than the required number of sites through

each stage. This ensures that backups are available

without delay if needed, so that extended delays
14 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

or failures at any one site will not hold up the entire process.

The OTA Mission Plan includes a siting program that exceeds the requirements of NWPA in

two principal areas: characterizing four sites for

each repository, instead of three; and recommending two sites for each construction authorization,

rather than one. Using an expanded siting strategy significantly increases the likelihood of meeting

the 1998 deadline for initial operation. This strategy is the principal assumption underlying OTA’s

conclusion that the first repository could be in fullscale operation by 2008 despite difficulties with

some sites.

NWPA requires that characterization be completed at three sites before one can be recommended. Beginning the characterization stage with

four sites allows a site to be recommended as soon

as the fastest three sites are finished; if only three

sites are characterized, the schedule depends on

progress at the slowest site. Similarly, submitting

two sites to NRC for licensing, rather than one,

means that construction could proceed as soon as

either site receives authorization.

It is also possible that NWPA may be interpreted

as requiring three sites that, after characterization,

appear suitable for licensing, before one can be recommended for licensing. Characterizing four sites

provides insurance against the delay that could result from a lawsuit to resolve this question. This

approach also increases the credibility of the State

veto provisions of NWPA by increasing the

likelihood that Congress will have a readily available alternative, if and when it has to decide

whether to overrule a State’s objection to the final

site. (The Act requires DOE to recommend a second site within one year in the event that Congress

upholds a State objection. This can only be done

if a second suitable site is available from among the

first set of sites that are characterized. )

The OTA Mission Plan calls for only one additional site at each stage for reasons of cost effectiveness. Again, the Act requires characterization

of three sites before one can be recommended; even

if there is only a 20 percent risk of delay or rejection at an individual site during characterization,

there would be nearly a 50 percent risk of delay

in having all three sites ready for the next stage.

Adding a fourth site during characterization reduces

that overall risk to 18 percent, a significant improvement, but adding a fifth site provides a smaller improvement, to 6 percent. Similarly, if there is a 20

percent risk that a single recommended site will be

rejected for construction authorization, recommending two sites reduces the risk to 4 percent,

while recommending a third reduces the risk only

to 1 percent.

OTA’s analysis suggests that the additional costs

of an expanded implementation program would

produce offsetting benefits that are not readily

quantifiable. First, it increases the credibility of the

process by allaying concerns that key decisions

might be compromised by lack of suitable alternatives. Second, it substantially reduces the risk that

the credibility of the Federal program might be

damaged by major delays in the repository program. Because of its troubled history, any major

programmatic failure—real or perceived—could

have grave consequences for both the waste management program and the continued use of nuclear

power. The greater initial costs of the OTA Mission Plan may thus be regarded as insurance for

a program that cannot afford any major failures

or delays. NWPA provides authority for such an

approach, as well as a source of funding that can

be adjusted to cover its costs. DOE’s Draft Mission Han, on the other hand, proposes measures

to speed up the repository development process, at

significant cost, but these measures do not provide

the insurance against major delays offered by consideration of additional sites.

Technology Development Strategy

The OTA Mission Plan calls for development

of the first repository to be accomplished in two

stages: 1) a demonstration phase, to show that a

licensable disposal technology exists; and 2) an

operational phase, to dispose of radioactive waste

on a large scale.

The demonstration phase would use a conservative system design that emphasizes certainty in

meeting regulatory requirements. A small amount

of waste (e. g., several hundred tonnes) would be

placed in conservatively designed packages during

the packaging and handling RD&D program required by NWPA. Permission would be requested
Ch. I—Executive Summary ● 7 5

from NRC to emplace this material in the repository as soon as possible following construction authorization—before the repository’s packaging facilities are built instead of after, as indicated in

DOE’s Draft Mission Plan. (If DOE builds an unlicensed test and evaluation facility at the repository site, as authorized by NWPA, the demonstration phase could be simply a licensed extension of

the activities conducted in that facility. ) Using a

conservative system design, involving low repository temperatures and a waste package whose lifetime exceeds NRC’s requirements, would reduce

the number of technical issues to be resolved before

initial licensed emplacement is allowed. This approach would allow early demonstration of both the

technology and the institutional steps required for

licensed disposal. It should thereby maximize the

likelihood of meeting NWPA’s 1998 target for initial repository operation.

The operational phase would use an optimized,

integrated system design, aimed at reducing the

overall risks, costs, and impacts of waste management operations, from discharge of spent fuel from

a reactor to final disposal in a repository. For example, recent analysis suggests that significant operational benefits, including substantially reduced

costs, might result from using a universal container—a package into which spent fuel would be placed

at the reactor and in which it would remain for all

subsequent waste management steps, unless it were

removed for reprocessing. Because this container

and other relatively new technologies will require additional RD&D, the schedule for the

operational phase would be determined by the

time required to develop and license an optimized system design.

This two-stage approach may increase initial

costs compared to DOE’s Draft Mission Plan, because it requires development of two disposal system designs and may defer full-scale operation for

a few years. At the same time, it may reduce total

costs in the long run because: 1) it removes the construction of the repository’s packaging facility from

the critical path for initial disposal; and 2) it thereby

avoids the risk that attempting to meet the 1998

deadline using those facilities, as proposed by DOE,

might preclude the use of a significantly improved

system design at the first repository. In addition,

it increases confidence in the schedule for full-scale

operation, because the conservative system design

could still be used if problems were encountered

with the optimized design.

Issues in the MRS Proposal

The second document to be submitted to the 99th

Congress is the MRS proposal, containing both designs for such facilities and an analysis of the need

for them and their feasibility. As noted earlier, it

now appears that MRS facilities will not be necessary for safe waste management unless major unexpected difficulties with geologic disposal are encountered. The OTA Mission Plan provides for a delayed decision to construct MRS facilities (or alternative disposal facilities) as a long-term backup

to repositories, in the event that major unanticipated difficulties are encountered with geologic

disposal.

The major storage issue to be considered in the

Mission Plan and the MRS proposal is whether to

authorize earlier construction of an MRS facility.

To facilitate congressional consideration of MRS

options, both the Mission Plan and the MRS proposal should evaluate at least three alternatives:

1

2.

Early siting, licensing, and construction of

an MRS facility. This could be done for several reasons: to provide a cushion against

delays in the repository program; to play an

operational role in an integrated waste management system; or to allow more time to be

taken in finding repository sites. This option,

which is implicit in DOE’s Draft Mission

Plan, would require congressional authorization in the very near future. It involves a major additional commitment of manpower and

resources over the next decade, which might

raise concerns that this effort would adversely

affect the repository siting process.

Federal at-reactor storage beginning in

1998. Under this option, the Nuclear Waste

Fund would pay the costs of additional storage beyond the contractual delivery date. This

avoids the costs of siting and licensing a large

new facility, and it would spread the costs of

delays in the repository program among all

utilities paying the waste disposal fee. This option might be accomplished through rulemaking, by modifying contracts with utilities; if
16 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

3.

so, no congressional action would be required.

This approach is compatible with a later decision to construct a centralized storage facility, if needed, but it would also allow planning for at-reactor storage as an integral part

of the waste management system. If it were

taken by DOE soon, it would separate the

equity issue of who should be responsible for

post-1998 interim storage from the technical

question of where that storage can best be

provided.

Deferral of the decision on a centralized

MRS facility until at least 1990, when DOE

expects to recommend the first geologic repository site to Congress. This allows enough

time to: 1) evaluate the demonstrations of atreactor dry storage technologies required by

NWPA; 2) complete the analysis of an optimized integrated waste management system

design that has recently been initiated by

DOE; and 3) determine from the results of

site characterization whether the repository

program can expect significant delays. It also

avoids the risk that an early effort to site a

large-scale storage facility would delay the repository program. If a decision were made in

1990 to construct an MRS facility, it could

begin operation by 2001, DOE’s current target date for operation of the full-scale loading

facilities for the first repository. Even if the

decision were made as late as 1998, it would

still allow alternative facilities to be available

quickly enough to remove spent fuel from reactor sites within 15 years after decommissioning. This option would require no congressional action at this time.

Institutional Issues

Finally, DOE will submit to the 99th Congress

a report on alternative institutional mechanisms for

financing and managing the commercial high-level

radioactive waste program. The central component

of NWPA is its commitment to developing a complex technological system, faced with technical and

institutional uncertainties, on a firm schedule extending over a period of decades. The confidence

in and credibility of this commitment could be

enhanced by establishing an independent waste

management agency with more funding and

management flexibility than is usual with a

typical Federal program. Creating such an agency

may be the best way to ensure that implementation of NWPA would not be adversely affected by

other fiscal and political priorities of the Federal

Government. In addition, separating this agency

from Federal activities that promote energy production could enhance the credibility of the program for those who see a conflict of interest between

such activities and the safe planning and development of a waste management system.

The degree of financial independence of the waste

management organization n will be of particular importance. NWPA insulates the revenues produced

by the waste management fee by establishing a separate Nuclear Waste Fund in the Treasury, limited

to carrying out the purposes of the Act. Although

the budget for the program is to be submitted and

expenditure levels authorized on a triennial basis,

the use of the Fund is subject to annual appropriations. Since annual budget control is not entirely

consistent with a commitment to steady progress

on a long-term schedule, any future deliberations

on establishing an independent waste management

agency will have to consider ways of providing such

an agency with greater budgetary independence.

Without such independence, there will be a risk that

considerations of the annual Federal budget (e. g.,

pressures to limit the temporary borrowing from

the Treasury that may be needed to balance the

flow of revenues and expenditures in the Waste

Fund) could lead to deferral or elimination of

planned expenditures. This could in turn jeopardize steady progress on a program whose schedule

has been fixed by contracts with utilities.

Achieving an acceptable balance between independence and accountability will be one of the

central challenges in designing such a waste

management authority. The more independent

the institution and its funding are, the surer the

guarantee that nuclear waste management activities will be carried out on schedule. But such an

institution raises a crucial and difficult question:

how to ensure the congressional oversight and public accountability that a democratic society demands. There may be considerable reluctance to
Ch. I—Executive Summary ● 1 7

establish a single-purpose agency with even greater

independence than the current institutional structure, for fear that it might be less responsive to the

concerns of Congress, the administration, and the

public.

The Mission Plan could serve as the principal

mechanism for balancing the need for adequate

congressional oversight with the need for increased flexibility of operation. Using the Mission Plan for this purpose could be easier and more

effective if there were a process by which Congress

could approve it. Since this is not now required by

NWPA, consideration of mechanisms for such approval might be included in any congressional deliberations on establishment of an independent

waste management agency.

If there were a mechanism for congressional approval of a Mission Plan, the function of the waste

management agency would be that of carrying out

a specific program, with specific goals that Congress has formally approved, and not that of developing broad waste management policy. This

might give Congress sufficient ongoing control to

warrant relaxation of normal annual budgetary

controls, thus increasing confidence that the waste

management program will have adequate funds

available when needed regardless of other Federal

budget priorities. Once congressional approval is

obtained, the agency could be authorized to make

expenditures from the Nuclear Waste Fund, as provided for in a multiyear budget contained in the

Mission Plan, without annual authorizations or appropriations. To ensure continued congressional

control, revision and reapproval of the Mission Plan

could be required at regular intervals (e. g., every

4 to 6 years).

The added independence that could be gained

under this approach might give the waste management agency the incentive to develop and carry out

a highly defensible and widely supported Mission

Plan. A regular process of review and reapproval

could increase public understanding of and support

for waste management activities. It would also allow

Congress to reconfirm its commitment, made in

NWPA, that there would be steady progress toward

the permanent disposal of high-level radioactive

waste.
Chapter 2

Radioactive Waste:

Its Nature and Management
Contents

Nature of Radioactive Waste . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Nuclear Reactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Nuclear Fuel Cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Amounts of Radioactive Waste . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Hazards of Radioactive Waste.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Institutional Aspects of Waste Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Federal Activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Non-Federal Involvement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

International Activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Chapter Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

TABLES

21

21

23

28

29

33

33

35

36

36

Table No. Page

2-1. Physical Characteristics of LWR Fuel Assemblies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

2-2. Current and Projected Inventories of Defense and Commercial

High-Level Radioactive Waste . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

FIGURES

Figure No. Page

2-1. Fission Process. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

2-2. Natural Background Radiation varies From State to State . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

2-3. Toxicity of Spent Fuel, High-Level Waste, and Its Parent Uranium Ore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

2-4. Toxicities of PWR Spent Fuel and Its Parent Uranium Ore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

2-5. Toxicities of PWR High-Level Waste and Its Parent Uranium Ore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
.-

Chapter 2

Radioactive Waste:

Its Nature and Management

Various forms of radioactive waste are produced

during the preparation, use, and management of

reactor fuel for the commercial production of electricity and for defense-related nuclear activities.

Radioactive waste is also produced in various industrial and institutional activities, including medical research and treatment. The focus of this assessment is the management of the highly radioactive

waste produced during the generation of commercial nuclear power.

In a nuclear powerplant, heat released when

atomic nuclei in reactor fuel are made to split (fission) is used to produce steam that powers an electricity-producing generator. This process creates

not only the heat needed for generating electricity,

but also radioactive byproducts that are present in

the “spent” (used) fuel discharged from the reactor.

The term high-level radioactive waste is used in this

report to refer to either the high-level waste material produced if the unused radioactive byproducts

are separated from the spent fuel for disposal or

the spent fuel itself if it is discarded directly as waste.

This chapter will describe the nature of radioactive

waste; its sources, amounts, and hazards; and the

technical and institutional aspects of its management.

NATURE OF RADIOACTIVE WASTE

Nuclear Reactions

Radioactivity

Some atoms, known as radioisotopes, are unstable (radioactive) and undergo a spontaneous decay

process, emitting radiation until they reach a stable

form. Called decay, this stabilizing process takes,

depending on the type of atom, from a fraction of

a second to billions of years. The rate of radioactive

decay is measured in half-lives, the time it takes

for half the atoms in a sample to decay to another

form. After 1 half-life, half the atoms in a sample

are unchanged; after 2 half-lives, one-fourth of the

original amount remains unchanged. Thus, after

several half-lives only a small fraction of the sample’s original atoms remain unchanged; yet the

sample may still be quite radioactive—either because some atoms have not decayed or because

some atoms have decayed to other radioisotopes.

The intensity of radioactivity in a sample is determined by the number of emissions, or disintegrations, per second and usually is measured in curies

(1 curie = 37 billion radioactive disintegrations per

second). From this standard, three common measurements are derived: the nanocurie ( 1 billionth of

a curie), the microcurie (1 millionth of a curie), and

the megacurie (1 million curies). Elements with

shorter half-lives-like thorium-234 at 24.1 days—

are more radioactive than those with longer halflives—like uranium-238 (U238) at 4.5 billion years—

because the shorter the half-life, the more atoms

in a sample of the element decay and emit radiation each second.

Fission

Some radioisotopes are fissile-i.e., they can split

when neutrons are added to their nuclei or, in some

circumstances, spontaneously. Only one fissile element, uranium-235 (U235), exists in nature. Others

are produced artificially when ‘ ‘fertile’ atoms such

as U238 absorb neutrons and subsequently decay

to fissile isotopes, like plutonium-239 (Pu239) (see

fig. 2-l).

During fission, the nucleus splits into two smaller

nuclei called fission products, releasing neutrons,

radiation, and heat in the process. The released

21
22 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

Figure 2-1.- Fission Process

on Neutron

\ \

b, Radioactive ~

\ decay

U-235 (

\

SOURCE: Office of Technology Assessment.

neutrons can cause nearby atoms to split, and,

given enough fissionable material, an ongoing chain

reaction can begin. Such a chain reaction generates heat, primarily from the fission process itself

and secondarily from the subsequent decay of the

radioactive fission products. Uncontrolled, a nuclear chain reaction could end in an atomic explosion. In a nuclear reactor, however, the fissile atoms

(U235) are diluted with many non-fissile atoms

(U238 and other atoms that absorb neutrons so that

the chain reaction is maintained but cannot produce an explosion.

Produced in great quantities in a reactor are: 1)

transuranic (TRU) isotopes—atoms that absorb

enough neutrons to become heavier than uranium

atoms, and 2) fission products—isotopes lighter

\

on

\

isotope

than uranium atoms that are formed by the fission

of an atom. Generally, fission products are more

radioactive and have short half-lives, from seconds

to decades. TRU isotopes can have half-lives as long

as millions of years.

Effects of Radiation

Highly energetic radiation can penetrate human

tissue and other matter, triggering molecular and

chemical changes that can result in damage or death

to cells, tissue, or even the entire organism. The

extent of the damage depends on the type of radiation, the length of exposure, the distance from the

radiation source, and the susceptibility of the exposed cells. The principal concern about radioactive

waste is that it might be released into the environ-

.
Ch. 2—Radioactive Waste: /ts Nature and Management ● 2 3

ment and be taken into the body through drinking

water or food supplies, thus placing a source of radiation very close to vulnerable tissues.

Radiation exposure is measured in reins, a unit

that indicates the amount of radiation received and

the biological implications of the exposure. In a

year’s time, the average person in the United States

is exposed to approximately 160 millirems (thousandths of a rem) of radiation, two-thirds of which

comes from natural background sources such as

mineral ores, cosmic radiation from outer space,

and the radioactive carbon and potassium found

in most living things. Natural background radiation from outer space increases with land elevation

and is about twice as high for a person living in

Denver, Colo., as for a person living at sea level

(see fig. 2-2). Slightly less than one-third of this

annual exposure comes from medical irradiation

(X-rays).

An acute radiation dose—50 reins or more over

a 24-hour period—results in radiation sickness

within 1 hour to several weeks. The chance of death

is nearly 100 percent from a dose above 1,000 reins,

90 to 100 percent from 600 to 1,000 reins, and 50

percent from 400 reins. With a dose of 200 reins

or less, survival is almost certain. Other consequences range from gastrointestinal and circulatory

system disorders to long-term effects like cancer,

birth abnormalities, genetic defects, and poor general health. Long-term effects also result from

chronic exposure to low-level radiation. In radioactive waste disposal, the concern centers on the possibility of such chronic low-level exposures caused

by escaped waste, rather than acute doses.

The Nuclear Fuel Cycle

Several kinds of radioactive waste are generated

during all stages of the nuclear fuel cycle—from the

preparation of reactor ftlel (front-end of the cycle),

through the operation of the reactor, to the storage and possible reprocessing of spent reactor fuel

(back-end of the cycle). The following activities

comprise the nuclear fuel cycle for uranium both

as originally envisioned and as now in use in the

74 operating commercial nuclear powerplants in the

United States.

Figure 2-2.—Natural Background Radiation Varies From State to State (millirem per year)

n

SOURCE: A. W. Klement, Jr., Estimates of Ionizing Radiation Doses in the United States, 1%0-20U0, Environmental Protec.

tion Agency Publication No. ORP/CDS 72-1, 1972.
24 . Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

Front End of the Fuel Cycle:

Preparation of Reactor Fuel

MINING

Uranium ore, the raw material of reactor fuel,

is extracted from surface and underground mines,

producing low-level radioactive dust and releasing

radioactive gas.

MILLING

At mills the uranium ore is crushed and ground,

then chemically treated to extract uranium oxides

and produce yellowcake (USOB). The process generates low-level airborne wastes and a large volume

of slightly radioactive mill tailings.

CONVERSION AND ENRICHMENT

Yellowcake is converted to uranium hexafluoride

gas (UFG), leaving low-level waste solids. At enrichment facilities the concentration of U235 in the gas

is increased from the 0.7 percent found naturally

in uranium ore to the 3 to 4 percent needed for fuel

for the reactors in use in the United States. In the

process, low-level airborne and liquid waste are

produced.

FUEL FABRICATION

The enriched UFG gas is then converted to solid

uranium dioxide (UO2), shaped into pencil erasersize pellets, and loaded into 12-ft long metal fuel

rods. The rods are then sealed, arrayed in fuel assemblies of 50 to 300 rock, and transported to reactors. Low-level gas, liquid, and solid radioactive

waste remain.

Reactor Operation

The light-water reactor (LWR) is the principal

reactor type in commercial use in the United

States. i In the LWR, the fuel assemblies are immersed collectively in a coolant (water), where they

form the reactor core. The control rods interspersed

among the fuel rods control the number of nuclear

reactions in the reactor fuel. Heat from fission and,

to a lesser extent, from the decay of fission products is used to heat water to steam. In one type of

LWR, the boiling-water reactor (BWR), the steam

is produced directly from the cooling water surrounding the reactor core. In the other type, the

pressurized-water reactor (PWR), the cooling water

is pressurized to prevent boiling and is used instead

to transmit heat from the core to boil water in a

separate steam generator. In both types the steam

causes a turbine to rotate, generating the electric

power transmitted to consumers. A typical nuclear

powerplant produces about 1 million kilowatts

(kW), or 1 gigawatt (GWe), of electricity.

After about 3 years, the buildup of fission products and TRU elements in a fuel assembly impedes

the efficiency of the chain reaction. When the concentration of U235 in the fuel is less than 1 percent,

the assembly, considered “spent” fuel, is removed

and replaced with fresh fuel. A typical l-GWe

PWR discharges about 60 assemblies, or a total of

‘Seventy-three of the seventy-four commercial powerplants are

LWRS. The one high-temperature gas reactor at Fort St. Vrain, Colo.,

operates like an LWR but uses helium gas for its coolant. Another

type of reactor under consideration for future use is the breeder reactor, designed to produce more fissile material than it uses by converting nonfissi]e U238 in the fuel into plutonium, which would be extracted

through reprocessing and recycled as new fuel.
Ch. 2—Radioactive Waste: Its Nature and Management ● 25

about 27 metric tons (tonnes)z of spent fuel, each

year, while a 1-GW, BWR discharges about 175

assemblies, or 31 tonnes, annually.3 Table 2-1

shows the characteristics of BWR and PWR fuel

assemblies before and after irradiation in a reactor.

Because of the decay of the fission products and

TRU elements, spent fuel is extremely hot and radioactive when it is initially discharged from the —— ————.—

‘Note that only the mass of the initial uranium is considered in the

measurement of fuel amounts and not the mass of the rest of the

assembly. While this report will use the term ‘‘tonnes’ for simplicity,

other terms in common use are MTU (metric tons of uranium),

MTHM (metric tons of heavy metal), and MTIHM (metric tons of

initial heavy metal). A metric ton, or tonne, is equivalent to 1,000

kilograms, or about 2,205 pounds.

3N’ational Research Council, Waste Isolation Systems Panel, A

Study of the Isolation S)stem for Geologic Disposal of Radioactive

\Vastes (Washington, D. C.: National Academy Press, 1983), pp. 28-

29. See chapter note 1 for further discussion of the amounts of spent

fuel produced by the generation of 1 GW-year of electricity.

Table 2-1 .—Physical Characteristics

of LWR Fuel Assemblies

BWR PWR

Overall assembly length (m) . 4.470

Cross section (cm) . . . . . . . . . 13,9 x 13.9

Fuel pin array . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 x 8

Fuel pins/assembly . . . . . . . . 63

Nominal volume/

assembly (m3

) . . . . . . . . . . . 0.0864

Assembly total weight (kg) . . 275.7

Uranium/assembly (kg)

Initial. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183.3

Discharge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176.5

Enrichment (wt% U’3S)

Initial. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.75

Discharge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.69

Plutonium/assembly

at discharge (kg) . . . . . . . . . 1.54

Other TRU elements/assembly

at discharge (kg) . . . . . . . . . 0.10

Fission productslassembly

at discharge (kg) . . . . . . . . . 5.2

Average discharge burnup

(MW-d/tonne initial

uranium) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27,500

Average thermal power

(kW/assembly)

Discharge. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278

1 year after discharge . . . . 1.3

10 years after discharge . . 0.2

Average radioactivity

(megacuries)assembly)

Discharge. . ., . . . . . . . . . . . 28,3

1 year after discharge . . . . 0.35

10 years after discharge . . 0.06

4.059

21.4 X 21.4

17 x 17

264

0.186

657.9

461.4

441.2

3.20

0.84

4.18

0.43

15.7

33,000

1,017

4.7

0.5

102.0

1.16

0.18

SOURCE: Derived from data presented in A. G. Croff and C. W. Alexander, Decay

Characteristics of Once-Through LWR and LMFBR Spent Fuels, High.

Level Wastes, and Fue/ Assemb/y Structural Materia/ Wastes. ORNL/

TM-7431 (Oak Ridge, Term.: Oak-Rige National Laboratory, ‘1980)

g8-948 O - 85 - 3 : QL 3

reactor. For this reason it is stored in water basins

to provide the cooling and radiation shielding that

it requires. For example, freshly discharged spent

fuel from a PWR generates up to about 221 megacuries of radioactivity and 2.2 megawatts (MW)

of thermal heat per tonne.4 BWR fuel is slightly

less hot and radioactive, since it generally has a

lower “burnup’ —a measure of the amount of the

fissile material in the fuel that has been used before

discharge, and thus of the amount of radioactive

waste products it contains.

The heat output and radioactivity of spent fuel

decay rapidly in the first year after discharge, by

factors of 216 and 88, respectively, for PWR fuel.

The approximately 10 kW of heat emitted per tonne

after one year equates to that of one-hundred 100-

watt light bulbs. The heat and radioactivity decay

less rapidly after the first year, by additional factors of 8 and 6, respectively, by the end of 10 years

after discharge.

Backend of the Fuel Cycle: Spent Fuel

Management and Waste Isolation

At present, many of the activities envisioned to

treat and manage commercial spent fuel exist in

theory, based on extensive experience with defense

spent fuel, but not in practice. Thus, deciding what

to do with commercial spent fuel and the waste

products it contains is often referred to as “closing the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle. The

following section provides an overview of the existing and envisioned activities of the back end of

the fuel cycle.

REPROCESSING AND RECYCLE

Spent fuel contains much material of no discernible value, as well as uranium and plutonium, over

99 percent of which can be recovered through reprocessing and then recycled for reactor fuel. In

the reprocessing operation, spent fuel rods are

chopped into pieces and dissolved. From the solution all but 0.5 percent of the uranium and plutonium is extracted. If the recovered uranium were

recycled, it would be converted to uranium hexafluoride (UF6

) gas for reuse in producing fresh nu4A. G. Croff and C. W. Alexander, Decay Characteristics of Once7’hrough LWR and LMFBR Spent Fuels, High-Level Wastes, and

Fuel-Assembly Structural Material Wastes, ORNL/T’M-7431 (Oak

Ridge, Term.: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, November 1980).
— —

26 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

clear fuel. If the recovered plutonium were recycled, it would be converted to plutonium oxide

(PuO2) and combined with uranium to make mixed

oxide (MOX) fuel.

The leftover solution from reprocessing, highly

radioactive at 10,000 curies per gallon, contains primarily fission products and is defined as high-level

waste. It must, by regulation, be solidified before

disposal. Any recovered uranium or plutonium that

is not recycled must also be disposed of. Both reprocessing and MOX fuel fabrication generate substantial quantities of TRU wastes—materials contaminated with enough long-lived TRU elements

to require long-term isolation like high-level waste.

Defense spent fuel—from reactors designed to

produce plutonium for weapons and from the powerplants of nuclear naval vessels—routinely is reprocessed to recover plutonium and unused enriched uranium. The nuclear fuel cycle was

originally envisioned to include such reprocessing

for all commercial spent fuel. However, for economic and political reasons discussed in chapters

3 and 4, no commercial spent fuel is now being reprocessed in the United States. Of the three commercial reprocessing plants originally planned, only

the facility at West Valley, N. Y., actually operated

(from 1966 to 1972). It closed for modifications and

never reopened. The facility at Morris, Ill., had

design problems and never opened, and the facility at Barnwell, S. C., has never been completed.

Without commercial reprocessing there can be no

commercial recycling of uranium or plutonium.

WASTE MANAGEMENT

Nearly all the highly radioactive byproducts produced thus far by commercial nuclear power generation in the United States are contained in the

spent fuel that has been discharged by operating

reactors. The original expectation that all spent fuel

would be reprocessed to recover usable uranium

and plutonium, and that the radioactive byproducts

would be separated as high-level waste, has not been

realized. It now appears possible that at least some

spent fuel would be treated as waste and discarded

directly without reprocessing, which is often referred to as a “once-through” fuel cycle. Thus, the

term high-level radioactive waste is used in this report to refer to either the high-level waste from reprocessing or the spent fuel itself, if discarded as

waste. Because of the uncertain future of reprocessing, high-level radioactive waste management

at present can be seen as including: 1) management

of spent fuel until a decision is made about whether

to reprocess it, and 2) final isolation of the fission

products and unused TRU elements that are now

in the spent fuel and that may or may not be sepa~

rated later.

The high-level radioactive waste management

system is a network of facilities for storing spent
Ch. 2—Radioactive Waste: Its Nature and Management ● 2 7

fuel and any high-level waste from reprocessing,

facilities for final isolation of whichever material

is ultimately discarded, and transportation links

connecting those facilities with one another and with

any reprocessing and recycling activities that ultimately occur. Each of these activities will be described briefly here and discussed at greater length

in chapter 3.

Interim Storage. —When the reactors that now

are operating or under construction were designed,

it was assumed that spent fuel discharged from the

reactor would first be stored in water-filled storage

basins at the reactor for about 6 months to dissipate

the thermal heat and allow the decay of some of

the short-lived fission products. It was expected that

the spent fuel then would be reprocessed and the

resultant high-level liquid waste solidified and

shipped to a Federal repository for final isolation.

Since no commercial reprocessing is being done,

and no final waste repository exists that could allow

spent fuel to be discarded directly, practically all

spent fuel remains in storage basins at reactor sites.

Modifications are being made where possible to increase the amount of spent fuel that can be stored

in these basins, which originally were designed with

a capacity for only 3 to 5 annual discharges of spent

fuel. Transshipment (shipping spent fuel from one

reactor site for storage in a basin at another site)

and new storage technologies now under development promise additional relief (see ch. 3).

Because of the delays that have already occurred

in the availability of both reprocessing and final repositories, it appears likely that most (more than

90 percent) of the spent fuel generated in this century will still be in temporary storage facilities at

the end of the century—even if reprocessing or direct final isolation of spent fuel begins in the

1990’s.5 Thus, for the next several decades, waste

management will consist primarily of interim spent

fuel storage. Any reprocessing that occurs would

simply convert some of the stored spent fuel into

separated uranium and plutonium and waste of various types, all of which would require interim storage until final isolation of the waste and recycling

(or perhaps direct final isolation) of the plutonium

and uranium.

‘b’. S. Department of Energy, Spent Fuel and Radioactive Waste

In\cntories, Projections, and Characteristics, DOE/RW-0006, September 1984, fig. C .2, p, 284, and fig. C .3, p. 285.

Final Isolation.—Final isolation, the last step

in radioactive waste management, is intended to

limit or prevent the release of highly radioactive

byproducts of nuclear fission into the environment

for the thousands of years it takes for these byproducts to decay to low levels. There is no licensed final

isolation facility for high-level radioactive waste in

the world.

There are two conceptually distinct technological

approaches to waste isolation that could be used for

final isolation: storage and disposal. Briefly, disposal is isolation that relies primarily on natural

(environmental) and manmade barriers, does not

permit easy human access to the waste after its final

emplacement, and does not require continued human control and maintenance. Storage is isolation

that permits easy access to the waste after emplacement and requires continued human control and

maintenance to guarantee isolation. Thus, disposal

is always designed to provide final isolation, while

storage may be intended for either interim or final

isolation. G

Although some have viewed long-term storage

as a viable final measure for managing high-level

radioactive waste, 7 Federal Government policy

since the 1950’s has been directed primarily toward

the development of disposal facilities for final isolation. However, storage will of necessity be the only

form of waste management until the capacity for

disposal is available and may continue to be a major part thereafter—either because it is desirable

to defer disposal even after facilities are available

(e.g., to maintain easy access to spent fuel for possible reprocessing) or simply because an extended

period would be required to eliminate the backlogs

of waste built up in storage by the time disposal

operations begin.

In the United States, Government efforts are focused on the development of mined, geologic re-

——-—— . .—

6Much of the debate about radioactive waste managcmcmt has been

clouded by blurred and shifting distinctions between storage and disposal. In particular, storage is often defined as emplacement with the

intent to recover the material, while disposal is defined as emplacement with no intent to recover, a distinction which is based on a subjective criterion— the intention of the person emplacing the wastethat cannot be directly observed from inspection of the facility receiving

the waste. In contrast, the definitions used in this report are based

on the obser~’able design characteristics of the system under considerate ion.

7Sec app, A, p. 206.
28 ● Managing the Nation% Commercial High-Leve/ Radioactive Waste

positories for disposal, although other disposal alternatives, such as emplacement in the seabed, have

been and probably will continue to be considered.

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (NWPA)

commits the Federal Government to begin operation of a geologic repository by the beginning of

1998. Until the mid-1990’s, the activities associated with disposal will involve locating and evaluating suitable repository sites and developing disposal technology (see ch. 3).

Transportation. —Linking the stages of the nuclear fuel cycle are transportation activities that also

generate wastes, primarily from the contamination

of transport containers by the transported materials.

Because most commercial spent fuel is now stored

at reactor sites, very little transportation of commercial spent fuel occurs in this country at this time,

although some transshipment does take place.

Amounts of Radioactive Waste

High-Level Waste From Reprocessing

The principal source of high-level waste at present is the reprocessing of spent fuel from defense

nuclear activities. Such waste is stored as liquid,

salt cake, and sludge in near-surface tanks or as

calcined solids in underground bins at Federal installations at the Hanford Reservation (Washington), the Savannah River Plant (South Carolina),

and the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory.

A small amount of high-level waste, from reprocessing about 234 tonnes of commercial spent fuel,

is stored at the Nuclear Fuel Services facility in

West Valley, N.Y. Table 2-2 shows the existing and

projected amounts of high-level radioactive waste,

in terms of volume, radioactivity, and thermal power (the rate of heat output). Note that if reprocessing of spent fuel from commercial power reactors

is undertaken, it could rapidly become the dominant source of high-level waste.

Spent Fuel

By the end of 1983, about 10,000 tonnes of spent

fuel was in storage in water basins at nuclear power

reactors in the United States. Commercial spent

fuel was being generated at a rate of about 1,400

tonnes/yr in 1983, and the Department of Energy

(DOE) estimates the rate will reach about 2,300

tonnes/yr by 2000. This increase would result in

a total of about 21,000 tonnes by the end of 1990

and 43,000 tonnes by the end of 2000.8 The currently operating reactors can be expected to produce about 55,000 tonnes of spent fuel, or about

196,000 fuel assemblies, over their operating

lifetimes. g

*U. S. Department of Energy, op. cit.

‘Projections supplied by the U.S. Department of Energy. See app. F.

Table 2.2.-Current and Projected Inventories of Defense and Commercial High. Level Radioactive Waste

End of calendar year 1983 End of calendar year 2000

Volumea Radioactivity Thermal power Volumea Radioactivity Thermal power

Material (cubic meters) (megacuries) (kilowatts) (cubic meters) (megacuries) (kilowatts)

High-Level waste:

Defense:

Savannah River. . . . . . 111,000

Idaho . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10,000

Hanford . . . . . . . . . . . . 203,000

Defense total . . . . . . . 324,000

Commercial:

West Valley . . . . . . . . . 2,000

. . . . . . . . . . . . . 0

Spent fuel:

Cumulative . . . . . . . . . . . 4,600

(10,000 tonnes)

Annual . . . . . . . . . . . . . 620

(1,400 tonnes)

776

65

474

1,315

35

0

12,900

7,400

2,280

190

1,380

3,850

104

0

48,000

29,400

83,000

14,000

217,000

314,000

—

300

19,400

(42,800 tonnes)

1,050

(2,320 tonnes)

699

241

430

1,370

23

324

35,700

13,700

2,040

726

1,256

4,022

68

1,106

131,000

55,300

aspent fuel volumes calculated Using a nominal volume of O.OSM m“ for a BWR assembly and 0.186 m’ for a PWR assembl}. (DOE/NE-0017/2, table 19! P 32)

bAssumes a first reprocessing plant starts operation in 1995 at 500 tonnelyr through 2004.

SOURCE U S Department of Energy, Spent Fuel and Radioactive waste /inventories, Projections, and Characteristics, DOEIFIW-0006, Washington, DC., 1984.
Ch. 2—Radioactive Waste: Its Nature and Management ● 29

The total volume of existing and projected commercial spent fuel discharges is shown in table 2-

2. Because most of the high-level defense waste is

relatively dilute, and has not been concentrated and

solidified, the current inventory of commercial

spent fuel represents only about 1 percent of the

volume of such defense waste. However, the current inventory of spent fuel already has a considerably higher level of radioactivity and heat output than the defense waste, and the annual

discharge from the currently operating reactors exceeds the total defense waste inventory in those two

measures. This is very significant for waste management, since the heat output is a more important factor than the physical volume of the waste

in determining the amount of repository space

needed for disposal.

Hazards of Radioactive Waste

Comparison of Nuclear Waste to Uranium

While the original uranium in reactor fuel is itself

a low-level health hazard, many of the radioisotopes

produced by the fission of uranium or the conversion of uranium into transuranic elements are more

toxic. First, most of these radioisotopes have shorter

half-lives than that of uranium. Some of the fission

products are so short-lived that about 80 percent

are gone by the time the spent fuel is removed from

the reactor. 10 This means that they undergo more

radiation-producing decays per second than the

original ore; hence, their radioactivity per gram of

material is much higher. Second, some of the waste

products are more biologically dangerous than the

original uranium because of the intensity of radiation emitted and because they stay in the body longer, once ingested, or concentrate in particularly

vulnerable organs. For example, 1 curie of the

transuranic isotope americium-241 (Am241) is estimated to be about 10 times as hazardous as 1 curie

of U*38.‘‘

The hazard posed by radioactive waste is often

discussed in terms of an overall measure, or index,

of the toxicity of the waste. A commonly used meas-

. —

‘“Bernard L. Cohen, “High-Level Radioactive Waste From LightWater Reactors, ” Reviews of Modern Physics, vol. 49, No. 1, January 1977, pp. 1-19.

11 Intemation~ Comission on Radiation Protection, Limits for hltakes of Racfionuclides by Workers, ICRP-30 (New York: Pergamon

Press, 1979).

ure of toxicity is the water dilution volume (WDV),

defined as the volume of water (usually measured

in cubic meters) that would be required to dilute

the waste to acceptable drinking standards. Figure

2-3 shows the WDV for 1 tonne of spent fuel, for

the high-level waste that would result if the spent

fuel were reprocessed both 160 days and 15 years

after discharge from the reactor, and for the uranium ore needed to produce 1 tonne of fuel. Those

WDVS are calculated using standards based on recent data for toxicity of various radioisotopes. Figure 2-2 shows that it would take about 1 million

years for high-level waste from reprocessing 15-

year-old spent fuel to fall below the toxicity of the

121bid.

Figure 2-3.-Toxicity of Spent Fuel$ High-Level Waste, — and its Parent Uranium Ore

I

I I I I 1 I I

I

Spent fuel

1

~ HLW from 15-year-

~ old spent fuel ~

10-’ 1 10’ 10’ 10’ 10’ 10’ 106 10’

Decay time after discharge (years)

SOURCE: Data supplied by Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
—

30 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

original ore. The toxicity of the unreprocessed spent

fuel would fall below that of the original ore after

about 3 million years. The figure also shows that

following the decay of most of the fission products

in the first few hundred years, the toxicity of spent

fuel would exceed that of the waste from reprocessing 15-year-old fuel by a factor of from 2 to 5.

Such comparisons of spent fuel and high-level

waste with each other and with uranium ore in

terms of a simple toxicity index should be used only

with great caution, for several important reasons.

First, these comparisons may be somewhat misleading since a toxicity index such as the WDV is only

a crude measure of the potential hazard to humans.

It will greatly overestimate the actual hazard posed

by the waste, which must take into account how

likely it is that the waste will be released into the

biosphere and eventually be ingested by humans.

A discussion of the hazard from radioactive waste

that considers the barriers between the waste and

human beings is contained in chapter 3.

Second, there are substantial uncertainties in the

estimates of the risk of cancer per curie of any radioisotope ingested into the body, resulting from

uncertainties about: 1) the fate of the radioisotope

in the body (what fraction is taken into the system,

where it goes, and how long it stays there), and 2)

how much damage is done by the radiation the radioisotope emits. 13 As new data and extrapolation

methods become available, estimates of the toxicity

of various radioisotopes change over time. These

uncertainties about the toxicity of the waste and

the likelihood of additional revisions in toxicity estimates in the future14 strongly suggest that waste

management regulations and policies be designed

to be relatively immune to such changes.

The impact of such changes can be seen by considering the effects of the recently revised estimates

published by the International Commission on Radiation Protection (ICRP), which are reflected in

——.—. .

‘

sBernard L. Cohen, “Effects of ICRP Publication 30 and the 1980

BEIR Report on Hazard Assessments of High-Level Waste, ” Health

Physics, vol. 42, No. 2, February 1982, pp. 133-143; and National

Research Council, op. cit., app. B. See also Charles E. Land, “Estimating Cancer Risks From Low Doses of Ionizing Radiation, Science, vol. 209, September 12, 1980, pp. 1197-1203.

14A diwussion of the possible need for further revisions of the ICRp30 estimates of the toxicity of Np2’7 is found in Bernard Cohen, “Effects of Recent Neptunium Studies on High-Level Waste Hazard

Assessments, ” Health Physics, vol. 44, No. 5, May 1983, pp. 567-569.

figure 2-2. Except for a few recent studies,15 most

published analyses use older estimates such as those

underlying Nuclear Regulatory Commission

(NRC) standards for protection of the general public, contained in the Cede of Federal Regulations

(CFR).l

’ The effect of the recent changes is shown

in figures 2-4 and 2-5, which display the toxicities

of spent fuel and high-level waste from reprocessing that spent fuel 160 days after discharge from

the reactor, calculated using both the ICRP and

the CFR standards. These figures show that the

—.. .- —

IsCohen, “Effects of ICRP 3[1; ” National Research Council, op.

cit.; A. G. Croff, “Potential Impact of ICRP-30 on the Calculated

Risk From Waste Repositories, Transactions of the American Nuclear Society, vol. 39 (1981), pp. 74-75.

IG1O CFR 20, app. B, table II.

10”

10’

10’

10’

10-’ 10’ 10’ 10’ 104

10’ 10’ 10’

Decay time afler discharge (years)

SOURCE: National Research Council, A Study of the Isoletlorr System for Geologic Disposal of Rsdiosct/ve Wastes, 1983.
Ch. 2—Radioactive Waste: Its Nature and Management ● 31

Figure 2=5.-Toxicities of PWR High-Levei Waste

and its Parent Uranium-Ore

10’0

10’

104

10-’ 1 10’ 10’ 10’ 104 10’ 10’ 10’

Decay time after discharge (years)

SOURCE: National Research Council, A Study of the Isolation System for Geologic Disposal of Radioactive Wastes, 19%3.

ICRP estimates decrease the toxicity of both spent

fuel and high-level waste for the first few hundred

years, but increase it in the long-run, with a greater

increase for high-level waste than for spent fuel. For

example, the amount of time it takes for each to

decay to the toxicity of uranium ore is increased—

from about 7,000 years to about 3 million years for

spent fuel, and from about 400 years to about

20,000 years for high-level waste.

Third, comparisons between the toxicity of spent

fuel and high-level waste from reprocessing are also

sensitive to the underlying assumptions regarding

reprocessing and recycle of the separated plutonium

that affect the actual radionuclide content of the

high-level waste. For example, the toxicity of highlevel waste is highly dependent on the assumed delay in reprocessing spent fuel after it is discharged

from the reactor. The longer the delay, the less the

difference between the toxicity of the resulting highlevel waste and the original spent fuel. Delay allows

14-year-half-life plutonium-241 (Pu241) in the spent

fuel to decay into Am241, which will be separated

into the high-level waste. Am241 and its decay product neptunium-237 (Np237) are the principal contributors to the long-term toxicity of both spent fuel

and high-level waste.

This effect can be seen by comparing the two

curves for high-level waste shown in figure 2-3.

These figures show that increasing the delay before

reprocessing from 160 days to 15 years increases

the time required for the toxicity of the high-level

waste to decrease to that of the original ore from

about 20,000 years to about 1,000,000 years. Most

published comparisons of the toxicity of spent fuel

and high-level waste assume that reprocessing occurs a short time (from 150 days to about 1.5 years)

after discharge from the reactor, which was originally expected to be the normal case for operation

of commercial reactors with recycle. This tends to

maximize the difference in toxicity between the

spent fuel and the resulting high-level waste. However, the delays that have already occurred in the

initiation of large-scale commercial reprocessing

make it unlikely that fuel younger than 15 years

old would be routinely reprocessed in the United

States for decades after reprocessing began. Thus,

the curve for high-level waste from 15-year-old

spent fuel in figure 2-3 represents a more realistic

estimate of the toxicity of the high-level waste that

might actually be produced by reprocessing commercial spent fuel in the United States during this

century.

Finally, the radionuclide content, and thus the

toxicity, of high-level waste will depend heavily on

the extent to which the plutonium that is separated

from the spent fuel during reprocessing is recycled

in MOX fuel. The reason that high-level waste is

17Ear1ier repressing done, unaccompanied by early recycle of the

plutonium, would not avoid this effect, since the plutonium-241 in

the separated plutonium would continue to decay into americium-241

which would have to be disposed of in high-level waste sooner or later.

While rapid reeycle of the plutonium could fission the plutonium-241

before it could decay, recycle itself complicates the waste disposal task

in ways that could offset this advantage. This is discussed further in

chapter 3.

laNationa] Research Council, Op. Cit., p. 34.
32 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

less toxic than the spent fuel from which it is derived

is that reprocessing removes practically all of the

plutonium, which not only is highly toxic itself, but

also decays to form other toxic radioisotopes. However, unless that plutonium is recycled and destroyed by fission in a reactor, it would eventually

have to be disposed of in addition to the high-level

waste. In other words, reprocessing by itself simply

separates the plutonium from the fission products

and other TRU elements in the spent fuel, but does

not eliminate it. The additional step of recycling

the plutonium would be required to reduce the

amount of plutonium that must ultimately be disposed of. However, plutonium recycle increases the

toxicity of the resulting high-level waste compared

to that produced from reprocessing fuel containing only uranium, since it increases the amounts

of important transuranic elements in the waste. 19

As a result, the net reduction in waste toxicity that

will result from reprocessing and recycling will be

less than that implied by comparisons (e. g., those

shown in fig. 2-3) which consider only the highlevel waste resulting from fuel that contains only

uranium.

Comparison of Radioactive and

Other Toxic Waste

Comparing radioactive waste to other hazardous industrial waste provides some perspective on

the problem of radioactive waste management. zo

Hazardous wastes include organic materials (e. g.,

chlorinated hydrocarbons) and inorganic chemical

components —almost all of which, like radioactive

waste, are manmade and do not exist in the natural environment—and metals, such as barium and

arsenic, which occur naturally, but usually in chemically bound forms. Both radioactive and other toxic

19 For example, Am241 ,which is a major contributor to long-term

toxicity both directly and through daughter Npz37, would be increased

about threefold by plutonium recycle in light-water reactors. Sec National Research Council, op. cit., pp. 289-290. See the analysis of

reprocessing in ch. 3, for further discussion of the effects of reprocessing time and plutonium recycle on the overall high-le~el waste management problem.

~OFor a detailed analysis of the problems of hazardous waste management, see Technologies and Strategies for Hazardous Waste Control (Washington, DC.: U.S. Congress, OfKce of Technology Assessment, OTA-M - 196, March 1983). For a more extensive comparison

between nuclear and nonnuclear hazardous wastes, scc James P. Murray, Joseph J. Barrington, and Richard Wilson, ‘‘Risks of Hazardous Chcrnica] and Nuclear Waste: A Comparison, Discussion Paper E-82- 11, Energy and Environmental Policy Center, Harvard

Unitcrsity, November 1982.

wastes can cause cancer, birth defects, and genetic mutations, although the causal relationships for

such effects may be better understood in the case

of radioactive materials 21

Unlike many toxic organic and inorganic compounds, radioactive waste cannot readily be detoxified or destroyed .22 As a result, it must be isolated

from the environment until it decays spontaneously

to low levels of radioactivity. Because radioactive

waste eventually decays, it is unlike some organic

and inorganic compounds, which persist indefinitely unless some treatment is applied to them, and

unlike the toxic metals, ‘which persist forever, although they too can be stabilized or immobilized

to render them relatively harmless. This spontaneous decay, however, produces the radiation that

makes the material toxic and releases heat. Both

the radiation and the heat complicate the task of

disposal (see ch. 3).

The amount of high-level radioactive waste generated each year is much less than the amount of

other hazardous wastes. In 1983 about 1,400 tonnes

of spent fuel were generated compared to 255 million to 275 million tonnes annually of other hazardous wastes .23 On the other hand, the cost of

disposing of the small amount of radioactive waste

is much higher than for other hazardous waste, because of the differences in disposal techniques that

must be used. The current cost estimate for disposal of spent fuel or equivalent reprocessed waste

in a deep geologic repository is about $125,000 per

tonne 24 compared to estimates of up to $240 Per

tonne for shallow landfill disposal of other hazardous wastes and up to $791 per tonne for treatment

of such wastes .25 Considering that the generation

—— - — 21 Land, Op, cit. j and Thomas H. ,Waugh, 11, ‘‘Chemical car c

i

n o

-

gens: How Dangerous Are Low Doses?’ Science, vol. 202, Oct. 6,

1978, pp. 37-41.

ZZBY ~mbarding radioactive waste with neutrons, some of the ]onglivcd, highly toxic transuranic elem~mts can be split, leaving fission

products with short half-lives that d~:cay much more rapidly. However, this docs not now appear to be a practical method for reducing

the Iong-ttn-m toxicity of radioacl ive waste. SCC discussion of

‘ ‘transmutation’ in ch. 3. See also, ii. G. Croff, J. O. Blomcke, and

B. C. Finney, Actinide Partitioning Transmutation Program Final

Report, 1: Otmall Assessment, ORN .-5566 (Oak Ridge, Term.: Oak

Ridge National Laboratory, June 1’180),

2“Of[ice of Technology Assessment, op. cit., p, 3.

24u, s, Department of Energy, Reoort on Financi ng the Disposal

of Comn)ercial Sptmt Nuclear Fuel an<! Processed High -Ltw’el Radioac -

ti~’e W’astc, DOIVS-0020, June 1981;, p. 14.

2JOfficc of Tcchno]og}, Assessment, op. cit., table 34, p. 196.
Ch. Z—Radioactive Waste: Its Nature and Management ● 33

of about $10 million worth of electricity produces

only 1 tonne of spent fuel,26 it is possible to spend

such a large amount per tonne to dispose safely of

spent fuel, or high-level waste from that spent fuel,

without materially affecting the overall cost of nuclear electricity.

Because radioactive waste is more tightly controlled and regulated than other hazardous wastes,

the location and characteristics of virtually all radio-

—. . —.———

ZG”rhe ~epartment of Energy estimates that generation of about 28

trillion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity by nuclear reactors will produce 144,000 tonnes of spent fuel, or an average of about 194 million

kWh/tonne. DOE, Report on Financing the Disposaf, p. 10. With

an average charge for residential customers of electricity of 54 mills/

k~’h in calendar year 1980 (Congressional Budget Office, Financing

Radioacfi\’e Waste Disposal, September 1982, p. xviii), this comes

to total revenues of $10,480,000 per tonne of spent fuel generated.

active waste are known, 27 and there is little chance

of illegal or uncontrolled dumping of significant

quantities, as sometimes occurs with other toxic

waste, Radioactive materials are also relatively easy

to detect in small concentrations using readily available instruments such as the Geiger counter; thus,

the potential threat of any escaped waste can be

checked more easily. In contrast, detection of the

many more diverse nonradioactive hazardous materials is more difficult; no universal method analogous to a Geiger counter exists to detect easily and

economically the many potentially toxic chemicals

that might be released, or that have already been

released, by hazardous wastes.

~ls~e DOE spent Fuel and RadjOacril,e Waste In\’entories, for a

complete inventory of radioactive waste in the United States.

—— —

INSTITUTIONAL ASPECTS OF WASTE MANAGEMENT

Waste management includes not only the technical activities for treating and isolating nuclear

waste but also a range of institutional activities required to guide and support them .28 These are described briefly below and are discussed at greater

length in chapters 7 and 8.

Federal Activities

Policymaking

Policymaking or decisionmaking activities at various administrative levels control the overall structure and goals of the system, the integration of the

activities, and, to a certain extent, the degree to

which the activities are accomplished successfully.

Because final isolation of high-level radioactive

waste is a Federal responsibility, policymaking in

this area is principally a Federal activity, although

there is much involvement by non-Federal actors.

Even waste management activities under private

control, such as interim spent fuel storage, are subject to Federal regulation. The Federal Government’s authority for commercial radioactive waste

~HA “l(lF(. d(,(ail(.d dC.5cription of the institutional aspects of th(’ Fulc.ral rad ioact i~’e waste management program is found in information

&Lsr /i)r L’ommcrcial Radioactive M’aste Management, U.S. Dcpartrnt.nt of F;neryy, DOE IF;rI’/401 10-1, JU]} 1982.

management rests with Congress and the executive

branch. Congress establishes general policy through

legislation and controls program implementation

by reviewing, authorizing, and appropriating resources. The laws passed by Congress authorize

Federal agencies to carry out their responsibilities,

clarify Federal and State roles in making decisions

and implementing programs, and give States legal

authority over certain waste management activities. The President and the executive branch further develop and implement the waste management

programs.

Regulation

ESTABLISHMENT OF SAFETY REQUIREMENTS

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is

responsible for developing generally applicable

standards that set limits on the allowable release

of radioactivity from the disposal of radioactive

waste. Proposed numerical standards for high-level

waste disposal in geologic repositories were published for comment in December 1982, and final

criteria are expected to be promulgated in 1985.

NRC is responsible for developing regulations

based on EPA standards for managing high-level

radioactive waste. Final NRC regulations for disposal in geologic repositories were issued in 1983.
34 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

licensed activities and defense programs. NRC has

already developed procedures and regulations

(based on anticipated EPA standards) that must be

satisfied before a mined geologic repository can be

licensed. During the various steps of repository development, NRC may conduct hearings so that

other interested parties may participate in licensing activities.

During the development of a repository, NRC

will formally evaluate the suitability of potential sites

at three stages. If the site appears suitable after in

situ testing, NRC will issue a construction authorization for repository development. If the initial

phases of repository construction pass NRC requirements, NRC will issue an operating license,

and waste emplacement in the repository will commence. If the final predictions of repository performance after waste emplacement meet NRC requirements, NRC will authorize closure of the

repository.

Development and Operation of Repositories

DOE is the Federal agency with lead responsibility for carrying out the high-level radioactive

waste management policies adopted by Congress

and the administration. The principal activity of

DOE and its predecessors (the Atomic Energy

Commission and the Energy Research and Development Administration) in this area has been research directed toward siting and constructing one

or more geologic repositories for waste disposal.

Other Federal agencies, in particular the Department of the Interior, also have some responsibilities

in developing repositories.

Funding

Until 1983, funds for developing final isolation

facilities came from annual Federal appropriations,

with the assumption that the utilities using those

facilities would ultimately repay the costs when they

delivered waste to a Federal repository. Legislation

enacted by Congress at the end of 1982 provides

funds through user fees paid by utilities at the time

the waste is generated.

Coordination and Management

Although DOE is the lead agency for waste management and Federal interagency cooperation on

some waste management activities does exist, there
Ch. Z—Radioactive Waste: Its Nature and Management ● 35

can license uranium milling operations, decommissioned facilities, or commercial burial sites for lowlevel waste within their State boundaries. State officials have had a major impact on repository siting

activities in the past, and the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 gives a major formal role to States

and affected Indian tribes in those activities in the

future. The role of State and tribal governments

is discussed in chapter 8.

Public Involvement

Interest groups and the general public participate in waste management activities in many ways,

including attendance at public hearings sponsored

by Federal agencies, direct appeal to Members of

Congress and other Federal and State officials, participation on citizen advisory panels and quasi-oversight panels, litigation, and submission of written

comments on proposed activities as part of the National Environmental Policy Act process. Technical groups conduct independent studies and reviews

and provide advice, either formally as contractors

or informally through independent publications, Although there is much controversy over the role of

the public in the decisionmaking process, some

funds are available to State and local organizations

is no single Federal agency with overall responsibility for coordinating and managing the activities

of all the Federal agencies involved in waste management. Interagency coordination is discussed further in chapter 7.

Non-Federal Involvement

Intergovernmental Interaction

Among the most important non-Federal actors

in waste management are the governments of the

States, Indian tribes, and localities that may be affected by waste management activities. State, local,

and Indian tribal governments informally review

policy and programs and express concerns by direct appeal to Federal officials, by intervention in

site selection processes, and, in the case of States,

by passing legislation restricting waste management

activities. Twenty-six States, in accordance with

formal agreements with the Federal Government,
36 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

(from the Federal Government) and to intervener

groups (from private sources) to facilitate nonFederal participation in waste management. Public involvement is discussed further in chapter 8.

International Activities

There are approximately 290 commercial nuclear

powerplants in operation worldwide and another

215 plants under construction in 31 countries, including the United States. *g Five countries have

operating facilities for reprocessing spent fuel from

LWRs. Major commercial waste management

R&D is being undertaken by the United States,

France, West Germany, Great Britain, Sweden,

zgThe~e fiWm~ were v~id at the end of 1982. Znternatiomd Atomic

Energy Agency Bulletin, vol. 25, No. 1, March 1983, p. 38.

Canada, and Japan. 30 In the United States, DOE

is primarily responsible for conducting cooperative

R&D efforts with foreign countries. The Department of State is involved in waste management

activities that involve U.S. nonproliferation policies

or cooperative activities with other countries.31 The

Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 includes provisions (sec. 223) to promote additional cooperation

with nonnuclear weapon states in the field of spent

fuel storage and disposal.

‘“See K. M. Harmon, “Survey c,f Foreign Terminal Radioactive

Waste Storage Programs, ‘‘ in U.S. Department of Energy, Proceedings of the 1983 Civilian Radioacti\’e Waste Management Information Meeting, CONF-831217, February 1984, pp. 199-205.

glen the subject of nonproliferation in general, see office of Technology Assessment, IVucdear Proliferation and Safeguads (New York:

Praeger Publishers, 1977). Detailed analysis of the relation between

nuclear nonproliferation and spent ft d management is found in Frederick C. Williams and David A. Deese, Nuclear Nonproliferation:

The Spent Fuel Problem (New York: Pergamon Press, 1979).

CHAPTER NOTE

The precise amount of spent fuel discharged by a reactor each year will depend primarily on two factors: the

total amount of electricity generated by the reactor that

year and the burnup of the fuel (measured in megawattdays per tonne [MWd/t]), which is a measure of the

amount of electricity obtained from each tonne of fuel

(and thus of the amount of fissile material in the fuel

that is used before the fuel is discharged from the reactor). The higher the burnup, the more complete the

utilization of U*35 and the less the discharge of spent

fuel per gigawatt-year (GW-yr) of electricity generated.

Since BWRS use lower burnups than PWRS, they discharge more spent fuel per GW-yr of generated electricity.

The 1984 DOE spent fuel projections shown in table

2-2 assume that spent fuel burnup will increase at an

annual rate of 2.5 percent from 1985 to 1996, and will

be 42,000 MWd/t for PWRS and 37,000 MWd/t for

BWRS from 1996 on.32 It is possible that burnups will

increase even further in the future, perhaps up to 50,000

MWd/t, if the price of uranium, and thus of fresh fuel,

goes up. 33 In this case, the amounts Of spent fuel ‘e32u . . s Depa~ment of Energy, Spent Fue~ and Radioactive Waste

Inventories, p. 11.

S3U S. Depa~ment of Energy, IVuc]ear Proliferation and Civilian

Nuclear Power, vol. 9, June 1980, pp. 24-27.

suiting from the projected levels of generation could be

reduced somewhat. However, even though higher burnups would reduce the amount of spent fuel, they would

not reduce the amount of fission products and transuranic elements contained in the spent fuel, since the

amount of those isotopes created is approximately proportional to the amount of electricity generated. Use of

higher burnups simply means that there will be more

fission products and transuranics in each of the smaller

number of fuel assemblies discharged for each gigawattyear of electricity produced. In other words, the waste

produced by generation of a given amount of electricity would be concentrated in a smaller amount of spent

fuel if a higher burnup were used. Thus, the total heat

output from the waste produced in generating a gigawatt-year of electricity, and the total repository space

needed for disposal, would be relatively unaffected by

increasing the burnup. However, handling and packaging at the repository might be simplified somewhat by

the smaller number of spent fuel assemblies involved

if they were disposed of directly without reprocessing.

For this reason, there may be waste management incentives for increasing burnups beyond the levels that

would be justified by the increased efficiency of fuel use

alone.
Chapter 3

Technology of Waste Management
Contents

Page

Waste Disposal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Mined Geologic Repositories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Other Disposal Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

Comparison of Disposal Alternatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Waste Storage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... ... ..OO. 55

Interim Storage Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

Comparison of Interim Storage Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58

Waste Transportation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

Safety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

Cost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

Reprocessing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

Status of Reprocessing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

Reprocessing for Waste Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

Integrated Waste Management System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

System Impacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

System Interrelationships . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

TABLES

Table No. Page

3-1. Number of Possible Cancer Cases Due to Ionizing Radiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

3-2. Projected Population Risks From High-Level Waste Disposal: EPA Reference Cases . . . . . 46

3-3. EPA Proposed Release Limits for Containment Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

3-4. Comparison of Capital and Annual Operating Costs of At-Reactor Storage Options . . . . . 60

3-5. Conventional Site Effects of a Large Industrial Facility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

FIGURES

Figure No. Page

3-I. Emplaced Waste Package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

3-2. Artist’s Conception of the Surface Support Buildings and Underground Facilities

of a Radioactive Waste Repository . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

3-3. Individual Radiation Dose as a Function of Water Travel Time From a Repository

in Basalt Containing 100,000 Tonnes of Unreprocessed Spent Uranium Fuel. . . . . . . . . . . . 47

3-4. Individual Radiation Dose as a Function of Water Travel Time From a Repository in

Basalt Containing Reprocessing Waste From 100,000 Tonnes of Spent Uranium Fuel.... 48

3-5. Water Dilution Volume of PWR Spent Fuel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

3-6. Dry Storage Concepts for Spent Fuel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

3-7. Decay Heat Power for Different Nuclear Fuel Cycles for a Pressurized Water Reactor . . . 72

3-8. Spent Fuel Shipments in a Centralized Waste Management System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

3-9. Spent Fuel Shipments in a Decentralized Waste Management System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Chapter 3

Technology of Waste Management

WASTE DISPOSAL

Over the last three decades, the Federal Government has considered disposing of radioactive waste

permanently in geologic formations on land, in ice

sheets, beneath the ocean floor, and in outer space.

Although total containment of radioactive material

in any of these environments may be impassible

to guarantee, or even expect, these disposal environments are attractive because their remoteness

from the Earth’s surface minimizes the biological

impacts of any potential releases of radioactivity.

Methods of disposal are in various stages of conceptual development. Disposal in mined geologic

repositories is the concept most studied, and subseabed disposal is the next. In general, past Federal programs for waste disposal have concentrated

almost exclusively on the development of mined

geologic repositories. In 1981 this technology was

formally selected as the focus of the Federal highlevel waste management strategy by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), based on its Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) on the Management of Commercially Generated Radioactive

Waste, published in 1980.1 However, very little

work has been done on any of the other concepts

except subseabed disposal. The uncertainties associated with many of the alternative disposal concepts reflect either the level of conceptual development of the technology or the complexity of the

envisioned disposal system. In some cases, uncertainties can be resolved through additional research

and development (R&D); in other cases, uncertainties may be unresolvable for all practical purposes.

Mined Geologic Repositories

Technology

The disposal of radioactive waste in mined geologic repositories at depths from 1,000 to several

—.— .

1 U. S. Department of Energy (DOE), Final Environmental Impact

Statement, Management of Commercially Generated Radioactive

Waste, DOWEIS-0046F (Washington, D. C.: October 1980), hereafter

referred to as FEIS.

thousand feet below the Earth’s surface is the final

isolation technology most widely studied and favored by the worldwide scientific community.

Three decades of study have revealed no insurmountable technical obstacles to the development

of mined geologic repositories, provided suitable

sites are found.2

The technology of the mined geologic repository

is composed of a system of both natural and engineered barriers selected to prevent or limit the

escape of waste from the repository so that the radiation exposure to humans from escaped waste is

held to very low levels. In addition, geologic disposal also involves a ‘‘technology of prediction’ ‘—a

set of procedures and techniques for predicting the

performance of a repository over the very long time

period that the waste remains hazardous. Each element of the technology of geologic repositories will

be discussed briefly below.

NATURAL BARRIERS: THE SITE

The site of a mined geologic repository is an integral part of the technology of geologic disposal

since it plays a crucial role in isolating the buried

waste from the biosphere. For this reason, sites for

such repositories must be selected with great care.

.— . . Z1bid; American physical Society (APS), “Report to the American Physical Society by the Study Group on Nuclear Fuel Cycles and

Waste Management, ” Reviews of Modern Physics, vol. 50, No. 1,

pt. II, January 1978; Interagency Review Group on Nuclear Waste

Management (IRG), Subgroup Repoti on Alternative Technology

Strategies for the Zsolation of iVuclear Waste, TID-28818 (draft),

(Washington, D. C.: October 1978); International Nuclear Fuel Cycle Evaluation (INFCE), Waste Management and Disposal: Report

of INFCE Working Group 7, International Atomic Energy Agency

(Vienna: 1980); U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Drafi

Envirrmmental Impact Statement on # CFR Part 191, Environmental

Standad for Management and Disposal of Spent Nuclear Fuel, HighLevel and Transuranic Wastes, EPA 520/1-82-025, December 1982,

hereafter referred to as DEZS on 40 CFR 19J; National Research

Council, A Review of the Swedish KBS-IZ Plan for DisposaJ of Spent

Nuclear Fue~ (Washington, D. C,: National Academy of Sciences,

1980); National Research Council, A Study of the Isolation System

for Geologic Disposal of Radioactive Wastes (Washington, D. C.: National Academy Press, 1983); U.S. INuclear Regulatory Commission,

Waste Confidence Decision, Federal Register, vol. 49, No. 171, Aug.

31, 1984, pp. 34658-34688.

39
40 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

The natural features of the site that contribute

to isolation are the host rock (which can be selected

to prevent or minimize contact between the waste

and flowing ground water, the principal potential

mechanism for bringing buried waste into contact

with human beings),3 the chemical characteristics

of the site and its environment (which can limit the

rate at which the waste dissolves in ground water

and is transported to the biosphere), and the time

required for contaminated ground water to flow

from the repository to the biosphere (which, along

with the chemical characteristics of the media surrounding the repository, can delay the release of

dissolved waste until many of the hazardous radionuclides have decayed). In addition, the location

of the site can be selected to reduce the possibility

of human intrusion (e. g., by avoiding proximity

to valuable natural resources) and to provide for

dilution of any contaminated ground water by large

quantities of surface water before the ground water

is used by human beings.

Until the late 1970’s, the natural features of the

geologic repository site were seen as the principal

means for providing waste isolation. Initially, the

emphasis was on a particular host rock, salt, which

has features that were felt to provide adequate assurance that the waste would be isolated from contact with flowing ground water.4 Later studies concluded that the characteristics of the environment

surrounding the host rock could provide adequate

isolation even if ground water were contaminated

by contact with the waste and that there was no

clearly superior host rock for mined repositories.5

Other rocks under consideration include tuff (compacted volcanic ash), basalt (coarse-grained solidified lava), and granite.

Because the site plays such a central role in geologic disposal in mined repositories, the final validation of the concept will depend on construction and

operation of a repository at an actual site. G No site

has been approved for such a repository anywhere

in the world, although some reviews have concluded

that it will not be difficult to find suitable sites. 7

3APS, op. cit.

‘See discussion of the evolution of the role of the waste form in app.

A.

5

1bid.; IRG, op. cit. ; National Research Council, IsoJation System.

6

1 NFCE, op. cit., p. 119.

7APS, op. cit. The National Research Council review of a Swedish

waste disposal plan also concluded that suitable disposal sites could

be found in Sweden. National Research Council, Review of the

Swedish KBS-11 Plan.

It is generally agreed that identification of specific

sites for detailed geologic investigation is necessary

to resolve the remaining technical questions about

geologic disposal. a

In the United States, the process of finding suitable sites involves the screening and progressive

elimination of sites in different regions of the country. It is likely that only a small percentage of the

sites screened will survive the site selection process. Because of the high degree of variability among

sites, each potential site must be evaluated individually through surface exploration and by geological mapping, geophysical (nondestructive) surveying, drilling, and in situ testing within candidate

rock formations. The technology for identifying and

‘‘characterizing’ potential sites is available or

under development. g

The suitability and total waste capacity of each

potential site must be evaluated on a case-by-case

basis because of the great variability among sites.

In some cases, for example, a fault (a fracture in

the Earth’s crust, along which there has been relative displacement of adjacent rock formations) may

reduce the suitability of a particular site; in other

cases, the fault could actually provide an additional

natural barrier.

Because all potentially usable rock types have not

been evaluated for repository sites, the total number and capacity of potential repository sites in the

United States is unknown at this time. However,

general knowledge about geologic formations

throughout the United States suggests that at least

several suitable repositories could be located, although it is probable that suitable sites cannot be

found in all States.

ENGINEERED FEATURES

The principal engineered features are the overall design of the repository, the waste form (e. g.,

solidified high-level waste or unprocessed spent

fuel), and the waste package, which may include

an overpack (e. g., a titanium container) designed

to provide containment for up to 1,000 years and

81RG, op. cit.; U.S. Department >f Energy and U.S. Geological

Survey (USGS), Earth Science Technizd PJan for Disposal of Radioactive Waste in a Mined Repository, Ikaft, DOE/TIC-l 1033 (draft),

April 1980, p. 1.

gIbid,; Cyrus Klingsberg and Jamrs Duguid, Status of Technology for Isoiating High-Level Radioactive,: Wastes in Mined Repositories,

DOE/TIC 11’207 (draft) (U.S. Depart nent of Energy: October 1980).
Ch. 3—Technology of Waste Management 47

a packing material (e. g., bentonite) designed to pre- As noted above, until the late 1970’s, it was genvent water from reaching the overpack and to limit erally assumed that the natural geologic features

the escape of any water that does come

tact with the waste (see fig. 3-l).

Figure

into con- of a salt repository alone would provide an adequate

degree of isolation. The solid waste form (required

3-1.—Emplaced Waste Package

/

. . . \

. - . “

Spent Fuel or ~

Solidified

High-Level ~ ‘

Waste

98-948 0 - 85 - 4 : QL 3
—

42 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

by Federal regulation) and waste package were intended only to prevent accidental release of waste

during transportation and handling until retrieval

of the waste from the repository was no longer contemplated. They were not seen as playing a crucial

role in ensuring long-term isolation of the waste

within the repository after it was sealed. 1

°

In the mid-1970’s to late 1970’s, recognition of

the uncertainties associated with the prediction of

the behavior of the repository and surrounding geology over a period of many thousands of years led

to a growing interest in a “multiple barrier” approach in which a combination of manmade and

natural barriers would act together to provide confidence in long-term isolation, despite uncertainties about each barrier separately. The result has

been a growing emphasis on the role of the waste

form and the waste package,11 which is reflected

in Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) regulations for geologic disposal.12

The current reference waste form for solidified

high-level waste from reprocessing is borosilicate

glass, which was selected when a solid waste form

was seen as being needed primarily for safe transportation and handling. When the waste form took

on an important role in long-term isolation, questions arose about how well borosilicate glass could

perform this more demanding task under the conditions anticipated in a repository after closure. Of

particular concern was the question of the rate at

which waste might dissolve from the glass into

ground water at the high temperatures that could

be produced by the heat emitted by the waste.13

Several technical reviews have concluded, however,

that borosilicate glass could be an adequate waste

form (although perhaps not the best one possible)

if the repository were designed so that the temperature of the glass remained relatively low (around

‘“See app. A.

t Isee, for example, the proWsed Swedish KBS waste disposal system in which major reliance is placed on a long-lived waste package,

analyzed in National Research Council, Review of the Swedish KBS-11

Plan, and in National Research Council, A Review of the Swedish

KBS-3 Plan for Final Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel (Washington,

D. C.: National Academy Press, 1984).

1210 CFR 60.

Issee, for examp]e, G. J. M&arthy et al., ‘‘ ImeraCtiOnS Between

Nuclear Waste and Surrounding Rock, ” Nature, vol. 273, May 18,

1978, pp. 216-217.

100° C).14 Recent studies have also concluded: 1)

that development of a waste form that would release waste into ground water much more slowly

than forms that are currently available could reduce substantially the expected long-term effects of

geologic disposal, and 2) that improvements in the

waste form would be much more effective than improvements in the rest of the waste package in

achieving that result. 15 Further discussion of the

value of continued R&D on alternative waste forms

is found in chapter 6.

If reprocessing to recover plutonium and uranium does not occur, it is assumed currently that

spent fuel would be disposed of directly, so that the

waste form would be the uranium dioxide fuel pellets (still in the fuel assemblies) that contain the

waste products. Recent analyses have concluded

that adequate isolation can be achieved in this way,

although the fuel pellets would be more soluble than

borosilicate glass. 16 If necessary the spent fuel could

be dissolved and resolidified in a better waste

form.17 However, a careful systems analysis would

be necessary to determine if the increase in worker

exposures and accident risks resulting from more

complex waste-processin{: operations would offset

the possible decrease in long-term risks from the

waste after disposal. *8

Some have argued that use of sophisticated engineered barriers, ‘such as a [ow-volubility waste form

or long-lived package, could decrease the reliance

on natural barriers to the extent that many more

sites would be usable for repositories. 19 (The role

of long-lived waste packages in a conservative re-

— -.—.— lqNation~ ReSearCh Council, lso~ation System, p. 7; U.S. Department of Energy, The Evaluation and Review of Alternative Waste

Forms for Immobilization of Fligh-1.evel Radioactive Wastes, Report

No. 3 by the Alternative Waste Form Peer Review Panel, DOE/TIC11472, July 1, 1981.

lsNation~ Research Councd, IsoL~tion System, p. 280; EpA, DE~f$

on 40 CFR 191, p. 208.

IGNation~ Research Council, lsc!lation System; INFCE, Op. Cit.;

IRG, op. cit.; EPA, DEIS on 40 tZFR 191,

17D0q FEIS, PP. 4.20-4.22.

lfJNation~ Research council, ~s(dation System, p. 14.

19see, for exmple, Nation~ Res,?arch Council, hdatbn system,

p. 45. However, this and other re[ent studies have concluded that

it is very important to select a site with chemical characteristics that

will limit the rate at which particularly toxic and long-lived radionuclides such as Np237 can dissolve into ground water. EPA, DEIS on

40 CFR 191, p. 109.
Ch. 3—Technology of Waste Management ● 4 3

pository system design is discussed further in ch.

6.) While there is no consensus about the degree

to which engineered barriers might substitute for

natural ones, there is growing agreement that they

may usefully complement natural ones to provide

a high degree of isolation through a multiple-barrier

system in which each barrier helps compensate for

the uncertainties about the others .20

TECHNOLOGY OF PREDICTION

Development and operation of mined geologic

repositories will require not only location of specific sites and design of engineered facilities appropriate for those sites but also decisions by the licensing authority, NRC, that those combinations

of sites and engineered features can be expected to

provide the required degree of waste isolation for

a required period of time. In addition to the physical technology, therefore, a ‘‘technology of prediction’ is needed to show in a formal licensing process

that a proposed repository is likely to meet established standards.

The repository development and licensing process is uncharted territory. The ability of a geologic

repository to isolate radioactive waste for millenia

cannot be demonstrated directly in the same sense

that a new aircraft can be demonstrated to perform

according to its design specifications. For this reason, there must be heavy reliance on predictions

of the long-term isolation provided by the repository based on the use of mathematical models that

embody scientific understanding of the behavior of

the repository and its environment .21 Techniques

for predicting repository performance are needed

as a basis for detailed design of a repository, as well

as for the licensing process .22 Such long-term prediction has never been done in a formal regulatory

process, and no widely reviewed and generally ac-

. —

ZOBoth proposed EPA Criteria for geologic disposal, and final NRC

regulations place emphasis on use of a multiple-barrier approach. See

proposed EPA standards in the Federal Register, vol. 47, No. 250,

Dec. 29, 1982, pp. 58196-58206. Final NRC technical criteria, 10

CFR, pt. 60, are found in FederaJ Reg”ster, vol. 48, No. 120, June

21, 1983, pp. 28194-28229, and are summarized in app. D.

“ Klingsberg and Duguid, op. cit.; 21 IRG, op. cit. ; APS, oP. clt ” ~ National Research Council, Isolation System; EPA, DEIS on 40 CFR

191.

22 Thomas H. pigford, “The National Research Council Study of

the Isolation System for Geologic Disposal of Radioactive Wastes,

presented at the meeting of the Materials Research Society, Boston

MA, November 1983.

cepted method for predicting repository performance exists. Many analytic procedures to be used

in the licensing process must be developed, including data collection and validation techniques, methods for verifying and validating scientific models,

and the formal procedures for using such models

to predict repository performance .23 The importance of an explicit program to develop the technology of prediction is discussed in chapter 6.

OVERALL STATE OF TECHNOLOGY

No licensed mined repository for high-level radioactive waste exists in the United States or elsewhere in the world. The failure to develop and license mined repositories in the United States stems

to a large extent from nontechnical factors such as

inadequate and intermittent Federal support and

reluctance to address major institutional problems.

The main areas of technical disagreement concern

not the ultimate feasibility of developing mined repositories, but the degree of conservatism in design (e. g., temperature limits and the design requirements for engineered barriers) and the pace

and scope of the R&D program needed to develop

a repository safely. *4 Technical reviews have concluded that the major remaining technical uncertainties about geologic disposal could be sufficiently

resolved in time to allow the first repository to be

constructed and licensed for operation by the late

1990’s, if no unforeseen technical or institutional

problems arise .25

—.— -

Zssee Nation~ Research Council, Implementation Of Long-Term

Environment/ Radiation Standards: The Issue of I’erifica[ion (\$rashington, D. C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1979), for detailed discussion of steps needed in demonstrating compliance with rritcria

lqFor example, the authors of a USGS report that is cited sometimes as raising fundamental questions about the overall concept of

geologic disposal believe that acceptable geologic repositories can be

constructed. J. D. Bredehoeft et al., “Geologic Disposal of High- I.e\-

el Radioactive Wastes—Earth Science Perspectives, Geological Survey Circular 779, U.S. Geological Survey, undated, p. 111. Also, as

noted above, the questions about the suitability of borosil icatc glass

as a waste form relate to its performance at very high temperatures

and can be deatt with by keeping the temperature in the repository

low. The extensive debates about waste management policy during

the Carter administration dealt not with whether to develop geologic

repositories, but instead with how many sites and geologic media should

be examined before selecting a site. IRG, op. cit.

Z5DOE and USGS, Op. cit, , p. 1, concludes that 10 years (from

1980) should be needed to resolve the major technical uncertainties.
44 Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

TECHNOLOGY DEPLOYMENT

Disposal in mined geologic repositories will involve the following activities (as well as others listed

in ch. 2):

Disposal Technology Development and Siting. —DOE’S present R&D efforts are focused on

spent fuel transportation and storage; data collection on geohydrologic environments and waste/rock

interactions; the development and evaluation of

waste forms, canisters, and other engineered barriers; the development of equipment and facility

designs for waste handling, processing, and disposal; and the development of predictive mathematical

models for evaluating the suitability of potential repository sites. Information from in situ testing and

impact evaluation activities at potential sites will

be used by DOE to develop full-scale repository designs to be submitted to NRC for approval. According to current regulatory procedures,26 if a potential repository site and design met appropriate

NRC requirements, NRC would authorize construction. After some or all of the repository and

supporting surface facilities were constructed, NRC

would thoroughly evaluate the suitability of the site

and determine whether to approve emplacement

of waste in the repository.

Repository Development and Operation.—Repository development would involve excavating

rock from the repository, preparing (canning) the

waste in surface facilities at the repository site,

lowering the canisters of waste into the repository,

and emplacing the canisters of waste and the surrounding overpack material into holes drilled in the

rock formation (see fig. 3-2). Each repository would

remain in operation from 10 to 40 years, depending on its size and the rate of waste emplacement.

During this operational phase, additional information on the behavior of the repository would be collected and used to refine further the predictions of

the long-term behavior of the repository. Individual rooms or modules of the repository could be

backfilled or kept open for a certain period of time

to permit further cooling of the waste or to maintain ready access to the waste.

After the repository is filled, DOE could request

that its license be amended to permit decommisZfIlo CFR 60, Subparts B and C, published in 46 FR 13971, Feb.

25, 1981.

sioning or closure of the facility. NRC would make

a decision about the request after considering the

plan and the public comments about it in light of

NRC requirements. The tunnels connecting individual rooms or modules of the repository would

then be backfilled and the vertical access shafts to

the repository, permanently sealed. After closure,

monitoring could be used to detect unexpected releases from the repository.

Safety

The expected efficacy of geologic disposal is not

based on the conclusion that the waste can be contained completely until it decays to harmlessness.

Instead, it is assumed that some releases may occur and that engineered and natural barriers can

limit the size of such releases to very low levels. The

two principal modes of possible release of radioactivity from a well-designed and well-sited mined repository would be small, concentrated releases from

human intrusion (e. g., from digging a well near

or into a repository), which could expose a few individuals to relatively large doses of radiation, or

the gradual release of radioactivity from the repository into ground water (and, ultimately, into drinking water or food supplies), exposing a potentially

large population to very small doses (compared to

background radiation) .27 The release of a large fraction of the waste in a repository would be extremely

unlikely, and the chance that any individual would

receive a very high dose of radiation would be

small. 28

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

(EPA) has calculated that releases from a geologic

repository containing 100,000 metric tons (tonnes)

of spent fuel (the lifetime output of about 100 onegigawatt [GWe] reactors) could be expected to produce fewer than an average of one fatal cancer every

10 years over a 10,000-year period. Table 3-1 shows

that this level of health effects is smaller than the

health effects that could result from other sources

of ionizing radiation. For example, it is much less

than 1 percent of the fatal cancers that would be

produced in the same exposed population from

normal levels of background radiation .29 The results

Z?EPA, DEIS on 40 CFR 191; N,ttiona.1 Research Council, Isolation System.

ZBEpA, DEIS on 40 CFR 191, pp. 107-108.

291 bid., p. 43.
Ch. 3—Technology of Waste Management ● 4 5

Figure 3-2.-Artist’s Conception of the Surface Support Buildings and Underground Facilities

of a Radioactive Waste Repository

.+. - -----

--- - -

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Energy.

of EPA’s calculations for various geologic media

are shown in table 3-2. More recent analysis, which

takes into account the revised estimates of radionuclide toxicity discussed in chapter 2, supports

EPA’s conclusions that the expected effects from

a well-designed and well-sited repository would be

small compared to the effects from background radiation.30

Figures 3-3 and 3-4 show recent estimates of the

possible performance of a repository in basalt containing 100,000 tonnes of spent fuel or equivalent

high-level waste (solidified in borosilicate glass).

Performance is measured in terms of the maximum

radiation doses, in millirems per year, that would

JONationa] Research Council, Isolation System, ch. 9.

be received by an individual from water contaminated by waste that has escaped from the repository.

The calculations reflect the recent International

Commission on Radiation Protection revisions of

the estimated toxicity of critical radionuclides that

were discussed in chapter 2. Both figures show that

the longer it takes for water to travel from the repository to the environment where it can be ingested by humans, the lower the predicted dose,

because of radioactive decay during that time. They

also show that the dose from spent fuel is expected

to be higher than that from high-level waste. However, even for spent fuel, the predicted dose from

using contaminated surface water is at most around

10 millirems per year, compared to a normal dose

of around 110 millirems per year from normal back-
46 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

Table 3-1.—Number of Possible Cancer Cases Due to ionizing Radiation’

Number of cases Number of cases

Origin per yearb

per 10,000 yearsb

High-level radioactive waste disposalc . . . . . . . . . . . . up to 0.1 up to 1,000

(Proposed EPA standards)

Uranium mill tailingsd

:

Unprotected* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 30,000’

Protected (covered, etc.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.03 300*

Indoor air pollution:

Residential exposuree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,000 to 20,000 ‘10,000,000 to

200,000,000*

Residential weatherization (added cases)e

(Nero estimate) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250t05,000 2,500,000 to

50,000,000*

Residential weatherization (added cases)f . . . . . . . . . 10,000 to 20,000 100,OOO,OOO to

2oo,~,ooo’

Background radiating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3,000 to 4,000 30,000,000 to

40,000,000

Cancer deaths (U.S.)h (all causes) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 430,000 NA

a These num~~ are all calculated on the Same basis using a linear non-threshold dose response ITKKfel. The linear non-threshold

model involves a high degree of speculation, and the resulting values have little merit ae absolute indicators of the numbers

of bloiogicai effects that may occur. It has been used here to provide a framework within which relalivo risks from various

radiation exposure situations can be compared.

b Assuming constant U.S. population and cuiture—numbers with (*) are extrapolated from annual v~u~’e.

C EpA propog~ ru)e 413 CFR part 191 (December 1982) number per 100,IXXI tonne high-levei redloectlve w=te repository.

d NRC, October IgSO. “Uranium Miii Licensing Requirements: Finai Ruies,” /%tera/ f?e~lster, 45, No. 194, 135521%5538. Radon

inhalation exposures.

e Nero, A, v., “fndoor Radiation Exposures From Z~]Rn and Its Daughters: A View of the Issue, ” Hedfh l?tYSh:S, 45, No. 2 (August

1983), 277-288.

f EPA Report EpA 52014.78-013 (revised printing, JulY 1979).

9 NASINRC, The Effects on populations of Exposure to LOW Levei of ionizing Radiation, November 1972 1972 BEiR Report.

h American Cancer Society, Cancer Facts and Figures—1982, 1~1.

● Does not include heaith effects from water pathways.

SOURCE: High-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Subcommittee, Science Advisory Board, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,

“Report on the Review of Proposed Environmental Standards for the Management and Disposiil of Spent Nuclear

Fuel, High-Level and Transuranic Radioactive Wastes (40 CFR 191),” January 1984, tabie A, pp. 12-13.

Table 3=2.—Projected Population Risks From High= Level Waste Disposal EPA Reference Cases

Projected health effects over 10,000 years

Repository Routine Drilling number Breccia Volcano;

type release Faulting (No hit) (Hit) pipe meteorite Total

Granite . . . . . 10 + 750 + 760

Bedded salt .

—

o

+

160 8 + + 190

Basalt . . . . . . 1,400 : 3,000 2 + 4,400

Number = “No hit” means the drili dcms not hit soiid waste but only reposltov water, whiie “hit” indicates the driil does hlt solld waste.

+ . Less than 1 pro)acted fatai cancer.

— . Not applicable.

SOURCE: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Draft Errv)rorrrnerrtal hnpsct Staterrrerrt for 40 CFR 191: &rvirorrrnerrtal Standards for Management arrd Disposal of

Spent Nuclear Fuel, High-Lewl and Transuranic Radioactive Waste, EPA 52011-824125, December 1982, p. 205.

ground radiation. (Further analysis of the difference

between high-level waste and spent fuel is found

in the discussion of reprocessing below. ) It should

be noted, however, that these figures show that direct use of contaminated ground water that has not

been diluted in a large volume of surface water

could lead to doses to some individuals that are well

above background levels .31

91 EPA cites Simtiw conclusions. EPA, DEIS on @ CFR 191, P. 106.

The acceptability of such expected effects is a

value judgment, rather than a technical determination, and is the responsibility of the Environmental

Protection Agency. EPA has proposed that the

amounts of certain critical radionuclides that can

be released from a repository in the first 10,000

years after emplacement be limited to specified levels that are calculated to produce no more than

about 1,000 deaths (for a 1OO,OOO-tonne repository)

during that period. The proposed limits are shown
Ch. 3—Technology of Waste Management ● 4 7

Figure 3-3.—Individual Radiation Dose as a Function of Water Travel Time

From a Repository in Basalt Containing 100,000 Tonnes of Unreprocessed

Spent Uranium Fuel

E

0

.&

102

10’

1

lolololo10

lo10’ 102

10’ 10410’ 106 10

Water travel time, year

Assumptions:

Dissolution rates = 10- 4/yr for C, Cs, and 1. All other radionuclides

dissolve at a rate determined by their own volubility rather than

the rate of dissolution of the waste form.

River flow = 1.1 x 101’ m3/yr

Groundwater flow = 3.2 x 1 0

4 mYyr

108

10’

106

10’

104

103

10’

10’

?

SOURCE: Adapted from National Reaearch Council, A Study of the/so/at/on System for Geologlc Dk?posal of Radioactive Wastes (VVaehington, DC:

National Academy Press, 19S3).
48 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

Figure 3-4.— Individual Radiation Dose as a Function of Water Travel Time

From a Repository in Basalt Containing Reprocessing Waste From 100,000 Tonnes

of Spent Uranium Fuel

.-

=.-

E

1

10-1

10-2

10-3

10 10’ 103 104

10’ 10’ IC

I

I

10’

10’

10’

10’

10’

)7

Water travel time, year

Assumptions:

Dissolution rates = 10- 4/yr for Cs. All other radionuclides dissolve

at a rate determined by their own volubility rather than the rate

of dissolution of the waste form.

River flow = 1.1 x IOf’ mVyr

Groundwater flow = 3.2 x 1 0

4 m3/yr

SOURCE: Adapted from National Research Council, A Study ofttre Isolation System for Geologic Disposal of Radioactive Wastes (Washington, DC:

National Academy Press, 19S3).

in table 3-3. The NRC performance requirements ceptable levels of radiation exposure to, or health

for geologic repositories-are summarized in appen- effects in, exposed population; or individuals; and

dix D. whether to set performance standards for individIt should be noted that there are disagreements ual components of a repository system (such as the

waste package), or only for the system as a whole .32 in the technical community about the philosophical

approaches reflected in both EPA’s proposed standards and NRC final regulations. The issues in dispute include whether to base the safety standards

on what is theoretically achievable by a well engineered and sited repository, or on an independently

determined standard of acceptable risk; whether to

state the standard in the form of limits for the

amounts of radionuclides that can be released by

a repository over a fixed period, or in terms of ac3ZA discussion and critique of the NRC regulations and proposed

EPA standards is found in National Research Council, Isolation System, ch. 8. Suggestions for revisions of the proposed EPA standards

are found in the ‘‘Report on the Review of Proposed Environmental

Standards for the Management ami Disposal of Spent Nuclear Fuel,

High-Level and Transuranic Radioactive Wastes (40 CFR191)” by

the High-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Subcommittee of the

Science Advisory Board of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,

January 1984. This group suggested that the release limits be ten times

higher than proposed by EPA.
Ch. 3—Technology of Waste Management ● 4 9

Table 3-3.—EPA Proposed Release Limits for

Containment Requirements (cumulative

releases to the accessible environment

for 10,000 years after disposal)

Release limit

Radionuclide (curies per 1,000 tonnes)

Americium-241 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Americium-243. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Carbon-14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200

Cesium-135 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,000

Cesium-137 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 500

Neptunium-237 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Plutonium-238 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400

Plutonium-239 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

Plutonium-240 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

Plutonium-242 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

Radium-226 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Strontium-90 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

Technetium-99 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10,000

Tin-126 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80

Any other alpha-emitting

radionuclide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Any other radio nuclide which does

not emit alpha particles. . . . . . 500

SOURCE US Environmental Protection Agency.

Figures 3-3 and 3-4 can also provide perspective

on the point emphasized in chapter 2: that simple

toxicity indices, such as water dilution volumes, are

a misleading measure of the hazard posed by radioactive waste. Figure 3-5 shows the contribution

made to the toxicity of spent fuel by each of the

most significant radionuclides. Comparing that figure with figures 3-3 and 3-4 shows that, with the

exception of neptunium-237 (Np237) in the very long

term, none of the radionuclides that are the principal contributors to the predicted dose from waste

in a repository are major contributors to the total

toxicity of the waste. The major contributors to the

toxicity are in general expected to decay before they

can reach the environment. Some, like strontium-90 and cesium-137, have short half-lives so that

they will decay to negligible levels even within relatively short water travel times. Others with longer

half-lives, like americium and plutonium, are expected to be retarded severely by chemical reactions with the surrounding rock so that they will

move much more slowly than the ground water and

thus will take a very long time to escape, even if

the water travel time is not long compared to the

half-life.

Figure 3-5.—Water Dilution Volume of PWR

Spent Fuel

10-’ 1 10’ 102

10’ 10’ 10’ 10’ 10’

Decay time after discharge, year

SOURCE: National Research Council, A Study of the Isolation System for Geologic Disposal of Radioactive Wastes (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 19S3),

cost

DOE estimates that the cost of designing, constructing, operating, and decommissioning a geologic repository having a capacity of 70,000 tonnes

of spent fuel will range from $5 billion to $7 billion (in 1983 dollars), depending on a range of factors, including the nature of the site and medium.33

Two repositories of this capacity should accommodate all of the radioactive waste generated over the

40-year expected operating lifetime of the nuclear

33u s Department of EnerW, Mission Plan for the Civilian Radi-

. .

oactive waste Management Program, draft, DOE/RW-0005 (Washington, D. C.: April 1984), vol. II, table 10-6, p. 10-14.
—

50 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

powerplants in existence or under construction in

the United States. The actual number required will

depend on a number of factors, including the physical capacity of the sites that are found, the repository designs that are finally adopted, the size of the

nuclear power system that must be served, and the

relative amounts of spent fuel and solidified highlevel waste that are disposed of.34

Other Disposal Technologies35

Subseabed Disposal

Next to mined geologic repositories, the disposal

concept that has been the focus of the most study

is subseabed disposal. Subseabed disposal involves

the emplacement of high-level radioactive waste beneath the ocean floor within the thick (200 to 500

feet [ft]) clay sediments that cover large expanses

of the relatively deep (3 to 4 miles) midoceanic regions. These flat-lying, homogeneous sediments

could provide sufficient disposal for all the highlevel radioactive waste produced worldwide. Because these remote, deep-ocean areas lack significant levels of mineral and biological resources, the

likelihood of human intrusion is very low. The midoceanic regions are among the most stable and predictable geologic environments on Earth. Moreover, the ocean itself provides an additional

isolating barrier between the sediment surface and

land-based ecosystems. On the other hand, subseabed disposal presents added safety risks from ocean

transportation accidents. Although waste retrieval

would be possible with existing technology, its cost

would probably be prohibitive for all but safety

reasons.

Additional work is needed before the scientific

feasibility of seabed disposal can be determined. For

example, further research is needed to determine

whether the waste canister and the sediments will

.——.

‘~4D0E ~ysis that took such factors into account concluded that

a maximum of five or six repositories would be needed for a nuclear

power system that reaches a maximum of 250 GWC of installed generating capacity. DOE, FEZS, table 7.3.10, p. 7.29.

q-he ~onc]usions abut these other disposal technologies are drawn

primarily from three sources in which these alternatives are analyzed:

DOE, FEZS, 1980; IRG, op. cit.; and U.S. Department of Energy,

Statement of Position of the United States Department of Energy in

the Matter of the Proposed Rulemaking on the Storage and Disposaf

of Nuclear Waste, DOWNE-0007 (Washington, D. C.: Apr. 15, 1980).

For brevity, specific references to these sources will be omitted.

adequately contain the wastes, and models to predict the physical and biological transport of radionuclides in the ocean must be developed.36

In its relatively small subseabed research program (funded at $6 million in fiscal year 1982),

DOE is studying not only the potential migration

of radioactive material within the oceanic sediments

and ecosystem, but also transport, emplacement,

and isolation systems. Large regions of the ocean

have been screened and many areas explored in

more detail; several prospective sites have been selected for in situ testing. Resolving technical questions about the impacts from the international

dumping of low-level radioactive waste onto the

ocean floor may be required before the emplacement of high-level radioactive waste could be initiated.

With subseabed disposal, the domestic political

difficulties associated with siting land-based mined

repositories might be replaced with similar difficulties in siting the shipping facilities .37 In addition, significant national and international legal

problems might require resolution before this concept could be implemented. The Ocean Dumping

Act (Public Law 92-532~ can be interpreted to ban

subseabed disposal of high-level waste. At the international level, the 1972 London Dumping Convention prohibits high-level radioactive waste from

being dumped into the oceans or placed on the surface of the seabed. However, since subseabed disposal involves emplacing the waste beneath the sediment surface, the legal status of this option relative

to existing international laws and the ongoing Law

of the Sea negotiations is presently ill-defined, and

there is currently no official U.S. position on the

matter.38 Implementation of this disposal alterna-

—-— — JGRO~rt Il. Klett, sU6Seabed Disposal Program Annual Report:

Systems, October 1981 Througl September 1982, SAND83-1835

(Albuquerque, N. Mex.: Sandia National Laboratories, February

1984), p. 8.

37A full discussion of the domestic and international issues in subseabed disposal is found in Edward Miles, Kai N. Lee, and Elaine

Carlin, Sub-Seabed Disposal of Hi!?h-Level Nuclear Waste: An Assessment of PoJicy Issues for the United States (Seattle, Wash.: University of Washington Institute for Marine Studies, July 21, 1982).

WK R. Hinga and D. R. Andt.rson, ‘‘The Institutional prOgram

for an International Subseabed Repository, ” in U.S. Department of

Energy, Proceedings of the 1982 Nationzd Waste Terminal Storage

Program Information Meeting (Washington, D. C.: December 1982),

pp. 68-70. See ~SO Seabed Programs Division, The Seabed Disposal

Program: 1983 Status Report, SAND 83-1387 (Albuquerque, N.

Mex.: Sandia National Laboratories, October 1983).
Ch. 3—Technology of Waste Management ● 51

tive would probably require an international agreement as well as specific U.S. congressional action.

To enhance the level of international cooperation in the evaluation of subseabed disposal, an international seabed working group has been created

with a membership that currently includes the

United States, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, the Federal Republic

of Germany, Switzerland, and the Commission of

European Communities. In addition, Italy and Belgium have participated as observers in the cooperative R&D efforts of this group. This high level of

international interest and cooperation indicates that

subseabed disposal is widely regarded as the most

promising alternative disposal technology to mined

geologic repositories. In addition to the potential

value of subseabed disposal for the United States,

it may be useful to maintain a viable seabed R&D

program for both low- and high-level radioactive

waste to ensure the safe and equitable use of the

seabed by the international community and to provide an alternative for those countries that cannot

dispose of radioactive waste on land.

Deep Holes

Deep-hole disposal involves the disposal of wastefilled canisters at the bottom of holes 12 to 15 inches

in diameter, drilled to a depth of 20,000 to 50,000

ft, well below the maximum depth of ground water

movement. At these extreme depths, the potential

for disturbance by natural surface forces or human

intrusion or for transport by ground water to the

biosphere would theoretically be minimized. However, significant uncertainties remain about the

character of the hydrogeologic environment and

about waste/rock interactions at these depths. Simply determining the suitability of alternative sites

at such depths is extremely difficult.

This concept requires larger holes and heavier

drilling equipment than are currently available, although these technical requirements are probably

manageable by extensions of existing technology.

The difficulty of keeping holes of this depth open

may complicate waste emplacement. Moreover, the

logistics of deploying a full-scale, deep-hole system

may be significant; as many as 2,000 holes may be

required if the commercial spent fuel from existing

reactors and those under construction are to be accommodated. This number could conceivably be

reduced by a factor of 10 for high-level waste from

reprocessing operations if the heat produced by the

waste did not cause significant problems. Each hole

would probably require 3 to 6 years to drill. Once

emplaced, it might be practically impossible to retrieve the waste and extremely difficult to verify the

degree of isolation obtained.

Rock Melting

Rock melting involves pumping newly generated

high-level liquid waste into a conventionally mined

cavity at depths of 5,000 to 6,000 ft. The high levels

of heat produced by the waste would theoretically

melt the surrounding rock within several decades;

the resultant resolidification of the rock/waste mixture into a presumably insoluble matrix would require many hundreds of years. Rock melting can

only be used for disposing of newly generated highlevel waste from the reprocessing of unaged spent

fuel. Therefore, any high-level waste generated

from reprocessing older spent fuel, as well as the

transuranic waste from reprocessing, will have to

be disposed of in another manner.

Since the rock-melting concept has not been studied to any great extent, it contains numerous and

potentially significant uncertainties about waste

handling and emplacement techniques, about the

physical and chemical interaction of the melted material with the host rock, and about the potential

migration of the radioactive material after emplacement. Retrieval of the waste is not possible with

rock melting, and verification of isolation after

emplacement, even over the short term, may be

difficult. The number of rock-melting disposal sites,

of course, would depend on the size of the cavities

used. For example, a mined cavity 80 ft in diameter

would be capable of containing the high-level liquid waste generated by reprocessing 50,000 tonnes

of spent fuel. Rock melting could offer substantial

cost advantages over the development of mined repositories because the mining activity for rock

melting is considerably less than that for the development of mined repositories.

Well Injection

From an operational point of view, a relatively

simple means of permanently isolating liquid high-
52 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

level waste from reprocessing would be to pump

it to depths of 500 to 5,000 ft into a well in a suitable

hydrogeological environment at or near a reprocessing plant. Two such injection wells would probably be required for a reprocessing plant with a capacity of 2,000 tonnes/year (yr). Retrieval of wastes

injected into deep wells would be limited, if not entirely impractical.

In grout injection, certain suitable rock formations, such as shale, at depths of 300 to 500 ft would

first be hydrofractured by injecting a fluid under

high pressure down a borehole. A mixture of liquid radioactive waste and self-hardening grout, such

as cement, would then be injected into the fractured

rock, leaving the waste in a relatively immobile and

essentially irretrievable form. Hydrofracturing has

been used at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory

to dispose of 1.8 million gallons of liquid defense

waste at a single well site, and monitoring has

shown no indication of any postinjection migration

of radioactive material away from the grout sheets.

Approximately 40 grout injection wells would probably be required at a reprocessing plant having a

capacity of 2,000 tonnes/yr.

Well-injection techniques have already been used

to dispose of various types of industrial wastes. In

fact, there are approximately 300 industrial wastedisposal wells that have been or are in operation

in the United States. However, at this time, there

are only limited field data on the long-term containment of these wastes. In addition, deep-well injection of any waste is prohibited in 12 States and

discouraged in another 7. Nine other States have

regulations controlling its use.

Ice Sheets

The ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica,

where ice thickness reaches several thousand feet,

could conceivably provide a remote, low-temperature environment for containing radioactive waste.

The waste could be allowed to melt down through

several thousand feet of ice to the bedrock under

the ice, to be suspended in the ice to a depth of a

few hundred feet from cables anchored at the ice

surface, or to be stored in surface facilities that

would gradually sink toward the bedrock under the

weight of naturally accumulating snow and ice. In

the first and second cases, refreezing of the water

above the waste as it melts through the ice would

theoretically seal the err placement hole. Cases two

and three could theoretically provide a certain degree of retrievability for a few hundred years. However, once inside the ice sheet, the waste would migrate slowly (over an estimated period of tens to

hundreds of thousands of years) with the ice toward

the perimeter of the ice sheet where the ice breaks

off as icebergs.

Although there are apparent advantages to this

disposal concept, an international group of glaciologists recommended in 1974 that the Antarctic

ice sheet not be used for waste disposal because of

the many uncertainties about its general nature,

evolution, and behavior, as well as the unknown

relationship between ice sheet dynamics and as yet

unpredictable climatic changes. The principal uncertainties concern the stability of the ice masses

for very long periods (10,000 years or more) and

the possibility that the waste, once in contact with

the basement rock, would be broken up mechanically and escape along unknown pathways. As in

subseabed disposal, international negotiations and

the signing of treaties would be necessary before

this concept could be implemented.

Space

Placing encapsulated radioactive waste into orbit around the Sun would eliminate the waste irretrievably from the Earth itself. According to concepts studied by DOE, spent fuel would first be

reprocessed and the high-level liquid waste from

reprocessing would be solidified into an acceptable

waste form. After transporting the solidified waste

to the launch site, an upgraded space shuttle would

carry the waste into orbit around the Earth. An orbital transfer vehicle would then be used to carry

the waste from the shuttle to the position of solar

orbit between Earth and Venus. (Shooting the

waste directly into the Sun would require too much

fuel to be practical.) After the orbital transfer vehicle

had been recovered, the shuttle would return to

Earth for reuse.

Although conceptually attractive and probably

technically feasible, space disposal is not considered

an immediate and viable disposal option because

of undeveloped technology, the large number of

space shuttle launches required (a thousand or more
Ch. 3—Technology of Waste Management ● 5 3

per year for spent fuel or 4 to 6 dozen per year for

high-level waste), and the uncertain, yet potentially

serious, consequences of an accident during launch

that might release significant quantities of radioactive waste into the atmosphere. Since space disposal

appears to be economically feasible only for selected

long-lived elements, or perhaps for the total amount

of high-level reprocessed waste, reprocessing of

commercial spent fuel would be required first. An

alternative disposal system would then be needed

for the remaining radioactive waste not destined

for space.

Assuming adequate funding and the resolution

of existing technical problems, this disposal concept could possibly be ready for use by the year

2000. However, resolution of numerous and potentially significant political and international issues

as well as a large number of legal complexities could

lengthen the time needed to implement this disposal

option.

Transmutation

Transmutation is a treatment (not disposal) technique that theoretically could be used to convert

(transmute) the long-lived radionuclides in radioactive waste (in particular, the transuranic radionuclides such as Np237) into stable or short-lived radioisotopes by neutron bombardment in nuclear

reactors. The process requires reprocessing spent

fuel, with the addition of a step that would separate (partition) the long-lived radionuclides from

the liquid high-level waste so that they could be incorporated into new fuel rods and recycled through

nuclear reactors. Although this process should theoretically reduce the long-term hazards associated

with the waste, recent work has indicated that the

process may result in an increased radiation hazard

during the short term because of the additional

complex operations that are involved, along with

a very small decrease in long-term hazards .39 In

fact, partitioning and transmutation involve such

an increase in operational complexity that the process can be seen as a new fuel cycle rather than simply as an incremental modification of the reprocessing fuel cycle. 40

-.

~9A, G, Croff J. 0, Blomeke, and B. C. Finney’, Acfinide partitioning-Transmu tation Program Final Report. I. OveraIl Assessment,

OR NL-5566 (Oak Ridge, Term.: Oak Ridge National Laboratory},

June 1980).

401bid.

Since only 5 to 7 percent of the recycled elements

are transmuted while the fuel is in the reactor, numerous recycles would be required to transmute all

the long-lived radioisotopes. Although specially designed reactors could conceivably increase the rate

of the transmutation process, most of these advanced technologies would require 20 to 30 years

to develop. Transmutation would substantially increase both the handling requirements and the volume of secondary wastes generated, thereby more

than doubling the total costs of waste management.

In addition, since fission products have to be disposed of after transmutation, the need for other

waste disposal technologies would not be eliminated.

Comparison of Disposal Alternatives

The general attractiveness of a particular disposal

option as a basis for the Federal waste management

program is affected by the following factors: 1) the

relative degree of safety it offers, 2) the type of waste

it can accommodate, 3) its provision for retrieving

waste, 4) the potential international complications

from developing or deploying the option, and 5)

cost .

Technology Status

Disposal in mined geologic repositories has received far more attention on a worldwide basis, and

hence is far more advanced in development, than

any of the other disposal technologies. As discussed

above, subseabed disposal is also now the focus of

an international research effort, and its scientific

and engineering feasibility could conceivably be

tested by the end of this century. The other technologies have received far less attention, and it

would require considerable effort to develop the

same level of understanding about their advantages

and disadvantages that now exists about mined repositories and subseabed disposal.

Relative Degree of Safety

It is difficult to compare different waste emplacement and disposal options in terms of safety, not

only because some have not been analyzed in much

detail, but also because such comparisons involve

a complicated balancing between differences in

long-term isolation on the one hand and offsetting
54 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

differences in near-term operational risks on the

other. In general, the more remote the environment

into which the waste is emplaced (e. g., outer space),

the greater the isolation that can be achieved. At

the same time, remote environments involve increased difficulty and risks during emplacement

(e.g., the risk of accidental reentry of waste into

the atmosphere in space disposal) and greater difficulty of monitoring the waste to detect unanticipated problems (and of taking corrective actions

such as retrieval) if such problems arise.

An additional safety consideration arises in the

case of those disposal alternatives, such as rock

melting, that require that spent fuel be reprocessed.

If reprocessing were undertaken specifically to allow

use of such an alternative, the additional operational

risks and worker exposures resulting from reprocessing would have to be balanced against any longterm safety advantages afforded by the disposal

technology.

Type of Waste

Because of significant uncertainties about the future of commercial reprocessing in this country and

the large quantities of spent fuel expected to be generated by the reactors that now are operating or

are under construction, it appears possible that at

least some spent fuel might be discarded directly

as waste. Thus, the ability to accommodate spent

fuel as well as high-level waste from reprocessing

could be an important consideration in choosing

a disposal system. Only some disposal technologies—e. g., mined repositories, deep holes, subseabed, and space—would have that ability, and in

some of those cases (in particular, space disposal),

technical considerations could make their use for

spent fuel impracticable.

Ability to Retrieve Waste

Because of the uncertainties about the degree of

long-term isolation that any disposal system would

provide, it maybe desirable to maintain some ability to recover the waste after emplacement if the

development of scientific understanding shows that

the risks were greater than anticipated at the time

of emplacement. In fact, EPA’s proposed criteria

for high-level waste disposal would require that removal of most of the waste be possible for a reasonable period after disposal. 41

Because disposal systems rely heavily on natural barriers to prevent radioactive waste from being released into the environment, these same natural barriers make human access to, and retrieval

of, the waste quite difficult after final emplacement.

In some cases, retrieval could be practically impossible. Thus, for example, the proposed EPA retrievability requirements might preclude use of such

technologies as deep-hole emplacement and rock

melting.

In addition to such safety considerations, retrievability might also be desirable in order to keep the

option of reprocessing spent fuel. The mined geologic repository appears to be the only disposal technology that could allow economic retrieval of spent

fuel after emplacement, although this may only be

possible before the repository has been backfilled

and sealed.

Potential International Complications

Legal and institutional difficulties at the international level could be encountered in any attempt

to use space, subseabed, or ice sheet disposal. However, the extent to which these problems could constrain the development of these disposal alternatives is uncertain. The potential for such

complications could make some technologies relatively unattractive as a choice for the primary focus

of the United States’ radioactive waste-management program.

cost

Preliminary cost estimates by DOE indicate that

mined geologic disposal and subseabed disposal

could be the least expensive options (on the order

of 0.1 C/kilowatt-hour [kWh] of nuclear-generated

electricity), while deep-hole disposal could cost several times as much (around 0.3¢/kWh).42 Estimates

of the costs of other options are too incomplete to

permit a similar calculation of the unit cost of disposal. All such estimates are uncertain at this point,

in part because the final safety standards and reg41EpA, DEZS on 40 CFR 191, p. 127.

WDOE, FEIS, table 6.2.7, p. (I. 192.
Ch. 3—Technology of Waste Management ● 5 5

ulations for high-level waste disposal have not been

adopted yet, and thus the final performance requirements for disposal systems are not certain. In

addition, the cost of those disposal options that require reprocessing is unknown because it is not clear

if the cost of such reprocessing would be offset completely by the sale of the recovered uranium and

plutonium or if part or all of the cost would have

to be included as part of the cost of waste disposal.

Nonetheless, since these estimated costs (excluding

reprocessing costs) are a small fraction (a few percent) of the typical current new construction cost

of generating nuclear electricity with a new facility,43 it appears unlikely that the ultimate disposal

costs would significantly affect the economics of nuclear power even if they are increased substantially

over current estimates.

Conclusions

Based on analyses of the above factors, the development of mi’ned repositories in the continental United States appears to provide the most immediately available disposal technology suitable for

both spent fuel and high-level waste from reprocessing that could be developed by the United States.

Despite potential international problems, subseabed

disposal presently provides the most promising alternative to the use of mined repositories. If commercial reprocessing is ever developed fully, it may

be advantageous to consider other options, such as

deep holes or rock melting, for disposing of the

high-level waste from reprocessing. However, even

if all spent fuel were reprocessed and the high-level

waste were disposed of using another disposal alter-

——- 4j1bid, , pp. 7.50-7.51.

native, there would still be other waste products

generated by the reprocessing operation (in particular, large volumes of transuranic-contaminated

waste) that may have to be disposed of in mined

repositories.

Although the development of mined repositories

could be deferred until more information about alternative disposal technologies is available, it is not

clear what benefits would be gained by such deferral.44 In fact, there is considerable consensus within

the technical community that the development of

mined repositories should not be deferred, and the

Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (NWPA) made

a commitment in law to operation of d geologic repository by 1998 (see ch. 5).

There is disagreement about the desirability of

developing other disposal options as insurance

against the remote possibility that mined repositories cannot be developed because of unforeseen

technical or institutional problems. The annual

budgets for the commercial waste management program have increased gradually from $1.7 million

in fiscal year 1972 to approximately $317 million

in fiscal year 1982. Of this latter amount, approximately 97 percent is devoted to the development

of mined repositories. Subseabed, deep-hole, and

space disposal options may be investigated further

as technologies to back up or complement the development of mined repositories, but are not now

planned for full development. NWPA also provides

for accelerated investigations of such alternative disposal technologies.

4+See discussion in issue 1, app. B

WASTE STORAGE

Unlike disposal technologies, storage technologies

are designed to allow easy retrieval of the emplaced

material. Thus, they cannot rely as heavily on remoteness and impenetrable natural barriers to prevent accidental releases and human intrusion, but

instead must use engineered features and continued

human control. In effect, the price of easy retrievability is the need for continued care, maintenance,

and monitoring of the storage facility.

As noted in chapter 2, large amounts of new storage capacity will be needed at least for the next several decades simply to hold the spent fuel generated by commercial reactors until adequate disposal

or reprocessing capacity becomes available. Storage for considerably longer periods may also be

used either to maintain access to spent fuel for possible future reprocessing or to allow waste (either

spent fuel or high-level waste) to cool before emplac-
56 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

ing it in a repository for permanent disposal. Some

also view permanent storage as an acceptable way,

in itself, to provide final isolation of the waste. (For

further discussion, see issue 1 in app. B.) Thus,

storage technology may be required to function for

periods ranging from 10 years or less to 100 years

or more.

Discussions about storage technology are sometimes clouded by the use of different terms (e. g.,

‘ ‘away-from-reactor’ [AFR] and ‘‘monitored, retrievable storage’ [MRS]) that have been associated with particular policy debates (see issue 4 in

app. B). For example, the term ‘‘AFR’ came into

general use in the debate about whether the Federal Government should provide centralized (thus,

away-from-reactor) storage facilities to enable the

Government to accept spent fuel from utilities during a relatively short interim period until a geologic

repository would be available, which was assumed

to be as quickly as possible. In contrast, the term

‘‘MRS” was introduced in the context of a debate

about whether the Federal Government should provide storage facilities designed for spent fuel and

high-level waste that could provide an alternative

to geologic repositories for an extended period—

perhaps 100 years or longer. However, some also

see an MRS facility as providing a cushion against

relatively short slippages in the geologic repository

program. In that event, there would be little practical difference between the two concepts.

In general, a system that can store spent fuel satisfactorily can also be designed to store high-level

waste from reprocessing. Therefore, although the

discussion of storage in this section focuses on spent

fuel storage, for which there is the greatest immediate need, it also pertains to storage of solidified

high-level waste from reprocessing.

Interim Storage Technology

Water-Filled Basins

Practically all the existing commercial spent fuel

is currently stored at reactor sites in water-filled

basins that were originally designed to store freshly

discharged spent fuel for a short period (6 months)

until it could be reprocessed. Such basins are an

effective way to provide the high level of radiation

shielding and thermal cooling needed during such

initial storage periods.

Photo credit: Department of Energy

Spent fuel storage basin at a commercial

nuclear powerplant

Since reactor basins were originally not intended

to provide storage for an accumulating inventory

of spent fuel, their potential capacity was not maximized. The capacity of those reactor basins, or of

new independent water basins, may be increased

in two ways: reracking and rod consolidation.

Reracking allows closer spacing of spent fuel elements by replacing the original, inefficient, but relatively inexpensive aluminum storage racks that hold

the spent fuel assemblies with more expensive racks

made of other materials. Because reracking in existing basins is by far the least expensive and easiest

way to provide additional storage capacity, utilities have been doing it as needed since the mid1970’s. By reracking, utilities can increase the capacity of many reactor basins that were designed

originally to hold up to 4 to 5 annual spent fuel discharges by up to 10 additional annual discharges.

DOE assumes that utilities will exploit the potential for reracking to the maximum extent possible

before considering other storage options.

Rod consolidation involves disassembling spent

fuel elements and packing the individual fuel rods

more closely together in steel storage canisters. This
Ch. 3—Technology of Waste Management ● 5 7

technology could allow the capacity of existing storage basins to be nearly doubled in some instances

(subject to structural limitations on the ability of

the basin to withstand the additional load) at a cost

comparable to reracking. Although large-scale rod

consolidation has not been demonstrated yet, such

demonstrations are planned for the next few years,

If successfully demonstrated, this method could reduce the need for additional storage facilities to

some extent by the end of the decade, and substantially by the end of the century. However, rod consolidation will probably not be usable at every reactor because of structural limitations on the total

weight of spent fuel that can be placed in some water basins. Rod consolidation could also be used

to increase the storage capacity of the dry storage

technologies discussed next.

Dry Storage

Several concepts for dry storage of spent fuel are

under consideration for new storage facilities (see

fig. 3-6). Since dry storage appears to be suited for

storage over long and uncertain periods, it has been

selected over water basins in each major Federal

analysis of extended storage options .45 Most of the

following dry storage concepts require sealing spentMU s Atomic Enerw Commission, Preliminary Draft Environ-

. .

mentaf Statement, Retrievable Surface Storage Facility (Richland,

Wash.: November 1974); U.S. Department of Energy, The Monitored

Retrievable Storage Concept: A Review of Zts Status and Analysis

of Its Impact on the Waste Management System, DOE/NE 0019

(Washington, D. C.: December 1981); D. E. Rasmussen, Comparison

of Cask and DryWell Storage Concepts for a Monitored Retrievable

Storage/Interim Storage System, PNL-4450 (Richland, Wash.: Battelle Memorial Institute, Pacific Northwest Laboratory, December

1982.

Figure 3-6.-Dry Storage Concepts for Spent Fuel

y Each drywell would hold a steel canister containing about 0.5 Each cask would contain about 10 tonnes of spent fuel (24 to

tonnes of spent fuel (1 or 2 fuel assemblies depending upon 52 assemblies).

the type of reactor).

If licensed, dry storage technologies like these may provide a relatively inexpensive, flexible alternative to water-filled basins for incj8-948 O - 85 - 5 : QL 3
58 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

fuel elements in steel canisters prior to emplacement:

●

●

●

●

●

●

Air-cooled vault—a large concrete structure

using natural air convection for cooling.

Concrete surface silo-a concrete cylinder sitting vertically on the ground.

Casks—large metal casks (which may be designed to be used for transportation as well)

sitting vertically in warehouselike sheds.

Surface drywell (dry caisson)—a steel- and

concrete-lined hole that will hold one or several spent fuel elements.

Tunnel drywell storage—drywells sunk in the

floor of subterranean tunnels.

Tunnel rack storage—movable racks placed

in tunnels inside a mountain.

Comparison of Interim Storage

Technologies

Status of Technology Development

Because the water-filled basin is the only storage technology now in use in licensed facilities, it

has been considered until recently the only viable

option for new facilities in the next decade. Estimates of the time required to design, construct, and

license an independent basin facility range from

about 7 years at a licensed reactor site to 9 years

at a new site.

However, recent studies indicate that some alternative dry-storage technologies may be available

for use before 1990.46 A cast iron cask of West German design and a cask of U.S. design are being

used by DOE and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) for tests and a licensed demonstration

expected to be completed in 1987. It is possible that

such cask technology could be licensed on a generic

basis, i.e., approved for use at any licensed reactor

site, thereby reducing the lead time required for

a decision by a utility to use the technology. Both

drywells and surface silos are being tested currently

by DOE at the Nevada Test Site.

Because of the significant potential advantages

of these technologies in stiety, cost, time, and speed

ME. R. Johnson Ass~iates, Inc., A Preliminary Assessment OfAhernative Dry Storage Methods for the Storage of Commercial Spent Nuclear Fuel, JAZ-180, DOE/ET/47929-1 (Reston, Va. : November

1981).

of implementation, it seems important to determine

their licensability and actual cost quickly, particularly for at-reactor use. NWPA includes measures

to accomplish this. If no major licensing problems

are encountered, cask or drywell facilities could be

constructed at reactor sites in about 4 years .47 Additional research, development, and demonstration

of dry storage will be required to develop a fullscale system that can reliably receive, package, and

emplace waste at the very high annual rates (2,000

tonnes/yr) that would be involved in a large, centralized storage facility. 48 There is, however, no

apparent technical reason why this cannot be done.

The cask and the surface drywell are currently

considered to be leading candidates for new storage capacity both at existing reactor sites49 and at

centralized facilities for interim or extended storage.50 A DOE study estimates that a centralized

dry storage facility using either casks or drywells

could be designed, sited, and constructed in about

11 years. 51 Other dry-storage technologies, such as

the tunnel-rack system, have received less study to

date .52

NRC has adopted regulations for licensing independent spent fuel storage facilities using wet or

dry technologies for periods up to 20 years .53 Since

these regulations were designed for interim storage, it is not clear whether additional issues might

be raised in the case of extended storage (for periods up to 100 years or longer) .54 If extended storage facilities were intended to be used for terminal

isolation, for example, more sophisticated engineered features such as waste packages might be

required to control releases that might occur if institutional control were lost or abandoned. If existing regulations had to be modified for licensing

facilities for extended storage, additional time could

be required to construct such a facility.

Safety

There appear to be no fundamental questions

about the technical ability to design, construct, and

471bid.

+fJRasmussen, op. cit., p. 6.46.

49E. R. Johnson Associates, Inc. , op. cit.

sORasmussen, op. cit.

JIDOE, The Monitored Retriev;!ble Storage Concept.

521bid.

5310 CFR, pt. 72.

WDOE, Monitored Retrievable Xtorage Concept, p. 2-14
Ch. 3—Technology of Waste Management ● 5 9

operate interim spent fuel storage facilities to meet

applicable radiation protection standards as long

as continuing surveillance and maintenance of the

facilities is provided. Safe storage in water basins

has already been demonstrated, and it appears likely that equally safe, perhaps safer, storage can be

provided with dry-storage technologies.55 While

there may be disagreements about the safety of particular system designs (e. g., certain methods for expanding the capacity of existing storage basins at

reactors), these disagreements do not challenge the

conclusion that safe storage is technically feasible.

Water basins are simple structures that have been

used successfully for the storage of radioactive materials, including spent fuel, for 30 years. The engineering practices and procedures involved in their

design and construction are well established. Experience shows that spent fuel can be stored under

water safely without significant deterioration of the

fuel elements for periods of at least 20 years and

perhaps considerably longer, particularly if the fuel

assemblies are sealed in stainless steel canisters to

contain leakage.

Although there has been much less experience

with dry storage than with water basins, dry technologies may have potential safety advantages.

First, unlike water-filled basins, they do not rely

on an active cooling system. Furthermore, the heavily shielded containers required in most dry technologies would provide a massive physical barrier

against accidents (e. g., airplane crashes) or sabotage and would limit the effects of such an event

to a few fuel elements. However, longer aging

(about 5 years) is required before spent fuel can

be placed into dry storage, and the fuel, once encapsulated, becomes hotter than in a water basin.

While there has been relatively little experience with

dry storage of spent fuel from light-water reactors

(LWRs), NRC regulations for independent interim

storage facilities contemplate licensing dry-storage

facilities.56

“M. S. Plesset, “ACRS (Advisory Comittee on Reactor Safeguards)

Comments on Proposed Rulemaking on the Storage and Disposal of

Nuclear Waste, ” Letter (Dec. 10, 1980) to John F. Ahern, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Quoted in DOE, Monitored Retrievable Storage Concept. See also U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Waste Confidence Decision.

5610 CFR, pt. 72.

The conclusion that high-level radioactive waste

can be stored safely is based on the assumption that

the storage facilities will continue to be controlled

and maintained .57 However, extended (orpermanent) storage raises a safety issue that does not arise

with interim storage: the possibility that institutional control of the storage facility would be terminated

before the waste decays to innocuous levels. This

situation could result either from the loss of society’s

ability to care for the facility (through war or social

regression) or, perhaps more likely, from carelessness or declining concern by later generations, leading to a decision not to continue to bear the costs

of maintenance despite the potential long-term consequences.

No detailed quantitative analysis yet compares

the safety of extended storage to that of direct disposal as a means of providing final isolation .58 Existing analyses of the safety of storage facilities deal

only with the releases that might occur during a

period of temporary storage under continuous human control. No analyses of accidents that could

cause releases from a storage facility over a very

long period are comparable in thoroughness to the

many studies of the possible ways that wastes could

escape from a mined repository. In particular, there

are no studies of the consequences of premature termination of institutional control, the ‘‘accident’

in a storage facility that is most comparable to a

physical breach of containment in a mined repository.

Flexibility

Water basins and dry vaults are fixed structures

with physical limits to their storage capacity. While

they can be designed to allow modular expansion,

such expansion is usually economical only for large

increments of capacity. In addition, they require

relatively long lead times for construction and licensing—about 7 years for a basin or dry vault at

a reactor site, compared to as little as 3.5 years for

a cask storage facility. 59 contrast, the dry technologies that use separate, freestanding containers

for individual fuel elements (shipping casks, drywells, and silos) all allow expansion of capacity in

57 Plesset, op. cit.

58A brief qu~itative comparison is found in the discussion of issUe

1 in app. B.

‘gE, R. Johnson Associates, Inc. , op. cit., table 7-1, P. 7-3.
60 Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

very small increments and on relatively short notice

once the required packaging facilities are available.

As a result, they appear better able to meet the uncertain storage requirements that now face utilities.

cost

The total undiscounted costs of constructing and

operating a 1 ,000-tonne storage facility at a reactor

site are estimated to range from $82 million (for

casks using fuel consolidated in the reactor basin)

to $260 million (for unconsolidated fuel in a dry

vault). GO The comparable undiscounted totals for

a centralized dry-storage facility with a 48,000 -

tonne capacity range from $2.4 billion (for surface

drywells and tunnel racks) to $5.3 billion (for tunnel drywells). 61 A comparison of capital and operating costs for a range of at-reactor spent fuel storage options is shown in table 3-4.

The wide range of technical and financial assumptions used in the available studies of storage

technologies precludes any simple comparison of

the cost per tonne of using each of the storage technologies at different locations. Examination of the

available DOE studies, however, leads to several

general conclusions:

1. For both at-reactor and away-from-reactor

use, those technologies providing relatively

large, fixed capacities (water basins or dry

vaults) appear to be more expensive per tonne

of storage than do the dry technologies that

allow expansion in annual modules (drywell,

silos, and casks). 62 The principal reason is that

the modular dry technologies have a lower initial capital cost, and their remaining costs can

be spread out over time as additional containers are built. Deferring much of the total costs

in this way reduces the discounted cost of storage and thus makes the expandable technologies even more attractive financially as capital costs increase. It also lowers the financial

risk involved in making a large investment in

fixed storage capacity when the total amount

of storage needed is uncertain.

bO1bid., table &1, p. &a, Amounts are in 1981 dollars.

61DoE, The Monjrored Retrievable Storage Concept, table 2-3,

p. 2-20. Amounts are in 1981 dollars.

GZE. R. Johnson Associates, Inc., op. cit., p. 2; DOE, FEZS, vol.

2, app. A, table A-8, p. A-1OO.

Table 3-4.—Comparison of Capital and Annual

Operating Costs of At= Reactor Storage Options

($/kilogram of uranium–operating costs

in parentheses below capital costs)

Facility capacity (tonnes)

Storage option 500 1,000 2,000

Cask (5-tonne capacity). . . . .

Vault (fuel canned). . . . . . . . .

Cask (l O-tonne capacity). . . .

BWR reracking (stainless

steel to berated

stainless steel) . . . . . . . . . .

Pool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Silo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Vault (fuel not canned) . . . . .

Drywell. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

PWR reracking (stainless

steel to berated

stainless steel) . . . . . . . . . .

Rod consolidation within

existing poola 

. . . . . . . . . . .

PWR reracking (low density

to stainless steel) . . . . . . .

BWR reracking (low density

to berated stainless steel)

BWR reracking (low density

to borate stainless steel) .

PWR reracking (low density

to berated stainless steel)

Double tieringb 

. . . . . . . . . . . .

118

(1.3)

100

(1.9)

(0!;

(1;;

(4.9)

(4:$

(2.1)

(0::

(0:;

40

(Oi;

(1%;

(1%;

(Oi;

—

109 “--

aNo operating coat data available.

bNo cost data, but reracking costs represent lower limits.

SOURCE: Electric l%wer Research Institute, Cost Corn@sons for Orr.slte Spent2.

Fuel Options, EPRI NP-33S0, MiIy 19S4, taties 12-1, 12-2.

The least expensive way to provide storage

using casks or drywells appears to be to locate

the storage facility at I-he site of a reactor, reprocessing plant, orgcologic repository where

existing staff and equ~+pment can be used for

packaging and handling spent fuel (or solidifiedhigh-level waste) fiwstorage. A major part

of the capital cost for a modular dry-storage

facility at an independent site is for the equipment and facilities needed for handling and

packaging the spent fuel prior to insertion in
Ch. 3—Technology of Waste Management ● 61

individual storage units. 63 A recent study of

centralized extended storage using casks and

drywells concluded that substantial savings

would be achieved if the cost of handling facilities (several hundred million dollars) could

be avoided by locating the storage facility at

a repository or reprocessing plant that would

have such facilities in any case, rather than

at an independent site .64 Since it may also be

possible to use modular dry storage at reactors

with only relatively minor modifications to existing facilities, decentralized storage at reactors may also prove to be less expensive than

centralized storage at a stand-alone facility.

However, there is as yet no consistent comparison of centralized v. decentralized storage using dry-storage technologies and using

the same financial assumptions for both cases.

3. Once a spent fuel element has been stored at

6SDOE, The Monitored Retrievable Storage Concept; Rasmussen,

op. cit.

64 Rasmussen, Op. Cit.

an interim storage facility, it may be less expensive to leave it there indefinitely than to

remove it and transport it elsewhere. For example, DOE estimates that the annual cost

of caretaker operations at a 48,000-tonne drystorage facility would be at most about $2.7

million, or about $56/tonne/yr. In contrast,

annual retrieval operations would range from

$4.1 million to $10.7 million, while transportation to another site would cost at least

$15,500/tonne— nearly 300 times the annual

caretaking cost. 66 Thus, an important consideration in planning the full-scale operation of

a waste disposal system will be how rapidly

to draw down the backlogs of spent fuel that

will already have been placed in storage by

the time disposal begins. This point is discussed further below and in chapter 6.

6SDOE, The Monitored Retrievable Storage Concept, table 2-1,

p. 2-18.

66]bid. , table 2-4, p. 2-’22.

WASTE TRANSPORTATION

Spent fuel is transported using heavily shielded

containers called shipping casks. At present three

types of casks are used:67

●

●

●

Legal weight truck casks weigh about 23 tons

and hold one pressurized water reactor (PWR)

fuel assembly or two boiling water reactor

(BWR) fuel assemblies. There are 11 such

casks in the United States.

Overweight truck casks weigh about 35 tons

and hold 3 PWR fuel assemblies or 7 BWR

fuel assemblies. They are restricted in movement because of their weight. There is one

such cask under construction.

Rail casks weigh from 64 to 90 tons and hold

from 7 to 10 PWR fuel assemblies or from 18

bTTheSe data are drawn from U.S. Department of Energy, SfJent

Fuel Storage Fact Book, DOE/NE-0005, April 1980, p. 54. OTA is

currently conducting a more detailed examination of container testing,

safety standards, and risks associated with transportation as part of

its ongoing assessment of Transportation of Hazardous Materials. Information systems and regulatory and institutional issues relating to

the safe transport of nuclear waste and other hazardous materials will

also be studied as part of this assessment.

to 24 BWR fuel assemblies. There are six rail

casks in the United States.

Solidified high-level waste from reprocessing would

also be shipped” in similar heavily shielded casks,

although such casks are still in the conceptual design stage.

The combined capacity of the existing truck and

rail casks is 28 tonnes. DOE estimates that this capacity would be adequate for shipments through

1988, even if all additional storage capacity beyond

existing basins were provided at a centralized storage facility, and that it would be possible for the

industry to meet the demand for additional casks

after that time. 68

Future casks may be somewhat different from

those now in operation. New casks may be able to

carry up to twice as much fuel as current ones if

designed to carry only fuel that is at least 5 years

Wbid., p. 39.
62 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

old. 69 Such fuel has about one-tenth the output of

heat and radiation as 150-day-old spent fuel, for

which existing casks were designed. Since it appears

unlikely that spent fuel less than 5 (or even 10) years

old would be moved for the next few decades, 70

there will be strong financial incentives to develop

and use casks that hold more spent fuel than current designs. In addition, transportation in the future may be done in casks that are designed for storage, 71 and perhaps for disposal for 72 as ‘en 

”

Safety

Standards

Transportation of highly radioactive materials is

governed by NRC and U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) regulations requiring that shipping casks be designed to limit radiation exposure

to bystanders during normal operations (10 millirems/hour at 6 ft from the cask) and to prevent release of radioactive materials from the cask even

in severe accidents. Casks must be designed to withstand a sequence of hypothetical tests without releasing more than a specified small amount of radioactive material.73 (It should be noted that the

ability of a cask design to pass these tests is assessed

by analytical methods rather than by actual performance of the tests on sample casks.) These design criteria, which are intended to encompass a

range of very severe accident conditions, include

sequential exposure to:

GgIbid., p. 39. See also J. A. Bucholz, A Summary Report on OPtimized Designs for Shipping Casks Containing 2-, 3-, 5-, 7-, or 10-

Year-Old PWR Spent Fuel, ORNL/CSD/TM-150 (Oak Ridge Term.:

Oak Ridge National Laboratory, April 1983), table 4a, p. 25. The

maximum capacity of an optimal rail cask design for 10-year-old spent

fuel is 21 PWR assemblies, compared to existing rail casks holding

12 PWR assemblies.

70An~yse5 gener~]y assume that the oldest fuel would be reprocessed or disposed of first. DOE analysis suggests that even if reprocessing began at large scale by 1990, the youngest spent fuel being reprocessed in 2020 would still beat least 10 years old. U.S. Department

of Energy, Spent Fuel and Radioactive Waste Inventories, Projections, and Characteristics, DOEINE-001 7/2, September 1983, table

1.4., p. 20.

TID. E. Rasmussen, op. cit., p. 6.32.

TZWestinghouse Electric Corp., En~”neered Waste package Conceptual Design, Defense High-Level Waste (Form 1), Commercial

High-Level Waste (Form 1), and Spent Fuel (Form 2), Disposal in

Salt, AESD-TME-3131 (Pittsburgh, Pa.: September 1982).

7949 CFR 173.398 (c). Transport regulations are 10 CFR 71 and

10 CFR 73.

. a 30-ft drop onto a flat, unyielding surface with

the cask oriented to cause the greatest damage;

. a 40-inch drop onto a 6-inch-diameter steel pin

mounted on an unyielding surface; and

. 30-minute, all-engulfing thermal environment (fire) radiating at 1,4750 F.

The same requirements have been adopted by the

International Atomic Energy Agency and are in

general use worldwide,

Questions have been raised about the adequacy

of these requirements (and of existing casks designed to meet them) in view of the conditions that

might be encountered in realistic accidents. For example, it is noted that some actual fires are hotter

than 1,475° F and some accidents involve impacts

at higher velocities than those involved in the drop

test. In this regard, the regulatory test conditions

are engineering criteria that provide a well-defined

basis for designing and analyzing casks. They are

intended to create stresses on the cask at least as

great as those produced by a wide range of extreme

accident conditions that could actually be encountered.74 Thus, while an individual aspect of a specific test (e. g., drop height or temperature) might

be exceeded in real accidents, other test aspects are

more severe than could he encountered in the real

world. For example, objects in the real world are

not completely unyielding; if struck by a transportation cask, they would absorb some of the energy

of the cask. Similarly, actual fires are not likely to

surround all surfaces of a cask completely, as specified in the regulatory test, and a fire that surrounds only part of a cask would have to be hotter

and/or longer than the regulatory fire to provide

the same heat input to the cask.

74 For example, it has been estim ~ted that the regulatory 30-ft drop

onto an unyielding surface would IX more severe than about 99.9 percent of all accidents, while the 30- minute fire requirement is longer

in duration than 99.8 percent of actual fires involved in rail or truck

accidents. See Edwin L. Wilmot, 7’ransportation Accident Scenarios

for Commercial Spent Fuel, SAND80-2124 (Albuquerque, N. Mex.:

Sandia National Laboratories, Fetruary 1981), pp. 47-48. Analysis

of the 1982 Caidecott Tunnel fire near San Francisco, in which a gasoline tanker burned in a highway tunnel, concluded that the fire could

have produced a heat input into a sj~ipping cask ranging from a minimum of one-fourth to a maximum of twice the heat input from the

standard regulatory fire conditions. D. W. Larson, R. T. Reese, and

E. L. Wilmot, “The Caldecott Tunnel Fire Thermal Environments,

Regulatory Considerations and Pmb,ibilities” (Albuquerque, N. Mex.:

Sandia National Laboratories, uncated), table 2.
Ch. 3—Technology of Waste Management 63

Experiments that have been performed using

shipping casks show how the regulatory tests can

be more severe than actual accident conditions that,

at first glance, appear to exceed the requirements.

For example, a cask would only reach a speed of

about 30 miles per hour (mph) in the regulatory

30-ft drop test. Yet in an experiment in which a

truck carrying a spent fuel cask was driven headon into a reinforced concrete target at 61 mph, the

actual forces experienced by the cask were less than

those that would result from the drop test.75 In

1984, the British Central Electricity Generating

Board performed the 30-ft drop test on an actual

48-tonne steel spent-fuel shipping cask, with no

reported damage to the cask. 76

Similarly, experiments in which spent fuel shipping casks were exposed to fires that were hotter

and/or longer than the standard fire specified in the

regulations showed that the actual environments

produced by those fires were comparable to, or less

severe than, the regulatory test requirements.77 Additional tests to determine the actual properties of

various fire environments are now underway at

Sandia National Laboratories under DOT sponsorship. Such tests could be quite valuable in resolving questions about the relationship between

existing regulatory requirements and actual accident conditions.

In 1981 NRC determined that no immediate

changes in current regulations were needed to improve safety. At the same time, it initiated a “Modal Study of Transportation Safety” designed to:

. —

TsMichael Huerta arlcI Richard H, Yoshimura, A Crash Test of a

Nuclear Spent Fuel Cask and Truck Transport System, .SAND77-

0419 (Albuquerque, N. Mex.: Sandia Laboratories, January 1978),

p. 16. It should be noted that this test was designed to assess the accuracy of analytical techniques for predicting the response of a cask

to a collision, rather than to evaluate regulatory standards or cask

designs.

TbThe Energy Daily, Mar. 8, 1984, p. 4.

77 Tests involving a so-minute, 1,2000 C torch fire led to cask heating

that was substantially less than would be produced by the regulatory

fire. Manuel G. Vigil, Amado A. Trujillo, and H. Richard Yoshimura,

“Measured Thermat Response of Full-Scale Spent Fuel Cask to a

Torch Environment, ” Nuclear Technology, vol. 61, June 1983, pp.

514-520. Analysis of exposure of a shipping cask in a railcar to a 2-

hour petroleum fuel fire concluded that the amount of heat input to

the cask was about equivalent to that resulting from the 30-minute

regulatory test fire. J. E. Hamann et al., ‘‘ Modelling of Pool Fire

Environments Using Experimental Results of a Two-Hour Test of

a Railcar/Cask System, Proceedings of the 6th International Sjrm -

posium, Packaging and Transportation of Radioacti\r Materials, Nov.

10-14, 1983, pp. 1081-1088.

●

●

●

●

collect data on severe accident conditions and

their relative frequency;

devise package tests that simulate those accident conditions;

analyze and/or test packages under severe accident conditions and assess their performance;

and

using this information, evaluate further the

adequacy of present standards to protect

against potential high consequence accidents

and develop possible changes to NRC standards, if appropriate. 78

This study is expected to be completed by the end

of 1985.

Whtie OTA did not attempt in this study to evaluate any particular technology designs or regulations, its review of the debate about transportation

safety did not reveal any fundamental technical

challenges to the conclusion that shipping casks can

be designed to prevent significant radioactive releases in realistic accident conditions.79 At the same

time, it is clear that the central role of shipping cask

integrity in providing transportation safety places

considerable importance on ensuring that great care

is taken in the manufacture, testing, use, and maintenance of casks. A transportation panel of the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Radioactive Waste Management concluded that:

. . . the transportation of radioactive materials is

not a major factor in the total hazards associated

with the nuclear power system. However, this conclusion is supportable only if the highest standards of care are applied in all aspects of waste preparation and transportation. 80

— —

T8NRC comment in preface to P. Eqqers, Severe Rail and Truck . .

Accidents: Toward a Definition of Bounding En~.ironments for 7’ransportation Packages, NUREG/CR-3499 (M’ashington, DC.: U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, October 1983), p. iii.

TgRecent c~tiques of radioactive waste transportation have focused

on the adequacy of existing cask designs and regulatory requirements

and have suggested that suitable casks could be designed. Marvin Resnikoff, The Next Nucfear Gamble (New York: Council on Economic

Priorities, 1983), pp. 20-21. See also Robert M. Jefferson, ‘ ‘Transporting Spent Reactor Fuel: Allegations and Responses, SAND82-

2778 (Albuquerque, N. Mex.: Sandia National Laboratories, March

1983); and Robert M. Jefferson et al., “Analysis of Recent Council

on Economic Priorities Newsletter’ SAND82- 1250 (Albuquerque, N.

Mex.: Sandia National Laboratories, May 1982).

EnReport of the panel on Transportation to the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management, August 1974, cited in letter from John

C. Frye, Chairman of the Committee on Radioactive Waste Management, to Dr. Robert C. Seamans, Jr., Administrator of the U.S.

Energy Research and Development Administration, Feb. 12, 1975.
64 Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

Thus, confidence in the safety of waste transportation will depend on confidence that shipping casks

will in fact be designed, constructed, and operated

according to packaging regulations. Past experience

with lax enforcement of packaging regulations concerning low-level waste shipments, 81 and recent criticisms of the adequacy of enforcement of regulations concerning spent fuel shipping casks, 82 suggest

that enforcement could become an issue of increasing concern as shipments of spent fuel increase. A

recent review of the regulatory structure of highlevel radioactive waste transportation concluded

that it is inadequate in several respects and recommended a careful evaluation of Federal regulation

of highway transport of radioactive waste .83

Risk Analyses

Analyses of the risks of transporting spent fuel

(or solidified high-level waste) in casks designed to

existing regulatory standards generally suggest that

the radiological risks to the public from accidental

releases of radioactive materials during transportation would be very small in comparison to the

health effects from normal operation of the fuel cycle.84 For example, a recent study evaluated the

costs and impacts of shipping 72,000 tonnes of spent

fuel (or the wastes from reprocessing that amount

of fuel) to five possible repository sites over a 26-

year period. This study concludes that for a repository at Hanford, Wash., there would be, at most,

78 nonradiological fatalities and 16 long-term cancer fatalities if the material were all moved by truck,

or about 6 nonradiological fatalities and 36 longterm cancers if it were moved by rail.85 In comparison, EPA’s analysis of waste disposal, discussed

earlier in this chapter, concluded that a repository

—..———

EIU.S. ~Panment of Transportation (DOT) and U.S. Department

of Energy, Nationai Energy Transportation Study, July 1980, p. 118.

8ZResnikoff, op. cit., ch. V.

8tNation~ Research Council, %&l and Economic Aspects of Radioactive Waste Disposal (Washington, D. C.: National Academy

Press, 1984), pp. 123-128. See also Paul F. Rothberg, “Nuclear Materials Transportation: Safety Concerns, Governmental Regulations

and Activities, and Options to Improve Federal Programs, Congressional Research Service Report No. 84-45 SPR, Mar. 15, 1984.

IMI_J .S, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Final Environmental hpact Statement on the Transportation of Radioactive Material by Air

and Other Modes, NUREG-01 70, vol. 1, December 1977, p. 5-52.

oSEdwin L. Wi]mot et al., A Preliminary Analysis of the COStS and

Risk of Transporting Nuclear Waste to Potential Candidate Commercial Repository Sites, SAND83-0867 (Albuquerque, N. Mex.: Sandia National Laboratories, June 1983), table 4, p. 12.

containing 100,000 tonnes of spent fuel could cause

1,000 or more deaths in a 10,000-year period after

disposal.

These risk studies also indicate that even a worstcase situation, involving a major breach of a cask

as a result of an accident or deliberate sabotage,

would not lead to catastrophic effects, but rather

might result in at most 10 to 15 deaths from cancer in the long term. For example, an NRC study

of the effects of releases from transportation of

radioactive materials in urban areas concluded that

the maximum consequences of accidental penetration of a spent fuel cask would be one cancer death

in the long term, with no early fatalities.86 A DOE

study of transportation by truck that examined accident environments much more severe than those

specified in the regulatory tests (e. g., a collision producing a large breach in the cask and failure of all

of the fuel rods, followed by a 2-hour, 1,850° F fire)

concluded that the maximum number of resulting

deaths would be about 10, and that the probability of an accident of that magnitude would be less

than 1 in 1 million per year.87

The NRC study of transportation of radioactive

materials in cities also examined the possible effects

of deliberate sabotage involving the use of explosives

to penetrate a shipping cask, to pulverize part of

the contained material, and to disperse that material into the environment. Using conservative assumptions about the amount of material that could

be released by sabotage, this study calculated that

such an attack on a truck cask loaded with 6-monthold spent fuel in New York City could cause from

tens to hundreds of cancer fatalites, while an attack on a rail cask could produce hundreds to thousands of cancer fatalities, depending on the precise

time and location of the attack and the weather conditions. 88 (While there would be no early deaths

from radiation, the explosion itself could be expected to cause about 10 deaths.89) However, a

—.. . - . —

‘3eSandia Nation~ Laboratories, 7’ransportation of Radionuclides

in Urban Environs: Drafi Environmental Assessment, NUREG/CR0743, SAND79-0369 (Washington, 11. C.: U.S. Nuclear Regulatory

Commission, July 1980), table 3-11, p. 66.

a?pacific No fiwest Laborato~, An Assessment of the Risk of Transporting Spent Nuclear Fuel by Truck, PNL-2588 (Seattle, Wash.:

Battelle Memorial Institute Pacific Northwest Laboratory, November 1978), fig. 2.1, p. 2-4.

88 Sandia Nation~ Laboratories, op. cit. , table 5-20, P. 131.

egIbid., table 5-20, p. 131.
Ch. 3—Technology of Waste Management ● 6 5

more recent assessment, based on experiments

using explosives to determine how much material

actually might escape from a cask as a result of sabotage, concluded that, at most, 14 cancer deaths

might result in the long term, with 4 deaths expected. 90

While the risk of fatalities from releases of radioactive material during spent fuel transportation

is calculated to be very low, the economic impacts

from a substantial release could be very high. These

impacts are estimated to be roughly comparable for

a worst-case accident and deliberate sabotage—

from $2 billion to $3 billion for an incident in a

City. 91 The major costs of both are almost entirely

attributable to the denial of use of the contaminated

area while cleanup occurs; once an area has been

contaminated to the level that nonuse is necessary,

futher contamination does not appear to increase

the cost.92 By way of comparison, accidents involving shipments of other common hazardous materials (e. g., gasoline, anhydrous ammonia, or chlorine) that are less well protected and more likely

to escape if a shipping tank ruptures may be more

likely to cause significant numbers of deaths than

accidents involving shipments of spent fuel .93 However, the costs of a worst-case accident with radioactive waste could be higher because of the cost of

cleaning up the resulting radioactive contamination, a problem that does not occur with most other

hazardous materials .94

—. . . . —.—

g’JRObert P. sandoval et al., An Assessment of the Safety of Spent

Fuel Transportation in Urban Environs, SAND82-2365 (Albuquerque, N. Mex.: Sandia National Laboratories, June 1983). This analysis was based on experiments with fresh fuel. Similar results, in terms

of the estimates of the amount of material that would escape, were

obtained in experiments using spent fuel. E. W. Schmidt et al., Final

Report on Shipping Cask Sabotage Source Tt=rm Investigation, Battelle Columbus Laboratories, NUREG/CR-2472 (Washington, D. C.:

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, October 1982).

91 Sandia National Laboratories, op. cit. The maximum direct economic impact for an accident is $2 billion (table 3-11, p. 66) while

the maximum for sabotage is $3 billion (table 5-17, p. 128).

‘* Ibid., p. 126.

g3The Probability of an accident leading to one or more deaths is

estimated to be about 2.2 in 100,000 per year for shipment of spent

fuel in trucks. See Pacific Northwest Laboratory, op. cit., p. 11-3.

No such accident has ever occurred. In comparison, DOT reports a

number of accidents involving one or more deaths associated with the

shipment of gasoline and anhydrous ammonia in 1977 alone. DOT

and DOE, Nationaf Energy Transportation Stud}., table 6-2, p. 108.

g+ Ibid, This report shows that although there were 1,500 incidents

involving the transportation of gasoline, leading to 21 deaths and 47

injuries, the total damage came to $6,981,317.

The adequacy of the worst-case accident analyses that have been performed to date has been questioned on the grounds that substantial uncertainties remain about the severity of ‘ ‘real-world’

accidents and about the amount of radioactive material that might be released .95 On the other side,

some argue that the analyses deal adequately with

the uncertainties by using conservative assumptions

that tend to overestimate the consequences.96

Transportation risk analyses have not been subject to the same degree of independent peer review

as have studies of the risks of geologic disposal. Such

a review, taking into account the results of the experiments and studies that have been performed

in the last 5 years, could help resolve some of the

disagreements about transportation safety and the

adequacy of the existing regulatory structure.

Conclusions

OTA did not undertake a detailed evaluation of

risks associated with any stage of waste management— storage, transportation, or disposal. However, a brief review of the areas of disagreement

between transportation risk analyses suggests that

many of the arguments are based on the assumption that very young spent fuel (150 days old or less)

is being transported—the assumption that was usually made when rapid reprocessing of all spent fuel

was anticipated. Such fuel generates so much heat

from radioactive decay that loss of the coolant used

to keep the temperature inside the cask to acceptable levels can lead to rapid overheating of the fuel,

release of radioactive materials from the solid fuel

pellets into the cask cavity, and subsequent escape

of those materials into the environment. It should

be noted that the analyses leading to the conclusion that the maximum consequences of a worstcase accident would be 10 to 15 cancer deaths take

such overheating into account. Others, however,

—

‘

5 Resnikoff, op. cit.

WA Feder~ court has reviewed NRC risk analyses and has concluded that they are adequate as a basis for transportation regulations.

The City of New York and the State of New York v. The United States

Department of Transportation, Et Al. and Commonwealth Edison

Company, Et Al., United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, Docket Nos. 82-6094, 82-6200, decided Aug. 10, 1983. This decision overturned a lower court decision invalidating in part the DOT

Reg. HM- 164 governing the highway transportation of large quantities of radioactive materials.
66 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

argue that much higher temperatures (and thus

much greater release of radioactivity) could result

if fuel were shipped that has been cooled after discharge from the reactor less than the 120 days required by NRC regulations-or if a cask were exposed to a fire that is longer and/or hotter than the

fire specified in the regulatory test.97

These arguments could be rendered moot, or at

least greatly reduced in force, by the fact that the

only spent fuel likely to be shipped in the foreseeable

future will be at least 5 years old, and more likely

more than 10 years old.98 As noted above, the heat

output of 5-year-old fuel is about one-tenth that of

150-day-old fuel. As a result, the maximum temperature of the fuel resulting from self-heating will

be much lower than is possible with young spent

fuel. This has several important implications for

analysis of the risk of transporting spent fuel.

First, the consequences of a breach of a cask or

failure of its seals would be substantially reduced.

Shipment of young spent fuel requires a coolant

(generally water) to keep the temperature of the fuel

at an acceptable level. Existing studies show that

loss of the coolant through a breach in the cask or

a failed seal or valve is a principal contributor to

total risk because it leads to rapid overheating of

young spent fuel. Because the heat output of older

spent fuel is so much lower, no coolant is required

in the shipping cask to keep the temperature down.

In fact, old spent fuel is now shipped without coolant in existing shipping casks,99 and casks designed

especially for transporting older fuel will probably

not use a special coolant.loo As a result, accidents

that could breach the cask or cause its seals to fail

would not lead to a rapid increase of the fuel temperature, as would be the case if the coolant escaped

from a cask carrying 150-day-old fuel.

Because self-heating from radioactive decay is

much less of a problem with old spent fuel, fire appears to be the only potential mechanism for heating

spent fuel to the high temperatures some have suggested could lead to major releases. One study that

argues that very large releases of radioactive magTRe9nikofl, op. cit., pp. 266-

’267.

98U. S. DOE, Spent FueJ and Radioactive Waste Inventories, Projections, and Characteristics, DOWRW-0006, fig. C.2, p. 284, fig.

C.3, p. 285.

ggJeflerson et ~., An~ysis of Recent Council on Economic priorities

Newsletter, p. 19.

IOOBucho]z, op. cit., p. 7.

terials could occur in a worst-case accident bases

this conclusion on the assumption that under certain circumstances the temperature of the fuel might

reach as high as 2,000° F, exceeding the temperature at which the fuel cladding would deteriorate

(about 1,688° F). 101 Analyses of currently licensed

casks show that the hypothetical regulatory fire (30

minutes at 1,450° F) would lead to an average maximum fuel temperature of only about 1,000° F in

120- to 150-day-old spent fuel.102 An analysis that

considered fires more severe than the regulatory

fire concluded that even a 2-hour, 1,850° F fire

could produce a maximum temperature of about

1,600° Fin 150-day-old spent fuel in a truck cask.103

Furthermore, this analysis indicates that the major effect of a fire of that length and temperature

would be to cause a loss of coolant from the cask,

which in turn would lead to rapid overheating of

the fuel. This self-heating, rather than the fire itself,

would cause most of the sharp temperature increase. 104 This situation in turn implies that a substantially longer and/or hotter fire would be required to produce excessive heating in old spent

fuel in a shipping cask, since decay heat from the

fuel would play a much less important role. Analysis shows that the regulatory fire would produce

a maximum temperature of 660° F in 5-year-old

fuel in a rail cask designed for such older fuel. This

is only 148° F higher than the normal operating

temperature of 502° F. With 10-year-old fuel, the

maximum temperature would be 559° F. *05

These considerations suggest that the risks of

transporting spent fuel could be substantially reduced if only older fuel were shipped. One study

calculates that the risk from transporting spent fuel

by truck in existing shipping casks could be reduced

by a factor of about 6 if the fuel were cooled for

4 years before shipment. 106 As noted earlier, there

could be strong economic incentives to ship older

fuel in casks that have been optimized for that purpose. Designing the casks for fuel that is at least

10 years old would provide an additional margin

Iolsee Resnikofl, op. cit., pp. 266.267.

102~e Edtin L. w~mont, Transporbatjon Accident Scenm”os, p. 1 ~.

lessee pacific Northwest Laborato v, op. cit., pp. G-7—G- 11.

IOtThis study c~cu]ates that 10SS of molant with no fire would Iead

to a maximum fuel temperature of 1 360° F (738° C). Addition of

a 2-hour, 1,850° F fire increased that maximum to 1,598° F, an increment of 238° F. Pacific Northwest Laboratory, op. cit., app. G.

IOsBucholz, op. cit., table 3, P. 22

Ioepacific Northwest Laboratory, op. cit., p. 11-3.
Ch. 3—Technology of Waste Management . 67

of conservatism compared to 5-year-old fuel since,

as noted, it would reduce the maximum temperature reached in the regulatory fire by about 100° F.

cost

A truck cask for spent fuel shipment is estimated

to cost about $700,000, while rail casks cost up to

$3.9 million.107 The total cost of shipping 1 tonne

of spent fuel for a distance of 1,500 miles is estiIOTU<S. Depafirnent of Energy, Report on Financing the Disposal

of Commercial Spent Fuel and Processed High-Level Radioactive

Waste, DOEIS-0020, June 1983, table 3-9, p. 18.

mated to be about $21 ,000; the cost of transporting the high-level waste from 1 tonne of spent fuel

is estimated to be about $3,000.108 Total transportation costs should represent less than 20 percent

of the cost of waste management. 109 These costs can

be reduced by using casks designed to ship larger

quantities of older spent fuel and by using regional

repository sites located to reduce transportation distances to the greatest extent possible. 110

IOB1bid., table 3-8, p. 17.

IOgIbid,, tables A-1, A-2, A-3, A-4, pp. 42-45.

110K. D. Kirby et ~., Evaluation of the Regional Repository Concept for Nuclear Waste Disposal, USDOE OffIce of Nuclear Waste

Isolation Report ONWI-62 (Columbus, Ohio: 1979), pp. 183-186.

REPROCESSING

Status of Reprocessing

The commercial nuclear power system was envisioned originally to include reprocessing of all

spent fuel and reuse of the recovered uranium and

plutonium. However, while reprocessing and recycling can reduce the requirements for uranium

ore, it will not be attractive commercially until the

cost of the recovered material becomes competitive

with the cost of fresh uranium. At present, nuclear

reactors are being delayed or canceled, and no new

orders are being placed because of uncertainties

about the demand for electricity, the cost of reactors, and other factors. 111 As a result, it appears

that there may be an excess capacity in the uranium

mining industry and uranium enrichment worldwide through the 1990’s,1

12 a situation that bodes

ill for the commercial attractiveness of reprocessing in the next few decades. At present, there appears to be no private interest in undertaking reprocessing in the United States.113 Moreover, there

is growing agreement within the technical community that large-scale commercial reprocessing will

not be attractive economically except as part of a

—

11 Iu.s. ~on~ss, Ofllee of Technology Assessment, NucIear power

in an Age of Uncertainty, February 1984,

1 izcongression~ Budget OffIce, Uranium Enrichment: Investment

Options for the Long Term, October 1983. See also “Uranium Shortage Turns to Glut, Science, vol. 225, Aug. 3, 1984, p. 484.

“

3

’’ Jilted Reprocessor Vents Spleen, ” The Energy Daily, Apr. 16,

1984, p. 2.

nuclear power system

and breeder reactors

including breeder reactors, 114

themselves may not become

economically competitive with LWRs for decades. 115

Reprocessing of commercial spent fuel is under

way currently in several countries, including France

and the United Kingdom, which are contemplating

eventual use of breeder reactors. The quickest path

for initiating the large-scale reprocessing of commercial spent fuel in the United States appears to

be the completion of the Allied General Nuclear

Services (AGNS) facility at Barnwell, S.C. However, the owners of that facility have recently abandoned the project, and completion and operation

of the plant would therefore probably require Federal intervention. 116 At present, the AGNS chemical separation facility, with a design capacity of

1,500 tonnes/yr, and the spent fuel receiving and

storage station have been completed. Full-scale

operation of the plant would require construction

of additional major facilities for conversion of

llqThe 1nternatiOn~ NUCleaT Fuel Cycle Evaluation (I NFCE) concluded that recycle of plutonium in LWR’S would be an economically marginal proposition and that most countries now planning to use

plutonium are planning to use breeder reactors. INFCE, Summary

Volume (Vienna: International Atomic Energy Agency, 1980), p. 145.

11 sIn the United States, the experimental Clinch River breeder reactor project has been canceled, and European breeder programs are

experiencing increasing delays. See ‘‘ Europe’s Fast Breeders Move

to a Slow Track, ” Science, vol. 218, Dec. 10, 1982, pp. 1094-1097.

“’’’Jilted Reprocessor, ” op. cit.
68 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

recovered plutonium into solid plutonium dioxide

(Pu02) and solidification and storage of high-level

waste from reprocessing. A number of regulatory

issues must also be resolved before a reprocessing

facility could be completed and operated. Licensing and operation of the AGNS facility or any new

reprocessing plant would require a generic proceeding dealing with reprocessing and plutonium recycle

and a licensing proceeding to resolve site- and

design-specific issues associated with the particular facility. 117

The AGNS facility could probably be completed,

licensed, and operating in about 10 years.118 Estimates of the cost for constructing the additional required facilities at AGNS range from $580 million

to $950 million. 119 A new reprocessing facility with

the same annual capacity is estimated to cost from

$1 billion to $1.6 billion, assuming a predictable

schedule is maintained. 120 Since there is no experience with much of the required technology at commercial scale in the United States, and since there

are substantial remaining regulatory uncertainties

(e.g., waste solidification criteria), these schedule

and cost estimates should be viewed with caution. 121

Reprocessing for Waste Management

Because it was generally assumed until the mid1970’s that spent fuel would be reprocessed to recover the usable uranium and plutonium, plans for

waste management focused on solidified high-level

waste from the reprocessing operation. However,

the increasing uncertainty about the economic incentive for reprocessing has focused attention on

the option of direct disposal of spent fuel. In this

context, some have suggested that reprocessing

might be desirable as a waste management step,

in view of its potential advantages over disposing

of unreprocessed spent fuel—for example, 1) re-

.—

11 TU.s. Department of Energy, Nuclear Proliferation and civilian

Nuclear Power: Report of the Nonproliferation Alternative Systems

Assessment Program (NASAP), vol. IV, DOE/NC-0001/4, June 1980,

p. 184.

llBIbid, p. 184; Internation~ Energy Associates Limited (IEAL),

Study of the Potentiid Uses of the Barnwell Nuclear Fud Plant (BNFP),

IEAL-141, Mar. 25, 1980, fig. 4-13, p. 145.

] 191EAL, ~p. ~it., p. 137; DOE, Nuclear Proliferation and Civif -

ian Nuclear Power, vol. IV, p. 185.

I ZODOE, Nuclear Proliferation and Civilian Nuclear power, vd.

IV, p. 185.

121 IEAL, op. cit. , p. 144.

moving the plutonium and uranium produces a

more benign waste product with lower volume, toxicity, and long-term heat output than spent fuel,

and 2) reprocessing allows the use of potentially better disposal technologies (e. g., less soluble waste

forms or alternative approaches, such as isotope

partition and transmutation).

Despite such potential advantages, major studies

that have considered reprocessing in the context of

waste management have concluded that reprocessing of commercial spent fuel is not required for safe

waste isolation. Mined repositories can be designed

for the safe isolation of either spent fuel or highlevel waste from reprocessing, or both. 122 Moreover, reprocessing—which generates additional radioactive waste streams and involves operational

risks of its own—does not appear to offer advantages that are sufficient to justify its use for waste

management reasons alone. 123 Thus, while largescale reprocessing of commercial spent fuel would

have significant implications for waste management, those implications would not be a major factor in the decision on whether to undertake such

reprocessing. Instead, the decision to reprocess

would depend on whether the recovery and recycling of unused fissionable material in the spent fuel

is more attractive from an economic and energy

policy point of view than using freshly mined

uranium. 124

—.. . —

1Z21NFCE, Summary Vo]ume, p. z 1; APS, op. cit., p. S 107; National Research Council, Zso/atio]t System, p. 1 1; and K. D. Closs

and H. Geipel, “Some Preliminary Results of the FRG (Federal Republic of Germany) Alternative Fuel Cycle Evaluation, ” presented

at the International Meeting on Fllel Reprocessing and Waste Management, Jackson, Wyo., Aug. 25-29, 1984.

1 ZJINFCE, Summary volume, ~~. 2 I: ‘‘Working Group 7 generally concluded, taking into account not only health and safety and environmental impacts but also the ~ther assessment factors, that the

difference in the impacts of waste management and disposal among

the reference fuel cycles does not :onstitute a decisive factor in the

choice among them. Employing technology assumed, the radioactive

wastes from any of the fuel cycles studied can be managed and disposed

of with a high degree of safety and without undue risk to man or the

environment. ” APS, op. cit., p. S1 12: “Although influencing details

of repository design, none of the factors we have identified concerning waste management are of dete]”mining importance in the choice

among fuel cycles. Page S107: “In particular, arguments concerning

. . . waste management are not important in deciding between recycle and non-recycle fuel cycle optiorls. While the Nation~ Research

Council Waste Isolation System Panel concluded that adequate isolation could be provided for spent fuel as well as high-level waste, it

did not address the question of the implications of waste management

considerations for the choice of fut 1 cycles.

IZ4Aps, op. cit., p. 5 8 .
Ch. 3—Technology of Waste Management ● 69

The principal reason for this conclusion is that

reprocessing and recycling do not produce a large

net improvement from a waste management point

of view because: 1) the benefits are not large, and

2) reprocessing and recycling generate new waste

management problems that offset some of the benefits. This can be seen by considering some of the

complications introduced by the two separate steps

of reprocessing and recycling.

Reprocessing Operations and Costs

Reprocessing involves dissolving the spent fuel

in acid and separating the fission products and

unusable TRU elements from the reusable material (uranium and plutonium). Dissolving the spent

fuel has several waste management benefits even

if the uranium and plutonium are not removed for

recycling. First, it allows the radionuclides to be

separated into several streams for different types

of treatment and disposal. For example, the shortlived, hot fission products (in particular, strontium90 and cesium-137) could be segregated for separate disposal so that the long-lived fission products

and transuranics could be disposed of without the

complications caused by high heat output. Second,

the dissolved material can then be resolidified into

a low-volubility waste form, which can reduce the

rate at which the waste could escape from a repository if it comes into contact with ground water.

A recent National Research Council study of geologic disposal shows that it is these effects, rather

than the removal of plutonium, which give high-level waste from reprocessing an advantage compared

to spent fuel. This can be seen by comparing figures

3-3 and 3-4, which show the study’s best estimates

of the expected doses from a basalt repository containing high-level waste and spent fuel, respectively.

These figures show that, for the ground-water travel

times greater than the 1,000 years required by

NRC regulations, the major difference between the

doses from spent fuel and high-level waste is caused

by carbon-14 (C14) and iodine-129 (1129).125 These

two nuclides are released as gases when the spent

.—

1zsThe doses resu]ting from the differences in content of plutonium

or uranium, and their decay daughters, like radium-226 (Ra?2G), are

at much lower levels because they are expected to dissolve much more

slowly than the the waste form that contains them, and to be retarded

strongly by the material surrounding the repository so that they substantially decay before they escape to the environment.

fuel is dissolved, and can then be concentrated in

a relatively few packages in a chemical form that

can limit the rate at which they dissolve into ground

water to a level far below the rate that is expected

if they are distributed uniformly throughout a large

number of spent fuel packages. 126

The other advantage that results from dissolving the spent fuel is that it is possible to resolidify

the material in a waste form that is much less soluble than the original spent fuel pellets. As noted

earlier, several studies have indicated that this could

be one of the most effective ways to improve repository performance significantly. As will be discussed in chapter 6, additional work on insoluble

waste forms could be useful. Recent analysis suggests that both spent fuel and borosilicate glass may

be unable to meet the current NRC release rate

requirement for some radionuclides,127 although

NRC can modify the requirements for some radionuclides on a case-by-case basis. In any case, use

of a less soluble waste form for spent fuel would

not require removal of the plutonium and uranium,

and dissolution and resolidification has been considered by DOE as one method for treating spent

fuel for direct disposal in a once-through fuel cycle. 128

Dissolving spent fuel, packaging the Ct4 and 1129

separately, and resolidifying the rest of the material in an insoluble form could thus improve expected repository performance. However, the important question from a waste management

perspective is whether the improvements are sufficient to warrant undertaking those relatively complex steps, if reprocessing is not otherwise being

done anyway to recover the plutonium and uranium. There are several considerations that underlie

the judgment cited above that the advantages are

not sufficient:

1. Reprocessing involves increased near-term

operational risks. Reprocessing spent fuel

would increase the amount of handling and

processing of highly radioactive materials

prior to disposal of the waste, increasing worker exposures and population exposures during normal operations and producing addiltbNation~ Research Council, Isolation System, p. 282.

!271bid., p. 239.

128DoE, FEIS, p. 4.20.
70 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

2.

tional possibilities for accidents that could

release radioactive material. For example,

DOE analysis shows that normal waste management operations for a 250-gigawatts-electrical (GWe

) once-through cycle could be expected to cause from none to 2 health effects

worldwide, while a comparable reprocessing

cycle could cause from 6 to 750 health effects

worldwide, with about 95 percent of those resulting from predisposal waste treatment operations. 129 130 This relatively certain increase

in near-term operational risks would have to

be weighed against the more uncertain reduction in long-term risks that could result from

reprocessing.

This same consideration also applies to any

of the more sophisticated waste-management

techniques that reprocessing would allow, such

as use of a highly insoluble waste form, to the

extent that they also involve more complex

handling and processing operations. In this

regard, a National Research Council panel recently concluded that the choice of solid waste

forms for high-level waste from reprocessing

should take into account the release of radioactivity into the environment from all stages of

waste management, including waste form

manufacture, rather than just the differences

in expected releases after the waste is placed

into a repository.

131 Similarly, as noted, analysis of the possible benefits of separating out

the long-lived, toxic TRU elements and recycling them along with uranium and plutonium so that they can be destroyed by fission

in reactors has concluded that the increase in

operational risks and complexity involved

would offset the limited advantages.

Reprocessing, or even simply dissolving spent

fuel and resolidifying it in another form, produces other waste forms—principally, large

volumes of TR U waste—that must also be

managed and ultimately disposed of. 132 If reprocessing were initiated before a disposal falzgrbid , pp. 7.39-7.40.

l~OThe recent cerrnan fuel cycle study has alSO concluded that a

reprocessing tie] cycle would increase worker and population exposures

compared to direct disposal of spent fuel. Closs and Geipel, op. cit.

lslNation~ Research Council, Zso]ation System, p. 14.

l$zsee DOE, FEIS, sec. 4.3.1 for TRU wastes produced by spent

fuel processing options and sec. 4.3.3 for TRU wastes produced by

reprocessing.

3.

cility were available, it would change the nature of the waste-from spent fuel to high-level

waste from reprocessing, TRU, low-level

waste, and, perhaps, unrecycled plutonium—

but would not eliminate the need for waste

storage. DOE estimates that the capital cost

of storage facilities at a reprocessing plant

could amount to around $350 million for 5

years’ output of waste and at least $280 million for storage of separated plutonium, which

would have to be provided unless the plutonium were recycled without delay. 133 In addition, these large quantities of additional waste

forms could significantly increase the costs and

risks of waste transportation. 134 Finally, TRU

wastes will require the same sort of long-term

isolation as the high-level waste and thus may

be disposed of in the same facility. Depending

on resolution of regulatory issues, such reprocessing wastes might require more repository

space than spent fuel for a given amount of

electricity generation .135

Reprocessing could increase the costs of waste

management if undertaken for that purpose.

It is not at all clear that there would ever be

a demand for all of the plutonium that could

be obtained by reprocessing all of the spent

fuel from LWR’s, even if a system of breeder

reactors were operated. 136 In addition, there

may be a financial incentive to discard some

plutonium after three or more recycles, in any

case, because of the buildup of undesirable radionuclides. 137 If reprocessing were required

as a waste management step, then the costs

IS9DOE, FEL$, vol. 2, app. A, tahle A.8.8, p. A. 102. ApS, op.

cit., p. 62, notes that the cost of storing separated plutonium for 10

years is much greater than the cost of storing spent fuel for the same

period.

Is+wilmot et ~., A p~fiminary Analysis, op. cit. see dso T. 1.

McSweeney, R. W. Peterson, and R Gupta, “The Costs and Impacts of Transporting Nuclear Waste to Candidate Repository Sites

in Proceedings of the 1983 Civilian Radioactive Waste Management

Information Meeting (Washington, E. C.: U.S. Department of Energy, February 1984), pp. 351-361.

13JDOE, FEIS, p. 7.29, table 7.3.1 ). This analysis takes into account the effects of plutonium recycle on the heat output of, and thus

the repository space required for, high-level waste.

lseThe MITRE Corp,, An~ysi~ of ~udear waste DiSpOSid ~d

Strategies for Facility Deployment (McLean, Va.: April 1980), a report prepared for the Office of Technology Assessment; and Brian

G. Chow and Gregory S. Jones, “Nonproliferation and Spent Fuel

Disposal Policy, ” a report prepared for the Council on Environmental

Quality (Marina Del Ray, Calif.: Pan Heuristics, October 1980).

137D0q FEZS, p. 7.30.
Ch. 3—Technology of Waste Management ● 71

of reprocessing that were not offset by sale of

recovered plutonium and uranium would have

to be added to the waste management costs.

Comparisons of the costs of disposing of

spent fuel and high-level waste show relatively

little difference between the two approaches,

with some studies showing an advantage for

high-level waste and others an advantage for

spent fuel. 138 For example, current DOE estimates show that the cost of disposal of spent

fuel would be about $122 to $125/kilogram

(kg), while the cost of disposing of the reprocessing waste equivalent would be $115 to $1 19/

kg; if the $8/kg cost of solidification of the highlevel waste is included, total waste management costs for high-level waste would slightly

exceed the costs for direct disposal of spent

fuel.139 In comparison, the costs of reprocessing could be several times as high. For example, DOE currently uses $390/kg as a reference

cost for reprocessing LWR fuel, with a possible range of from $200 to $600/kg. 140 Since

the range of uncertainty in the cost of reprocessing is greater than the total estimated cost

of waste disposal, it is highly unlikely that the

very small difference in disposal cost between

spent fuel and high-level waste would play a

significant role in a decision about whether to

undertake reprocessing.

Even if high-level waste could be disposed

of for free, the cost advantage would not by

itself offset the cost of reprocessing. Thus, a

waste policy requirement for reprocessing

spent fuel that would otherwise not be reprocessed for economic reasons could substantially

increase the costs of waste management. (This

would be the case even if the only processing

involved were dissolution of spent fuel and resolidification in borosilicate glass, without

separating the plutonium and uranium-a step

which DOE estimates would increase the cost

of waste management in a once-through cycle by about 60 percent. 141)

Issrbid., p. 7. 5(I shows s]igh~y higher costs for reprocessing waste;

INFCE, Summary Volume, p. 232, shows about a 10-percent advantage for reprocessing waste.

JJg~E, Report Orl Financing the Disposal, op. cit., p. 2.

1*OU s. Depa~ment of Energy, Nuclear Ener~ Cost Data Base,

DOE/NE-0044/2 (Washington, D. C.: March 1984), table 2.12, p. 24.

1+1 Derived from FEZS, table 4.9.7, p. 4.110.

Since neither EPA nor NRC have concluded that

unprocessed spent fuel would not be an acceptable

waste form, there may be little incentive for incurring the additional costs and operational risks of

reprocessing (or other processing) simply to improve repository performance beyond a level that

is already judged to be satisfactory. Similar considerations also would apply to any more complex

and expensive waste processing steps allowed by

reprocessing that promise to reduce long-term risks

below the level presented by direct disposal of spent

fuel. Reprocessing could allow use of more complex disposal system technologies than those possible with direct disposal of spent fuel. For example, it could allow separation and separate disposal

of the heat-producing, but relatively short-lived, fission products from the cool, but very long-lived,

transuranics, or the use of disposal systems such

as space disposal, which are not practical with spent

fuel. Similarly, it could allow use of very insoluble

waste forms and/or waste forms that are tailored

to the characteristics of the repository host rock.

However, unless these alternative disposal options prove less expensive than simpler systems or

are required by law or by regulation for safety reasons, they may not be used—even if reprocessing

were undertaken for resource recovery reasons. For

example, as mentioned earlier, recent analysis has

shown that increased waste management costs, as

well as increased operational risks, would probably

preclude partition and transmutation of long-lived

radionuclides in reactors, even if spent fuel were

already being reprocessed routinely.142 Similarly,

if a very low-volubility waste form proved to be significantly more expensive than a more soluble but

still acceptable one (which borosilicate glass may

prove to be), it is not clear that the additional expenditures would be made unless there were a regulatory requirement for the more expensive waste

form. The same reasoning, of course, would apply

to the choice between spent fuel and reprocessed

waste as a waste form.

Effects of Plutonium

Recycle on Waste Management

So far, we have considered only the waste management benefits and costs associated with chemil+2(_Jroff et al. , Op. cit.
72 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

cal processing of spent fuel per se. Some of the potential waste management advantages of high-level

waste compared to spent fuel result from removing the plutonium and recycling it so that it is destroyed by fission in nuclear reactors rather than

being disposed of. However, like the initial step of

reprocessing, which is required for separating the

plutonium in the first place, the additional step of

plutonium recycle generates waste management

problems that offset the advantages to some extent.

First, recycle of plutonium reduces the difference

between once-through spent fuel and high-level

waste. As noted in chapter 2, plutonium recycle increases the toxicity and heat output of the resulting

high-level waste. Thus, as recycle continues, the

resulting high-level waste from reprocessing spent

mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel containing recycled piutonium becomes more and more similar, in toxicity and heat output, to once-through spent fuel

containing no recycled plutonium. 143 This effect is

increased by the delay in reprocessing, which, as

discussed in chapter 2, will also increase the toxicity and heat output of the resulting high-level

waste.

The effect of plutonium recycle on the heat output of high-level waste can be seen in figure 3-7,

which shows the heat output of once-through spent

fuel (SF UOZ

), high-level waste with no plutonium

recycle (HLW UO2), and high-level waste with plutonium recycle (HLW MOX). The heat output of

HLW MOX is actually higher than once-through

spent fuel for the first 100 years, the period during

which the maximum temperature increases in a repository are expected.144 This could reduce one of

the advantages sometimes cited for reprocessing—

i.e., its ability to reduce the volume of waste, since

the unused uranium and plutonium (representing

about 95 percent of the volume of the spent fuel)

would be separated for reuse. The actual reduction

that could be achieved will depend on the amount

of heat-producing, high-level waste that can be

placed in each canister, which in turn will depend

on the temperature limits established for the waste

package and the repository and on the heat output

of the waste. The nearer the heat output of highlevel waste to that of once-through spent fuel, the

less the advantage of high-level waste in terms of

143DOE, EMS, p. 7.53.

‘

441 bid., app. K.

Figure 3=7.—Decay Heat Power for Different

Nuclear Fuel Cycles for a Pressurized Water Reactor

Time aller d scharge, years

SOURCE: Wang, et al., Thermal Impact of Waste Emplacement and Surface Cooling Associated With Geologic Disposal of Nuclear Waste, NUREGICR2910 (Washington, DC: U.S. Nu:lear Regulatory Commission, 19S3).

volume and number of waste canisters. Furthermore, any volume reduction that results from reprocessing and recycle may not reduce proportionately the total amount of repository space needed

to dispose of the waste from the generation of a

given amount of nuclear electricity, since it is the

total amount of heat-producing isotopes in the

waste, rather than the waste’s physical volume, that

is the principal determinant of the total repository

area required.

Secondly, considerable centralized control of the

nuclear power system may be needed to eliminate

all of the plutonium recovered by reprocessing.

While recycle destroys plutonium by fission in reactors, it also produces plutonium from U238, so

that the total amount of plutonium present in a reprocessing cycle is greater than that in the oncethrough cycle.145 Thus, if reprocessing and recy -

‘+slbid., p. 7.30.
Ch. 3—Technology of Waste Management ● 7 3

cle were undertaken to reduce the amount of plutonium that must be disposed of compared to a

once-through cycle, careful planning and management would be needed to minimize the amount of

plutonium left when the nuclear power system is

eventually phased out.

In addition, recycle may have to be continued

for an extended period to obtain major reductions

of plutonium compared to those from a oncethrough cycle. For example, DOE calculates that

a once-through nuclear power system that reaches

250 GWe. in the year 2000 and phases out by 2040

would produce about 1,900 tonnes of plutonium

to be disposed of in spent fuel. In comparison, a

reprocessing cycle for the same generating scenario

would produce about 3,400 tonnes of plutonium,

about 1,100 tonnes of which would still be unrecycled in 2040 even if reprocessing and recycle

began as early as 1990.146 Clearly, nuclear power

generation and recycle would have to be continued

considerably beyond 2040 to reduce the amount of

unrecycled plutonium to a small fraction of the plutonium discarded in the once-through cycle. Since

it is not clear that economic factors would lead utilities to manage their systems so as to reprocess all

spent fuel and to recycle all of the recovered plutonium, some form of Federal intervention (e. g., a

regulation requiring that utilities deliver solidified

1461 bid., tab]e 7.3.12, p. 7.31.

high-level waste for disposal, or Federal operation

of reprocessing facilities and of reactors for using

the plutonium), might be needed to minimize the

amount of unrecycled plutonium.

Conclusion

Available analysis strongly supports the conclusion that reprocessing is best viewed as a possible

measure for extending energy resources rather than

as a waste management step. Analysis of the merits of reprocessing and recycle from the perspective of energy needs is beyond the scope of this

study. However, it is not necessary at this time to

decide when and how much spent fuel will be disposed of or reprocessed, since that decision will not

be faced until a disposal capability is available. At

that time, if commercial reprocessing has not commenced, a decision will have to be made either to

maintain the spent fuel in surface (or near-surface)

storage facilities at reactor sites, repository sites,

or other independent sites; to store the spent fuel

in a geologic repository that could be backfilled at

a later date; or to dispose of the spent fuel in mined

repositories. If that decision is to be based primarily on the resource value of the spent fuel rather

than on the capability to dispose of spent fuel or

high-level waste from reprocessing, the capability

to dispose of both spent fuel and high-level reprocessing waste will have to be developed. (For further discussion of this point, see issue 3 in app. B.)

INTEGRATED WASTE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

To manage the annual flow of spent fuel generated by operating nuclear reactors, waste management will entail the construction and operation over

a long period of time of some combination of the

technologies described above. Most analyses of radioactive waste management to date have concentrated on individual components—spent fuel storage, transportation, or disposal-rather than on

their integrated operation in a full-scale system. 147

Only in the last several years have the analytical

tools been developed that (if properly combined)

— --

141The DOE ~~ls did Use a systems model to analyze the impacts

of operation of the total waste management system.

would allow a systematic comparative analysis of

different waste management system designs and optimization of the entire system. 148 As a result, there

are a number of important questions of system design for which relatively little systematic analysis

exists. For this reason, OTA’S analysis of these

questions has been based on inference from a num148ReCent an~ysis of waste transportation system issues concludes

that greater interaction is needed among persons involved in repository design, transportation system development, and waste generation. Comments of NWTS Transportation Interface Technology Peer

Review Panel, in Clinton G. Shirley, IVWTS Transportation Znteriice Technology Development Priority Report, SAND82-1804 (Albuquerque, N. Mex.: Sandia National Laboratories, July 1983), p. 9-14.

98-948 0 - 85 - 6 : QL 3
74 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

—

ber of partial analyses, some performed specifically

for this assessment.

A more comprehensive analysis of system design

must await development and use of an integrated

system model that combines the partial models that

have been developed by DOE. In particular, we

note ‘that integration of the capabilities of the existing Integrated Data Base149 (projections, sourceterms, and process tradeoff analyses), transportation systems analysis capabilities150 (routing and

logistics), repository systems analysis capabilities151

(design/cost tradeoffs), repository risk analysis152

(radiological impact of repository), and any one of

numerous health impact models153 would result in

a system model capable of performing a variety of

cost/risk/benefit/scheduling studies necessary for efficient planning and operation of the waste management system. The complexity of these models

and the specialized expertise necessary to implement them will likely require implementation of the

integrated model in pieces at various sites, with results being communicated using computer-compatible methods (magnetic tapes). The importance of

developing an integrated system model is discussed

further in chapter 6.

System Impacts

Health Effects

Waste management may result in small, localized

releases from accidents during waste handling,

transportation, and storage activities prior to disposal. However, there appears to be little, if any,

chance of massive, uncontrolled releases of radioactivity into the environment in a short period of time

that would cause a large number of health effects

(in contrast to the possibility, however remote, of

a meltdown in a reactor). Instead, the principal ra-

*’gK. J. Notz, “Radwaste Inventories and Projections: An Overview, ” USDOE Report ORNL/TM-8322, July 1982.

151JD. S. Joy, B. J. Hud~n, and M. W. Anthony, ‘‘Logistics Characterization for Regional Spent Fuel Repositones Concept, ” USDOE

Report ONWI-124, August 1980.

lslL. L. C]ark ~d B. M. Cole, ‘‘An Analysis of the Cost of Mined

Geologic Repositories in Alternative Media, ” USDOE Report PNL3949, February 1982,

152D. J. Silviere et al., “A Short Description of the AEGIS Appreach, ” USDOE Report PNL-398, September 1980.

IS9M. Mil]s and D. VOgt, “A Summary of Computer Codes for

Radiological Assessment, ” USNRC Report NUREG/CR-3209,

March 1983.

biological effects during waste management prior

to disposal would result from radiation doses to

workers and the public during routine operations. 154

Analyses indicate that after disposal in a geologic

repository, the two principal modes of release would

be: 1) small, concentrated releases produced by

human intrusion (from digging a well either near

or into a repository) that could result in large doses

of radiation to a few individuals; or 2) the gradual

release of radioactivity from the repository into

ground water (and ultimately into drinking water

or food supplies), leading to very small doses (compared to background radiation) to a large portion

of the population. DOE analysis calculates that normal operation of a waste management system without reprocessing could be expected to produce, at

most, two health effects genetic disorders or fatal

cancers) over a 70-year period, even if the level of

nuclear power generation increased to 500 GWe by

2040.155 The addition of reprocessing increases the

maximum expected health effects to 37 on a regional basis and 1,100 worldwide for the same level of

generation. 156 While this is a large number in absolute terms, it nonetheless represents only a small

fraction (0.003 percent) of the health effects to the

world population expected to result from natural

sources of radioactivity over the same period. 157 A

review of the risks associated with nuclear power,

conducted by the National Academy of Sciences,

concludes that the total exposure to future generations from wastes released from a repository should

not exceed the doses to the present generation from

normal operation of the nuclear fuel cycle. 158

Nonradiological Impacts

Even if there are no significant direct health effects from radioactive releases, management of

high-level radioactive wastes will have ecological,

land-use, manpower, and community adjustment

impacts. In general, the nonradiological health and

environmental effects from constructing and operating a geologic repository should be no more severe

than those associated with other large construction

IS4C]oss and Geipel, op. Cit.

ISSDOE, FEZS, table 7.4.3, p. 7.40.

l~G1bid., table 7.4.4, p. 7.40.

‘

571 bid., p. 7.39

lJ8Nation~ Academy of Sciences, Risks Associated with Nuclear

Power: A Criticai Review of the Literature, Summary and Synthesis

Chapter (Washington, D. C.: 1979), p. xi.
Ch. 3—Technology of Waste Management 75

projects. In particular, the anticipated nonradiological impacts arising from the resource and economic requirements of nuclear waste management

occur in similar and ongoing activities associated

with preparation of fresh nuclear fuel and coal mining. For example, the largest coal mines dwarf

mined geologic repositories as geographically concentrated sources of nonradiological, ecological, and

community impacts.

160 The waste storage and disposal system should add, at most, about 20 percent of the land area to the land area required for

the mills and reactors they serve. When all of the

other facilities such as uranium mines and enrichment plants are taken into account, it appears unlikely that high-level radioactive waste management

would ever require an appreciable fraction of the

total land area serving the nuclear fuel cycle. 161

Construction and operation of waste storage and

disposal facilities are likely to have effects on nearby

communities similar to those of mining or industrial warehousing. Development of a repository

could create a noticeable increase in local population, particularly during the construction phase,

that could require careful planning for expanded

public services and housing. Such “conventional”

impacts have been experienced and dealt with during industrial developments of many kinds; they

are not unique to radioactive waste management.

(See table 3-5.) However, the socioeconomic impacts of a repository are likely to be very site-specific

and difficult to predict on the basis of experience

with other types of facilities at other sites.

A less tangible and familiar community impact

of waste management and disposal would be the

effect of public concerns about the radiological

health and safety risks of waste management operations —concerns that would not exist to such a degree about more familiar industrial activities.164

— ——— ISgNation~ Research Council, Social and Economic Aspects, p. 93.

160 The MITRE Corp., Assessment of the Non-RadioJo~”caJ Zm -

pacts of Mana~”ng Commercially Generated Spent Fuel, April 1981,

a report prepared for the Office of Technology Assessment, pp. 2-22,

2-23.

1611 bid., p. 2-8.

16zIbid., p. 2-13. See also Roger Kasperson, Anticipating the Socioeconomic Impacts of Nuclear Waste Facilities on Rural Communities, Center for Technology, Environment, and Development, Worcester, Mass., Testimony prepared for the Rural Development Subcommittee of the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, U.S.

Senate, Aug. 26, 1980, p. 6.

lbJNation~ Research Council, Social and Economic Aspects, p. 12.

1 b+steve H. Murdock, F. Larry Leistritz and R ita R. Harem, ~u

 -

Table 3-5.—Conventional Site Effects of a Large

Industrial Facility

1.0 Economic Effects

1.1 Change in property value

1.2 Change in rental costs

1.3 Change in cost of goods and services

1.4 Higher property taxes

1.5 Change in employment

1.6 Change in prevision of jobs

1.7 Change in travel costs

1.8 Change in market areas and competitive position of

economic activities

2.0 Environmental and Health Effects

2,1 Noise

2.2 Air pollution

2.3 Damage to soil quality

2.4 Water drainage damage

2.5 Vibration

2.6 Congestion and access

2.7 Accidents

2,8 Aesthetic changes

3.0 Social Change Effects

3.1 Social pathologies (alcoholism, drug abuse, mental

illness, divorce, juvenile delinquency)

3.2 Crime

3.3 Personality adjustment

3.4 Affectual relations

3.5 Use of community facilities

3.6 Intergroup conflict

3.7 Quality of public services

3.8 Sense of community (includes sense of attachment,

support networks)

4.0 Location Transfer Costs and New Location Effects

4.1 Searching

4.2 Moving

4.3 Capital financing costs

4,4 Start-up and operating costs (businesses)

4.5 Personality adjustment

5.0 institutional Adaptations

5.1 Land-use functions

5.2 Development planning

5.3 Negotiations with contractors, government agencies

5.4 Conflict resolution

5.5 Jurisdictional issues

5,6 Public service bureaucracies; direct-sewice agencies

5.7 Division of responsibilities

SOURCE: National Research Council, Sodal and Ecorromlc Aspects of Rsdloactive Waste Disposal (Washington, DC: National Academy Press,

1984).

There might also be important community impacts

resulting from the controversy that could surround

the siting of waste facilities. 165 In any case, evidence

suggests that the public perceives radioactive waste

management to be qualitatively different from other

clear Waste: Socioeconomic Dimensions of Long-Term Storage

(Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1983), p. 112.

l’3s Kasperson, Anticipating the Socioeconomic Impacts.
76 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

superficially similar operations and industries. 166

This has led some analysts to conclude that a systematic effort to identify and understand those impacts that cause the greatest public concern might

be needed to avoid repetition of past conflicts in

the implementation of the Federal waste management program.

167 A National Research Council

panel recently concluded that the “special” effects

associated with the radiological aspects of radioactive waste management might be particularly difficult to assess, but could exceed the conventional

effects of a repository and prove difficult to mitigate or eliminate. 168

The acceptability of waste management activities to a community may depend not only on their

actual or perceived impacts but also on the benefits

the community expects to receive from the activities. While studies of the socioeconomic effects of

radioactive waste management facilities have generally focused on the negative impacts, operation

of a geologic repository will have some positive impacts as well. As with any industrial facility, the

repository will bring some jobs to the community.

In addition, the first repository—which is likely to

be the first such facility in the world—may well become an international research center on radioactive waste disposal for a period extending well beyond the time when the repository ceases active

operation. This could lead to long-term community benefits that might to some extent offset the

more immediate but short-term impacts of repository construction. In fact, some communities that

are already familiar with nuclear activities and are

interested in the financial benefits of waste management have indicated willingness to host waste

facilities. 169

166 Roger E. Kasperson et ~.! “Public Opposition to Nuclear Energy: Retrospect and Prospect, Science, Technology, and Human

Values 31, spring 1980, pp. 11-23; and J. A. Herbert et al., Nontechnical Issues in Waste Management: Ethical, Znsitutional, and Politicai Concerns (Seattle, Wash.: Human Affairs Research Centers,

Battelle Memorial Institute Pacific Northwest Division, May 1978).

‘c7Gene I. Rod-din, “The Role of Participatory Impact Assessment

in Radioactive Waste Management Program Activities, Institute of

Governmental Studies (Berkeley, Calif.: 1981), pp. 43-44.

lbBNation~ Research Council, Social and Economic Aspects, p. 101.

‘c9’’Nuclear Waste War Cry: ‘Not Here, You Don’t!’, ” U.S. News

& World Report, Aug. 15, 1983, pp. 23-24; “To Keep Their Town

Alive, the Residents of Naturita, Colo. Want a Nuclear Dump, ” The

Wall Street ~ournal, July 1, 1982, p. 1.

Generally, Federal activities are less attractive

financially to local communities than those of commercial industry because the Federal Government

does not pay local taxes. Because the adverse impacts of repository development and operation have

the potential for substantial harm to the host community, provision of resources to reduce, mitigate,

and compensate for such impacts may be required. 170 Authority for this response was included

in the NWPA (see chs, 5 and 8).

Transportation

The transportation of high-level radioactive waste

will be the aspect of waste management that affects

the largest number of States and communities. The

actual risks posed by transportation appear to be

low, although transportation is the predisposal

waste management step with the potential for the

most serious accidental release of radioactive material. 17t The transportation of high-level radioactive waste through a community will place some

demands on State and local governments to maintain some emergency response capability for shipping accidents, whether or not any release of radioactive material occurs. The actual number of

communities affected in this way will be highly dependent on the nature of the waste management

system that is developed—whether it is highly centralized, with one large repository or interim storage facility operating at any one time, or decentralized, with several operating facilities distributed

around the country. The more centralized the system, the greater the number of communities affected by transportation of spent fuel from reactors

to storage or disposal.

A qualitative idea of the different transportation

implications of centralized and decentralized waste

management systems can be obtained by comparing figures 3-8 and 3-9. These figures show the projected annual shipments to a single western storage site and to three regional storage sites in the

year 2004, assuming that 113 reactors are in operITONation~ Research Council, Social and Economic Aspects, p. 12.

See also S. A. Carries et al., Incentives and the Siting of Radioactive

Waste Facilities, ORNL-5880 (Clak Ridge, Term.: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, August 1982).

171 D(3E, FEIS, p. 4.98.
Ch. 3—Technology of Waste Management ● 7 7

Waste Management System

n

/

Projected annual shipments to a western site in 2004, assuming truck shipments from all reactors. (Site selected for demonstration purposes

only. The site shown is only one of several western sites now under consideration for a repository, and is used as a convenient hypothetical

exampie only.) The actual number of annual shipments is likely to be lower because of use of new casks designed for eider spent fuei, which

will carry more per shipment, and shipment of some fuel using much larger rail casks.

SOURCE: National Research Council, Social and Economic Aspects of Radioactive Waste LXsposal (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1984).

ation at that time and that all shipments are made

by truck.172 The shipments represent about 13,000

spent fuel assemblies containing about 3,700 tonnes

of fuel. 173 One rough indicator of the difference between the centralized and decentralized systems is

the total shipping distance involved. Assuming for

.— 172 — These examples are drawn from a more extensive analysis of the

effects of centralized and decentralized systems on transportation in

National Research Council, Social and Economic Aspects, ch. 3. The

sites shown were selected for demonstration purposes only, to show

the effects of regional v. centralized storage or disposal. Only one of

the sites, in southern Nevada, is now under consideration for a geologic

repository. The two eastern sites are the inoperative reprocessing facilities at Morris, Ill., and Barnwell, S. C., which were considered by

the Carter administration as possible sites for Federal away-from-reactor storage facilities, and which were sometimes used as hypothetical

storage sites for analytical purposes. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act

of 1982 forbids the acquisition of these facilities for Federal interim

storage, and the sites have not been, and are not now, under consideration for geologic repositories.

17 JIbid., app. A, p. 15 ~ .

simplicity that all shipments were made by truck,

the shipping distance in 2004 would be about 9 million miles for the regional system, compared to

about 33 million miles for the single western site. 174

Both the costs and risks of transportation will increase with the total transportation distance. For

example, a recent analysis showed that the costs

and risks (from radiation exposure and nonradiological accidents) would be about two to three times

greater for a repository in the westernmost area now

under consideration, Hanford, than for a repository in the easternmost area under consideration,

the Gulf Interior region. 175 Other analysis has conbid, table A. 18, p. 166, and table A. 14, p. 162.

i 75T. I. McSweeney et al. , “The Costs and Impacts of Transporting Nuclear Waste to Candidate Repository Sites, Proceedings of

the 1983 Civilian Radioactive Waste Management Information Meeting (Washington, D. C.: U.S. Department of Energy, 1984), pp.

357-359.
78 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

Figure 3=9.-Spent Fuel Shipments in a Decentralized Waste Management System

Projeoted annual shipments to regional sites In 2004, assuming truck shipments from aii reactors. (Sites selected for demonstration purposes

only. The eastern sites are not under consideration for repositories and are used as convenient hypothetical examples oniy.) The actual number

of annuai shipments is Iikeiy to be lower because of use of new casks designed for eider spent fuei, which will carry more per shipment, and

shipment of some fuei using much larger rail casks.

SOURCE: National Research Council, Social and Economic Aspects of Redloactlve Waste Disposal (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 19S4.)

eluded that the costs and risks of waste transportation could be reduced by as much as a factor of 2

with an optimally sited system using two or three

repositories compared to a single repository. 176

cost

The aggregate costs of high-level radioactive

waste management will be in the tens of billions

of dollars, the actual amount depending on the scale

of nuclear power generation, the time that disposal

occurs, and the geologic medium used for the repository. DOE has estimated that if disposal began

in 2010, the cost of waste management would be

up to $18 billion for the currently operating reactors

and up to $68 billion for a 250-GWe system. 177

!TSK. D. Kirby et al., Op. cit.

ITTDC)E, FEIS, table 7.62, p. 7.47. Also, the most recent DOE alI~-

ysis concludes that the cost of disposing of 144,000 tonnes of spent

fuel or equivalent high-level waste—about the amount expected to

These very large absolute figures are relatively

small, however, compared to the total capital cost

of the nuclear power system that would be served.

Since the expenditures for waste management occur substantially later than do the initial capital expenditures for the reactor system, discounting to

take into account the time value of money reduces

the relative effect of waste management on the overall cost of generating nuclear electricity. As a result, it appears unlikely that the costs of waste management could ever represent more than a relatively

small fraction of the total cost of nuclear power generation. DOE, in its analysis of waste management

alternatives for a range of nuclear power futures,

be generated by the reactors now in o xration or under construction-is

between $18 billion and $20 billion in constant 1982 dollars. U.S.

Department of Energy, Report on .rinancing the Disposid, op. cit.,

p. 2.
Ch. 3—Technology of Waste Management ● 7 9

concludes that the costs of waste management

would add not more than 2 to 10 percent, and most

likely not more than 3 percent, to the cost of nuclear electricity. 178 For this reason the fees for

radioactive waste disposal are likely to be small in

comparison to the effects on the costs of coal-generated electricity resulting from clean air regulations. 179

Since these fees would be seen by the utility as

an annual cost, instead of an increase in the capital cost of building a nuclear powerplant, it appears

unlikely that waste management costs could significantly affect a utility’s decisions about whether to

construct a new nuclear reactor. This conclusion

is strengthened by the fact that the estimated cost

of waste disposal is small compared to the total cost

of fresh fuel, 180 and in fact, may be no greater than

the range of uncertainty in the estimates of the cost

of fresh fuel. 181

The greatest potential cost impact of nuclear

waste management policy may not be the direct

costs of the management system, but the indirect

costs that would result if problems in development

or operation of such a system led to shutting down

reactors or to a moratorium on operation of new

ones. For example, the cost of replacement power

for a l-GWe reactor for 1 year could exceed the

estimated cost of storing and disposing of the total

amount of high-level radioactive waste generated

from the operation of that reactor during its lifetime. 182

Distribution of Impacts

Since waste management is apt to represent only

a small part of the total costs, logistics, and social

impacts of the entire nuclear fuel cycle, 183 the choice

among management systems will have little incremental effect on the overall impacts of nuclear power generation. However, available studies have con-

] TBIbid,, pp. 7.50-7.51. An~ysis by the Congressional Budget Office supports this conclusion. CBO, Financing Radioactive Waste Disposal, September 1982, p. 27.

‘791 bid., p. xvii.

IEOA recent DOE ~~ysis shows an example leve]ized fresh fuel cost

of 7.7 mills/kWh, compared to a waste disposal fee of 1 mill/kWh established by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982. U.S. DOE, Nuclear

Energy Cost L?ata Base, table 4.2, p. 66.

181 MITRE, IVonradiolo@”cal Impacts, table 2-6, p. 2-20.

‘

821 bid., pp. 2-21.

1831 bid., ch. 2.

sidered only the aggregate impacts of alternative

systems. The distribution of those impacts among

the private sector, the Federal Government, and

regions of the country has not been analyzed rigorously, even though it underlies the equity judgments that are at the heart of the political decisionmaking process. 184 Usually, the Federal Environmental Impact Statement, the primary tool for

identifying impacts, focuses almost entirely on aggregate impacts and not at all on their distribution.

While alternative waste management systems may

be little different in their aggregate impacts, they

may differ significantly in their equity implications. 185 For example, a highly centralized system

with only one repository operating at a time could

substantially increase the number of communities

affected by waste transportation. Thus, concerns

about equity issues—in particular, the regional distribution of the costs and benefits of waste management— may play a major role in decisions about

both spent fuel management and waste disposal

policies.

Rigorous analysis of the regional impacts of waste

management would require development of an integrated waste system model capable of dealing with

specific sites and transportation routes. As noted

earlier, although important components that could

be used in such a model have been developed, they

have yet to be combined.186

System Interrelationships

High-level radioactive waste management at

operational scale will involve handling highly

radioactive materials in quantities and at annual

rates that are unprecedented. For example, from

—

lB4Roger E, Kasperson, ‘ ‘Institutional and Social Uncertainties in

the Timely Management of Radioactive Wastes, Center for Technology, Environment, and Development, Clark University, June 30,

1980. Testimony prepared for the California Energy Commission for

the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Confidence Rulemaking on the

Storage and Disposal of Nuclear Waste.

1 Sfsee Nation~ Research Council, Social and Economic Aspects,

ch. 3.

lsGSite-swcific highway and rail routing models have been developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratories. See D. S. Joy et al.,

HIGHWAY, A Transportation Routing Model: Program Description and User’s Manual, ORNL/TM-8419, December 1982; and D.

S. Joy et al., ‘ ‘Predicting Transportation Routes for Radioactive

Wastes, ” Waste Management 1981, vol. 1, p. 415. These are used

in Edwin L. Wilmot et al., A Preliminary Analysis. A nonsite-specilic

integrated systems model was developed for use in the U.S. DOE,

FEIS, ch. 7.
80 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

the beginning of the use of nuclear power to the

end of 1980, a total of about 5,000 spent fuel assemblies were transported from reactor sites. 187

About 10,000 assemblies would have to be transported each year to feed a 3,000 -tonne/yr repository.

188 Nonetheless, available analyses indicate that

the flows of radioactive waste produced by existing

and projected levels of nuclear power generation

should be manageable, provided that careful planning is done to avoid bottlenecks and minimize the

strains that could result from the rapid increase in

transportation and handling when a repository or

reprocessing plant begins operation. 189

The annual handling capacity of the elements of

the waste management system is as important as

the total amount of the waste in determining the

behavior of the system. For example, the buildup

of spent fuel in storage is determined by the difference between the rate at which spent fuel is generated by reactors and the rate at which it can be

reprocessed or disposed of. If the Barnwell reprocessing plant were to begin operating at its maximum capacity of 1,500 tonnes/yr in 1995, it would

take 20 years to reprocess the amount of spent fuel

that had gone into storage by that time. 190 It would

take somewhat more than the capacity of one additional plant of the same size to handle the 2,200

tonnes of spent fuel expected to be generated each

year by the reactors that will by operating in

1 BTEdWi~ L. wi]mot, Transportatio n Accident SCenariO& table

xxv, p. 44.

188Based on an average of 3.5 assemblies/tonne of spent fuel, derived

from utility projections of spent fuel discharges contained in app. B

of the U.S. Department of Energy, Spent Fuel Storage Requirements,

DOE/SR-0007, March 1981.

IWDOE, FEIS; MITRE, Analysis of Nuclear Waste Disposal; National Research Council, Social and Economic Aspects.

1goDOE, SPnt Fuel and Radioactive Waste Inventories, table 1.2,

p. 30.

1995,191 Similarly, a single waste repository of the

current reference loading capacity, 3,000 tonnes/yr,

would be sufficient to stop the buildup of spent fuel

in storage, but not to reduce the backlogs very

quickly. Thus, it appears likely that up to 90 percent of the spent fuel generated in this century will

still be in temporary storage facilities (most of it

at the original reactor basins) at the end of the century, even if the Barnwell reprocessing plant were

put into operation or a repository began direct disposal of spent fuel during the 1990’s.192

Increasing the annual handling capacity of the

waste management system is expensive. The capital cost of a 1 ,500 -tonne/yr reprocessing plant is

estimated at $2 billion, 193 and a 3,000 -tonne/yr repository is estimated to be about $3 billion. 194 The

initial capital cost of a centralized spent fuel dry

storage facility capable of receiving about 1,500

tonnes/yr would be about $500 million, while an

additional 500-tonne/year handling module at the

same site would cost about $90 million. 195 Since

leaving spent fuel once it has been placed in storage at the reactor is relatively inexpensive, as noted

in the discussion of storage technology, the decisions about how fast and when to remove spent fuel

from storage at reactor basins will have significant

cost implications that must be considered in planning for the operation of a full-scale waste management system. (For further discussion, see the

analysis of the Mission Plan in ch. 6.)

‘

g

’ Ibid.

lgzIbid., fig. C.2, p. 284; fig. ~.3, p. 285.

193DoE, Nuc]ear Energy Cost Data Base, table 2.13, P. 27 (1983

dollars).

fWDOE, Report on Financing the Dispowd, table 3-4, p. 13 ( 1982

dollars).

19SD, E. Rasmussen, Compari: on of Cask and Drywell Storage,

op. cit., table A.27, p. A.28 (19[12 dollars).
Chapter 4

History of Waste Management:

Setting the Stage
Contents

Page

Development of Federal Waste Management Policy and Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

Early History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .......,.....’....”.. ......”....”......s.... 83

Recent History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ....’...” ...”........”’.... 85

Problems for Waste Management Policy.........*....***. . ...... 88

Key Policy Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ’ . . . . . . . . . . . . .............”.. 88

Complicating Factors.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .............””. 90
Chapter 4

History of Waste Management:

Setting the Stage

When the 97th Congress convened in 1981,

almost four decades into the nuclear era, about 160

U.S. commercial nuclear plants had been built or

approved for construction, and approximately

6,700 metric tons (tonnes) of commercial spent nuclear fuel containing radioactive waste had already

been generated. Yet the United States still had not

decided how radioactive waste should be dealt with

from point of generation to point of final isolation.

As a result, a host of problems had arisen that both

complicated the task of developing a credible and

comprehensive waste management program and

cast a cloud of uncertainty over the future of nuclear power in the United States.

The passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of

1982 (NWPA) in the final hours of the 97th Congress represented a major watershed in the evolution of radioactive waste management policy in the

United States. The decisions made in NWPA about

how radioactive waste should be managed were

influenced not only by technical and institutional

capabilities but also by perceptions of those capabilities—perceptions formed by the historical experience of waste management. To understand how

these perceptions affected the development of waste

management policy and to avoid the pitfalls of the

past in implementing that policy, it is necessary to

examine the history and effects of past radioactive

waste management policies and practices. 1 This

chapter will provide that background. The provisions of NWPA will be described and analyzed in

chapter 5.

‘This chapter draws on Radioactive Waste Management Policy

Making, a more detailed analysis of the history of the U.S. waste management program by Daniel Metlay, included as app. A of this report. For brevity, references to that appendix are omitted (except for

direct quotations), and only references to other sources are cited in

this chapter.

DEVELOPMENT OF FEDERAL WASTE MANAGEMENT

POLICY AND PROGRAMS

Early History (1945-75)

Sources of Radioactive Waste

High-level radioactive waste was first produced

on a large scale in the wartime effort of the early

1940’s to produce plutonium for atomic weapons.

Spent fuel from defense reactors was routinely reprocessed to recover uranium and plutonium, and

liquid high-level waste from reprocessing was stored

in storage tanks at Federal facilities-first at Hanford, Wash., and later at Savannah River, S. C.,

and Idaho Falls, Idaho. It was assumed that disposal could take place later, possibly at these same

sites.

In 1954 the Atomic Energy Act opened the nuclear power industry to private enterprise, and the

first contract for a commercial reactor was issued

2 years later. Unlike defense reactors, commercial

reactors were designed primarily to produce electricity. Spent fuel discharged from commercial reactors was stored in water-filled basins at reactor

sites, pending development of a commercial reprocessing facility.

Climate of Policymaking

Overseeing the burgeoning commercial nuclear

industry was the Atomic Energy Commission

(AEC), established by the Atomic Energy Act of

1946 to promote as well as regulate the nuclear

industry’s defense and commercial functions.

AEC’s five members were appointed by the President for 5-year terms. They in turn were overseen

83
84 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

by the congressional Joint Committee on Atomic

Energy (JCAE).

During the 1950’s and 1960’s, waste management received relatively little attention from policymakers. Issues of waste management paled beside

the exciting, pressing challenges of reactor development and research. In addition, the early regulators and developers of nuclear power viewed waste

disposal primarily as a technical problem that could

be solved when necessary by application of existing

technology. This belief was buttressed by the 1957

report of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS),

which concluded that high-level radioactive waste

could be disposed of in a variety of ways and sites

in the United States. * Testimony of Federal and

civilian experts in the 1959 oversight hearings by

JCAE further endorsed this view. Daniel Metlay

describes the effect of such technical optimism:

An illusion of certainty was created where, in

reality, none existed. Over the years, the sense of

technological optimism embedded itself in the attitudes and thoughts of important agency policymakers. It became, in a sense, an official doctrine at

AEC. There is no evidence that its validity was ever

seriously questioned until the mid-1970’s, This optimism facilitated fragmentation by lulling policymakers; agency personnel never fully recognized

that they might create in a sequential, incremental

fashion an elaborate technological structure (civilian nuclear power), only to find that the last pieces

could not be made to fit. The difficulties of integrating the whole were systematically underestimated.3

As a result of these beliefs and attitudes, commitments of budget and personnel to the management

of radioactive wastes were woefully inadequate,

forcing key personnel to make stopgap decisions.

Moreover, key officials tended to ignore signs that

a technical approach was not working and to discount the nontechnical factors that impeded progress. Later, when it became apparent that more

comprehensive action was needed to isolate waste,

the organizational and technical structures were not

prepared to respond rapidly enough. Although

some decisions made during this time later proved

to be unfortunate, at the time they were made,

‘National Academy of Science/National Research Council, The Disposal of Radioactive Waste on Land, 1957.

3App. A, Q. 203.

many appeared at least reasonable and, given the

constraints at work, the most appropriate possible.

Reprocessing and Storage

The country’s first large-scale efforts in waste

management were defense-related and involved the

reprocessing of spent fuel and the storage of liquid

wastes from that reprocessing in carbon steel tanks

designed to last 50 to 100 years. From 1957 to 1973,

however, premature corrosion of the tanks resulted

in a series of well-publicized leaks at Hanford and

Savannah River. An attempt at Hanford to prevent

further leaks by solidifyng the wastes created a solid

that remains in the tanks today and may be very

difficult, if not impossible, to remove for ultimate

disposal.

In 1963, AEC authorized the construction of the

first commercial reprocessing plant, the Nuclear

Fuel Services (NFS) facility at West Valley, N.Y.

During its 6 years of operation (1966-72), the NFS

plant experienced several problems. For one, the

lack of enough commercial spent fuel forced the facility to reprocess well below capacity, and to reprocess defense fuel that it was not designed to handle, causing damage to equipment and other technical problems. In addition, the plant received adverse publicity about its offsite leaks of radioactive

waste and about radiation exposure to some of its

workers.

In 1970, AEC proposed new regulations that

committed the Government to develop repositories

on Federal land and required that, for safety, liquid

high-level waste be solidified within 5 years of its

generation and transported to the repository within

5 years after solidification. Partly to meet these new

regulations, the NFS plant was closed in 1971 for

modifications. For financial reasons the plant never

reopened, and the 612,000 gallons of liquid wastes

from its reprocessing operations remain in storage

tanks at the site.

A second commercial reprocessing plant, built

by General Electric at Morris, Ill., never operated

because of technical and design problems. A third

plant, the Allied General nuclear Services (AGNS)

facility in Barnwell, S. C., was still under construction in April 1977, when commercial reprocessing

was suspended indefinitely by the Carter administration. Since the operations ceased at West Val-
Ch. 4—History of Waste Management: Setting the Stage 85

ley, no reprocessing of commercial spent fuel has

occurred in the United States.

Disposal

AEC first addressed the problem of waste disposal in 1955 when it asked NAS how to structure

research to establish a scientific base for the waste

management program. Under the assumption that

the waste to be disposed of would be dissolved at

relatively low concentrations in liquid, NAS stated

in its 1957 report that disposal was technologically

feasible and that stable salt formations appeared to

be the most promising repository medium. Such

formations would theoretically prevent transport of

liquid and would become self-sealing in the event

of a fracture. The commitment to salt became a

cornerstone of waste disposal policy for the next 20

years.

In the 1960’s, improved reprocessing techniques

reduced the volume and increased the thermal and

radiation content of reprocessed wastes. To test the

effect of these new characteristics on salt, 14 spent

fuel assemblies and several heaters to raise the temperature of the salt were emplaced from 1965 to

1967 in the abandoned Carey Salt Mine at Lyons,

Kans. The experiment, called Project Salt Vault,

was conducted in an atmosphere of goodwill among

Federal, State, and local officials: State and local

officials were consulted about various aspects of the

experiment, public tours of the mine were given

during the experiment, and the wastes were removed at the end of the experiment, as promised.

The results of this experiment showed no measurable evidence of excessive chemical or structural

effects on the salt, a fact which became important

2 years later when the need suddenly arose to find

a disposal site quickly.

In 1969, a fire at the Federal weapons components facility in Rocky Flats, Colo., left a large volume of low-level, plutonium-contaminated transuranic waste. Following standard procedures,

officials sent the wastes to the National Reactor Test

Station in Idaho for storage. Concerned that their

State had become a dumping ground for waste from

Colorado, Idaho’s political leaders appealed to AEC

Chairman Glenn Seaborg, who pledged to remove

the waste by 1980. That promise, as well as the

commitment to disposal expressed in the AEC regulations mentioned above, spurred AEC to search

for a geologic repository site. The Lyons site was

selected because:

●

●

●

some, albeit very little, information had been

gathered about the site during Project Salt

Vault;

a favorable reception by the local citizenry

seemed likely; and

investigations needed to prove the acceptability of the other sites would have delayed repository development by 2 years.

AEC announced in 1970 that, pending confirmatory tests, the Lyons site had been selected for the

first full-scale repository. Although the degree to

which AEC had consulted with State and local officials before this announcement is in dispute, AEC’S

decision did not have full endorsement from these

officials. Moreover, State and local political opposition to the Lyons site was intense, particularly when

technical problems with the site became apparent.

The Government abandoned plans for Lyons 2

years later because AEC was unable to convince

critics that the many mining boreholes throughout

the site could be plugged reliably and because no

one could account for the disappearance of a large

volume of water flushed into a nearby mine.

Left without a repository, AEC requested the

U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to search for additional repository sites for defense wastes. It also

proposed building a series of aboveground structures, called retrievable surface storage facilities

(RSSFs), to store commercial high-level wastes for

a period of decades while geologic repositories were

developed. The environmental impact statement

issued by AEC in support of the RSSF concept

drew intense criticism by the public and by the

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) because

of concerns that the RSSFs would become lowbudget permanent repository sites, As a result,

AEC abandoned the RSSF concept in 1975,

Recent History

Climate of Policymaking

After the mid-1970’s, significant changes occurred in waste management. EPA issued its first

standards-those for the preparation of reactor fuel,
86 . Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

for reactor operations, and for reprocessing of spent

fuel—and announced its intention to develop standards for the disposal of nuclear waste. The Energy

Reorganization Act of 1974 abolished AEC and distributed its developmental functions to the new Energy Research and Development Agency (ERDA),

later changed to the Department of Energy (DOE),

and its regulatory functions to the new Nuclear

Regulatory Commission (NRC). JCAE was disbanded and its role assumed by a variety of congressional committees. These events marked the

change to a formal process of regulating the storage and disposal of high-level wastes. Thus, ERDA

(later, DOE) would select a disposal site and design a facility to meet regulations promulgated by

NRC in accordance with EPA standards.

By the late 1970’s, the problem of waste isolation

had captured the focus of the Federal Government,

which began to allocate substantial personnel and

funds to its solution. Although many decisionmakers still contended that managing high-level radioactive wastes was not technically difficult, they increasingly recognized the nontechnical aspects of

the problem and worked to develop a firmer technical base from which to make decisions.

Disposal

DEFENSE WASTE

The abandonment of the Lyons site left the Government without a repository for the nuclear wastes

from Rocky Flats. To fill that need, ERDA officials in 1974 selected a site near Carlsbad, N. Mex.,

for construction of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant

(WIPP), a pilot repository for defense transuranic

waste. Initially, State and local officials supported

WIPP because of its potential for boosting the economy of an area hard hit by the decline in the potash industry.

Then in 1977, the Government made the first

of several dramatic changes in the scope and mission of WIPP: it considered the emplacement of

defense high-level waste at the facility.4 To ensure

repository safety, ERDA also promised the licensing of the repository by NRC. Angered by the

‘This discussion of the history of WIPP is drawn from Jackie L.

Braitman, Nuclear Waste Disposal: Can Government Cope? (Santa

Monica, Calif.: The Rand Corp., December 1983), pp. 116-121.

changes in scope, the New Mexico House of Representatives came with in three votes of passing a

constitutional amendment banning disposal of outof-State nuclear waste. ‘Under fire, DOE promised

New Mexico officials veto rights over WIPP.

Relations were further strained in February 1978

when DOE recommenced the emplacement of up

to 1,000 commercial spent fuel assemblies at WIPP.

Local opposition arose over the increased hazards

promised by the inclusion of spent fuel; over the

change in nature of the repository from pilot to permanent; and over the perception that New Mexico,

which had no commercial reactors, would assume a

disproportionate responsibility for the Nation’s

commercial nuclear waste. Moreover, critics accused DOE of putting aside technical considerations to use WIPP to satisfy laws, passed by California and under consideration in other States,

requiring that a demonstrated high-level waste disposal technology approved by the Federal Government must exist before additional reactors could

be constructed.

During 1978 and 1979, Congress rejected the

proposals for NRC licensing and State veto powers

for WIPP. These actions weakened the credibility

of DOE, which had promised those provisions to

New Mexico. In 1980 President Carter proposed

that WIPP be terminated but that the site (now

called the Los Medanos site) be retained as a candidate for a future repository. Congress refused to

terminate WIPP, reactivating it as an unlicensed

defense facility primarily for disposal of transuranic

waste from Rocky Flats and for defense high-level

waste research. Site characterization activities at

WIPP, including the construction of a large shaft

and exploratory tunnels, are now underway.

COMMERCIAL WASTE

For disposal of commercial high-level waste,

ERDA developed the National Waste Terminal

Storage (NWTS) program in 1975. The program

involved a multiple-site survey of underground

geologic formations in 36 States and was designed

to lead to the development of six pilot-scale repositories by the year 2000--the first in salt, the rest

in other geologic media. This change from preoccupation with salt reflected new views about what

constituted an effective repository. As formally
Ch. 4—History of Waste Management: Setting the Stage ● 8 7

expressed in 1978 in “Circular 779”5 by several

USGS scientists and also in a study by the American Physical Society,6 the effectiveness, or integrity,

of a repository could be considered dependent on

the combination of the emplacement medium and

its environment, rather than on the emplacement

medium alone. With that view, salt, although still

a strong contender, might not be the only choice

for a geologic repository. Moreover, the staff of

NRC contended that “it would be highly desirable

to place major, if not primary, importance on the

waste form itself, its packaging, and the local wasterock interface. 7

The responses of State officials to DOE’s plans

for the NWTS program varied. Some States excluded ERDA from even exploring potential repository locations. Others were reluctant to welcome

ERDA until further studies were completed. Thus,

what began as a fresh start in the area of waste management soon got mired down in the reluctance of

State officials even to contemplate a facility on their

soil.

Because of lower-than-requested funding and

political opposition from the States, schedules

slipped repeatedly as the Government was forced

to cut the program drastically. By 1980, active site

evaluation research was being undertaken only in

Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, Texas, Utah, and

Washington.

Recent Waste Management Policy

THE CARTER ADMINISTRATION

Partly to ease the utilities’ growing burden of

spent fuel storage, President Carter announced in

his spent fuel policy in 1977 that title to spent fuel

would be transferred to the Government and that

the spent fuel would be transported at utility

expense to a Government-approved away-fromreactor facility for storage until a repository became

available. A one-time fee for Government storage

and disposal would be charged to the utility. To

— .

‘J. D. Bredehoeft, A. W. England, D. B. Stewart, N. J. Trask,

and 1. J. Winograd, ‘ ‘Geologic Disposal of High-Level Radioactive

Wastes—Earth Sciences Perspectives, Geological Survey Circular

#779, U.S. Geological Survey, 1978.

“’Report to the American Physical Society by the Study Group

on Nuclear Fuel Cycles and Waste Managcmcnt, Reviews of hfocf -

ern Physics, vol. 50, No. 1, pt. 11, January 1978.

7App. A, p. 219.

limit the availability of weapons-grade material,

President Carter extended the moratorium on reprocessing, set in the Ford administration in 1976,

by suspending indefinitely the reprocessing of commercial spent fuel in the United States. The policy

also offered to provide limited storage and disposal

of foreign spent fuel, if necessary to meet nonproliferation objectives, and committed substantial resources to development of mined geologic repositories.

To help develop his administration’s policy on

long-term nuclear waste management, President

Carter established in 1977 the Interagency Review

Group (IRG), composed of representatives from

14 Government agencies. IRG submitted its report

in 1979, and in 1980 President Carter ratified the

unanimous conclusions of IRG, recommending:

1. proceeding with the geologic disposal program;

2. increasing State and Indian tribe involvement

in repository siting;

3. preparing a detailed National Plan for Nuclear Waste Management; and

4. developing better participation programs for

the general public and the technical community.

In addition, he required characterization of more

sites in a variety of media prior to submission of

a license request to NRC, an issue on which IRG

had been unable to reach a consensus.

To formalize the relationship between DOE and

the States, IRG formulated the concept of ‘consultation and concurrence, first proposed by the National Governors’ Association. Under this concept,

a State would be consulted by the Government and

given the opportunity to concur with each step in

developing a repository. By not concurring, a State

could effectively exercise a veto. To advise the Federal Government on key radioactive waste management issues, President Carter created the State

Planning Council (SPC), a 14-member council of

Governors, State legislators, an Indian tribal government representative, an observer from NRC,

and representatives from DOE, the Department of

Transportation, and EPA. SPC recommended that

a State’s nonconcurrence be overridden, or preempted, by the Federal Government only through

a Presidential determination backed by both Houses

of Congress.
88 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

96TH CONGRESS

Nearly 50 bills concerning waste management

were introduced in the 96th Congress. The Senate passed a bill which emphasized development

of long-term, monitored storage facilities that permitted the retrieval of the emplaced waste. The

House passed a bill that focused on a timetable for

development of mined repositories. However, no

acceptable compromise could be reached between

the two bills, largely because of disagreements about

the power States should be given with respect to

siting of defense waste repositories. 8 As a result,

the effort to pass comprehensive high-level radioactive waste management legislation during the 96th

Congress failed.

THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION

In 1981 the Reagan administration declared its

support for nuclear power and declared an ‘ ‘intent

to demonstrate the permanent storage of high-level

radioactive waste as soon as possible. The administration lifted the ban on commercial reprocessing, and DOE adopted the assumption that the reference waste form for disposal would be solidified

high-level waste rather than spent fuel. However,

DOE efforts to encourage private investment in reaBoth Houses agreed that the host State’s objection would be sustained with regard to a repository for commercial high-level waste if

either the House of Representatives or the Senate affirmatively concurred, but they were unable to agree to a procedure for dealing with

a State’s objection to a repository for defense high-level waste.

‘This description of the waste management policy of the Reagan

administration is drawn from the statement of Kenneth Davis, Deputy Secretary of Energy, before the Subcommittee on Energy and the

Environment, Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, U.S. House

of Representatives, July 9, 1981.

processing have been unsuccessful. The Reagan administration also withdrew the Carter administration’s offer to provide Federal storage facilities for

spent fuel and left utilities with the primary responsibility for storing spent fuel until reprocessing or

disposal facilities are developed.

With regard to repository siting, the Reagan

administration reduced to three the number of sites

that were to be examined prior to selecting a first

site for licensing; the Carter administration had

planned to evaluate four to five sites before making

the selection. The three sites were expected to be

in basalt formations at Hanford, in volcanic tuff

at the Nevada Test Sitej and in a salt formation

at a site to be determined in 1983. Construction

of exploratory shafts for in situ testing was planned

to begin in 1983. After completion of the shafts in

1985, one of the three sites was to be selected for

the development of an unlicensed test and evaluation facility for development of waste emplacement

technology. This facility was planned to be ready

to accommodate up to 200 to 300 packages of solidified high-level waste by 1989.

The first license application for a full-scale facility was expected to be submitted to NRC by 1987

or 1988. Review of the license application would

be conducted by NRC in parallel with further development of the unlicensed test and evaluation facility. The first repository was expected to be constructed and licensed for operation between 1998

and 2001. 1

°

IOA siml]ar schedu]e was u]timate]y incorporated in NWPA and is

discussed at greater length in chs. 5 and 6.

PROBLEMS FOR WASTE MANAGEMENT POLICY

Key Policy Issues

Two major related waste management issues

faced the 97th Congress when it began to consider

radioactive waste legislation in 1981:

1. What to do about final isolation of the highly

radioactive waste produced by nuclear re2.

actors, which is contained for the present in

the spent fuel discharged by those reactors.

What to do with the growing inventories of

that spent fuel now stored at the reactors,

given the uncertainties about when (or even

whether) it would prove worthwhile to reprocess them, and when final isolation facilities

would be available.
Ch. 4—History of Waste Management: Setting the Stage ● 8 9

Final Isolation

The central issue that was to be resolved concerning final isolation was how strong a commitment

to make to the development of a waste disposal technology that, unlike storage, would not require continued human control and maintenance to assure

safe isolation. 11 Some argued that a disposal system should be developed with all deliberate speed.

Others argued that a long period of interim storage (many decades) should be planned before developing a disposal system so that more options

could be made available and uncertainties about

the economic value of spent fuel could be resolved

before selecting a disposal techology for development. Still others argued that storage itself is a

satisfactory approach to final isolation, so no disposal system is needed. Although DOE made a formal decision to proceed with the development of

mined geologic repositories, this decision had not

yet been endorsed by Congress, and a bill passed

by the Senate in the 96th Congress contemplated

extended storage in monitored retrievable storage

facilities as an alternative to rapid development of

a disposal system. OTA’s analysis indicated that

until there was a clear resolution of this issue in

law, continued instability in the direction of the

waste management program was possible. *2

There was considerable disagreement over the

degree to which the future use of nuclear power

should depend on the development of an acceptable program for final waste isolation. Some argued

that the United States should make no significant

new commitments to nuclear power—and hence to

the generation of more waste—until the safe and

final isolation of nuclear waste could be demonstrated. Others argued that the technology for safe,

final isolation was available and that there was no

technical justification for restricting waste generation. Nonetheless, they argued that a demonstration

of final isolation was needed to allay public concerns

that threatened the continued growth of nuclear

power. From either point of view, it was seen as

important to resolve the existing uncertainties about

final isolation of radioactive waste.

I )An extensive discussion of this subject is found in issue 1 of app. B.

‘ZOTA testimony before the House Committee on Science and Technology, Subcommittee on Energy Research and Production, Oct. 5,

1981.

Even among those Who agreed that developing

the capability to dispose of—rather than store—radioactive waste was necessary to stop the issue from

becoming an encumbrance on the use of nuclear

power, there was substantial disagreement about

how to demonstrate this capability and about the

urgency of doing so. Some believed that the current

basis of knowledge about mined geologic repositories was adequate to permit an acceptably safe

repository to be sited and constructed quickly. They

argued for rapid development of a repository (and

perhaps an earlier unlicensed demonstration facility into which a small amount of waste would be

emplaced) to allay what they perceived to be

unfounded public concerns about waste disposal.

Others believed that more time would be needed

to develop sufficient confidence in a repository design and site. They contended that emplacement

of waste in a demonstration facility would not by

itself allay public concerns and feared that pressures

for rapid action could lead to a premature commitment to an inadequate repository site or design or,

at the very least, would lead to actions that would

jeopardize the credibility of the Federal waste disposal program.

Some argued that resolving disagreements about

the technical feasibility of waste disposal would not,

in itself, be enough to remove disposal as an issue

affecting the use of nuclear power, Demonstrating

the Federal Government’s institutional capacity to

carry out the difficult effort required to build and

operate a safe and reliable waste isolation system

may be as important as demonstrating the technical capacity to dispose of waste.

Interim Spent Fuel Storage

The fact that neither reprocessing nor a Federal

waste repository was likely to be available for a decade or longer meant that it would be necessary to

provide interim storage for large quantities of spent

fuel for at least the rest of the century. This posed

two key problems for utilities, which led some to

seek Federal assistance in providing that storage.

First, reactors were running out of storage space,

and it was clear that some might have to shut down

by the mid-1990’s unless more storage space were

made available—even if existing basins were expanded as much as possible and if utilities were

allowed to ship spent fuel to unfilled basins at other
90 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

reactors. 13 Some utilities would face serious problems by the late 1980’s if such shipment were not

allowed. Because of the relatively long leadtimes

needed for the construction and licensing of new

storage facilities, these utilities needed to know

within a few years whether they would have to provide such facilities themselves.

Second, the fact that there was no firm schedule

for either reprocessing or turning spent fuel over

to the Federal Government left the utilities completely in the dark about how much additional storage capacity they would have to provide, when they

would be able to end their liability for the growing

inventories of spent fuel, and how much the total

cost would be for storing and disposing of that fuel.

There was increasing opposition to efforts to provide additional storage capacity because of fear that

easy availability of interim storage would reduce

the pressures for developing a Federal disposal system, thus turning interim storage facilities into permanent waste repositories. This opposition, in turn,

had increased utilities’ fears that they might not be

able to gain approval for additional storage facilities quickly enough to prevent reactor shutdowns.

Concern about the utilities’ capacity to provide

additional interim storage quickly enough to prevent reactor shutdowns, especially in the face of the

Government’s failure to develop disposal facilities,

led some to argue that the Federal Government

should provide away-from-reactor storage facilities

to give utilities one sure way to get rid of spent fuel

once their existing basins were full. 14 Others argued

that the utilities should be responsible for interim

storage, while the Federal Government concentrated on the disposal program. While the Carter

administration proposed that the Federal Government acquire an away-from-reactor facility, the

96th Congress did not authorize it, and the Reagan

administration focused, instead, on helping the utilities provide their own additional storage.

Complicating Factors

Linkage to Broader Issues

Resolution of disagreements about commercial

waste management policy has been complicated by

linkages to broader issues: the use of nuclear power,

the future of reprocessing, and the disposition of

high-level waste from defense activities. OTA’s review of the history of waste management showed

that disagreement over these broader issues was a

major reason for the past inability of the Federal

Government to devise a stable policy for dealing

with commercial wastes, and suggested that successful adoption and implementation of such a policy would be easier if the policy were neutral regarding the resolution of these broader issues.

THE USE OF NUCLEAR POWER

In the mid-1970’s, the public began to challenge

the wisdom of developing a nuclear power industry unconstrained by the status of waste management. As noted in a memorandum for a JCAE policy session:

. . . the uncertainties concerning the location of the

repository are already adversely affecting public acceptance of nuclear power, and it is possible that

this aspect of the overall nuclear program could

become an unnecessarily important negative factor

in the Nation’s ability to consider its nuclear option

to power generation. 15

While there is strong disagreement about whether there should be any formal linkage in Federal

law between progress in developing a final isolation program and the operation of nuclear reactors,

there already is such a linkage in some State laws

and in NRC policy. In 1976 California passed a

law, upheld by the Supreme Court in 1983,16 that

made the siting of reactors in that State contingent

upon Federal Government assurance that the demonstrated technology or means for disposal of highlevel waste existed. In addition, the Natural Re-

~ssuch shipment between reactor pools is referred to as ‘‘transshipment.

14An extensive discussion of this issue is found in issue 4, zipp. B.

“@p. A, p. 225.

I bpacjfic Gas & Electric CO. v. St~~te Ener~ Resources Conservation and Development Commission, 1 U. S.L. W. 4449 (Apr. 20, 1983).
Ch. 4—History of Waste Management Setting the Stage ● 91

sources Defense Council petitioned NRC to conduct a rulemaking proceeding to determine if highIevel waste could be disposed of without undue risk

to the public health and safety and to refrain from

licensing reactors until such a determination was

made. In denying the petition, a position upheld

in court, NRC stated that it ‘ ‘would not continue

to license reactors if it did not have reasonable confidence that the wastes can and will in due course

be disposed of safely. “17 In 1981 NRC announced

its intention to conduct a generic proceeding ‘ ‘to

reassess its degree of confidence that radioactive

waste produced by nuclear facilities will be safely

disposed of, determine when any such disposal will

be available, and whether such wastes can be safely

stored until they are safely disposed of. As a result of this ‘‘Waste Confidence’ proceeding, NRC

concluded in 1984 that there is reasonable assurance: 1 ) that safe disposal of high-level waste and

spent fuel in a geologic repository is technically feasible, and 2) that one or more mined geologic repositories would be available in the 2007-2009 time

frame. 18

An analysis of the merits of proposals to limit

the use of nuclear power pending progress on waste

disposal involves questions of energy policy that are

beyond the scope of this OTA study. 19 However,

currently operating reactors, which have already

discharged more than 10,000 tonnes of spent fuel,

would generate around 55,000 tonnes by the end

of their operating lives, even if no additional reactors were licensed for operation. The waste in this

spent fuel must be isolated safely, regardless of the

future of nuclear power. However, the nuclear

waste problem is only one of a number of difficulties

inhibiting the expanded use of nuclear power,20 and

resolution of that problem by itself may not be sufficient to sway decisions in favor of new reactor

orders. 21 Nonetheless, if the other difficulties are

resolved, it appears likely that the degree of pro-

—— —.. . . . -

‘7t@. A, p. 227.

1 au S, Nuc]car ReWlatoV Commission, 10 CFR Parts 50 and 50,

i ‘Wasic Confidence Decision, “ Federal Register, vol. 49, No. 171,

Aug. 13, 1984, pp. 34658-34688.

l~This issue was not addressed in the NWpA.

zo,~’uc]ear Power in ~ Age of uncertainty (Washington, D. C.: U.S.

Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, OTA-E-216, February

1984). See also Graham Allison et al., “Governance of Nuclear Power”

(Cambridge, Mass.: Energy and Environmental Policy Center, Harvard University, December 1981).

ZIA1lison et d., op. cit., p. 43.

gress in the final isolation program in the next decade could affect decisions about the future use of

nuclear power, whether or not there is a formal

linkage between the two subjects. If a policy can

be adopted, maintained, and implemented steadily

and successfully over an extended period it can be

expected to have a positive effect on attitudes about

nuclear power. Continued delays and shifts of direction, or discovery of major unforeseen technical

problems, could have a negative effect on the willingness of utilities to invest in new reactors.

REPROCESSING AND THE POTENTIAL

ECONOMIC VALUE OF SPENT FUEL

In OTA’s view, the uncertainty about when, if

ever, it will become economical to reprocess spent

fuel has unnecessarily complicated Federal decisions

about interim spent fuel storage and about final

waste isolation. Some have argued, for example,

that because spent fuel is a potentially valuable resource, the capacity to dispose of spent fuel need

not— and should not—be developed until a clear

decision on reprocessing is made. Extended or permanent storage has been proposed instead of disposal as a means of ensuring that the potential economic value of spent fuel is indefinitely preserved.

However, the development of a disposal capacity

will take more than a decade, and even when it is

developed, spent fuel does not have to be disposed

of irretrievably. Thus, the major decisions facing

the 97th Congress did not concern the advisability

of disposing of spent fuel, since the capacity to do

so did not yet exist; rather, they concerned when

and at what rate the capacity to dispose of waste

would be made available, and what provisions

would be made for the storage of spent fuel and

any reprocessed waste in the meantime.

If the economic value of spent fuel remains

uncertain once a disposal capacity has been developed, the decision can be made at that time whether

to continue storing spent fuel or to dispose of it.

As discussed in chapter 3, storage could be accomplished at a repository site by using the repository’s

packaging and handling facilities to receive and prepare waste for storage on the surface. Developing

the capacity to dispose of both spent fuel and reprocessed waste may, in fact, be the best way to

ensure that the decision to reprocess or dispose of

spent fuel is based mainly on the resource value
——

92 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Leve/ Radioactive Waste

of the spent fuel and not on the lack of a capacity

to dispose of either spent fuel or high-level reprocessed waste .22

The question of when it might be desirable to

dispose of spent fuel irretrievably, therefore, is quite

distinct from the question of when it will be desirable to have the technical capacity to do so, although the two are frequently confused in discussions of waste management policy. The only

irreversible decisions that can be made now are

those related to the availability of technical capacity for disposal, since the longer the development

of disposal facilities is deferred, the longer future

waste managers will have no choice but to continue

storage.

DEFENSE WASTE POLICY

The defense and commercial high-level radioactive waste programs, merged under the Carter administration, were separated by the Reagan administration. Disagreements about whether the same

procedures for siting commercial waste repositories

should also apply to repositories for defense wastes

were a major reason the legislation dealing with

high-level radioactive waste did not pass in the 96th

Congress.

In this regard, some people argued that no matter

what is done with military waste, the Federal Government had an obligation to get on with the resolution of the commercial waste management problem. They pointed out that the Government had,

by law, reserved for itself the responsibility and the

authority to dispose of high-level waste23 and, thus

far, had failed to fulfill its responsibilities. They

argued that efforts to deal with commercial wastes

should not be impeded by disagreements about policies for managing defense waste, as occurred during the 96th Congress. They also contended that

separating the commercial and defense programs

could allow more rapid progress in commercial

waste disposal, which would, in turn, make it easier

to deal with defense wastes by providing usable

technology and sites. They noted that there were

no compelling public administration arguments to

ZZThiS is discussed in issue 3, app. B.

23 William C. Metz, “Legal Constraints on Repository Siting, ” IVuclear Waste: Socioeconomic Dimensions of Long-Term Storage, Steve

H. Murdock, F. Larry Leistritz, and Rita R, Harem (eds.) (Boulder,

Colo.: Westview Press, 1983).

have a single organization dealing with the two

problems and cited precedents for separating military and civilian programs with similar technical

requirements, such as assigning the civilian space

program to the National Aeronautics and Space

Administration. Moreover, some viewed a different

institutional approach to siting repositories for defense waste as justified because they believed the

balance of Federal authority should be greater in

an activity associated with national defense.

Those who favored handling commercial and defense wastes in a unified program cited the similarities between their technical and environmental

needs for long-term isolation. Such an integrated

approach, they argued, would be necessary for

gaining public acceptance of a national repository

program and would discourage deferral of progress

on disposal of defense wastes or the use of less stringent procedures in the defense program. Those who

disagreed cited the fact that, since Federal law already provided that any repository for high-level

waste, whether defense or commercial, would have

to be licensed by NRC to meet the same environmental standards, separation of the programs would

not necessarily lead to a less stringent approach with

defense wastes.

Federal Credibility and Mutual Distrust

The most formidable problem that NWPA had

to address was the intense level of mutual distrust

among various concerned parties, a distrust that

threatened to lock the waste disposal effort in a state

of virtual and continual paralysis. The single most

critical factor in that distrust was the severe erosion of public confidence in the ability of the Federal Government—on the basis of its past record—

to create and carry out an effective waste management program.

24 The utilities and the nuclear industry doubted that the Federal Government would

ever meet a schedule or stick to a policy. Environmentalists doubted that the Federal Government

would deal adequately with safety concerns. States

doubted that the Federal Government would deal

openly and fairly with them.

ZqNationa] Research Council, Soci,d and Economic Aspects of Radioactive Waste Disposal: Considerations for Institutional Management (Washington, D. C.: National Academy Press, 1984), p. 38.
Ch. 4—History of Waste Management: Setting the Stage ● 9 3

To the degree that a Federal law alone can do

so, NWPA went a long way toward meeting many

of the specific concerns of the various parties and

toward strengthening the credibility of the Federal

effort. Below is a brief discussion of the main reasons why the credibility of the Federal program was

so low before the passage of NWPA and of some

of the remaining problems of mutual distrust that

could complicate the effort to implement the Act.

POLICY INSTABILITY

The Federal waste management effort had been

plagued by many major shifts of policy, making

steady progress difficult and undermining public

confidence in the effort.25 A major cause of policy

instability had been the failure of the Federal Government to consider a broad enough range of viewpoints, or to address adequately the legitimate technical and nontechnical concerns of major interest

groups. This left some groups with a strong incentive to try to thwart or change the policies.

As a result, changes in administration had often

meant abrupt changes in waste disposal policy. In

1976, for example, President Ford responded to

concerns about the need to demonstrate progress

in waste disposal by announcing a 1985 target date

for the first repository, a policy that led to an almost

exclusive focus on salt as a disposal medium and

on sites that had already been studied or were regarded as easy to secure. The Carter administration, responding to the resulting concerns that an

accelerated schedule could lead to premature commitment to a medium or site, adopted a new policy involving the review of four to five sites in two

to three media and an anticipated repository target

date of 1997 to 2006. The Reagan administration

abandoned the Carter policy for one of examining

three sites in two media, the minimum requirements of NRC, with earlier development of demonstration facilities. With respect to interim storage,

the Carter administration proposed that the Government acquire an away-from-reactor facility and

offered to accept spent fuel from utilities for interim

storage prior to disposal. The Reagan administraZsThe State planning Council recommended that ‘‘national planning for radioactive waste management should avoid abrupt changes

in direction to prevent further deterioration of program credibility and

loss of time. ” State Planning Council on Radioactive Waste Management, Recommendations on National Radioactive Waste Management Policies: Report to the President, 1981, p. 29.

tion rescinded the offer and announced that utilities would be responsible for interim storage. In

view of such shifts, some observers questioned

whether any policy could be expected to outlast a

change of administration.

FEDERAL CAPACITY TO IMPLEMENT A POLICY26

The history of the waste management program

raised questions about the institutional ability of

the Federal Government to implement any waste

management policy successfully, even if the policy could be stabilized for an extended period.

There were several reasons for this concern.

First, until the mid-1970’s, the waste management effort was starved for the stable and sufficient

resources—both people and money—needed to ensure a successful waste management effort. Not

until 1972 did waste management exist as a distinct

bureaucratic entity with its own independent budget, and not until 1977 did the program receive substantial funding. Increases in the number and expertise of the staff that the waste program needed

to meet its responsibilities did not keep pace with

increases in funds. Moreover, history suggested that

the normal Federal budget process may not assure

the adequate and stable long-term funding needed

to enable timely development of final isolation facilities. For example, inadequate funding of the

Federal Government’s geologic repository development program had limited the number of alternative technologies and sites that were investigated,

increasing the likelihood that an acceptable system

would not be developed in a timely manner and

heightening concerns about the technical adequacy

of the program.

Second, past problems in the final isolation program had raised questions about the capabilities

of the DOE waste management program. These

questions will burden its future efforts, even though

the problems reflected not the competence of the

people carrying out the program, but the low priority placed on the effort, the lack of resources, and

the sharp and frequent shifts of policy. Although

generally regarded as technically competent, the

DOE program did not appear to have enough people with the skills needed to handle the social, political, and institutional issues that concern States,

lbTheSe issues are discussed at greater length in ch. 7.
94 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

local communities, and groups outside of DOE or

to handle the broad policy and strategic issues. The

failure to go beyond the strictly technical questions

and address these kinds of issues had undermined

much of the credibility of the waste management

program.

Finally, the development and implementation of

a comprehensive waste management policy will

require an unprecedented degree of coordination

within both the executive branch and Congress. At

present, no single Federal agency or congressional

committee has the jurisdiction to deal with the wide

range of activities required to manage radioactive

waste safely. Six major executive agencies and

about 12 congressional committees have jurisdiction over different aspects of waste management.

Experience suggests that coordinating the activities of all these Government entities will be difficult. Also, agencies have consistently failed to meet

deadlines to implement policies according to schedule, perhaps, in part, because waste disposal is only

one of the many activities for which they are responsible. For example, NRC’s draft technical regulations for high-level waste, scheduled for issue

in 1977, were actually issued in 1981; EPA’s overall standards for waste disposal, due since 1977,

were not even published for discussion until the end

of 1982. These delays have raised questions about

the ability of the Federal Government to meet a

long-term schedule requiring the coordinated actions of independent agencies.

PERCEPTIONS OF TRUSTWORTHINESS

Justified or not, States and others had developed

strong doubts that the Federal Government could

be counted on to keep its word on waste management matters and that, in general, it could be

trusted. One example of the basis for this distrust

is the series of policy reversals concerning WIPP

discussed above.

State Concerns27

To make technical progress in waste disposal, the

Federal Government must have access to potential

disposal sites in order to perform the detailed study

and evaluation needed to determine site suitability.

However, several States have sought to prevent

ZTState issues are discussed at greater length in ch. 8.

DOE from conducting initial site investigations,

and 18 States have enacted restrictive legislation

that bans high-level radioactive waste management

activities within their borders without State approval.28 Other States may feel obligated to adopt

similar restrictions to make certain they do not, by

default, end up with waste storage or disposal facilities.

In addition to general concerns about Federal

trustworthiness, State opposition to Federal siting

activities has two main sources:

●

●

The Inherent Costs and Risks Involved in

Waste Disposal. –-The presence of any

amount of radioactive waste and the various

steps involved in storage and disposal pose potential radiological risks and have adverse social and economic impacts on States and localities. Although these impacts can be controlled

or mitigated, there is no assurance that they

can be eliminated, Even if States had no other

concerns about waste disposal, they would

probably be reluctant to take on such costs and

impacts. In its extreme form, the desire not

to bear the costs involved in waste disposal can

lead to what has been called the “not in my

backyard” or ‘‘anywhere but here’ attitude,

which may underlie at least some State opposition.

Fear of Unfairness in Siting Decisions.—

Many States fear that they could become a

national dumping ground for waste—that they

will be forced to take waste generated in other

States or even from the entire Nation, thus

bearing a disproportionate share of the waste

disposal burden. Related to this fear is that of

the ‘‘foot in the door’—the concern that if the

Federal Government succeeds in siting any

waste management facility, even a small research facility, it will try to save money and

avoid fighting new siting battles by attempting

to expand that facility, eventually creating a

repository at that site. A related State fear is

‘

e

Sarah Daneman, “State Legislation on High-Level Nuclear Waste

Disposal (as of 9/15/82 ),” published in The Radioactive Exchange,

vol. 1, Nos. 14 and 15, Part II, September/October 14, 1982, pp.

15-21. Some laws have banned actit ities involving waste from other

States; others have required State approval prior to storage or disposal of all commercial high-level waste. DOE has so far not challenged

the legality of these restrictions in [ ourt.
Ch. 4—History of Waste Management: Setting the Stage ● 9 5

that Federal siting decisions will be based too

heavily on considerations other than technical

safety criteria, such as a desire to site a repository quickly to remove waste disposal as an

obstacle to the use of nuclear power or a desire to avoid the difficulties of dealing with restrictive State legislation.

Although restrictive State legislation may not

stand up to Federal court challenges, the legal

processes entailed in such challenges could delay

siting efforts. DOE had been reluctant to contest

State restrictions and had sought, instead, to conduct waste management activities at sites where it

was likely to encounter the fewest obstacles—either

in time, cost, or political opposition. That approach

can be defended on the grounds that, if it speeds

up the process, and if the site eventually selected

is technically sound, then it matters little how the

site is chosen. However, that approach may increase resistance to Federal siting activities for two

reasons. First, no site selection process is likely to

be perceived as equitable or technically credible if

it chooses, or appears to choose, sites mainly because they are the easiest to obtain. Second, the

approach feeds State fears that the Federal Government will increasingly follow a ‘‘path of least

resistance in seeking repository sites and thus

strongly encourages those States that have not yet

adopted restrictive or prohibitive measures to do

so. No State wants to be last in the race to make

certain that the path of least resistance does not lead

straight into its borders.

Overall Impacts of History

NWPA is the first Federal law that sets out an

explicit national policy and schedule for the disposal

of high-level radioactive waste. It also contains a

number of provisions aimed at overcoming some

of the major concerns that have hampered the waste

disposal effort in the past. But a law alone, no matter how well framed, cannot by itself wipe out the

long legacy of problems and false starts and the deep

distrust it has generated among the principal parties involved and concerned with waste disposal.

A law alone cannot demonstrate that the Federal Government has the capacity to deal fairly with

the States in the selection and development of sites,

to take the surest and safest route to waste disposal

instead of the most expedient, or to demonstrate

to the satisfaction of the regulatory authorities and

the concerned and affected parties that an adequate

waste disposal technology exists. Nor can a law

alone dispel, however much it may allay, the distrust that decades have built up among the various

parties.

That distrust may, indeed, be the single most

complicating factor in the effort to develop a waste

disposal system that is acceptable technically, politically, and socially. For, if Federal credibility—its

capacity to show the various parties that it can and

will do the job competently, fairly, and on schedule—remains the most critical factor in a successful

waste disposal effort, it is not Federal credibility

alone that is in question. States, environmentalists,

and others may, indeed, fear that the Federal Government and industry will cut corners just to be able

to say that the problem is solved. But there is the

correlative concern that not all State forces or environmentalists are acting in good faith: that, whatever their express concerns with safety or other matters, some environmentalists seek to block and stall

waste disposal efforts solely because they are opposed to the use of nuclear power, and some in the

States seek only to prevent any and all waste disposal activities from occurring within their borders.

In short, some believe that no matter how well

the Federal Government does its job in carrying

out the Act—no matter what pains it takes to remove any legitimate grounds for opposition—there

are those in the States and elsewhere who will do

everything possible to slow or stop its efforts. Whatever the basis for this belief, it only makes it all the

more necessary for the Federal Government to remove the legitimate grounds for opposition by carrying out the Act in ways that address the honest

concerns of States and others and that seek to avoid

past mistakes.

The waste management program has improved

substantially over time in resources, breadth of

organizational commitment, and technical and institutional sophistication. It has laid a solid technical groundwork for the development of mined

geologic repositories. Furthermore, resolution of the

key policy issues regarding interim storage and final

isolation through enactment of NWPA should provide stability to waste management policy that has
.

96 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

been lacking in the past. Nonetheless, the burden tolerance for failures. Any major failures—real or

of past problems will complicate the task of devel- perceived—could have grave consequences for both

oping an effective and acceptable waste disposal sys- the waste management program and the future use

tern. Moreover, after more than three decades of of nuclear power.

struggling with nuclear waste, there is only a limited
Chapter 5

Policy Analysis: The Nuclear Waste

Policy Act of 1982 in Perspective
Contents

Key

The

Page

Comprehensive Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. .. .. ... ... .. O..... ..OOO ”...””~+o””””” ““””.””” 110
—

Chapter 5

Policy Analysis: The Nuclear Waste

Policy Act of 1982 in Perspective

.

,’

The issues and problems described in the preceding chapter were debated extensively during the

96th and 97th Congresses, culminating in final

passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982

(NWPA) in the closing hours of the 97th Congress.

During the course of that debate, OTA presented

the principal results of its study of commercial highlevel radioactive waste management to Congress

through testimony and release of a summary report that dealt with the key issues under debate. 1

As part of its study, OTA analyzed a wide range

of views from the technical community, Federal

agencies, the nuclear industry, the environmental

community, State and local officials, and the lay

‘Office of Technology Assessment, Managing Commercial HighLevel Radioactive Waste, April 1982.

KEY

The fund

public. OTA then identified the basic elements of

a waste management policy that addressed the main

concerns of the major affected parties. Thus, while

OTA examined a wide range of issues and options

as part of its assessment, it focused its testimony

and report on that particular combination of options that appeared capable of securing the credibility, stability, and broad support essential to a

successful waste management effort. This chapter

contains the basic policy conclusions underlying

that integrated policy, the key elements of that policy, and an analysis of NWPA from the perspective of that policy. Many of the points summarized

in this chapter are discussed at greater length in

the following chapters. Discussions of the principal

technical issues addressed in NWPA are found in

appendix B, and the full text of the Act is included

in appendix C.

ELEMENTS OF A COMPREHENSIVE POLICY

amental finding that OTA presented

to Congress was that, if history were not-to repeat

itself, and if the stalemate on nuclear waste were

not to continue, a comprehensive policy was needed

that commanded the support and addressed the

concerns of all major interested parties, made a formal Federal commitment to developing several disposal facilities according to a firm and conservative schedule, and guaranteed the financial and

managerial resources required to meet that commitment.

By 1980 a widespread concern had developed

that the Federal Government could not or would

not manage radioactive waste safely and efficiently.

The doubts concerned not so much the technology

of disposal as the institutional capacity of the Federal Government to carry out the difficult and sustained effort required to build and operate a disposal system that could safely handle large amounts

of waste. The long-term uncertainties and strong

doubts about the Federal Government’s capacity

to cope with the nuclear waste problem were the

main obstacles to the waste management effort.

Only a comprehensive policy that focused on solving the final isolation problem and that addressed

institutional as well as technical issues appeared

likely to overcome those doubts and uncertainties.

Such a policy, moreover, had to be both acceptable and credible to all concerned parties. For unless

all parties supported a given policy—or at least had

a strong stake in seeing it succeed—the policy instability of the past was likely to persist, with each

new administration changing the policy of its predecessor in order to satisfy one interest group or

another. Thus, the more a waste management policy represented a formal agreement—a genuine

treaty that all sides could

dressed their interests and

accept because it adconcerns and because

99
100 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

they believed it could work—the more likely that

policy would be to survive changes of administration and to avoid extensive judicial and other

delays.

OTA concluded that to be credible, a waste management policy had to adopt a conservative approach that carefully identified all the potential

sources of technical and institutional failure, took

the steps necessary to keep the risk of failure to a

minimum, and included contingency plans for dealing with any failures that did occur. In addition,

because of the high level of distrust of the Federal

waste management program, credibility required

a high degree of explicitness about and commitment

to key policy measures and programs for carrying

them out.

The radioactive waste management policy that

OTA concluded would be both broadly acceptable

and credible would contain three main elements,

each of which would be aimed at overcoming one

of the three major obstacles to a successful Federal

waste management effort: 1) policy instability; 2)

doubts about the institutional capacity of the Federal Government to implement a long-term policy;

and 3) perceptions of a lack of Government trustworthiness.

Element I—Commitment in law to the main goals

of a comprehensive national policy for interim

storage and final disposal of commercial high-level

radioactive waste:

A. To develop several final disposal facilities—

mined geologic repositories—on a firm and

conservative schedule.

B. To contract with utilities to begin accepting

waste at a repository on a conservative date,

when a repository is likely to be available.

C. To assist the interim storage efforts of utilities by supporting licensed demonstrations of

dry storage technologies, and by providing a

limited amount of supplemental storage capacity as an emergency backup in case of unavoidable delays in utilities’ efforts to develop their

own storage capacity.

Element II—Credible institutional mechanisms for

meeting the policy goals:

A. Congressional approval of a binding Mission

Plan,2 developed by the administration, that

B.

c.

spells out the technical and institutional actions and the financial and managerial resources required to meet the policy goals.

Assured funding through a waste management

fund financed by a mandatory user fee based

on the Mission Plan and paid by utilities at

the time the waste is generated.

Assurance of adequate managerial resources

through creation of an independent, singlepurpose agency whose sole responsibility is to

carry out the waste management program.

Element III—Credible measures for addressing the

specific concerns of the States and the various

publics:

A.

B.

c.

Development of explicit plans and provision

of assured funds for involvement of the lay and

technical publics.

Development of a regulatory process that

makes ample allowance for the first-of-a-kind

nature of the problem of demonstrating that

a disposal system will provide the desired degree of isolation for millennia.

Provision in law of measures dealing with

State and local concerns, such as a form-al role

in repository siting decisions and impact compensation.

The technical and institutional elements of the

policy outlined above are all mutually supportive

and, in several respects, inseparable. For example,

unless the policy is carried out by a single-purpose

organization with assured and adequate funding,

no comprehensive program that attempts to follow

a firm schedule over a long period of time is likely

to have much credibility with the general public or

with the utilities. Similarly, it may be possible to

gain broad support for a single-purpose organization with independent funding only if effective oversight mechanisms are assured and if there is substantial agreement in advance, laid out in a Mission

Plan, about precisely what the organization is going to do and how it is going to do it.

Because of these interdependencies, several stages

may be required to implement all of the elements

of the policy. OTA viewed the radioactive waste

management problem as a. nettle that, painful as

it might be, would have to be grasped in its entirety if it were ever to be resolved.

‘In OTA’S 1982 summary report, Manag”ng Commercial High Level Radioactive Waste, the term Management Action Program was

used for this concept. However, sine: NWPA uses the term Mission

Plan, this report has adopted that t~~rminology.
Ch. 5—Policy Analysis: The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 in Perspective . 101

THE NUCLEAR WASTE POLICY ACT

The passage of NWPA represented a watershed

in the development of Federal waste management

policy. This section describes and analyzes the major provisions of NWPA, using the integrated waste

management policy outlined above as a framework,

and identifies the key issues that remain to be resolved.

Element I:

Commitment in law to the main goals of a comprehensive national policy for interim storage and

final disposal of commercial high-level radioactive

waste.

By including measures to deal with both interim

storage and final isolation, NWPA addresses both

the concerns of utilities facing the near-term need

for additional spent fuel storage and the concerns

of those who feel that the highest priority must be

given to the long-term task of a developing final

isolation system for high-level radioactive waste.

The embodiment of an explicit high-level radioactive waste management policy in law demonstrates

that Congress as well as the administration is committed to the policy, a fact that should help ensure

the policy stability that has been lacking in the past.

OTA’s analysis concluded that comprehensive

waste management legislation should commit the

Federal Government to three basic policy goals:

Goal 1: To develop several final disposal facilities—

mined geologic repositories—on a firm and

conservative schedule.

Permanent Disposal Facilities.—NWPA resolved the dispute about whether to proceed with

long-term storage or permanent disposal by adopting as its primary focus a requirement that the Federal Government site, construct, and operate facilities for the permanent disposal of high-level

waste and any spent fuel disposed of as waste.3 The

history of strong and successful opposition to proposals to develop Federal storage facilities for commercial radioactive waste suggests that the development of permanent disposal facilities is required

to satisfy public concerns about waste disposal and

to serve as the basis for a widely accepted and stable

— —

‘An extended discussion of this dispute is found in issue discussion

I of app. B.

waste management policy.

does not place a burden

OF 1982

Unlike storage, disposal

of continued care and

maintenance on the future, and it is less vulnerable

to carelessness or neglect by some future generation. Moreover, a commitment to develop disposal

facilities provides future generations with a greater

range of choices than would storage alone. Such

facilities will give waste managers the option of disposing of spent fuel or high-level reprocessed waste,

or of deferring disposal by placing any such material delivered to a repository into extended storage

at the surface. The development of facilities that

can handle both reprocessed waste and spent fuel

will also ensure that waste management efforts are

not impeded by debates about reprocessing.

At the same time, NWPA ensures that long-term

storage will be available as an option by requiring

the Department of Energy (DOE) to prepare a detailed proposal for construction of one or more monitored retrievable storage (MRS) facilities and an

analysis of the need for such facilities to be presented

to Congress for consideration by July 1985. However, it also requires that disposal in a permanent

repository proceed regardless of whether any MRS

facilities are constructed. The question of the role

of MRS facilities in the overall waste management

program remains to be resolved, as discussed in the

following chapter.

Mined Geologic Repositories. -NWPA does not

simply commit the Federal Government to develop

permanent disposal facilities; it also lays out a

detailed process for siting and licensing one particular permanent disposal technology-the mined

geologic repository. (This process is outlined in app.

E.) The mined geologic repository is the clear choice

as the disposal technology to be developed because

it is the most thoroughly studied technology and

is most widely favored by the international technical community. Both the technology and the required regulations exist or are being developed, and

available analyses indicate that a licensed geologic

repository could be developed within the next 20

years if adequate resources are devoted to the task.

The legislated commitment to develop geologic repositories both demonstrates and promotes policy

stability, since it involves no change in direction

from previous programs and policies.
102 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

Unlike subseabed disposal (the most promising

alternative disposal technology, disposal in mined

geologic repositories in the continental United

States does not raise the question of the need for

international agreements for access to disposal sites,

In any case, development of mined repositories will

not preclude development of other disposal technologies and a later decision to use one that proved

to be sufficiently attractive; in fact, NWPA requires

DOE to accelerate research and development

(R&D) of alternative technologies for permanent

disposal. If another technology were chosen later,

any geologic repository sites that had been developed by then could still be used for supplemental

purposes, such as disposal of waste forms (e. g.,

transuranic-contaminated [TRU] wastes) that

might be too bulky for disposal using other technologies.

Several Repositories.—NWPA includes mandatory schedules for siting and licensing two separate

geologic repositories, with a site for the second to

be selected within 3 years of the first. There are

three main advantages to developing several repositories more or less in parallel instead of developing and filling one repository at a time. First, a

waste management system with two repositories

would be more reliable, since disposal operations

could continue at one even if problems arose that

interrupted loading or limited the total disposal capacity of the other. Second, if acceptably safe,

licensable sites can be found in the East near the

majority of existing and projected reactors, the costs

and risks of waste transportation—as well as the

number of communities affected by it—would be

substantially less than those of a system based on

a single repository in the West, where most sites

now under consideration for the first repository are

located. Recognizing this, NWPA explicitly requires transportation impacts and costs to be considered in selection of the site for the second repository. Third, a system with two repositories is more

equitable and could allay the fears of any State that

it might become the Nation’s sole dumping ground

for nuclear waste. Thus, siting two repositories may

encounter less political opposition than an effort to

develop only the single site of a centralized system.

Full realization of these advantages requires that

the second repository begin operating within a relatively short time after the first. While NWPA requires the first repository to begin operating by

early 1998, there is no explicit target date for operation of the second. To ensure that a second repository ultimately is developed, NWPA prohibits

emplacement of more than 70,000 tonnes of spent

fuel in the first repository until the second begins

operating. While this limit exceeds the 55,000

tonnes expected to be discharged by the reactors

that are now in operation, it is considerably less

than the total of about 100,000 tonnes that will be

produced if the reactors now under construction are

completed, Thus, the limit in NWPA is likely to

require eventual construction of the second repository. However, its operation could be deferred for

up to perhaps 20 years after emplacement of waste

begins in the first.

To avoid strong budgetary pressures to continue

to expand the first licensed repository and to defer

the financial and political costs of developing a second one as long as allowed by the Act, the development of a regional system may require an explicit commitment by DOE to begin operating a

second repository within a specified time after the

first is operational. The time should be short enough

to give credibility to the commitment, but long

enough to allow the development of the second repository to benefit from the lessons learned in siting

and licensing the first. To give additional credibility

to the commitment, and to assure the availability

of resources as needed, the actions needed to develop and operate the second repository on schedule

should be included in the Mission Plan (Element

II-A), and the additional costs should be considered in determining the revenues required from the

disposal fee (Element II-B) (Further discussion is

found in the following chapter. )

A Firm and Conservative Schedule.—A central

provision of NWPA is the requirement that DOE

begin disposal of radioactive waste in the first

geologic repository no later than January 31, 1998.

Prior to passage of the Act, the repository schedules

used by DOE and its predecessors lacked the force

of law, and repeated slippages had called into question the credibility of Federal assurances that a repository would be available within a reasonable

period.

A major conclusion of OTA’s assessment was

that such a commitment in law to a firm schedule
Ch. 5—Policy Analysis: The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 in Perspective 103

for operation of a geologic repository was central

to a resolution of the radioactive waste problem.

It was needed to provide:

1.

2.

3.

Assurance that a permanent disposal system

that does not place a burden of continued care

and maintenance on future generations will

be developed within a reasonable period of

time. Any extended delay in the development

of disposal facilities would deeply concern both

those who wish to remove the waste problem

as a burden on the continued use of nuclear

power, and those who fear that interim storage would become a permanent solution by

default.

Clear and fixed goals for an implementation

program. Long-term planning is difficult in

the absence of well-defined and agreed-upon

program goals, which had been lacking in the

past.

A firm basis for planning interim spent fuel

storage. Without a repository schedule, the

utilities’ storage problem would remain openended.

For the commitment to a firm schedule to be

most credible, the target date for beginning operation of the first repository should be a conservative date that makes ample allowance for the reality

that the location, design, and licensing of a geologic

repository is a complex endeavor that has never

been done before and that, therefore, no one knows

for certain how long it will take. OTA’S analysis

suggests that the most important aspect of securing and sustaining the public’s and utilities’ confidence in the waste disposal program is not how

quickly a repository can be made available if everything goes right the first time, but whether the repository will be available according to a firm schedule that is widely accepted as feasible and reasonable

despite the remaining technical and institutional

uncertainties about the siting process.4

Whether the January 31, 1998, target date for

initial operation of the first repository can be seen

as conservative in this sense depends to a considerable extent on the approach to constructing and

operating the repository that is adopted by DOE,

as discussed at greater length in the following

4An extended discussion of the repository schedule is found in ch.

6, and in issue 2 of app. B.

chapter. DOE analysis shows that the 1998 target

date is very optimistic if initial operation must await

construction of the packaging facilities of the repository. 5 However, if initial operation of the repository is achieved by emplacement of a small

amount of waste packaged elsewhere as part of

packaging and handling tests during the research,

development, and demonstration (RD&D) program, as suggested in chapter 6, the 1998 target

appears to be achievable even if there are delays

in the siting and licensing process. (This assumes

that a suitable site can be found among those now

under consideration for the first repository; if none

of these is licensable it appears unlikely that the

1998 deadline could be met. ) As discussed further

in chapter 6, an approach to repository development using an initial demonstration phase of smallscale operation, analogous to low-power operation

of a reactor, could minimize the risk of failure to

meet the mandated target date and could, at the

same time, allay concerns that corners might be cut

in order to meet the deadline.

Goal 2: Contract with utilities to begin accepting

waste at a repository on a conservative date,

when a repository is likely to be available.

NWPA requires DOE and the owners of spent

fuel and/or high-level waste to execute, by June 30,

1983, contracts under which DOE will accept and

dispose of such material. A standard contract was

promulgated by DOE in April of 1983,6 and contracts have been signed as required by law.

NWPA does not require that the contracts specify

delivery dates for the material that is covered, and

the contract form adopted by DOE does not require

DOE to publish a priority ranking for accepting

spent fuel until 1991, or to approve utility delivery schedules until 1992, at the earliest. To give

utilities that must make decisions about interim

storage measures before 1992 a firmer basis for

planning, the Mission Plan required by the Act

would need to include an explicit contractual waste

acceptance schedule and a clear statement of priorities for accepting waste.

5U. S. Department of Energy, Mission Plan for the CiviIian Radioactive Waste Management Program, DOE/RW-0005 DRAFT, April

1984, Pp. 3-A-27— 3-A-43.

‘1 O CFR, Part 961,
.

104 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

Because the one geologic repository authorized

by NWPA is the only facility that DOE is now

authorized to construct where spent fuel or highlevel waste could be accepted on a large scale, confidence that spent fuel will ultimately leave reactor

sites depends largely on confidence in the program

for siting and operating the first repository. Thus,

the heart of the waste acceptance plan is a repository loading schedule—a target schedule for moving waste to geologic repositories. In order to provide a credible basis for contractual commitments

with utilities and to assure communities near reactors that reactor sites will not become de facto

long-term waste repositories, the certainty of the

repository loading schedule is more important than

the speed. To give greater certainty, the Mission

Plan would need to contain a repository schedule

that is a high-confidence prediction of when repositories are likely to be operating at a full-scale rate

comparable to the rate of waste generation, despite

the kinds of delays that might be anticipated. To

avoid raising false expectations, this ‘‘best estimate’ schedule would need to be clearly distinguished from more optimistic management goals

that show the earliest that spent fuel could be delivered to Federal facilities if all goes well.

OTA’s analysis concludes that if an expanded

repository siting program (discussed in ch. 6) is

used, there can be considerable confidence that the

full-scale loading facilities of the two repositories

required by NWPA could be operating no later

than about 2008 and 2012, respectively, even if difficulties are encountered. This is a conservative estimate because it could be met even if all of the sites

initially evaluated are rejected and a new backup

site must be used for each repository. If such contingencies do not arise, the repositories could be

available earlier. Even if the repositories do not

operate at full scale until 2008 and 2012, they could

still allow spent fuel to be removed from practically

all reactor sites within 10 to 15 years after the expected date of reactor decommissioning. Further

discussion of a conservative repository loading

schedule using 2008 and 2012 as targets for contractual commitments to full-scale operation of two

repositories is found in chapter 6.

Since unforeseen events could cause slippage in

the repository loading schedule, even if the schedule

included allowances for some delays, explicit provisions are needed for what would be done with

waste until it can actually be delivered to a repository. As discussed below, NWPA provides that the

utilities have the primary responsibility to provide

for, and pay the costs of, interim storage until the

material is accepted by DOE for disposal in a repository. The Act does not authorize DOE to construct any large-scale storage facility that could accept a significant quantity of waste before a

repository is available.

A major question to be resolved is whether and

how the waste management program should take

responsibility for spent fuel storage if a repository

is delayed beyond the 1998 target date contained

in the Act. An extended discussion of this question

is found in chapter 6. To summarize briefly here,

the Mission Plan should contain provisions for two

possible cases of delay in the repository program:

relatively small and more or less expected delays

in full-scale loading that entail additional interim

storage beyond 1998; and large delays (decades or

more) resulting from the discovery of now-unexpected problems with geologic disposal that could

call into question its feasibility. The former possibility requires a post-1998 interim storage plan,

which discusses who is to be responsible for the storage (the individual utilities with the immediate storage needs or the waste management program

funded by all the utilities) and where storage is to

occur (at the reactors or in a centralized MRS facility). The latter requires a backup facility plan—a

plan for providing alternative storage (MRS) or disposal facilities if geologic disposal cannot be implemented in a reasonable time. These possible roles

for MRS facilities also need to be evaluated in detail

in the MRS need and feasibility study required by

NWPA.

Goal 3: Assist the interim storage efforts of utilities

by supporting licensed demonstrations of

dry storage technologies, and by providing

a limited amount of supplemental storage capacity as an emergency backup in case of unavoidable delays in utilities’ efforts to develop their own storage capacity.

NWPA incorporates these provisions in their entirety. 7 Utilities are given primary responsibility for

7An extended discussion of interim storage is found in issue 4 of

app. B.
Ch. 5—Policy Analysis: The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 in Perspective ● 105

providing interim spent fuel storage capacity—including new storage facilities—until the spent fuel

can be accepted by DOE for delivery to a repository. DOE is to aid utilities in developing the

needed additional capacity through cooperative

licensed demonstrations of new dry storage technologies. Cooperative agreements have been signed

with three utilities for such demonstrations. DOE

is also authorized to conduct dry storage R&D activities to provide data to assist utilities in licensing new storage facilities. In addition, NWPA includes measures to facilitate NRC licensing of new

storage technologies and storage facility expansions.

As a backup to utility efforts, DOE is directed

to provide up to 1,900 tonnes of storage capacity

on an emergency-only basis to utilities that are

unable to provide their own storage capacity in time

to prevent shutting down a reactor. NRC is to determine which utilities qualify to use that capacity. DOE can provide the storage either at existing

Federal facilities or at reactor sites (using mobile

storage equipment such as casks, or new facilities

constructed at the site). The full costs of such storage are to be recovered through fees paid by the

utilities using the storage.

Utility responsibility for interim storage will allow

DOE to focus its attention on the disposal program

and to avoid possible confrontations with host States

and localities about efforts to obtain or construct

a Federal interim storage facility. It should also reduce concerns that the availability of such a facility might undermine incentives for progress in the

disposal program. The Act’s strong Federal initiatives to promote commercialization of new and flexible dry storage technologies are needed to ensure

timely resolution of licensing uncertainties that

make such technologies a riskier prospect for utilities than the less attractive but more certain option of the water basin. Provision of a limited

amount of emergency backup storage capacity

should alleviate utilities’ concerns about vulnerability to reactor shutdowns in the event of unavoidable delays in the provision of additional storage

capacity. In addition, NWPA’S commitment to a

firm repository schedule should reduce the resistance to utility efforts to provide interim storage that

has been based on concerns that such storage might

become permanent by default.

Because of the promise shown by new storage

techniques —rod consolidation (which increases the

capacity of existing reactor basins) and dry technologies such as storage casks—the demand for such

emergency backup capacity could be quite small.

While no analysis of the precise amount of emergency storage needed is available, it can be noted

that only 1,000 tonnes of storage would allow all

of the 27 reactors projected to need new storage capacity by the end of 1989 an additional 2 years to

provide that capacity. 8 DOE currently expects that

the increased efficiency of at-reactor storage that

is expected to result from demonstrations of rod

consolidation and dry storage technologies should

be sufficient to preclude need for any Federal interim storage. 9 Thus it now appears that utilities

will be able to provide the needed additional storage capacity in time to prevent disruption of reactor operation.

Element II:

Credible institutional mechanisms for meeting the

policy goals.

The basic institutional conclusion of OTA’s review of the history of the Federal waste management effort was that substantial changes in the Federal Government’s management approach would

be needed to give credibility to the central component of Element I—the commitment to the development and operation of a complex technological

system, faced with technical and institutional uncertainties, on a firm schedule over a period of decades. NWPA included many of the most important institutional changes that were included in the

integrated waste management policy identified by

OTA, although certain key issues were not addressed at the time the Act was passed. The pro\’ isions of NWPA are discussed below in the context

of the three key institutional provisions of the integrated policy.

A: Congressional approval of a binding Mission

Plan, developed by the administration, that spells

out the technical and institutional actions and the

financial and managerial resources required to

meet the policy goals.

8

See issue 4, app. B.

‘DOE, op. cit., p. 3-D-7.
106 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

NWPA requires DOE to submit a detailed Mission Plan to Congress, although no provision is

made for formal congressional approval. The Mission Plan is needed to perform two key functions. 10

First, it must lay out a long-term waste management program, based on the authority in the Act,

that fills in those details of the operation of the highlevel waste management system that are not specified in the Act; that is, a repository loading plan,

a post-1998 interim storage plan, and a backup facility plan.

Second, it must present an implementation program that DOE believes will be sufficient for achieving the goals of the waste management plan. A

credible commitment to a long-term plan requires

a credible implementation program for effecting it.

To be credible in the face of the history of problems and delays in past Federal waste management

efforts, an implementation program must identify

the major possible sources of technical and institutional failure, provide measures that minimize the

likelihood that these failures will occur, and include

contingency plans for dealing with those failures

that do occur. Such a program will likely involve

an expansion of ongoing DOE programs to ensure

that backup sites and technologies are available with

minimum delay if problems develop with the principal candidates.

While a sound technical implementation program is necessary to the success of the waste management program, it may not by itself be sufficient

because of the many institutional challenges that

must also be met in siting and operating waste management facilities. Thus the Mission Plan should

also contain an institutional implementation program showing how the activities of all the involved

Federal agencies will be coordinated; how DOE will

carry out the NWPA’s many requirements for interactions with States and Indian tribes; and how

DOE will provide for peer review of the technical

programs and for public involvement (discussed

below).

This comprehensive waste management plan and

implementation program is needed to build confidence that the goals of the Act can and will be

achieved, to provide a basis for estimating the resources needed to do so, and to pinpoint clear milestones that can be used to hold the responsible agencies accountable for timely progress.

OTA’s study concluded that formal approval of

the Mission Plan is a key issue to be addressed in

any future congressional consideration of possible

changes in the institutional arrangements for the

waste management program, because the Mission

Plan could play a central. role in oversight and control of an independent waste management agency

(discussed further below). Congressional approval

would put teeth into the milestones in the Plan and

would demonstrate congressional commitment to

the Plan. Approval of the Plan on a multiyear basis

would also give Congess a way to exert long-term

control over the waste management program while

allowing it the independence from the annual budget and policymaking process needed to ensure

steady progress.

Without a formal mechanism for approving the

Plan, there could be great value to developing a

Mision Plan that is as broadly supported by the key

interested parties as possible. Finally, the initial

Mission Plan should include explicit provisions for

further revisions of the Plan as required by developments during the implementation of the program.

B: Assured funding through a waste management

fund financed by a mandatory user fee based on

the Mission Plan and paid by utilities at the time

the waste is generated.

Stable, adequate funding is essential if the Federal commitment to a firm schedule is to be met.

The traditional annual budget and appropriations

process appears inconsistent with such a commitment, since it lays great stress on keeping immediate costs as low as possible and thus will tend to

cut back on the expanded aspects of the implementation program (e. g., development of backup sites

and technologies) that arc vital to building confidence that the target date can be met.

Prepaid Fee. —A major institutional provision

of NWPA is creation of a Nuclear Waste Fund financed by a fee initially set at 1 mill (O. 1 cent) per

kilowatt-hour on nuclear-generated electricity .11

Shifting the front-end funding of the waste management program directly to utility ratepayers at

the time the waste is generated provides a large and

IOThe Mission plan is discussed in detail in ch. 6. i I Funding is discussed at length in ch. 7.
Ch. 5—Policy Analysis: The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 in Perspective . 107

stable source of funds, independent of annual competition with other Federal priorities, This should

allow implementation of the expanded and more

expensive program needed to give confidence that

steady progress can be maintained over a period

of decades. This arrangement also puts the total

costs of waste management on the users of nuclear

electricity rather than on the Federal taxpayer.

NWPA requires the Secretary of Energy to review the fee annually and to adjust it as needed to

ensure that the full costs of the program are recovered. This provision allows funding levels to be

determined by the program needed to meet desired

goals, rather than having the achievable goals

limited by the availability of funds, as occurred in

the past.

Assured funding requires not only a reliable

source of revenues, but also assurance that the funds

will be made available to the waste management

agency as needed to carry out the program. Thus,

any future deliberations concerning the institutional

arrangements for waste management need to consider ways of providing greater budgetary independence than is now the case under the Act, which

continues annual appropriation control over the

Nuclear Waste Fund. Greater independence, with

continued congressional control, could be obtained

through multiyear appropriations based on an approved Mission Plan, rather than through annual

appropriations. This is discussed further in chapter

7.

C: Assurance of adequate managerial resources

through creation of an independent, single-purpose waste management organization whose sole

responsibility would be to carry out the waste

management program.

Need for a Single-Purpose Agency .—The assurance of adequate management resources is as important as the assurance of adequate funds. For this

reason, NWPA established within DOE a singlepurpose Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, whose sole task is to implement the provisions of the Act. The office, which is separate from

the other nuclear activities of DOE, is headed by

a Presidential appointee who reports to the Secretary of Energy. This step should stabilize the waste

management organization at a higher policy level,

insulate it from competition with other nuclear policy areas or future Federal reorganizations, and help

provide the degree of central, integrated planning

and management capability needed to meet a longterm Federal commitment on schedule.

NWPA also set in motion a process to ensure that

institutional questions are addressed in more detail

in the future by requiring DOE to submit to Congress a report on alternative institutional approaches for managing the radioactive waste program, including the option of establishing a private

corporation. OTA’s analysis of the history of the

Federal radioactive waste management program

concludes that the credibility of the central component of NWPA—a commitment to the development and operation of a complex technological system, faced with technical and institutional

uncertainties, on a firm schedule extending over

a period of decades—could be enhanced by the establishment of an independent waste management

agency with more funding and management flexibility than is usual with a typical Federal program.

The creation of such an agency may be the best

way to ensure that other fiscal or political priorities

of the Federal Government do not adversely affect

progress in the waste management program. 12 Because the program is now funded entirely by fees

paid by utilities for disposal services, rather than

by appropriations from general Federal revenues,

any additional costs involved in establishing and

operating a new, single-purpose agency would be

borne by the users of nuclear power rather than

by the Federal taxpayer.

Establishment of an Effective Oversight Process.

—The more independent an institution and its

funding are, the surer the guarantee that a comprehensive program will be carried out on schedule.

But such an institution raises a crucial and difficult question: how to ensure the congressional oversight and public accountability that a democratic

society demands. Achieving an acceptable balance

between independence and accountability will be

one of the central challenges in designing an independent waste management authority.

As noted earlier, a major conclusion of OTA’S

study is that congressional approval of the Mission

Plan could play a central role in achieving that balI zThe ~ue~rion5 in~.o]l,ed in establishing an independent agencY are

discussed in ch. 7.
108 . Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

ance. In fact, OTA’s analysis suggests that it may

not be possible to gain broad support for the creation of an independent institution with independent

funding until a generally accepted Mission Plan has

been developed. If decisions about an institutional

structure (including the oversight mechanism) are

made after the Mission Plan has been submitted,

the decision about the appropriate degree of independence for such an institution would be made

in light of an explicit agreement about precisely

what that institution would be expected to do. The

Mission Plan can then serve as, a yardstick by which

Congress —and a board of directors or any other

body, including the public—can oversee the activities and expenditures of the waste management

agency and measure its progress.

Relationship to Defense Waste Programs.-The

separate program office established by NWPA focusses on civilian radioactive waste management.

Programs for dealing with wastes generated by

DOE defense-related activities are managed under

the Assistant Secretary for Defense Programs.

However, NWPA also requires that the Secretary

of Energy make arrangements to use the repositories developed pursuant to the Act for disposal

of defense high-level waste unless the President

determines, after a study required by the Act, that

separate repositories for such wastes are needed.

The draft report from that study, released in 1984,

concludes that placing the defense waste in the commercial waste repositories will be the most costeffective option. 13 Such an arrangement could also

reduce concerns that separation of the civilian and

defense waste disposal programs could lead to indefinite deferral of progress on disposal of defense

waste. However, if the civilian waste management

program must accept defense waste as well, provisions may be required to ensure that the agency’s

ability to keep to the schedule for repositories—

and thus to fulfill the commitments made in the

contracts with nuclear utilities—does not depend

on the Federal appropriations needed to fund the

defense side of the program. Specifically, the Mission Plan must show how the defense and commercial disposal activities will be integrated.

13u. S. Department of Energy, An Evaluation of Commercial./ Repository Capacity for the Disposal ofllefense High-Level Waste, DOE/

DP-0020 (DRAFT), Juiy 1984.

Element III:

Credible measures for addressing the specific concerns of the States and the various publics.

Because of the legacy of distrust, explicit measures and guarantees are needed to give confidence

about the integrity of decisions concerning the siting, construction, and operation of waste disposal

facilities. Concerns about the safety and equity of

Federal waste management activities by affected

States, localities, and the general public could become a source of increasingly effective opposition

to implementation of a waste management program

unless specific measures are adopted to deal with

these concerns. Efforts to proceed without dealing

with these concerns may simply provoke greater resistance, confrontations, and failures to achieve program objectives on schedule. Recognition of these

concerns in the waste management program is 1ikely to broaden support for it in the first place, reduce opposition during implementation, and remove grounds for complaint.

A: Development of explicit plans and provision of

assured funds for involvement of the lay and technical publics.

Public Involvement.--An effective program of

public involvement and information may be essential for developing the broad public support needed

for a waste policy to succeed.14 On this point,

NWPA recognizes that “public participation in the

planning and development of repositories is essential in order to promote public confidence in the

safety of disposal. Public involvement may be particularly important in the creation of an independent agency with independent funding, which could

be regarded as less responsive to public concerns

than the existing institutional structure. Although

considerable opportunity for public involvement in

Federal activities is already required by existing law

and administrative procedure, NWPA provides a

number of specific opportunities for public input

to siting considerations, such as public hearings in

the vicinity of potential repository sites, before key

decisions are made. However, public confidence

that an adequate and sustained level of resources

will be devoted to public involvement during the

development and implementation of a waste management program could be increased if DOE inI+pub]ic involvement is discusse 4 further in ch. 8.
Ch. 5—Policy Analysis: The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 in Perspective 109

eluded a comprehensive plan for public involvement

as part of the Mission Plan.

Peer Review. —Because confidence that a geologic repository will perform as desired over a

period of millenia must ultimately rest on confidence in the soundness of the underlying scientific

analysis, extensive peer review of this analysis at

each step can play an important role in assuring

the public that waste will be disposed of safely.

While the responsible Federal agencies generally

recognize the importance of peer review, public

confidence that it would, in fact, take place could

be enhanced by including a peer review plan in the

Mission Plan.

B: Development of a regulatory process that makes

ample allowance for the first-of-a-kind nature of

the problem of demonstrating that a disposal system will provide the desired degree of isolation

for millenia.

Many believe that, with a first-of-a-kind problem such as radioactive waste isolation in general,

and the first geologic repository in particular, an

effective regulatory process is perhaps the most vital

element for assuring the ultimate safety of waste

disposal.

Developing the ‘‘Technology of Prediction. ‘—

What must be demonstrated to show that waste can

and will be safely disposed of is not just the physical technology of disposal, but the institutional capability of the Federal Government to make a regulatory decision that a repository at a specific site

can be expected to provide the required degree of

waste isolation for a required period of time (10,000

years in tentative criteria under consideration by

the Environmental Protection Agency). In addition

to the physical technology, therefore, a broader

‘‘technology of prediction’ is needed to show in

a formal licensing process that a proposed repository is likely to meet established standards.

Since the ability of a geologic repository to isolate

radioactive waste for millenia cannot be directly

demonstrated, there must be heavy reliance on predictions of repository performance that are based

on the use of mathematical models embodying scientific understanding of the behavior of the repository and its environment. Since such long-term

prediction has never been done in a formal regulatory process, problems can be expected to arise

the first time it is attempted. In addition, many

analytic procedures to be used in the licensing process remain to be developed, including data collection and validation techniques, methods for verifying and validating scientific models, and the

formal procedures for using such models to predict

repository performance. Inclusion in the Mission

Plan of a clear plan for the actions to be taken by

both DOE and NRC for resolving these uncertainties about procedures before the first formal licensing proceeding begins could avoid unnecessary delays at that critical stage of the waste disposal

program.

Integrity of the Repository Licensing Process.

—For many who question the credibility of the Federal waste management program, confidence in the

safety of waste disposal will depend on their confidence in the NRC repository licensing process. Several measures that would be included in a Mission

Plan, in order to give it a high probability of success, would also increase confidence in the integrity

of the licensing process. First, use of a conservative schedule for full-scale repository operation, one

that can be met even if the first site submitted for

licensing is rejected by NRC, should reduce concerns that pressures to meet the schedule could unduly influence the first licensing decision. Second,

planning to achieve initial repository operation with

a small amount of waste packaged during the R&D

program, before packaging facilities are built at the

repository site, could allow the 1998 deadline to be

met even if NRC requires more than the minimum

time allotted by NWPA for its decision on a construction authorization. This would further reduce

the pressure on the licensing process. Finally, a

high-confidence Plan would carry more sites than

the minimum required by NWPA through two crucial steps in the siting process—site characterization and NRC construction authorization—to ensure that enough good sites would be available at

the end of each stage to proceed to the next without major delay. This should reduce the concerns

that a marginal site might be approved because of

lack of any timely alternative. These measures are

discussed in detail in chapter 6.
—

110 Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

C: Provision in law of measures dealing with State

and local concerns.

A broadly supported policy will require assurances that State and local concerns about safety and

equity will be addressed, and written into law, to

be credible. 15 The stronger the guarantees in law,

the more willing the States are likely to be to cooperate with the Federal Government. Some argue

that State opposition is so strong that only Federal

preemption can overcome it. It can also be argued,

however, that any eventual attempt to deal with

State restrictions will be more likely to succeed if

strong efforts have been made to meet States’ legitimate concerns.

NWPA includes two particularly important types

of provisions addressing State and local concerns.

First, it requires DOE to engage in an extensive

process of consultation with States and affected Indian tribes throughout the site selection and development process. It also gives the State or tribe the

right to veto the President’s selection of a repository site, a veto that can only be overridden by joint

IsState and ]OC~ issues are discussed in ch. 8.

action of both Houses of Congress. Similar provisions apply to other waste management facilities

addressed by the Act.

Second, NWPA requires DOE to make payments to States, affected Indian tribes, and in some

cases local governments to compensate for the socioeconomic impacts of development and operation

of waste management facilities. Confidence that

these payments will be forthcoming more than a

decade from now is enhanced by the stipulation that

the necessary funds be provided from the Nuclear

Waste Fund, rather than from appropriations from

general revenues.

Some elements of a high-confidence Mission Plan

would also address some of the substantive concerns

of the States about the waste management program.

For example, State concerns that the first repository

may end up being the only one would be addressed

by a requirement that a second licensed repository

begin operation within a relatively short fixed period after the first. An explicit backup siting plan

would also help reduce concerns that a lack of alternatives could compromise the fairness and integrity

of the site selection process, as noted earlier.

CONCLUSION

NWPA contains most, but not all, of the policy

elements OTA identified as being central to a

broadly supported waste management policy. The

Act resolved the major issues that had dominated

the radioactive waste debate during several Congresses by committing to a schedule for developing geologic repositories, giving utilities the primary

responsibility for interim storage until a repository

is available, and clearly defining the role and powers

of States and affected Indian tribes in siting waste

facilities. In addition, it contains several key provisions that OTA had identified as being of particular importance to implementation of a repository program: financing through a mandatory fee

on nuclear-generated electricity; and provisions for

financial compensation to States and affected Indian tribes that host waste management facilities.

In OTA view, the provisions of NWPA contain

suficient authority for a feasible waste management

program based on geologic repositories.

Certain major questions were left to be addressed later, either in the Mission Plan or in subsequent

legislation dealing with the institutional arrangements for managing the radioactive waste program.

The principal questions to be addressed in the Mission Plan concern the plan and schedule for repository development and operation, the scope of the

implementation program (especially the siting program) for meeting that schedule, and the role of

MRS facilities in the waste management program.

As noted earlier, OTA’s analysis suggests that a

broadly supported policy would include a commitment to a conservative repository operation schedule that can be met despite the remaining technical and institutional uncertainties, backed up by

an implementation program that places greatest

emphasis on increasing the confidence that the

schedule can be met without compromising safety,

rather than on holding down the expected frontend program costs. While NWPA does not require
Ch. 5—Policy Analysis: The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 in Perspective ● 111

this approach, it provides sufficient authority for

its use in the Mission Plan, and provides a source

of funding that can be adjusted if needed to cover

the costs of a conservative program.

Other important elements not addressed in

NWPA all relate to the concept of an independent

waste management agency with more funding and

management flexibility than is usual with a typical

Federal program. These elements are: 1) establishment of such an agency; 2) funding through multiyear appropriations from the Nuclear Waste Fund;

and 3) a procedure for congressional approval of

the Mission Plan as the principal mechanism for

balancing the need for adequate congressional control of the agency with the need for increased flexibility of operation. As noted earlier, the history

of the Federal waste management program suggests

that these changes could substantially increase the

likelihood that a Federal commitment to a schedule

for repository operation can be kept. These changes

are discussed in more detail in chapter 7.

At the time NWPA was being debated, alternatives to the existing institutional structure for waste

management had been studied less thoroughly than

the technical options. It was felt to be unnecessary

and premature to attempt to make major changes

before a long-term technical program had been

adopted. Instead, Congress chose to correct some

of the most obvious institutional problems by establishing the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste

Management within DOE. Congress chose to leave

the question of more basic structural changes for

consideration following submission by DOE of a

study of alternative institutional arrangements for

managing the waste program.

OTA’s analysis indicates that development by

DOE of a Mission Plan that is widely viewed as

achievable and as responsive to the principal concerns of the major affected parties is the crucial next

step, both for stabilizing the waste management

Program and for establishing the level of confidence

that would be needed before a more flexible and

independent waste management organization could

be established. If the Mission Plan leaves some affected parties strongly dissatisfied with the way that

the major questions left open by NWPA are resolved, the risk of future policy shifts such as those

that have characterized the program in the past will

continue, and the credibility of long-term commitments will suffer. In addition, it is likely that such

dissatisfaction would lead to strong opposition to

giving the waste management program any greater

managerial and financial independence than it

already has. The following chapter presents the

basic elements of a Mission Plan that is consistent

with the authority provided by NWPA and that will

be, in OTA’s opinion, feasible and responsive to

the principal concerns of the major affected parties.
Chapter 6

The Mission Plan
Contents

Page

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

An Achievable Initial Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115

Basic Elements of the Initial Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . , 115

Major Advantages of the Initial Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116

The Waste Management Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

Repository Loading Schedule . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

Storage: The Role of the MRS in the Waste Management Plan... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124

Implementation Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

Present Siting Program ..........,.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

High-Confidence Siting Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132

Waste Management Technology Development Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141

A Strategy for Revising the Mission Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

Chapter Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151

TABLES

Table No. Page

6-1. Possible Alternatives for Completion of Major Program Phases of First Repository . . . . . . . 133

6-2. Risk That Delayer Rejection of Sites in One Stage of Repository Development Will

Delay Progress to the Next Stage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134

6-3. Effects of Canister Life and Waste Form Release Rate on Projected Population Risks

Over 10,000 Years.... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145

FIGURES

Figure No. Page

6-1. Spent Fuel Projections: LWRS Operating and With Construction Permits on

Dec. 31, 1982 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122

6-2. Potentially Acceptable Sites for the First Repository . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131

6-3. Regions Being Considered for the Second Repository . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Chapter 6

The Mission Plan

INTRODUCTION

With the enactment of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (NWPA), the Federal Government

has, for the first time, committed itself in law to

a specific date—January 31, 1998—for beginning

the disposal of nuclear waste in a geologic repository. Meeting that commitment will require the

Government to surmount many unprecedented

technical and institutional challenges in a sustained

effort over a period of decades. If that commitment

is to be credible-particularly in view of past problems—it must be supported by a Mission Plan that

makes ample allowance for the technical and institutional uncertainties associated with development

of the first geologic repository.

In developing the Mission Plan, two points must

be considered. First, it is important to develop a

Plan that will be widely regarded as feasible and

achievable, to show that there is at least one workable approach to manap”ngspent fuel andhigh-levei

waste using the authority provided by NWPA.

OTA believes that this can be done relatively

quickly by using a conservative system design based

on currently available information and analysis.

While such a Plan would not be optimal, the credibility of the Federal waste management program

is far more dependent on the realism and achievability of the Mission Plan than on its optimality.

Second, it maybe possible to reduce significantly

the radiation exposure to workers and the public,

the costs, and the overall complexity of the waste

management process by developing a carefully integrated waste management system design. However,

the analytical basis needed to design an optimized

integrated system is still under development. Further research, development, and demonstration

(RD&D) on waste container designs for such a system will also be required.

For these reasons, the Mission Plan would contain two elements: 1) an achievable initial Plan that

includes ample allowances for those uncertainties,

and 2) a strategy for revising the initial Plan as

appropriate in the light of new data and experience.

Each is discussed below.

AN ACHIEVABLE INITIAL PLAN

Basic Elements of the Initial Plain

As part of its analysis, OTA developed an initial Mission Plan that is: 1) consistent with the

authority provided by NWPA, 2) likely to be

achievable, and 3) responsive to the principal concerns of the major affected parties. While it is sometimes referred to hereafter as the OTA Plan, ’ this

approach represents for the most part an expansion, rather than a major redirection, of the approach that the Department of Energy (DOE) has

followed in the past and presented in the Draft Mission Plan released in the spring of 1984. The following sections summarize the basic elements of the

OTA Plan and compare it with DOE’s Draft Mission Plan in order to highlight key issues.

OTA’S propostxi Mission Plan emphasizes certm”nty and places great weight on the importance

of minimim”ng the risk of major programmatic delays or falures. Because of the long history of difficulties in the Federal waste management program,

there is limited tolerance for failures. Any major

failure—real or perceived—could have grave consequences for both the waste management program

and the future use of nuclear power. Thus, the Plan

described below is designed to give a high level of

confidence that it both can and will be achieved.

115
116 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

To ensure it can be achieved, the OTA Plan includes a conservative waste management plan that

can be met despite remaining uncertainties. Because geologic repositories are the only large-scale

waste facilities authorized and required by NWPA,

the heart of a waste management plan based on the

authority provided by NWPA is a repository loading schedule: a target schedule for moving spent

fuel from reactor sites (where practically all of it

will be stored) to Federal geologic repositories.

The crucial decision concerning the repository

loading schedule is the balance between the degree

of certainty that the schedule can be met, and the

promised speed of the schedule. Developing a

geologic repository is a complex endeavor involving many first-of-a-kind technical and institutional

steps. The faster the promised schedule, the less

margin there is for delays or problems at any of

these steps, and the less confident one can be that

the schedule can be met. To provide utilities and

the communities near reactors with a highly reliable

schedule for removing spent fuel from interim storage, the OTA Plan emphasizes certainty by using

a repository loading schedule that does not require

everything to go smoothly the first time.

The OTA Plan also includes an implementation

program designed to give confidence that the conservative loading schedule will be met. The crucial

choice to be made in the implementation program

concerns the balance between the certainty that the

program will achieve the objectives of the waste

management plan on schedule, and the initial costs

of the program, both financial and political. The

basic fact that must be faced is that it is impossible

both to maximize the certainty of achieving the objectives on schedule and to minimize the initial costs

at the same time. In designing an implementation

program, DOE has essentially two choices: 1) a

preventive approach that identifies in advance the

most serious potential sources of failure and delay,

and includes measures to reduce the chance that

they will occur or cope with them if they do; or 2)

a reactive approach that meets the minimum requirements and standards of the Act and assumes

that no major failures will occur, or that problems

can be dealt with adequately after they occur. The

first approach treats the requirements of the Act

as a floor rather than a ceiling on DOE’s efforts.

It will cost more at the start, but over the long run

its financial and political costs may be less-perhaps

far less—than those incurred by the other approach.

Because it includes measures to anticipate and avoid

potential delays and failures, the preventive approach is also likely to reduce the time required to

develop an operating repository. With this approach, confidence that the Mission Plan will be

carried out successfully is based on the anticipation and allowance for potential problems.

To minimize the chance of real or perceived program failures, the OTA Plan uses a preventive implementation strategy. Its central feature is the pursuit of enough backup components of the isolation

system (e. g., the waste form and waste container)

and candidate repository sites to ensure a high probability that at least one acceptable combination will

be available on the target date, even if somewhat

predictable failures occur. Such use of backups is

a standard technique for achieving high reliability

in technical systems.

Major Advantages of the Initial Plan

Because the Mission Plan outlined below requires

DOE to go beyond the minimum requirements of

NWPA, it may involve higher financial and political costs than those contemplated in DOE’s Draft

Mission Plan. These potential costs could be regarded as unnecessary by those who believe that

geologic disposal is a relatively straightforward technical enterprise. However, they could also be seen

as the price of insurance for a program that cannot afford any major failures or delays. If those who

believe that geologic disposal will be easy to implement are proved right, this approach will produce a broad range of technical options and qualified sites before they are required by the conservative waste management plan. If they are wrong,

this approach will be more successful at preventing major delays and will be cheaper in the long

run.

While NWPA does not require this approach,

it provides sufficient authority for its use and provides a source of funding I hat can be adjusted to

cover the costs of such a program.

The Mission Plan presented below offers several

other advantages. First, it can serve as an impor-
tant early step toward demonstration that high-level

radioactive waste can and will be disposed of safely.

A Plan with adequate provisions for dealing with

the remaining technical and institutional uncertainties can increase the consensus in the technical community that the waste management plan and the

implementation program are feasible and that regulatory standards will be met. Second, by ensuring that cost estimates, necessary for any future

revisions of the waste disposal fee, are based on a

program that is widely regarded as being achievable, the Plan should significantly reduce the uncertainty about the ultimate cost of disposal that now

faces utilities and ratepayers. Third, the highCh. 6—The Mission Plan . 117

confidence approach can contribute to the acceptability of the Plan, since the measures needed to

give confidence that the waste management plan

can be met should also address some of the key concerns of interested parties such as States and environmental groups. In particular, basing contracts

on a conservative repository loading schedule that

makes allowances for delays can reduce concerns

that safety might be sacrificed for speed, while development of backup repository sites and technologies can reduce concerns that less-than-satisfactory

options might be used for lack of any suitable alternatives.

THE WASTE MANAGEMENT PLAN

While NWPA sets a target date of 1998 for initial operation of the first geologic repository, it does

not clearly indicate either how fast DOE is to accept waste for disposal after the repository is available or what is to occur if the repository does not

begin operating in 1998. To fill in those crucial

details, the initial Mission Plan must contain an

explicit waste management plan that includes: 1)

a credible repository loading schedule that could

be met even if there were delays in the repository

program, 2) a plan for interim spent fuel storage

after 1998 (who is responsible and where storage

is to be provided) if the repository is delayed, and

3) a backup plan for monitored retrievable storage

(MRS) or alternative disposal facilities that would

allow the Federal Government to accept spent fuel

or reprocessed waste eventually, even if there are

major unforeseen difficulties with geologic disposal.

Repository Loading Schedule

NWPA clearly established the Federal responsibility for disposal of high-level waste and spent

fuel and adopted a schedule for development of geologic repositories for that purpose. Since the Act

defines a repository as a “system . . . for permanent deep geologic disposal, and disposal as ‘‘emplacement in a repository, ” the geologic repositories

required by the Act are the only facilities that DOE

can use to discharge the Federal responsibility for

high-level waste disposal. Thus, a conservative initial Mission Plan based on the authority now provided by NWPA would focus on the credibility of

the repository loading schedule as the basis of the

credibility of the Federal commitment to take possession of spent fuel and ultimately remove it from

reactor sites.

The schedule for the first geologic repository is

of particular importance, because that repository

is the only large-scale waste management facility

that NWPA authorizes DOE to construct. Although DOE is required to find a suitable site for

the second repository and submit it to the Nuclear

Regulatory Commission (NRC) for licensing, further authorization by Congress will be needed for

construction of that repository. (As discussed below,

the Act’s limitation on the amount of spent fuel that

can be placed in the first repository before the second begins operation will require eventual construction of the second to accommodate the spent fuel

expected to be generated by the reactors now operating or under construction. ) NWPA also directs

DOE to prepare site-specific designs for MRS facilities, but the Act neither authorizes nor requires

DOE to actually site or construct such a facility.

The rate at which spent fuel can be transferred

to repositories will be determined primarily by the

dates on which the facilities begin operation and

by the loading rate of each repository. These are

discussed below.
—

118 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

Schedule for Full-Scale

Operation of the First Repository

A major reason for the contractual commitment

to a schedule for accepting waste at a repository,

included in the integrated waste management policy described in chapter 5, is to provide a basis for

confidence that spent fuel will ultimately be removed from reactor sites to a permanent resting

place, and thus that interim storage will not become

a long-term measure by default. OTA’s study concluded that the single most effective measure to facilitate efforts to provide additional interim spent

fuel storage is to provide a highly credible schedule

and program for siting and operating geologic repositories.

To create confidence that interim storage would

indeed be interim and not permanent, the certainty

of the schedule for repository operation is more important than the speed. Thus the Mission Plan

would contain a conservative repository loading

schedule that is a high-confidence prediction of

when repositories are likely to be operating despite

the kinds of delays that might be anticipated in a

first-of-a-kid venture. Such a repository loading

schedule must take into account four broad sources

of uncertainty: 1) the time that will be required for

the technical and institutional steps involved in

characterizing and licensing the first repository site,

2) the possibility that NRC will not grant a construction authorization or operating license for the

first site submitted for approval, 3) the possibility

that the disposal system design might be rejected

by NRC or might require substantial modifications

to meet regulatory requirements, and 4) the possibility that the target loading rate of each repository cannot be achieved in practice. A repository

loading schedule that would provide for these uncertainties would allow ample time for: 1) delays in

the siting and licensing process, including rejection

of the first site submitted to NRC and the licensing of a backup; and 2) development, licensing, and

demonstration of two disposal system designs at the

first repository site, before the full-scale packaging

and loading facilities are constructed.

The Plan will also need to include more optimistic management goals that show the earliest time

that spent fuel could be delivered to the Federal

Government, if all goes well. Such goals are needed

as program management tools to prevent the allowances for delay in the conservative loading

schedule from being used up by avoidable procrastination. However, to avoid raising false expectations, such management goals should be clearly distinguished from the conservative “best estimate”

schedule used as a basis for contractual commitments. Questions about the credibility of the Federal waste management program in the past have

stemmed in part from plans and schedules that

could only be met if no Technical or institutional

difficulties arose. The credibility of the Mission Plan

would be enhanced if cent contractual commitments are

based on a conservative repository loading schedule

that does not assume that everything will go right

the first time.

MANAGEMENT TARGET SCHEDULE

The repository management target schedule suggested here provides for operation of the first repository to be accomplished in two phases—a demonstration phase and an operational phase. These

phases are designed to address separately the two

distinct reasons for a repository:

1.

2.

To demonstrate that a suitable disposal technology exists and that NRC will license it.

This is needed to allay concerns that there is

no solution to the waste disposal problem and

can be accomplished with initial licensed emplacement of waste : n a repository.

To dispose of radioac,bive waste at a scale com -

parable to the rate at which it is being generated. This is needed to ensure that at some

definite point waste will actually be removed

from storage and moved to a permanent resting place. It requires a full-scale operating repository system.

The target for initial operation in the demonstration phase is January 31 1998, as required by

NWPA. For this phase, a small amount of waste

(e.g., several hundred tonnes) would be placed in

conservatively designed packages during the generic

packaging and handling R.D&D program required

by NWPA. Permission would be requested from

NRC to emplace this material in the repository as

soon as possible following issuance of a construction authorization, before the repository’s packaging facilities are constructed.
Ch. 6—The Mission Plan “ 119

Providing for separate demonstration and operational phases of operation of the first repository

offers several advantages:

1.

2.

It increases the likelihood that the 1998

deadline for initial repository operation will

be met, Analysis by DOE indicates that the

1998 deadline probably cannot be met if operation of the first repository is deferred until

the full-scale packaging and handling facilities

can be built. 1 Under the conservative Plan described in this chapter, initial emplacement

of waste in the repository would be accomplished before the repository’s packaging facilities had been constructed”. This should minimize the time between the construction authorization and the first licensed disposal in

the repository, thus increasing the chances that

the 1998 deadline can be met even if there are

delays in receiving the first construction authorization.

It allows an early demonstration of licensed

disposal. What is needed to demonstrate that

radioactive waste can and will be safely disposed of is not only the physical technology

of disposal, but also the institutional capacity of NRC to make a regulatory decision that

a repository at a specific site can be expected

to provide the required degree of waste isolation. NRC approval of a licensed phase of lowlevel operation, as soon as possible after the

construction authorization is granted, could

provide an early demonstration of both the

physical and institutional requirements for disposal. Licensed low-level operation may also

be adequate to satisfy the requirement in some

State moratorium legislation that no new nuclear reactors be licensed until a demonstrated

disposal technology has been approved by the

Federal Government.2

‘U. S. Department of Energy, Draft Mission Plan for the Civilian

Radioactive Waste Management Program, DOE/RW-0005 DRAFT,

April 1984, pp. 3-A-36 and 3-A-37 (hereafter Drafi Mission Plan).

2Analysis by the presiding member of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Committee of the California Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission concludes that the last step needed for demonstration is confirmation of the existence of a suitable site. Emilio E.

Varanini, 111, ‘ ‘Aspects of Demonstrating Nuclear Waste Disposal,

statement presented to the Waste Disposal Technology Symposium,

University of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz., Feb. 27, 1979. This could be

accomplished by NRC approval of initial disposal at a site.

3, It allows time to optimize the system design

for the operational

-phase. Meeting the Jan-uary 1998 deadline with an initial phase of lowlevel operation could also separate the question of demonstrating the existence of a disposal technology from that of full-scale operation. The demonstration phase would use a

conservative repository system design (discussed below), based on the principle that the

certainty of obtaining NRC approval with a

minimum of technical disputes should take

priority over cost-effectiveness. Deferring the

operational phase would allow more time for

DOE to develop, and NRC to approve, a fullscale system design in which broader waste

management system considerations such as

cost and worker radiation exposures are given

higher priority. This might allow relaxation

of initial conservatism in repository design,

if justified by the results of low-level operation and testing, thus reducing the risk that

adoption of a conservative baseline system design in the initial Mission Plan could lead to

costs that later prove to be unnecessary.

This approach may also reduce disposal costs in

the long run compared to DOE’s proposed approach, which involves construction of full-scale

packaging and handling facilities quickly after a

construction authorization is granted.3 There are

several sources of possible cost savings. First, this

approach allows time to develop and license an optimized system design. As noted earlier, recent

studies suggest that it may be possible to significantly reduce total waste management system costs

and radiation exposures during operation by using

a carefully integrated system design.4 DOE’s cur-

—-——.-—. —

‘DOE’s Draft Mission Plan includes two phases of repository operation but initiates construction of the full-scale facilities at the same

time as the pilot-scale facilities. There is no allowance for a period

of low-level operation before the design of the full-scale facilities is

locked in. Instead, the two-phase aproach is used primarily as a way

of meeting the 1998 deadline, rather than allowing time to develop

and test an optimized system design before commiting to construction of the full-scale system.

‘Raymond E. Hoskins, “Concept for an All-Purpose Transport,

Storage and Disposal Cask for Spent Nuclear Fuel Management, ”

published in Prcmedings of the 1983 Civilian Radimctive Waste Management Information Meeting, CONF-8312 17, U.S. Department of

Energy, February 1984, pp. 362-368. See also Westinghouse Electric Corporation, Waste Technology Services Division, Preliminary

Cost Analysis ofa Universal Package Concept in the Spent Fuel Management System, WTSD-TME-432, September 1984.
120 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

rent plans may not allow time to develop and incorporate an optimized integrated design in the first

repository, however, since DOE did not formally

initiate an effort to develop concepts for an integrated system until 1984. To avoid foreclosing prematurely the option of using such an integrated system for the first repository, the DOE management

target schedule for construction of the full-scale

packaging and handling facilities for the operational

phase would be determined by the time required

to develop, test, and license an optimized integrated

system design. Whether or not this would require

an adjustment of several years in DOE’s current

planning schedule (for operation of full-scale facilities in 2001) is by no means certain. However, the

potential benefits to be obtained could more than

offset the cost of the additional storage required if

a delay of several years were involved.

Second, it would provide greater certainty that

the full-scale system could be operated at the target rate required by the repository loading schedule,

since the final design would have the benefit of the

experience gained during low-level operation in the

demonstration phase. This would reduce the risk

of costly and time-consuming modifications to an

already constructed facility unable to operate at the

target rate.5

Third, it would allow more time to resolve questions about whether and when spent fuel might be

reprocessed. This would allow the operational disposal system design to be optimized based on better information about the relative proportions of

spent fuel and high-level waste from reprocessing

it would have to handle, and would reduce concerns that irreversible decisions about the fate of

spent fuel would be made prematurely.

Fourth, deferring the large costs of full-scale operation can reduce the total discounted cost of disposal, thus offsetting to some extent the costs of the

additional interim storage that would be required.

5Whi1e the DOE Draft Mission Plan provides for an initial phase

of repository loading using partial loading facilities, it does not allow

time to test the loading facility design before full-scale facilities are

constructed. Since there is no experience at packaging and handling

highly radioactive materials at the rates expected during full-scale repository operation, constructing the full-scaJe facilities without experience at an intermediate scale increases the risk that repositories will

not be able to achieve their target loading rates in practice.

CONTRACTUAL REPOSITORY

LOADING SCHEDULE

The repository loading schedule used for contracts with utilities would be based on operation

of full-scale loading facilities beginning no later than

2008 at the first repository. This date is a credible

basis for commitments because, unlike the more

optimistic management schedule, it can be met even

if significant technical and institutional difficulties

are encountered. For example, the first repository

could be operating by 2008 even if none of the sites

initially evaluated at depth (’ ‘characterized’

proved acceptable and a new site not now under

consideration had to be used. (By contrast, the

DOE Draft Mission Plan estimates that the second

repository could be operating by 2004, even if both

a new site and a new geologic medium [granite]

were used. ) Spent fuel could be accepted some years

earlier than the commitment date if the contingencies that have been allowed for, such as the need

to use a backup site, do not materialize-provided

that the repository program has been managed firmly

enough to prevent the allowances from being used

up by avoidable delays.

The 2008 commitment date for operation of fullscale facilities at the first repository is consistent with

some independent assessments of the likely availability of a repository. NRC has determined in its

‘‘waste confidence’ rulemaking that there is reasonable assurance that a geologic repository would

be available between 2007 and 2009.6 The Tennessee Valley Authority, in an analysis of its own needs

for additional spent fuel storage, estimates no better than a 50-50 chance that DOE will be able to

accept spent fuel on a large scale by 2008.7 OTA

believes that use of the implementation program

described below can substantially increase the level

of confidence that a repository would be available

by that time.

Schedule for Operations

of the Second Repository

The Act does not commit to a specific date by

which the second repository is to come on line, but

rather sets a limit of 70,000 tonnes on the amount

of spent fuel or equivalent high-level waste that can

‘Federal Register, vol. 48, No. ’39, May 20, 1983, p. 22730.

7Hoskins, op. cit.
Ch. 6—The Mission Plan ● 121

be placed into the first repository before the second begins operation. DOE analysis shows that the

second repository could open by 2005, at the earliest, if the first site recommended for that repository is approved by NRC and there are no substantial delays in the siting process. At most, it could

open as late as 30 years after the first, since it would

take about that long to emplace 70,000 tonnes in

the first repository, according to DOE’s most recent repository loading schedule. (It should be noted

that because the reactors that are currently ope

ating or under construction are expected to discharge over 100,000 tonnes of spent fuel during

their lifetimes, the 70,000-tonne limit on the first

repository implies that the second must ultimately

be built if projected amounts of waste are to be accommodated without amendment of NWPA.)

The proposed Mission Plan would commit to

operation of the full-scale facilities of the second repository to begin no later than 2012—4 years after

the commitment date for full-scale facilities of the

first repository. An explicit commitment to operation of a second repository soon after the first would

allay concerns that the first repository would become the Nation’s sole ‘‘nuclear waste dump’ for

many decades, and would provide a backup to the

first repository to ensure that some disposal operations could take place even if problems developed

with one repository. In addition, if an acceptable

site for a second repository can be found nearer the

bulk of the reactors in the East, it will significantly

reduce the costs and impacts of full-scale transportation of high-level radioactive waste from reactors

to disposal. Planning for a short delay between

operation of the first and second repositories allows

more time to identify suitable sites in the East, and

time for experience at operating the first repository

before the second starts up.

Target Full-Scale Annual Loading Rate

The target loading rate of each repository is a

major design decision affecting the entire waste

management system. It will determine how long

each repository will be in operation, how quickly

the buildup of spent fuel in storage at reactors can

be stopped, and how long it will take to eliminate

the backlogs that are already in storage at the time

repository loading begins. The higher the target

loading rate, the more rapidly the backlogs can be

eliminated. At the same time, increasing the repository loading rate will increase the cost of the packaging and handling facilities, the number of transportation casks needed to deliver waste to the repository, and the number of shipments needed each

year.

Three considerations are relevant to choosing a

design maximum loading rate: the projected types

and amounts of waste that must be accepted, the

goal for removing waste from interim storage, and

the desired reserve margin in the loading capacity. Each will be discussed briefly.

WASTE PROJECTIONS

A waste management plan must be based on

some assumptions about the amount of spent fuel

that will be generated in the future. The more reactors that are expected to be operating when the

repositories begin operation, the greater the loading

capacity that will be needed to stop the buildup of

spent fuel in storage. OTA suggests that, as a base

case for the waste management plan, DOE consider the spent fuel expected to be generated by the

reactors that are now operating or are under construction (see fig. 6-1 ). If additional reactors are

ordered in the future, the Mission Plan can be revised as needed. (If the increase over currently

planned construction is relatively small, it could

probably be handled by increasing the design loading rate of one or both of the two repositories required by the Act, or by extending the operational

period of the repositories. If the increase is large,

additional repositories may be required. ) This

would provide a conservative basis for estimating

the fee that will have to be charged to ensure fullcost recovery, as required by NWPA. A fee based

on the expectation of revenues from reactors that

have yet to be ordered could turn out to have been

too low if those orders do not materialize, a and

could produce insufficient revenues in the early

years of the program.

The waste projections must also make assumptions about the relative amounts of spent fuel and

high-level waste from reprocessing that would be

delivered for disposal. A conservative assumption

is that all spent fuel would be delivered directly to

8U. S. Department of Energy, Report on Financing the Disposal

of Commercial Spent NucIear Fuel and Processed High-Level Radioactive Waste, DOE/S-0020 (Washington, D. C., June 1983), p. 30.
— —

122 . Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

Figure 6=1.-Spent Fuei Projections: LWRS Operating and With Construction Parmlts on Dec. 31, 1932

1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025 2030

Year

aAS~~eS b~lns gre re~~ked to the rnexlrnum extent, but no rod consolidation. Consolidation couid significantly increaaa the capacity of the exiSting baairm

SOURCE: Data aupplled by U.S. Uepertment of Energy (aea app. E).

repositories without reprocessing. This would give

a high estimate of the number of packages of highly

radioactive waste to be received, packaged, and emplaced in each repository each year, since it is expected that there would be fewer packages of solidified high-level waste than of spent fuel for a given

amount of electricity generation. At the same time,

a conservative plan would provide capacity to dispose of the high-level waste from the West Valley

reprocessing plant and the defense nuclear

programs.

Planning to provide capacity for direct disposal

of all spent fuel simply ensures that disposal will

be available as an option according to the planned

schedule, not that spent fuel must be disposed of

according to the schedule. Thus, it does not preclude future decisions to defer disposal. In fact, once

the repository packaging and handling facilities

needed to meet the reference loading schedule have

been constructed, it would be possible to store the

packaged spent fuel on the surface at the repository if that were desired.

GOAL FOR REMOVING WASTE FROM STORAGE

DOE estimates that by 1998, some 36,000 tonnes

of spent fuel will be in storage (practically all of it

at reactor sites), and about 2,300 additional tonnes

will be discharged each year by the reactors that

are in operation at that time.g While it is possible

‘U.S. Department of Energy, Spent Fuel and Radioactive Waste

Inventories, Projections, and Charactem”sticsp DOWRW-0006, September 1984, table 1.2, p. 30.
Ch. 6–The Mission Plan ● 123

that one repository loading at 3,000 tonnes per year

could handle the total annual discharge from the

reactors that are already operating or under construction, it would have little capacity left over to

begin reducing the backlog. A major design question, then, is how much loading capacity to provide beyond the amount needed to stop the buildup

of spent fuel. This decision will depend upon how

quickly it is desired to remove waste from interim

storage sites, and, in particular, how quickly to

remove spent fuel from reactor sites.

As discussed in chapter 3, once fuel has been

placed into storage, it may be cheaper to leave it

there for an extended period than to construct the

additional transportation and disposal capacity

needed to allow it to be removed quickly. Furthermore, NRC has concluded in its ‘‘waste confidence’ rule that spent fuel can be left safely at reactor sites up to 30 years after expiration of the

reactor’s operating license. Nonetheless, the prospect of spent fuel remaining in storage at reactor

sites for decades after the reactors cease operation

may be objected to by the surrounding communities and may be viewed as a negative factor in decisions about siting and construction of new reactors.

The repository loading schedule must strike a balance between these considerations.

Allowing 10 to 15 years after reactor shutdown

for spent fuel removal could be advantageous because it would avoid the strains on the transportation and handling systems that would result if a reactor’s lifetime discharge had to be removed within

a few years. 10 In addition, designing and licensing

the transportation cask fleet to handle only fuel that

is at least 10 years old would provide an additional

safety margin because of the reduction in heat output of the fuel.l1 Under the current DOE contract,

spent fuel must be at least 5 years old before it can

be delivered to DOE, which means that some spent

fuel will remain at reactor sites for at least 5 years

after decommissioning.

Operation of full-scale facilities of the first repository as late as 2008 and the second repository as

IOAli GhOvanlOU et al., Analysis of Nuclear Waste Disposal and

Strategies for FaciJity Dep/oymenc, The MITRE Corporation,

(McLean, Va., April 1980), p. 6-51.

11A9 discussed in Ch. 3, cask design studies show that increasing

the age of fuel from 5 to 10 years leads to a 1000 F reduction in maximum fuel temperature during a design-basis fire.

late as 2012 would not lead to large amounts of

spent fuel being left at reactor sites for an extended

period after decommissioning. Even with that

schedule, two repositories, each loading at 3,000

tonnes per year, could dispose of all the spent fuel

expected to be generated by the reactors now operating or under construction by about 2030, and

could ensure that spent fuel is removed from each

reactor site within 10 to 15 years after the reactor

ceases operation. 12

RESERVE MARGIN

Confidence that the desired annual loading rates

will be achieved in practice can be increased by

planning to construct one more independent processing line than the minimum expected to be required to meet target loading rates. Available studies suggest that a single processing line may be

capable of achieving the loading rate of 3,000 tonnes

per year now being used in DOE plans.13 However, construction of two lines provides a reserve

margin that can, in several ways, increase the confidence that that rate will be achieved in practice.

First, the loading rate depends on both the number of packages per year that the processing line

can handle and the amount of waste that can be

placed in each package. Even if one line is able to

process the required number of packages each year,

it is possible that site-specific considerations might

require a lower package waste load than anticipated. Provision of a second packaging line would

allow the waste load per package to be reduced by

half without lowering the total loading rate.

Second, the reserve margin provided by a second packaging line is insurance against the possibility that unanticipated operational difficulties

might force each line to operate at a lower rate than

planned. The risk that this would occur could be

reduced by planning to begin full-scaie operation

following construction of the first processing line,

and to defer construction of the second until the

design is confirmed in practice and any needed

modifications are made.

lzData On light-water reactors that are operating and with const~ction permits provided by DOE. See app. G for calculations.

l~westinghouse Electric Corporation, Advanced Energy Systems

Division, En~”neemd Waste Package Conceptual Design Ikfense High

Level Waste (Form 1) and Spent Fuel (Form 2) Disposal in SaIt,

AESD-TMA-3131, September 1982, pp. 422-423.
124 Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

Third, a second processing line provides backup

loading capacity against the possibility of accidents

or other problems that would halt, interrupt, or

slow down the operations of the first line, or loading

of the other repository. In fact, if a single line proves

capable of handling the target rate of 3,000 tonnes

per year, the second line would provide fully redundant capacity to handle material intended for the

other repository if loading of that repository were

halted for any reason.

Addition of a second processing line is estimated

to cost between $18 million and $60 million, depending on the package design .14 In addition to increasing confidence that the loading schedule will

be achieved, it could also allow defense high-level

waste to be loaded in the repository (if a decision

is made to do so) without seriously affecting the

loading of commercial waste.

Storage: The Role of the MRS

in the Waste Management Plan

Although the major focus of NWPA is the siting

and operation of two permanent geologic repositories, the Act also requires DOE to submit designs

for, and a study of the need for, one or more monitored retrievable storage (MRS) facilities. This

study is to be submitted to Congress in mid-1985,

to provide a basis for possible deliberations concerning whether to authorize siting and construction of such a facility.

Proposals for construction of Federal storage facilities have played a major role in debates about

waste management policy since 1974, when the

Atomic Energy Commission, following failure of

the attempt to site a first repository at Lyons,

Kansas, suggested Retrievable Surface Storage Facilities (RSSFS) as an interim measure to allow several decades to develop permanent disposal facilities. (See the discussion of storage in ch. 4 and app.

A.) Two distinct functions have been proposed for

such storage facilities:

1. To provide relatively short-term interim storage as part of a waste management program

predicated on fairly rapid development and

operation of geologic repositories. This role

~+~bi~., pp. 423 and 434.

2.

was the focus of debate on the Carter administration’s proposal to provide Federal awayfrom-reactor (AFR) storage facilities in the

1980’s, discussed in issue 4 of appendix B.

To provide a long-term waste management

option that would allow more time to be taken

in developing geolo!gic repositories or other

disposal technologies (tie proposed role for the

RSSF), or to serve as an alternative to geologic

repositories in the event that such repositories

cannot be developed for a long, and perhaps

indefinite, period. The construction of longterm storage facilities as an alternative to rapid

development of geologic repositories is discussed in issue 1 of app. B.

Proposals for construction of MRS facilities have

included both functions. 1 t would be valuable for

the Mission Plan to analyze the need for each of

these principal functions in an integrated waste

management system. This would provide a useful

perspective for the plan, required to be included

in the MRS need and feasibility study, for integrating any MRS facilities that are constructed with

the other storage and disposal facilities authorized

by the Act. Such analysis would also be responsive

to NWPA’s requirement that the Mission Plan provide ‘‘an informational basis sufficient for informed

decisions. A brief discussion of each function

follows.

Post-1998 Interim Storage

While the repository program is the principal

focus of the Mission Plan, it must also address the

issue of interim storage after the 1998 deadline for

repository operation. Additional storage capacity

will

●

●

be required after 1993 for three reasons:

Even if the repository begins operating on

schedule in 1998, it will take some time to

reach a high enough annual loading rate to

equal or exceed the rate at which spent fuel

is being generated. DOE currently estimates

that this would not occur until 2003.15

Some slippages in the repository operation

schedule are possible if: not likely. Even a conservative repository development program

might experience some relatively short delays

resulting from foreseeable but unavoidable

15DOE, Draft Mission Plan.
Ch. 6—The Mission Plan ● 125

events such as lawsuits, construction accidents,

rejection of a repository site, strikes, and bad

weather. While such events could delay repository loading by years, they would not lead to

extended or open-ended delays and would not

raise major questions about the eventual availability of geologic repositories.

● Even after the repository is operating at full

scale, there will be a need for buffer storage

capacity in the waste management system to

allow reactors to continue operating without

disruption even if there are any operational

difficulties at the repository that would prevent it from accepting spent fuel at the desired

rate.

NWPA provides that utilities be responsible for

additional interim storage as needed until DOE can

accept the waste at a repository, and the Act does

not authorize construction of Federal storage facilities. In accordance with this law, an initial Plan

based on the authority in NWPA would provide

for interim storage by utilities at reactor sites until

a repository or alternative long-term waste management facility is available.

Providing post-1998 interim storage at reactor

sites appears to be quite feasible. 16 NWPA contains

measures to facilitate utility efforts to provide atreactor storage until a repository is available, and,

as noted earlier, NRC has concluded in its waste

confidence rulemaking that spent fuel could be safely stored at reactor sites for up to 30 years after termination of the reactor license. Thus, if no further

action were taken by Congress to authorize storage by the FederaI Government, it appears now that

the needed storage could and would be provided

by the utilities themselves. This shows that the existing authority provided by NWPA is sufficient to

carry out a workable waste management program

unless currently unforeseen major problems are encountered in developing geologic repositories.

Nonetheless, discussions concerning the Mission

Plan have raised the issue of whether the Federal

Government has a responsibility or an obligation

to take spent fuel after 1998 if a repository is not

ICDOE ‘‘exwcts the increasecj efficiency of onsite spent fuel storage, that is expected to result from successful completion of the fuel

rod consolidation and dry storage demonstrations (now underway),

to be sufficient to preclude the need for Federat Interim Storage. ”

DOE, Dratl Mission Plan, p. 3-D-5.

available as required by NWPA. This involves two

interrelated questions: who should be responsible

for post-1998 interim storage, and where should it

be done? These need to be discussed separately,

although they are often merged in the comparison

of two alternatives: utility responsibility, with storage at the reactor sites; or Federal responsibility,

with storage at an MRS facility. There is also a

third option that bears consideration, since NWPA

allows DOE to take title to spent fuel at reactor sites:

Federal responsibility for post-1998 storage at the

reactor sites.

RESPONSIBILITY FOR POST-1998

INTERIM STORAGE

Some feel that NWPA requires utilities to provide interim storage for as long as is necessary until a repository is available. Others feel that the Act’s

1998 deadline for a repository, and the fact that utilities are now paying fees for disposal services, obligates the Federal waste program to take responsibility for spent fuel beginning in 1998. This is

primarily an equity issue rather than a technical

question, since NWPA allows DOE to take title to

spent fuel at the reactor sites before it is delivered

to a repository. Thus, title and responsibility could

be transferred according to any arbitrary schedule

that could be agreed upon. The options range from

continuation of utility responsibility until spent fuel

is physically delivered to the repository, to having

the waste management program take responsibility

for all spent fuel in 1998. OTA’s analysis of an integrated waste management policy concluded that

it may be possible to reach agreement on the principle that the costs of additional spent fuel storage,

beyond the contractual acceptance date (and perhaps title to and liability for the spent fuel), would

be transferred from the utility to the waste management program on that date.

It should be noted that under NWPA, the costs

of the waste management program are to be recovered from users through fees. Thus, any costs for

additional interim storage would be paid for by utilities rather than the Federal Government, whether

that storage is provided by the utilities directly or

by the Federal waste management program. The

question is whether the cost will be paid only by

those utilities that would have to provide additional

storage if the repository loading schedule is delayed,

or by all utilities through the Nuclear Waste Fund.
IZ6 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

NWPA currently requires that utilities, to the extent possible, provide interim storage until the spent

fuel is accepted by the waste management program,

and requires that the costs of the limited 1,900-

tonne Federal interim storage program be borne

by those utilities that use it. While NWPA provides

that any MRS facilities subsequently authorized by

Congress would be paid for for the Nuclear Waste

Fund, it also requires that the MRS proposal be

accompanied by a funding plan that would provide

that the costs of constructing and operating such

facilities be borne by the generators and owners of

the material to be stored in the facilities.

While the decision about who is responsible for

post-1998 spent fuel storage would affect primarily the equity of the distribution of waste management costs among the utilities themselves, it could

also affect the total costs to the utilities. This will

depend on the interest rate set by the Secretary of

the Treasury for borrowing by the Nuclear Waste

Fund in years when the expenditures exceed the

revenues from the waste disposal fee. If that rate

is set at the rate for Government securities, rather

than at competitive market rates that utilities would

face if they were raising capital themselves, shifting the storage costs to the waste management program could reduce the total costs to the utilities and

would to some extent represent an implicit Federal

subsidy to the waste management program.

LOCATION OF POST-1998 INTERIM STORAGE

If the utilities are responsible for interim storage, it appears likely that most of the storage would

be located at reactor sites. If the Federal waste management program takes responsibility, the storage

could be done either at centralized MRS facilities

located away from the reactor sites, or at the sites

themselves, using one of the dry storage technologies that will be demonstrated as part of the program required by NWPA. If combination storage/

transportation casks prove feasible and licensable,

DOE could simply provide those casks to utilities

as needed to store spent fuel that cannot be stored

in the reactor basin, since DOE has authority under

NWPA to provide transportation casks. (DOE has

suggested this option in the Draft Mission Plan.)

Once a repository begins operation, title to the spent

fuel could also be transferred to DOE at any desired

rate even if the target loading schedule is not

achieved, since title can transfer at the reactor site.

If multipurpose casks are not feasible, Congress

could authorize DOE to provide other storage facilities directly at reactor sites, as is already authorized under the limited Federal interim storage program in NWPA. This approach maybe desirable

unless there are substantial safety and cost benefits

to centralized storage, and it would avoid the potential complications of siting and licensing MRS

facilities.

If DOE provided additional storage using multipurpose casks, the costs would be borne by the

waste management program rather than by the individual utility. If Congress authorizes DOE to construct additional storage facilities, either a centralized MRS or at-reactor facilities, a decision

could be made at that time about whether the costs

would be borne by all utilities.

The questions involved in providing a centralized

Federal MRS for post- 1998 interim storage are essentially similar to those involved in earlier proposals for a Federal AFR storage facility that were

considered at the time N WPA was being debated.

(These questions are discussed in issue 4 of app.

B.) The major difference is that the interim storage provisions of NWPA have dealt with a principal argument made for a Federal AFR: the concern that utilities would not be able to provide

additional storage capacity quickly enough to prevent reactor shutdowns. As noted earlier, it now

appears likely that utilities will be able to provide

their own storage by and after 1998 even if no large

Federal storage facility is provided. While a systematic and detailed comparison of storage options

must await completion of the MRS needs and feasibility study, available studies suggest some preliminary conclusions, which are discussed below.

Available analyses suggest that decentralized atreactor storage could be economically competitive

with centralized storage, and may even be less expensive under some conditions. 17 The principal reason is that the at-reactor approach allows the capital cost of handling facilities to be spread out over

time as small increments are added on a reactorby-reactor basis as needed. A centralized approach

17A recent ~~ysis of univers~ (ontainer concepts shows that an

optimized at-reactor approach using storage transportation casks could

be as much as 20 percent less expensive than an optimized approach

including centralized MRS facilities, Westinghouse, Preliminary Cost

Analysis, table 1-3, pp. 1-10 and j -11.
Ch. 6—The Mission Plan ● 127

involves a large front-end expenditure for packaging and handling facilities that may not be fully utilized, and that to some extent would duplicate atreactor facilities that the utilities would already have

constructed to meet their pre-1998 interim storage

obligations under NWPA.18

In addition, expanding at-reactor storage may

be more reliable than building a centralized storage facility for assuring adequate buffer storage in

the event of delays in repository siting or interruptions in repository operations. A centralized storage facility would itself be subject to many of the

same sorts of ‘expected’ delays that would affect

a repository. In addition, a centralized MRS facility, like a repository, would be potentially vulnerable to operational problems that could adversely affect many reactors simultaneously unless

provisions have been made for buffer storage at the

reactor sites. Furthermore, the history of strong and

successful opposition to past efforts to provide Federal storage facilities suggests that a policy of providing MRS facilities might be relatively difficult

to sustain over an extended period. Thus, the effort to develop MRS facilities may not provide

much more insurance against such delays than

would the measures to increase confidence in the

repository loading schedule described below.

On the other hand, it is possible that a need could

be shown for offsite storage before a repository can

be expected to be available. For example, some reactor sites may be limited in their physical capacity for additional storage, although further analysis is needed to determine the extent to which this

would lead to a requirement for offsite storage before repositories are likely to be available. (There

will be a need for some spent fuel prior to that time

for packaging and handling tests, dry storage

RD&D, and low-level operation of the first repository. This requirement may be sufficient to eliminate any physical need for offsite interim storage

beyond the 1,900 tomes of backup offsite storage

already provided for by NWPA. ) It is also possible that there may be overall system benefits, in

terms of safety and cost, to providing centralized

facilities for the additional interim storage that

would be required if all the contingencies provided

for in the conservative repository loading plan came

to pass. However, this remains to be demonstrated.

Iasee chapter note at end of chapter.

To provide Congress with a complete basis for

its decision, it would be valuable for the MRS need

and feasibility study to include an analysis of an

optimum Federal at-reactor storage option for comparison with the centralized MRS options. Comparisons would be made in terms of total waste

management system costs, worker and public radiation exposures, geographic distribution of waste

management impacts, and vulnerability to delays

or disruption of operation of any facilities in the

system. Consideration of providing Nuclear Waste

Fund-financed interim storage at reactor sites, as

an alternative to centralized MRS facilities, would

allow a comparison of the relative merits of at-reactor and away-from-reactor storage that is not complicated by institutional differences in funding and

ownership arrangements between the two options. 19

It would also be useful for the MRS need study

to analyze the advantages and disadvantages of deferring a decision on post-1998 interim storage until

1990, when DOE is expected to recommend the

first site for a repository. This would allow the decision to be made after: 1) evaluation of the results

of the commercial spent fuel storage RD&D program required by NWPA, which is expected to be

completed in 1989; 2) development of an integrated

system model and evaluation of optimized integrated system designs; and 3) completion of characterization of the first round of candidate repository sites, at which time the projected schedule for

repository availability would be much better known.

If a decision were made to proceed with an MRS

facility at that time, it could still be available by

around 2001, the current target date for operation

of full-scale facilities at the repository.

Finally, it would be useful for the MRS study

to contain analysis of the impact of storage options on the rate of progress in the repository program. As discussed in chapter 4, one of the major

sources of resistance to efforts to provide a Federal

storage facility in the past has been concern that

the availability of such a facility would lead to deferral of the politically and financially costly steps involved in siting a geologic repository. In OTA’S

—

19DoE comparisons of at-reactor and away-from-reactor storage

to date have assumed that the at-reactor facilities would be financed

at private utility borrowing rates, while the centralized facility would

be financed at lower Federal borrowing rates and would not be subject to taxation. This biases the results in favor of away-from-reactor

facilities.
— .

128 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

view, this is the principal programmatic risk in attempting to site and construct a large Federal storage facility before a permanent repository site is

selected and licensed. The risk arises from: 1) the

possibility that the effort to site and construct a Federal storage facility would divert resources and energy from the repository program; and 2) the fact

that, once such a facility is available, it will be easier

and less expensive to expand the storage capacity

from year to year than to proceed rapidly to develop a geologic repository. (For further discussion

of this point, see issue 1 in app. B.) On the other

hand, some argue that making the Federal Government responsible for storing growing inventories

of spent fuel would put more pressure on the Federal program to find a permanent solution. Because

such considerations may be more important in an

MRS decision than the relative technical merits of

at-reactor vs. away-from-reactor facilities for interim storage, they are worthy of rigorous analysis in

the MRS need study.

Backup Waste Facility Plan

The other possible role of MRS facilities is as

a long-term alternative to geologic repositories. A

comprehensive Mission Plan must address the possible need for such an alternative. To date, no insurmountable technical obstacles to geologic disposal have been identified. However, there is

always some possibility that major difficulties could

lead to extended delays or even rejection of the concept. Thus, a complete specification of the Federal

commitment to utilities must identify what will be

done if that occurs. The principal question to be

addressed is when to provide long-term alternatives

to repositories so that the Federal Government can

accept spent fuel in the event that geologic repositories are delayed for a long time. The answer to

this question will determine the backup waste facility plan.

Generally speaking, only two alternatives will ensure that the Federal Government can take physical possession of waste or spent fuel from utilities

if a geologic repository is delayed: 1) MRS facilities; or 2) disposal capacity based on some other

disposal technology, such as subseabed emplacement.

NWPA provides for the development of both options: section 141 requires the development of designs and construction plans for MRS facilities, and

section 222 requires the accelerated development

of alternative permanent disposal technologies.

If MRS facilities are provided for post-1998 interim storage, they would be available as long-term

backup facilities if there are major problems with

the disposal program. However, if it is decided to

provide interim storage at reactor sites, a time may

come when alternative facilities must be provided

to prevent the spent fuel from remaining at the reactor sites indefinitely. Because the Act does not

require or authorize construction and operation of

such facilities, a comprehensive Mission Plan would

identify a time at which DOE would address the

question of whether to seek such authority from

Congress and would discuss the criteria for making an affirmative decision.

To avoid the need for additional authority as long

as possible, the proposed Mission Plan defers this

decision until it is clear that there are major technical problems with geologic disposal. Specifically,

it provides for the decision to be made after completing NWPA’S mandatory process for siting two

repositories, which will occur when NRC decides

on the second site in 1998. This should provide ample time to obtain the evidence that might justify

a reevaluation of the entire concept of geologic disposal. For example, rejection of one or more candidate sites during characterization, or even NRC

disapproval of the first site submitted for licensing,

would not be strong evidence that geologic disposal

might not work, any more than drilling one or two

dry holes on an otherwise promising potential oilfield proves that the field does not contain oil. Since

there is little experience with at-depth characterization or licensing of a geologic disposal site, and since

at least some geologists believe that it is impossible to tell on the basis of surface exploration alone

whether a site is suitable for a repository, one can

expect some ‘‘dry holes’ before a site that can be

licensed is found. On the other hand, if no such

site can be found after completion of a conservative siting program designed to site two repositories

(see discussion of the siting program below), ample grounds might exist for reevaluating the feasibility of geologic disposal.

If no proposed repository site has received a construction authorization by 1998, authorization to

construct two MRS facilities (or alternative disposal

facilities, if suitable technology is available) would
Ch. 6—The Mission Plan ● 129

be sought. Since DOE estimates that an MRS could

be sited, licensed, and constructed in about 11 years

after authorization, it should be possible to have

backup facilities in operation between 2008 and

2012, the commitment dates for operation of the

two geologic repositories, even if a decision to construct such facilities is not made until 1998. Operation of backup storage or disposal facilities with

a capacity of 6,000 tonnes per year (DOE’s reference loading rate for two MRS facilities), even if

it came as late as 2012, could still assure that the

spent fuel discharged by reactors now operating or

under construction could be removed from the sites

of most reactors (except a few of the oldest ones)

within about 15 years after reactor shutdown. (See

app. G.)

Deferring a decision on long-term alternatives

until a full and fair effort has been made to site and

license the geologic repositories required by NWPA

has

●

several advantages:

It avoids the risk that early availability of longterm storage facilities, or perhaps simply the

effort to provide such facilities, might create

pressures to defer difficult repository siting

decisions, as discussed above. While long-term

MRS facilities might be constructed earlier,

to allow more time for repository siting, it must

be recognized that such a step may make it

more difficult to precede with selection and

evaluation of repository sites at all.

It provides ample time to develop backup technologies, A conservative schedule for backup

facilities allows time to test the feasibility of

alternative disposal technologies and to develop MRS designs that are most suitable for use

as a long-term alternative to geologic repositories. In this regard, it would be valuable for

the MRS need and feasibility study to discuss

the design criteria that would be appropriate

for MRS facilities intended as long-term alternatives to geologic repositories, in contrast to

those intended for relatively short-term interim

or buffer storage, and to identify any RD&D

needed to develop technologies for very longterm monitored storage. (This is discussed further in the analysis of the technology development program, below. )

IMPLEMENTATION PROGRAM

To be credible as a basis for contractual commitments with utilities, the proposed repository

loading schedule requires not only allowances for

delays, but also an implementation plan that contains measures to avoid delays in the first place and

to mitigate the impact of difficulties that do occur.

As noted earlier, the key feature in the high-confidence implementation program described in this

chapter is the use of backup sites and technologies,

to give confldence that at least one acceptable combination of site and repository design will be available when needed even if some candidates are rejected. While this program emphasizes certainty

rather than minimized front-end costs, it represents

a minimum use of backups, since it involves using

only one more candidate site and technology at key

stages than the minimum required number. It is

a major conclusion of OTA analysis that this min -l

im urn backup strategy can substantially increase

confidence that the waste management plan can and

will be carried out on schedule.

Present Siting Program

The major source of uncertainty in the repository schedule lies in the process for finding suitable

sites and for NRC review and approval of a repository constructed at those sites. Unlike many more

familiar technologies, the site of a geologic repository is itself a central component of the technology.

The natural barriers produced by the properties of

the site are expected to provide the ultimate longterm insurance against any significant release of the

waste. Thus, the process of finding sites with the

right properties and of convincing NRC that those

properties do exist is at the heart of the process of

developing geologic repositories.
.

130 ● Managing the NatIon’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

NWPA prescribes a detailed process for finding

and licensing sites for two geologic repositories. The

major steps are:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

Development of guidelines for site selection.

DOE, with NRC concurrence, issues general

guidelines for recommending sites for repositories. This was accomplished in December

1984.

Nomination. Following issuance of guidelines,

DOE must nominate at least five sites suitable

for detailed evaluation for the first repository.

This is anticipated in early 1985. No later than

July 1, 1989, DOE must nominate five sites

for the second repository.

Characterization. The crucial step in site

evaluation involves tests performed in tunnels

at the base of a large shaft excavated to the

proposed depth of the repository. These tests

are intended to determine the suitability of the

site for a repository. Both NWPA and NRC

regulations require DOE to characterize three

nominated sites for each repository. The first

sites are expected to be named in 1985.

Presidential recommendation and congressional review. Following characterization, the

President must recommend to Congress a site

for the first repository no later than March

31, 1987, and a site for the second repository

no later than March 31, 1990. (DOE has concluded that these recommendations cannot be

made until June 1990 and October 1995, respectively; see below.) At that time, the host

State or Indian tribe has an opportunity to disapprove of the recommendation. Such disapproval prevents further development of the site

unless Congress overrides it by passage of a

joint resolution.

‘NRC construction authorization. If the site

is not disapproved, it is submitted to NRC

for review and issuance of a construction

authorization—i. e., approval to proceed to

construct a repository at the site. NRC must

act on the DOE application within 3 years,

which can be extended by one year at the

Commission’s discretion. This is the last step

explicitly prescribed in detail in NWPA.

Construction. After NRC issues a construction authorization, DOE will construct the

surface facilities and some portion of the

underground facilities of the repository.

7. Operating license. NRC regulations prescribe

that, following construction, NRC will review

an application from DOE to begin disposing

of waste at the repository, an application that

will incorporate any new data about the site

obtained during construction. If this license

is granted, DOE can begin operation.

Imposing this detailed siting process and ambitious schedule on the ongoing DOE siting program

raised certain concerns that need to be considered

in the siting strategy. First, the 1998 deadline for

initial repository operaticn can most likely be met

only by using sites in areas that were already under

investigation at the time the Act was passed, although full-scale operation of the first repository

could be achieved by 2008 even if a site not now

under consideration had to be used (see fig. 6-2).

While this was recognized at the time NWPA was

passed, some have questioned whether it is possible to apply the guidelines required by the Act fairly

and effectively if the sites for initial consideration

were already selected before the guidelines were developed. In addition, some are concerned that, because there is a wide variation in the quantity and

quality of data available for- the various sites under

consideration, and because the siting guidelines

were delayed nearly two years beyond the deadline

specified by NWPA, it may not be possible to make

a sound technical choice among the available sites

at this time. Some are thus concerned that considerations other than technical ones might unduly influence the choices. They argue that DOE should

postpone selecting sites far characterization until

more information on the current sites can be obtained, or even until additional sites can be identified and evaluated.

Any major delay of site characterization (e. g.,

to allow new sites to be considered) would make

it practically impossible to meet NWPA’S 1998

deadline for the first repository. Thus, a Mission

Plan based on the requirements of the Act must

assume that the initial selection of sites for

characterization will be made from among those

now under consideration. The problem is how to

proceed to the characterization stage while minimizing the risk that doing so would lead to premature decisions. In fact, there is considerable agreement in the technical community that it is

important to proceed now t~ detailed characteriza-
Ch. 6—The Mission Plan ● 131

Figure 6-2.—Potentiaiiy Acceptable Sites for the First Repository

Tuff

Basalt

NOTE: In December 1984, DOE published draft environmental assessments on these sites, indicating that the Hanford, Yucca Mountain, and Deaf Smith sites are the

top three candidates for characterization.

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Energy, Draft kfission Plan for the Civilian Radioactive WaSte Management Program, DOEIRW-0005 DRAFT, April 1984.

tion of speeific sites in order to make progress in

developing geologic disposal.20 If that step is deferred because of concerns that there is not enough

data now to proceed, the siting program might get

caught in a vicious circle: before sites could be

selected for at-depth characterization, much more

data about the sites would have to be obtained; yet

to get more data about the sites, characterization

is necessary.

ZOFor exmple, he Interagency Review Group concluded that “Acre

is an urgent need to obtain access to potential repository sites to begin

the process of site characterization. Laboratory studies and in situ testing . . . cannot substitute for thorough examination of actual sites. ”

Subgroup Report on Alternative Technology Stratep”es for the Isolation of NucJear Waste, TID-28818 (draft), October 1978, p. 78. Similarly, a DOE/U. S. Geological Survey (USGS) study concluded that

“The major impediment to the resolution of technical questions leading

to the establishment of a mined geologic repository for commercial

radioactive wastes is the lack of specific sites on which to conduct detailed in situ geological research. DOE and USGS, Earth Science

Technica/ Plan for Disposal of Radioactive Waste in a Mined RepositoV, DOE/TIC-l 1033 (draft), April 1980, p. 1.

The principal risk in choosing sites for characterization using currently available data is that of

prematurely discarding a site that in fact has a better chance of ultimately being licensed by NRC

than one of the sites that is selected. Comparing

sites will be a difficult task. Because there is no

single generally accepted measure of the quality of

a repository site, a judgment that one site is better

than another must be based on a subjective balancing of many incommensurable factors. Such judgments will be particularly difficult before the data

from in situ characterization are available, since

the basic questions about site suitability can only

be answered by at-depth testing. There is no assurance that the sites that appear most likely to be

licensable on the basis of currently available information would turn out to be those that appear most

favorable after characterization has been completed.

Carrying extra sites through critical stages of the

site evaluation process would reduce the risk of pass-
—- —— —

132 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

ing over a good site in favor of a less-favorable one

by deferring the crucial decisions to screen out some

sites in favor of others until more data are available. This approach will be discussed further in the

following description and analysis of the proposed

high-confidence siting strategy.

High-Confidence Siting Plan

A high-confidence Mission Plan, using only the

authority now provided by NWPA, would use an

expanded repository siting strategy to provide confidence that the two repositories required by NWPA

would be available no later than required by the

proposed loading schedule. Evaluation by OTA of

DOE’s analysis of possible sources of delay in the

repository program

21 suggests that there is considerable confidence that the target dates of 2008 and

2012 for full-scale operation of the first and second

repositories can be met if one more site than the

minimum required bylaw is carried through each

stage of the siting process, prior to the actual construction of each repository. Thus, four sites rather

than three would be characterized, and two rather

than one would be recommended for submission

to NRC for construction authorizations.

Sources of Uncertainty

The effect of this expanded strategy on the level

of confidence in the repository schedule can be seen

by considering the two principal sources of uncertainty in the siting process:

● the time required to complete each stage of the

siting process; and

● the likelihood of a site being rejected at each

stage.

TIME REQUIRED TO COMPLETE EACH STAGE

OF THE SITING PROCESS

Table 6-1 shows DOE’s estimates of the possible range of times that might be required for each

major stage of the siting process. A strategy of carrying one more site than the required minimum

through each stage provides insurance against the

possibility that extended delays at any one site will

delay the entire process. For example, NWPA requires that characterization be completed at three

21~q Drafi Mission Plan, pp. B-A-Z?—B-A-M.

sites before one can be recommended for licensing.

If only three sites are characterized, then the date

on which one can be recommended will be determined by the rate of progress at the slowest site.

If four sites are characterized, one can be recommended as soon as the fastest three are completed;

extended delays would have to be encountered at

two sites to delay the entire process. Similarly, submitting two sites to NRC for licensing, rather than

one, means that construction could proceed as soon

as authorization is granted for either.

Table 6-2 shows how extra sites can reduce the

risk that the entire process will be delayed by delays at one site. Notice, for example, that even if

the likelihood of experiencing an extended delay

at any one site during characterization is as low as

20 percent, there is about a 50 percent risk that at

least one site will experience a delay that would hold

up the site recommendation process. Characterizing four sites instead of three can reduce that risk

to about 20 percent. In general, the largest improvement is provided by the first site added beyond the minimum number needed to proceed to

the next stage. This finding is the basis for OTA’s

conclusion that a siting strategy using only one

more than the minimum required number of sites

at key steps can substantially increase confidence

that large delays will be avoided.

LIKELIHOOD OF SITE REJECTION

Analysis performed for OTA indicates that there

is a lack of consensus in the technical community

about how much information about the ultimate

suitability of a site can be determined at each stage

of the site evaluation process-surface testing, in

situ characterization, repository construction, and

operation. 22 Some experts feel that a site that ap--

pears suitable on the basis of tests performed from

the surface will have a high probability of being acceptable as a repository. Others believe that there

could be as much as a 50 Percent chance that such

a site would be rejected on the basis of information obtained during characterization, and as much

as a 40 percent chance that a site that survived characterization would subsequently be rejected on the

22Ghova~ou et ~., op. cit., Ch. 8. Also published in Ghovanlou,

et al., “Selecting a Repository Site, ” Underground Space, vol. 6,

1982, fig. 1, p. 244.
Ch. 6—The Mission Plan ● 133

Table 6-1.—Possible Alternatives for Completion of Major Program Phases of First Repository

Recommend sites for Select site and NRC licensing Construct and test

characterization Characterize sites obtain site approval review repository

Assumotlons and schedule durations:

1-A “

Secretary recommends three sites

to President by

January 1985, President approves

sites in minimum

time provided by

Act (15 months)

1-B

NRC requires significant changes to

siting guidelines,

President approves

site in minimum

time provided by

Act (21 months)

l-c

Extensive modification

required to EAs,

President approves

site in minimum

time provided by

Act (27 months)

1-D

Secretary requires additional data to

support site recommendation, President requires

additional review

period allowed by

Act (45 months)

2-A

Recommendation

based on surface

studies and ES

construction data

(22 months)

2-B

Parallel permitting, insitu testing (49

months)

2-c

Sequential permitting,

in-situ testing (73

months)

2-D

Sequential permitting,

ES construction

delays, extensive

in-situ testing (133

months)

3-A

President recommends site, no

State or Indian

Tribe disapproval

(17 months)

3-B

President recommends site, State

or Indian Tribe

disapproval filed,

Congress overrides (20 months)

3-c

Additional DEIS

review, President

recommends site,

State or Indian

Tribe disapproval

filed, Congress

overrides (29

months)

3-D

Additional DEIS

review, President

recommends site,

site disapproved,

select new site

(43 months)

NRC adopts two-step

construction

authorization

4-A

NRC review expedited (24

months)

4-B

NRC review takes

nominal period

allowed by the

Act (36 months)

4-c

NRC requires additional review time

as allowed by the

Act (48 months)

4-D

NRC requires extensive additional information to

SUPPOft CA (60

months)

4-E

NRC rejects site,

new site selected,

approved and CA

issued (108

months)

Construction under

two-step construction

authorization

5-A

Phased construction,

Phase One complete (53 months),

Phase Two complete (90 months)

5-B

Full scale repository

(70 months)

5-c

Phased construction,

exploratory shafts

not used for construction, Phase

One complete (89

months), Phase

Two complete

(126 months)

5-D

Phased construction,

exploratory shafts

not used for construction, construction delays.

Phase One co-m;

plete (101

months), Phase

Two complete

(138 months)

KEY: EA = environmental assessment

ES = exploratov shaft

DEIS = Draft Environmental Impact Statement

CA = construction authorization

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Energy, Draft Mission Plan for the Civilian Radioactive Waste Management Program, DOE/RW-0005 DRAFT, April 19S4.

basis of information obtained during construction

or operation.

The possibility that disqualifying data would be

found after a site is recommended for licensing is

of particular importance in view of current DOE

siting plans. According to those plans, the initial

license application would be based on 8 to 22

months of in situ testing (depending on the medium), while data from about 7 more years of atdepth tests, including 4 years of extensive underground construction, would be available before

NRC is expected to act on the application for an

operating license. 23 The shorter the time spent obtaining data prior to the license application, the

greater the likelihood that any disqualifying problems at a site will not be discovered until after the

application has been submitted.

ZJDOE, Drafi MiSSOn Plan, p. 3-A-32, and fig. 3-A-5, p. 3-A-38.
134 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radliactive Waste

Table 6.2.—Risk That Delay or Rejection of Sites

in One Stage of Repository Development Will

Delay Progress to the Next Stage

Number of sites considered

Sites needed to at each stage

proceed to next stage 2 3 4 5

P = 20%0

I % 0.2% .03%

; : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : : 3%: 10% 30/0 0.7%

3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . NA 49% 18% 6%

P = 50%

. . . . . . . . . . 25% 13% 60/0 3%

; : : : : : : : : . . . . . . . . . . 75% 50% 31% 19%

3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . NA 870/o 690/o 50%

NOTE: In this tabie, P represents the probability that any individual cite wouid

experience major difficulties in one stage of the siting process, ehher a

deiey in competing the proceae or outright diequetification. Since no cite

haa aver gone through any of these stagea, P ie a subjective judgment.

if N ie the number of aites evaluated in the atege (coiumns) and K ie the

number of eitee that muat compiete the atege to go to the next (rowe),

then the riak of a deiay in the stage is 8impiy the probability that at ieeet

N -K+ 1 sites have difficulties. Using the eimpiifying aeaumptiona that

aach site hee the eeme probability (P) of experiencing difficuitiea, and

that there ie no interdependence of results among the cites, probability

theory showa that the rick is given by the foiiowing atatament:

N

Riak -

J=(?K+,) J&! ‘J(’-PYN-J)

SOURCE: Of fica of Technology Assessment.

Because there is no experience in most of the

steps for developing high-level waste repositories

(and since final EPA performance criteria for repositories have not yet been adopted), this lack of

consensus cannot be resolved at present and is a

factor that must be considered in determining the

appropriate approach for investigating sites for repository development. The expanded strategy described above reduces the consequences of rejection of any one site by providing an additional site

as backup at each stage and by increasing the pool

of viable sites. For example, if there is a 20 percent chance that any one site submitted for a construction authorization will be rejected by NRC,

then submitting two sites instead of one reduces the

risk of not having an approved site from about 20

percent to only 4 percent.

Characterizing four sites rather than three also

provides insurance against a potentially important

ambiguity in the requirements of NWPA. DOE

considers that it can proceed to recommend a site

for licensing even if one or more of the three sites

to be characterized is found unsuitable during or

after characterization .24 However, DOE also rec241 bicl., p. 3-A-33.

ognizes the possibility that this interpretation of the

requirements of NWPA might be found invalid,

and that NWPA might be interpreted as requiring that before DOE can recommend a site for licensing, it must have three sites that appear suitable

for a repository after characterization. 25 Table 6-2

clearly suggests that this more demanding interpretation would make the characterization stage much

more vulnerable to delays if only three sites are

characterized initially. For example, even a 20 percent probability that an individual site would be

rejected would lead to a 50 percent risk that characterizing three candidate sites would produce fewer

than three that were suitable after characterization.

Characterizing four sites would reduce that risk to

about 20 percent. If steps to characterize additional

sites are not taken until this question can be resolved, which may not occur until DOE recommends a site, there is a risk of a delay of 4 or more

years if the more demanding interpretation were

upheld, and if it were necessary to find and characterize a replacement site for one rejected during

the initial characterization phase.26 In any case, if

the legal uncertainty is not resolved before the end

of the characterization process, and if fewer than

three good sites are available at that time, there

could be a delay of a year or more for consideration of a lawsuit to resolve the question.

Steps to Increase Confidence

The following section discusses the high-confidence siting strategy in more detail as it relates to

each of four key areas:

●

●

●

●

relationship of the siting processes for the two

repositories required by NWPA;

characterization of candidate sites for each repository;

recommendation of sites to NRC for construction authorizations; and

screening to identifi new backup sites potentially

suitable for characterization.

z5Recent discussions between DOE and NRC concluded that the

issue remains to be resolved mgaxtling how many sites need to be determined to be suitable afier characterization. The Radioactive Exchange,

vol. 3, No. 11, June 30, 1984, p. 1.

Z6DOE, Dr~t Mi~jon pl~, p. B-A-41. The Draft Mission plan

does not indicate an explicit plan for assuring that backup sites would

be available.
Ch. 6—The Mission Plan . 135

HAVE TWO FULL, SEPARATE PROGRAMS FOR

SITING A FIRST, WESTERN, REPOSITORY

AND A SECOND, EASTERN, REPOSITORY

The overall goal of the siting program is to provide confidence that two repositories will be operating within a relatively short time of each other.

Because the Act requires that transportation costs

and impacts be taken into account in siting the second repository, the siting plan is also designed to

maximize the likelihood that one repository would

be located in the East and one in the West.

A clear commitment to a credible plan for siting both repositories may be needed to allay the

concerns of those areas being considered for the first

repository that they might by default wind up being the nation’s only nuclear waste ‘‘dump’ if financial and institutional pressures lead to indefinite deferral of the second repository. Since most

of the sites under consideration for the first repository are in the West, a serious effort to site the second repository in the East, near most of the reactors, should help deal with concerns of the first

round States about regional equity.

In this approach, the first round of site characterization—for the first repository-would contain

only western sites. The eastern sites now under consideration would not be characterized in the first

round.

For each round of site characterization to focus

on one region, as proposed in the high-confidence

siting plan, the first round must use western sites.

Six of the nine sites now under consideration are

located in the West (see fig. 6-2), and one of the

two westernmost sites (in Nevada and Washington) must be included in the first round in order

to meet NRC requirement that at least one nonsalt site be characterized before the first repository

site can be licensed (all of the other sites are in

bedded or dome salt). Considering only the western sites in the first round, as proposed in this strategy, ensures that both the primary candidate for

NRC licensing and its backup (explained later)

would be western. In addition, it may be easier to

reach agreement about the suitability of a site located in a relatively arid region the first time the

licensing process is attempted. The six western sites

now under consideration represent four distinct

geohydrologic settings and three geologic media

(basalt, tuff, and bedded salt), and thus should provide a sufficiently wide range of choices for characterization in the first round.

The second round of site characterization—for

the second repository—would involve only eastern

sites. Thus, sites characterized for the first, western, repository would not be considered again in

the second round, as now contemplated by DOE.

At present, the DOE Draft Mission Plan provides

that one of the sites from the first round of characterization be counted among the three that must

be characterized before the second repository is selected, as allowed (but not required) by NWPA.27

DOE plans to characterize only two additional sites

for the second round, and is currently screening

crystalline rocks in the East to identify potential candidate sites (see fig. 6-3). The third site, to be carried over from the first round, most likely would

be western, although it could be eastern if one of

the eastern sites now under consideration were characterized in the first round.

Because OTA’s high-confidence siting strategy

provides for only western sites in the first round,

they would not be used again in the second, eastern, round. Instead, DOE would evaluate four eastern sites before selecting the site for the second repository (unless the results of the first round of

characterization show that three would give sufficient confidence that delays could be avoided). This

approach would increase the chances that both a

primary site and a backup (discussed below) for a

second repository will be found in the East. It would

also reduce the stakes involved in selecting the sites

for the first round of characterization. If some sites

from the first round are also used in the second,

as now contemplated by the DOE Draft Mission

Plan, sites selected for the first round face some

chance of being selected for the second repository

even though they are not the first choice for the first

repository. Of course, there will always be some

possibility that one of the sites from the first round

of characterization would ultimately be needed for

the second repository, but in this expanded siting

plan that would be done only as a last resort, i.e.

if a full and fair effort to find a suitable eastern site

fails.

N~E, Dr~t Misson plan, p. 10-4.
— — —.

136 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

Figure 6-3.—Regions Being Considered for the Second Repository

\

Northeastern

Region

I I A

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Energy, Draft Mission Plan for the Civilian Radioactwe Waste Management Program, DOEIRW-00C5 DRAFT, April 19S4.

CHARACTERIZE FOUR SITES FOR EACH

REPOSITORY INSTEAD OF THE THREE

REQUIRED BY NWPA

Characterizing more than the minimum required

number of sites is the principal, and perhaps only,

way to reduce substantially the likelihood of major delays or other complications at the crucial step

of recommending the first site for a repository. Significant problems at this point could damage the

credibility of the Federal waste management effort.

Characterizing one more site than required by

NWPA would provide insurance against the possibility of extended delays (see above). Characterizing four sites also gives greater confidence that at

least two suitable ones will be available after characterization, allowing a backup to be submitted to

NRC more quickly, as discussed below, and avoiding the delay of as much as 10 years that could occur if characterization of backups were not started

until the principal candidate had been rejected.

The increased confidence that at least two suitable characterized sites would be available without

extended delays also would reduce the risk that

Congress might have to consider a State’s objection to the President’s recommendation of the first

site without having a suitable alternative candidate

available. In fact, NWPA requires DOE to recommend a second site for licensing for a repository

within 1 year if the first recommendation is vetoed

by the State and the veto is not overridden by Congress. This can only be done if a second suitable

characterized site is availabls from among the first

set of sites that are characterized.

Characterizing additional sites also reduces the

risk that proceeding now to site characterization

would prematurely narrow the available options on

the basis of relatively little information. For example, characterizing four sites for the first repository

allows one site to be selected from each of the four
Ch. 6—The Mission Plan . 137

western geohydrologic settings. The decision about

which settings to reject could be deferred until after

a site in each setting had been characterized, so that

the decision could be based on comparable and

more extensive data from each site. This minimizes

the risk that a site that has a better chance of ultimately being licensed by NRC might be passed

over in favor of a less suitable site because the currently available data gives a misleading picture.

In this approach, the only narrowing of choices

before characterization of sites for the first repository would be selection of one of the two sites under

consideration in the Paradox Basin area and the

Palo Duro Basin area, the western settings that each

contain two sites. Comparing nearby sites in the

same setting should be easier than comparing sites

in substantially different settings. Thus, the first

use of the siting guidelines would be in the relatively limited choice between sites in the same setting. The guidelines’ major application would come

at the later stage of selecting sites to recommend

to NRC for licensing based on the data from site

characterization, which are needed for the full application of the guidelines in any case.

Characterizing an extra site for each repository

could increase total expected program costs by up

to several percent. The actual amount would depend on the geologic medium involved and the extent of at-depth investigation required. This is discussed below.

RECOMMEND TWO SITES TO NRC FOR

CONSTRUCTION AUTHORIZATIONS FOR EACH

REPOSITORY, RATHER THAN JUST THE

ONE REQUIRED BY NWPA

The conservative contractual commitment dates

(2008 and 2012) for operation of full-scale facilities

at two repositories allow for the possibility that the

primary candidate sites will be rejected by NRC

at some point during the licensing process. To give

further confidence that the commitment dates will

be met, a backup site for each repository would be

submitted for a construction authorization as soon

as possible after the primary site for each repository had been recommended. NRC would be asked

to license both alternatives, rather than to choose

between them.

If only one site per repository is recommended

to NRC for licensing, then the selection of the final

repository site must be made at the recommendation stage on the basis of only the information available after characterization. Recommending two

sites per repository for licensing allows the final

selection to be made after NRC’s review of both

sites, including review of the additional data that

would be obtained from both sites during the 3 or

more years of the licensing process.

The additional cost of submitting a second site

per repository for licensing, assuming that two good

sites are available after characterization, should be

very small compared to the cost of characterizing

the site in the first place. Furthermore, it would

be inexpensive insurance against the delays that

could result if licensing of a second site were not

initiated until after the first was rejected. Even if

neither site were rejected by NRC, this approach

might still reduce the time required for the first repository to begin operation by aIlowing construction to begin as soon as either site for that repository is approved.

If both sites for a repository receive a construction authorization, the one not selected for development would be held as a backup in case problems are discovered during construction or during

the first 5 to 10 years of operation of the repository at the primary site. If the backup site is not

needed by the end of that period, it could be used

for subsequent repositories beyond the first two.

When combined the first step, this step is designed to give confidence that DOE could recommend to NRC both a primary western site with a

western backup, and a primary eastern site with

an eastern backup. Separating the siting process

into western and eastern rounds also reduces the

risk that a good site from the first round that would

otherwise be needed as a backup in that round

would instead be needed for the second repository.

If either the primary site or the backup is rejected, another site would be submitted for a construction authorization as soon as possible to ensure

that one backup would be available with minimum

delay. If a suitable characterized site were available, the additional cost of submitting it for licensing would be small. If a suitable characterized site

were not available, a contingency siting plan could

provide for characterization of an additional site

to be initiated immediately (see discussion of screening program for backup sites below).
—

138 . Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

CONTINUE SITE SCREENING TO IDENTIFY NEW

SITES SUITABLE FOR CHARACTERIZATION AS

BACKUPS FOR THE FIRST TWO ROUNDS

The preceding steps are intended to increase confidence in the repository schedule by increasing the

number of sites initially considered at crucial stages

of the siting process. However, there is always some

possibility that even the increased number would

not be sufficient and that, eventually, additional

sites would have to be characterized. A high-confidence siting strategy would therefore include a

backup site-screening program to identify additional new sites suitable for characterization for both

the western and eastern repositories.

Characterization of an additional site could begin, for example, in the unlikely event that only

one site survives the initial round of characterization and would ensure that a backup site for each

repository can be recommended to NRC for a construction authorization. Or an additional site might

be characterized in case one of the two sites submitted to NRC is rejected and there is no other suitable characterized site available. Such a step would

minimize the delay that would result if the sole remaining site were rejected at some later point in

the licensing process. (In either case, this would

mean that all but one of the sites initially characterized had been rejected at some point in the process. This would be evidence that the more pessimistic view about the difficulty of finding suitable

sites is correct, and that having a backup available

is even more important than originally expected. )

This contingency siting plan increases confidence

that the conservative contractual repository loading

schedule can be met even if there are major problems with the first round of site characterization.

As noted in the discussion of the repository loading

schedule, it is possible that the first repository could

be operating by 2008 even if none of the first four

sites characterized proved suitable and one of the

sites identified through the backup screening program had to be characterized and used. This contingency plan also gives added confidence that each

of the two licensed repositories required by the Act

will be backed up by a second site with a construction authorization, which could be developed into

a full repository if problems are discovered with the

operating repositories during their initial years of

operation.

The backup site screening process would not replace the ongoing DOE siting program, which

would continue as the meii.ns for meeting the schedules in NWPA for identifying the first candidate

sites for characterization for the first and second

repositories. DOE’s analysis of the repository development schedule suggests that a siting program

designed to make a best effort to meet the 1998

deadline for the first repository must proceed to site

characterization in the next year or so. Yet it would

probably take several years to identify new candidate sites and to complete the necessary procedural

steps for characterizing them; for example, DOE

does not expect to be able to begin characterizing

sites for the second repository until 1989. Thus the

NWPA repository schedule appears to require that

characterization begin with the sites now under consideration, in order to determine if they include at

least one that is suitable for a repository.

To give confidence that both a western and an

eastern site can ultimately be found, the backup

siting program would search for backups in the

West for the western sites now under consideration

for the first repository site, as well as backups in

the East for the second site. This requires an expansion of the program in the DOE draft Mission

Plan, which suggests that sites under consideration

for the second repository be considered as backups

for the first, if backups are needed.

The backup sites for possible characterization for

a repository in the West could be obtained, for example, by continuing the screening of the Basin and

Range province now being conducted by the U.S.

Geological Survey (USGS) .28 This USGS effort

uses a site screening process, proposed in 1980 by

a Federal interagency working group,29 that

searches for favorable geohydrologic environments

instead of focusing initially on particular host rocks

or on federally owned land, as in past siting efforts. so (Identifying new sites that are not now

28M. S. Bedinger, et d., “Status of Geohydrologic Screening of

the Basin and Range Province for 1:.elation of High-Level Radioactive Waste, ‘‘ in DOE, Proceedings {}f the 1983 Civilian Radioactive

Waste Management Information Meeting, pp. 193-195.

29u. s. Geologic~ Survey, Plan fiw Mentification and Geological

Characterization of Sites for Mined Radioactive Waste Repositories,

Water-Resources Investigations Open-File Report 80-686 (Reston,

Va., May 1980).

30The siting program outlined in the Drafit Mission plan is a continuation of the two principal approaches to site identification that

have been used in tha past by DOE and its predecessors: 1) search-
Ch. 6—The Mission Plan 139

under consideration for the first repository would

avoid having to use as backups any of the current

sites that were not judged good enough to be included among the first four selected for characterization, and would address the concerns of those

who feel that siting efforts should not be limited to

the current sites. ) Backups for an eastern repository could be identified by using this same screening process in the East, or by considering media

in addition to crystalline rocks, which are the focus

of current efforts to identify sites for the second repository.31

Costs and Benefits of the

High-Confidence Siting Strategy

The basic issue in selecting a siting strategy is

the balance between the initial cost of the strategy

and the degree of confidence that long delays will

be avoided. As noted earlier, OTA’S conclusion that

there can be considerable confidence in the conservative repository loading schedule is based on

the assumption that the backup siting strategy described above would be used.

The crucial near-term siting question is whether to characterize one extra site for the first repository, in addition to the three required by NWPA.

DOE’s current plan to characterize only three sites

is identical to the plan in place before NWPA imposed the 1998 deadline for initial repository operation. Characterizing one additional site is the principal significant expansion that could be made to

increase the confidence that a licensed repository

would be available by 1998. While characterizing

an additional site would increase program costs over

the next 4 years or so, it could reduce total program costs in the long run by reducing or avoiding

potentially costly delays. Thus the decision on how

many sites to characterize raises important questions for the Congressional appropriations process.

ing for favorable locations containing a potentially suitable candidate

host rock, and 2) searching for favorable locations with suitable host

rocks on Federal reservations dedicated to nuclear activities. Of the

six areas now under consideration for the first repository, four with

salt deposits (Texas, Utah, Mississippi, and Louisiana) were identified by the first method, while two (the Hanford Reservation in Washington and the Nevada Test Site) were identified by the second. Candidate sites for the second repository are being identified by the first

method, focusing on crystalline rocks (granite) in the East.

31DOE, Dr~t Mission Plan, pp. 2-%—2-47.

To give Congress a clear understanding of the

implications of decisions about the siting program,

especially the decision about how many sites to

characterize, it would be valuable for the Mission

Plan to present the results of a rigorous comparison

of the costs and benefits of alternative siting strategies. This should evaluate both a minimum strategy that does no more than explicitly required by

NWPA and an expanded strategy that includes one

more than the minimum required number of sites

at key stages. This comparison should consider: 1)

the increased initial costs of a backup siting strategy, 2) the long-term cost savings that can result

if delays can be avoided by such a strategy, and

3) the non-quantifiable costs and benefits of the

siting strategy. The remainder of this section discusses some preliminary observations concerning

each area.

INCREASED INITIAL COST

The principal cost impact results from the number of additional sites that would be characterized

under the expanded siting strategy; the other provisions, such as submitting two sites for licensing,

should have considerably less impact. The additional cost of characterization is difficult to determine

at this time for several reasons. First, the actual cost

of characterizing an additional site is difficult to determine from available information. It will depend

upon the amount of work that must be done at the

site. At one extreme, it is possible that preliminary

borehole tests could lead to the site being rejected

before an exploratory shaft is sunk.32 At the other

extreme, the Draft Mission Plan envisions carrying out at each characterized site a considerable

amount of engineering and construction that is actually required only for a site that is recommended

for development and licensing. While this can save

some time in the repository schedule, it adds perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars to the costs incurred at the sites that are not used,33 without in-

~ZCharacterization Cm include boreholes from the surface as well

as an exploratory shaft. If there is reason to suspect that additional

tests from the surface might disclose factors that would preclude use

of the site, those tests could be performed first to determine whether

it is worth incurring the costs and impacts of sinking an exploratory

shaft. If the site were rejected before the shaft was sunk, characterization activities could be terminated and the site reclaimed, as required

by section 113(c) of NWPA.

gsThe DOE Drfit Mission plan proposes that characterization at

each site include sinking two large shafts that can subsequently be

used for repository constmction (p. 3-A-21), a step which is expected
140 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

creasing the certainty of the schedule in the same

way that characterizing an additional site would.

To facilitate congressional deliberations on the

DOE waste management budget, it would be useful

for the Mission Plan: 1) to distinguish clearly between characterization costs that are required to determine which sites are suitable for recommendation, and those additional costs that are required

only for a site which is selected for development;

and 2) to compare DOE’s current proposed approach with one in which four sites are characterized only to the extent necessary for DOE to select

the most promising two for submission to NRC (as

provided above), with the more expensive detailed

work needed to support a license application to be

done only at those two sites.

The additional cost is also uncertain because it

is unclear how many extra sites would ultimately

have to be characterized. At the outside, all of the

steps described above could require characterization of three more sites than the five contemplated

in current DOE plans (one extra site as a backup

for each repository, and an additional eastern site

to replace the one that DOE plans to carry over

from the first round.) However, just as many additional sites might be required under a minimal

strategy-if only one site survives the first round,

for example, it would be necessary to characterize

at least three new sites for the eastern repository.

Thus, characterizing extra sites before they are

needed, rather than after, merely incurs those costs

earlier than would otherwise be the case. In addition, it may not be necessary to characterize more

than three for the second repository in any case,

if experience with the first round shows that an additional site is not needed to give the desired level

to save about 3 years in the DOE schedule (p. 3-A-37). The additional cost of a second large shaft is estimated to be about $75 million

to $100 million per site (footnote on p. 10-4). The Drdt Mission Plan

also provides for detailed engineering work including limited final waste

package and repository designs for all characterized sites, including

those not selected for development (p. 10-2). The additional cost of

preparing limited final designs for all characterized sites is difiicult

to estimate but could amount to $160 million per site or more (table

10-1, p. 10-5, and fig. 3-A-5, p. 3-A-38). By comparison, NRC estimated in 1981 that $25 million to $30 million was an upper limit for

the “at-depth” portion of site characterization (in soft rock), assuming that the test facility included two shafts and up to 1,000 feet of

tunnels. U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, ‘ ‘Disposal of HighLevel Radioactive Wastes in Geologic Repositories: Licensing Procedures,” Federa/Re~”ster, vol. 46, No. 37, Feb. 25, 1981, p. 13973.

of confidence in the schedule for the second repository.

REDUCED LONG-TERM COSTS

The major quantifiable benefit of the expanded

siting strategy is that it can reduce the likelihood

of the delays that would result if backup sites are

developed only after it is certain that they are

needed. Such delays would require additional interim spent fuel storage, for example-for this alone

a delay of as much as 5 years, while additional sites

were characterized, could cost between $600 million and $1.1 billion.34 A rigorous comparison of

the costs and benefits of alternative siting strategies must balance the expected costs of such delays

against the expected initial siting costs.

NONQUANTIFIABLE COSTS AND BENEFITS

Perhaps the most important nonquantifiable benefit of the expanded siting strategy is that it reduces

the risk that the credibility of the Federal waste

management program would be damaged by major delays at key stages of the siting program, particularly at the crucial early step of recommending

the first site for a repository. Because of its troubled

history, the program does not appear to have a large

reservoir of goodwill left to cushion it in the event

of major difficulties in the future. From this perspective, it is important to compare siting strategies in terms of the risks they involve if siting turns

out to be difficult, as well as the benefits they yield

if siting proves to be relatively easy.

If the most optimistic view proves to be correct,

the conservative siting strategy described in this section will produce more sites than are needed—

which should increase confidence that repositories

can be made available as needed if a significant expansion of the use of nuclear power is contemplated.

Potentially suitable sites can be banked, saved for

later use, and developed as they are needed. If the

sites are eventually developed, the initial cost of site

evaluation is not lost, only incurred sooner than

absolutely necessary. If the more pessimistic view

proves to be correct, the sizing strategy will reduce

the likelihood of costly delays and adverse political impacts that might result if the current siting

3+B~ing Engineering Company Southeast, Inc., Spent Fuel Storage System Options: A Comparative Cost Analysis, a report prepared

for the Electric Power Research Institute, 1984, table 2-5, p. 2-13.
Ch. 6—The Mission Plan ● 141

process fails to produce enough suitable sites at any

key decision point in the siting process. In addition, by providing for backups at key stages of the

repository development process, the conservative

siting strategy would increase the credibility of the

process by reducing fears that crucial decisions

might be prejudiced by the absence of any real alternatives.

It can be argued that expansion of the site evaluation process beyond the minimum required by

NWPA would increase the political costs involved

in locating radioactive waste repository sites, since

it would increase the number of States affected by

DOE siting activities. On the other hand, it can

be argued that, because it would increase confidence that two repositories would in fact be available on schedule, with one in the East and one in

the West, the expanded program would offer advantages to States that do not wish to see their nuclear reactors become de facto spent fuel repositories

and to States that would be substantially affected

by waste transportation if there were only one repository. Furthermore, keeping the processes for

siting the first and second repositories separate, and

not using sites characterized for one repository for

the other as well, could reduce the concerns of the

targets for the first repository that they would also

be under consideration for the second, and the concerns of the targets for the second repository that

they may wind up being the first-and perhaps the

only—repository.

Waste Management Technology

Development Program

The second element of a high-confidence implementation program is a conservative waste management technology development program. This

program includes parallel development of both a

conservative baseline waste management system design, intended to be widely viewed as workable despite the remaining technical uncertainties, and an

optimized system design. The conservative baseline

system design, to be widely viewed as workable,

would be based on currently available data and on

the assumption that current technical and regulatory uncertainties could be resolved in the direction of increased, rather than reduced, demands

on system performance. This approach minimizes

the probability that the design would have to be

modified substantially in the light of unfavorable

developments, and thus would build confidence that

a conservative loading schedule based on the design could be met even if such developments occurred. It also provides a useful basis for a conservative estimate of disposal costs.

As noted earlier, the conservative design would

be intended only for implementation during the

demonstration phase of repository operation, while

the optimized system design would be implemented

for the operational phase. However, the conservative design would be available as a backup if problems are encountered with the alternative. Furthermore, the existence of a conservative design that

is widely viewed as workable would reduce the likelihood that disagreements in the technical community, about whether a proposed ‘‘optimal’ design

is suitable, would be interpreted by the public as

disagreement about whether there is any design that

will work.

This section will describe in general terms both

a conservative baseline design and the related

RD&D program for each element of the waste management system.

Geologic Repositories

NWPA requires that a conceptual repository design be included in the site characterization plan

to be prepared for each site proposed for detailed

evaluation. In addition, baseline repository designs

are needed as a basis for determining the waste disposal fee and to provide additional focus for the

RD&D program.

DOE and its predecessors have generally used

the approach of developing reference repository designs that appeared most cost effective in light of

the best information available at the time. As new

information about site conditions, waste characteristics, repository performance, or regulatory requirements became available, the designs were

modified to conform to the new information and

to maintain their cost effectiveness. This has sometimes led to ongoing technical disagreements about

whether the designs would be acceptable, and to

repeated changes in the system design. The object

of developing a conservative baseline design is to

minimize the technical debates about whether the
142 . Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

system would be able to meet regulatory requirements, and to provide a basis for a workable disposal system that is not likely to require continued

modification.

One risk of using conservative baseline designs

is that they could lead to higher waste disposal costs

than necessary if additional RD&D indicated that

their conservatism was excessive but it proved institutionally difficult to relax that conservatism once,

the designs had been adopted. This risk would be

reduced by proving for a demonstration phase of

low-level operation at the first repository before the

full-scale packaging and handling facilities are built.

The conservative system design is in fact explicitly

intended for that initial demonstration phase, with

development of an optimized full-scale system design deferred until the principal remaining technical uncertainties have been resolved.

Using a conservative design for the demonstration phase should reduce the likelihood of difficulties

during the licensing process, and could minimize

the time required to gain NRC approval for initial emplacement of waste in the repository. Until

the final design is completed, the conservative reference design could be used as a basis for a conservative estimate of the waste disposal fee, thus

reducing the likelihood of insufficient revenues. It

should be noted, however, that even if a conservative design must ultimately be used, the additional

costs should not substantially affect the overall economic competitiveness of nuclear power.35

~~A review of the pape~ presented at a recent international conference on radioactive waste management concluded: “Though (disposal)

costs are higher than had been assumed previously, they do not seem

likely to have a serious or decisive impact on the use of nuclear power—

and this even in countries with small nuclear programmed. Economics was not and will not be a major driving force for simplifying or

reducing conservatism in radioactive waste management systems; elaborate systems that meet long-term safety and stringent radiation protection requirements can be aflorded, even though they may not always

be justifiable on technical grounds. ” S. Fareeduddin and J. Hirling,

“The Radioactive Waste Management Conference, ” Znternationai

Atomic Energy Agency Bulletin, vol. 25, no. 4, December 1983, p.

4. For perspective, DOE projects that the price of uranium in the year

2000 might range somewhere between $25 and $120 per pound (in

current 1983 dollars), compared to a price of about $20 per pound

in 1984, and that an increase of $10 per pound in the price of uranium

increases the nuclear fuel cost to utilities by about 0.8 mills (.08 cents)

per kilowatt-hour (kWh). U.S. Department of Energy, United States

Mining and Milling Industry: A Comprehensive Review, DOE/S0028, May 1984, pp. 47 and 60. This range of uncertainty represents

a range of about 8 mills/kWh in nuclear fuel cost (measured in 1983

dollars), compared to the 1 mill/kWh waste disposal fee established

by NWPA.

The principal areas for conservatism in repository designs are reduced thermal loading, retrievability, the waste form, and the waste package.

REDUCED THERMAL LOADING

A major source of conservatism in repository design would be in thermal design criteria-allowable

heat load per acre and maximum temperatures of

waste package and rock formation. The decay heat

from the waste is a major source of uncertainty

about the long-term behavior of the engineered barriers, the repository facility itself, and the hydrogeologic environment in the vicinity of the repository. One straightforward way to reduce technical

uncertainties about repository performance is to

keep the repository temperatures relatively l0W.

36

Available studies suggest that a conservative initial repository design would keep the maximum

temperature of the rock in the repository in the vicinity of 100° C. For example, a recent National

Research Council review of geologic disposal concluded that limiting the rock temperature to 100°

C would provide confidence in the suitability of borosilicate glass, the reference waste form for reprocessed waste, until the necessary research is performed to show that it would be suitable at higher

temperatures.

37 In contrast, current DOE reference

designs have rock temperatures that range from

140° C (in unsaturated tuff) to 250° C (in basalt) .38

In addition to reducing rechnical disagreement

about the expected performance of the repository,

use of conservative thermal criteria may have the

added benefit of reducing the amount of RD&D

that is needed on waste forms and packages by reducing the temperature range for which their performance must be assured.

~sFor examp]e, in its comments on DOE’s preliminary draft Mission Plan, NRC obsemed that “DOII can reduce or eliminate uncertainties about testing needs by design measures such as limiting thermal loading. ” Letter from John G. Davis, Director, Ofice of Nuclear

Materials Safety -d Safeguards, U.!]. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, to Michael J. Lawrence, Acting Director, Oflice of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, Department of Energy, Feb. 8, 1984,

p. 2.

~7A Study of the Isolation System fhr GeoIop”c Disposai of Radioactive Wastes, (Washington, D. C.: Na:ional Academy Press, 1983), p.

7. Conservative repository designs developed by the Swedish utilities

would also limit maximum temperaf ures to this range. See, for example, KBS, Find Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel-KBS-3, (Stockholm: Swedish Nuclear Fuel Supply Co., May 1983).

S8Nation~ Research Council, op. cit. P. 8.
Ch. 6—The Mission Plan ● 143

A lower thermal loading can be achieved in three

ways:

1.

2.

3.

Cooling the waste prior to final sealing in the

repository. Even with an optimistic repository

loading schedule, with the full-scale facilities

of the two repositories beginning operation in

1998 and 2005, the initial spent fuel emplaced

would be 25 years old, and fuel as young as

10 years old would not be emplaced until after

2010.39 Additional cooling could be obtained,

if desired, by storing the spent fuel above

ground at the repository site for a longer period before emplacement, or by keeping the

repository rooms open for some period after

emplacement and using active ventilation to

remove heat before the rooms are backfilled

and sealed.

Reducing the amount of waste in each canister. The amount of waste placed in each canister affects not only the maximum temperature of the canister after emplacement, but

also the number of canisters that must be handled each year to accommodate a target waste

loading rate, an important determinant of system design and cost. Recent DOE designs

assume that the canister loading will be increased by disassembling spent fiel assemblies

and consolidating the individual rods in the

waste canister, allowing the rods from 6 pressurized water reactor assemblies, or 18 of the

smaller assemblies from boiling water reactors, to be placed in a single canister. Since

this involves an additional complex operation,

a conservative design (for demonstration

phase operations and initial cost estimates)

would instead assume no rod consolidation.

The RD&D program for developing an optimum system design would be intended to provide the data needed to justify larger canister

loads.

Reducing the amount of waste per acre of repository. Reducing the amount of waste per

acre (the emplacement density) will reduce the

heat load per acre for waste of any given age,

leading to lower temperatures. At the same

time, it would increase the number or size of

wu . . s Depa~ment of Ener~, Spent Fuel and Radioactive Waste

Inventories, Projections, and Characteristics, DOEIRW-0006, September 1984, fig. C.2, p. 284.

repositories required for a given amount of

radioactive material, thus increasing the disposal cost. From a technical point of viewi increasing the emplacement density is an easy

way to relax the thermal conservatism used

in the demonstration phase.

Using conservative thermal criteria for the baseline repository design is consistent with the principle of basing the baseline design to the maximum

extent possible on data and analysis that are available now. The National Research Council study

of geologic disposal concluded that current DOE

design temperatures are much higher than the temperatures used in most studies of waste form dissolution,40 and it suggested using conservative initial temperature limits, although it also concluded

that research will probably eventually allow use of

higher temperatures. While conservative thermal

criteria would be used for initial emplacement of

waste during the demonstration phase, the RD&D

program would determine the extent to which those

criteria could be relaxed for emplacement during

the operational phase.

RETRIEVABILITY

NRC’s regulations for high-level waste disposal

require that the repository design keep open the option of waste retrieval throughout the period during which wastes are being emplaced, and thereafter

until completion of a repository performance confirmation program and NRC review of the results.

The regulations specify that the design provide for

retrieval to be undertaken any time within 50 years

after initiation of emplacement, subject to modification in light of the planned emplacement schedule

and confirmation program .41 In addition, NWPA

(sec. 122) also requires that repository designs allow

for retrieval of spent fuel for safety or economic reasons, subject to NRC approval.

An important design question affecting the cost

of disposal is whether to provide for “ready retrievability, ” easy access to the waste, by keeping the

repository rooms open during the retrievability period rather than backfilling them soon after waste

emplacement. A period of ready retrievability offers two advantages. First, it reduces concerns that

+ONation~ Research Council, op. cit. p. 8.

+lFeder~ Register, VO]. 48, No. 120, June 21, 1983, p. 28197.
144 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

emplacement of waste in a repository is a practically

irreversible step. Second, it enables economic recovery of spent fuel if reprocessing appears desirable

after the fuel has been emplaced.

NRC’s regulations do not require easy access,

nor do they preclude backfilling. While there are

some advantages to early backfilling, particularly

in salt, remaining the hot backfill to retrieve the

waste could be quite difficult and expensive .42 Thus,

the retrievability requirement may be an additional

factor favoring conservative thermal design criteria.

Since the design implications of the NRC requirement have not yet been thoroughly assessed,

a conservative initial design would provide for some

period of ready retrievability after emplacement,

although perhaps not for the full period of repository operation. DOE has analyzed 25-year ready

retrievability and concluded that it is feasible, although it is more expensive because it requires reduced thermal loads per acre.43 However, the additional cost could be reduced by using ventilation

to remove excess heat; furthermore, the conservative thermal loads needed to meet a 100° C design

temperature may enable ready retrievability at relatively small additional cost.

In any case, the assumption of some period of

ready retrievability should provide a conservative

estimate of the cost of disposal and could increase

confidence in initial low-level emplacement of waste

in the repository. The assumption could be relaxed

for full-scale operation when analysis is available

to show that NRC requirements can be met even

if rooms are backfilled soon after waste emplacement, and when it is clear that ready retrievability

of spent fuel is not needed for economic reasons.

WASTE FORM

DOE reference waste forms are borosilicate glass

for solidified high-level waste and untreated fuel assemblies for spent fuel. Because EPA analysis concludes that either waste form could meet EPA’s pro-

.—. —

4ZNatiOn~ ReSearCh council, Op. cit., p. 9.

43The cost impact is greatest for a repository in salt, because, unlike

hard rock, salt flows under pressure, making it more difficult to keep

tunnels open for an extended period. U.S. Department of Energy,

Final Environmental Impact Statement, Management of Commercially Generated Radioactive Waste, DOEIEIS-0046F, (Washington,

D, C.: October 1980), vol. 2, app. K, pp. K.23-K.25.

posed environmental standards,44 and because these

are the two waste forms that have been studied in

most detail, a conservative baseline system design

would be based on these waste forms. This is consistent with the decision to use borosilicate glass as

the waste form for solidifying the liquid commercial high-level waste stored at the inoperative Nuclear Fuel Services reprocessing plant at West Valley, NY, and the defense high-level waste stored

at the Savannah River plant. The classified waste

from West Valley, and some of the waste from Savannah River (if it is decided to place defense waste

in commercial repositories), could be used in the

demonstration phase of the first repository, along

with an amount of spent fuel. As noted above, a

National Research Council study concluded that

keeping the temperature of the borosilicate glass

below 100° C, as provided in the conservative repository design for the demonstration phase, would

give confidence in its suitability as a waste form

until the uncertainties in its performance at higher

temperatures can be resolved through additional

research .45 The waste form RD&D program would

determine whether this conservatism could be relaxed in the full-scale operational phase.

The RD&D program would provide for development of backup waste forms for both untreated

spent fuel and high-level waste as a hedge against

unforeseen problems such as regulatory difficulties.

In particular, the recent National Research Council

study of geologic disposal concludes that neither

waste form may be able to meet NRC criterion

that the engineered barriers allow no more than one

part in 100,000 of each critical radionuclide to escape each year. 46 While this criterion is not absolute, and might be adjusted by NRC for individual radionuclides in light of the EPA standard or

the geochemical characteristics of the repository and

4+u.s. EnvirOnment~ Protection Agency, Drafit Environmental ~mpact Statement for 40 CFR 191: Environmental Standards for Management and Disposal of Spent Nuclear Fuel, High-Level and Transuranic Radioactive Wastes, EPA 520/1-82-025, (Washington, D. C.:

December 1982).

4sNation~ Research Council, op. cit., p. 7. This study concluded

ttlat “borosilicate glass is the appro~wiate choice for further testing

and for use in current repository de:,igns’ but also that ‘‘there are

uncertainties about its performance m a repository that need to be

better understood before glass waste ~ ould be acceptable for emplacement in a repository. ” Ibid., p. 78.

4bNation~ Research Council, op. cit., pp. 237-238.
Ch. 6—The Mission Plan ● 145

its environs, 47 it is possible that less soluble waste

forms might be necessary for at least some candidate repository sites. In addition, the National Research Council study concluded that significant improvements in repository performance could be

achieved if highly insoluble waste forms could be

developed. The study participants recommended

a backup technical program that would: 1) provide

insurance against the contingency that release rates

from currently preferred waste forms prove considerably higher than now estimated, and 2) develop better waste package alternatives that could

be used in later stages of waste emplacement .48 The

potential effect of a reduced waste form release rate

on the risks from geologic disposal is shown in table

6-3.

The RD&D program could examine such waste

forms, as well as processes for treating spent fuel

(e.g., by powdering or chemical dissolution) so that

it could be incorporated in such a waste form directly if reprocessing and plutonium separation is

not otherwise undertaken for resource recovery reasons. However, later decisions about whether to use

an alternative waste form that involves significantly

more complex treatment and handling processes

than the reference waste forms involve (e. g., dissolution and resolidification of spent fuel) should

take into account the increased costs, risks, and

operational exposures that would be entailed .49

4710 cFiIart 60.113(a)(l )(ii)(J3).

qBNatiOnal Research council, Op. cit. , pp. 82-83.

+gThe Nation~ Research Council review of geologic disposal observed that the operational considerations of producing different waste

forms could be a factor in the choice between waste forms, and conConservatism also suggests that the entire waste

management process be kept as simple as possible.

WASTE PACKAGE

A conservative baseline waste package would use

the package design that has received the most study

to date: a metal canister, containing several spent

fuel assemblies, which would be emplaced in vertical boreholes drilled in the floor of the repository

rooms. Since the package would be unshielded, it

would require remote handling. Potentially more

cost-effective emplacement techniques now under

consideration by DOE, such as insertion into long

horizontal boreholes drilled out from the walls of

the rooms, would not be used in the baseline design because they have not been studied as thoroughly as the vertical emplacement concept.

A major aspect of conservatism in the waste package concerns the design lifetime of the package. Proposed EPA criteria encourage use of multiple barriers to increase confidence about long-term

isolation, and NRC final regulations require that

the waste package provide assurance of containment

of the waste for a period of from 300 to 1000 years,

the period during which the heat released by the

waste will have its greatest effect. Some argue that

analyses using mathematical models to project repository performance show that such a package

would not significantly improve the predicted percluded: ‘‘The analysis of the release of radioactivity to the environment must include the entire waste disposal cycle, beginning with

waste-form manufacture, to achieve overall minimal release objectives. National Research Council, op. cit., p. 14

Table 6-3.—Effects of Canister Life and Waste Form Release Rate on

Projected Population Risks Over 10,000 Years

Projected health effects

Granite Bedded salt Basalt

Canister life:

Reference Case (100 years) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . — 190 —

(500 years) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 760 — 4,400

1,000 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 575 90 3,900

5,000 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 40 180

Waste form release rate:

Reference case (10-41year). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 760 190 4,400

High estimate (l O-’/year) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,500 200 18,000

Low estimate (lO-a/year) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 50 50

— = Not applicable.

SOURCE: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Draft .Envirorrnrerrtal Impact Statement on 40 CFR Part 191, Environmental

Standards for Management and Disposal of Spent Nuclear Fuel, High-Level and Transurarric Radioactive Wastes,

EPA 52011-82-025, December 1982.
146 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

—

formance. Others, including NRC, argue that it

may be needed to give greater confidence in the

predictions of repository performance.50

A conservative approach would be to provide for

a waste package with a design life exceeding the

regulatory requirements, and to use that waste form

as a fully redundant barrier, rather than as a compensation for any defects in the geologic features

of the site. (The potential effect of increased canister life on the risks from geologic disposal is shown

in table 6-3. ) Long life is achieved by using thick

canister walls and/or corrosion-resistant material,

such as copper, titanium, or zirconium. For example, a Swedish-designed copper canister for use in

a granite repository has been estimated to have up

to a 1-million-year life.51 DOE estimates that a titanium canister would add about $6 per kilogram

to the cost of disposal,52 compared to current waste

package designs using a simple canister of stainless

steel (for tuff) or carbon steel (for salt or basalt). 53

A conservative baseline system design would include a long-lived package in its plans for the demonstration phase and in estimating disposal costs,

while the RD&D program to develop an optimized

design would determine whether that conservatism

could be relaxed for full-scale operation.

While the conservative baseline design would use

the borehole waste package concept, recent analyses have suggested that there may be significant advantages to a waste package design that is significantly different from the borehole design. This

alternative design involves a massive (70 to 100

tonnes) cast iron or cast steel cask holding up to

10 to 20 tonnes of spent fuel, which could also conceivably be used for storage and transportation .54

Such a cask would provide radiation shielding so

that complicated hot cell operations, shielded transport vehicles, and shielded storage vaults would not

5010 CFR pan (jo. 11 S(a)( 1 )(ii)(B). The importance of an effective

engineered barrier in addition to the waste form itself is discussed in

‘ ‘Achieving Performance Objectives for the Engineered Barrier Systern, ” a Staff Report prepared by the Subcommittee on Energy Conservation and Power of the Committee on Energy and Commerce of

the U.S. House of Representatives, Committee Print 98-II, November 1984.

31 NationA Reseamh Council, A Review of the Swedish KBS-3 plan

for Final Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel (Washington, D. C.: National

Academy Press, 1984), p. 3.

5ZDOE, Repo~ on Financing the Disposal of Spent Fuel, p. 23.

33D0E, Draft Mission Plan, p. 3-A-19.

S4Westinghouse, En@nee~ Waste Package; Hoskins, oP. cit.

be required.55 The casks would simply be placed

in repository rooms, eliminating the need for drilling holes for holding the package.

It maybe possible to design such a cask as a universal container for storage, transportation, and disposal. If so, it could substantially reduce the complexity of the waste management process and

reduce worker exposures, since the spent fuel would

be handled directly only once—at the time it is

placed in casks at the reactor. This universal container would also provide great flexibility in the system, since once spent fuel; has been placed in the

cask in which it will ultimately be buried (unless

it is removed for reprocessing), slippages in the repository schedule would not cause additional storage problems. Even if such a multipurpose outer

cask cannot be used, the universal container concept could be applied to an inner container that

could be inserted into separate outer containers for

storage, transportation, and disposal.

Because of the potential advantages of this unproven concept, the RD&D program to develop an

optimized system design would resolve questions

about its feasibility as quickly as possible, so that

this concept can be considered as an option for the

operational phase of the first repository, (It is important to resolve the question before full-scale

packaging facilities are des;igned and constructed,

because the different waste packages impose different requirements on the design of the handling

facilities and on the repository itself. The operational implications of using a massive disposal cask

may have to be determined during the generic packaging and handling test program, required by the

Act, before a decision could be made to adopt that

concept.) Although DOE plans to examine this system, it is unclear from the Draft Mission Plan

whether this system’s feasibility would be determined in time for its use in the full-scale facilities

of the first repository. As discussed above, the twophase approach to operation of the first repository

is designed to allow ample tlme to determine whether this technology is feasible and desirable before

a commitment is made to a final design for the operational-phase system.

Sswestinghouse, L?ngineered Waste package, p. 279.
Ch. 6—The Mission Plan ● 147

TECHNOLOGY OF PREDICTION

As discussed in chapter 3, predictions of repository performance will be based heavily on the use

of mathematical models. Use of such predictive

techniques in a formal licensing process may well

be one of the most difficult aspects of demonstrating

disposal, and validation of those techniques will be

of critical importance. 56 Since such long-term prediction has never been done in a formal regulatory

process, many unforeseen problems will probably

be encountered the first time it is attempted. A serious effort to anticipate and resolve such problems

before the first formal licensing proceeding commences could avoid unnecessary delays at that critical stage of the waste disposal program. This could

be accomplished, for example, if the site characterization plan required by section 113(b) of NWPA

included a preliminary analysis by DOE of the expected performance of the conceptual repository design for that site, based on the data available prior

to characterization. If this analysis were explicitly

related to NRC and EPA performance requirements, a broad review process involving NRC,

EPA, USGS, and others could begin at that time.

This could allow ample time for thorough consideration of the issues that might arise. It would also

provide a rigorous basis for the characterization

program, so that efforts could be focused on resolving the uncertainties that were identified as centrally important to the predictions of repository performance.

While this approach might not lead to formal resolution of licensing issues, in the sense that they

could not be reopened later, it is possible that a sufficient degree of technical consensus could be

reached that some issues would be effectively resolved. This would permit attention to be focused

on those issues that remained in dispute. If this were

done at each site recommended for characterization, it should increase the probability that NRC

JGThe NatiOn~ Research Council study of geologic disposal noted

that ‘ ‘There is not yet a validated technique for predicting the performance of borosilicate glass—or of any other waste form—in a repository . . . Whatever technique the U.S. Department of Energy

(DOE) adopts for predicting waste-form and waste-package performance must be carehdly validated before any waste form and waste package can be considered acceptable. National Research Council, Zsolation System, pp. 78-79. For a discussion of general issues in the

development and use of predictive models, see OffIce of Technology

Assessment, Use of Models for Water Resource Management, Planning, and Policy, OTA-O-159, August 1982, ch. 3.

would be able to reach a decision on a site within

the 4 years’ maximum time allowed in NWPA.

Storage

Available analyses indicate that there are

technically promising interim storage methods that

could substantially reduce the overall cost of waste

management. These include rod consolidation and

storage casks that could also be used for transportation and perhaps for disposal. Since these methods have not yet been demonstrated and licensed,

a conservative system design would not assume that

these technologies would be available, but would

instead assume that all spent fuel would be received

unconsolidated in casks optimized for shipping

only. However, the RD&D program in the Mission Plan would contain an accelerated effort to examine these possibilities and determine the extent

to which they could be incorporated into a later

revision of the system design. It is important that

this be resolved as quickly as possible, before final

choices about interim storage systems are made by

individual utilities (in deciding how to deal with

their spent fuel until at least 1998) and by Congress (in deciding whether to authorize MRS facilities after the MRS proposal is presented in

1985). Because these decisions could be strongly

affected by the availability of a multipurpose cask

or other form of universal container, the Mission

Plan should clearly show the relationship between

the program for evaluating the feasibility of such

containers and the timing of the storage decisions

that would be affected by their availability.

The RD&D program must also address the technology requirements for monitored storage for indefinite periods. The storage technologies that are

most mature today, and that would most likely be

selected for an MRS facility if one were to be built

in the 1990’s, are the surface cask and dry-well concepts. 57 While these are particularly well suited for

providing easily expandable storage capacity in the

face of an uncertain level of demand (as would be

the case for buffer storage to deal with small

schedule slippages), they may not be optimal for

providing large amounts of storage for an extended

period in the event of major difficulties in the repository program—the principal role for MRS fa5TDOE, Draft Mission Plan, p. 3-B-7.
148 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

cilities in the backup facility plan described above.

In addition, storage facilities designed for a long

and perhaps indefinite period of storage may raise

licensing issues that are not faced by facilities intended for a limited period of interim storage. Thus

the RD&D program in the Mission Plan would include a program for developing, testing, and perhaps demonstrating appropriate storage technologies so that a reliable long-term system can be

provided with high assurance of success if needed.

Transportation System

A conservative baseline system design would assume that transportation during full-scale operation of the repository system would be accomplished

with casks that are designed for transportation only

and that are optimized for the repository loading

schedule, taking into account the age of spent fuel

or high-level waste at the time it would be transported to a repository. As noted in chapter 3, designing the casks for fuel that is at least 10 years

old would provide an additional margin of conservatism by reducing the effects of self-heating in case

of transportation accidents involving a fire. There

is little question that such casks can be designed,

licensed, and constructed in time for the conservative loading plan, although any transportation during the next decade or so would probably have to

use the existing generation of casks. While detailed

designs remain to be developed, currently available

analysis should give a solid basis for initial estimates

of cost and capacity.

The transportation section of the Mission Plan

would also include a baseline reactor storage unloading plan, since that will have significant implications for transportation. For example, an unloading plan that provides for large amounts of

stored spent fuel to be removed from a relatively

small number of reactors each year, rather than for

smaller amounts from a larger number of reactors,

may simplify the transportation process and reduce

its costs and impacts by allowing the use of dedicated unit trains. However, it would also require

allowing larger quantities of spent fuel to build up

at each reactor site before the site is unloaded. (See

app. G for a discussion of the limitations on the

rate at which spent fuel can be removed from reactor sites. ) A conservative initial Mission Plan

would assume that interim spent fuel storage would

be unloaded according to the “oldest fuel first”

principle included in the reference contract adopted

by DOE. Assuming that all spent fuel is to be

shipped by truck would maximize the number of

shipments and the demands on the repository waste

receiving facility as a basis for a conservative estimate of system costs and impacts.

One important focus of the transportation RD&D

program is to determine whether casks that might

be used for storage and/or disposal can be designed

to be suitable for transportation as well. As noted

earlier, this could greatly simplify the overall waste

management process. This will require substantial

coordination with the spent fuel storage and repository development programs to ensure that a fully

integrated optimized system design can be developed in time to be considered for the operational

phase of the first repository.

Packaging and Handling Technology

To ensure that unforeseen bottlenecks do not prevent the Federal Government from accepting waste

according to the planned schedule, prior experience

at handling, packaging, and emplacing radioactive

waste at operational rates would be valuable. DOE

now estimates that by the time a repository is to

begin operation in January 1998 some 36,000

tonnes of spent fuel, representing over 126,000 individual spent fuel assemblies, will have been discharged by commercial nuclear reactors.58 To store

or dispose of this spent fuel at a central facility fast

enough to stop the further buildup of inventories

in at-reactor storage in 1998, without even beginning to work off the backlogs, would require handling about 2,300 tonnes, or about 7,900

assemblies, in 1998 alone. If this spent fuel were

being canned for storage or disposal, it would require filling, sealing, and testing—using remote

handling procedures—up to 5,000 canisters per

year (depending on the final system design).

There is experience with all of the procedures for

handling spent fuel through the step of canning for

storage, but there is no experience at rates approaching those that must be achieved for full-scale

operation. For example, DOE tests involving emSoTheSe are DOE’S most current projections, found in spent Fuel

and Radioactive Waste Inventories, Projections, and Characteristics,

DOE/RW-0006, September 1984, ch. 1.
Ch. 6—The Mission Plan ● 149

placement of encapsulated spent fuel in a deep

mined facility in granite at the Nevada Test Site

have used only 11 spent fuel assemblies. Furthermore, there is no experience with the procedures

that might be required for final packaging of either spent fuel or high-level waste for permanent

disposal, procedures that may be more complex

than those required for canning for temporary storage. While there is little doubt that waste can be

packaged and loaded at relatively high rates, there

is less certainty about the rates that could actually

be achieved by the first facilities designed for that

purpose.

The provisions of NWPA suggest a conservative

RD&D program that could give a high degree of

assurance that full-scale facilities will operate at the

planned rates and thus minimize the risk that commitments to delivery schedules cannot be met. The

program would involve three stages prior to fullscale repository operation, allowing development

of hands-on experience with large amounts of spent

fuel and/or high-level waste in a series of steps extending over the next 20 years. The first stage

would take place before the first site is approved,

while the next two would take place at the site following NRC approval.

GENERIC TESTS

The first stage would involve the generic packaging, handling, and emplacement tests required by

section 217(d) of NWPA. Since many of the operational questions apply to large-scale storage as well

as to disposal, it may be very useful to plan for an

integrated storage and disposal operational testing

program that could provide data useful to MRS

designs, as well. The program could also include

the 300-tonne dry storage R&D program authorized in section 218(c). Such a program would develop packaging and handling technology that

would allow the packaged material to be emplaced

either in surface storage or into a repository. This

would help ensure that spent fuel or high-level waste

could be accepted at operational rates at a repository on a target date, even if it were decided to defer full-scale loading of the repository itself. As

noted above, handling and emplacement tests may

be a particularly important part of determining the

feasibility of using very large self-shielded casks for

disposal and would also be useful in developing final

designs for handling such large casks at operational

rates even if the casks are only used for surface

storage.

An integrated storage and disposal test facility

would also allow the development and demonstration of the capacity to retrieve waste from a repository at a rate comparable to the emplacement

rate— an NRC requirement—and to place it into

temporary surface storage if necessary. This should

help build confidence that initial emplacement of

waste into a repository is not an irreversible step.

To gain needed operational experience might require a substantial quantity of spent fuel or highlevel waste. For example, tests at a scale of 5 percent

of both the total capacity and projected annual handling rate of DOE’s current reference repository

design could require over 1,000 tonnes over the next

decade. The actual amount that should be used

would be determined by an analysis of: a) the need

for reliable data and experience concerning operations with highly radioactive materials over a sustained period, and b) the need for packaged waste

or spent fuel for use in the second stage of preoperational tests, early tests of waste emplacement in a

repository during the demonstration phase of repository operation.

It may be possible to conduct all of the needed

generic operational tests using existing government

facilities. If not, NWPA authorizes construction of

a test and evaluation facility (TEF) that could allow

unlicensed temporary emplacement of up to 100

tonnes of spent fuel in a repository-like facility at

anticipated repository depths to test and verify handling and emplacement procedures.

EARLY REPOSITORY EMPLACEMENT TESTS

The initial stage of the demonstration phase

would involve early emplacement in the repository

of the material packaged conservatively during the

first generic packaging and handling tests. This

would occur after NRC had granted a construction authorization but before completion of the first

process line of the packaging facilities of the repository. Informal discussion with NRC staff indicates

that this would be possible within the framework

of the existing regulations for repository licensing;

it would be analogous to low-power licensing for

a reactor. As noted earlier, emplacement during
150 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

this phase would use the conservative disposal system design. Early emplacement of a small amount

of waste under licensed conditions would be a logical extension of the activities at a TEF if one were

constructed at the repository site.

Such tests would offer a number of potential benefits. First, it would allow an early test of one of

the crucial steps in the licensing process: NRC’s

ability to decide to allow actual “disposal” as

defined by NWPA—permanent emplacement of

waste in a geologic repository with no foreseeable

intent of recovery. Second, because emplacement

of even a small amount of waste with NRC approval would be disposal, it should satisfy the requirement in section 302(a)(5) that disposal in a repository begin by January 31, 1998. NWPA does not

specify the level of operation that must begin by

that time, but it does specify that emplacement be

disposal, which presupposes NRC permission for

permanent emplacement with no intent of recovery.

Thus, this approach could allow disposal to begin

perhaps several years earlier than 1998, assuming

that the construction authorization for the first repository is granted on schedule.

TESTS OF REPOSITORY PACKAGING FACILITIES

A final stage of testing in the demonstration

phase would be operation of the initial process line

of the full-scale packaging facilities. For this stage,

one processing line would be constructed and operated for a period of several years in order to discover and correct any design problems before constructing the rest of the process lines in the facility.

While initial emplacement during the demonstration phase will use the conservative baseline design,

the optimized system design would be demonstrated

in this phase. Thus, the schedule for earliest operation in this phase depends on the time required

to develop and gain NRC approval of an optimized

design. Once the final designs have been modified

as needed in light of this operational experience and

the rest of the processing lines have been built, the

RD&D program would be finished and the full

operational phase would begin.

Integrated System Model

Evaluation and comparison of alternative waste

management system designs with the conservative

baseline design would greatly benefit from development of an integrated systems model that allows

analysis of the total costs, risks, worker exposures,

and other operational characteristics of waste management system designs from the time spent fuel

is discharged from the reactor to the time of final

disposal. As noted in the discussion of the integrated

waste management system in chapter 3, many elements already exist which could be combined into

an integrated model.

It is important to recognize that an optimum system design may involve elements that are not optimum if viewed from a narrower perspective. For

example, from the point of view of the individual

utility, using a multipurpose container for spent fuel

might appear to increase interim storage costs, yet

use of such containers may substantially reduce the

total system costs. As another example, steps that

could improve safety in one area could reduce it

elsewhere; for example, while treatment of spent

fuel to reduce its volubility may improve repository

performance in the long run, it would lead to increased operational risks and generation of additional waste streams that must be disposed of.

An integrated system model is needed to capture

all of these effects, so that decisions can be made

on the basis of a clear understanding of the implications of the options under consideration. Another

area in which integrated analysis is needed concerns

the tradeoffs between distance between waste packages when emplaced in the repository, concentration of waste in the waste form and package, use

of a corrosion-resistant waste package, and additional cooling prior to disposal.59

Alternative Disposal Technologies

Confidence that a permanent disposal system will

ultimately be available could also be enhanced by

the development of alternative disposal technologies, Such development is required by section 220

of NWPA.

sgNation~Research Council, Isc]ation System, p. 15.
.

Ch. 6—The Mission Plan ● 151

A STRATEGY FOR REVISING THE MISSION PLAN

It is to be expected that future analysis and research will provide information that may allow relaxation of some of the convervatisms in the initial

Mission Plan or significant changes in the system

design. The initial Mission Plan should identify

those points in the repository development process at which it is expected that sufficient new information would be available to warrant reexamination of the Plan. Alternatively, provision could be

made for reassessment of the Mission Plan every

3 years, to provide a basis for the triennial budget

and authorization process established by NWPA.

Use of the Mission Plan for that purpose is discussed further in chapter 7.

The initial Mission Plan could also specify what

steps would be taken to review and revise the Plan.

Because the choices to be made in the Mission Plan

have significant implications for many affected parties, public acceptance of and confidence in the Plan

might be enhanced by broad involvement of the

various affected parties in the process of review and

revision. (See discussion of the role of the Mission

Plan in public participation in ch. 8.) This could

also build consensus on the Plan, thereby reducing the likelihood of successful efforts to cause

changes that favor one group or another or to

thwart the Plan’s implementation.

CHAPTER NOTE

Available analysis shows that there are strong financial incentives for use of cask or drywell storage at reactor sites—the same modular technologies that would

also likely be used for a centralized storage facility designed to provide a limited amount of storage for a relatively short period. Thus, the main difference between

at-reactor and centralized storage would be the difference in the cost of the packaging and handling facilities required in each case. DOE estimates that a cask

storage facility with an annual receiving rate of about

2,000 tonnes would require handling and support facilities costing about $410 million. 60

By 2008, the reactors that are now operating or under

construction are expected to require about 2,300 tonnes

per year of additional storage capacity beyond that available in their own basins (see app. E). About 1,500

tonnes per year of that amount would be from reactors

that will have to provide their own storage facilities by

1998, so construction of new handling facilities for that

fuel at a centralized site would duplicate costs that have

already been incurred. The remaining 900 or so tonnes

per year is from reactors that would not have to provide additional storage facilities until 1998 or later. This

represents the annual discharge of about 30 1 -Gwe reactors.

The estimated capital cost of facilities for lifetime cask

storage for two such reactors at the same site is

$7,100,000. 6’ This in turn suggests that the total capital cost for the at-reactor facilities for 900 tonnes per

year would be well under $200 million. Since these costs

would be spread out over the 10-year period, the discounted cost would be less, compared to the discounted

cost of a centralized system in which most of the capital

costs are incurred at the beginning. While a detailed

analysis will be required to provide an accurate comparison of at-reactor and away-from-reactor storage

costs (an analysis that would benefit from completion

and evaluation of the dry storage RD&D program mandated by NWPA), this rough estimate indicates that

there is no strong prima facie reason for concluding that

dry storage using modular systems will benefit from

large economies of scale if implemented at centralized

sites.

60D. E, R~mussen, Comparison of Cask and DryWell Storage Concepts for a Monitored Retrievable Storage/Interim Storage System,

Battelle Memorial Institute Pacific Northwest Laboratory, PNL-4450,

December 1982, table A.29, p. A.30.

ME. R. Jo~son Ass~iates, Inc., A Pndiminary Assessment of Alternative Dry Storage Methods for the Storage of Commercial Spent Nuclear Fuel, JAI-180, DOE/ET/47929-l, Reston, Va., November 1981,

table 8-2.
Chapter 7

Federal Institutional Issues
Contents

Page

Program Funding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

Organization of the Federal Waste Management Agency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158

The Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159

Alternative Means of Financing and Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162

Federal Interagency Coordination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168

TABLES

Table No. Page

7-1. Reference Program Costs for Waste Disposal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156

7-2. Nuclear Waste Fund Projections Under tine DOE Reference Program Schedule . . . . . . . . . 165

7-3. Principal Executive Agencies With Waste Management Responsibilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168

FIGURES

Figure No, Page

7-1. Range of Cumulative Estimated Waste Management Program Costs ..............,.. . . 158

7-2. Organization Chart of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Chapter 7

Federal Institutional Issues

The history

effort strongly

of the Federal waste management capacity of the Federal Government to implement

suggests that changes in past insti- a waste management policy successfully: funding

tutional arrangements and procedures may increase for the program, organization and management of

the credibility of the central component of the Nu- the program, and coordination among the agenclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (NWPA)-the com- cies that will be involved in waste management.

mitment to the development of a complex technological system, despite technical and institutional

This chapter will discuss each of these concerns,

the ways in which they have been addressed in

uncertainties, on a firm schedule extending over NWPA, and some of the important questions that a period of decades. As discussed in chapter 4, there

are three particular areas of concern regarding the remain to be resolved.

PROGRAM FUNDING

The direct and indirect costs of waste management probably will be a small fraction (several percent) of the cost of nuclear-generated electricity. 1

For example, the Congressional Budget Office

(CBO) calculated that even if the costs of the waste

disposal program were 160 percent greater than

currently anticipated, it would add only about 3

to 4 percent to consumer electricity bills.2 However,

the absolute sums required to develop an operating waste disposal system will be quite large (see

table 7-l). According to Department of Energy

(DOE) estimates, about $4 billion of research and

development (R&D) will be required over the next

20 years to develop the capability to dispose of

radioactive wastes in mined repositories.3 The total

cost of developing and operating two mined repositories, which would be sufficient to accommodate

all of the high-level radioactive waste that will be

generated by the reactors now operating or under

construction, is expected to amount to about $20

billion in 1982 dollars.4 Assuming an average of

3-percent inflation per year over the entire period

‘The discussion of costs draws heavily on a staff working paper prepared for OTA by the Congressional Budget Office: “Financing Nuclear Waste Disposal, May 1981.

2Congressional Budget Office, Financing Radioactive Waste Disposal, September 1982, p. 27.

‘U.S. Department of Energy, Report on Financing the Disposal

of Commercial Spent Nuclear Fuel and Processed High-Level Radioactive Waste, S-0020, June 1983, table A-1, p. 42.

‘Ibid., p. 2.

of repository development and operation, and taking into account some (but not all) sources of cost

uncertainty, DOE estimates that actual program

outlays could range from $35 billion to $64 billion.5

Thus, the credibility of any Federal commitment

to a long-term waste management program will

depend on confidence that these large sums will be

available as needed over a period of decades.

NWPA provided for funding of the Federal radioactive waste management program through a

mandatory f’ee of 1 mill (one-tenth of 1 cent) per

kilowatt-hour (kWh) on nuclear-generated electricity. The revenues from this fee will be placed in

a Nuclear Waste Fund in the Treasury of the

United States, and can be used only for waste management activities specified in NWPA. This restriction on the use of the fund will be of particular importance during the first few decades of collection

of the fee, when the fund will accumulate large surpluses that must be allowed to accrue interest so

that sufficient money will be available in later years.

It has been Federal policy since 1970 that the

costs of commercial radioactive waste disposal be

borne by the generators of the waste.6 However,

‘Ibid.

6APP. F, pt. 50, title 10, CFR, Nov. 14, 1970, requires that upon

delivery of high-level radioactive waste to a Federal repository, the

party delivering such waste would pay the Federal Government a

charge designed to defray all costs of disposal and perpetual

surveillance.

155
— —.

156 Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

Table 7=1.—Reference Program Costs for Waste Disposal

Program cost Percentage of

(in billions of Total program

Cost category 1983 dollars) cost

Two 72,000 metric ton capacity repositories:

Construction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5 23—17b

Operating c . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.0—6.9 26–34

Decommissioning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.7 5–4b

Transporting spent nuclear fueld 

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,3–4.0 15—20

Site selection, evaluation, and licensing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 8–6b

Test and evaluation facility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.2 1

Technological development. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5 10—8 b

Administration e . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.8—2.2 12—1 1

Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.3—20.3 100

aTheseCOst$refertO tworepositories bulltln asaltmedlum. The costs of building and opefatlng two hard rock rwos~tofie$

would be roughly2 percent higher.All CBOanalysesaasume the development of salt repositories.

b Although the specific program Cost remains the same under different growth patterns, its corresponding :}hare of total PrOgram costs will differ,

c The total Owrating cost for the two repositories depends on the scheduie of nucieareiactricity 9eneratiOn. Th~! ennual oPeratin9

cost for each repository is $48 million per thousand metric tons of spent fuel received.

d Totai Sflipplrlg Costs SISO deperlda on the nuclew.growtfl forecast; the annUai cost per thousand metric ton:; of spent nuclear

fuei shipped is S28 miliion. A no-growth scenario assumes that only 82,000 metric tons wiil be disposed o‘ at a cost of $2.3

blilion; the S4.0 biliion projection refers to the three growth forecasts used by CBO.

e Administrative costs inciude aid peyments to State end local governments and to indlan tribes affected by rePs~tOrY development and fund management coats. Administrative costs continue until the second reposltoW is decommissioned, and thus

depend on the schaduie of nuciear-electricity growth.

f The rmge of total Cost estknates reflects the reposito~ scheduies under the different nuclear~rowth forecasts used by CBO.

SOURCE: Congressional Budget Office, Nuclear Waste Dkwosal: Achlevh7g Adequate Financing, August 19E4. Based on cost

projections from Department of Energy, Report on Financing the Disposai of Commercial Spent Nuciear Fuel and

Processed High-Levei Radioactive Waste, DOEIS-0020, June 1983.

it had been assumed, before passage of NWPA, that

most of the costs of developing the disposal system

prior to operation of the first repository would have

to come from Federal appropriations, to be repaid

when utilities delivered the waste to a Federal facility for storage or disposal. 7 If this repayment approach had been continued, progress in the waste

disposal program for the next decade or two would

have been dependent on competition for general

revenues in the annual Federal budget process and

thereby vulnerable to pressures to defer major expenditures (e.g., site evaluation activities) when the

Federal budget was tight. Moreover, the period of

dependence on Federal appropriations would have

been uncertain, since offsetting revenues would

have been determined by the utilities’ independent decisions about when to deliver waste to the

Federal Government.

Under the pay-as-you-go system established by

NWPA, the utilities with nuclear reactors provide

the front-end funding for the development of repositories. This method has the potential for assuring the availability of an adequate source of reve7See, for example, U.S. Department of Energy, ‘‘Preliminary Estimates of the Charge for Spent-Fuel Storage and Disposal Services,

DOE/ET-0055, July 1978.

nue, so that lack of resources can be eliminated as

a limitation on the scope and timing of the technical waste management program.8 This could allay

any concerns that budgetary pressures might lead

to “corner-cutting” that cou.ld compromise safety.

It could also increase greatly the credibility of any

waste management policy commitments of the Federal Government. In fact, OTA’s analysis indicates

that this funding arrangement may be necessary

for a credible commitment to a firm schedule for

developing and operating waste repositories.

To realize the full potential of a mandatory fee,

two requirements must be met. First, there must

be a means of adjusting the revenues from the fee

to ensure that the full costs of the program are

recovered despite inflation and unanticipated

changes in program scope. Second, the revenues

must be available for expenditure as needed. The

first requirement will be considered in the remainder of this section; the second will be analyzed

in the discussion of fiscal oversight mechanisms that

follows.

8Funding limitations have restricte 4 the scope of the Federal site

evaluation program in the past. See app. A, p. 213,
Ch. 7—Federal Institutional Issues 157

DOE has analyzed the revenues expected to be

generated by the l-mill/kWh fee established by

NWPA and concluded that those revenues, including interest earnings when the fund is in surplus,

should be just sufficient to cover total program costs

for development and lifetime operation of two repositories, if there are no significant cost increases

over current estimates other than an average inflation of 3 percent per year. g However, it should

be noted that this conclusion is based on a repository development program that is little modified

from the program that was in place before the enactment of NWPA, which for the first time established

in law a firm Federal commitment to a specific date

for repository operation. As discussed in chapter

6, the repository siting and development program

needed to give high confidence that such a commitment can be met despite technical problems is

likely to be more extensive and expensive than the

program planned prior to passage of the Act.

If the mandatory fee is to provide sufficient revenues to enable the Federal Government to meet

its waste management policy commitments, then

it maybe necessary to adjust the initial l-mill/kWh

level to cover the program needed to fulfill those

commitments. (Historically, the program, and thus

the achievable goals, have been determined to a

considerable extent by the availability of appropriated funds. ) Since the program expenditures to

be covered by the fee will extend over a period of

four or more decades, a plan of activities and their

associated costs over an extended period will be

needed. The long-term cost analysis required in the

Mission Plan could be particularly useful as a basis

for determining whether adjustments of the fee are

needed.

Whatever the initial estimates of the long-term

costs of the waste management program, the potential for unanticipated cost increases is very

high.l0 There are many sources of cost uncertainty. 11 First, future inflation maybe incorrectly estimated. For example, DOE’s analysis shows that

if average annual inflation is 5 percent instead of

‘U.S. Department of Energy, Report on Financing the Disposal,

p. 31.

‘“Ibid., p. 3.

11 See u.s. Department of Energy, Report on Financing the Disposal, and Congressional Budget OffIce, Financing Radioactive Waste

Disposal, for analyses of sources and implications of cost increases.

the anticipated 3 percent, it would increase aggregate program expenditures (in current dollars) by

about $34 billion. 12 Second, current estimates are

based on generic repositories, while the actual sitespecific costs are likely to be different. Third, regulatory requirements for the disposal program are

not final. Finally, there may be unanticipated technical problems that lead to increased costs. Both

DOE and CBO agree that cost uncertainty is the

principal source of financial risk to the disposal program. 13 Figure 7-1 shows a DOE estimate of the

range of possible cumulative waste management

costs.

Because the future costs of waste management

are uncertain, there is a risk that the fee established

by NWPA may not generate sufficient revenue to

cover the actual costs of the program. Providing

a mechanism for revising the fee to adjust for cost

increases is important, not only if it is desired that

all costs of the waste management program be

borne by the generators of the waste, but also if

it is desired to make credible long-term commitments for the development and operation of a Federal waste disposal system. If adjustment is difficult or impossible, then the revenues generated by

the fee could, over the course of time, become inadequate to finance the program. In that event, history suggests that, once again, budgetary pressures

might lead to program cuts (particularly in the

number of backup sites and component technologies under parallel development) that could reduce

the credibility of the long-term commitments. At

the same time, if adjustments are too easy, there

will be a risk that incentives for cost control would

be weak.

NWPA deals with this by requiring the Secretary of Energy to review the adequacy of the fee

annually and to propose any changes required to

ensure that the full costs of the waste management

program are recovered. It also provides for congressional control over such fee increases by specifying that either House can block a proposed in12U. S. Department of Energy, Report on Financing tht’ Disposal.

p. 31. A recent Congressional Budget Office study concludes that the

I mill fee will be inadequate if inflation exceeds 3 percent annually,

Congressional Budget Ofice, Nuclear Waste Disposal: Achim’ing Adequate Financing, August 1984.

] su s Department of Energy, Report on Financing the Disposal.

. .

p. 32; and Congressional Budget OffIce, Financing Radioacti\’e Waste

Disposal, p. 24.
158 . Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

Figure 7-l.- Range of Cumulative Estimated Waste Management Program Costs

(constant 1982 dollars)

30

c I

= A

12 F A

10

t

4

t

A

1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025 2030

Year

SOURCE: U.S. Depeftment of Energy, Rejwtl on Flnanclng the Dkpoeal of Commercle/ Spent Nuc\eer Fuel and Fwceaeed High-Lew/

Radloact)w Wade, DOE/Sa20, June 19S3,

crease. However, the Supreme Court’s finding that

such one-House veto provisions are unconstitutional raises questions about the long-term effectiveness of the provisions for congressional review of

adjustments of the fee. The problem of striking an

appropriate balance between cost control and ade-

.—— — I+Immigration and Naturalization Service V. Chadha et ~., 103

S. C., p. 2764, No. 80-1832.

quacy of revenues in light of the uncertainties resulting from the Supreme Court’s decision will be

considered below in the discussion of fiscal control

mechanisms for the waste management organization. 15

IJSee &. U.S. Department of Energy, Report on Financing the

Disposal, p. 32; and Congressional Budget Oflice, Financing Radioactive Waste Disposal, p. 32.

ORGANIZATION OF THE FEDERAL

WASTE MANAGEMENT AGENCY

The implementation of the repository develop- primary responsibility. On :he technical side, steady

ment program mandated by NWPA entails two progress must be made through a series of R&D

major sets of requirements for the organization with milestones to the goal of the operation of one or
Ch. 7—Federal Institutional Issues ● 159

more full-scale disposal facilities. Such progress requires the ability to assemble and manage considerable financial and human resources over a period

of decades, to ensure that resources remain at an

adequate level to continue activities, and to coordinate technically diverse and demanding tasks.

The lead agency must also be attentive to nontechnical demands, Agency officials must be able

to deal with a variety of non-Federal parties with

conflicting viewpoints who have the power to delay waste management efforts if they are dissatisfied. In such a situation, the ability to negotiate and

bargain is important, as is the ability to forecast

demands of non-Federal parties and the possible

effects of such demands on the waste management

program.

Radioactive waste management has suffered in

the past from problems in policy and program planning, in the coordination of agency activities, and

in responsiveness to the expressed concerns of

groups affected by waste management, such as utilities, environmentalists, and State officials (see ch.

4). These and other problems have led to suggestions that there be changes in the agency with principal responsibility for radioactive waste management, currently DOE. The suggested changes fall

into two broad categories: those related to the position of the waste management program within the

Federal Government, and those related to the internal organization of the program.

At the time NWPA was being debated, alternatives to the existing institutional structure for waste

management had been studied less thoroughly than

the technical options. It was felt unnecessary and

premature to attempt to make major institutional

changes at that point before a long-term technical

program had been adopted. Instead, Congress

chose at that time to correct some of the most obvious institutional problems by establishing within

DOE the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste

Management, with a Director appointed by the

President and reporting to the Secretary of DOE,

and to leave the question of more basic structural

changes for later consideration. To ensure that institutional questions would be addressed in more

detail in the future, NWPA also requires DOE to

submit to Congress a report on alternative institutional approaches to managing the radioactive waste

program, including the option of establishing a private corporation. Each of these steps will be discussed further below.

The Office of Civilian Radioactive

Waste Management

Historically, the principal Federal responsibility

for radioactive waste management has been discharged by a program office located within an organization having many broader responsibilities

concerning nuclear power—initially the Atomic Energy Commission, then the Energy Research and

Development Administration, and now DOE.l6 As

a result, the Federal waste management program

has had to compete for money, manpower, and policy-level attention with more popular or urgent

areas of nuclear R&D.

Establishment of the waste management program

as a single-purpose office that is independent of

other nuclear activities of DOE should stabilize the

waste management organization at an appropriate

policy level, insulate it from competition with other

nuclear policy areas, and make possible the central integrated planning and management needed

for ensuring implementation of a long-term waste

management policy. 17 This should also insulate the

waste management organization from any major

institutional uncertainty or delay that could occur

if the Federal energy activities were reorganized,

as has been proposed by the Reagan administration.

While NWPA moved the location of the waste

management office within DOE, some changes

within the office itself may be desirable. The Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management is

based on the waste management organization in

DOE that existed prior to passage of the Act. The

ability of that organization to implement a radioactive waste policy has been questioned by some

observers 18 The history of the waste management

115For ~ discussion of (he evo]ution of the waste management organization, see app. A.

1 TSee for example, Nationa Academy of Public Administration,

‘‘Building the Institutional Capacity for Managing Commercial HighLevel Radioactive Waste, ” May 1982, p. 4.

‘aSee Irvin C. Bupp, “The Management of the National Research

and Development Program, statement prepared for the California

Energy Commission, May 30, 1980, p. 4.
. — — —.

160 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

program suggests that some changes in internal organizational structure may help build confidence

that the commitment in NWPA to operate a repository by 1998 can be met.19 Such changes may

be useful regardless of whether there is any shift

in the organizational location of the waste management program. The following discussion will briefly

consider some of the principal types of changes that

have been suggested.

Some observers, particularly some State officials,

have questioned DOE’s planning and implementation abilities in nontechnical areas of waste management (e. g., dealing with sociopolitical impacts)

that may be as important as the technical areas for

successful siting and development of a repository. 20

Though proficient in technical areas, some DOE

personnel are seen as lacking the nontechnical skills

and sensitivities important for planning for relations between DOE and non-Federal participants .2*

Yet NWPA contains many requirements for extensive DOE relations with States and the public,

While them appears to be growing appreciation at

DOE of the importance of nontechnical questions

in implementing a radioactive waste program, no

single office or manager has been clearly responsible for dealing with them. As a result, even though

contractors to DOE have produced many studies

in nontechnical areas, there is no clear mechanism

for transferring the results of their analysis into policy and programs. 22 Implementation of NWPA

might be facilitated if responsibility for dealing with

such nontechnical aspects of the waste program

were explicitly assigned to a staff group with the

—...— — 19 For an ~na]ysis of the institutional problems in implementing a

radioactive waste management program, see Jackie L. Burns, ‘‘Institutional Issues in the Planning and Implementation of a Program

to Dispose of High-Level Radioactive Wastes, Rand Corp., N-1650-

DOE, 1981. See also National Academy of Public Administration,

op. cit., pp. 40-42.

ZOThis was apparent in many interviews with State offlcids conducted by OTA stafland contractors. This view was also expressed,

for example, by the South Carolina Governor’s Task Force on Advanced Nuclear Systems, which concluded that lack of proper attention to, and planning for, socioeconomic and sociopolitical impacts

had been a major impediment to implementation of waste management and disposal systems. ‘‘Review of—’Draft Report of Department of Energy Task Force for Review of Nuclear Waste Management, ‘ “ June 1, 1978, p. II-7.

21See pat Choate and John Bowman, ‘‘Radioactive Waste h4anagement: State Concerns, a report to OTA from the Academy for

Contemporary Problems, 1981.

22 For a comprehensive &cUssiOn of these and other management

problems, see Burns, op. cit.

expertise needed to deal with them. This may require the addition of staff with the appropriate skills

and experience.23 In response to such concerns, the

Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management

has recently established an outreach division (see

fig. 7-2).

Changes may also be needed to strengthen

DOE’s ability to plan and coordinate the many activities that will be involved in developing and deploying an operating repository system on schedule. As discussed in chapter 5, OTA has concluded

that one of the basic requirements for making a

commitment to a firm repository schedule credible is the development of a sound implementation

plan, showing precisely how the Federal Government proposes to meet the schedule. NWPA includes a requirement for development by DOE of

a comprehensive Mission Plan. However, historically the DOE waste program has lacked the strong

central planning and analysis capacity that would

be required to develop an integrated Mission Plan.

Instead, it has relied on a relatively small central

staff to coordinate the activities of field offices and

contractors. 24 That central staff has been divided

along functional lines (e.g., spent fuel storage and

repository development), with little or no emphasis placed on analysis of how all the individual functions could be integrated into a comprehensive

waste management system.

Passage of NWPA, which mandates both a

schedule for repository operation and a wide range

of technical and nontechnical activities prior to

operation, places an even greater demand on the

waste management organization to ensure that

those activities are coordinated most effectively if

the schedule is to be achieved. Unless there is sub231 bid., p. 87,

Z+fjome have noted that this management structure ~s~ affects

DOE’s ability to deal with nontechnical requirements. For example,

the Summary Report of the Second Keystone Conference on Public

Participation in Radioactive Waste Management Decisionrnaking

stated that, “A major barrier to establishing an effective public participation program at DOE is the lack of overall management capability at headquarters. It is perceived that most of the people at DOE

headquarters are contract officers and not program managers. Concern was expressed that no one was paying sufficient attention to the

absence of a strong program management capability at DOE, in comparison to the disbursement of funds fwerwhelmingly to contractors.

‘ ‘Public Participation in Developing National Plans for Radioactive

Waste Management” (Keystone, Colo.: The Keystone Center, (Jctober 1980), p. 15.
Ch. 7—Federal Institutional Issues 161

Figure 7=2.—Organization Chart of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management
—.

162 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

—

stantial direct involvement by DOE program staff

in the development of the Mission Plan, it may have

little chance of achieving its potential as a key management tool for coordinating the many activities

required to meet the goals of NWPA. This may

require establishment of an adequately staffed and

funded group within the waste management office

with responsibility for integrated systems analysis

and mission planning. In response to these concerns, the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste

Management recently established a program integration division.

Implementation of NWPA may also require

strengthening of the capacity of the DOE central

office program staff to manage the field activities

of the program. Historically, radioactive waste

management functions have been handled by

geographically separate organizational units that

operate different programs and laboratories .25 Because field offices have latitude in program implementation, including relations with States in the

course of siting activities, coordination is more difficult to maintain. Yet, NWPA’s commitment to

a firm schedule for operation of a repository may

make such coordination even more important than

it has been in the past.26

Alternative Means of Financing

and Management

In addition to establishing an Office of Civilian

Radioactive Waste Management within DOE,

NWPA also requires the Secretary of Energy to

study and report to Congress on alternative approaches to managing the construction and operation of all civilian radioactive waste management

facilities.27 The study is to consider the feasibility

Zfsee, for example, Roger Kasperson, ‘‘Institutional and Social Uncertainties in the Timely Management of Radioactive Wastes, testimony prepared for the California Energy Commission, June 30,

1980, pp. 11-16. See also Burns, op. cit.

ZGpresident Kennedy’s commitment to land a man on the Moon

by the end of the 1960’s required new organizational modes at the

National Aeronautics and Space Administration. In particular, a much

stronger headquarters team was needed to coordinate the efforts of

several research centers that would be involved. See Frank W. Anderson, Jr., Orders of Magnitude: A History of NACA and NASA, 1915-

1976 (Washington, D. C.: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1976), p. 31.

Z7T0 conduct this study the Secretary of Energy appointed an advisory group formally titled the Advisory Panel on Alternative Means

of Financing and Managing Radioactive Waste Facilities. The first

meeting was held in January 1984, and the report of the panel was

delivered to the Secretary at the end of 1984.

of establishing an independent, single-purpose

waste management organization, including a private corporation.

OTA’s analysis of the history of the Federal

radioactive waste management program concludes

that the credibility of NWPA’s commitment to the

development of a complex technological system on

a firm schedule could be enhanced by the establishment of an independent waste management

agency with more funding and management flexibility than is usual with a typical Federal program.

This section will discuss some of the arguments for

creating an independent organization and will focus

on the problem of providing adequate oversight and

control over such an organization.

At present, DOE is responsible for numerous

policy areas in nuclear energy besides radioactive

waste management and for a host of other energyrelated programs. Units in DOE responsible for

waste management have in the past had to compete with other units for funding and staff. Given

the long time span during which development of

the waste management system will take place, waste

management could receive inadequate attention relative to other functions, both from outside policymakers and from DOE itself, if it continued to be

treated simply as one program among the many

for which DOE is responsible, Moreover, what was

seen by the Interagency Review Group (IRG) as

a strength of DOE—its ability to maintain an appropriate perspective on waste management in relation to energy production-may, in some senses,

be a liability.28 Some groups fear that DOE’s mission as a promoter of energy production could conflict with the safe planning and development of a

radioactive waste management system. A separate

radioactive waste management authority could be

insulated from promotion of nuclear power in a way

that DOE would find difficult to match.

Creation of a new organization with a narrow,

mission-oriented focus on radioactive waste management would greatly reduce the chance that organizational resources would be diverted to other,

competing missions. The attention of outside policymakers to waste management issues might be

increased through the increased visibility such an

z8RePort t. the President by the lnt, ~ragency Rev’iew Group on Nuclear Waste Management, TID-29442, March 1979, p. 117.
Ch. 7—Federal Institutional Issues 163

organization would give to radioactive waste management and by the reduction of internal organizational layers that now exist at DOE. Finally, to outside parties, change can signal a fresh start and a

break with existing practice.

Establishing a separate organization could leave

open later options for organizational change-e. g.,

the transfer of responsibility for operating storage

or disposal facilities to the private sector—to a greater extent than would occur if responsibility for the

Federal waste management program remained with

a program unit within DOE. If a corporation were

later created to manage the entire nuclear fuel cycle, as proposed by some, an independent agency

might more easily merge with such a corporation

than could a program within DOE. Similarly, creation of an independent radioactive waste management agency may be most compatible with a later

decision to create a broader Federal hazardous

waste management authority dealing with both radioactive and nonradioactive toxic wastes in general. 29

There are many possible models for a separate

radioactive waste management authority, including

a federally chartered public corporation, such as

the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA); an independent authority with loose ties to DOE, such as

the Bonneville Power Administration; or a new

agency in the executive branch. Some analyses of

the nature of radioactive waste management responsibilities have suggested that a corporate structure may be most desirable for a waste management organization .30 For example, corporate

structure is most consistent with the self-financing

nature of a program funded entirely through user

fees, and with the high degree of discretion over

annual expenditures from a trust or revolving fund

needed to give confidence that a long-term schedule

can be met. (Since the organization would be selffinanced through the waste management fee, any

additional costs involved in establishing and oper-

——-.—— ~gEfforts t. site faci] ities for treatment and disposal of toxic wastes

encounter many of the same difhculties associated with siting radioactive waste management facilities, and some of the technical problems of providing isolation with an acceptable level of confidence are

similar. Thus, it could be argued that there would be advantages to

a single hazardous waste management agency. Along these lines, the

U.S. Geological Sutwey has created a single O!%ce of Hazardous Waste

Hydrology that deals with both radioactive and nonradioactive waste

issues.

JOSee Muon Willrich and Richard Lester, Radioactive Waste: M~-

a.gement and Regulation (New York: The Free Press, 1977).

ating a new, single-purpose agency would be borne

by the users of nuclear power rather than by the

Federal taxpayer.) A definitive conclusion concerning the most suitable organizational form would require a more extensive investigation of the advantages and disadvantages of the various possible

models than OTA was able to perform,31

A major question to be addressed in the organizational study of alternative structures for the lead

waste management agency is the degree of independence the agency would be granted in the performance of assigned responsibilities, especially in

discretion over annual expenditures. Government

corporations, for example, normally have more independence than Federal agencies.32

Greater independence makes organizations more

resistant to political fluctuations and enables greater

flexibility in hiring and firing and in rewarding

good performance and penalizing nonperformance.

If the organization has control over use of its

revenues, uncertainties of the annual appropriations

process can be avoided.33

On the other hand, greater independence could

prove detrimental if oversight were insufficient to

allow adequate responsiveness to interests and concerns of groups outside the organization. In some

instances, insulation from outside political influence

has led managers of government corporations to

overemphasize financial criteria, an action that

could be fatal to the credibility of a radioactive waste

management organization. 34 Thus, a particularly

.

31A preliminaV an~ysis Of ot-gartization~ issues is found in An Organizational Analysis of a Nuclear Waste Management System by

Randall F. Smith, report prepared for the Oflice of Technology Assessment by Battelle Human Affairs Research Centers, BHARC-311 /

80/010, March 1980. See also National Academy of Public Administration, op. cit., pp. 40-42; and Jackie L. Braitman, Nuclear Waste

Disposal: Can Government Cope? (Santa Monica, Ca.: The Rand

Graduate Institute, December 1983).

JzNation~ Academy of Public Administration, ‘‘Report on Government Corporations, vol. 1, August 1981; see also Harold Seidman, Politics, Position, and Power, 3d ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 265-276.

33A ~umey of utilities’ attitudes about the Federal waste management program showed a desire that funding for radioactive waste management be independent of problems in the Federal budget and DOE

budget cycles. See “Developing a Federal Policy on Spent Nuclear

Fuel, ” Task 2 Draft Report, prepared for DOE, Assistant Secretary

for Policy and Evaluation, Office of Coal and Electrical Systems Policy, by Resource Planning Associates, Inc., and International Energy

Associates Ltd., June 1978.

34 Annmarie Hauck w~sh, The public Business: The politics and

Practices of Government Corporations (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT

Press, 1978), p. 6.
.

164 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Leve Radioactive Waste

important question in establishing a more independent waste management authority will be how

to ensure a satisfactory degree of congressional

oversight and public accountability.

Because of concerns about the responsiveness of

past Federal waste management efforts, there may

be considerable reluctance to establish a lead organization with any greater independence than DOE

for fear that it might be less responsive to the concerns of Congress, the administration, and the public. Achieving an acceptable balance between independence and accountability will therefore be one

of the central challenges in designing an independent waste management authority. The following

discussion considers possible means of achieving

such a balance through the general oversight structure for the waste management agency and through

fiscal control mechanisms.

Oversight Structure

The oversight structure of an independent waste

management agency could be similar to that of a

public utility, since the agency would have a monopoly on disposal of commercial waste and utilities would be required to use its services. Supervision of the management of the agency could be

exercised by a board of directors, appointed by the

Secretary of Energy, Congress, or the President,

with possible congressional confirmation of appointments. Such a board could include members from

Congress, DOE, and other Federal bodies, as well

as from non-Federal groups such as State and local

governments, utilities, public service commissions,

and environmental organizations. Alternatively,

such non-Federal groups could be represented

through a public advisory commission established

as part of an oversight structure .35

35The Ju]y I$IT8 Radioactive Waste Management Discussion Group

sponsored by the Keystone Center for Continuing Education recommended the creation of a Public Advisory Committee, with members

from citizens’ groups, private industry, universities, local and State

governments, and Congress, to ensure “effective two-way communication between the federal government and concerned segments of

the public, thereby improving the federal program and developing

a broader understanding of that program outside of the federal government. ” Letter to Frank Press andJohn M. Deutch, Sept. 9, 1978,

p. 8.

Fiscal Control

Whatever formal oversight structure is chosen,

control of the finances of the waste management

agency will be of particular concern. There are two

distinct aspects of fiscal control that should be addressed in an analysis of institutional alternatives:

control over the level of the mandatory waste management fee established by NWPA, and control

over the agency’s expenditures from the Nuclear

Waste Fund.

CONTROL OF REVISIONS OF THE FEE

The discussion of program funding indicated the

importance of providing some mechanism for adjusting the waste management fee to cover unanticipated costs. Because of the importance of the

fee adjustment mechanism to the success of the

waste management program, and the uncertainty

created by the Supreme Court decision concerning the one-House veto, which raised questions

about the provisions in NWPA for congressional

control of revisions of the fee, it would be useful

for any congressional deliberations on alternative

institutional arrangements to consider alternative

fee adjustment mechanisms.

Two possibilities are: 1,) complete delegation of

authority to revise the fee to the head of the waste

management agency, with no provisions for congressional review; and 2) revision of the fee only

through amendment of the l-mill/kWh level established by the Act. In either case, it may be difficult to strike a balance between the oversight needed

to ensure efficient use of the revenues from the fee

and the assurance that revenues will be sufficient

to cover all of the costs of the program needed to

provide confidence that the commitments in NWPA

can be met.

If the head of the waste management agency were

given the authority to adjust the fee, and Congress’

only means of vetoing such an adjustment were

through specific legislation, direct congressional

control would be difficult--both because of the inherent complexity of the legislative process and because such legislation would have to be signed by

the President, who might be inclined to support the

action of the head of an executive branch agency.
Ch. 7—Federal Institutional issues 165

Adjustment of the fee in this case might be too easy,

thereby weakening the incentives for efficiency and

good management.

If there were no specific provision dealing with

adjustment of the fee, then the l-mill/kWh fee could

only be changed by amendment of NWPA itself.

In this case, adjustment of the fee would be quite

difficult, in part because of the general difficulty

of the legislative process and in part because of reluctance to amend the Act. As noted earlier, if it

is too difficult to adjust the fee to cover unexpected

cost increases, the result may simply be that the

scope of the waste management program is reduced

to match the available revenues. This would eventually lead to a situation in which progress in repository development becomes limited by the availability of resources, which would not be fully

compatible with NWPA’s firm commitment to a

schedule for repository operation.

One possible adjustment mechanism that has

been suggested is automatic adjustment of the fee

according to an index of inflation (see table 7-2).36

Another possibility for revising the fee is suggested

by the fact that an independent waste management

JGH. R, 4690, introduced in the second session of the 98th congress,

would amend the fee adjustment provisions of NWPA to require automatic correction of the fee to keep up with inflation, following NRC

approval of a construction authorization for the first repository. This

approach is analyzed by the Congressional Budget Office in Nuclear

Waste Disposal: Achieving Adequate Financing.

agency would, in effect, be a public utility with a

mandatory fee on its users. Thus, it might be possible to have an independent body, analogous to

the Postal Rate Commission, review and perhaps

even approve proposed fee revisions.

If more direct congressional control were desired,

the mechanism of a joint resolution, as provided

in NWPA for dealing with a State’s objection to

a repository site (see ch. 8), might be used. If a joint

resolution were required to veto a proposed fee revision, the degree of congressional control over

changes of the fee would be limited by the ability

of the President to veto the resolution.37 On the

other hand, it would reduce the likelihood that

needed fee increases would be deferred simply because of congressional inaction. If enactment of a

joint resolution were required to approve a proposed fee revision, the degree of congressional control would be substantially higher, although it might

increase the chance that needed revisions would be

deferred .38

STS+ 1650, introduced in the first session of the 98th Congress fOlIowing the Supreme Court’s decision on the one-House veto, would

provide for congressional veto of agency actions through passage of

a joint resolution, which would have to be signed by the President.

J8H. R. 4690 would alSO allow the Secretary to propose fee changes

in addition to the automatic adjustments for inflation, but those changes

must be approved by Congress through passage of a joint resolution.

Table 7-2.—Nuclear Waste Fund Projections Under the DOE Reference Program Schedule (in billions of 1983 dollars)

High Medium Low No

nuclear nuclear nuclear nuclear

growth growth growth growth

Fixed fee of 1 mill per kilowatt-houc

Total program costs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20.0 20.1 20.3 15.3

Totai fee collections. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... , . . . . . 16.2 15.4 14.2 10.7

Net interestb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 1.3 -2.4 -1.2

Final fund balance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -0.6 -3.4 -8.5 -5.8

Optimal fee for zero final balance (in mills per kilowatt-hour) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.02 1.10 1.19 1.22

Fee increased by annual inflatlon ratec:

Total program costs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20.0 20.1 20.3 15.3

Total fee collections. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34.8 34.2 34.3 17.7

Net interestb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27.1 26.1 31.0 10.5

Final fund balance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41.9 40.2 45.0 12.9

Optimal fee for zero final balance (in miils per kiiowatt-hour) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0.50 0.52 0.55 0.72

NOTES: The long-term inflation and real Interest rate assumptlone are 4.3 percent and 3.5 percent, reapectlvely.

a Total fee Collecting include the one-time payments made for spent fuel generated before April 7, 1983, estimated at $2.3 billion (in nominal dollars).

b Net intere9t includes earnings on invested fund revenues and payments on borrowed funds.

C Thi9 fee de9ign would incre~e the current fee by the annual percent change in the gross national product price deflator, beginning in 19S4. The Optimal fee under

this schedule refers to the rate the fee should have been set at in 19S3 in order to leave a final fund balance of zero.

SOURCE: Congressional Budget Office, Nuclear Weate Disposal: Achieving Adequate Financing, August 1984.
166 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

CONTROL OF EXPENDITURES FROM

THE NUCLEAR WASTE FUND

Assurance of steady progress in development of

a waste management system requires assurance that

adequate funds will be available as needed. This

in turn requires not only assurance of sufficient

revenues but also assurance that the revenues will

be made available to the waste management agency

as needed to carry out the program. In this regard,

NWPA makes expenditures from the Nuclear

Waste Fund subject to annual appropriations. This

provides a high degree of congressional control over

program financing, which may be seen as particularly desirable if the head of the waste management

agency is given power to revise the fee. On the other

hand, it also raises questions about whether sufficient funds will be available each year to carry out

a long-term repository development program on

schedule. For example, there may be pressures in

the appropriations process to defer large capital expenditures in years in which the Federal budget is

particularly tight. This may be inconsistent with

the assurance of predictable annual funding needed

to ensure that a firm, long-term schedule can be

met. Thus, there appears to be an inherent conflict between a stable commitment to a fixed

schedule for a complex technical project and a high

degree of external budgetary control.

There is a wide range of alternatives for congressional control over the finances of a Federal entity.

At one end of the spectrum in terms of independence is TVA, which has direct control over the use

of the funds generated by the sale of electricity, although its budget is shown as part of the Federal

budget. Congressional influence is exercised

through annual oversight of TVA activities, direct

control of its debt ceiling, and appointment and

confirmation of its board of directors.

An alternative that lies between the financial independence of TVA and annual appropriations

control would be to provide for multiyear appropriations, which might be justified in view of the

long-term nature of the repository development

program and the need for adequate and predictable funds over an extended period of time. NWPA

takes a step in this direction by providing that the

budget for the Nuclear Waste Fund is to be submitted, and the appropriations from the fund are

to be authorized, on a triennial basis.

Role of the Mission Plan in Agency Oversight

To exercise fiscal control over the waste management program, the responsible oversight authorities need justification of proposed revenues generated by the fee and expenditures from the fund.

The Mission Plan required by NWPA might be

particularly well suited for this purpose, if it contained a detailed, long-term budget for the expenditures and revenues required to implement the Plan.

In fact, the Mission Plan could serve as the principal mechanism for balancing the need for adequate

congressional oversight with the need for increased

flexibility of operation and funding.

DOE analysis shows that the cost of waste disposal will mainly be determined by the scope of the

repository R&D program, the timing of construction and operation of full-scale disposal facilities,

and the design of the repository. Therefore, to ensure that the fee to be charged to utilities to finance

the waste management program covers all of the

costs required to meet the legislated objectives, the

fee must be based on a clearly defined plan for developing and operating a repository system. The

Mission Plan could provide such a basis for the fee,

and for appropriations from the Nuclear Waste

Fund.

To be most useful as a basis for fiscal control,

the Mission Plan would have to be revised periodically to take into account the fiscal effects of inflation, unanticipated difficulties, program changes

required by new information, or other developments. For example, congressional consideration

of a proposed fee revision might be facilitated if the

proposal were accompanied by a revised version

of the Mission Plan that clearly justifies the change

in the fee in terms of such factors. Congressional

review of a budget for multiyear authorizations or

appropriations could similarly benefit from provision of a revised Mission Plan that gives a detailed

analytical basis for the budget. The amount of time

required for congressional review of fiscal matters

could be reduced if proposed fee revisions were submitted at the same time as multiyear budgets, and

if proposed revenues and expenditures were justified by a single revised Misision Plan document.

NWPA does not require revisions of the Mission

Plan after it has been submitted to Congress, nor

does it explicitly link the Mission Plan to the deter-
Ch 7—Federal Institutional Issues ● 167

mination of revisions of the fee or to the triennial

budget authorization and annual appropriations

process. However, NWPA does require that the

Mission Plan contain an estimate of the annual expenditures needed to carry out its objectives, and

NWPA does not appear to preclude DOE from revising the Plan as necessary for use as a justification for fee changes and appropriations from the

fund.

Use of the Mission Plan as a basis for oversight

and accountability of an independent waste management agency could be strengthened by creation

of a process for congressional approval of the Mission Plan. OTA’s analysis of the history of Federal waste management efforts suggests that it may

be unlikely that broad agreement can be reached

on establishing an independent waste management

agency unless there is explicit agreement about what

the agency is going to do and how it is going to

do it. Congressional approval of a Mission Plan for

implementing the goals enacted in NWPA would

establish such an agreement. Thus, the function

of the waste management agency would not be to

develop broad waste management policy, but rather

to carry out a specific program to implement specific goals, a program Congress has formally approved. Once approved, the Mission Plan could

serve as the main yardstick by which Congress—

and a board of directors or any other body, including the public—could oversee the activities and

expenditures of the waste management agency and

measure Its progress.

A process of extensive public and technical review of the draft Mission Plan prior to congressional

approval could help develop broad national understanding and agreement on waste management policy. This agreement, combined with explicit congressional approval, could enhance the credibility

and stability of the program .39

sgThe State planning Council recommended that ‘‘nationzd planning for radioactive waste management should avoid abrupt changes

in direction to prevent further deterioration of program credibility and

loss of time. To that end, it also recommended a broad and extensive national planning process involving all levels of government and

the general public. Letter from Richard W. Riley, Chairman, State

Planning Council, to President Carter, Jan. 13, 1981, The process

of review of the Mission Plan could also serve as a principal vehicle

for public information efforts and for public involvement in the waste

management program. See discussion of public involvement in ch. 8.

There are many possible options for providing

some form of congressional approval of the Mission Plan. These range from direct approval

through an explicit joint resolution procedure, such

as that included in the Synfuels Act for congressional approval of a national synfuels strategy, to

indirect approval through approval of authorizations, appropriations, or fee revisions explicitly

based on the Mission Plan.

In developing procedures for congressional approval of the Mission Plan as part of the oversight

mechanism, several considerations should be taken

into account. First, the elements of the Mission Plan

subject to congressional review and approval should

not be too detailed. For example, it may be appropriate for Congress to approve a long-term schedule

of activities and associated expenditures and revenues derived from a more detailed Plan, rather than

to approve such a Plan in its entirety.

Second, the approval process should allow room

for revision of the Mission Plan as new information

and developments arise. Provision could be made,

for example, for the agency to revise and resubmit

the Mission Plan for approval as needed.

Third, the approval process must give Congress

sufficient ongoing control over the actions and expenditures of the management agency to warrant

the relaxation of the normal annual budgetary control. One approach would be to require revision

and reapproval of the Mission Plan at regular intervals, such as every 4 or 6 years. Between reapprovals, the waste management agency could be

authorized to make expenditures from the Nuclear

Waste Fund, as provided for in the multiyear budget contained in the Mission Plan, without a requirement for annual appropriations or authorizations.

While the agency would also have the power to propose changes to the Mission Plan and budget more

frequently, it might be anticipated that revisions

of the Plan and fee would normally take place only

at these regular intervals.

Fourth, approval of the initial Mission Plan and

revisions to it should be sufficiently difficult that

the program and its milestones, once approved, will

be taken very seriously, and arbitrary changes will

be effectively precluded. To avoid the possibility

that the waste management program would come

to a halt if the Mission Plan and its multiyear budg-
168 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

et were not approved, the program could remain under this approach, if congressional approval of

subject to the annual appropriations process unless a Mission Plan could be obtained, could give the

and until such approval had been granted. The waste management agency a strong incentive to

added fiscal independence that would be provided produce a highly defensible, widely supported Plan.

FEDERAL INTERAGENCY COORDINATION

Currently, six major Federal agencies have responsibility for various aspects of the radioactive

waste management effort (table 7-3). For any waste

management program to succeed and progress according to schedule, each agency must do its job

well and on time. Closely coordinated schedules will

be required for all involved agencies; working

agreements among them will have to be developed;

and each agency will have to devote sufficient resources, both money and manpower, to its waste

management responsibilities. The challenge of coordination will be more difficult because waste manTable 7-3.—Principal Executive Agencies With Waste

Management Responsibilities

Agency/Responsibility

Department of Energy (DOE). -Responsible for developing

radioactive waste isolation technologies and for designing, constructing, and operating final isolation facilities

for high-level and TRU wastes and spent fuel generated

in national defense and commercial nuclear programs.

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).—Responsible for

developing generally applicable standards for radioactive

materials. EPA is now developing such standards for geologic repositories for radioactive waste.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC}—Responsible for developing and implementing regulations to ensure public

health and safety for storage and final isolation of highlevel radioactive wastes, low-level wastes, and radioactive wastes created in the mining of uranium ore. NRC is

now developing regulations for mined geologic repositories that will implement the standards developed by EPA.

Department of Transportation (DOT). -Responsible for developing, issuing, and enforcing safety standards governing certain packaging and shipping containers for

radioactive materials, and for the labeling, classification,

and marking of all waste packages.

Department of the interior (DOI):

U.S. Geological Survey(l/S(3S~-Conducts geologic investigations in suppori of DOE’s waste disposal programs,

collaborates with DOE on earth sciences technical activities, and will act as consultant to NRC when NRC

considers DOE applications for disposal facilities.

Bureau of Land Management (BLM~–Serves as custodian

of certain Federal landholdings and reviews any proDosals to r)lace waste disoosal facilities on such lands.

SOURCE: Office of Technology Assessment.

agement activities represent only a small part of the

responsibilities of each agency.

Recognizing the need for cooperation by many

Federal agencies to meet mandatory schedules

for developing repositories, NWPA requires the

Secretary of Energy to prepare “Project Decision

Schedules” for each repository specified in the Act.

These schedules are to contain deadlines for all Federal agencies that must take action to enable each

repository to be developed on time. OTA believes

that it would be very useful for the Mission Plan

to incorporate the Project Decision Schedules for

each repository, so that it would represent an implementation plan for the entire Federal Government, rather than just for DOE. If the initial Mission Plan is submitted before those schedules have

been completed, it could be revised as appropriate

to include them when they are available.

Development of an integrated radioactive waste

management Mission Plan that includes both the

technical and institutional steps required for each

agency to meet the goals of legislation, as suggested

here, would be an important first step toward ensuring interagency coordination .40 Even after a Plan

is developed, there will be a need for continued

oversight to monitor progress and resolve any disputes among the agencies as the Plan is implemented. In addition, action must be taken to ensure that each agency has the manpower and

financial resources it will need to fulfill its role

in the Federal waste management program. While

NWPA provides an assured source of funds for

DOE through the waste management fee, the other

agencies, which must also act on time if the sched40The State p]anning Council concluded that a national plan ‘‘is

vital to improve coordination among :he Federal agencies . . .‘ State

Planning Council on Radioactive W.~ste Management, Recommendations on National Radioactive Waste Management Policies: Report to the President, August 1981, p. 28.
Ch. 7—Federal Institutional Issues 169

ules in the Act are to be met, may be dependent

on annual appropriations from general revenues for

the funds they will need to do so.

The overall responsibility for developing an interagency plan and overseeing its implementation

could be assumed by one of the following groups:

● the lead waste management agency;

● the Executive Office of the President; or

● a high-level council.

OPTION 1:

The lead waste management agency.

As the lead agency for radioactive waste management, DOE has been responsible for coordinating all Federal nonregulatory aspects of waste management and for working out relationships with

regulatory agencies. Most waste management legislation considered by Congress has left DOE with

interagency coordination responsibilities. IRG also

chose DOE to coordinate, plan, and implement the

nonregulatory aspects of radioactive waste management. The strongest arguments of IRG in favor of

DOE related to the drawbacks of change: a major

shift of responsibilities to a different organization

could disrupt ongoing programs, cause delay, and

entail significant financial costs. Such a change

could also exacerbate perceptions that Federal radioactive waste management policy lacks stability.

While DOE can be seen as the logical candidate

for overseeing coordination of waste management

activities by other agencies, there are some limitations to such an approach. First, the history of the

Federal waste program gives some grounds for

doubt that sufficient interagency coordination will

be achieved in the future if responsibility for coordination is left solely to DOE. Although DOE was

given lead agency responsibility and an interagency

coordinating committee was established under the

Carter administration, no coordinated interagency

schedule was developed .4’ The lack of adequate

means to set priorities for agencies based on an

overall Federal schedule has resulted in such situations as the adoption by the Nuclear Regulatory

41 IRG recowized that ‘‘a summary of the implementing actions

needed to be taken by involved agencies would have been helpful,

and stated that such a summary ‘‘is being prepared for submission

to the President and will be published subsequently. ” This was never

done. Interagency Review Group, op. cit., p. 119.

Commission (NRC) of regulations for repositories

in the absence of EPA standards, which the regulations are intended to implement. Similarly, DOE

has had to search for prospective repository sites

far in advance of determination of the performance

standards such sites would have to meet.

The difficulty results in part because some of the

key actions in developing waste repositories involve

regulatory agencies. While DOE was given responsibility for coordinating all Federal nonregulatory

aspects of waste management, its powers over regulatory matters were limited to working out effective relationships with regulatory bodies .42 Giving

DOE full responsibility for coordinating all Federal agency activities might create a real or perceived imbalance between the regulated agency

(DOE) and the regulator (NRC), particularly if

DOE has the power to make the final decision on

the deadlines for actions of other agencies, including

NRC. To build trust in the Federal Government’s

waste management program, it may be wise to

avoid any actions that could create even the appearance of compromising the integrity of NRC in this

area.

This might become particularly important if it

were decided to fund the radioactive waste management activities of those agencies out of the Nuclear Waste Fund, rather than from general revenues. Since the fund is not explicitly limited to DOE

activities, this may be possible, and it can be argued

that this would help ensure steady progress in the

waste program. In the current climate of cutbacks

in Federal expenditures and manpower levels, there

may be budget and staff limitations on the waste

management activities of EPA and NRC that could

adversely affect their ability to meet schedules. For

example, some difficulties can be expected in the

first attempt to prove in an NRC licensing proceeding that a repository will perform according to regulatory standards. Delays during that licensing proceeding might be reduced or avoided by an NRC

research effort designed to identify and resolve such

difficulties before the licensing process begins. Such

an effort may be easier to undertake if the necessary funds are provided directly from revenues generated by a mandatory waste management fee than

42’ ‘Fact Sheet: The President’s Program on Radioactive Waste Management, ” Office of the White House Press Secretary, Feb. 12, 1980,

p. 9.
170 . Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

if they must come from NRC’s regular annual appropriations from general revenues.

It can be argued that the incremental increase

in the waste management fee that would be required to cover all regulatory activities would be

so small that it would not have any impact on the

economic competitiveness of nuclear power, and

that the cost could be more than offset in the long

run if regulatory delays and problems could thereby

be minimized. This approach could be facilitated

if an integrated Mission Plan also contained longterm cost estimates for the activities of other involved Federal agencies as well as for DOE. However, if DOE had final authority over which costs

could be covered by the Nuclear Waste Fund, substantial questions might be raised about the independence of the other agencies funded in that

manner.

On the other hand, if the activities of other agencies continue to be funded out of general revenues,

it may be impossible for DOE to be effective in ensuring that they have adequate resources to meet

their milestones in the Mission Plan. In either case,

then, there are questions about whether DOE can

play a useful role in dealing with the funding aspects

of interagency coordination.

Although the Secretary of Energy is given lead

responsibility for preparing the Project Decision

Schedules, this task is to be done “in cooperation

with all affected agencies. However, the Act does

not specify how this cooperation is to be accomplished. In view of the possible limitations of one

agency’s developing an effective plan for actions

required of other agencies, particularly of regulatory agencies, consideration of one of the following options may be useful in developing the interagency Project Decision Schedules, integrating

them into the Mission Plan, seeing that they are

properly followed, and ensuring that funds are

available as needed.

OPTION 2:

Executive Office of the President.

This option would give an existing, high-level

organization in the Executive Office of the President responsibility for interagency coordination.

For example, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) was heavily involved in the activities of IRG, and some have suggested that the

Director of OSTP (the Presidential Science Adviser)

be designated as the senior policymaker and overall coordinator of Federal activities on radioactive

wastes.43 Such an agency may be free of the credibility problems that have afflicted DOE and its

predecessors simply became it is a different organization. Its location in the Executive Office of the

President may enhance its chances of achieving

coordination among the various agencies involved

in waste management and of ensuring that each involved Federal agency has the resources it needs

for its waste management activities.44 If it were

decided to fund the activities of the other agencies

out of the Nuclear Waste Fund, this approach to

interagency coordination could provide a more effective way to allow that to be done without raising questions about the in.dependence of the regulators from the regulated agency, DOE.

On the other hand, there are general disadvantages to giving heavy new responsibilities to an

agency in the Executive Office of the President.

Agencies in the Executive Office of the President

tend to have small staffs, mind, as a result, their existing missions could suffer if waste management

responsibilities were added. Conversely, existing

missions could have such claims on agency loyalties

and resources that radioactive waste management

could be slighted.

43 Keystone Center for Continuing Education, July 1978 Radioactive Waste Management Discussion Group, letter to Frank Press and

John M. Deutch, Sept. 9, 1978.

44A task force established by the State P1anning Counci] to review

a draft of a national plan for radioac :ive waste management concluded

that direct involvement of the Executive Office of the President was

needed in preparing the plan and in an interagency management committee. It also emphasized the importance of ‘active involvement by

the Office of Management and Budget to ensure integrated consideration of the programs and budgets for all waste management activities and to generate greater agreerr ent in the executive branch concerning muhiyear funding levels pre:,ented in the draft plan. “Report

for the State Planning Council: An Independent Task Force Review

of the Second Working Draft of the l~ational Plan, undated, included

as an appendix to a letter from Richard Riley, Chairman, State Planning Council, to President Carter, J an. 13, 1981. National Academy

of Public Administration, op. cit., also recommends designation of

‘‘a top echelon position in the Execu :ive OffIce of the President . . . to

serve in the role of an honest brokt r for the radioactive waste management program’ (p. 4).
Ch. 7—Federal Institutional Issues 171

OPTION 3:

A high-level council.48

Several sources have proposed

some type of council structure to

the creation of

handle various

aspects of waste management, in particular interagency coordination and planning.46 While such

an approach probably would not be useful for

handling operational responsibilities in the waste

program, a high-level council might be useful for

a more limited purpose such as overseeing the development of an integrated Government-wide Mission Plan that includes the associated Project Decision Schedules and long-term budgets for other

agencies. (These budgets would in turn serve as a

basis for financing their activities through the Nuclear Waste Fund, if that were desired. ) In this approach, the operational responsibility for preparing the detailed contents of the Mission Plan could

be left to the appropriate agencies, while the council

could guide the development of the outline, oversee

the work of the agencies as they prepare its substance, and review and perhaps approve the final

product for submission to Congress.

Because of the wide range of interests affected

by Federal radioactive waste management activities, the credibility of such a council might be enhanced if its membership included representatives

from non-Federal groups such as State and local

governments, utilities, public service commissions,

and environmental groups .47 This is commonly

‘

5 The term ‘ ‘council’ will be used to refer to any organizational

structure involving representatives from various agencies or other

groups. Other terms that are frequently used include: committee, commission, working group, task group, etc.

4bThe July 1978 Keystone Radioactive Waste Management Discussion Group recommended that the Interagency Review Group be

continued to facilitate interagency coordination. A bill introduced by

Senators Percy and Glenn during the 96th Congress (S.742) would

have established an interagency committee with duties involving coordination among agencies with waste management responsibilities and

preparation of annual Nuclear Waste Management Plans. The State

Planning Council Task Force on the national plan recommended that

the development of a national plan for radioactive waste management

be ‘ ‘aggressively directed by a high-level interagency committee that

meets on a frequent basis. This was seen as ‘‘necessary to extract

and enforce real commitments from the agencies on improved coordination, . essential to correcting a key constitutional weakness of

the FederaJ program, and not incompatible with maintaining the

necessary degree of independence for regulatory responsibilities, State

Planning Council on Radioactive Waste Management, op. cit., p. 4,

47A Gener~ Accounting Office report that examined the Federal

organizational structure for waste management recommended legislation establishing a Federal and State committee to be responsible

for developing a national waste management plan. In support of this

done in Presidential or national commissions, such

as the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental

Relations or the Water Resources Council, that are

appointed to investigate an area of broad national

interest.

For such a council to play an effective role in

overseeing the waste management planning activities of DOE and the other involved agencies, it

would probably need its own staff, focusing solely

on radioactive waste management. Its effectiveness

might be increased further if it were established formally by Executive order. To avoid creation of a

permanent governmental entity, a sunset provision

could require dissolution of the council once a

Government-wide Mission Plan had been completed. A determination could, however, be made

at that time if the council should be continued in

some form to oversee the Federal Government’s

implementation of the program and to ensure that

each agency would have both the resources and the

incentives to meet its own particular deadlines. (The

latter objective might be facilitated if the Office of

Management and Budget were included as a member of the council.)

Chairmanship by someone within the Executive

Office of the President (e. g., the Vice-President or

the Director of OSTP) could both signal a high lev- ,

el of Presidential interest in the resolution of the

radioactive waste problem and help preserve the

balance between the implementing and regulatory

agencies. History suggests that such a council can

be an effective focal point for identifying and analyzing on a coordinated Government-wide basis,

the principal options facing the Nation in a particrecommendation, the report stated, ‘ ‘We believe it is \ery unlikely

that making DOE the responsible lead agency to plan and coordinate

the program will establish public confidence and trust. A more diverse organizational concept made up of Federal and non-Federal representatives should develop the policy and plan, while DOE maintains responsibility for implementation. Only through (his broader

involvement can there be any chance that the pub] ic can bc con~’inced

that an acceptably safe disposal method exists. General Accounting

Office, ‘ ‘The Nation’s Nuclear Waste—Proposals for Organization

and Siting, EMD-79-77, June 21, 1979, p. 12. Along these lines,

the National Governors’ Association (NGA) Subcommittee on Nuclear Energy once suggested the creation of a National Commission

on Nuclear Waste Management, to include members from State and

local governments. Statement of GovernorJames B. Edwards, Chairman of the NGA subcommittee, before the House Comm ittce on

Science and Technology, Subcommittee on Fossil and Nuclear Energy

Research Development and Demonstration, June 20, 1978.
.

172 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

ular area of interest48—precisely the task that must

be accomplished in the development of the radioactive waste Mission Plan. The creation of such a

4BSee the histo~ of the Space Task Group, established by President Nixon under the chairmanship of the Vice President. Civilian

Space Poficy and Applications (Washington, D. C.: U.S. Congress,

Office of Technology Assessment, OTA-STI-1 77, June 1982), pp. 96-

98. This group conducted the first interagency planning effort with

respect to the civilian space program. It involved participation from

the general public as well as Federal agency representatives.

council could be seen as a clear signal to the public that the Federal Government intends to get its

own house in order so as to implement NWPA. If

such a council were charged with overseeing the

development of integrated policies and implementation plans for all radioactive wastes, not just commercial high-level waste, it could also help allay concerns of those who fear that legislation dealing only

with commercial high-level waste could lead to deferral of action in other areas of waste management.
Chapter 8

Addressing State and

Public Concerns
Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ””””””~”” ““00 ”””.”

State Concerns . . . . . ....... .. . 9 . .0 

Waste Management Impacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Equity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . “.”.”.”

Federal Credibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .’””.,”.”-”.”.”

State Involvement in Waste Management Decisions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

State Role in Policy Development and Program Oversight. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

State Role in Facility Siting Decisions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Prevention and Mitigation of Impacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ............~~ ....*

Addressing State Concerns About Safety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Impact Mitigation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ~ ., . . . . . . . . . . . ~ . . ., ..”....”

Equity in Siting Waste Facilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Public Involvement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..~....”.”.”~. .“”

175

175

176

176

177

177

177

178

184

184

186

188

190

TABLES

Table No. Page

8-1. NWPA Decisions, Deadlines, Opportunities to Influence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
Chapter 8

Addressing State and Public Concerns

INTRODUCTION

History suggests that concerns about the safety

and equity of Federal waste management activities

on the part of States, Indian tribes, localities, and

the general public could become a source of increasingly effective opposition to implementation of a

waste management program unless specific steps

are taken to deal with these concerns. Efforts to proceed without dealing with them may simply provoke greater resistance, confrontations, and failure to achieve program objectives on schedule. On

the other hand, measures that adequately address

these concerns in the waste management program

are likely to broaden support for it, reduce opposition during implementation, and remove grounds

for complaint.

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (NWPA)

includes many provisions designed to deal with the

concerns of the States, Indian tribes, and the general public. This chapter will describe those provisions and the background against which they were

developed.

STATE CONCERNS

The Federal Government must have access to potential disposal sites to evaluate the suitability of

various geologic media and of particular sites for

radioactive waste disposal. Ultimately, Federal

ownership of actual disposal sites will be necessary.

Federal attempts to perform siting activities have

met with strong State opposition, however, severely

hindering Federal efforts to find and examine potential waste disposal sites across the country. 1 State

and Federal apprehensions have led to a vicious circle in which the actions of each side, taken in perceived self-defense, reinforce the fears of the other.

On the Federal side, some parties are concerned

that States will refuse to take waste under any circumstances. On the State side, there is fear that

the Federal Government will site waste facilities despite legitimate State objections.2

‘As of September 1982, approximately 160 State laws, initiatives,

and resolutions and 250 local laws pertaining to high-level radioactive

waste had been passed throughout the United States. Steven H. Murdock, F. Larry Leistritz, and Rita R. Harem (eds. ) NucJear Waste:

Socioeconomic Dimensions of Long Term Storage (Boulder, Colo.:

Westview Press, 1983), p. 75.

‘For a discussion of some of the diflkulties encountered in past Federal-State relations, see Roger Kasperson, ‘‘The Dark Side of the Radioactive Waste Problem, ” Progress in Resource Management and

Environmenta/P/arming, T. O’Riordan and K. Turner (eds. ) (New

York: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., 1980), vol. 2, pp. 135-136. See also

app. A.

The manner in which State opposition to Federal radioactive waste management activities is dealt

with, and the ultimate outcome of such opposition,

have implications for Federal activities in other policy areas in which there is Federal/State conflict.

This is especially true in other activities that concentrate costs in smaller areas while spreading benefits on a national or interregional scale. Federal/State relations in radioactive waste management

pose both an opportunity to establish mutually satisfactory and workable precedents and a risk of establishing unwise ones.

State opposition to Federal siting activities appears to be based primarily on (1) fears regarding

the possible risks and impacts of radioactive waste

and waste management activities and (2) fears

about possible inequitable distribution of those risks

and impacts. These concerns are complicated by

distrust of the Federal Government.3

‘OTA’S analysis of State concerns draws on the results of OTA staff

interviews with State officials in South Carolina, Nevada, New Mexico, and Washington, and on interviews with State officials in Michigan, New York, Illinois, and Tennessee conducted for OTA by the

Academy for Contemporary Problems, as reported by Pat Choate and

John Bowman in Radioactive Waste Management: State Concerns,

report prepared for the OffIce of Technology Assessment, 1980. See

also app. A. It should be noted that efforts to find sites for treatment

or disposal of nonnuclear hazardous wastes are beset by similar con175
..

176 . Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

Waste Management Impacts

Radiological impacts—dangers to physical health

and safety from exposure to radiation—are the potential impacts of greatest concern to States and localities. No matter how remote the possibility, waste

management facilities and transportation of waste

bring the chance of accidental release of radioactive

materials to the biosphere.

States and localities are also concerned about the

nonradiological impacts of waste management activities—i. e., those impacts that can be expected

to occur even if there is no release of radioactive

materials. Some potential nonradiological impacts,

such as demands for increased State emergency response capabilities, arise because radioactive waste

management involves radiological hazards. Others

arise simply because a nuclear waste management

facility is a large-scale industrial activity. Potential nonradiological impacts include the following:

●

●

●

●

Expenditures for activities related to Federal/State relations. Depending on the arrangements adopted, States will incur costs in reviewing Federal siting proposals, particularly

if outside experts are consulted.

Increased demands on governmental services.

State and local police and fire departments,

health departments, and other agencies will

have increased responsibilities to prepare for

and cope with possible accidents involving

radioactive waste. States may have to allocate

additional funds for regulatory activities such

as inspection of trucks bearing waste. Roads

will be subjected to added stress from truck

shipments.

Possible losses in land and property values.

Possible losses in tax revenue. Radioactive

waste repositories will be built on land either

already owned by the Federal Government or

acquired for that purpose. Such lands and facilities will remain federally owned in perpetuity. Traditionally, Federal ownership has

meant that lands and facilities are not taxable

by State and local governments.

cerns. See Martin Jaffe, Hazardous Waste Management: Implications for Nuclear Waste Facility Siting, report prepared for the Office of Technology Assessment, American Plaming Association, Apr.

18, 1980.

●

●

●

●

Increased demands on potentially scarce natural resources, such as water.

Possible loss of the ability to exploit mineral

and other resources from lands surrounding

repositories.

Nonradioactive water and airpollution resulting from facility construction and operation.

Boomtown effects. Construction and, to a lesser extent, operation of radioactive waste management facilities may result in an influx of

new residents and transients to areas in which

such facilities are located, possibly straining

existing physical and social services. Boomtown effects have been severe, for example,

in some rural areas of Western States where

mining and energy extraction industries have

recently begun operations. In some cases, the

introduction of a new industry to an unprepared locality has led to social disruption, such

as rising rates of alcoholism, divorce, and

crime.

Equity

Beliefs about what is equitable vary widely.

While the health and safety aspects of prospective

waste sites are of primary consideration, the amount

of waste present in storage and disposal facilities

and the distribution of sites are also important factors in States’ views of siting.4 Some States fear that

they could be forced to host radioactive waste generated by the rest of the Nation and thus bear an

inequitable share of the disadvantages of nuclear

power. Such concerns about equity have been important in the debate over onsite storage v. awayfrom-reactor storage and in evaluations of repository siting, especially in discussions of numbers and

locations of repositories.

Another equity consideration is the length of time

waste will be in interim storage in a State. Some

States fear that the impetus for the Federal Government to develop permanent repositories would

be lessened if such short-term solutions are put into

‘Concern about equity was expressed by many State officials in interviews with OTA staff and has been frequently expressed in congressional hearings on radioactive waste legislation. See, for example, statements made by officials from Illinois and South Carolina to

the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Nuclear

Regulation during hearings concerning pending nuclear waste legislation on Nov. 9, 1981.
Ch. 8—Addressing State and Public Concerns . 177

place, and that, as a result, interim spent fuel storage in those States could become permanent by

default.5

Federal Credibility

Distrust of the Federal Government, stemming

from past instances of what States perceive to be

low Federal competence and poor responsiveness

to States’ needs, forms the background against

which States express fears about impacts and equity

and from which States measure current Federal efforts.6 State opinion of Federal competence has been

lowered by frequent Federal policy changes; delays

in formulating a stable national radioactive waste

‘Officials in both South Carolina and 1llinois were concerned that

proposed Federal interim spent fuel storage in existing facilities in those

States could become permanent if there were continued delays in a

Federal permanent repository. They also did not want such interim

storage facilities to take a disproportionate share of the national spent

fuel storage burden. See FederaJ Facilities for Storing Spent Nuclear

Fuel—Are They Needed? General Accounting Office, June 27, 1979,

EMD-79-82, pp. 14-16. See al.w E. William Colglazier, Jr. (cd.), The

Politics of Nuclear Waste (New York: Pergamon Press, 1982), especially the Foreword by Governor Richard W. Riley of South Carolina, pp. ix-x.

Wee app. A; and Choate and Bowman, op. cit.

management plan; failure to consult effectively with

State officials on site investigations; several controversies about the scope of the Waste Isolation

Pilot Plant, near Carlsbad, N. Mex.; maintenance

and funding of the contaminated Nuclear Fuel

Services reprocessing plant site at West Valley,

N. Y.; and the safety of the proposed site at Lyons,

Kans. Problems with leaks and inadequate monitoring of military and low-level waste have also affected State perceptions of Federal management of

commercial high-level radioactive waste. One State

fear is that considerations other than technical criteria bearing on safety will play an unwarranted

role in Federal siting decisions. Such considerations

might be, for example, a perceived need for rapid

siting of a repository to remove the waste problem

as an obstacle to nuclear power, or a desire to save

costs and time by directing site-selection efforts

toward locations with already existing Federal facilities.

NWPA addresses State and Indian tribe concerns

through measures in three areas: State involvement

in waste management decisions, prevention and

mitigation of impacts of waste management activities, and equity in siting waste facilities.

STATE INVOLVEMENT IN WASTE

MANAGEMENT DECISIONS

Discussions about State involvement in radioactive waste management have focused on two areas:

1.

2.

How States should be involved in making

overall Federal radioactive waste management

policy and in reviewing implementation of

policy.

What powers a State should have in siting decisions involving that State, and what limits

should be placed on those powers.

State Role in Policy Development

and Program Oversight

States have played a role in the formation of Federal radioactive waste management policies and in

the review of implementation of those policies by

the same means as those used in other policy areas:

discussions with agency officials, direct lobbying

of administration and congressional leaders, and

use of the State’s congressional delegation to make

views known and to influence policy. Organizations

representing State governmental groups, such as

the National Governors’ Association and the National Conference of State Legislatures, have also

been important in advocating State interests.

In addition to these traditional means, States

were involved in the development of Federal radioactive waste management policy through a specialpurpose organization, the State Planning Council

(SPC), created by President Carter by Executive

order in February 1980 and given an 18-month

maximum lifespan. SPC, among other duties,

made recommendations to the President and the
178 . Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

Secretary of Energy about State involvement in all

phases of radioactive waste siting and on more general matters of policy affecting State and local interests, such as composition of the National Waste

Management Plan and the Nuclear Regulatory

Commission’s (NRC) licensing procedures. SPC

formally dissolved in August 1981 after issuing a

final report.

Some proposals for future State involvement in

radioactive waste management have envisioned the

recreation of SPC or the creation of a similar organization; others have focused exclusively on the

State role in siting decisions, leaving State involvement in policymaking to traditional means.

It can be argued that with the completion of the

assigned duties of SPC, there is no longer a need

for a special-purpose organization to supplement

existing ways in which States can contribute to Federal radioactive waste management policy. Within

SPC itself, there was division about whether the

council’s life should be extended, and no resolution was passed calling for such an extension.

In favor of reviving SPC or creating a similar

organization, it can be argued that there is a continuing need for a single body to synthesize the

viewpoints of different States and of groups within

States. Radioactive waste management policy could

experience major changes under different Presidential administrations during the extended period in

which waste management facilities will be sited and

operated. A special-purpose organization could

prove useful for reviewing and commenting on the

draft radioactive waste Mission Plan to be prepared

pursuant to NWPA, for monitoring the waste program, and for making recommendations when appropriate. 7 Another possible avenue for State involvement in policy development and program

oversight would be State representation on broader

bodies such as a high-level council for overseeing

development of a Federal Government-wide Mission Plan, or an oversight body for an independent waste management agency. (Further discussion

of these ideas is found in ch. 7.)

‘The RESOLVE Forum on High-Level Radioactive Waste Management recommended continuation of SPC. See ,k.fanaging the Nation High -Le\’eI Radioacti\’e Waste: Ke,v Issues and Recommendations (Washington, D. C.: The Conservation Foundation, July

1981), pp. 27-28.

NWPA made no special provision for State involvement in policy development and program

oversight, although it does specify that the draft

Mission Plan must be submitted to the States and

affected Indian tribes for their comments. However,

it may be useful for the administration to consider

establishing some mechanism through Executive order, as was done with the SPC, and for congressional deliberations on alternative management approaches to consider a State role in oversight of the

institutional options that are considered.

State Role in Facility Siting Decisions

The question of the appropriate role for States

and Indian tribes in Federal decisions about siting

radioactive waste management facilities has been

one of the main areas of contention in development

of Federal radioactive waste management policy,

The Carter administration proposed giving States

a continuing role in radioactive waste management

through a process termed consultation and concurrence. 8 This policy left many specific features of

the Federal/State relationship undefined, however.

Later, proposals setting out the State role more

clearly were introduced in the 96th Congress, and

both the Senate and House passed radioactive waste

management bills (S. 2189 and H.R. 8378, respectively) in 1980 which specified provisions for State

involvement, although no final bill was adopted at

that time. NWPA, passed in the closing days of the

97th Congress, contained detailed provisions for

State involvement in siting not only permanent disposal facilities, but also facilities for interim spent

fuel storage and for certain research and development (R&D) activities. These are discussed below.

There has been general agreement that a process of consultation—in which individual States are

promptly and continuously provided information

about intended siting activities affecting them, State

views are solicited, and Federal responses are made

to State concerns—should take place. NWPA provides for such consultation in two general ways,

First, it specifies points during the repository site

screening and licensing process at which the affected

‘For a discussion of the genesis of this concept during the deliberations of the Interagency Review Group (IRG), see Ted Greenwood,

“Nuclear Waste Management in the United States” in Colglazier,

op. cit.
Ch. 8—Addressing State and Public Concerns ● 179

States and Indian tribes must be notified of proposed Federal actions, provided with detailed information, and given a chance to comment (see

table 8-l). Second, it requires the Secretary of

Energy to seek to enter into binding written agreements with States or Indian tribes affected by Federal activities at sites that have been selected for

detailed characterization. These agreements are to

include a wide range of specified procedures, including procedures: 1) by which a State or Indian

tribe may study and make recommendations concerning the impacts of a proposed repository; 2) by

which the Department of Energy (DOE) shall assist

the State and local governments near the repository site in resolving concerns about such offsite

effects as emergency response requirements, waste

transportation, and monitoring of the repository

during operation and after decommissioning; and

3) by which the objections of a State or Indian tribe

can be resolved through negotiation, arbitration,

Table 8-1.—NWPA Decisions, Deadlines, Opportunities to influence

Decision/event NWPA deadline Opportunity to influence

Draft Mission Plan published by Apr. 6, 1984 Reviewed by State/tribe

DOE Comments available for public inspection

Final Mission Plan submitted to June 6, 1984, effective 30 days

Congress after submission

Five sites nominated for site After issuance of siting Hearings in vicinity of sites prior to nomination

characterization guidelines (Rl)a

and prior to preparation of environmental

JUIV 1, 1989 (R2)a

assessments

Environmental assessments for Accompany nominations

five nominated sites

Three sites recommended for Jan. 1, 1985 (Rl)

site characterization July 1, 1989 (R2)

President approves or 2 to 6 months after

disapproves three sites for recommendation

site characterization

Site characterization plans Prior to sinking exploratory Public hearings

(SCPS) prepared by DOE for shafts State/tribal comments on draft SCPS,

each site to be characterized SCPS available for comment at hearings

NRC site characterization State/tribal comments on draft

Analysis for each site

Prior to repository site DOE must hold hearings at all sites under

recommendation consideration for repository recommendation

30 days prior to recommendation DOE must notify State/tribe

State/tribe may comment to DOE and provide

impact report to be forwarded to the

President

DOE recommends one site for

repository

DOE prepares environmental Public comment on draft environmental impact

impact assessment statement

President recommends site to Mar. 31, 1967 or 1988 (Rl)

Congress Mar. 31, 1990 or 1991 (R2)

Possible State/tribal notice of 60 days later State/tribal action (may include public

disapproval to Congress participation if no written agreement)

Possible congressional override 90 days later

DOE submits application to NRC 90 days after site designation Application sent to State/tribe

for construction authorization takes effect

NRC issues construction Jan. 1, 1989 (Rl), or 3 to 4 years Intervention in licensing

authorization after receipt of application

(Rl, R2)

Repository in operation 1998 (Rl)

aRl fefers to the first repository; R2 to the second.

SOURCE: Laura Worby, Citizen’s Nuclear Waste Manual (Washington, D. C.: Nuclear Information and Resources Service, 19S4).
I&) ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

or other mechanisms. Similar mechanisms and procedures are provided by the Act for consultation

with States and affected Indian tribes concerning

siting and operation of Federal interim storage facilities, any monitored retrievable storage facilities

that might subsequently be authorized, and test and

evaluation facilities.

Perhaps the most controversial question concerning the State role in waste facility siting was how

much formal power, if any, the States should be

given to block Federal actions. ‘I’he alternatives that

were considered ranged from giving States an absolute veto-i. e., the binding legal authority to halt

Federal siting activities—to giving the Federal agency responsible for waste management the explicit

authority to preempt State objections. This section

will discuss some of the principal arguments for

these two positions, which represent the opposite

ends of the spectrum of alternatives, and will describe the provisions for shared powers that were

ultimately incorporated in NWPA.

State Veto—the Binding Legal Power

to Halt Federal Siting Activities

Under a State veto approach, Federal agencies

could proceed with activities only in the absence

of State objections. The most important feature of

this approach is the binding legal power of a State

to stop the activity in question at any point. Such

activity could resume only if the State changed its

position.

As argued by proponents, veto rights represented

an equitable and constitutionally justified distribution of power among political units. If errors were

made in the siting, design, construction, or operation of radioactive waste facilities, present and

future residents of States would have to live with

the consequences. Historically, States have been

accorded primary responsibility for protecting their

citizens’ property, health, and general welfare. Veto

power was seen by some as a necessary defense

against a Federal Government perceived as prepared to site radioactive waste facilities regardless

of State objections.

In addition, many advocates of State veto believed that States would act reasonably and that a

veto would not be used unless it were essential. In

their view, a veto would indicate an unreasonable

or unsafe Federal proposal rather than an unreasonable State reaction. They expected that siting

would occur if the Federal Government could provide credible assurances of safety. A situation in

which all 50 States vetoed sites was not anticipated.

Advocates believed that, even if the situation were

likely, the veto approach should be rejected only

if and when the situation occurred, and not before.

On the other hand, not only Federal officials, but

many State officials as well, feared that if given a

veto power, State officials would have no choice but

to use it, regardless of the merits of a particular project.9 They believed the alternative to such use could

be political disaster because public opposition to a

radioactive waste project is likely to be much stronger and more intense than support for it. Even if

internal political pressures were not overwhelming,

officials might use their veto power out of fear that

their State would be the only one not to veto a facility. If use of the veto by many States was expected, the Federal Government might select sites

primarily on political rather than technical

grounds —one of the very reasons why some States

distrust the Federal Government. For these and

other reasons, the veto approach was opposed by

many organizations, including SPC.1

°

Federal Agency Preemption

Federal agency preemption—whereby a Federal

agency could, if necessary, overrule a State and proceed with a siting activity in dispute-is the reverse

of State veto. In essence, the extent of involvement

and power possessed by States would be determined

by the Federal Government. In its extreme form,

States would have little or no chance to influence

Federal activities, and consultation would be minimal. More commonly, however, proponents of the

preemption approach envisioned much greater

State involvement, including measures of consultation. Even with extensive consultation, however,

Federal agency power would remain clearly predominant.

‘For example, statement by Steven Sldar for the National Conference of State Legislatures before the Subcommittee on Energy Regulation, Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, July 19,

1979, p. 8.

Iostate planning Cowci] on Radioactive Waste Management (Spc),

Recommendations on National Radimctive Waste Management Policies: Report to the President, August 1981, p. 6.
Ch. 8—Addressing State and Public Concerns ● 181

Several rationales were given for preemption.

Preemption was seen by proponents as the appropriate expression of Federal preeminence in radioactive waste management, given the relationship

of waste management to other areas of Federal concern, such as national energy policy, interstate

commerce, foreign policy, national health, and distribution of costs among many States. It also was

seen as consistent with past Federal legislation and

policy in the general field of atomic energy.

An implicit assumption behind preemption, in

many cases, was that a significant number of States

would reject siting of a radioactive waste facility,

given the power to do so. In this view, making compromises with a State would take too long or be

too expensive to permit timely siting of needed

waste management facilities. Examples that support this assumption include the many State laws

restricting waste management activities and vociferous State reactions even to initial site exploration. An explicit declaration of Federal power was

perceived by some proponents to be the quickest

and, perhaps, only way to remove such present and

potential obstacles to siting activities in time to safeguard nuclear power.

Opponents noted that preemption had potential

problems as an approach to State powers in radioactive waste management. Apart from objections

based on States’ rights considerations, the ability

of this approach to overcome State objections quickly may in fact be limited. States have substantial

abilities to translate their objections into delay and

expense for the Federal Government through such

means as defense of their legislation in court and

intervention in licensing hearings. While the Federal Government legal power to overcome State

opposition is fairly clear, 11 the amount of time and

expense required to do so is uncertain. Court challenges, for example, could take years to reach judgmoment12 Some feared that unless the avenues for

State intervention were narrowed or the procedures

for reviewing challenges to State actions were exI I For a genera] discussion of the legal status of state ]aWS affecting

radioactive waste management, see Harold P. Green and L. Marc

Zen, “Federal-State Conflict in Nuclear Waste Management: The

Legal Bases, ‘‘ in Colglazier, op. cit.; and William C. Metz, ‘‘Legal

Constraints to Repository Siting, ” in Murdock et al., op. cit.

‘*Frederic A. Morris, “The Federal Legal Framework for High-Level Nuclear Waste Management” (Seattle: 13attelle Human Affairs Research Center, Mar. 31, 1980), BHARC-31 1/80/009, pp. 29-34.

pedited— measures that could have broader implications for Federal/State relations in general—

attempts at preemption might make siting proceed

more slowly. Preemption could also create a vicious

circle in which preemption of initial State opposition would generate more intense opposition, which

in turn would have to be preempted. Each turn of

the circle would make it more difficult to return to

mutual trust. Initial use of the preemption approach

could make it difficult to switch to a more cooperative approach later.

Shared Powers

Between preemption and veto, a broad spectrum

of possible approaches to Federal/State sharing of

power in radioactive waste management were considered in the debate leading up to passage of

NWPA. This report will use the term shared powers

to characterize this middle ground.

Basic features of most proposals for shared

powers that were considered included: 1) extensive

consultation between States and the Federal Government, often including procedures for resolving

some types of State objections (e. g., by arbitration);

and 2) the formal ability of States to halt some Federal siting activities, under some circumstances, balanced by Federal power to override State objections, given certain conditions. Shared powers thus

represented a compromise between veto and preemption, with limitations placed on the powers of

both sides.

Limitations on State power, especially override

provisions, are objected to by some defenders of

States’ rights because of the perceived chilling effect such limitations might have on a State’s ability

to influence Federal actions and to protect State interests. Conversely, even with such limitations,

some observers are troubled by the formal ability

of States to halt Federal projects. These disadvantages to each side are mitigated by several factors.

From the State perspective, limitations on veto power may be acceptable even to strong defenders of

States’ rights. At the same time, defenders of Federal preeminence may find satisfaction even in a

process that gives States nonconcurrence powers

under some circumstances.

The Carter administration policy of consultation

and concurrence, while intended as a compromise

between the extremes of preemption and veto, was
182 Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

vague in its definition of concurrence, particularly

in distinguishing between nonconcurrence—the

ability of a State to prevent the continuance of Federal siting activities—and State veto. 13 Not surprisingly, much of the debate about the State role in

radioactive waste management during the 96th and

97th Congresses focused on the precise specification of the balance between Federal and State

authority.

In response to those who were concerned about

giving States any formal authority to halt Federal

activities, it was noted that adoption of explicit procedures for shared powers would in some ways be

simply a formalization of powers States already possessed to delay Federal actions, plus formalization

of procedures for resolving disputes at several levels.

It was argued that these formalizations would make

the use of State power more predictable and contained. Federal plans, State objections, Federal responses, mediation between parties, and final judgments could all be expressed within specified areas

with prescribed procedures and time limitations.

Adoption of a formal structure in law might enable

the Federal Government to avoid the slow, graduated appeal procedures likely in various courts if

restrictive State actions were challenged and defended .14

Procedures Established by NWPA

NWPA includes detailed processes for State and

Indian tribe involvement in decisions for siting the

different types of waste management facilities addressed in the Act. While there are some differences

in the processes dealing with different facilities, in

IJThe Interagency ReVievv Group stated that consultation and concurrence implies ‘ ‘an on-going dialogue participation and the development of a cooperative relationship between States and all relevant

Federal agencies during program planning and the site identification

and characterization programs on a regional basis using the systems

approach, through the identification of specific sites, the joint decision on a facility, any subsequent licensing process and through the

entire period of operation and decommissioning. Under this approach

the State effectively has a continuing ability to participate in activities at all points throughout the course of the activity and, if it deems

appropriate, to prevent the continuance of Federal activities. (Report to the President by the Interagenc,v Re\iew Group on Nuclear

Waste Management, TID-29442, March 1979, Washington, D. C.,

p. 95. ) For further discussion of the concept of consultation and concurrence, see Consultation and Concurrence, proceedings of a workshop held at Eastsound, M ich. on Sept. 23-26, 1979, published by

the OffIce of Nuclear Waste Isolation, Battelle Memorial Inst itutc,

January 1980, ONWI-87.

14SNar, op. cit. , p. z.

general they share two features: 1) prior to selection of a final facility site, State and Indian tribe

participation is limited to extensive consultation;

and 2) following site selection15 by the Federal Government, the affected State or Indian tribe has the

right to lodge a formal objection with Congress,

and that objection becomes effective unless overturned by passage of a joint resolution by both

Houses of Congress. These and several other features will be discussed briefly next.

State role during site exploration and characterization. —NWPA provides for extensive consultation with States during the siting steps preceding the President’s recommendations to Congress

of a site for a repository, but the Act grants the

States no authority to halt Federal activities. During the debates on waste management legislation,

some had argued that States should have the right

to forbid or halt these initial siting activities, as well

as some other activities, because of the possibility

that site exploration might lead eventually to a repository. Others argued that such restrictions on

exploration could mean that sites that were desirable from a technical viewpoint might be effectively withdrawn from consideration, or that the sites

that were finally chosen might be those that were

most politically acceptable rather than those that

were most technically suitable. 16 If safety is to be

the primary goal of radioactive waste management

policy, it was argued, the ability to gain knowledge

about different media and sites must be preserved,

and therefore the States’ ability to prevent the Federal Government from conducting site exploration

activities should be limited. 17

Procedures by which the Federal Government

could override a State’s objection.—The 96th and

97th Congresses debated extensively about what

procedures should be required to override a State’s

objections to a Federal choice of a waste disposal

site. The greater the number of political bodies required to reach agreement to override a State objection, and the greater the amount of action required by them, the more difficult it will be for an

J SIn the case of a Feder~ Interim Storage Facility, the State has

the right to object only after DOE decides to provide more than 300

tonnes of storage capacity at a site.

IbSk]ar, op. Cit. , p. s.

171 n this regmd, Spc recomnlendcd that States and t ribcs not at’-

.

bitrarily refuse permission for initial site investigations. SPC, ln[t’rim Report, Feb. 24, 1981, p. 14.
Ch. 8—Addressing State and Public Concerns 183

override to occur. SPC, for example, recommended

that for a State’s objection to be voided, a Presidential determination and a concurrent or joint resolution by both Houses of Congress should be required.

Conversely, override can be made easier in various ways. Both the Senate and House bills passed

in the 96th Congress had provisions stating that for

a State’s objection to stop DOE’s civilian waste siting activities effectively, at least one House of Congress must pass a resolution sustaining the State’s

objection. State objections would thus be overridden de facto if such a resolution were not passed.

After considering and finally rejecting the ‘‘oneHouse-sustain” approach, the 97th Congress ultimate] y agreed to include in NWPA a procedure

requiring passage of a joint resolution by both

Houses of Congress to override a State’s objection

to a Presidential selection of a repository site. However, the ‘‘two-House-override’ approach may be

little different from the ‘ ‘one-House-sustain’ approach in terms of the relative difficulty of overturning such an objection. The reason is that the

procedures in NWPA for congressional consideration of a State’s objection practically ensure that

both Houses would ultimately have to vote on a

resolution dealing with that objection, as was the

case with the ‘‘one-House-sustain’ provisions previously under consideration. As long as each House

will eventually have to vote on the question of

whether to sustain or overturn a State’s objection,

all the State has to do to have its position upheld

under either approach is to persuade one House

to vote its way. is However, if the procedures had

allowed a significant possibility that one House

might never vote on the question (for example, if

the resolution could die without being discharged

from a committee to which it had been referred),

the legislation would have been biased in favor of

continuation of the status quo if Congress failed to

act—rejection of a proposed site in the case of a

— -

1 alf the one-HouSe-SuStain approach is used, a House sympathetic

with the State would vote to pass the resolution to sustain the objection. If the two-House-override approach is used, a House sympathetic

with the State would vote to defeat the resolution to override the State

objection. In either approach, the State objection would be overridden

only if both Houses supported the selection of a site by voting to defeat a resolution to support the State or to pass a resolution to o\’erride the State. If either House does not support the site selection under

either approach, the State’s objection would be sustained.

‘‘two-House-override” approach, or acceptance of

the site with a ‘‘one-House-sustain’ approach.

Participation by affected States and local governments.-Affected States are those that could be

heavily affected by a radioactive waste management

facility located in another State: e.g., States that

are connected by above- or below-ground water systems or that serve as a transportation corridor for

waste shipments to another State in which a waste

facility is located. Some proposed giving affected

States rights similar to those enjoyed by host States.

SPC, for example, recommended that affected

States meeting certain criteria established by DOE

in consultation with the Department of Transportation (DOT) have rights equivalent to host

States.19 However, NWPA gave explicit participation rights only to States that would host a repository site and to affected Indian tribes. 20

Localities near radioactive waste management facilities will bear a large share of facility-related impacts. While there were many proposals that relevant local governments be given consultation rights,

there were few proposals that they be given any authority to block Federal actions, as well. State officials and organizations have generally been opposed

to giving local governments such authority. NWPA

does not provide for participation in siting decisions

by units of local government, and leaves it up to

States to decide how local governments will be involved in the consultation process.

A recent National Research Council report concluded that the lack of an institutionalized process

for involving local governments in the siting process represents a significant gap in the framework

defined by NWPA, and that the need for linkage

between local jurisdictions and State governments

is of potentially critical importance to the waste

management program. The report underscored the

responsibility of State governments to address the

issue of State-local relations constructively, since

Congress decided against a Federal prescription for

the institutional relationship between State and local

jgSPC, Interim Report, p. 19.

20NwpA defines an ‘‘affected Indian tribe’ as one whose reservation contains a specified radioactive waste facility or whose federally

defined possessor or usage rights may be substantially and adversely

aflected by the locating of such a facility, (42 USC 10101. )
—

184 . Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

governments.

21 On his topic, SPC had recommended that the Federal Government put forward

a clearly structured interagency waste management

program plan that provides for effective participation by local governments, as well as by State and

tribal governments.22 In addition, it recommended

that States establish a process that would enable

local governments to participate in the NRC repository licensing process.23

The State role in military waste siting.—There

was substantial disagreement over whether States

should have the same role in military waste disposal

as in civilian waste disposal efforts. Some argued

that because the hazards associated with defense

and commercial waste are similar, their treatment

should be similar. In addition, some feared that if

commercial and defense waste were considered separately, defense waste might remain in storage indefinitely rather than be disposed of safely. Others

argued that giving States a role in decisions on the

. — 21 N~tion~ Research council, Social and Economic Aspects of Radioactive Waste DisposaJ: Considerations for Institutiomd Management (Washington, D. C.: National Academy Press, 1984).

ZZSK, Recommendations, p. 12.

231 bid., p, 15.

disposal of military waste would jeopardize national

security and could set a precedent for involving

States in decisions on siting other facilities needed

for national security purposes, such as military

bases.

One compromise considered was to give States

the power to object to military waste facility siting

but to make override easier than would be the case

for the siting of commercial waste facilities. For example, S. 2189, considered during the 96th Congress, required that a State’s objection to defense

waste siting could be upheld only if both Houses

of Congress affirmed the objection. However, the

97th Congress agreed in NWPA to apply the same

procedures to repositories for commercial waste and

defense waste. NWPA also provided that the Secretary of Energy use the commercial waste repositories developed under the Act for disposal of defense waste, as well, unless the President finds, on

the basis of an evaluation to be completed by January 1985, that a separate repository for defense

waste is required. The draft of that evaluation, released in 1984, concludes that disposal of defense

waste in commercial repositories would be the most

cost-effective option.

PREVENTION AND MITIGATION

OF IMPACTS

State concerns may also be addressed directly in

the waste management program by measures dealing with the prevention and mitigation of impacts.

Such measures could reduce pressures on the participation process (above) as the principal means

of protecting States’ interests. They could also increase State confidence in the competence and integrity of the Federal radioactive waste management system.

Addressing State Concerns

About Safety

It is beyond human ability to ensure that no release of radioactivity will occur over the course of

radioactive waste management operations and during the long life of the waste after it is disposed of;

indeed, such total containment is not required by

the proposed Environmental Protection Agency

(EPA) standards nor final NRC regulations for

high-level waste repositories. However, it is possible to reduce the chances that serious impacts will

occur and to lower the consequences of impacts if

they do occur. States seek assurances that siting will

not be based on nontechnical grounds or inadequate

criteria, that the siting process will proceed no faster

than safety concerns dictate, that waste management activities will be monitored for safety, and that

emergency response capability exists. The Federal

radioactive waste management program could provide such assurances in several ways. Some are explicitly provided by NWPA, while others are within

the discretion of DOE.
Ch. 8—Addressing State and Public Concerns ● 185

Independent Reviews of Radioactive Waste

Management Plans and Activities

Confidence in the safety of waste management

activities will be increased by independent reviews

of Federal plans for radioactive waste management

before such activities take place. At present, there

are three main levels planned for such review-internal review by DOE, licensing proceedings by

NRC, and reviews by individual States of applicable parts of the plan. Additional levels of review

(e.g., by bodies of independent scientific experts)

might increase the confidence of observers that sites,

technologies, and management systems will meet

necessary levels of safety and reliability.

NWPA provides States and affected Indian tribes

with funding for such independent technical reviews. The Environmental Evaluation Group in

New Mexico provides a good example of how such

review might be accomplished. This group, which

is supported by funds from DOE, provides the State

of New Mexico with independent technical review

of DOE activities in developing the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant near Carlsbad.

As discussed in chapter 3, the first repository

could well become an international waste disposal

research center. In that event, opening the repository to independent scientific investigations could

give the affected State and locality additional confidence that potential problems with the site would

not be overlooked.

Availability of Backup Sites

States’ concerns that the Federal Government

might continue to develop a less-than-satisfactory

repository site simply because of the lack of any

alternatives could be addressed by measures designed to increase confidence that an adequate

number of backup sites would be under consideration at each stage of the repository development

process, up to and including full-scale operation.

Along these lines, NWPA establishes a process for

siting and licensing two separate repositories. The

site for each is to be selected based on (1) an initial

evaluation of five sites that have been nominated

for consideration on the basis of preliminary data

obtained from surface exploration and drill holes,

and (2) a detailed characterization at repository

depth of three of the nominated sites.

Additional measures that could be provided by

DOE in the Mission Plan include a target date for

operation of the second repository soon after the

opening of the first, characterization of one more

site than the required three, and submission of a

backup site for licensing for each repository. These

measures—which are also needed to increase confidence in a firm waste acceptance schedule, as discussed in chapter 6—could increase confidence that

any sites eventually selected for development had

been chosen strictly on technical merit,24 and could

also deal with State concerns about equity in siting

by assuring States that the initial site would not

automatically become the only operational site.

Assistance in Monitoring and

Emergency Response

The capabilities of personnel and equipment to

detect and respond to accidents are important for

maintaining the safety of radioactive waste management operations. Filling the need for these capabilities may be the impact of radioactive waste siting

that affects the largest number of States and communities, depending on waste transportation arrangements.

25 Evert State and community through

which waste will be transported will need some ability to respond to accidents, or at least to know

whom to contact if local capability is inadequate.

Monitoring and emergency response capabilities

are also necessary for the safety of waste management facilities during operation and after closure.

The Federal Government will have the primary reSpomibility for monitoring any emergency response

at Federal facilities, although States will be involved

to some extent.

NWPA provides for assistance to repository host

States and affected Indian tribes concerning monitoring and emergency response for both waste

transportation and repository operation. However,

no provision is made for special assistance to nonrepository States affected by waste transportation.

Thus, such States will have to rely on existing general provisions for Federal involvement in transportation of radioactive materials.

‘+Choate and Bowman, op. cit., pp. 25-26.

Zssee Albert M. Church and Roger D. Norton, ‘‘Issues in Emergency Preparedness for Radiological Transportation Accidents, ’ Natural ResourcesJournal, VOI. 21, No. 4., October 1981, pp. 757-771.
186 Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

Under legislative authority that existed prior to

passage of NWPA, NRC and DOT regulate the

transportation of radioactive waste. However, State

and local authorities, along with personnel employed by transportation carriers, are usually the

first to respond to transportation accidents involving all types of hazardous cargo shipments, and they

have primary responsibility for maintaining public health and safety in the event of such accidents.

This is true for radioactive waste transport, as

well.26 The Federal Government provides assistance

to State efforts in various ways: for example,

through radiological assistance teams, training

courses for State and local authorities, assistance

to States in preparing emergency response plans,

and funding of state enforcement efforts through

the State Hazardous Materials Enforcement Development Program conducted by DOT. *7

Monitoring— which includes inspection, enforcement, and, possibly, escort of waste shipments—

and emergency response policies and capabilities

vary greatly from State to State. 28 Some States have

wide-ranging requirements and large offices devoted to one or both efforts; others have more minimal requirements and may depend largely or entirely on outside assistance. For both emergency

response and monitoring, the ability of States to

handle shipments depends, in part, on regulatory

demands. For example, if Federal regulations requiring waste to be escorted were to be promulgated, a heavy burden could be placed on State and

local police departments.

Some States feel that their programs are adequate

to handle foreseeable demands. However, other

States and localities see some level of Federal assistance as necessary. Localities, in particular, often

lack equipment and expertise to deal with emergencies involving radioactive materials, and many

States express a desire for aid in training personnel and in procuring special equipment. Opinions

vary on what the extent of Federal assistance should

be. SPC recommended that State and, where appropriate, tribal governments should have the lead

role in developing emergency response plans and

‘eIbid., p. 765.

27S. N. s~omon, State Surveillance of Radioactive Material Transportation, U.S. Nuclear Regulatoy Commission, Office of State Programs, NUREG-1015, February 1984, pp. 35-36.

paFor a detailed review of existing State programs, see ibid.

procedures for dealing with transportation accidents. 29 Consideration of additional Federal support to States affected by radioactive waste transportation may be appropriate before large

quantities of waste begin to be moved to an operating repository. Options include:

1. Additional Federal backup to State and local

efforts, such as training programs, provision

of information, or more active support in

equipment and personnel.

2. Increased level and scope of Federal funding

of State and local efforts. Financial assistance

may be needed to enable States to cope with

the relatively large number of shipments of

radioactive waste that will occur when a repository begins operating. For example, it has

been estimated that it would cost about $6 million over 30 years for the equipment and training needed to bring New Mexico’s emergency response capacity to the level required for

the anticipated shipments of transuranic waste

to the WIPP facility .30

3. Direct provision of monitoring and emergency

response services.

Impact Mitigation

Many of the nonradiological impacts likely to

arise from the management of radioactive waste are

common to other large-scale industrial developments and could be significant for the States and

communities involved, depending on the size of repositories, the size of the affected communities, and

the proximity of communities to repositories. DOE

has said that potential impacts on communities near

proposed repository sites represent a significant

issue in gaining public and local acceptance of siting

activities. 31

SPC recommended that, because the Federal

Government has responsibility for developing re-

%PC, Recommendations.

~OR. Cummings, H. Bumess, and R. Norton, The proposed Waste

Isolation Pilot Project (WZPP) and Impacts in the State of New Mexico: A Socioeconomic A@ysis (Albuquerque, EMD-2-67-1 139, April

1981), ch. 7; cited in Church and Norton, op. cit., p. 764.

SIStatement of Kenneth Davis, Deputy Secretary of Energy, before

the Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment, Committee on

Interior and Insular Affairs, U.S. House of Representatives, July 9,

1981. Interior and Insular Affairs Document 97-12.
Ch. 8—Addressing State and Public Concerns . 187

positories, it should accept responsibility for socioeconomic impacts arising from such development.32

Measures to mitigate the impacts of repository

siting activities may be vital in making those activities acceptable to the affected population .33 Without mitigation measures, a major portion of the

costs of siting would be borne by host States and

communities. While such concentration of costs is

common, radioactive waste management may be

judged differently from other industrial activities.

One major difference lies in the perceived benefits

brought by the siting of facilities. Apart from the

general national importance of isolating waste safely, the principal specific benefit of commercial radioactive waste management will be the continued

viability of nuclear power—a benefit that may not

be experienced directly by affected areas.

On the positive side, some jobs will be created

and some local businesses will benefit, especially

with the construction of repositories. There may

be long-term beneficial impacts on the community

if the repository becomes an international scientific

research center. However, these local benefits may

not by themselves outweigh local concerns about

the potential negative impacts of a radioactive waste

repository.

NWPA includes a number of requirements for

a range of payments to host States, affected Indian

tribes, and, in some cases, units of local government to mitigate the impacts of development and

operation of the various facilities provided for in

the Act. Drawing these payments from the Nuclear

Waste Fund, rather than from general revenues,

should substantially increase the credibility of Federal assurances that mitigation payments will be

forthcoming when needed. A brief discussion of

three types of impact payments follows .34

32spc, Recommendations, p. 11.

33A more extensive discussion of mitigation measures can ~ found

in chapters 10, 11, and 12 of Murdock et al., op. cit.; see also S. A.

Carries et a!., Incentives and the Siting of Radioactive Waste Facilities (Oak Ridge, Term.: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, ORNL5880, 1982).

34A more detai]ed description of the mitigation measures contained

in NWPA and an evaluation from a State point of view are found

in “The Nuclear Waste Policy Act and Socioeconomic Impact Mitigation Provisions and Problems, ” by Robert D. Smith of the Texas

Nuclear Waste Programs OffIce, published in Proceedings of the 1983

Civilian Radioactive Waste Management Information Meeting, U.S.

Department of Energy, CONF-831217, February 1984, pp. 50-56.

Tax-Equivalent Payments

Because waste disposal will be conducted by the

Federal Government, the land, facilities, and operations will not be subject to the State and local taxation that normally offsets some of the costs of private industrial activities. While other Federal

facilities share this drawback, radioactive waste

management operations are less attractive. Unlike

many other Federal lands, which are at least potentially returnable, waste sites will never be turned

back to lower units of government. To deal with

this, NWPA includes a requirement for payments

to States and units of local government in which

a repository is located, and to Indian tribes affected

by repository development, of an amount equivalent to the revenues that would be collected if the

repository could be taxed at the same rate as other

real property and industrial activities. In the case

of Federal interim storage facilities, general impact

assistance payments can be used to compensate for

the loss of taxable property resulting from public

rather than private ownership of the facilities. No

provision is made for tax-equivalent payments in

the case of monitored retrievable storage facilities

or test and evaluation facilities.

Compensation Payments

There are many precedents for compensating affected units of government monetarily for direct impacts caused by private or Federal activities and

for making anticipatory payments in expectation

of such impacts. 35 Firms planning to conduct operations such as extraction and development of natural gas, coal, oil, shale, and minerals have offered

lump sum payments and other mitigation measures, such as direct funding of services, to offset

both actual and anticipated impacts. Nuclear utilities in several countries also offer such measures

to affected communities. In Japan, for example,

anticipatory compensation payments are made prior to evidence of damage. Localities receive a subsidy—portions of which go to improve roads,

schools, and other public projects—generated from

a tax on utilities for electrical generation. 36 NWPA

35This was done, for example, when the Tennessee Val]ey Authority (TVA) and the State of Wyoming signed an agreement that subjects TVA to all the laws, regulations, and taxes the State imposes

on private mining companies. Nuclear Fuel, Mar. 31, 1980.

wln one case, the amount devoted to such payments was 10 Percent of the cost of plant construction. Hilliard W. Paige, Daniel S.
. .

188 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

includes provisions for impact mitigation payments

to States in which a repository is located and to affected Indian tribes. State participation in forecasting potential impacts arising from radioactive waste

management activities and in negotiating Federal

mitigation measures are included in the guarantees

provided by NWPA.37

The Act also provides for impact payments to

units of local government within which a monitored

retrievable storage facility is located, and to States

and units of local government hosting a Federal interim storage facility. No impact mitigation measures are provided for test and evaluation facilities.

Incentive Measures

Some argue that the benefits provided to States,

localities, and Indian tribes asked to host radioactive waste facilities should go beyond simple compensation for impacts, and should instead be set

at a level sufficient to provide positive incentives

to accept the facilities. Measures to encourage communities or States to accept waste management activities include monetary payments, construction

of public facilities, and the tradeoff of siting a waste

facility for a pledge to site a desirable project nearby

or an undesirable project elsewhere.

——.——

Pipman, and Janice E. Owens, Assessment of Natiomd Systems for

Obtaining Local Acceptance of Nuclear Waste Management Siting

and Routing Activities, International Energy Associates Limited,

IEAL-158, July 1980, “Japan,” pp. 9-10.

STSpC recommend~ that impacts of repository development activities should be independently assessed by State, tribal, and local governments as a basis for Federal impact payments. SPC, Recommendations, p. 11.

Although incentives could lessen opposition to

siting, perhaps even making it attractive, they may

also have drawbacks. A potential disadvantage of

monetary payments, in particular, is that they may

appear to prejudice a waste siting decision, possibly

increasing suspicion in some communities that they

are being bribed to accept something that is unsafe. If incentives are offered to make radioactive

waste management activities more acceptable, it

may be necessary to tie them to other measures that

address health and safety concerns, such as emergency response, and to measures that provide assurances regarding the technical merits of the radioactive waste management program .38 In

addition, there may be a need for explicit upper

limits on the amount of incentives that could be provided. Otherwise, depending on the latitude that

the beneficiaries of incentive measures are given

to negotiate the amounts received, the cost of such

measures could become excessive, placing an unfair burden on those who must pay for waste management activities.

NWPA makes no provision for incentive measures beyond compensation for impacts. However,

there is no limit placed on the level of tax-equivalent

and impact payments for States and Indian tribes

affected by repositories, and considerable flexibility

is given to the Secretary of Energy in negotiating

a package of impact compensation.

——tsFor example, in an interview with OTA on Dec. 11, 1980, members of the New Mexico Governor’s Task Force on Radioactive Waste

Disposal indicated that Federal compensation to affected States may

be appropriate, but only after all the questions about radiological health

have been considered.

EQUITY IN SITING WASTE

FACILITIES

Measures to address State concerns about the im- turned with relative ease39 the passage of such laws

pacts of waste management facilities will not nec- by a number of States indicates the strength of State

essarily address their concerns about equity in the -

siting of those facilities. Measures dealing explicitly tgRecent court decisions support the conclusion that state or IOCd

with the question of equity may help increase the laws restricting radioactive waste management from outside the State

acceptability of siting decisions. Though State laws or locality can be preempted. A Louisa County, Va., ban on the storage

of spent fuel from facilities outside the countv’s boundaries was voided

banning out-of-State waste probably could be over- by ~ U.S. District Court judge on Mar. 4, l’983. In issuing that judg-
Ch. 8—Addressing State and Public Concerns 189

concerns about equity in the siting of waste management facilities. Nonnuclear States, in particular, feel keenly the intrinsic unfairness of storing

or disposing of the waste of nuclear States. Nuclear

States, for their part, are understandably sensitive

about bearing more than their perceived fair share

of costs .40

Concerns about equity have been heightened by

proposals for a highly centralized waste management system, using the minimum number of waste

facilities technically necessary to store or dispose

of waste safely. It may be technically possible for

one repository or storage facility with a large annual loading capacity to handle all of the expected

disposal or storage needs for decades. This approach might require less initial capital expenditure than an approach involving more or less simultaneous construction of several smaller facilities.

Conceivably, only one siting battle would have to

be fought for the disposal or storage system, avoiding the additional battles engendered by additional

facilities.

From an equity standpoint, however, the centralized approach has important drawbacks. While

the meaning of fair distribution differs from person to person, one factor is generally included in

equity perceptions: to the extent possible, beneficiaries of actions should bear the accompanying

costs. There is disagreement, however, about who

are the primary beneficiaries of the activities that

have generated commercial high-level radioactive

waste. Some consider the benefits of nuclear power

to be national in scope because, for example, nuclear power aids energy independence. Others focus

on a smaller class of beneficiaries, the direct consumers of electricity generated by nuclear power.

Whichever view is taken, use of a minimum numment, the judge cited NWPA as clearly giving the Federal Government the authority over storage of radioactive material. He also cited

the Federal Government’s exclusive authority over radiation safety

and over interstate commerce. The Radioactive Exchange, vol. 2, Nos.

3 and 4, Mar. 22, 1983, p. 20. Furthermore, on May 2, 1983, the

Supreme Court decided not to review lower court decisions that declared unconstitutional laws of the States of Illinois and Washington

which imposed restrictions on the transportation and storage of radioactive materials in those States. This action allowed the lower court

decisions to stand. The Radioactive Exchange, vol. 2, No. 8, May

20, 1983, p. 10.

4oFor example, testimony of former Nevada Governor Mike

O’Callaghan before the Subcommittee on Nuclear Regulation, Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Nov. 14, 1979.

ber of large facilities for storage and disposal of

radioactive waste would make it inevitable that

many of the beneficiaries of nuclear power generation would not bear a proportionate share of the

impacts of waste management.

Thus one advantage of centralized systems—that

it is easier to expand a first facility than to build

another one—is a distinct disadvantage in an equity

sense, since it favors the concentration of the negative impacts of waste management in a very few

areas. Moreover, a system utilizing a single, large

storage or disposal facility will probably necessitate

a longer transportation network that affects a greater number of States than a system with regional

facilities, if those facilities are located near the

sources of waste.

Federal policy that takes into account State concerns about equity may be less likely to provoke

State opposition. At various times, Federal officials

have noted equity considerations and proposed

measures to increase equity in siting. For example, DOE’s environmental impact statement (EIS)

on commercial radioactive waste management considered equity as a social issue and, partly in response to concerns about equity, stated that DOE

would consider the feasibility of regional repositories 41 although no official commitment ‘as

made.

NWPA contains two features that relate to equity

in siting. First, it encourages interim spent he] storage at reactor sites and strictly limits Federal interim storage to 1,900 tonnes, to be used only by

utilities that are unable to provide their own storage in time. Onsite storage provides assurance that

at least some beneficiaries—in this case, utilities and

their customers—will bear interim storage costs.

It would be difficult for a small number of awayfrom-reactor facilities, especially if federally owned,

to restrict the costs only to the utilities involved.

In addition, onsite storage involves less transportation of spent fuel than does away-from-reactor

storage; hence, the number of communities affected

and potentially the number of transportation accidents would be reduced.

f IM~agement of Commercially Generated Radioactive Waste,

Fina/ Environmental Impact Statement, U.S. Department of Energy,

DOE/EIS-0046F, October 1980, vol. 1, p. 3.45.
190 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

Second, in response to concerns about the question of regional equity, NWPA requires the development of two geologic repositories.42 It also specifies that transportation impacts be taken into

account in siting the second repository, a stipulation that appears to be intended to encourage location of the second repository closer to the sources

of waste generation than the sites now under investigation for the first repository .43

—

+21R(3, for e=mple, recommended siting repositories on a regional basis, as far as the technical considerations would permit. IRG,

op. cit., pp. 51-52,

4~In suppfi of this provision during the debate on NWPA, Senator SIade Gorton (Wash. ) stated: “In the case of the State of Washington, it is my opinion that it should be asked to do no more than

provide nuclear disposal capacity adequate to dispose of those wastes

which are generated within a range of distance in which the transportation risks can be minimized. Other States in other regions of the

country should be responsible to provide disposal capacity for nucIear

waste generated within similar ranges of those disposal facilities. We

should not be planning to move high-level nuclear waste across the

While NWPA requires siting and licensing two

repositories, it only authorizes construction of the

first. The Act does not require operation of the second until 70,000 tonnes of spent fuel or waste have

been placed in the first-which could take more

than 20 years. Some State officials have suggested

that if a regional strategy is adopted, simultaneous regional repository activities might be necessary to assure potential host States that the first repository would not be the only repository. Equity

considerations could thus support a commitment

to a schedule involving operation of the second repository within a reasonably short time after the

first, as provided in the conservative Mission Plan

described in chapter 6.

continent if we can avoid it. We should not be looking to a State on

one side of the continent to provide disposal capacity for waste generated on the other. ” (Congmssiomd Recoti, Dec. 20,1982, p. S15667.)

PUBLIC INVOLVEMENT

Public interest in radioactive waste management

comes from concerns about its potential hazards

and from its possible linkage to the future of nuclear power. The checkered history of radioactive

waste management has convinced some members

of the public that the hazards may not be sufficiently

understood or fully explained by Government officials. Some feel that the promoters of nuclear

techology may not be sufficiently conservative about

public health and safety. Others are concerned that

delays in implementing permanent waste disposal

may impair the authorization of new nuclear reactors, thereby jeopardizing the energy security of

the country and perhaps their own jobs. As with

hazardous waste disposal, many citizens living near

a candidate site adopt the attitude ‘‘not in my backyard. ” Through grassroots organizing efforts, some

special-interest groups attempt to stymie the wastesiting process and demand an end to the production of mom waste, thereby stopping nuclear power.

Nuclear waste and radiation are also associated with

many negative images, such as nuclear weapons,

cancer, and birth defects. It is understandable,

therefore, that many members of the public have

sought greater access to the decisionmaking process, in the belief that the Government has not made

the best decisions in the past.

The call for additional avenues for public participation is usually predicated upon a belief that

public acceptability is central to the resolution of

a particular societal problem such as radioactive

waste management. The fundamental objectives

often quoted for public participation in a Government program are:44

● To improve the quality of Governrnent decisions through the solicitation of broad public

input and review. Public scrutiny has improved some Government programs, such as

the trans-Alaska pipeline. Participation by the

“technical’ public through peer review by

outside expert groups is obviously valuable in

program design and implementation. Because

confidence that a geologic repository will perform as desired over millenia must ultimately

rest on confidence in the soundness of the

+4see, for exmple, A. Henry Schilling and StanJey M. Ne~ey,

“Public Participation in Nuclear Waste Management, ” Battelle

Human Affairs Research Centers, Seattle, Wash., April 1979.
Ch. 8—Addressing State and Public Concerns 191

underlying scientific analysis, extensive peer

review of this analysis at each step can play

an important role in assuring the public that

radioactive waste will be disposed of safely.

General public review is also valuable because

technical decisions implicitly involve social

values. Public input allows Government officials to discern what the public wants and assists them in formulating technically and politically acceptable policies. Some of the

chronic technical, institutional, and political

problems that have occurred in the waste management program in the past might have been

eliminated or alleviated through wider public

scrutiny.

● To enhance the legitimacy of and to build support fora Government program. Once implementation of a program has begun, voluntary

compliance or active cooperation by key individuals, firms, and groups is often essential

for a program to achieve its goal. If a significant segment of the public believes its concerns

are being ignored, it can stop virtually any

project by devoting sufficient resources to do

so. Making the decision process open to public inspection and responsive to input from responsible parties can result in greater public

acceptance and understanding of the decision.

● To inform and educate the interested public,

so that they can act as they deem appropriate. Effective, intelligent, and meaningful public involvement in Government decisionmaking processes often requires adequate information and education. 45 Members of the public

can most appropriately decide on their own

how to be involved in Government decisions

if they are well-informed about the issues involved in those decisions.

Thus, the purpose of increased public participation is for the Government to reach wise, just, and

fair decisions that can be implemented successfully.

The implicit hope of proponents of public participation is for the Government to make better decisions in radioactive waste management than it has

~5~RG s~at~, < ‘The IRG’s own experience with public participation

and the recommendations of many citizens appearing before the IRG

indicate the urgent need for sustained, effective efforts to inform the

public and to provide opportunities for discussion between the public

and the Government. ” IRG, op. cit., p. 96.

in the past. Increased public participation, however, does not automatically build public support.4G

Sometimes more information increases fears and

concerns, thereby leading to polarization rather

than consensus. The desire by some to minimize

public participation, e.g., in military programs for

waste management, is based on the fear that increased visibility will create increased opposition.

Nonetheless, public involvement can pinpoint

problems that need further attention by the Government as well as accelerate the ripening of an

issue in order to initiate the settlement process. Ignoring the need for public participation may only

postpone problems that appear later in a program’s

development. While an inadequate technical program cannot be made acceptable solely by public

participation, public scrutiny can highlight difficulties that need the application of more Government resources. In controversial issues of high public visibility, such as radioactive waste disposal,

Government officials will probably have to accommodate increased demands for sharing of information and even some authority.

Considerable opportunity for public involvement

in Federal Government activities is already required

by existing law and administrative procedure. The

Administrative Procedure Act,47 for example, requires notice in the Federal Register and public

hearings for various Federal actions, e.g., rulemakings. The regulatory agencies must hold formal

public commenting periods on draft rules, standards, and regulations prior to promulgating final

versions. The National Environmental Policy Act

(NEPA) requires the preparation of environmental

impact statements that entail public participation

opportunities in the notice of intent, public hearings, and commenting process. In a final EIS, Federal officials are required to respond to public comments received on the draft EIS. Regulations

promulgated by the Council on Environmental

—-.—._—.—— 46A represenbtive of the League of Women Voters observed that

‘‘if increasing the likelihood of project completion is an agency’s sole

rationale for involving the public, the process will certainly fail to reach

even that single, limited objective . . . If people sense (accurately) that

they are involved only to be sold a particular decision, the seeds for

failure are well sown. ” Susan Wiltshire, “Public Involvement in Nuclear Waste Management Decisions, Proceedings of the 1982 National Waste Terminal Storage Program Information Meeting, U.S.

Department of Energy, DOE/NWTS-30, December 1982, pp. 214-216.

475 U. S.C. 551, et seq.

.,
192 . Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

Quality have broadened the opportunities for public

review and involvement in NEPA implementation.

The legislation that established DOE directed it to

encourage and provide for public participation in

the development of national energy programs; the

DOE Citizen Participation Manual was produced

in 1979 as a result. The Office of Management and

Budget has required that local communities be informed of Federal Government projects that are

likely to affect them. Formal licensing procedures,

such as those required by NRC’s procedural regulations for high-level waste repositories, offer opportunities for public and State participation

through public hearings in the siting and licensing

process, The Uranium Mill Tailings Radiation

Control Act of 1978 contains provisions for public

participation in remedial action programs, as do

the rules promulgated by DOT for selecting alternate routes for transport of radioactive waste. In

addition, the Freedom of Information Act increases

open public access to a broad range of information

about Federal activities.

The many available avenues for public participation in Federal programs also include formal and

informal mechanisms not required by law. These

include:

●

●

●

●

●

●

public meetings that incorporate presentations

by Government officals;

outside advisory panels and review committees created for various Federal programs;

library and information services provided by

Government agencies;

submission of unsolicited comments and advice to program managers;

public surveys and questionnaires for identifying public concerns and opinions; and

congressional lobbying by various special interest groups to put pressure on executive

branch officials.

Federal radioactive waste management programs

have, since 1976, provided significant public participation opportunities in the development of national policies and plans.48 For example, the Carter

administration created the Interagency Review

Group (IRG) to produce formal policy recommendations for the President in radioactive waste management. According to an IRG staff member:

+sc&e Schi]ling and Nealey, op. cit.

The IRG recognized two reasons why obtaining

input from interest groups and the public was critically important. First, it believed that its policy

recommendations would not be useful or capable

of being implemented unless they commanded

broad support. Second, it believed that the legitimacy of the outcome and willingness of the public

to accept it depended in large measure on the legitimacy of the process itself and on giving the public a chance to participate and be heard. In short,

the IRG sought both to accommodate its policies

to external reality and to draw relevant interest

groups into the process in the hope that because

of their involvement, they would be more likely to

support the policy outcomes. 49

Public hearings, meetings with interest groups,

and solicitation of public comments on draft documents were used by IRG for public involvement.

Approximately 15,000 copies of the draft IRG report were distributed, and comments were actively

sought. Some 3,300 written comments were received. The review of the public comments led to

the reopening of internal IRG discussions on many

of the difficult policy questions. The revised IRG

report published in March 1979 contained the text

of the draft report, the drafting committee’s summary of the public comment on each section of the

draft, and an IRG response to these comments.

These responses frequently involved extensions and

revisions of findings contained in the draft report .50

President Carter adopted many of the IRG recommendations in his policy statement of February 12,

1980, and stated that:

. . . it is essential that all aspects of the waste management program be conducted with the fullest possible disclosure to and participation by the public

and the technical community .5]

In addition to public participation in national policy discussions, various segments of the public have

undertaken activities at specific project sites. The

proposed Waste Isolation Pilot Plant has for several years elicited intense interest, both in support

and opposition, from groups in New Mexico. Other

potential host States for a repository have had contacts and public information meetings with Federal

4gGNenwood, op. cit., p. 22.

501 bid., pp. 22-23.

51’’Fact Sheet: The President’s Program on Radioactive Waste Management, ” O~ce of the White House Press Secretary, Feb. 12, 1980,

p. 10.
.Ch. 8—Addressing State and Public Concerns ● 793

officials over a period of years. Since attempting

to site a repository in Kansas in the early 1970’s,

DOE has increased contacts with State and local

officials and the public at proposed project sites,

apparently recognizing that ‘‘a Federal agency disregards at its peril the potential power of State and

local officials whose opinions reflect the consensus

of their constituency on matters of health and

safety. ’52

Congress, in passing NWPA, found that “State

and public participation in the planning and development of repositories is essential in order to promote public confidence in the safety of disposal of

. . . waste and spent fuel. ’53 To accomplish this,

NWPA specifies a detailed process for State involvement and for public hearings and review of environmental analyses prepared by DOE at various

stages of the siting process.

Review of past Federal efforts at public participation in radioactive waste management activities,

and of critiques of those efforts by non-Federal

observers, 54 suggests three steps that could increase

public confidence in DOE’s public involvement

program:

1. Commit additional resources to public involvement.

Because of the importance of public acceptability

of DOE waste management activities, planning and

implementation of public involvement programs require the same degree of care and attention as tech-

—— ——

~ZRichard G. Hewlitt, “Federal Policy for the Disposal of Highly

Radioactive Waste from Commercial Nuclear Power: A Historical

Analysis, ” (Washington, D. C.: U.S. Department of Energy, Mar.

9, 1978).

Stpublic Law 97-425, sec. 11 l(a)(6), 96 Stat. 2207, 42 U.S.C. 10131.

“See, for example, “Public Participation in Developing National

Plans for Radioactive Waste Management: Summary Report of the

Second Keystone Conference on Public Participation in Radioactive

Waste Management Decision Making, ” (Keystone, Colo.: Keystone

Center for Continuing Education, October 1980). The conference concluded, “If adequate plans for public participation are not prepared

soon and carefidly executed, Federal-State relationships could be

harmed; DOE’s credibility could be reduced further; and progress

in implementing (President Carter’s) new radioactive waste program

could become more difiicult. Letter to Stuart Eizenstat from Robert

Craig and Ter~ Lash, July 15, 1980, p. 3, appended to the conference report.

nical programs. 55 T he need for improvements in

the program for public involvement in repository

development activities was the subject of many public comments on DOE’s draft guidelines for repository site selection. 56 while DOE strongly endorses

the concept of public participation at the State and

local levels,57 it may be necessary to dedicate additional resources—in terms of staff, funds, and

management attention—to that task.

As noted in chapter 7, questions were raised prior

to passage of NWPA about the relative weakness

of the DOE waste program staff in the area of the

nontechnical aspects of waste management. The increased level of interaction with the States and public required by the Act will place even greater

demands on DOE in that area. Thus creation of

an adequately staffed and financed program group

devoted solely to DOE relations with non-Federal

actors, including the general public, as suggested

in chapter 7, could increase confidence that public

involvement will receive a level of attention commensurate with its importance to the success of the

program. The newly established outreach division

within the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste

Management may accomplish this.

Mechanisms for some public participation in

Federal radioactive waste programs surely will continue to be provided, if only because of the existing

legal and procedural requirements. However, some

outside groups that have studied the Federal Government’s public participation efforts in the area

of radioactive waste management have found those

efforts wanting in some way, either directly—

55This point is emphasized in a letter from SPC to President carter, which stated: “Public participation in waste management planning and programs is sufficiently important to deserve the same quality

of thought, commitment, and implementation as technical programs.

This requires a clear definition of goals and objectives; a detailed framework of operating policies, procedures, and/or regulations; and management cognizance, control, evaluation and impro~’ement. The text

of the letter is found in app. E of SPC, Recommendations. See also

Nuclear Waste Management Process Review Forum: FinaJ Report

(Palo Alto, Calif,: RESOLVE Center for Environmental Conflict Resolution, June 1980), pp. 36-37.

5GU . . S Depa~ment of Energy, Responses to Pub/ic COIIIITWUS on

the Proposed General Guidelines for Recommendation of Sites for

Nuclear Waste Repositories, Draft, May 27, 1983, vol. 1, pp.

IV-10—IV-12.

571 bid., p. IV-12.
194 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

through explicit criticism—or indirectly—through

detailed recommendations for change. For example, the Keystone Center’s conference on public

participation in July 1980 concluded that:

Involvement of the public and non-Federal jurisdictions in making decisions about management

and disposal of radioactive wastes is important for

gaining needed improvements in the overall Federal program, enhancing the credibility of Federal

agencies’ prugrams (when warranted), and educating the public about those programs and the technology of waste disposal. Current Federal plans for

obtaining public participation need substantial improvements to achieve this objective (emphasis

added) .58

Such criticisms suggest that additional efforts are

needed.

2. Include an explicit public involvement plan

in the Mission Plan.

DOE agrees with the need for involvement by

both the lay and technical publics in the waste management program.

59 However, it has yet to publish explicit policies or a long-term plan showing

how such involvement is to be carried out and how

the results are to be used in the decision process.60

As noted in chapter 5, the broad distrust of the Federal waste management program that developed as

a result of past experiences means that a high degree of explicitness about and commitment to policies and programs is needed to rebuild credibility. Thus, confidence that an adequate public

involvement program will be carried out could be

enhanced by including a detailed public involvement plan in the Mission Plan.61 This plan should

make clear whose comments will be sought, where

the interaction will take place, how the comments

will be used, and how decisions will be made. It

should also include explicit provisions for an ob-

— — .

56 Keystone Center, “Public Participation, ” p. iv.

SsDepa~ment of Energy, Responses, p. IV-12 and IV-27.

@An example of a formal Federal agency policy for public participation can be found in the Environmental Protection Agency’s policy published in the Federal Reg”ster, vol. 46, No. 12, January 19,

1981, pp. 5736-5746.

blThe v~ue of exp]icit, Cletai]ed plans for putdic involvement k identified in the SPC letter to President Carter, op. cit.; in the Fina/ Report of the RESOLVE forum, pp. 36-37, and in the report of the Keystone Center, “Public Participation in Developing National Plans, ”

p. iv.

jective public information program62 and for a systematic technical peer review process.63 Confidence

would be further increased if this plan were accompanied by a long-term budget for carrying it out,

to ensure that the costs of public involvement are

explicitly included in the estimates of overall program costs so that adequate resources can be made

available from the Nuclear Waste Fund.

3. Use the Mission Plan as a focus for public involvement.

A frequent theme of recommendations for public involvement activities is the development of a

national radioactive waste management plan as the

focal point for such activities.64 An attempt was

made by DOE during the Carter administration

to develop a National Plan for Radioactive Waste

Management. The administration circulated the

fourth working draft of the plan to State governments and Congress for comment before producing a revised draft for formal public review. The

intention was to produce a final version after ob6ZThe impor~nce of a public information program has been emphasized by a representative of the government of the State of Mississippi: “The only means through which this nation is going to effectively solve the problem of radioactive waste disposal is through

the process of gaining a public confidence that the Federal, State and

local governments and the public sector are satisfied that the waste

disposal program is credible and is designed to absolutely assure the

public health and safety and the environmental quality. There is only

one mechanism by which such a program can be successful. That mechanism is a comprehensive, completely objective public information

program. Testimony of Ronald Forsythe, Mississippi Energy and

Transportation Board, before the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment of the House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, May

26, 1983.

sgAddition~ efforts may be needed in the area of peer review. Addressing this subject in a 1983 report, a National Research Council

panel concluded that DOE “should institute a more deliberate overall technical review of its program on geologic disposal. This technical review should be done on a continuing and extended basis, with

full technical input representing the technical breadth of the program

. . . “ National Research Council, A Study of the Iscdation System

for Gecdogic Disposal of Radioactive Wastes (Washington, D. C.: National Academy Press, 1983), p. 15.

‘For example, the Keystone conference on public participation recommended, “A National Plan for the management of radioactive

wastes should be prepared through an extended process involving the

knowledgeable and concerned segments of the public, and the appropriate ofticials of State, tribal, and local governments. ” Keystone Center, “Public Participation, ” p. iv. Similarly, SPC concluded, “A

National Plan, which would be updated periodically, is vital to improve coordination among the Federal agencies, to build and maintain the Federal/State/tribal partnership, and to involve the public in

the decision making process. ” It recommended that the National Plan

process be carried fomvard. SPC, Recommendations, pp. 28-29.
Ch. 8—Addressing State and Public Concerns ● 195

taining public comments and then to update the

plan biennially by repeating the process. It was

hoped that the preparation of a National Plan might

then become a useful vehicle for improving coordination among Federal agencies, incorporating

comments from States and Indian tribes, and eliciting public participation. The Reagan administration received the comments on the draft plan from

the States and Congress, but it did not proceed with

the development of a document for review by the

generaI public.

As discussed in chapter 5, NWPA requires DOE

to prepare a comprehensive Mission Plan for the

waste management program. Chapter 6 showed

that the choices to be made in the Mission Plan will

involve many decisions about the waste management program that will have significant implications for many affected parties—e. g., the utilities

and their ratepayers, the communities affected by

waste transportation, and so on. For example, the

timing of operation of the second repository could

greatly influence the number of States affected by

waste transportation, while the planned full-scale

loading capacity of the repository system will determine the level of impacts of waste transportation and the length of time that utilities will have

to care for spent fuel stored at reactors. While

NWPA does not explicitly require DOE to provide

for broad public involvement in preparation of the

Mission Plan, such involvement could be a useful

means of developing broad support for the Plan by

those affected by the choices made in it, and in fact

may be a necessary step for achieving that objective. 65

DOE widely circulated a preliminary draft of the

Mission Plan for comments, which were used in

preparing the formal draft required by NWPA. As

suggested in chapter 7, a process of extensive public and technical review of this formal draft, and

of any subsequent revisions of the Plan after it has

been submitted to Congress as required by the Act,

could help develop broad national understanding

of and agreement about the high-level waste management program.

bsspc stated that ‘ ‘public participation must be incorporated to produce a ‘true National Plan. “ Letter to President Cafier from Governor Richard Riley, Chairman of the State Planning Council, Jan.

13, 1981, p. 2, contained in the appendixes to the SPC Interim Report, Feb. 24, 1981. The Keystone conference on public participation also agreed that public participation in development of a National

Plan “is needed if the administmtion’s plans am to be widely accepted

and workable. Letter to Stuart Eizenstat from Robert Craig and Terry Lash, July 15, 1980, p. 2, appended to October 1980 report of the

conference.
Appendixes
Appendix A-1

Radioactive Waste Management

Policymaking*

Acknowledgments

In preparing this paper, the author accumulated a

number of debts that he can only hope to partially repay

with these words of acknowledgment. William Barnard

of the Office of Technology Assessment was a constant

source of encouragement and support as this effort, initially planned to be of 2 months duration, stretched into

many months. He also carefully read the first draft and

offered helpful criticisms. David Stewart of the U.S.

Geological Survey provided much information as well

as useful suggestions for improving the first draft. Alex

Perge of the Department of Energy (DOE) also commented on the first version of the paper and pointed out

some factual errors. Several unknown reviewers from

DOE and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC)

helped improve the accuracy of appendix A-2.

In addition to David Stewart, the author greatly benefited from detailed internal decision memoranda obtained from the Office of Science and Technology Policy

and from NRC. The Off Ice of the Historian at DOE

was extremely helpful in providing decision memoranda for the period prior to 1975. Sheldon Meyers, Director of DOE’s Office of Nuclear Waste Management,

and his staff also provided assistance. However, they

were unable to find or to produce some key decision

papers for the post-1975 period. That unfortunately

made this analysis less complete than it might otherwise

had been.

Marcia Picket did an admirable job in typing the

drafts and the final product.

Despite all these efforts to facilitate the work and to

improve it, errors undoubtedly remain. For this I take

full responsibility.

The Imperative

The philosopher Hans Jonas poses the central ethical

issue of our new technological age as he observes that

the days have passed when:

The good and evil about which action had to care lay

close to the act, either in the praxis itself or in its immediate reach, and were not a matter for remote planning . . . Proper conduct had its immediate criteria and

almost immediate consummation. The long run consequences beyond were left to chance, fate or providence.

Ethics, accordingly, was of the here and now, of occasions as they arise between men, of the recurrent, typical

situations of private and public life. 1

● The material in this appendix was prepared for OTA by Daniel Metlay

of the University of Indiana under contract No. 033-2690.0, June 1981.

I Hans Jonas, “Technology and Responsibility: Reflections on the New Task

of Ethics, Social Research 40, spring 1973, pp. 35-36,

Instead, suggests Jonas,

[T]his sphere is overshadowed by a growing realm of

collective action where doer, deed, and effect are no longer

the same as they were in the proximate sphere, and which

by the enormity of its [technology’s] powers forces upon

ethics a new dimension of responsibility never dreamt of

before. 2

Advocating a new categorical imperative—’ ‘In your

present choices, include the future wholeness of Man

among the objects of your will’ ‘—Jonas recapitulates

a theme which underlay the intent of those managing

radioactive waste from the time they were first produced, nearly 2 score years ago.

Introduction

Radioactive waste management is a problem that is

not quite like most others that have come within the

Government’s purview. There are technical and institutional uncertainties associated with this problem; some

of them unknown and possibly large; some of those uncertainties are, in principle, unresolvable. The cost of

error may be high, and the time constant of feedback

about error is great. No jurisdiction is enthusiastic about

locating waste management facilities within its confines;

yet if all decline, a pressing national need will not be

met, thus opening the way for a repeat of the ‘‘tragedy

of the commons.

This paper is about radioactive waste management

problem-solving. It examines how the Federal Government responded to an issue of high complexity, potentially large risk, and intense political controversy. Eight

dimensions of waste management problem-solving are

considered:

the determination of what constitutes waste;

the storage of radioactive waste;

the role of the earth sciences in designing waste disposal facilities;

the development of strategies for searching for disposal sites;

the use of engineered barriers in the design of waste

disposal facilities;

the determination of acceptable levels of risk in disposing of radioactive waste;

the interaction between the States and the Federal

Government in the area of waste management; and

the relationship between waste management and

the production of nuclear power.

For each of these elements, two questions are raised:

How did a particular aspect come to be recognized as

part of the “problem?” How did the understanding of

‘Ibid., p. 38.

1 9 9
200 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

the eight problem elements evolve over time? Once those

questions have been considered, we ask a third one:

How did conceptualizations of the problem and decisions taken at one point influence problem-solving during subsequent periods of time? We shall try to learn

the reasons why policymaking was sometimes quite successful and why it was sometimes not. By doing that

we hope to provide insights into designing and implementing programs that might be useful guides for the

future.

Before we can proceed with that analysis, the stage

must be set, a foundation must be laid. For those unfamiliar with the details and history of radioactive waste

management, four chronologies have been prepared and

are included in appendix A-2. The chronologies describe, in turn, events dealing with waste storage, events

dealing with waste disposal, events dealing with the regulation of radioactive waste, and events affecting organizational structure and responsibility for waste management. In addition, a “time line” has also been

prepared and appended which shows the sequence of

some of the major events in waste management history.

Of more general interest, however, is a discussion of

the context within which waste management problemsolving occurred. The evolution of waste management

policymaking can only be partially understood without

reference to that context. It is to that second component of the foundation that we now turn before addressing the eight specific areas of the problem.

The Context of the

Policymaking Process

Richard Cyert and James March correctly observed

that complexity and uncertainty generate dilemmas

about how to act. According to them, decisionmakers

in organizations appear to resolve those dilemmas

through the use of a particular strategy:

[Policymakers] make decisions by solving a series of

problems; each problem is solved as it arises; the organization then waits for another problem to appear. Where

decisions within the [organization] do not naturally fall

into such a sequence, they are modified to do S0.

3

Thus, policymakers give pressing problems priority;

what had to be done yesterday draws their first attention today. Problems which can wait, wait.

A high degree of complexity and a substantial amount

of uncertainty affect policy makers’ behavior in other

ways as well. Decisionmakers tread carefully; they

cautiously implement policies that are minimally disruptive; they monitor the consequences of their actions and

evaluate whether those consequences are satisfactory or

‘Richard Cyert and James March, A Behavioral Theory of the Firm

(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963), p. 3.

unsatisfactory. When faced with outcomes that are not

acceptable, they search in the neighborhood of the existing policy to find alternatives. To simplify the complexity they confront, policymakers generally ignore factors that appear only marginally related to the core of

their efforts; sometimes they even ignore factors that are

substantially related but which are, for any number of

reasons, intractable or elusive.

The evidence is strong that the policymaking process

for the back-end of the nuclear fuel cycle followed the

patterns of organizational behavior just described, at

least during the three decades prior to 1975. The Atomic

Energy Commission (AEC), the developer and the regulator of the nuclear power technology, deferred the

search for long-term solutions to the problem of waste

management. When the problem could be finessed, it

was; when it could not be, waste management was dealt

with in ad hoc ways. Such responses are hardly unreasonable. Indeed, given the limitations inherent in the

exercise of cognitive power by individuals, as well as

more mundane but important constraints such as budget

ceilings, they may represent the best strategy available.

Nonetheless, those responses may prove ultimately to

be inadequate and insufficient; their employment may

lead policymakers into situations from which they cannot easily or gracefully escape.4

What factors facilitated this fragmentation of nuclear

power policy and the subsequent minor emphasis given

to waste management? First, attitudes held by the AEC

Commissioners and operating personnel played a role.

The Commissioners never got personally excited about

the problems of waste management. In the history of

AEC, there was only one Commissioner, Clarence Larson, who took a major interest in waste management,

But even he never championed the area’s needs in the

same manner that James Ramney pushed reactor development or Glenn Seaborg pushed physical research.

For most of the Commissioners, waste was unpleasant,

unglamorous, and low priority.

Evidence for this proposition comes from interviews

with key participants involved in the decisionmaking

processes that took place prior to 1975. One person who

dealt with the Commissioners every day described the

obstacles he encountered:

To get them interested was very difficult. There was

not a lot of glory in waste. No one wanted to be a champion of waste. Milt Shaw and I went to get the Kansas

Governor’s approval [for the Lyons repository] but not

one Commissioner would go to do it. No one wanted to

get tagged as having waste being his bag . . . One division or another would develop things about waste man4See, Daniel Metlay, Error Correction in Bureaucracy, unpublished Ph. D.

dissertation, University of California, 1978, especially chs. 1 and 5 .
App. A-l—Radioactive Waste Management Policymaking . 201

agement within the staff; the Commission tolerated it,

but they were really interested in reactors . . . I’d have

a hard time finding someone on the Commission who

thought he was responsible for waste.5

A program director dealing with waste management

during this period offered a similar view: “One of the

problems the Commission had for years was that the

emphasis was on the development of reactors and to hell

with anything to feed or service reactors. That was because the sexy part of this industry was the damned

reactor . A former Commissioner summed up how one

of his colleagues treated the issue of waste management

by recalling that ‘‘every time anyone mentioned waste

to X, [he] would make a face, turn up [his] nose, and

move on to another subject.

Nor could the cause of waste management be sustained through the skillful use of internal politics by personnel at lower levels. For them to pursue the issue intensely hardly made much sense. Grand careers were

made in reactor development where the organization’s

resources were committed, not in waste disposal. Moreover, waste management also seemed to lack the intellectual challenges of reactor research or high energy

physics.

A second influence, more subtle but extremely pervasive, which led policy makers to place a low priority

on waste management and which reduced their sensitivity to potential errors in their actions was a sense of technological optimism. By technological optimism we mean

a systematic perception on the part of scientific and

technical professionals that solutions to problems can

be crafted through the straightforward administration

of readily available technologies. It is, in Leon Lindberg’s words, ‘‘an overwhelming faith in progress

. . . that admits of few limitations to the ability of scientific knowledge to solve problems. Obviously, much

of this optimism is justified by past experience. Scientists and engineers have solved a wide range of problems

and have fundamentally altered modern society. However, should this faith be too rigidly held or if it is

misplaced, then serious distortions can arise. In particular, there is a tendency among those gripped by technological optimism to discount substantially aspects of

problemsolving which are not technological. g This proclivity can lead them to misspecify and misconstrue the

character of the problem and to adopt policies that prove

to be inadequate. The evolution of waste management

‘Confidential interview with author, 1975.

cContidential interview with author, 1976.

‘Confidential interview with author, 1975.

‘Leon Lindberg, “Energy Politics and the Politics of Economic Development, 1976, p. 29.

‘See, Ida Hoos, “The Credibility Issue, ‘‘ in W. P. Bishop, et al., Essays

on Issues Relevant to the Regulation of Radioactive Waste Management,

NUREG-0412, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 1978, for a good discussion of this point.

policy provides a striking illustration of both the sense

of technological optimism and its often accompanying

tendency to discount the nontechnical components of

problemsolving.

For at least 25 years, the nuclear developers maintained that radioactive waste management was an easily solved problem; by extension, it was also one that

could be disaggregated and ignored until a system was

actually required. A plethora of examples document the

policymakers’ sense of technological optimism. We cite

just a few. One manager in the Division of Reactor

Development and Technology testified before the Joint

Committee on Atomic Energy ~CAE) in 1959:

Although one has to be careful to distinguish between

aspiration, reality, and speculation, it is my strong feeling that the development program has thus far found solutions to some of the waste problems and at least indications of solutions to others. 10

Even the most visible failure in waste management history, the Lyons project, was seen as technically feasible

by program personnel. The Oak Ridge engineer in

charge of that effort was asked whether the laboratory

could have handled the problems which arose in Kansas. He replied, “Of course, it was technologically

possible. 1 One executive in charge of waste management development remarked: ‘‘The easiest part of the

reactor business is the waste management portion. I

can’t believe that it has ended up as it has. ’12 The Director of the Division of Waste Management reflected official attitudes when he told the American Nuclear Society: “We do have today, in the retrievable surface

storage facility, the answers needed for safe management

of commercial high-level radioactive waste. 13

In sum, one gets a strong impression from reading

the public record and from talking with former AEC

personnel that, if they had just been given enough

money and had been left alone, they could and would

have solved the “problem” expeditiously and to virtually everyone’s satisfaction.

Interestingly, this position was held despite repeated

technical setbacks in a number of efforts to manage the

byproducts of nuclear fission. The storage of military

wastes at Hanford has been plagued with numerous

problems. Tanks expected to hold the liquid waste for

50 to 100 years have corroded and leaked after less than

25.14 Although the waste stored at the Savannah River

facility have not leaked into the environment, plans to

I ou, S, Congress, Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, hearings, Industrial

Radioactive Waste Disposa/, 86th Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, DC,: U.S.

Government Printing OfYice, 1959), pp. 992-993.

llconfidenti~ interview with author, 1975.

‘

z

Ibid.

IsSpeech by Frank pittm~ to the American Nuclear Society, NOV. 16, 1972.

Reprinted in Atomic Energy Commission Press Release S-18-72, p. 2.

I+see Envjmnmenta] Impact Statement, Waste Management Operation%

Hanford Reservation, Richland, Washington, WASH- 1538, U.S. Atomic

Energy Commission, 1974.
202 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Leve Radioactive Waste

dispose of the material in the bedrock underlying the

plant have not been consummated in part because of

potential technical difficulties.’s The legacy of the

Nuclear Fuel Service operation, 640,000 gallons of waste

in upper New York State, will cost nearly a half billion

dollars to dispose of. The attempt to build a repository

at Lyons failed in part because it was too hastily conceived and designed. Low-level wastes have migrated

from their burial sites at Maxey Flats, Ky., despite

repeated predictions that such movements were

physically impossible.l6

Moreover, the sense of technological optimism was

maintained despite the fact that past technological approaches to what must be regarded as a long-term problem have proven to be only temporary stopgaps. The

experience at Hanford illustrates that point. To cope

with the leakage from the corroding tanks, a decision

was made in 1965 to evaporate completely the waste solutions; the resulting salt cake not only would not leak,

but also it would seal up any holes in the tank. Yet,

many knowledgeable people agree with the Natural

Resources Defense Council’s observation that:

Eliminating the excess liquid has to a great extent also

ended [the government’s] ability to remove the waste from

the tanks since as damp solids the waste can no longer

be pumped hydraulically out of the tanks. Moreover, liquids cannot be reintroduced in too many of the tanks to

resuspend the waste since to do so would almost certainly result in substantial leaks to the ground.17

While the alternative of mining the waste out does exist, that technique is beset with a number of difficulties:

a remote control system for mining would have to be

developed; efforts would have to be made to reduce airborne releases; and the material is difficult to deal with

physically: thus, the record suggests that past technical

efforts have at least occasionally complicated matters for

the present and have engendered problems for the future.

No force foreordained this phenomenon of technological optimism. Rather it was something that appears

to have evolved and to have been institutionalized. Indeed, as early as 1955, AEC had not become overly sanguine. For instance, one individual from the Division

of Reactor Development and Technology told the first

meeting of the National Academy of Science’s (NAS)

Advisory Committee on Waste Disposal:

To some extent because of our geographically isolated

locations (such as Hanford), it has been possible to sweep

l~~tematjve tiesses hr Managing Existing Commemial High-Level

Radioactive Wastes, NUREG-0043, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission,

1976, p. 12.

16&, ~pmwmenti N&din the Land D@osal of Radioactive Wastes--+

problem of Centuries, RED-76-54 (Washington, D. C.: U.S. Congress, General

Accounting Oillce, 1976).

IJNatur~ Resources Defense Council, ‘‘Memorandum and points of

Authorities in Support of the NRC Licensing of the ERDA’s High-Level Waste

Storage Facilities Under the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974, ” p. 18.

the problem under the rug, so to speak. But those of us

who are close to it are convinced we must face up to the

fact that we are confronted with a real problem . . . Looking backward we know of the mistakes that many industries made in assuming that the disposal of waste was

simply a back-door problem that any one could handle. 18

At the same time, his colleague, who 4 years later, would

become so optimistic in testifying before the JCAE,

noted: “I certainly hope I can disabuse you of the idea

that we have any solution that will solve the problems

of waste disposal. “19 Yet, if that NAS study began on

a note of caution, it ultimately provided the major support for the technological optimism that developed in

the agency. Although the writers of the NAS report were

careful to note the need for further research, they stated

categorically that “the committee is convinced that

radioactive waste can be disposed of safely in a variety

of ways and in a large number of sites in the United

States. “2° Further, they stated that “disposal in salt was

the most promising method for the near future. ’21 The

consequences of such judgments were great. As someone

who has been in the waste management program for

a number of years put it, “The NAS report did instill

a sense of complacency in the minds of the people dealing with waste management. Because of it, we felt that

a solution would be available whenever we needed it. ’22

The Joint Committee itself also played an important

role in institutionalizing the sense of technological optimism. In extensive hearings held in 1959, JCAE heard

one expert after another from AEC, from the national

laboratories, from academia, and from industry testify

that a technological solution to the waste management

problem was possible.23 Once that technological optimism received the imprimatur of the Joint Committee7 JCAE promptly dropped the subject and, for all

practical purposes, never returned to it for another 16

years.

The cumulative impact of the way the NAS report

was interpreted and the Joint Committee hearings was

to legitimize a certain perspective. An illusion of certainty was created where, in reality, it did not exist.

Over the years, the sense of technological optimism

embedded itself in the attitudes and thoughts of important agency policymakers. It became, in a sense, an official doctrine at AEC. There is no evidence that its

validity was ever seriously questioned until the

mi&1970’s. This optimism facilitated fragmentation by

lulling policymakers; agency personnel never fully

recognized that they might create in a sequential, in1~NatiOnaJ Academy of Science~National Research Council, The Disposal

of Radioactive Waste on Land, 1957, pp. 16-17.

1gIbid., p. 34.

‘“Ibid., p. 3.

‘

] Ibid., p. 6.

zzconfidenti~ interview with author, 1974.

Wbid.
App. A-l—Radioactive Waste Management Policymaking ● 203

cremental fashion an elaborate technological structure,

civilian nuclear power, only to find that the last pieces

could not be made to fit. The difficulties of integrating

the whole were systematically underestimated.

Furthermore, it seems likely that this sense of technological optimism influenced the manner in which decisionmakers conceptualized the issue of waste management. In particular, the lack of attention given to the

nontechnical dimensions of policy prior to the mid1970’s may have resulted from a belief that the problem was so readily technically solvable. In such a case,

it is understandable that AEC managers came to view

the technology as virtually self-implementing. Only

within the last 6 or 7 years has the recognition grown

that the nontechnical or institutional aspects of waste

management need to be addressed as thoroughly and

intensively as the technical ones.24

Thus, during the formative years of waste management policymaking, 1945 to 1975, the issue was never

given a very high priority by the AEC leadership. Waste

was unglamorous; the management of it was not a pressing problem and could therefore be postponed; such a

postponement hardly seemed ill-advised at the time

because a firm belief prevailed in the nuclear power

community that once a need arose, the problem would

yield to some readily envisioned, self-implementing

technical solution.

The consequences of this state of affairs were twofold.

First, budgetary commitments for waste management,

the program’s staff of life, were minuscule, particularly

when compared to funds expended for reactor development. (See fig. A-1 and also table A-1 which detail the

allocations for waste management up to the present

time. ) Those low budgets severely constrained problemsolving as personnel were forced to make do. Second, the years of relative neglect made it harder to respond to rapidly growing external concerns about the

adequacy of the waste management program. The organizational and technical infrastructure had not been

well established prior to the mid- 1970’s. As a result,

AEC and its successors found themselves in a constant

struggle to catch up. When the program appeared to

falter, its credibility was challenged. That, in turn,

created a situation in which efforts to find solutions were

undermined.

In describing the context of policymaking we refrain

from critically judging the choices made, even though

in retrospect some of those decisions proved to be unfortunate. We do so—and suggest that others do so as

well—because, at the time the choices were made, they

W3ee for in~tace, W, p. Bishop, ct al, , Proposed Goals for Radioactive

Waste Management, NUREC-0300, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission,

1978, and proceedings of Conference on PubIic Policy Issues in Nuclear Waste

Management, 1976.

Figure A-1 .—Expenditure for Reactor Development

Compared With Expenditures for Waste Management

1952 1956 1960 1964 1968 1972 1976

Fiscal year

appeared at least reasonable and, perhaps, given the

constraints at work, the most appropriate possible.

Thus, while one can properly be concerned about the

lack of progress in waste management, one ought not

to denigrate those—at all levels—who worked this problem in the past.

Having established the context of policymaking that

prevailed up until 1975, we must note that it has

changed dramatically over the last half decade. Whereas

AEC did not even have a separate organizational structure with its own budget responsible for waste management prior to 1972, now DOE has an Office of Nuclear

Waste Management headed by the Deputy Assistant

Secretary. Funding for commercial waste management

is now over 100 times greater than it was a decade ago.

During the Carter administration top officials at DOE

maintained that, aside from the strategic petroleum

reserve, waste management had captured highest priority. And while decisionmakers over the last 5 years still

strongly believe that managing radioactive waste is not
204 Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

Table A= I.—Waste Management Costs

(dollars in thousands)

Fiscal year Commercial Defense

1960 and prior . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1961 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1962 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1963 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1964 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1965 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1966 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1967 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1968 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1969 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1970 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1971 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1972 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $

1973 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1974 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1975 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1976 and TQ.... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1977 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1978 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1979 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1980 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1961 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1982 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

$ 125,772

1,704

3,750

6,215

10,263

16,632

67,087

123,236

179,753

207,192

256,343

317,473 — —

8,573

8,940

8,972

11,702

9,492

14,953

17,725

21,020

26,421

27,526

32,017

44,653

44,570

54,998

83,521

141,203

162,969

234,362

296,899

313,864

336,628

392,000

Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $1,189,648 $2,418,776

a difficult technical problem, their current optimism has

not led them to discount the other dimensions of policy

and, perhaps more significantly, appears to be founded

on a firmer technical base.

As the reader digests the next sections dealing with

the substance of problem-solving, he should keep in

mind what the context of decisionmaking was and how

that context influenced the action taken.

Defining Radioactive Waste

Radioactive waste comes in a variety of forms; they

include uranium mill tailings, low-level waste derived

from industrial, institutional, power generating, and

military sources, and waste derived from the decontamination and decommissioning of nuclear facilities.

While all those forms create some health hazard and

therefore must be managed with care, this paper shall

concentrate almost exclusively on two other types: highlevel and transuranic contaminated waste.

During the early years of the nuclear endeavor, prior

to 1970, only low- and high-level waste were distinguished; the former variety had to be kept strictly

isolated and contained while the latter could be placed

into the environment under conditions of lower constraint. More precisely, AEC in 1957 defined high-level

waste to refer to material which “emitted radiation so

strong as to materially reduce the time a person can be

near the radiating body. “

251n practice,that meant that

are lease of two or more roentgens per hour arbitrarily

qualified material to declassified as high-level waste.

Ten years later, that definition was refined to mean

material “which, by virtue of its radio-nuclear concentration, half life, and biological significance, requires

perpetual isolation from the biosphere.”26

Some material, such as the byproducts of reprocessing military fuel and the postfission products of commercial power reactors, clearly falls under these

radiological definitions of high-level waste. Classifying

other material, however, is somewhat more complicated.

For instance, material contaminated with transuranic

elements, transuranic waste, initially was interred, along

with low-level waste, in shallow land burial sites. In the

late 1960’s, AEC decided to halt that practice and segregate its own transuranic waste for ultimate transfer

to and disposal in a geologic repository. In 1974, the

agency proposed that commercial waste possessing

transuranic activity of greater than 10 nanocuries per

gram be treated the same as commission-generated

transuranic material .27 Although that regulation was

never adopted and thus no formal definition of transuranic waste is available, there seems to be a fair amount

of agreement that transuranic waste, however ultimately

defined, will eventually be disposed of in a manner

similar to that of high-level waste. The Nuclear

Regulatory Commission (NRC) is currently carrying

out a study to determine whether other radionuclides,

hitherto treated as low-level wastes, should, like transuranic waste, become subject to more stringent management controls.28

The very idea of waste connotes something that is valueless. The military high-level waste conforms as readily

to this ordinary language meaning of the term as it does

to the radiological definition. The material that emerges

from a reprocessing plant at the Hanford or Savannah

River facilities is economically worthless. The situation,

however, with regard to the postfission products of nuclear reactors is somewhat more complex and contentious.

From the earliest days of AEC reactor development

program, the operating assumption was that commercial spent fuel would be reprocessed and its residual

uranium and plutonium recycled as fuel. As the Director of Reactor Development wrote Commissioner Libby

in 1957, employing this technological alternative would

25’’ Hand1ing and Disposal of Radioactive Waste, ” AEC 180/6, June 14,

1957, p. 10,

ZbMinutes of Atomic Ener~ Commission Meeting 2373, June 3, 1969, p. 13.

‘7See, Management of Commercial High Level and TransuraniumContaminated Radioactive Waste, Drafi EIS, WASH-1539, U.S. Atomic

Energy Commission, Washington, D. C., 1974, pp. 2.4-1—2.4-17.

les~, A Classjticatkm System for Radbactive Waste Disposal— What waste

Goes Where? NUREG-0456, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission,

Washington, D. C., 1978.
App. A-7—Radioactive Waste Management Policymaking . 205

‘ ‘increase utilization of uranium resources and lower

fuel costs. “29

(It would also provide the not inconsiderable benefit of facilitating the sale of U.S. reactors

abroad. ) High-level waste then became whatever was

left after reprocessing and recycle. Indeed, the first formal definition adopted by AEC in 1970 held that commercial high-level wastes were ‘‘those aqueous wastes

resulting from the operation of the first cycle solvent extraction system, or equivalent and the concentrated

wastes from subsequent extraction cycles, or equivalent,

in a facility for reprocessing irradiated reactor fuels. ’30

Given the view that reprocessing would be economically advantageous, that definition seemed quite consistent with the ordinary language connotations of the

term waste. Within the next 5 years, however, the logic

behind AEC’S 1970 definition of high-level waste came

under challenge. For the ordinary language connotations of waste as something valueless did not seem to

apply to reprocessed commercial material alone.

The definitional dilemmas arose because earlier assumptions about the costs of reprocessing no longer

seemed to hold. The first reprocessing plant, operated

by Nuclear Fuel Services, initially charged a fee that

was substantially lower than what the next generation

of facilities would have to impose. 31 The increase was

believed to be so great that arguments were advanced

suggesting that reprocessing might not be economically advantageous at all. Robert Fri, Deputy Administrator of the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA), informed President Ford that for

the United States, “the economics of the [reprocessing]

technology are uncertain, and even if favorable, would

produce only about a 2-percent reduction in the cost of

generating [nuclear] electricity”32 (emphasis added).

Thus, the plutonium and uranium components, to

which value had been attributed, might not, after all,

be valuable.

The economics of reprocessing were a major element

considered in the plutonium recycle rulemaking hearings Generic Environmental Statement on Mixed Oxide Fuel (GESMO) conducted by NRC. The Commission’s staff, somewhat more cautious than Fri, predicted

a discounted benefit of $3.2 billion over a quarter century for a reprocessing/recycle option compared to the

‘‘throw-away’ fuel cycle.33 This is an 8 percent fuel cost

—

“’’Plutonium Recycle Program at Hanford, ” AEC-960, Mar. 14, 1957, p. 1.

‘“APP F, 10 Code of Federal Regulatkms, pt 50.

Slsee, for example, Ftia] Generic Envii-onmenta] Statement on the Use d

Recycled Plutonium in -Mixed Oxide Fuel in Light Water CooIed Reactors

(GESMO), NUREG-0002, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 1976,

pp. xi-19—xi-23.

sZMemorandum to the President from Robert Fri, Sept. 7, 1976, p. 19.

33GESM0, Op. cit p. ES-16. See afso Spurgeon Keeny, Jr., et al., Nuclear

.,

Power Issues and Choices (Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger, 1977), p. 323.

advantage, but less than a 1 percent advantage in total

electrical costs. Obviously, substantial uncertainties are

associated with those predictions. But what is significant is that the logic for defining high-level radioactive

commercial waste was seriously and officially undermined; unreprocessed spent fuel rods could now satisfy

both the ordinary language and radiological definitions

of waste.

The GESMO analysis is notable in an ironic sense

as well. Whereas the definition of waste was initially a

byproduct of an intuitive commitment to reprocessing

and recycling, now reprocessing and recycling were being advocated, in large degree, on the basis of waste

management considerations: 40 percent of the economic

advantage of that fuel-cycle option derived from savings in the costs of waste storage and disposal .34

Moreover, arguments were made within NRC to continue to push recycle aggressively in terms of the waste

management implications of failing to do s0.

35)

The shifting definition of commercial high-level waste

had some pragmatic consequences. When, in 1970,

AEC tied the definition to a particular fuel cycle, they

set off a critical sequence of events. For once the

presumption is made that spent fuel contained valuable

components, there are strong economic incentives to extract those components as rapidly as possible. At the

same time, safety considerations dictate that large

volumes of the residual material should not accumulate.

The combination of those two factors led AEC, at the

same time it released its definition, to promulgate a

regulation requiring that high-level commercial waste

be transferred to the Government within 10 years from

the time irradiated fuel rods were removed from the

reactor 36 When AEC acted, this requirement did not

appear to pose difficulties as a repository at Lyons,

Kans., was being developed. When that effort was terminated, however, the strong need arose to have an

alternative available to receive the waste from reprocessing plants. In particular, the decision to construct a

retrievable surface storage facility (RSSF) can be directly

traced to the need to satisfy that regulatory exigency .37

As spent fuel emerged more clearly as a possible category of high-level waste, policymakers had to reorient

some of their programs. NRC, for instance, was in the

midst of the ‘‘S-3’ hearings on the environmental effects of reprocessing and waste management. The definitional changes forced new analyses to be performed and

added to the regulators’ uncertainty about whether their

actions would be sustained in court. In addition, deferral of reprocessing increased pressure on utilities to find

34GESM0, Op. cit., p. 11-78.

““PU Recycle Issue, ” SECY-75-37, Feb. 19, 1975, p. 8.

36see app, F, 10 CFR 50.

3 7 ’’ Management of Commercial High Level Radioactive Wastes, ”

SECY-2371, Mar. 17, 1972, p. 13.
206 . Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

space to store spent fuel assemblies. Over three times

as much room would be required. 38 The Carter administration’s decision to request authority to construct

an away-from-reactor facility was a response to that

perceived problem.

But the major significant consequence of the shift was

the injection of a novel issue into the waste management

debate: could spent fuel be disposed of as safely and efficiently as waste from a reprocessing plant? The

GESMO analysis answered that question affwmatively

and concluded that there is “no clear preference for any

specific fuel-cycle option based on radioactive waste

management considerations. ’39 But others, particularly

advocates from the nuclear industry and some geologists, were not as persuaded. They argued that differences in volume, heat generation, amount of longlived toxic radionuclides, and homogeneity of chemical

composition all worked to increase the ease and lower

the risk of disposing reprocessed waste. This controversy

raged intensely for a time. There appears to be an

emerging, although not complete, technical consensus

within this country that “considerations of the management of [high-level waste] do not put significant constraints upon choices among various fuel cycles. ’40 That

view has recently been supported in the report of the

International Nuclear Fuel Cycle Evaluation study

group .41

Storing Radioactive Waste

Early records of waste management policymaking

blur the conceptual difference between storing and

disposing of radioactive waste. Over the years seemingly

more precise conceptual distinctions emerged even

though semantic confusion persists. Nevertheless, some

definitional ambiguity still remains. The purpose of this

section is to clarify the meaning of the two terms, to

show how thinking about storage has evolved, and to

specify some remaining policy dilemmas dealing with

waste storage. We shall then consider the issues surrounding radioactive waste disposal in the next three

sections.

The connotations associated with the terms storage

and disposal can be misleading. Storage is usually linked

to temporariness, disposal with permanence. Phrases

such as ‘‘interim’ are connected to the former term

while “ultimate’ and “final’ are associated with the

latter. It is quite possible for the same technological

‘

9

1 bid., p. iv-H6.

‘L. Charles Hehel, et al., Report to the American Physical .%eiety by the

Study Group on Nuclear Fuel CycIes and Waste Management (APS Report),

Report of Modern Physics 50, January 1978, p. 5107.

else Intemat~n~Nuclear Fuel Cycle Evaluation, IAEA, Vienna, Austria,

1980. ‘

system to be viewed by some individuals as an interim

measure while others see it as providing a final resting

spot for waste. Thus, the designation of a system

depends mainly on what can be done with it sometime

in the future, a fate that cannot be forecast at the start

with complete certainty. A more conceptually clear way

to distinguish storage from disposal is based on the

degree of effort that must be exerted to gain access to

and active control over the waste material. At the extremes, spent fuel management at the reactor would be

an example of storage while extraterrestrial shipment

or transmutation would be instances of disposal. In between, all other technical approaches must be viewed

as possessing some mixture of storage and disposal

characteristics. For instance, NRC’s draft requirement

that a geologic repository be designed to facilitate the

retrieval of the waste for 50 years after emplacement

operations cease transforms geologic ‘‘disposal” into an

elaborate method of storage. 42 For simplicity sake, we

shall call those approaches which require at least as

much effort to gain access to and control over the waste

as burial in geologic formations without provisions for

retrievability ‘‘disposal options. Those approaches requiring less exertion will be termed “storage options. ”

This shorthand should not encourage the reader to forget that a continuous range exists between the endpoints of “storage” and “disposal.”

This country’s first large-scale excursion into waste

management centered on developing storage systems.

The vast tank farms at the Hanford Reservation, as we

noted above, were established to hold the liquid waste

produced in conjunction with the nuclear weapons program. The functions of the system were ambiguous at

the time they were created and, to some extent, remain

so today. There is some evidence to suggest that those

involved at Hanford, particularly during the pre-1970

period, viewed the tanks, or some relatively minor

modification of them, as a perfectly viable final approach to managing the wastes. 43 Indeed, the view is

advanced in some early documents that the tanks would

maintain their integrity for hundreds of years, just the

length of time needed for the two biggest “problem

isotopes, strontium and cesium, to decay .44 Certainly, this view of perpetual tank storage was the one which

prevailed in the design of the commercial waste management system used at the Nuclear Fuel Service’s (NFS)

reprocessing plant .45

4ZFe&ra] Register, Mar. 5, 1981.

4$For exmp]es of the ambiguity, compare Atomic Ene~ Commission 180/5,

“Disposal of Radioactive Wastes, ” Mar. 30, 1956 with Atomic Energy Commission 180/6.

*4See, “Hanford’s Highly Radioactive Waste Management Program, ” AEC

180/30, Apr. 5, 1968, pp. 6-7.

45~e U.S.Conps,Joint Committ= on Atomic Energy, hearings, chem~af

Repmeessing Plant, 88th Cong., 1st sess. (Washington, D. C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1963).
App. A-l–Radioactive Waste Management Policymaking ● 207

By 1956, however, another position began to gain

currency within AEC. Those who took that new tack

argued that tank storage was not the ‘‘ultimate solution” to the waste management problem . . . if only

because it was too expensive over the long run.46 Instead, they advocated a robust research program to find

a technical option that could be employed to manage

newly created waste material. Thus, rather than being

a final measure, tank storage would simply serve as an

interim approach pending the discovery of something

better.

There were a number of AEC staff and policymakers

who saw the storage system serving a third function:

a reservoir containing materials of economic importance. Efforts were initiated to extract from the waste

soup radionuclides that were commercially valuable.

Strontium and cesium would be employed as heat

sources; cesium would be used in a project to irradiate

foods; the heavy metals would be destined for industrial

applications. 47 In his way, some of the costs of the waste

management program might be offset. There was sufficient enthusiasm for this approach in the late 1960’s

that one firm reached an agreement with AEC to build

a fission product extraction plant at Hanford. But before

construction began the economics of the endeavor

turned sour and the company canceled its plans. Nevertheless, the idea of fission product recovery of commercially valuable material would not die easily. As late as

1975, JCAE was pushing the concept.48 Even today,

some people still hope to see some commercial venture

to utilize fission products.

The next major initiative in the waste management

program was the effort to develop a disposal facility at

Lyons, Kans. A combination of technical weaknesses

and a lack of attention to the institutional aspects of the

project contributed to its early and painful demise.

AEC, thus, found itself in early 1972 without a

repository and without a fallback plan to find another

site for one in the near term.

AEC response was to propose constructing a series

of aboveground engineered structures—mausolea—

which would be used to store solidified, reprocessed

waste from the commercial sector. 49 The explicit rationale for this undertaking presented to AEC was:so

If the problems of gaining public acceptance of the concepts of storage [sic] in geological formations cannot be

overcome in the near future, an available option is retrievable storage in carefully engineered man-made structures and acceptance of the idea that man must main-

*bAtomic Ener~ cornrnjg.qjon 180/5, op, Cit., p. 5.

+7 Memorandum, Fr~k pittman to James Ramey, Feb. 25. 1965>

pp. 7-8.

tsThls matter arose during hearings on the Atomic Ener~ COmmis5i0n’s

fiscal year 1976 budget.

49See WASH-1539.

M’ High Level Waste Management, SECY-2271, Jan. 25, 1972, p. 3.

tain close control over the waste so stored at least until

geologic storage [sic] becomes acceptable or until development of new technology opens up new approaches not

now practical.

Storage in RSSF would be used as an interim approach

pending a more hospitable political environment.

Unfortunately, AEC took other actions over the next

2 years which, at the very least, sent a set of mixed

signals to those interested in waste management policy.

Perhaps because fiscal year 1975 was a tight budget

year, AEC had to severely cut back its expenditures

devoted to advancing its capabilities for geological

disposal or for discovering new alternative technologies.

That circumstance left the impression in the minds of

some concerned individuals that the RSSF’S function

could very well evolve into one of final disposition

rather than the interim one which AEC asserted. That

was precisely the critique of the RSSF leveled by the

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA):

A major concern in employing the RSSF concept

is the possibility that economic factors could later

dictate utilization of the facility as a permanent

repository, contrary to the stated intent to make the

RSSF interim in nature . . . [I]t is important that

[environmental factors] never be allowed to become

secondary to economic factors in the decision making process. Vigorous and timely pursuit of ultimate

disposal techniques would assist in negating such

a possibility . . . However, the draft statement does

not contain an adequate description of a program

to develop such a disposal system nor does it reflect

either the priority given to programs by the AEC

nor an indication of the resources required .51

More than any other single criticism, the one advanced

by EPA and supported by other commentators provide

the coup de grace for the RSSF concept. In this instance,

it was clear that it was unacceptable to proceed with a

storage system unless there were unambiguous assurances that the system would not degenerate into a final

disposing spot for the waste.

Since the cancellation of the RSSF, Federal activity

has concentrated on the development of disposal technologies, particularly mined geologic repositories. A

number of generic studies have been undertaken and

exploration of specific sites commenced. But because of

the. program’s relatively late start and its slow progress

and because of possible lengthy delays in the start of

commercial reprocessing, concerns arose as early as

1975 that a number of operating reactors would run out

of room to store their discharged spent fuel onsite.52

Should that occur and if there were no alternative locations to place the material, then the reactor would be

SIEPA reswnse to WASH-1 539, NO V. 15, 1974, p. 2.

5ZL WRSpntFuel Disposition Capabilities, 1975-1984, ERDA-25, Energy

Research and Development Administration, 1975.
— —

208 . Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

forced to shut down. Between 1975 and 1977, the private

sector floated proposals to construct large-scale facilities

to hold excess spent fuel from utilities. Yet, for a variety of reasons, many unclear to this day, those proposals

never reached fruition.

It was in this context that the newly elected Carter

administration announced its spent fuel policy in October 1977.53 Under it, title to the spent fuel would be

transferred to the U.S. Government. The fuel would

be transported to a Government-approved away-fromreactor site at the utility’s expense. A one-time fee would

be paid by the utility that would cover the Government’s

costs of storage and disposal. In addition, the administration expressed a willingness to accept limited

amounts of foreign spent fuel for storage and disposal

if such an action contributed to the achievement of the

country’s nonproliferation goals. At the time this policy

was first articulated, many of its modalities and logistics

were unsettled. The administration, for instance, did

not necessarily propose to construct a new storage facility on its own. It was prepared to contract with the private sector for storage services.

Thus, the away-from-reactor storage proposal was initially designed to serve four different functions. It

prevented the shutdown of reactors pending repository

development; it would provide time for the geologic disposal program to mature; it would provide some foreign

countries at least a limited incentive to forego fuel

reprocessing thereby reducing the spread of nuclear

arms; it would provide a means of conserving potentially valuable material since the plutonium and

uranium in the spent fuel would be accessible should

reprocessing ever be permitted and become economically viable. Later on, the away-from-reactor program was

also advocated by those who saw a fifth function: the

away-from-reactor, by relieving some of the pressures

on the nuclear industry, would reduce the likelihood that

the industry might use its large political clout to force

a premature decision on a geologic disposal plan. Finally, the administration carefully distinguished its policy

from the RSSF project. Not only did it announce that

disposal remained a high priority, but it committed

substantial resources toward that end. It should be

noted, however, that those actions did not deter critics

who maintained that an away-from-reactor would also

end up as the final resting place for the stored waste

either because of the short-term economics or because

DOE would lose its incentive to develop repositories.

The administration’s initiative to involve the public

sector in the provisions of storage facilities placed the

issue of waste management on Congress’ legislative

agenda after a hiatus of nearly 5 years. A plethora of

~$DOE Information Bulletin, R-77-017, Oct. 18, 1977.

bills were introduced dealing with a wide range of waste

management issues. In July 1980, the Senate passed S.

2189, which, in many respects, marked an abrupt

change from the policies that had evolved over the last

decade.

In particular, the bill blurred the conceptual distinction between storage and disposal. The bill defined “disposal’ ‘ to include the:

. . . long-term isolation of material, including longterm monitored storage which permits retrieval of the

material stored .54

Moreover, it provided for the construction of a “disposal” facility that would:

. . . permit continuous monitoring, management, and

maintenance of the spent fuel and high level radioactive

waste for the foreseeable future, allow for the ready

retrieval of any spent fuel and high level radioactive waste

for further processing or disposal by an alternative

method, and safely contain such high level radioactive

waste and spent fuel so long as may be necessary, by

means of maintenance, including, but not limited to, replacement of such a facility .55

That section had the effect of radically redefining the

idea of disposal. Although geologic means could still be

pursued, indeed the bill called for that program’s acceleration and a demonstration repository, mined

facilities were no longer to be seen as the dominant

technique of disposal. The Federal Government’s obligations in that regard could be met by the construction,

monitoring, and continuous replacement of a set of

mausolea. In fact, the bill sanctioned a return to an

RSSF-like approach.

Senate bill S. 2189 viewed the function of storage as

essentially twofold: a means of preserving options to protect the resource value of the spent fuel and a method

of postponing, perhaps forever, commitment to a technique of more secure disposal. It was that last vision

that elicited the most hostile response. Critics maintained that the bill, by diluting the commitment to disposal, would permit an inequitable transfer of risk from

this generation to generations in the future. The House

of Representatives passed a bill more responsive to those

concerns. And despite last-minute, strenuous efforts to

compromise the two versions, no mutually acceptable

legislation could be hammered out. The 96th Congress

adjourned with the issue of storage still unresolved. The

new Reagan administration abandoned the away-fromreactor storage proposal, believing that the private sec1

tor ought to tend to the storage of spent reactor fuel.

S+ fjenate Bill 2189, sec.

531 bid., sec. 402 (b).

201 (3).
App. A-l—Radioactive Waste Management Policymaking ● 209

Utilizing Knowledge of the Earth

Sciences in Developing a Waste

Management Program

Since the late 1950’s, when the policy was informally adopted of disposing of at least the high-level waste

from the commercial sector, the front running technical

strategy has been emplacement in repositories mined

by conventional methods. At a very early stage, earth

scientists and mining engineers were involved in conceptually crafting the AEC waste management program.

Those same professionals have intermittantly provided

guidance to AEC and its successor agencies over the last

quarter century. In this section, we shall explore how

the basic scientific and technological knowledge influenced the design of the waste management program.

We shall in particular note how, as the program evolved,

earth science became a more central element of the effort and how relatively simple—but elegant—earth

science conceptions were displaced by more complex

ones.

The first major involvement of earth scientists to consider the issue of waste disposal began in February 1955.

Then AEC contracted with NAS to provide advice on

how to structure the research that could establish the

scientific basis of a waste management program. NAS

appointed an eight-man committee of prominent geologists, hydrologists, and geophysicists. The group met

several times and convened a major conference on the

question at Princeton University during September

1955. Two years later, the committee issued its first

report, one which we noted above was extremely influential in orienting waste management policy for two

decades. 56

The problem the committee addressed was, in many

repects, unprecedented: how to design a mechanism for

isolating highly toxic radionuclides from the biosphere

for long, possibly geologic, periods of time. At the time

its deliberations began, the group took as a given the

fact that the waste materials would be dissolved, at relatively low concentrations, in some liquid. This constraint strongly affected the way the committee proceeded to puzzle through the problem. In particular,

several alternatives were quickly discarded, The use of

granite and other crystalline rock quarries was discounted because of the near impossibility of sealing the

facility against leaks. The use of permeable noncrystalline rocks such as sandstone and limestone by themselves

was precluded for similar reasons. The uncertainties of

sealing nonpermeable materials such as clay and shales

seemed too formidable. Other options, such as injection of the waste into deeply lying porous media interSONAS/NRC, 1957, op cit.

stratified with impermeable beds, were deemed to be

feasible in principle but so plagued with significant problems that they were impractical in the short run.57

One technique did, however, strike the committee as

rather promising. It involved the use of salt, either

bedded or domed, cavities: “Abandoned salt mines or

cavities especially mined to hold waste are, in essence,

long-enduring tanks. “58 What made salt the appropriate and in some sense the elegant solution were two factors. First, water will not pass through a relatively stable

salt formation to carry away the waste. Second, should

any fractures arise in the salt, they would soon be selfsealing because of the plastic flow properties of the

material at typical repository depths. The NAS committee believed it had found an autonomous mechanism,

based on immutable physical principles, for ensuring

that the toxic waste would be reliably isolated for

thousands of years.

It is essential to understand the premises behind the

committee’s espousal of salt. The committee’s position

was founded on the assumption which the group explicitly recognized required substantiation, that the

material’s chemical and physical properties would not

be radically altered when the salt was exposed to the

heat and radiation generated by the waste. If that assumption held, then all that was necessary was to find

a suitable salt formation, dig a hole, backfill it with salt,

and walk away.

During the next 4 years, small-scale research projects

were initiated to test the validity of the committee’s

assumption. Those investigations were ‘‘encouraging,

but there remained a variety of difficulties which, in the

words of one report, were ‘‘unique to liquid waste disposal. “59 Cavity alterations and radiolytic reactions were

observed. And while the technical operatives expressed

optimism that those obstacles would be overcome, it

became evident that the salt concept had not been

validated.

As the 1960’s began, substantial alterations in fuel

reprocessing technology were being made, the most important of which involved a twentyfold reduction in the

volume of liquid waste. That breakthrough, while substantially increasing the waste’s heat and radiation density, facilitated transforming the material into a solid

form. That prospect, in turn, redirected AEC’S fledging research program. AEC contractors, urged on by

the NAS committee, set out to examine the effect of dry

packaged radioactive wastes on salt. Therein lie the

origins of the first major in situ experiments—called

371 bid., pp. 81-103.

‘

8

1 bid., p. 5.

$9R. L. Bradshaw and W. C. McClain (eds. ), %ojee( Sah Vau/t: A

Demonstration of the Disposal of High-Activity Solidified Wastes in

Underground Sah Mines, ORNL-4555, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak

Ridge, Term., 1971, p. 1.
210 . Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

Project Salt Vault—undertaken to obtain the data

needed to design a waste repository.

To say that AEC vigorously pursued these efforts to

validate the salt assumptions would vastly overstate the

case. Funds to support Project Salt Vault had to be

“bootlegged” from other efforts by researchers at the

Oak Ridge National Laboratory. With some difficulty

they put together enough resources to carry out studies

in the Carey Salt Mine at Lyons, Kans., between 1965

and 1967. Fourteen irradiated fuel assemblies taken

from AEC’s Experimental Test Reactor were used to

simulate solidified waste. The assemblies were placed

in a ring-like arrangement in the floor of the mine. Furthermore, electrical heaters were installed to raise the

temperature of a large quantity of salt in the central

pillar in order to obtain information on its in situ structural response to heat. In spite of the rather high radiation doses to the salt and in spite of the high thermal

loading, no measurable radiolytic or excessive structural

effects in the salt were observed. While hardly a definitive or exhaustive test, the results of Project Salt Vault

at the time did lead many in AEC to believe that the

salt assumptions were largely valid. GO

Although the AEC leadership had little enthusiasm

for this experimental effort when it was first proposed

or even as it was being conducted, nearly 3 years after

it was concluded the undertaking took on special significance. For in 1970, AEC decided to move ahead and

develop a full-scale facility at the Carey Salt Mine.61

AEC’S managers relied heavily on the Salt Vault data

to support their new initiative. Indeed, the environmental impact statement assessing the proposed Lyons

repository contains no geophysical information gathered

at the site after the conclusion of Salt Vault. 62

The Kansas project was ultimately canceled because

water from a nearby solution mining operation could

not be easily accounted for and because it was hard to

persuade critics that the roughly 20 oil and gas boreholes

could be reliably plugged. The abandonment of the

Carey Mine site, however, did not undermine AEC’s

faith in the salt assumptions. In fact, as we detail later

on in this essay, the Commission quickly moved to identify other sites that might be suitable for a repository.63

Nevertheless, it committed the preponderance of resources to searching for locations where the emplacement media would be salt. This almost single-minded

preoccupation with a single geologic formation is well

reflected in the comprehensive “Technical Alternatives

CoSee for instance, memorandum, George Kavanagh to commissioners,

“Background Information on Long Term High-Activity Waste Management, ”

Sept. 8, 1967, p. 2.

61{ CSo]id R~ioactive Waste3: Salt Mine Storage, ” AEC 180/81, Apr. 23,

1970.

elRad&ctjw Wrote Repjtqy, Lyons, Kansas, U.S. Atomic Energy COInmission, Washington, D. C., 1971.

c~’ ‘High-~ve] Waste Management, SECY-2333, Feb. 24, 1972, p. 4.

Document” which contains essentially no information

on “nonsalt” repository options. 64

Up until this time those earth science specialists working in and for AEC, as well as those associated with the

NAS’S advisory committee, were a relatively closed

group. They all accepted the salt assumptions and felt

comfortable with a waste management policy that was

predicated on them. Over a period of nearly 20 years,

that perspective has two important consequences for the

orientation of AEC’s research program. First, comparatively little effort was devoted to considering how the

geologic environment outside of the salt formation might

contribute to isolating the waste. Second, there was considerable reluctance to investigate other emplacement

media as a possible alternative to salt.

By the mid-1970’s, because of the abandonment of

the Lyons site and because of the growing controversy

over nuclear power, waste management policy became

salient to a wider range of individuals, members of the

general public and technical specialists alike. Many of

the new participants were unable to accept the prevailing salt assumptions. At first, the criticism of the

Government’s waste policies came from citizen groups

generally opposed to nuclear power. The salt assumptions were rejected in those criticisms as concerns were

raised about brine migration, decrepitation, the problem

of breccia pipes, and the corrosiveness of salt solutions,

concerns which had all been considered and largely discounted by the Commission. Later on, however, more

subtle challenges were advanced. These did not reject

the salt assumptions but held them to be problematic

and therefore urged that different technological

strategies be explored.

Perhaps the earliest influential instance of the latter

brand of skepticism was the report of the American

Physical Society (APS) study group on nuclear fuel

cycles and waste management. 66 The APS study group

did not explicitly reject the salt assumptions. On several

occasions the report’s authors stated that there was no

basis for believing that a salt repository could not be

developed. 67 Yet, the conceptual thrust of the APS study

was strikingly different from that which had dominated

since the mid-1950’s. Instead of accepting the elegant

solution of a relatively isolated, autonomously selfcorrecting salt formation, the group stood back and

focused on the larger hydrogeologic environment.

That environment was, in their view, the critical element in designing a waste disposal facility. While the

behavior of the emplacement media per se was imporc+A/remat&S ~r Manitging Wastes From Reactor and Post-Fission @erations in the LWR Fuel Cyck, ERDA-76-43, Energy Research and Development Administration, Washington, D. C., 1976, pp. 24.49-24.80.

G~’’So]id R~ioactiveWastes: Long-Term Storage in Centrid Kansas Sdt

Mine, ” AEC 180/87, June 12, 1970, p. 5.

‘American Physicaf So&ty, 1976.

cT&x American Physical Society, p. S139, for ex-p]e.
App. A-l—Radioactive Waste Management Policymaking ● 211

tant, it need not be determinative. For if sufficiently long

hydrological flow paths were available and if sorptive

material were present along those paths, then the requirements that the emplacement media be self-sealing

and impermeable might well be superfluous.

Based on our analysis of hydrogeologic transport we

expect that the conditions that would provide for satisfactory geologic isolation of radioactive waste—i. e., a suitable groundwater environment—are present in a sufficient number of places that several acceptable sites in difi

ferent geologic media can be located without difficulty

in the immediate future.68 [Emphasis in original. ]

Thus, the APS report recommended that a broader program of geologic research and development be instituted. 69

That position, on the surface, appears inconsistent

with the group’s unwillingness to reject the salt assumptions. After all, if those assumptions held, then substantially greater attention to geohydrology and ground

water modeling would itself be superfluous. The elegant

solution had not been overthrown.

What made the APS report internally consistent was

the introduction of ‘anthropogenic concerns. ’70 Even

if the formation compensated for natural disruptions,

salt, particularly domes, by its very nature was attractive to those looking for oil, gas, potash, or even a

storage site. Future generations searching out those

resources might inadvertently disrupt the repository and

bring on “possibly serious consequences” unless the environment outside the emplacement media also contributed to the isolation of the waste. But if one considers the environment of the salt, there is no reason

why the environment should not be considered for other

media. In the group’s view such a course would only

be “prudent”—hence their conclusions and recommendations.

While the APS study did not explicitly reject the salt

assumptions, another report published shortly thereafter

came quite close to doing so—at least in the context of

prevailing premises about repository operation. Since

the early 1950’s, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)

had been supporting AEC and its successor agencies in

their waste management research. In the mid-1970’s the

USGS involvement had begun to intensify. The two

agencies’ interaction was not entirely without conflict,

which centered on the nuclear organization’s commitment to salt. For a period of time, USGS personnel tried

to reach an accommodation on that issue with those

managing the waste program. Those USGS scientists,

however, eventually came to believe that their concerns

about salt-some of which reflected the views of nuclear

opponents—were not being given proper consideration. 71

6aIbid., p. S138.

6gIbid., p. S7.

‘“Ibid., p. S139.

TIConfidenti~ interviews with author, 1980.

In a rare action by traditionally cautious bureaucrats,

the USGS scientists publicly expressed their concerns

in Circular 779: ‘‘Geologic Disposal of High-Level Radioactive Wastes—Earth Science Perspectives. “72 The

bulk of the work engendered little controversy; the middle section, however, raised some disturbing—although

not entirely novel—questions and in doing so conferred

a legitimacy to those technical concerns about disposing of waste in salt which heretofore had been lacking.

The USGS argument asserted that if relatively hot

waste—say 5 to 10 years old—is introduced into a salt

repository the potential exists for the repository to lose

its integrity. That circumstance would arise because the

thermal pulse would aggravate “the mechanical disturbances initiated by mining the repository and the chemical disturbances caused by the introduction of material-not in chemical equilibrium with the rock mass. ’73

Should the repository fail, the salt would not itself retard

the migration of the nuclides. Thus, USGS arrived at

precisely the same conclusion, although by a different

and—from a policy perspective—substantively significant route, as did the APS study group.

It would be misleading to infer from this discussion

that AEC and its successors were unbending in their

commitment to salt. Beginning in 1973 and accelerating

in the next few years, AEC and its successor agencies

sponsored research in other media. 74 In 1976, ERDA

announced a program to examine a variety of emplacement media to find acceptable repository sites and that

the third facility might be constructed in some media

other than salt.75 Yet, if policy makers at AEC and

ERDA were prepared to open the door for geologic

diversity, they saw little reason to abandon the salt

assumptions. However, as more and more technically

competent groups” and individuals inside and outside the

Government questioned the salt orthodoxy, it became

clear that this fundamental earth science controversy had

to be resolved. The forum for that resolution came to

be the Interagency Review Group on Nuclear Waste

Management (IRG) established by President Carter in

April 1978.

A working subcommittee of IRG, chaired by the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), was

assigned the task of crafting a paper synthesizing the

status of knowledge about waste isolation using geologic

repositories. 76 Representatives from DOE and USGS

took an active role in the preparation of the report. The

T~The Cjrcu]ar was written by J. D, Bredehoeft, A. W. England, D. B.

Stewart, N. J. Trask, and 1. J. Winograd.

73Circular 779, pp. 4-5.

7V3ECY-2271, p. 3.

T~znformarjon From ERDA, ‘‘ERDA Studies Geologic Formatio n

Throughout Nation for Data on Potential Sites for Commercial Nuclear Waste

Disposal, ” No. 76-355, Dec. 2, 1976.

TbSu&mup Report on Alternative Technology Strategies for the Isolation

of NucJear Waste, app. A, TID-28818 (draft), Interagency Review Group on

Nuclear Waste Management, Washington, D. C., October 1978.
—

212 . Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

study underwent four major revisions over the course

of slightly over 6 months. It was reviewed both by a

specially appointed advisory committee and by hundreds

of individuals from the earth science community .77

The section dealing with salt repositories in the OSTP

paper represented something of a compromise between

the views of DOE and USGS; in tone and thrust it was

quite akin to the APS study. In essence, the OSTP document questioned, but did not overturn, the salt assumptions. At the same time, it reiterated the concerns of APS

and USGS about the importance of viewing the waste

isolation mechanism as an entire system of waste form,

package, repository structure, and hydrogeologic environment.

The evolution of earth science perspectives from the

early 1950’s to the late 1970’s was striking and profound. While no one dismissed out of hand the concept

of a mined repository, the elegant solution of salt came

to be questioned—and for some—rejected. In its place

has come a more complex view of what needs to be done

to ensure that waste will be reliably isolated for geologic

periods of time. In the three sections that follow—site

selection strategy, waste packages, and regulatory philosophy—we shall be recapitulating some of the themes

raised here. For those aspects of the waste management

problem came critically to depend on the status of geologic science and technology.

Developing a Search

Strategy For Sites

Siting strategies fall along a conceptual continuum.

A process by which sites are randomly examined until

an acceptable one is found demarcates one extreme. The

other end point corresponds to a strategy in which all

possible sites are comprehensively compared along a

variety of dimensions prior to selecting one. In the

pragmatic world of seeking a location for a repository,

neither extreme is appropriate. The former approach

fails to take advantage of existing knowledge to eliminate

a priori sites that are unsatisfactory. The latter approach

is too demanding of knowledge, time, and resources.

In between the two extremes, a range of “mixed”

strategies do exist, and they can be distinguished in

terms of how proximate they are to either end point of

the continuum. Indeed, the history of site selection strategies is a chronicle of movement away from the more

random end toward the more comprehensive one.

AEC’s initial site selection strategy can be inferred

from the process which at least tentatively selected the

Carey Mine in Lyons, Kans., as the location of the

country’s first repository. As the reader will recall, per771 bid., Preface.

sonnel from Oak Ridge National Laboratory used that

abandoned mine for experiments designed to determine

the thermal and radiation effects of high-level waste on

salt. They were led to that particular type of geologic

formation by the strong endorsement given salt 6 years

earlier by NAS.

Those involved in this Project Salt Vault recall that

their efforts enjoyed the support of the local citizenry. 78

Four factors contributed to this climate of acceptance:

1) the experiment was designed from the beginning to

be reversible—once it was over all the waste was completely removed; 2) consultations were held with local

groups before the project began; 3) efforts were made

by Oak Ridge staff personnel to conduct the studies in

full view of the Kansas population; and 4) once the research started, regular tours were conducted in which

the general public could visit the mine.

Project Salt Vault might have become an isolated

footnote in the saga of nuclear policymaking had not

two circumstances intervened. The first was a fire which

occurred in 1969 at an AEC weapon’s components facility in Rocky Flats, Colo. The accident gave rise to

a large volume of low-level, plutonium contaminated

debris. Following its standard operating procedures, the

managers of Rocky Flats forwarded the waste to the National Reactor Test Station in Idaho for storage. That

action outraged Idaho’s political leadership who saw no

reason why their State should become the dumping

ground for waste created in Colorado. They acted and

ultimately extracted a commitment from Chairman Seaborg that all of the waste would be removed by the end

of the 1970’s. 79 That pledge necessitated the construction of a disposal facility. The second circumstance,

which will be discussed below, was the emerging regulatory policy on commercial waste management. That

evolving policy also provided a basis for AEC to go

beyond the early experimental efforts at the Kansas salt

mine and to develop a repository.

Thus, confronted with the need for a repository,

AEC’S siting strategy was relatively straightforward.

Because of the prevailing geologic assumptions held

within AEC and among its contractors, host formations

other than bedded salt were not even considered. This

left about 500,000 mi2 of land overlying bedded salt

within the continental United States. That area was further reduced because only salt deposits 200 ft thick and

lying within 2,000 ft of the surface were deemed “to

be the most desirable for the first waste repository. “8°

The largest area meeting these criteria lay in central

Kansas; there were two smaller areas in Michigan and

one in west central New York.

zaco~fidenti~ interviews with author, 1975.

zgLetter from Seaborg to Senators Church and Jordan, June 9, 1970.

SoAtomic Energy Commission 190/81, Op. cit. , p. 10.
App. A-l—Radioactive Waste Management Policymaking . 213

In the technical analysis provided AEC, none of the

alternative sites had a clear-cut advantage in terms of

their geologic characteristics although the New York

location was in an area of lower tectonic stability. The

Michigan site was burdened by the fact that part of it

underlay metropolitan Detroit. But finally, AEC decided on the Kansas site and in particular the experimental mine in Lyons because:

1. There had been detailed information gathered on

the area as part of Project Salt Vault.

2. There was a sense of confidence in receiving a “favorable reception on the part of local and state officials and private citizens. ”

3. There was a recognition that necessary investigations to prove out the acceptability of the other sites

would result in considerable delay ‘‘estimated on

the order of two years. “81

The choice of the Lyons location turned out to be unfortunate. The site developers encountered several major technical problems and, as we shall point out below,

substantial political controversy as well. Less than 2

years after its selection, the location was abandoned by

AEC .82

How AEC’s successors crafted a strategy for site selection in the next iteration of activity is not nearly as

straightforward. What is undisputed is this chain of

events. The aftermath of the Lyons endeavor had

created an environment that was not conducive to further site exploration. As a result, early in 1972, USGS

was asked by the AEC headquarters staff and personnel from Oak Ridge to summarize the available geologic

and hydrologic knowledge of selected rock types, particularly salt, in other parts of the country and to assess

their suitability for a waste repository. The USGS study

identified approximately a dozen regions where candidate sites might be found. That fall, the choice was made

to concentrate further exploration in the Permian basin

in eastern New Mexico. The choice seems to have been

made because the other regions featured salt domes and

anticlines (Guld and Paradox basin) rather than bedded

salt, because they were in areas of heavy population

(Salina basin), or because the salt was too far underground (Williston basin) .83

Four candidate sites were examined in more detail

and out of that investigation came the decision in favor

of a site located 30 miles east of Carlsbad. Additional

drilling and geophysical exploration, however, indicated

that that location was unsatisfactory. Eight additional

areas were studied and their consistency with eight criteria was measured. From that process emerged the site

‘Ji Atomic EnerW Commission 180/87, op. cit., pp. 4, 16.

‘

zBriefing Summary, “Program Review—High Level Waste Management, ”

Feb. 2, 1972.

B9Waste Isolation Pdot Plant, Draft Environmental Zmpact Statement (WzppDELS), DOE/EIS-O026-D, Department of Energy, April 1979, pp. 2-4—2-6.

for what is currently designated the Waste Isolation Pilot

Plant (WIPP), a facility now being considered as a repository for waste from the defense program .84

The official history of the WIPP site selection strategy

leaves the reader with the impression of an entirely scientific and rational process driven simply by the force

“ 85 To a large degree, that is likeof disinterested analysls.

ly the case. However, that history contains at least one

minor point of contention and one significant omission.

The first has to do with who made the decision to focus

on the Permian basin. According to the official version,

“USGS and [Oak Ridge] selected Eastern New Mexico as the area in the United States best satisfying their

site-selection guidelines. 86 This was presumably at a

meeting in Carlsbad in November 1972. USGS personnel who attended that meeting, however, maintain that

the decision to select the Carlsbad area for further exploration was made 2 months previously by AEC headquarters staff and Oak Ridge personnel. The November

meeting with USGS simply ratified the initial choice. 87

But the omission could render the point of contention moot. Even before the technical problem which

ultimately doomed the Lyons project arose, AEC officials had met with representatives from New Mexico.

As a memorandum detailing that contact reports:88

Their interest in obtaining a Federal waste disposal

facility came from a worsening of the competitive position of the U.S. potash industry . . . as highly automated

Canadian mines in rich potash seams began to come into

production. This translated into a loss of jobs and a blow

to the Eddy County/Lea County economy. Preliminary

discussions with potash interests, the Carlsbad Chamber

of Commerce and the State Department of Development

indicated that there was a potential for a favorable political

atmosphere. 89

The Interagency Review Group (IRG) went on to say,

however, that “there is a risk that as a result of applying nontechnical criteria first, organizational and political commitments might develop to such a degree that

insufficient weight might be given to technical data developed later on. ’90

It is fair to say that opponents of the Lyons and WIPP

sites— as well as some relatively disinterested observers—believed that technical criteria had been subordinated to political and bureaucratic ones. This impression was fostered, in part, by the fact that AEC and its

successor agencies made substantial public commits+Th~ annoUnced plans for WIPP have changed repeatedly. While currenti~

being considered for only the disposal of defense transuranic waste, at other

times the disposal of defense high level waste and the possible disposal of 1,000

commercial fuel rods have been proposed.

85W[PP Ers, Op. Ci[., pp.

 2-3—2 -

’

2

.

96WIPP ELS, op. cit., p. 2-6 .

‘JTConfidentid interview with author, 1980.

Ssowen Gourmley to Dorner Schueler, “Change m Exploration From Kansas to New Mexico, Feb. 1, 1979.

89su@-ouP Report, op. cit., p. 8]

‘“Ibid.
214 . Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

ments to the projects and had no alternative sites available as backups. Under those circumstances it was hard

to convince the skeptical that the sites would be evaluated in an objective fashion.

The siting strategy adopted up to this point, then, was

closer to the random ad hoc extreme of the continuum

than to the completely comprehensive end. That choice

was not entirely voluntary. The preoccupation with salt

reflected a limited geophysical perspective and knowledge base. Time constraints, such as those imposed by

the Rocky Flats fire, the emerging regulatory changes,

and the political need to show some progress in geologic

disposal, ruled out a more deliberate strategy. Finally,

resources were scarce; this also foreclosed a more elaborate strategy.

In truth, neither AEC policymakers nor relevant outsiders were particularly satisfied with that state of affairs. The Lyons experience had clearly indicated the

pitfalls of a narrow approach to finding sites. As a result,

by the mid-1970’s, AEC and later its successor, had begun to create the conditions that would allow for the

adoption of a more comprehensive site selection strategy. Time pressures were dampened, at least temporarily, by the RSSF and the delays encountered with reprocessing. The Ford administration was persuaded that

major funding increases in the program were required.

The earth sciences knowledge base broadened as new

research was undertaken.

This restructuring of circumstances was accompanied

by a policy decision to expand considerably the approach

to site selection.91 There was to be a comprehensive review of underground formations throughout the United

States. Thirty-six States in all were to be surveyed.

Fieldwork, including core drilling, was slated to take

place in at least 13 States and perhaps as many as 19,

More significantly, the search, for the first time, was

not to be confined to bedded salt; instead, other host

rocks, such as domed salt, basalt, shale, granite, and

other crystalline formations were considered. Lower

than requested fundings and political objections from

Governors and Senators, however, forced a retrenchment in the initial plans. While the expanded program

was termed ‘‘too ambitious and not well designed for

Federal/State and local government interaction, ”92

nevertheless, as a result of this broadened policy,

fieldwork was and is still being undertaken in Texas,

Louisiana, Mississippi, Washington, and Nevada in

search of a location for the first commercial waste

repository.

This expansion of the site selection strategy yielded

some important dividends. It introduced some redungll~~matjon F~m ERDA, op. cit., DCC. 2, 1976.

91 RePrr on Tak Fome hr Review of Nuclear Waste Management,

DOE/ER-0004 (draft), Department of Energy, Washington, D. C., February

1978, p. 12.

dancy and backup into a program sorely lacking these

characteristics. It increased the public credibility of the

program. It deflated concerns that a single locality had

been selected as the site for the Nation’s nuclear waste.

Yet, those returns should not lead one to overestimate

the degree to which the new strategy differed from its

predecessor. In particular, salt was still viewed as the

leading, and perhaps preferred, candidate for host rock.

This predisposition, based partly on the greater depth

of engineering information and partly on organizational

tradition, was reflected in the new program’s assertion

that the first two repositories would likely be carved in

salt. In a more fundamental sense the new strategy was

akin to the old in that both mandated a choice and commitment to build a repository once a satisfactory site

was found and qualified. To use an analogy, both strategies adopted a decisionmaking principle similar to that

used by most house sellers: as soon as an offer exceeds

the threshold of “acceptability,” it is taken.

Like the order in which technical and nontechnical

criteria are applied to screen sites, this decisionmaking

rule need not be unsound. But if, as we shall see, there

is great uncertainty and strong disagreement about what

constitutes the threshold of acceptability, such a decisionmaking principle can be quite risky both scientifically and politically.

There was, in fact, increasing awareness within

DOE—as well as among outsiders—of the riskiness inherent in this principle of choice. By the time the Carter

administration had taken office and had completed its

first assessment of the waste management program, the

awareness had grown to the point where alternative selection rules were being publicly discussed. The report

of the Deutch Task Force observed that ‘‘two basically

different philosophical approaches were possible. 93 The

first involved comparing the best salt design with the

best design in another media. On that basis, the preferred media would be chosen; then several sites in that

media would be considered and, presumably, the best

one selected for the repository. The second approach,

in essence, was the continuation of the status quo. The

first satisfactory salt site would be selected and developed

in a technically cautious fashion. The Deutch Task

Force concluded that “the first approach [is] unnecessarily conservative’ and it favored the second .94

Although DOE did reconfirm its decision principle,

the Deutch Report initiated a process whereby the sensibility of the philosophy was assessed. The forum for

this further review was IRG. IRG assigned OSTP the

responsibility of analyzing alternative technological

strategies for the isolation of nuclear waste in addition

to the technical report on the status of geologic knowl931bid.

“1bid., p. 13.
App. A-l—Radioactive Waste Management Policymaking ● 215

edge. OSTP began by conceptualizing six strategies in

which the first disposal mechanism was a geologic repository. (A seventh postponed the choice of option.)

The six alternatives differed in the degree to which there

would be intercomparisons prior to site selection. The

most restrictive alternative was that of evaluating the

suitability of sites on a case-by-case basis—e. g., the

status quo. The broadest alternative called for comparison of several sites in several different geological environments. This broad range, it should be noted, was

dictated by the technical finding, discussed above, that

no particular geologic emplacement medium enjoyed a

preferred position.

As the analysis got under way, the OSTP group soon

concluded that the strategies which required intercomparisons possessed certain advantages over the

case-by-case approach. 95 Intercomparison of sites would

likely increase public confidence, would stand a better

chance of satisfying the National Environmental Policy

Act and meeting regulatory requirements, and, all

things being equal, would improve odds of obtaining

a technical success. The case-by-case approach, in contrast, held the advantage of reducing the time it might

take to develop an operating facility. That approach

would also lessen logistical difficulties that might arise

in transporting waste from storage, and entail lower

near-term costs.

However, after the first draft of this analysis was circulated within IRG and after informal discussions between staff members of DOE and OSTP, agreement was

reached to remove the case-by-case strategy from further consideration. Without any fanfare, then, and for

reasons which are still something of a mystery, DOE

abandoned its traditional decision principle for repository siting, one which it had reaffirmed only 4 months

previously.

The sole remaining issue with respect to siting strategy was how many sites in what geologic environments

would be used in the comparison. DOE argued for two

or three while most of the rest of the IRG agencies called

for four or five. The relatively small difference in number disguised a large difference in substance. For the

question was whether the waste management requirements could be satisfied by the existing program or

whether an expanded effort of geologic investigations

would be required prior to the selection of the first

repository site. This conflict was ultimately resolved by

the President in favor of the more redundant strategy.96

NRC, in 1981, developed its own procedures that mandated some degree of intercomparison before a site is

presented for regulatory review and licensing.97 In pars~confidenti~ intcrv& with author, 1978.

g$see announcement of waste management policy by President Carter, Feb.

12, 1980.

gTFe&ra] Reg~ter 46, Feb. 25, 1981, p. 13979.

ticular, NRC required that three sites in at least two

different media be evaluated before a permission will

be given to begin repository construction.

Developing a Waste Package

High-level waste streams from a reprocessing plant

and, to a lesser extent, spent reactor fuel can be transformed into different waste forms prior to their disposal.

The potential variety of form is wide, ranging from essentially untransformed materials to waste forms carefully designed to be compatible, and perhaps in thermoequilibrium, with repository rock. In addition, the waste

form itself may be surrounded by other material to protect it further after emplacement in, for example, a

geologic repository. The waste form and accompanying material surrounding the waste are termed a waste

package.

The state of the art of materials science determines

the range of feasible alternatives of waste form and

packaging. But there are several issues that must be addressed before the final choice is made. To what degree

is there confidence that the geology of a repository will

perform its job reliably to reduce demands on the waste

form? What economic costs are justified to obtain certain levels of reduction in the long-term risk? What improvements are needed in the waste handling and transportation process itself? How are long-term advantages

and disadvantages balanced against short-term ones? In

this section, we shall analyze how those issues were addressed, implicitly and explicitly, as the idea of an ‘ ‘acceptable’ waste form evolved.

As early as 1957, the AEC staff reported that work

was under way to ‘‘concentrate and flx the radioactive

waste material . . . in a stable, solid medium so that

migration of the radioactivity into the environment is

eliminated or reduced to safe limits. ’98 Among the approaches investigated were conversion to oxide by

heating (calcinating), self-sintering with natural earth

materials, and fixation of the waste in synthetic feldspars, clays, ceramics, and glasses. Nine years later,

research on waste forms had advanced to the point

where the NAS Radioactive Waste Committee could observe that it was “favorably impressed with the whole

solidification program’ and that it was ‘‘especially

hopeful about glass or ceramic products, because they

may be safe from serious leaching and, thus from release

of hazardous radionuclides, for periods of centuries. ’99

Despite the promise of waste from research, waste

management practices proceeded along a largely indeg’JAtOmiC Energy Cotrltni.ssim 180/6, op. cit., p. 28.

‘National Academy of Sciences/National Research CounciI, Report to the

Division of Reactor Development and Technology, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, 1966, p. 28.
216 . Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

pendent track throughout this period. An examination

of decisionmaking prior to 1970 at the major centers of

waste storage/disposal—West Valley, Savannah River,

Hanford, and Idaho—illustrates that point.

The promise of a waste form that would contribute

to safety was ignored most blatantly at the NFS reprocessing plant at West Valley, N.Y. There to the extent

that storage of liquid waste in tanks would become the

means of disposal—and that appeared to be the most

likely outcome at the time—the waste form became the

neutralized stream from the extraction process. Implicitly, NFS, AEC, and the State of New York made the

judgment that the economic and health costs and the

technological uncertainties involved with more sophisticated waste forms overwhelmed any short-term advantages of waste processing. Obviously, such an assessment had as its premise the view that perpetual institutional control of the waste provided as much protection

for the public health and safety as other options such

as geologic storage. 100 The historical record is unambiguous that NFS, prior to 1970, did not devote any

significant effort to designing or developing the alternative waste forms that might be necessary should the

strategy of perpetual institutional care be abandoned.

In many respects, the consideration of waste form at

Savannah River was also superficial because of the presumed mode of disposal. Beginning in the late 1950’s,

proposals were advanced to inject the facility’s waste

into the dense, crystalline bedrock underlying the site.

AEC production division staff believed that three geological barriers would provide independent obstacles to

the movement of the mobile waste in slurry form: the

crystalline bedrock itself; the saprolite clay overlying the

rock; and the aquifer overlying the clay. Alternative

waste forms and disposal options were almost totally

ignored. 101 This position was taken largely because the

production division staff and that of its Savannah River

contractor, the Du Pent Corp., believed that:

Cost estimates indicate the solidification and off-site

shipment of the waste . . . would be an order of magnitude greater than placing the waste in bedrock caverns. Furthermore, the hazards involved in processing

and shipping this large volume of highly radioactive material might be avoided.102

The geology of the Hanford site did not permit a

scheme analogous to bedroek disposal. Therefore, other

disposal options were considered. This led, in turn, to

a somewhat more intensive examination of waste forms.

The production division staf and the personnel of Hanford’s contractors, Atlantic Richfield Corp., were predisposed to a disposal technique premised on near surl~see the &Cu99iOn in Chemical Repressing plants.

IOIGenerd Accounting OfrICe, Observations Concerning the Management

of High Level Radioactive Waste Material, Washington, D. C., 1968, p. 27.

‘“2’’NAS Review of SR Bedrock Caverns Concept, ” SECY-148, Ju1y 28,

1970, p. 2.

face burial of waste in engineered structures. Such an

option could easily and inexpensively accommodate the

large volumes of waste as well as the fact that a substantial fraction of the liquid waste had been reduced to salt

cake to prevent loss of material in case of a leak. Using

the near surface burial technique also meant that a waste

form only had to be developed for the residual liquor.

That could be expediently converted to an aluminosilicate material-a sort of “cement.” Those involved in

the Hanford operations did recognize, however, that the

near-surface disposal option might not provide the longterm safety margins deemed acceptable. Thus, the possibility of solidifying the waste—perhaps using the spray

calcinator developed at Richland—prefatory to onsite

or offsite geologic disposal was acknowledged. 103 Yet,

as in the case of Savannah River, concern was expressed

that under such an alternative ‘‘costs would be increased. 104

The only instance where waste management planning

and waste form research merged was at the National

Reactor Test Station in Idaho. Two factors accounted

for this exception. First, geologic and hydrologic conditions militated against final disposal at the site. Second, because only relatively small volumes of waste were

involved, it was possible to use stainless steel tanks from

the start to store the liquid waste. This, in turn, allowed

the operators to avoid neutralizing the waste with large

quantities of base. These two differences created at once

a need, an incentive, and a favorable technological circumstance for developing a more elaborate waste form.

By the end of the 1960’s, the Waste Calcining Facility

was converting 400,000 gal of waste per year into a granular solid. 105 The solid could be stabilized by heating

to 900° C. But even so, it possessed a high leach rate

for both strontium and cesium,lO6 This waste form, however, would facilitate material handling and transportation at a relatively small economic cost and health

hazard. Yet, the form itself, like its more primitive

cousins at Savannah River and Hanford, would only

contribute marginally to the long-term containment of

the waste.

As the 1970’s began, then, policymaking on waste

form was almost totally subordinated to the more

general question of disposal option. Because each of the

four waste centers took different stances on the basic

issue, it was not surprising that they held divergent views

on the secondary one. This pluralism of approach, while

perhaps justifiable in a strict technical sense, did lend

an ad hoc air to policymaking that made the program

susceptible to public criticism. To forestall this and to

lo~plm for the M~a&ment of AEC Radioactive Waste, WASH-1202, U.S.

Atomic Energy Commission, Washington, D. C., 1972, pp. 13-16,

1O+Aton~ic EnerW Commission 180/30, op. cit., p. 6.

io~p]~ for the Management, op. cit., p. 20.

1OsA]ternatives for Managing Wastes, op. cit., pp. 6.16-6.21.
App. A-l—Radioactive Waste Management Policymaking . 217

impose some order on at least a portion of the waste

production sites—the new commercial reprocessing

plants to be constructed—AEC moved to promulgate

appendix F to 10 CFR 50.107 AEC resolution of the

disposal issue for the private sector led, virtually

automatically, to greater closure on the waste form

question. 108

As noted above, appendix F, the first formal regulatory policy statement for commercial high-level waste

disposal, committed the Federal Government to build

and operate a geologic repository. Implicit in that commitment was the judgment that such a technical means

was the soundest option in terms of the long-range

public health and safety. Such a judgment, although not

based on any extensive risk analysis, foreclosed the

perpetual care alternative used by NFS. It also cast a

shadow over the bedrock approach and to a lesser extent Hanford’s near surface burial scheme. 109

Appendix F also resolved, again sometimes implicitly, some corollary issues. There would only be a few

repositories built—one would serve the industry’s needs

up to 2000. Thus, waste would have to be transported

to the central repository over long distances from the

commercial reprocessing plants which were in various

stages of operation and construction. Because transportation of millions of gallons of highly radioactive liquid

waste was deemed too hazardous, waste solidification

would have to take place at the reprocessing facility. 110

AEC still had to fill in some critical details: When

would conversion to a solid waste form occur? What

would be the chemical composition of that solid waste

form? Initially, the AEC staff suggested that both those

issues be finessed, postponed until some other time. One

paper AEC considered called only for conversion prior

to the ‘‘retirement of the reprocessing facility from

operational status, and only for ‘‘an AEC-approved

solid form. 111 Commissioner Ramey instigated changes

which ultimately led to the requirement that the liquid

waste be converted within 5 years after their production. 112 Comments from the nuclear industry about

the ambiguity surrounding the term “AEC-approved’

prompted a clarification which specified that the solid

had to be dry as well as chemically, thermally, and

radiolytically stable. That clarification hardly defined

107’ ’Siting of Commercial Reprocessing Plants and Related Waste Management Facilities, AEC 180/47, Oct. 9, 1968.

‘“’’’ Siting of Commercial Fuel Reprocessing Plants and Related Waste

Management Facilities, ” SECY-160, July 31, 1970.

‘

09’’ Siting of Commercial Fuel Reprocessing Plants and Related Waste

Management Facilities, ” AEC 180/88, June 17, 1970, p. 29.

I IOApp. F required that the liquid waste be converted to a solid form within

5 years after reprocessing and the solid transported to a Federal repository no

later than 5 years thereafter. The timing was somewhat arbitrary but represented

a balance between waiting for the waste to cool and avoiding large build-ups

of liquid waste.

I I I Atomic Energy Commission 180/47, op. cit., p. 5.

11zMemorandum, Thompson to the other Commissioners, June 22, 1970,

p, 3.

the solid form unambiguously. Yet, when Chairman

Seaborg asked whether more detailed volubility requirements might be included, the Director of Regulation

responded:

A major advantage of the salt disposal concept is that

the material has been dry for millions of years, thereby

eliminating the importance of volubility considerations.

Furthermore, the small but finite volubility of even the

most insoluble waste solids developed to date did not

provide any additional protection over that provided by

the integrity of the salt formation. 113

Many have applauded the adoption of appendix F as

a sound public policy decision. It limited the number

of disposal sites and foreclosed the obsolete and hazardous option of disposing liquid waste. But it is critical

to recognize the limitations of the appendix’s scope. It

would never affect the operations at Savannah River or

at Hanford, and it did not affect the waste which had

heretofore been produced at West Valley. At those sites

the same waste management plans, which discounted

the potential virtues of waste form, could be implemented. Even for new commercial reprocessing plants,

waste form was not viewed as something to pursue for

anything other than short-term advantages.

The comments of the Director of Regulation suggest

the view of many AEC staff members at the time—the

issue of waste form had largely been resolved by appendix F. After all, the Idaho facility had been producing

calcined waste for nearly a decade; General Electric had

adopted this same process for its proposed reprocessing

plant at Morris, Ill. This view seemed so entrenched

that, when Milton Shaw, the author of appendix F, severely cut back funds for waste form research at Hanford to save money for the breeder development program, strong objections from the head of AEC’s Operational Safety Division were ignored,

This presumed closure on the waste form issue lasted

only a few years. Commissioner Larson, an underwater

explorer who had seen glass siting undecomposed on the

seabed, began to argue that developing ‘ ‘an essentially

insoluble solid form for our radioactive high-level

waste . . . should be one of the highest priority efforts

in our waste management program. Those arguments resonated as it became increasingly clear that the

unstated assumption of appendix F, early establishment

of a repository, would not be fulfilled. In fact, by 1974,

AEC’S waste management policy was premised on extended surface storage in the RSSF. The shift in policy

direction had to be coupled, AEC’S Waste Management

Director asserted, with a shift in policy regarding waste

form:

The probability of failure of the RSSF is proportional

to the time in storage, and protection against the conse1l~MinuteS of Commission Meeting 2429, Aug. 8, 1970, pp. 10-11.

114 Memorandum, Larson to the other Commissioners, June 26, 1972.
218 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

—

quence of escape during extended surface storage would

be enhanced by modifying the waste to a form having

a lower probability of dispersal to air (by decreasing the

surface to volume ratio) or to water (by decreasing leachability). The probability of dispersion can be decreased

by having the waste in a massive low-leachable glass (or

ceramic) form while it is in surface storage. 115

It was recognized that a change in position on the waste

form question could have unsettling effects on the

emerging reprocessing industry. Thus, the waste management staff recommended that a centralized glassmaking plant be built at the RSSF site by AEC. 116

Significantly, in neither the public nor internal record is there any consideration of the desirability of the

glass waste form in terms of long-range, hundreds of years,

safety. Nevertheless, the demise of the RSSF and the

proposed Calcine Conversion Facility and a return to

an emphasis on geologic disposal did not mark the end

of the glass waste form. Only 5 years after it was dismissed by the Director of Regulation, it came to figure

prominently in the center of the “Baranowski bull’ seye’ which graphically depicted the multiple barrier

design or repositories. Waste form, presumably glass,

was seen, for the first time, as something more than a

modality for moving waste; it had become a means of

significantly improving repository performance. 117

Once waste form was certified as an important potential contributor to long-term safety, it took little time

before the choice of glass came under attack. By 1976,

borosilicate glass was already being criticized for having too high of a leach rate and for being too subject

to devitrification. 118 Within the materials science community, the debate over waste form raged furiously and

eventually ignited into controversy over an NAS report

on the subject. 119 Behind the technical substance of that

debate, however, is a more fundamental policy question: to what degree should waste form and packaging

be elevated from the potential contributor to long-term

safety to a fully redundant element of a waste management system?

Currently, the staff of DOE maintains that borosilicate glass, while perhaps not the ultimate waste form,

is good enough. They believe that other forms would

be costly and time-consuming and potentially more hazardous to develop. Those disadvantages would not be

outweighed by large gains in long-term system reliability

because the geology of a repository can be depended on.

The staff of NRC argues that “it would be highly de-

‘ls’’Pros and Cons of Alternative Roles of Government and Industry

Reconverting High-Level Waste to Glass, ” SECY-74-673, May 28, 1974, p. 1.

I lcIbid,, pp. I-2; see alSO WASH-1539, pp. 2.5-31—2.5-34.

I ITNO record can & found pefiaining to the origins of this elevation of waste

form.

I InThis criticism wa9 first raised in 1976 and was incorporated into the

American Physical Society study, op. cit., pp. S128-S132.

“’See Luther Carter, “Academy Squabbles Over Radwaste Rep-t,” Science

205, Ju]y 20, 1979, pp. 287-289.

sirable to place major, if not primary, importance on

the waste form itself, its packaging, and the local wasterock interface. This would leave the geology as a fully

redundant additional barrier. 120 The regulators’ position clearly derives from a more skeptical view of the

potential for predicting the behavior of repository

systems and geologic formations far into the future. One

indicator of the intensity of the NRC position is the fact

that in its proposed technical criteria for regulating

geologic disposal of high-level radioactive waste only one

specific standard is set forth: the performance criteria

for the waste package.121

Determining Acceptable Safety Levels

for a Geologic Repository

In the previous two sections, the discussion has focused on strategies for finding ‘‘acceptable’ sites for a

repository and on the desiderata for an ‘ ‘acceptable’

waste form package. We have not considered the process through which acceptable levels of safety are determined and precisely what those levels are. This section

will consider how the process of determining what is acceptably safe has evolved over the last 12 years. However, because the process has not yet reached closure,

no statement can be made about its outcome. Instead,

this section will also explore the implications of developing sites and waste packages absent a final determination of acceptability.

Judgments about acceptability, it must be recognized,

are fundamentally matters of preference. Scientific and

technical findings can inform those judgments by clarifying what the levels of safety associated with particular

system design or repository siting decisions are likely

to be. Even if those findings should be consensually accepted as being empirically accurate (no small task in

itsel~, it still remains for the individual or society as a

whole to determine, based on a set of values, whether

those levels of safety are satisfactory or not. 122 In the

final analysis, then, judgments about acceptability cannot be validated or invalidated; they have the same status as questions of taste.

Prior to 1975, no formal process had been set into

place to resolve explicitly the issue of acceptable levels

of safety. To be sure, an AEC licensing board during

the 1960’s did grant construction and operating permits

to the NFS reprocessing plant at West Valley, N.Y. 123

Implicit in those authorizations was the judgment that

IZOLetter, Jack Martin to Sheldon Meyers, June 11, 1979.

tZIFeder~ Register, March 1981.

lzzsee Re~fi to the Presi&nt, Interagency Review Group on Nuclear Waste

Management, TID-29442, Washington, D. C., March 1979, p. 42.

’

23A provisional construction permit-CSF-l-was granted Nuclear Fuel

Service on Apr. 30, 1963.
App. A-l—Radioactive Waste Management Policymaking 219

the storage of liquid waste in tanks for an indefinite

period of time posed an acceptable burden to society.

But, pragmatically, the drive to introduce commercial

reprocessing totally dominated considerations of the appropriate level of acceptability for managing the waste

generated by the facility.

The repository proposed for Lyons, Kans., in 1970

provided another instance where a judgment had to be

rendered about the site and repository design’s acceptability. Because AEC ultimately chose to abandon those

plans, no definitive assessment of acceptability was ever

made. Nevertheless, the environmental impact statement for the project documents well the logic of how

such decisions were made at the time. 124

Two features of that logic are particularly striking.

First, the process for determining the acceptability of

a site and repository design was illustrated. Views about

what constituted an acceptable social burden were admitted from only a narrowly based segment of the policy. In particular, the value judgment offered by the

NAS’S Committee on Radioactive Waste Management

that ‘‘the use of bedded salt for the disposal of radioactive waste is satisfactory” was endorsed and accepted. 125

The views of elected officials in Kansas that the specific

project was too risky were discounted. 126 This situation

is somewhat ironic because, only 4 years previously,

AEC ignored the value judgment of a majority of the

NAS Committee that the Savannah River bedrock project was unacceptably hazardous and proceeded with site

exploration, 127 second, because no a priori standards

for site suitability were ever explicitly enunciated, even

this narrowly based judgment of acceptability could not

be held accountable. Selection of a site in the absence

of explicit standards for acceptability raised concern in

some quarters that AEC would be able to shoot an arrow at a wall, to draw the target around where the arrow landed, and then to pronounce itself an expert

marksman.

With the withdrawal of the Lyons EIS in 1972, and

with AEC falling back to a strategy of long-term surface storage, a hiatus of activity emerged and, as a

result, an opportunity arose to adjust the process by

which matters of acceptability might be resolved. No

evidence is available which suggests that such an effort

was undertaken. The prevailing view within the AEC

during that 1972-75 period appears to be that, whenever

the time came to develop a repository, judgments about

acceptability of a site and a design would be rendered

]Z+Lyons’ Environment~ Impact Statement, pp. 8-13.

iZ3Nation~ Academy of Sciences/Nation~ Research Council, Disposal o f

Solid Radioactive Wastes in Bedded Salt Lkposits, 1970, p. 1.

llcsee Lyon9’ Environment~ Impact Statement, pp. 55-5105.

IZTNation~ Acade my of Sciences/National Research Council, 1966,

pp. 7’3-75.

in much that same relatively closed and informal fashion

as they had been in the past.

Starting in 1974, however, the process for determining acceptability in waste management began to undergo two fundamental alterations. First, EPA, after years

of bureaucratic in-fighting, established a firm toehold

in the domain of radiation protection standards. EPA

issued standards for the front-end of the nuclear fuel cycle, for reactor operations, and for reprocessing of spent

nuclear fuel. 128 In addition, the agency announced it

intended to develop standards for the disposal of nuclear

waste. Such criteria would, for the first time, impose

explicit constraints on repository developments.

The second change was the passage of the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974. That law, which took effect

in January 1975, abolished AEC and established in its

place ERDA and NRC. The motive behind the legislation’s approval was to remove a potential-many believed actual-organizational conflict of interest by separating the development of nuclear power from its

regulation. Not surprisingly, then, both the House and

Senate bills contained language authorizing NRC to

license any “facility used primarily for the receipt and

storage [sic] of high-level radioactive wastes. 129 The

notion of an independent review of a repository project

was one of those proverbial ideas whose time had come.

A review of the legislative history of the Energy Reorganization Act finds no record of opposition to this

provision—one which represented a major policy shift.

The entry of EPA and the establishment of independent review authority for NRC marked the transition

from an informal process of determining acceptability

to a formal process of regulation. First ERDA and then

DOE would have to choose a site and design a disposal

facility that would meet the regulations that NRC promulgated to ensure that EPA’s standards would be satisfied. What was and still is indeterminate was how the

regulatory role would evolve and mature.

Conceivably, there are a spectrum of approaches

under which the regulators might interact with

repository developers. At one extreme, the regulators

adopt a relatively passive posture. The developers proceed with their efforts absent any regulatory guidance

under the implicit assumption that any facility constructed would ultimately have to be accepted by the

regulators. Under this approach, regulation would

ultimately degenerate into a posteriori approval. At the

other extreme, the regulators would establish criteria

and standards independently of the developers and compel those responsible for repository siting and design to

~zns~e, En Vironmen(af Analysis of the Uranium Fuel cycle, E~A-520/9- 73-

003, Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D. C., 1973; and 40 Code

of Federal Regulations 190,

IZgEnerU Reorganization Act of 1976, sec. 202(3).
220 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

conform. The developers could proceed only with

generic studies until final regulations were promulgated.

Mixed approaches might also be adopted. For example, regulation and development could emerge as interactive, iterative, and somewhat informal activities.

The developers provide information to the regulators

about what is technically possible. Moreover, the

developers disregard technical possibilities that seem

unlikely to be viewed positively by the regulators. At

the same time, the developers pursue designs that allow

key parameters to be modified within a range that is

likely to include the regulatory standard. Thus, the

regulators and the developers work together through the

site selection process and up to the time licensing

commences.

Settling on a regulatory approach is no easy matter.

The first alternative, while the least time-consuming,

is almost certainly legally tainted; moreover, political

opposition to it would be vocal and intense. The polar

extreme, however, is just as problematic. EPA has still

to issue its standards, even in draft form. Without those

standards, NRC job of issuing detailed regulations

becomes more complicated. In short, if the developers

were simply to wait for the regulators to act, substantial unfortunate delays would well result. What is clear

today, that neither extreme approach is viable, was

sensed back in 1975. Some mixed approach had to be

taken. How that course was charted and its implications

are the subjects to which we now turn.

All mixed approaches, by definition, entail interaction between the regulators and the developers. What

distinguishes one such approach from another, however,

is which of the two sides provides the driving force that

shapes their relationship and how strong that thrust is.

When NRC was first created, it possessed neither the

institutional knowledge nor the resources to deal with

ERDA on an equal basis. As a result, NRC’s regulatory

efforts were initially designed to track ERDA’s developmental plans. As those plans shifted, however, NRC

found itself in the position of having to recast its own

priorities. For instance, NRC first concentrated on developing procedures and techniques for regulating the

choice of site and designing of repositories in bedded

salt. When a domed salt facility became a leading contender, NRC found that it could not develop new regulatory tools in time to meet the deadlines then

envisioned.

As NRC matured as an institution, the balance between the regulators and the developers (now DOE),

shifted, resulting in changes in the character of the

prevailing mixed approach. The publication of NRC’s

policy statement on licensing procedures for geologic

repositories marks one stage in that evolution. 130 The

tSOFedera] Register 43, NOV. 17, 1978, pp. 53869-53872.

proposed policy called for informal regulatory review

of the developers’ site selection decision. The NRC staff

might provide comments and advice but the Commission itself would not make any formal findings or take

any formal action. The developers would be at liberty

to proceed as they chose in the face of that guidance.

The first formal DOE-NRC interaction would occur

prior to the sinking of the repository shaft. NRC could

either authorize repository construction if certain findings were made, or it could delay authorization until

additional data was obtained from sinking the shaft.

Unresolved safety issues might be deferred until construction was completed if it was felt that further

research was likely to yield favorable solutions. A second formal licensing review would occur prior to the

receipt of radioactive material at the repository. NRC

concurrence would also be required at the time of closure

and decommissioning.

Implicit in those proposed procedures was a vision

of the relationship between regulator and developer. In

particular, the NRC staff believed that it was essential

for the regulators to intervene formally in the process

before substantial organizational and resource commitments to the site had been made by DOE. Absent such

early involvement, the regulators faced a risk of being

swept along by the developers’ momentum. Herein,

then, lay NRC’s first major effort to assert the initiative

in its relations with DOE.

Yet, almost as soon as the proposed policy statement

had been issued, the NRC waste management staff, now

under new leadership, began to question the policy’s

logical foundations. 131 In particular, the staff came to

believe that any formal authorization prior to the sinking of the shaft, or even after it for that matter, would

have to be made on the basis of incomplete and inadequate data. For emerging scientific opinion, articulated

by the USGS, NAS, and the President’s Interagency

Review Group, suggested that “exploration and testing

at depth should be performed to determine whether the

surrounding geology will retard waste migration. 132

Thus, NRC proposed to require such investigations prior to issuing a permit for constructing a repository.

This shift increased the risk of premature commitment and the concomitant pressures such a commitment

might generate. Recognizing that NRC might lose the

initiative in dealing with DOE, the revised procedural

regulations adopted new strategy: ‘‘To guard against

DOE’s making a premature and preemptive commitment to a particular site in a particular medium . . . this

[revised] approach provides for characterization of a

number of sites at different locations and in different

t~jFederal Register 44, Dec. 6, 1979, pp. 70408-70421.

‘

321 bid., p. 70410.
App. A-l—Radioactive Waste Management Policymaking ● 221

media 133 Thus, a multiple-site strategy not onlY

emerges as the one seemingly most consistent with the

realities of geologic understanding, but it is also an effective means of asserting regulatory control over the

actions of the developers.

The evolving shift in the force driving the relationship between the regulator and the developer can also

be observed in the proposed technical criteria issued by

NRC in 1981.134 Three examples stand out as being particularly striking in this regard. The first is the requirement that the waste package contain radionuclides completely for 1,000 years. The second is the extensive

discussion given to the problem of human intrusion. The

third is the clear signal that alternative waste forms and

packages be investigated. None of these requirements

appear to be at all arbitrary or constitute an abuse of

regulatory discretion. Yet each could also reasonably

be interpreted as a technical maneuver designed to force

DOE to retrofit its program to conform with the regulator’s desires. Certainly part of DOE’s negative reaction to the 1,OOO-year waste form requirement could be

viewed in this light. Moreover, NRC strong concern

about the issue of human intrusion has to be understood

in the context of the controversy over the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant site. In that instance, DOE appeared

ready to proceed despite the presence of amounts of

potash in the area that might prompt exploration and

exploitation in the future. Finally, the dictum about

alternative waste forms and packages must be read in

the light of the criticism NRC has made about the adequacy of the DOE program.

The developmental program has continued to expand

even as the relationship between NRC and DOE

evolved. And not unexpectedly some costs have been

paid because of this. Perhaps the most significant one

has occurred in the realm of site selection. Absent formal regulatory guidance, DOE has had to develop its

own selection criteria. Although they have made a

serious effort to accomplish that task responsibly, 135 it

does seem clear that resource and organizational commitments have been made to sites that might not conform to NRC’s selection criteria or satisfy NRC’s procedural requirements for choosing sites for characteriza-

< tion. In the view of some observers the process for selecting the sites is flawed and further work on them merely

undermines public confidence in the program. 136

‘s3’(Proposed New 10 CFR Part 60—Disposal of High Level Radioactive

Wastes in Geologic Repositories—Procedural Aspects, ” SECY-79-580, Oct.

22, 1979, p. 6,

IS~Federa] Register, March ~981.

l$~see, NWTS criteria for the Disposal of Nuclear Wastes: Site Qualification Criteria, ONWI-33(2) (Columbus, Ohio: Battelle, 1980).

l~bsee some of the critical comments on the siting choice and the Department of Energy’s response to them in Final WIPP EIS, DOE/EIS-0026, 1980.

The Relationship Between the Federal

Government and the States in Nuclear

Waste Management

The Federal Government and several States can possess overlapping jurisdictions and share powers. In the

field of nuclear waste management, the Federal Government through NRC has entered into agreements with

a number of States whereby the latter entities regulate

the activities of low-level waste burial grounds.137 Current law specifies that the States take over this responsibility fully through the formation of regional compacts. 138 In the domain of high-level waste disposal,

however, Federal law, at least at this time, * does not

authorize and probably precludes the sharing of power

and authority. Nevertheless, successful implementation

of a high-level disposal plan requires that the States be

intimately involved. For behind a formal lack of State

power lies a plethora of informal powers that must be

accommodated. The accommodation is necessary because the States firmly believe that they must protect

the unique interests of those residing within their jurisdiction.

In this section, we shall examine how Federal officials

responsible for waste management began by discounting the informal authority of the States, believing that

it would not be exercised, and ended up conceding to

the States formal powers that legally could not be rendered.

AEC’S involvement with the States dates back to the

earliest days of the waste management program. At that

time, AEC worked closely with local health officials and

sanitary engineers in the design of facilities to store waste

from the military program. By 1956, AEC was consulting with State and interstate public health and water

pollution control agencies and was involving State governments in the evaluation of geological and hydrological problems associated with disposal of liquid and solid

waste. Moreover, a continuing dialog was reported to

be taking place on the waste management issue through

such mechanisms as AEC’S Advisory Committee of

State Officials and the Council of State Governments.

One analysis for AEC observed that this Federal/State

interaction had been quite positive and recommended

that it be continued and strengthened. Yet, the analysis

concluded, that relationship could prosper only if it

“rested on information derived from sound research and

development programs integrated with knowledge and

ljTThe A~eement States authority is found in the Atomic Energy Act of 1954,

as amended, sec. 274.

lj’JSee Low Leve] Waste Management Policy Act of 1980, which passed Congress on Dec. 13, 1980.

● Prior to passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982.
—

222 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

appreciation of the experiences of . . . communities in

resolving their . . . environmental problems. 139

Over the next decade and a half, the character of the

Federal/State relationship did not significantly change.

Then, as noted above, in 1969, a fire broke out at AEC’S

military facility at Rocky Flats, Colo. Considerable

quantities of plutonium-contaminated debris were produced. The material was shipped to the waste storage

grounds at the National Reactor Test Station (NRTS)

in Idaho. Concerned about NRTS’S role as a “dumping ground, ” Idaho Senator Frank Church requested

a multiagency investigation of the facility’s operations

and environmental impacts.140 Although the subsequent

report clearly indicated that AEC’S practices in Idaho

fully protected the health and safety of the State’s

population,l41 Church, backed by Governor Cecil Andrus, pressed for a commitment from AEC to remove

the wastes and dispose of them elsewhere. 142

AEC recognized that such an action was consistent

with its evolving waste management policy. Even before

the Rocky Flats fire, AEC had moved toward an approach for commercially generated waste that centered

on the use of Government-owned repositories. It was

certainly feasible to use those planned facilities

to dispose of the transuranic contaminated waste stored

at Idaho. Thus, AEC Chairman Seaborg agreed to honor Church’s request and promised to begin removing

the waste by 1980.143 That commitment marked the first

time a State had substantively affected the direction of

AEC policy. The States’ role had clearly expanded beyond providing technical collaboration.

It is ironic that AEC’S sensitivity to—or at least a

pragmatic recognition of—the concerns of the States in

the case of Idaho directly influenced its decision to

undertake the Lyons project, an endeavor which since

has come to be viewed as so lacking both in sensitivity

and pragmatism with regard to the State of Kansas. 144

Earlier in this paper the technical issues that cast a

shadow over the project’s viability were noted. It is important to recognize that as the exploration and characterization of the site progressed, the political atmosphere was quite turbulent as well.

In the decision memorandum the Commissioners approved authorizing the Lyons project, explicit directions

were given to the staff to ‘‘consult with State officials. 145 The written historical record is unclear about

the scope of those consultations. Nonetheless, it is likely that members of the Kansas Geological Survey and

1~sAtornic Ene~ Cornrni.ssim 180/5, op. cit., p. 14.

l*oLetter, Church to Seaborg, Sept. 13, 1969.

i~l~tter, Bureau of Radiological Health to Church, February 1970.

l+~Letter, Church to Seaborg, Apr. 30, 1970.

l~~~tter, Seaborg to Church, June 9, 1970.

1*+For ~ Cxmple of such a view, see H. Peter Metzger, The Atomic

Establishment (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972), pp. 154-160.

1+$Atomic Ener~ Commission 180/87, op. cit., p. 6.

probably the staff of the Governor’s office and of local

legislators were briefed. What we do know is that no

unambiguous commitments of political support for the

project by the State emerged from those consultations.

AEC had not “lined up its ducks” at the time of the

public announcement on June 17, 1970, that Lyons had

been tentatively selected as the first repository site, 146

AEC’S politically exposed position made it more vulnerable to first the skepticism and then the criticism of

U.S. Congressman Joseph Skubitz, who represented a

Kansas district which did not include Lyons. Skubitz

began by asking a straightforward question: why had

the Kansas salt fields been selected rather than a site

in the Salina basin that would have been closer to the

operating and planned reprocessing plants in New York,

Illinois, and South Carolina? The agency responded by

saying the Kansas site possessed ‘‘geologic characteristics . . . generally more favorable than those of the salt

in the Salina basin. ” AEC furthermore justified the long

transport routes to Kansas by postulating a reprocessing plant in California; that hypothetical plant would

then make Lyons a centrally located spot.147

AEC’S answer to Skubitz was misleading in that it

emphasized the technical bases for the choice and virtually ignored the nontechnical factors. 146 The site selection process, as we noted above, was less than systematic; the analysis supporting the choice of Lyons took

up less than eight pages. Yet, even the analysis concluded that Lyons enjoyed, at best, only a marginal technical advantage over other potential sites. If anything,

the Kansas salt mine was chosen because of local acceptance of the experimental Project Salt Vault and

because AEC did not want to wait for—nor did it have

the resources to fund—an investigation of other locations. 149 All this is not to say that AEC’S choice was

wrong; simply it was less than candid in dealing with

one Representative from Kansas.

AEC also had difficulty in answering specific technical

questions raised by Skubitz with the obvious help of

Kansas Geological Survey’s new director, William

Hambleton. Concerns were raised about the thermal effects of the geological system, about the problem of brine

inclusion, about the available techniques for borehole

plugging, about possible mechanisms for retrieving the

waste if necessary, and about the potential for radiation damage to the salt. Many of these same concerns

were held by AEC and NAS, But because AEC had only

skimpily funded waste management research and

development, very few definitive studies could be cited

to bolster the agency’s claim that the site was sound.

I*Atomic Ener~ Commission Press Release, N-102, June 17, 1970.

1* TLetter, Emlwine to Skubitz, June 11, 1970.

l+OAtomic Enerw Commission 180/87, op. cit., pp. 4, 16.

l+gAtomic EnerW Commission 180/81, oP. cit., pp. 4-6.
App. A-l—Radioactive Waste Management Policymaking . 223

Instead, AEC pointed to work under way to resolve

many of those issues and, in essence, sought to hold the

debate in abeyance until the research reached fruition.

Skubitz, however, strongly argued that it was inappropriate to select a site, even tentatively, absent those

technical findings. For him, AEC’s decision to proceed

with work at Lyons was both a premature commitment

and an act of faith, a faith he did not share.

In the months after the project was publicly announced Skubitz was in the forefront of the attack.

Other Kansas officials seemed to adopt a wait-and-see

attitude. That was not to last for long. Spurred on by

AEC’s seeming lack of candor, disturbed by the agency’s underdeveloped technical program, and irritated

by what they saw as AEC’s patronizing and arrogant

manner, other local officials soon joined the fray. By

the beginning of 1971, Governor Robert Docking had

become a firm opponent of the Lyons project, and began

to question AEC’sw motives and good faith. 150 Eventually, in August 1971, both of Kansas’ Senators, Robert

Dole and James Pearson, sponsored an amendment to

AEC’s authorizing legislation prohibiting buying of land

or burying waste materials at Lyons until such time as

an independent advisory council, appointed by the President, reported to Congress that the establishment of

a repository and burial of high-level waste could be carried out safely.151 Thus, AEC’s inability to satisfy the

not altogether capricious concerns of State officials

resulted in their losing considerable autonomy in implementing a major policy decision in waste management.

The Lyons experience had a profound effect on AEC

and its successor agencies. While the RSSF was being

planned, AEC engaged in intensive consultations with

State officials from Nevada, Idaho, and Washington.

And although State concerns were not completely resolved, intense confrontations never broke out as they

did over the Kansas project.

By the time the RSSF was canceled and as ERDA

reinvigorated efforts aimed at finding new sites for a

geologic repository, nuclear energy policymakers clearly

recognized that States had to become more intimately

involved in waste management decisionmaking. Thus,

in November 1976, ERDA’s Administrator, Robert

Seamans, wrote to State governors and legislators to inform them of the agency’s plans to expand the site exploration program. The letter offered to work closely

with the States and to keep the Governors informed of

how the efforts were progressing. Most significantly,

Seamans committed himself to terminating a project

within a State ‘‘if the State raises issues . . . connected

with [technical] criteria and their application that are

not resolved through mutually accepted procedures. 152

The States, in effect, were being offered at least the

potential of a veto over the construction of a waste facility within their jurisdiction.

The response of State officials was mixed. Some, such

as those representing South Carolina, Kansas,

Michigan, and Wisconsin, wrote to Seamans and explicitly disinvited ERDA from even exploring potential

repository locations. Others, such as those representing

New York, Missouri, and Colorado, were reluctant to

welcome ERDA until further studies, such as the Generic Environmental Impact Statement on Waste Management, were completed. Finally, still others, such as

those representing Oklahoma, Missouri, Mississippi,

and Louisiana, did agree to work with ERDA to develop

ground rules which might permit site exploration to proceed. No State, however, evinced much enthusiasm and

one by one States soon were dropped from consideration. Thus, what began as a new initiative, a fresh start

in the area of waste management, soon got mired down

in the reluctance of State officials even to contemplate

a facility on their soil. 153

The expanded exploration program was directed at

finding sites for disposing of commercially generated

waste. A parallel effort to construct a repository in New

Mexico for military waste had, as we noted above, been

in progress since 1973. State officials and local influential had initially welcomed the possibility of utilizing

a site near Los Medanos for a Waste Isolation Pilot Plant

(WIPP). 154 By 1978, surface-level site characterization

was well under way. And a correspondingly mature institutional relationship had evolved between the Federal

and State Governments. The New Mexico Governor

established a Radioactive Waste Consultation Task

Force, an Environmental Evaluation Group, and an Advisory Committee on WIPP. Those groups carried out

independent evaluations and assessed the technical validity of the characterization program and provided advice to the Governor. DOE funded a substantial fraction of that State effort.

Cooperation between the two levels of government

was further facilitated by an informal agreement that

provided the State of New Mexico with the right of concurrence on the construction of any facility proposed for

the long-term permanent disposal of nuclear waste. The

State interpreted that right to include the opportunity

not to concur and on a number of occasions Federal officials acquiesced in that interpretation, Another factor

which cemented the Federal/State partnership was the

commitment from the Carter administration in 1978

150see Letter, D~kingS m Skubitz, Feb. 20, 1970, for first hints of Docking’s growing opposition.

151see Provl$o inserted in AEC Authorizing Legislation for fiscd year 1972

for item 72-3-b, the proposed Lyons repository, op. cit.

I~2Letter, Seamans to State officials, NO V. 26, 1976, P. 3.

l~9Re~rt of Task Force, op. cit., p. 12.

,mGourmley, op. cit., PP. 3-5.
224 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

that WIPP would be licensed by NRC.155 Such an independent formal review process would help satisfy New

Mexican concerns that the facility was indeed “safe.”

By all accounts, then, as the 1970’s drew to a close,

DOE and New Mexican officials had established fundamentally strong working relations that were able to

survive such occasional shocks as periodic shifts in the

proclaimed functions WIPP would fulfill and disagreements over the adequacy of the draft WIPP impact statement. 156 In December 1979, however, Congress passed

the Department of Energy National Security and Military Applications of Nuclear Energy Authorization Act

of 1980. That law was reluctantly approved by President Carter, who at the time of the signing expressed

strong disagreement with the legislation’s provisions affecting WIPP. In particular, the bill undermined the

basis on which New Mexico’s cooperation rested: it prohibited DOE from granting the State a veto over the

construction of the facility and prevented its licensing

by NRC.157 Once again, DOE found its relations with

a key State strained almost to the breaking point.

DOE’s relationship with the States had developed in

an ad hoc fashion over the last half of the 1970’s. By

early 1978, it became clear to many policy makers that

that interaction had to be formalized and institutionalized. DOE began intensive consultations with the leadership of the National Governor’s Association (NGA).

NGA adopted a resolution in August 1978 which asserted that DOE had to “obtain State concurrence prior

to final site determination. “158 At precisely the same

time, President Carter’s Interagency Review Group on

Nuclear Waste Management (IRG) was formulating the

concept of ‘consultation and concurrence. Under that

approach, the ‘‘State would be in agreement with each

step in the [repository development] process before the

next activity’ would begin. 159 The IRG formulation was

ambiguous, perhaps purposely so. Six months later,

IRG recast and clarified the concept. In particular, a

distinction was made between consultation and concurrence and a State veto. The former, it was held, implied a continuing dialog between the States and the

Federal Government; the latter suggested an action

taken only at one discrete point in time. ’GO To many,

IRG’s distinction was without a difference: the obverse

of concurrence was nonconcurrence, which was pragmatically equivalent to a State veto. Nevertheless, this

formulation of consultation and concurrence made explicit a policy that had been informally pursued for

several years; it also proffered more power to the States

than they were, up to that time, legally entitled to.

The formalization by the executive branch of this

policy raised two questions, neither of which has been

definitively answered. The first question focused on the

wisdom of granting the States the ability to delay or defer

a critically needed national effort. Indeed, President

Carter seemed to retreat from the recommendations of

IRG when he emphasized the “consultation” phase and

reemphasized the “concurrence” phase in his waste

management policy statement.l 161 Moreover, several

Members of Congress expressed concern that DOE had

gone too far in trying to satisfy the States’ demands,

thereby creating a dangerous precedent for the future. 162

Even some State executives indicated that they did not

welcome the power not to concur. To have such authority, in their view, would virtually compel them to use it.

Yet, those who opposed endowing the States with substantive controlling influence over repository siting were

probably in the minority. For the majority the real issue—and the second question raised by DOE’s policy—was how would the modalities of the process be

designed. In particular, what steps could the Federal

Government take if it disagreed with a State’s nonconcurrence? President Carter created by Executive order

a State Planning Council (SPC) composed of Governors,

legislators, and representatives of Indian tribes, to provide advice on issues such as that. 163 SPC resolved that,

in case of disagreement between DOE and a host State,

the latter could only be overridden by an explicit

Presidential determination supported by both Houses

of Congress. 164 When Congress itself took Up the issue

in late 1980, both Houses agreed on an override mechanism for commercial high-level waste disposal: the host

State would only be sustained if either the House or the

Senate affirmatively concurred with the State’s position.165 Congress, however, could not agree on the right

of a State to object to a facility designed to dispose of

defense high-level waste. In fact, the disagreement was

largely responsible for Congress’ inability, at that time,

to pass a bill dealing with high-level waste.

Linking Reactor Operation With the

Development of Techniques for

Radioactive Waste Disposal

. . . the general problem of radioactive waste need not

retard the future development of the nuclear energy industry with full protection of the public health and

safety. 166

lssconfidenti~ inteWiews with author, 1978.

“

s

Ibid,, 1980.

tsTDepartment of EnerW Nation~ Security and Military Applications of

Nuclear Energy Authorization Act of 1980, Sec. 213, 93 Stat. 1259.

ls8Nuc]ear herW Policy Position, op. cit., adopted Au~st 1978.

13gRe~rt ~0 the president, TID-28817 (draft), Interagency Review Group

on Nuclear Waste Management, Washington, D. C., p. 52.

lsOReport to the President, find report, op. cit., pp. 88-96.

islpresident~ Statement on Nuclear Waste Management Policy, Feb. 12,

1980.

Iszsee, for instmce, ]etter, Dingell to O’Leary, Apr. 21, 1978.

lb~Executive Order No. 12192, Feb. 12, 1980.

Is+state p]aning Council Resolution No. 4-10.

lc~see, S.’2 189, sec. 908, 96th Cong. , for example.

lbbzndustr~] Radioactive Waste Disposal, op. cit., p. 3.
App. A-l—Radioactive Waste Management Policymaking ● 225

That statement gives expression to a particular logic.

It holds that as long as a solution to radioactive waste

disposal is clearly envisioned, there is no need to prevent the commercial nuclear industry from developing

and maturing. Another logic can also be constructed.

This one holds the generation of nuclear waste, particularly by the commercial nuclear industry, ought to be

linked to a resolution of the problem of waste disposal.

Which logic prevails depends strongly on the outcome

of activities in the legal and political arenas. In this section, one will examine how those outcomes have made

the linkage logic more salient although not dominant.

Throughout the period when AEC existed, Congress

and the President implicitly sanctioned the development

of a nuclear power industry unconstrained by the status

of the waste management program. For a dozen years,

1959-71, one can find fewer than 25 pages of testimony

about any aspect of radioactive waste management

amongst the many thousands of pages reporting on hearings held by the JCAE on commercial nuclear power. 167

Two reports addressed to the President on civilian

nuclear power mentioned the unresolved waste disposal

question, but there is no evidence that President Kennedy, President Johnson, or their staffs saw in that

unsettled issue any reason for concern. 168 Moreover,

during that 1959-75 period, the nuclear industry contracted for all but six of the reactors ordered in this

country.

169 Such a large financial commitment ensured

that the industry’s political clout would be used to oppose any action linking reactor deployment with progress in waste disposal.

AEC behaved in a fashion consistent with the incentives and signals provided by its political environment.

The agency’s policymakers and operating personnel

rarely even entertained the idea that, as the waste

management program lagged behind reactor development and deployment, the latter effort should be slowed

until the former effort reached fruition. When they did

consider the issue of linkage, it was always quickly

dismissed. For example, a 1965 memorandum to Commissioner Ramey reaffirmed the validity of the conclusions adopted by the JCAE without offering any further analysis or rationale. 170

By the early 1970’s, however, AEC recognized that

its political environment had changed somewhat. A

memorandum prepared for an AEC policy session noted

that “the uncertainties concerning location of the

lh7See footnote 8 in NRDC v. Nuclear Regulator), Commission, 547 F. 2d

633 (1976) (Hereinafter NRI)C v. NRC).

Iwsee for example, Cjvjljan Nuclear Power—A Report tO the president,

1962, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, Washington, DC., 1962. The brief

section on waste management appears on pp. 54, 55.

lbgThe Nuc]ear In&8tV.1974, WASH-11 74-74, U.S. Atomic Energy Commk.sion, Washington, D. C., 1975, pp. 8-13.

I Topittman to Ramey, OP. cit., p. 1.

repository are already adversely affecting public acceptance of nuclear power, and it is possible that this aspect

of the overall nuclear program could become an unnecessarily important negative factor in the Nation’s ability to consider its nuclear option to power generation. 17

1

At about the same time, the agency also recognized that

the National Environmental Policy Act required the

consideration of the environmental effects of the

uranium fuel cycle, including waste management, in reactor licensing hearings. 172 A year later, a staff analysis

of waste management policies noted that any major

changes in AEC programs ‘‘might be used by nuclear

opponents as an indication that nuclear waste cannot

be handled safely for the long term and that nuclear

power should be halted. 173 But if perceptions of and

demands from the political environment had begun to

change, agency behavior did not. For example, AEC

staff argued that the S-3 table, which quantified the environmental effects of the fuel cycle, need not even be

considered because, ‘‘if factored into individual costbenefit analyses, [it] would be sufficiently small as not

to dect significantly the resultant conclusion. 174 When

it came time to prepare the first programmatic environmental impact statement on commercial waste management, AEC did not analyze the option of shutting off

reactors pending progress in the waste disposal program;

to have addressed that option would have been in its

view too time-consuming. 175

The tenor of the political environment, however,

shifted dramatically in 1976. In June, the State of

California passed a bill which conditioned siting of reactors within the State on a finding that ‘ ‘the United

States through its authorized agency has proved that

there exists a demonstrated technology or means for the

disposal of high-level nuclear waste. “176 When such a

finding could not be made, a de facto moratorium on

new nuclear reactors began in the State.177 Although the

law was overturned as an unwarranted intrusion in an

area preempted by the Federal Government, 178 the fact

that a powerful actor—the State of California—had

firmly rejected the logic of JCAE was not lost. *

In a separate action, scarcely a month after the California Legislature had acted, the Court of Appeals for

iT1sECY-ZzT 1, op. cit., p. 2.

!Tz~edera] Register 37, NO V. 15, 1972, pp. 24191-24193.

17s’’Policies for Management of Commercial High-Level Radioactive

Waste, ” SECY.74-222, Nov. 16, 1973, p. A18.

‘74Federal Register, 1972, p. 24192.

ITs~uclear Fuel Cyc]e, ERDA-33, Ener~ Research and Development Administration, 1975, p. 47.

ITsC~ifomia public Resources Code 255 24.2, West SUPP. 1977.

l?TC~ifomia EnerW Resoumes Conservation and llevelopment Commission,

In the Matter of Implementation oflVuclear Reprocessing and Waste Disposa~

Statutes, No. 76-NL-1, 76-NL-3, Jan. 25, 1978, p. 5 .

ITaPacjtjc ~ga] Foundation, et al. v. State Energy Resources conservation

and Development Commission, reported in CCH, Nuclear Regulations

Reports, pp. 16, 621-16, 628.

● The law was ultimately upheld by the Supreme Court in 1983.
226 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

the District of Columbia invalidated the rule which was

supported by the S-3 table. 179 Powerplant certification

was abruptly halted and remained so for 2 months.

More significantly, by holding that AEC had failed to

develop the technical analysis for the rule adequately,

the court became the first Federal institution to demand

that a reasoned response and analysis of the consequences of waste disposal techniques be provided before additional reactors could be brought on-line: “Once a

series of reactors is operating, it is too late to consider

whether the wastes they generate should have been produced, no matter how costly and impractical reprocessing and waste disposal turn out to be; all that remain

are engineering details to make the best of the situation

which has been created. 160 In effect, the court’s opinion, while not mandating either logic, did reinforce the

arguments of those seeking an explicit linkage between

reactor operation and demonstrable techniques for waste

disposal.

In November 1976, the environmental litigating

group, the Natural Resources Defense Council

(NRDC), petitioned NRC to conduct a rulemaking proceeding ‘‘to determine whether radioactive wastes

generated in nuclear power reactors can subsequently

be disposed of without undue risk to the public health

and safety and to refrain from acting finally to grant

pending or future requests for operating licenses until

such time as this definitive finding of safety can be and

is made. 181 By this petition, NRC was being asked to

reconsider the logic that had guided Federal regulatory

and developmental programs for 17 years. NRC denied

the petition the following June. In the explanation of

its denial, the Commission maintained that it was not

obligated, under the Atomic Energy Act, to make the

determination requested by NRDC. 182 That claim was

later sustained in court.183

But in denying the petition, NRC did not reject the

logic of linkage. It did state that “it would not continue

to license reactors if it did not have reasonable confidence that the waste can and will in due course be disposed of safely. “

184 That statement advanced two critical policy innovations and was made at the insistence

of the Chief of the Waste Management Branch over the

objections of the Executive Legal Director. The first innovation was the distinction between “can and will. ”

That distinction marked a departure from the posture

of technological optimism. Second, the Commission’s

explanation for its confidence was based on and tied to

179fvR~ V. NRC, op. cit.

1oO1bid., p. 637.

t~lpetition is Pfited in Federal Register 42, J~. 13, 1977, p. 2730.

189’ NRDC petition for Rulemaking on Waste Management ,

SECY-77-48B, June 1, 1977.

tUNR~ v. NRC and United States ofAmerica, reported in CCH, Nuclear

Regulation Reports, pp. 16537-16544.

w SECY.77.48B, attachment 1, p. 14.

the general direction taken by both NRC and ERDA

programs at that time. “The clear implication is that

if the direction of the present program[s] should change

significantly, NRC as a matter of sound policy may no

longer be in a position to continue licensing reactors. 185

The California laws, judicial review of the S-3 table,

and the NRC response to the NRDC petition all left

profound and depressing impressions on those defending the logic of the Joint Committee. Mustering their

forces, those opposing linkage did prevail in the intense

and bitter bureaucratic infighting over the Carter administration’s proposals for reforming reactor licensing

procedures. Advocates of including a specific linkage

provision found their views rejected by the President

himself. The opponents of linkage were also heartened

by the Deutch Report’s recommendation to dispose of

1,000 spent fuel rods at the WIPP, a recommendation

many believe was prompted by a desire to satisfy California’s law.186 Moreover, the President’s Interagency

Review Group managed to avoid the question of linkage

in preparing its analysis. 187 Yet despite these events,

forces within the Government still pressed for a commitment to nuclear power which was dependent on progress in waste disposal. For example, one such advocate,

J. Gustave Speth, formerly a lawyer for NRDC and later a member and then Chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ, announced, to the surprise

and shock of many colleagues, that CEQ favored “a

national decision which would make the expanded use

of nuclear power contingent on a clear and convincing

showing, after consideration of both technical and institutional factors, that nuclear power’s deadly

byproducts can be safely contained for geologic

periods. ’188

Additional pressures to establish an explicit linkage

between reactor licensing and the resolution of the waste

management question began to mount in May 1979,

when the District of Columbia Court of Appeals ruled

in the case of Minnesota v. NRC. 189 The plantiffs

challenged NRC’s licensing decision in two cases in

which utilities sought to expand their onsite capacity for

storing spent fuel. The plaintiffs argued that, absent a

proven waste management system, the environmental

effects of continued at-reactor storage for an indefinite

period of time into the future had to be considered.

Moreover, they argued that unless the analysis demonstrated an acceptable level of environmental impact, the

additional storage space could not be constructed. While

the NRC Licensing Appeal Board accepted the logic of

q3ECy.77-48B, op. cit., p. 2.

la~onfidenti~ interviews with author, 1978; also see Task Force RcPort,

op. cit., pp. 16-17.

lsJRe~~ t. the President, final report, op. cit., pp. 5-8.

jsaQuot~ in the New York Times, %pt. 30, 1977, p. 12.

18*&fjnnesota V. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 602 F. 2d 412 (1979).
App. A-l—Radioactive Waste Management Policymaking “ 227

the plaintiffs’ contentions, it held that the Commission,

in its denial of the NRDC petition, had resolved the issue by stating that it had reasonable confidence that safe

methods of permanent disposal would be available when

needed. 190 The court, however, felt that such a pivotal

statement had to have a firmer analytical foundation

than the Commission had thus far provided. The court,

therefore, remanded the case to the agency for further

consideration in ‘‘the interest of sound administration. 191 In October, NRC announced its intention to

conduct a generic processing ‘‘to reassess its degree of

confidence that radioactive waste produced by nuclear

facilities will be safely disposed of, determine when any

such disposal will be available, and whether such wastes

can be safely stored until they are safely disposed of. ’192

That proceeding, to which there are over 40 parties, is

expected to conclude in 1983.

Coping With Interdependence

As the reader is undoubtedly aware, the eight elements of waste management policymaking just presented are not independent of each other. Rather, events

transpiring in one sphere affect and constrain later

events in all spheres. In this penultimate section, first

introduced is a conceptual framework for understanding

those interactions; it then is employed to explicate the

intricacies of waste management policymaking.

At the outset of this paper, developing the nuclear

power energy system was a rather complex task laden

with uncertainties. Also noted were those characteristics

of complexity and uncertainty that led policy makers to

assign a low organizational priority to the issue of waste

management up until 1975. Now there is a need to explore further some of the implications of complexity; this

time the complexity of the waste management domain

itself.

Although there is some disagreement about the concept’s meaning among those who use it, the level of complexity will be associated with the number and richness

of the interdependencies that join the components or

elements of a policy domain. A policy domain will be

complex if it possesses a large number of interdependencies among its elements and if it is structured in a fashion

that prevents breaking it down into relatively self-contained systems capable of being treated independently

of each other. In engineering phraseology, complexity

is what distinguishes tightly coupled from loosely

coupled systems. In cybernetic terms, complexity results

from the presence of numerous feedback channels. Com190~ NRC 51.

191&ffflnesota V, Nuclear Regulatory Gmmission, 418.

lQ2FederaJ Register 44, Oct. 25, 1979, pp. 61372-6~3~5.

plexity is what forces econometric modelers to abandon

a system of recursive equations and shift to a system

of equations that capture a series of reciprocal relations.

While no convenient metric exists which scales complexity, a persuasive case can be made that the nuclear waste

management policy domain is relatively complex. In figure A-2, the major interdependencies among the domain’s elements are sketched out.

Most of those relationships can be inferred from the

analysis of the eight elements of policymaking. The

choice of waste form is dependent on whether spent fuel

rods or high-level reprocessed byproducts are considered

to be waste. But the choice is also determined by how

adequate the scientific/technological knowledge base is

deemed to be. For instance, those who are skeptical of

our current ability to engage in accurate long-term predictions of geologic behavior would choose more sophisticated forms than those who had more confidence.

Moreover, regulatory standards, such as the proposed

technical criteria recently suggested by NRC, have an

obvious influence on the waste form selected. In a similar manner the choice of siting strategy will depend on

the adequacy of the knowledge base; the greater the uncertainty, the more redundant the strategy is likely to

be. But the siting strategy will also be strongly affected

by the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act as well as specific mandates of NRC such as its

licensing regulations.

The capability to develop a system for disposing of

radioactive waste will be a function of the siting strategy,

the choice of waste form, the adequacy of the scientifichechnological knowledge base, and the thoughtfulness

and sophistication of the implementation program. That

latter component subsumes, among other things, logistical and budgetary planning, manpower training, designing responses to large changes of scale in operation,

and post-decommissioning monitoring. Capability will

be influenced as well by the regulatory standards set

forth by NRC and EPA; the stricter the standards, the

less likely, ceteris paribus, will be the existence of sufficient capability to meet them.

But in an important way, those regulatory standards

are also affected by capability. If the regulators, for instance, do not believe that a requirement for zero release

for 10,000 years is within the current or near-term projected capability, they will be reluctant to impose it. The

standards will be influenced by elements in the regulators’ political environment such as courts, Congress, and

by the outcomes of battles among competing interest

groups as well.

Like beauty, however, capability is often in the mind

of the beholder. Those perceptions will not be independent of some ‘‘objective’ assessment of the development

act but they will be influenced-perhaps strongly—by
228 “ Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

De finition

waste

of

Figure A-2.—Waste Management Policymaking

Siting strategy .

---=4

Perception of

Itwel I-If ~

scientific/technological 7

knowledge base

c

~~~ ~

a

-s%$~~~~ e

w ‘

Linkage issues

other factors as well. For instance, the historical experience of waste management will affect an individual’s

sense of current capability. Totally exogenous considerations such as political philosophy, value orientation, or

lifestyle may also play a role in evoking perceptions of

capability.

This distinction between capability and perceptions

of it is not a trivial one: for it is the latter factor, not

the former one, which directly influences other elements

in the policymaking schema. In particular, the activities

of interest groups are premised on their particular views

about capability. Members of the general public will accept or reject proposed projects based on their beliefs

about capability. Moreover, Federal/State relationships

will develop in ways determined by perceptions of capability; the less favorable the perceptions, the greater

the effort subordination jurisdictions will make to have

a strong say in waste management decisionmaking. Finally, those perceptions will affect how salient the

linkage issue is likely to be; unfavorable beliefs increase

sensitivity to the claim that waste is being produced

without any demonstrated means at hand to dispose of

it.

Key

Direct relationship

Reciprocal relationship

Feedback ioop

These interactions among elements of the waste management policy domain dynamically play themselves out

over time. Thus, the definition of waste accepted at time

T affects the choice of waste form at time T + 1. In

similar fashion, the degree of public acceptance for a

particular project or policy at one point in time influences the character of the political environment at some

later point. Finally, the reciprocal relationship between

choice of waste form and the adequacy of the knowledge

base and between regulatory standards and capability

can also be understood in terms of a time-lagged interdependence.

The dynamism, critically conditioned by the complexity of the domain, engenders important consequences

as policymaking unfolds, Any given element comes to

depend in a nonsimple manner on prior states of a range

of other elements. Not only need policy makers concern

themselves about managing a set of direct relationships,

but they also must address a set of indirect ones as well.

In less formal terms, the dynamism and complexity of

policymaking quickly locks the elements of the domain

together. Past decisions and performance come to influence and constrain present choices in important
App. A-l—Radioactive Waste Management Policymaking 229

respects. Four examples can illustrate how this process

has occurred.

Example One

Adequacy of knowledge -Capability+ Perceived

capability-Acceptance

So long as all the major actors in waste management

policymaking subscribed to the salt assumptions, consensus prevailed as to the general adequacy of the scientific/technological knowledge base. The clear implication of that consensus was that isolating waste was a

quite solvable problem. Certainly that was the thrust

of the earliest NAS study. Those not directly involved

had no basis for questioning that claim and, thus, overall

perceptions of capability were positive. Interest groups

and the general public, to the extent they even thought

about the issue of waste, were quiescent.

As the consensus began to dissolve in the mid-1970’s,

questions were raised about capability—with some arguments being advanced that isolation, in principle, was

impossible. Within the larger community, perceptions

about capability grew more skeptical. As those perceptions became more widespread, they provided the basis

for opposition among interest groups and members of

the public.

In short, actions taken early on in the history of waste

management severely constrained the options available

in later years. As the premises which underlay action

shifted, the nuclear developers found themselves locked

in, unable to respond to changing circumstances without

undergoing considerable organizational trauma.

Example Two

Adequacy of knowledge+ Capacity+ Regulatory

standards Waste form

The erosion of the consensus about salt, undermining faith in the elegant solution, had additional consequences beyond activating interest groups and members

of the general public. Personnel at both EPA and NRC

began to ponder what their response should be. At both

organizations, skepticism replaced confidence in the accuracy of predictions of geologic behavior over long

periods of time. The simple and straightforward assumptions held in the past were seen to be inadequate.

Although EPA’s position cannot be ascertained, since

the agency has not promulgated its draft standards and

criteria, NRC response has been strikingly clear.

Those regulators have mandated that the waste form

and package become fully capable of isolating the waste

independently of the repository and surrounding environment. In other words, given the inadequacy of

knowledge and the resulting predictive uncertainties

prudence requires that the repository geology not be the

sole barrier preventing release of the waste. The waste

form and package must maintain its integrity for over

1,000 years. After that, the waste must not escape beyond the engineered portion of the repository at a rate

of greater than 10-5 per year.

Example Three

Perception-Federal/State relationships-Political

environment Implementation

In the early 1970’s, when AEC embarked on the Lyons project, the view was widely held among leaders of

the Kansas Geological Survey that insufficient knowledge about repository design had been gathered. The

men from Kansas pointed to what they felt were primitive heat-flow models as well as gaps in understanding

waste-rock interactions and rock mechanics. These concerns about the technical viability of the effort provided

a basis for opposition on the part of U.S. Representative

Skubitz and Governor Docking.

Those officials unleashed a barrage of criticism on

AEC, and despite the agency’s best effort, those protests—asserting that State interests were being

ignored —never diminished. Within a year, the controversy had escalated. Kansas Senators Dole and Pearson were persuaded to introduce an amendment to an

AEC authorization bill. The rider required that an expert advisory committee be appointed to certify that the

Lyons site was sound and the repository design was reliable. Absent such certification, the Commission could

not proceed. Had the effort gone ahead, the agency

would have lost its autonomy over the project’s implementation.

Example Four

Experience with storage-Perception- Federal/State

relationships- Political environment- Implementation

Historically, it has been the case that people’s judgments about the degree of capability have, rightly or

wrongly, been strongly influenced by the record established in storing waste from the military program. Images of leaking tanks at Hanford and the orphaned waste

at West Valley subvert claims of competence for disposal. As the images became more widespread and as

the waste issue became more salient, State officials began

to seek Federal guarantees that would ensure that any

project within a State would be predicated on a high

level of scientific and technical expertise.

Without those assurances, States were reluctant even

to permit repository site investigation, let alone actual

site selection. As more and more States espoused that

position, a new-era “tragedy of the commons’ loomed.
230 ‘ Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Leve/ Radioactive Waste

The National Governors’ Association, in response, advanced the idea of consultation and concurrence and

soon found it accepted by the Carter administration.

Formal agreements were to be negotiated between the

States and DOE which would govern the implementation of further repository development activity.

The complexity and dynamic nature of the waste

management policy domain—characteristics we have

tried to lay out conceptually and with help of the four

examples just presented—are not merely intellectual

abstractions. Rather, the existence of those two features

has some significant real world implications.

First, if our arguments are valid, the past is indeed

prologue; the slate can never be wiped clean. Actions

taken in the past continue to reverberate within the domain of waste management policymaking. To be sure,

the impact of those actions—unless reinforced by later

similar ones—becomes attenuated as they recede in

time. But the impact never disappears completely.

Thus, present day policymakers find themselves saddled

with a not-entirely-welcome legacy. Although they may

assert that the “time has come to put Lyons behind us, ’

they are indulging themselves if they believe that can

easily happen. Past problems will reside in the consciousness of many players.

The most salient consequence of this pertains to the

problem of credibility. Even the most objective and

scientifically responsible and competent DOE program

managers will find that they will be judged not only on

their own merits but on their predecessors’ as well. The

claim that ‘‘things will now be done right’ will often

appear hollow in the face of a string of past failures and

incomplete successes. Altering that perspective will not

be a trivial undertaking.

A second implication of the complexity and dynamism

of the waste management policy domain follows from

the first. At this point in time, 35 years into the nuclear

age, there is only limited room for new failures in dealing with those toxic materials. Certainly, the current

program is substantially improved in terms of resources,

broader organizational commitment, and sophistication

compared to the one in place as recently as 5 or 6 years

ago. A sense prevails that progress-albeit slow progress

in some people’s view—is being made. Yet, the optimism is fragile. There simply is not much “slack” present. Should a glaring error arise, there will be little or

no residuum of good will to buffer the program from

profound shocks.

Conclusions

On the basis of the discussion in the preceding 10 sections, a range of conclusions can be drawn about how

waste management policymaking has evolved over time.

For ease of presentation, the findings will be categorized

as follows: conclusions about the policymaking process;

conclusions about the technical basis for policymaking;

conclusions about problem-solving strategies; and conclusions about the institutional dimension of policymaking.

The Policymaking Process

Up until approximately 1975, waste management and

particularly waste disposal efforts were fragrnented from

and subordinate to other aspects of nuclear development. That state of affairs was an expectable organizational response to uncertainty and complexity. Waste

management and disposal was funded at low levels; the

problem had low bureaucratic visibility; research and

development directed toward disposal was quite rudimentary.

Waste management policies have shifted frequently

over the years. Initial plans to construct a repository at

Lyons, Kans., had to be abandoned in 1972. AEC then

pursued a policy of extended surface storage until 1975.

Those efforts were replaced by a program emphasizing

disposal in salt formations. More recently, the program

has looked at an expanded range of potential candidate

sites in a variety of geologic media.

Major waste management policies were made on an

incremental and ad hoc basis. The waste management

program has lacked a unified guiding philosophy that

could lend coherence to decisionmaking. Policymaking

has tended to be reactive rather than proactive. It has

often had a short-term rather than a long-term orientation.

Difficulties encountered in one sphere of waste

management have often created problems in other

spheres. Developing a waste disposal system requires

the fine tuning of a number of interdependent components. When difficulties arose in one sector, they carried over into other parts of the system. As a result,

problem-solving was retarded in a wider number of

areas.

Waste management policymaking retains little slack

to buffer against additional setbacks. Many of those involved in the waste management policy domain hold the

view that the program has been relatively unsuccessful.

Those negative images have damaged the program’s

credibility. In many quarters, no residuum of good will

exists to mitigate the shock of some new policy failure.

Technical Issues

Although uncertainties over some technical questions

persist, no one has suggested that waste disposal in geologic formations is, h principJe, not possible. Many

technical issues remain unresolved. Disagreements re-
App. A-l—Radioactive Waste Management Policymaking ● 231

main about the significance of those issues and corresponding policy consequences. Nevertheless, throughout

the history of waste management problem-solving, no

credible argument has emerged which undermines the

feasibility of geologic disposal.

After an initial overwhelming emphasis on disposal

in salt formations, attention has increasingly been given

to candidate sites in other media. For many years, AEC,

heavily influenced by NAS, was committed almost exclusively to finding a site in salt. Not until the

mid- 1970’s did ERDA expand the range of potential

host formations. DOE has broadened even further investigations and research into sites other than salt.

Although more is known about engineering a repository in salt, no particular host geologic formation enjoys a preferred status as a potential disposal site.

Geologic knowledge has evolved since the early 1950’s

when salt was recommended as the preferred disposal

media. A technical consensus has emerged which holds

that the repository and its hydrogeologic environment

must be analyzed in tandem to ensure the isolation of

the waste. Once that environment has been factored into

disposal design, most geologists believe that suitable sites

can be found which utilize a wide variety of host rock

formations.

Waste forms and packages have evolved from being

mere conveniences to becoming fully redundant components of a disposal system. The attention paid to waste

form early on was mainly directed at increasing the ease

of transportation of the material from a reprocessing

plant to the repository. Later, ERDA advocated other

waste forms that would increase the middle term isolation capability of a disposal system. In 1981, NRC

issued a proposed regulation that elevates waste form

and packaging into a major component whose performance strongly affects the very-long-term isolation capability of the system.

Strategic Issues

Until 1978, the strategy for seeking disposal locations

focused on a single site at a time; no site intercomparisons were to be made prior to site selection. Personnel at AEC and ERDA adopted this strategy of single

site investigation in part because they had to operate

on tight budgets. They also saw no reasons why comparing sites offered any safety advantage. Current NRC

procedural regulations, however, require some site intercomparison prior to the issuance of a repository construction permit.

A single site strategy can be politically risky. The

nuclear developers must operate in a political atmosphere characterized by suspicion and skepticism. No jurisdiction is enthusiastic over the prospect of being a host

for a repository. If only one site is under active consideration at a time and no alternative exists, that suspicion and skepticism becomes reinforced and local opposition intensifies.

Nontechnical considerations have played an important initial role in selecting sites to date. It is largely immaterial whether technical or nontechnical factors are

considered first in choosing a potential repository site

so long as both can exert an unbiased influence in the

process. Tentative site selection in Kansas and in New

Mexico relied heavily at the start on nontechnical factors. Concerns were raised in each case that technical

considerations were not given their appropriate weight.

Institutional Issues

The definition of waste, whether it includes spent hel

as well as high-level reprocessed waste, has important

implications for decisions about storage and disposal.

Historically, the waste management program had presumed that reprocessed waste would be disposed of. As

that assumption came under challenge and was undermined, adjustments—some of which were major—had

to be made in the program. The current waste management program seeks to avoid those difficulties in the

future by designing facilities that will accommodate

either reprocessed waste or spent fuel rods.

Repository development has been complicated by the

absence of regulatory standards. The nuclear developers

have proceeded over the years to design repositories and

investigate potential sites without much regulatory guidance. This has had two consequences: first, emerging

regulations have forced the developmental program to

make time-consuming and costly adjustments. Second,

the developmental program encountered public suspicion and skepticism because its internal standards and

criteria were unaccountable.

Policies predicated on extended storage have enjoyed

acceptance only when coupled with strong commitments

to and implementation of a credible program of disposal.

The Federal Government has advocated long-term

waste storage on at least four different occasions. Each

time public criticism has been intense. Only when the

plans for storage were linked to a well-funded disposal

program did the opposition become somewhat attenuated.

Federal/State relationships have evolved with the

States being given a more active role in waste disposal

policymaking. Initially the State role was one of

technical collaboration. State concern over repository

siting decisions coupled with their informal powers to

delay Federal effort augmented that role. Current policy

with regard to commercial waste disposal envisions a

major State contribution in siting choices.

Pressures to establish a formal linkage between further generation of commercial waste and progress to-
232 . Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

ward solution of the disposal problem have grown over In this paper, the major themes and issues in the

the years. Prior to 1975, there were very few who ad- history of waste management policymaking have been

vocated that linkage. Thereafter, however, a number detailed. By understanding the successes and failures

of States adopted laws conditioning further growth in that marked that history, people might in the future

nuclear generating capacity on a resolution of the waste avoid policies that are error-prone. Therein lies the poissue. NRC is currently holding hearings to determine tential contribution of this research.

its stance on the question.
Appendix

Major Events

A-2

in

Waste Management History—1944-81

PART I

Development of Long-Term (Interim) Storage

THE HANFORD EXPERIENCE

Reference: I-Al—December 1944

Construction of the first storage tanks for high-level

liquid radioactive waste is completed at the Hanford

Reservation. The material that is put into those tanks

came from reprocessing reactor fuel irradiated to produce the plutonium, some of which ultimately was used

in the bomb that destroyed Nagasaki, Japan. The singlewalled tanks were constructed out of carbon steel that

was less durable, but more readily available and less expensive than stainless steel. The life expectancy of the

tanks was estimated to be between 50 and 100 years.

The use of carbon steel tanks required that the acidic

liquid waste streams be made alkaline.

Reference: I-AZ—January 1952

Operations begin at the Redox reprocessing plant.

This new chemical process for extracting plutonium

from irradiated reactor fuel rods produces a significantly

smaller volume of waste than did the original bismuth

phosphate. Because of the greater concentration of fission products in the waste stream, however, the liquid

waste from the first-cycle extraction system is self-boiling

and must be stored in tanks with appurtenances for boiling waste. These tanks are still constructed of singlewalled carbon steel and the waste is made alkaline prior

to storage.

Reference: I-A3—January 1956

Operations begin at the large capacity Purex reprocessing plant. This new chemical process for extracting

plutonium further reduces the volume of waste produced. The waste are still self-boiling and are stored in

similarly designed single-walled carbon steel tanks.

Reference: I-A4—July 1958

The first leak of 55,000 gallons (gal) was detected in

a tank containing nonboiling waste constructed in 1944.

The leak was remedied and did not endanger the public

as far as could be determined.

Reference: I-A5—March 1965

In order to reduce the number of new tanks to handle the waste from new production and to replace some

old tanks, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and

the operators at Hanford embark on an in-tank solidification program. The purpose of this program is to

reduce the liquid to a salt cake that would remain in

the tanks even if cracks developed. The first waste to

be solidified were those in the Y-tank farm and were

nonboiling waste.

Reference: I-A6—June 1967

Because of their higher heat content, self-boiling waste

could not be solidified in their tanks. To immobilize

233
234 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial H/gh-Level Radioactive Waste

—

those wastes, AEC and the Hanford operators begin

waste fractionation. In this process, the long-lived, high

heat generating fission products, cesium and strontium,

are removed and the remainder of the waste is allowed

to decay until it can be evaporated in tanks to a salt cake

and sludge.

Reference: I-A7—February 1971

First double-shell waste storage tanks available for use

at Hanford. The new tanks consist of a freestanding carbon steel tank inside a steel-lined reinforced concrete

vault; a tank within a tank. This design provides secondary containment of the waste. Any leakage from the

primary tank would be detected and corrective actions

taken before any radioactive material comes in contact

with the surrounding soil. The primary tank is also heat

treated after fabrication (stress relieved) to prevent stress

corrosion cracking believed to be the cause of previous

tank leaks.

Reference: I-A8—May 1973

The largest leak occurs in the 106-T tank constructed

in 1947. Over 100,000 gal of waste is released because

the operators failed to monitor the liquid levels in a

receiving tank during transfer from one tank to another.

The leak was remedied and did not endanger the public

as far as could be determined.

Reference: I-A9—November 1973

The waste Encapsulation and Storage Facility begins

operation. This facility takes the separated cesium and

strontium and packages the isotopes in a form that allows for their ultimate disposal. Until that time, the

packages are stored in an engineered facility and cooled

by circulating water.

THE SAVANNAH RIVER EXPERIENCE

Reference: I-Bl—November 1954

High-level liquid waste is first generated at the Savannah River Plant as part of the military production program. The waste results from reprocessing irradiated

reactor fuel using a modified Purex process. The selfboiling waste is made alkaline and stored first in singlewalled carbon steel tanks. Later on, double-walled carbon steel tanks are constructed and used at Savannah

River.

Reference: I-B2—October 1957

The first tank leak is detected at Savannah River but

none of the material is released into the environment.

Reference: I-B3—March 1960

AEC and the operators of the Savannah River Plant

begin an in-tank solidification program which, like the

one at Hanford, reduces the waste to a dry salt cake and

sludge.

THE IDAHO EXPERIENCE

Reference: I-Cl—February 1953

Reprocessing of irradiated fuel from AEC’S experimental reactor program and the Navy’s nuclear fleet

begins at what is now the Idaho National Engineering

Laboratory. The waste streams are not neutralized but

are instead stored in stainless steel tanks.

Reference: I-C2—December 1963

The acidic waste are solidified by means of a fluidized bed waste calcinator facility for the first time. The

liquid waste is sprayed into a bed of calcine which is

agitated by a flow of hot air and heated to the calcining

temperature. The product is converted to granular solids

which are pneumatically transported to storage facilities.

Reference: I-C3—May 1970

A fire at an AEC-owned weapons fabrication facility

located at Rocky Flats, Colo., leaves considerable solid

waste contaminated with transuranic material. The facility ships the waste for storage to the Idaho facility,

Idaho’s Governor and Senators protest the transfer and

receive a pledge from AEC Chairman Seaborg that the

waste will be removed by the end of the decade.

Reference: I-C4—October 1976

Construction begins on a new waste calcining facility to convert liquid high-level waste to a granular solid.

The new facility will replace the older calcining facility, which was designed as a demonstration unit, and

it will provide many operational improvements.

NUCLEAR FUEL SERVICES

REPROCESSING OPERATION

Reference: 1-Dl—May 1963

After years of effort to encourage commercial ventures in fuel reprocessing AEC approves a construction

permit for the Nuclear Fuel Services Corp. (NFS) to

build such a facility in West Valley, N. Y,, NFS adopts

the Savannah River model of liquid waste storage in

tanks. New York $tate Atomic Development Authority
—

App. A-2—Major Events in Waste Management History-1944-81 “ 235

agrees to be responsible for safeguarding the waste and

for maintaining the tanks in perpetuity. NFS pays into

trust fund for the care of the waste.

Reference: I-D2—April 1966

NFS receives an operating permit and commences

fuel reprocessing.

Reference: I-D3—March 1972

NFS ceases operation and closes down for remodeling and expansion. During its nearly 6 years of operating, the company reprocessed 160 metric tons of fuel

from the commercial nuclear power industry and 480

metric tons of fuel from the military production reactors at Hanford. A total volume of 640,000 gal of

uranium processing waste are stored in mild steel tanks

and 12,000 gal of acid thorium waste are stored in stainless steel tanks.

Reference: I-D4—April 1976

The Getty Oil Co., current owners of the NFS facility, announces their withdrawal from the reprocessing

business and request that New York State, in accordance with its 1963 agreement, take over responsibility

for the liquid waste stored in tanks.

Reference: I-D5—July 1979

The Energy and Water Development Appropriation

Bill for 1980 directs the Department of Energy (DOE),

using funding provided to it for commercial waste

management, to provide necessary technical support to

study and recommend a nuclear waste solidification program at West Valley, N. Y., and to assist the State of

New York as appropriate in developing such a program.

Based on this direction, DOE initiates studies and announces its intent to prepare an environmental impact

statement (EIS) on alternatives for solidification of the

high-level liquid waste in storage at the NFS site.

THE RETRIEVABLE SURFACE

STORAGE FACILITY

Reference: I-El—June 1972

AEC announces plans to construct an engineered retrievable surface storage facility (RSSF) to hold commercially generated high-level waste until the time when

a geological repository is available for waste disposal.

This initiative is prompted by the failure of the Lyons

repository project. The RSSF would be essentially designed as mausolea and would be sited at large AEC

or Federal sites in the sparsely populated portions of the

Western United States.

Reference: I-E2—September 1974

AEC issues an EIS in support of the RSSF. The EIS

draws critical comments from a wide range of groups

and individuals including some Western Governors and

the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Reference: I-E3—April 1975

The Energy Research and Development Administration’s (ERDA) Administrator Seamans, in one of his

first official acts, withdraws the RSSF impact statement

and requests that the proposed congressional authorization for the RSSF be deleted.

SPENT FUEL POLICY

Reference: I-Fl—April 1977

President Carter announces that, in pursuit of nonproliferation objectives, his administration would seek

the deferral of commercial reprocessing and associated

recycle of plutonium. Under this policy, spent fuel

would become the waste form of the future.

Reference: I-F2—October 1977

DOE, with Presidential approvaI, announces a spent

fuel policy which has three major components. First,

the administration will construct a large away-fromreactor facility to store any spent fuel that utilities wish

to transfer to the Government. The Government would

then take title to the fuel and have responsibility for it

until it is permanently disposed of. Second, at the time

of transfer, the utilities would pay a one-time charge

for the Government’s services. The charge would fully

pay for storage as well as disposal costs. Third, the

United States would accept for storage and disposal limited amounts of foreign spent fuel if such an action would

contribute to this country’s nonproliferation objectives.

Reference: I-F3—March 1981

The new Reagan administration declines to continue

efforts to construct an away-from-reactor storage facility.
236 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

PART II

Development of Disposal Options

GENERIC STUDIES AND

INVESTIGATIONS

Reference: II-Al—August 1957

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Committee, providing advice to AEC, reports on the possibility

of disposing radioactive waste in geological formations.

The Committee is convinced that “radioactive waste

can be disposed of safely in a variety of ways and at a

large number of sites in the United States. ” The Committee also maintains that ‘‘disposal in salt is the most

promising method for the near future. ” Furthermore,

the Committee notes that “disposal could be greatly

simplified if the waste would be gotten into solid form

of relatively insoluble character. Significantly, the

Committee observes that “the necessary geologic investigation of any proposed site must be completed and the

decision as to safe disposal means established before

authorization for reactor construction is given. Unfortunately, such an investigation might take several years

and cause embarrassing delays in the issuing of permits

for construction. This situation can only be handled by

starting investigations now of a large number of potential future sites as well as the complementary laboratory

investigations of disposal methods.

Reference: 11-A2—February 1959

The Joint Committee on Atomic Energy (JCAE)

holds hearings on Industrial Radioactive Waste Disposal. Scores of witnesses from Government, industry,

the national laboratories, and academia testify and present scientific papers on the manifold aspects of radioactive waste storage and disposal. The hearings led AEC

and JCAE to conclude that: 1) radioactive waste management practices have not resulted in any harmful effects on the public, its environment, or its resources;

and 2) the general problem of radioactive waste need

not retard the future development of the nuclear energy

industry with full protection of the public health and

safety.

Reference: 11-A3—November 1962

In a report to President Kennedy on civilian nuclear

power, AEC maintains that the waste management

problem is “technically soluble” and that “aside from

the central reactor development program proper, no

other phase of the entire program is more important

than that of waste disposal. ”

Reference: 11-A4—March 1971

JCAE returns to the subject of waste management

and conducts extensive hearings on the proposed repository in Lyons, Kans. Following those hearings, the

Committee reports out an authorization bill providing

funds for the facility. The implementation of the project is conditioned upon a finding by an advisory committee, appointed by the President, that ‘‘the establishment and burial of high-level waste can be carried out

safely.

Reference: 11-A5—January 1972

AEC publishes the first version of its plan for managing waste generated as part of the defense program. The

plan details AEC intentions for short- and long-term

storage of liquid high-level, low-level, solid, and gaseous

waste.

Reference: 11-A6—May 1974

AEC publishes its first technical analysis of potential

alternative methods for long-term management of highlevel radioactive waste. The document is based on reports written for AEC by the Battelle Pacific Northwest

Laboratory. Neither the Battelle report nor the AEC

summary reaches any conclusion about a preferred disposal option.

Reference: 11-A7—November 1975

JCAE holds its first oversight hearings specifically on

the waste management question since 1959. The Committee hears reports from the program managers of

ERDA, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC),

and EPA.

Reference: 11-A8—May 1976

ERDA releases the so-called Technical Alternatives

Document (TAD) which describes the technologies

available for managing radioactive waste from commercial nuclear power. TAD updates and expands the

analyses reported by Battelle 2 years previously. Like

its predecessor, TAD makes no evaluation of the competing technologies nor does it reach any policy-relevant

conclusions. Work on TAD was undertaken in response

to a request from JCAE. The document was also required to provide technical support for the preparation

of a Generic Environmental Impact Statement on Commercial Radioactive Waste Management (GEIS).
App. A-2—Major Events in Waste Management History-1944-81 ● 237

Reference: 11-A9—October 1976

ERDA publishes a proposed Table of Contents for

its GEIS and requests public comment.

Reference: 11-AIO—April 1979

After undertaking one major version of the document,

DOE publishes a draft version of its GEIS. The impact

statement is intended to support a programmatic decision to concentrate, in the near term, on mined geological repositories as a means for waste disposal.

Reference: II-All—October 1980

DOE publishes final version of the GEIS.

Reference: 11-A12—July 1977

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) releases Circular 770, “Geologic Disposal of High-Level Radioactive Wastes—Earth Sciences Perspectives. ” Although

expressing confidence that ‘‘acceptable geologic repositories can be constructed, ” the circular’s authors did

conclude that ‘‘the earth-science problems associated

with disposal of radioactive waste are not simple, nor

are they completely understood. ” The circular noted

‘‘many weaknesses in geologic knowledge’ particularly with respect to disposal of waste in salt.

Reference: 11-A13—January 1978

The American Physical Society (APS) released its

study on the nuclear fuel cycle and waste management.

The APS group affirms that ‘ ‘effective long-term isolation for spent fuel high-level or transuranic waste can

be achieved by geologic emplacement. ” Moreover, the

group concludes that ‘‘many waste repository sites with

satisfactory hydrogeology can be identified in the continental United States in a variety of geologic formations. Bedded salt . . . can be a satisfactory medium for

a repository, but certain other rock types, notably

granite and possibly shale, could offer even greater longterm advantages.

Reference: 11-A14—February 1978

DOE completes a major internal review of its waste

management programs. The reviewers urge expansion

of the Department’s technical efforts in the area of

geologic disposal, maintain that reprocessing is not required for the safe disposal of commercial spent fuel,

recognize that a repository for commercial waste may

not be ready by 1985, and reaffirm the principle that

the responsibility for ultimate disposal of radioactive

waste must rest with the Federal Government.

Reference: 11-A15—March 1978

President Carter establishes an Interagency Review

Group on Nuclear Waste Management (IRG) composed of representatives from 14 governmental units.

The group is instructed to formulate recommendations

for an administration policy with respect to long-term

management of nuclear waste and supporting programs

to implement this policy.

Reference: 11-A16—October 1978

The draft IRG report to the President is released for

public comment along with a Subgroup Report on Alternative Strategies for the Isolation of Nuclear Waste. The

draft Presidential report drew heavily on the analysis

of the Subgroup report and its appendix which assessed

the status of knowledge with regard to geological disposal. In the draft Presidential report, all 14 agencies

agree that: the waste disposal program should proceed

on the assumption that the first disposal facilities for

high-level waste will be in mined repositories; site

characterization work in a variety of geological environments should be accelerated; funding should be increased for near-term technical alternatives to geologic

disposal; initial placement of waste in a repository should

be done on a technically conservative basis and should

permit retrievability; and opportunities should be pursued, if available, to site a licensed intermediate-scale

facility in which as many as 1,000 spent fuel rods or

waste canisters would be emplaced with the possibility

but not necessarily the expectation of their removal. The

agencies disagreed about the strategy to be employed

in choosing sites to be submitted for licensing and on

the future of the proposed Waste Isolation Pilot Plant

(WIPP).

Reference: 11-A17—February 1980

President Carter announces his administration’s comprehensive waste management policy. He ratifies all the

unanimous IRG recommendations. He resolves the two

controversial issues of site selection strategy and WIPP.

He decides to adopt a siting approach in which four to

five sites in a variety of environments are characterized

extensively before a license application for one of them

is submitted to NRC. The President also decides to

recommend to Congress the termination of the WIPP

project.

INVESTIGATIONS IN SALT

Reference: 11-Bl—November 1965

Following over 3 years of preparation, the first canister of Experimental Test Reactor (ETR) irradiated fuel

is emplaced in the abandoned Carey salt mine in Lyons,
23 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Levei Radioactive Waste

Kans. This initiates the main phase of Project Salt

Vault. The project is designed to determine the thermal and radiation effects of high-level waste on salt and

to demonstrate waste handling techniques. The project

is carried out by personnel from the Oak Ridge National

Laboratory.

Reference: 11-B2—June 1967

The last canister of ETR fuel is removed from the

abandoned salt mine, thereby ending the experimental

phase of Project Salt Vault.

Reference: 11-B3—May 196 6

NAS reviews AEC’S waste management program

once again. It reaffirms its 9-year-old view that “salt

beds as permanent storage sites for high-level radioactive solids has promise of being successful and satisfactory. ” The Committee also strongly supports efforts to

solidify high-level waste.

Reference: 11-B4—June 1970

AEC announces that a site in the salt deposits near

Lyons, Kans., had been “tentatively selected” for the

country’s first repository. The choice is contingent on

confirmatory tests being carried out.

Reference: 11-B5—July 1970

Political opposition to the repository begins to develop

in Kansas with Congressman Joseph Skubitz and Governor Robert Docking taking the lead. They are supported in their opposition by the new head of the Kansas Geological Survey, William Hambleton.

Reference: 11-B6—November 1970

The NAS Radioactive Waste Management Committee issues a report on the suitability of the Lyons site.

The Committee deems the site “satisfactory” but withholds final judgment pending the completion of additional studies. That additional research would focus on

understanding the uniformity of the salt beds, developing techniques for plugging nearby oil and gas wells and

boreholes, refining methods of backfilling to prevent

subsidence in the salt, and understanding the thermal

and mechanical properties of key geologic structures.

Reference: II-B7—September 1971

The AEC program manager for the Lyons repository

returns to Washington from a trip to Kansas persuaded

that newly discovered technical difficulties severely

threaten the project’s future. The difficulties involve the

discovery of numerous, previously unknown, oil and gas

wells and boreholes. These might not be successfully

plugged. In addition, water used to solution mine salt

in a neighboring mine had ‘‘disappeared. This event

seemed to suggest that the geological integrity of the proposed site might be inadequate.

Reference: 11-B8—February 1972

AEC abandons plans for a repository at Lyons citing

technical uncertainties and problems in political and

public acceptance.

Reference: 11-B9—May 1974

After searching by USGS for over 2 years for a new

potential repository site in bedded salt, ERDA decides

to begin site characterization at a location outside of

Carlsbad, N. Mex. The agency intends this to be a

WIPP which would be used to dispose of transuranic

contaminated waste, most of which is stored at Idaho,

and up to 1,000 canisters of high-level defense waste.

Reference: 11-BIO—February 1978

An internal agency review of DOE’s waste management program recommends that the pilot plant’s mission be expanded to include disposal of up to 1,000 commercial spent fuel assemblies and that it be licensed by

NRC.

Reference: 11-Bll—October 1978

DOE issues a draft EIS in support of the WIPP project.

Reference: 11-B12—February 1980

President Carter attempts to terminate the WIPP

project.

Reference: 11-B13—June 1980

Congress overrules the President on the WIPP termination.

Reference: II-B14—September 1980

DOE issues the final EIS for WIPP.

INVESTIGATION OF THE BEDROCK

FORMATIONS AT SAVANNAH RIVER

Reference: II-Cl—June 1958

The Du Pent Co., the operator of the Savannah River

Project under contract to AEC, suggests that the possibility of disposing of the partially crystallized high-level

waste in the bedrock underneath the facility be studied.
App. A-2—Major Events in Waste Management History-1944-81 ● 239

Reference: 11-C2—May 1966

After nearly 6 years of intermittent review of the bedrock proposal, a majority of the NAS Radioactive Waste

Management Committee calls the project “dangerous

and not worth sinking the exploratory shaft. A minority calls for continuation of experiments and sinking the

exploratory shaft, a view which AEC adopts several

months later.

Reference: 11-C3—October 1970

AEC announces that work would proceed on selection of the bedrock site and on the design of the shaft

and exploratory tunnels.

Reference: 11-C4—September 1972

The NAS Committee issues a report in which it now

concludes that there was a reasonable prospect that the

waste could be safely contained in bedrock vaults.

Reference: 11-C5—November 1972

AEC decides to abandon the bedrock project, citing

technical uncertainties and political opposition of South

Carolina Senator HcNings.

EXPANSION OF THE PROGRAM FOR

GEOLOGICAL DISPOSAL

Reference: 11-Dl—February 1972

AEC contracts with USGS to undertake a study of

possible sites in salt formations that might be suitable

for a repository. The USGS investigation is expanded

several years later to include sites in formations other

than salt.

Reference: 11-D2—October 1975

ERDA policymakers decide to embark on a multiplesite strategy which would lead to the development of several repositories by 2000. The first two of those would

be in salt formations; the others might be in other geological media. Letters are sent to 36 State Governors

informing them of these plans and asking their cooperation in site exploration activities.

Reference: 11-D3—October 1976

Because reactions from many State executives were

quite negative and because permission to explore was

often denied, the multisite program is forced to retrench.

It also suffers budget cuts in the Office of Management

and Budget. Site investigations do commence in Texas,

Louisiana, Mississippi, Washington, and Nevada.
240 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

PART III

Development of High-Level Waste Regulations

NUCLEAR FUEL SERVICES

REPROCESSING OPERATION

Reference: III-Al—May 1963

After years of effort to encourage commercial ventures in fuel reprocessing, AEC approves a construction permit for NFS to build such a facility in West

Valley, N.Y. NFS adopts the Savannah River model

of liquid waste storage in tanks. New York State Atomic

Development Authority agrees to be responsible for safeguarding the waste and for maintaining the tanks in perpetuity. NFS pays into a trust fund for the care of the

waste.

Reference: 111-A2—April 1966

NFS receives an operating permit and commences

fuel reprocessing.

Reference: 111-A3—March 1972

NFS ceases operation and closes down for remodeling and expansion. During its nearly 6 years of operation, the company reprocessed 160 metric tons of fuel

from the commercial nuclear power industry and 480

metric tons of fuel from the military production reactors at Hanford. A total volume of 640,000 gal of

uranium processing waste are stored in mild steel tanks

and 12,000 gal of acid thorium waste are stored in stainless steel tanks.

Reference: 111-A4—April 1976

The Getty Oil Co., current owners of the NFS facility, announce their withdrawal from the reprocessing

business and request that New York State, in accordance

with its 1963 agreement, take over responsibility for the

liquid waste stored in tanks.

GENERAL ELECTRIC

REPROCESSING OPERATION

Reference: 111-Bl—December 1967

AEC grants a construction permit to the General

Electric Corp. to construct a commercial reprocessing

facility at Morris, Ill. The plans for the facility call for

the conversion of cooled liquid high-level waste into a

solid form using a calcination process. In 1974, the company decides not to seek an operating permit because

of the design flaws in the plant’s maintenance systems.

ADOPTION OF APPENDIX F

Reference III-Cl—August 1970

After over a year of consideration, AEC adopts appendix F to its regulations (10 CFR 50). The impetus

behind the adoption comes from Milton Shaw’s Reactor Development and Technology Division. Commissioner Ramey is a strong supporter of the regulation.

Both the Production Division and the Division of Industrial Participation express reservations. Commissioner Thompson dissents on the final vote. Appendix

F requires that the reprocessed high-level liquid waste

be converted to a suitable solid form within 5 years after

their production, that the solidified waste be transferred

to a repository within 5 years after conversion, and that

the repository be operated by the Federal Government

and located on Federal land.

ALLIED GENERAL NUCLEAR SERVICES

REPROCESSING OPERATION

Reference: 111-Dl—December 1970

AEC grants a construction permit to the Allied General Nuclear Services Corp. to construct a commercial

reprocessing facility at Barnwell, S.C. The Barnwell

facility never receives an operating license and is

mothballed pending a decision to resume commercial

reprocessing.

DEVELOPMENT OF URANIUM

FUEL CYCLE RULE

Reference: III-El—November 1972

AEC announces that it will hold hearings on the environmental impact of the uranium fuel cycle. The purpose of the hearings would be to help formulate a rule

that would quantify the annualized impacts arising from

the operation of a 1,000-MW reactor. Those impacts

would then be considered as part of the required National Environmental Policy Act analysis undertaken

when reactors are licensed.

Reference: 111-E2—April 1974

AEC issues its rule on the environmental effects of

the uranium fuel cycle. The purpose of the hearings

would be to help formulate a rule that would quantify

the annualized impacts arising from the operation of a

1,OOO-MW reactor. Those impacts are quantified and
App. A-2—Major Events in Waste Management History-1944-81 241

presented in the S-3 Table. Almost immediately thereafter, several environmental and public interest groups

challenge the rule in court.

Reference: 111-E3—July 1976

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia overturns the S-3 rule in National Research Defense

Council (NRDC) v. NRC. The court holds that AEC’S

consideration of the environmental effects of fuel

reprocessing and waste management was not adequately

supported by the formal record. Reactor licensing is

brought to a halt.

Reference: 111-E4—October 1976

After 3 months of intensive effort, NRC publishes a

supplement to AEC analysis of the environmental effects of the uranium fuel cycle. The supplement provides a more complete and thorough consideration of

the effects of reprocessing and waste management. At

the same time, NRC publishes a proposed interim rule

and modifications of the S-3 Table. The interim rule

is adopted in March 1977. Preparations are made to

hold hearings which will lead to the adoption of a final

rule. Reactor licensing is resumed.

Reference: 111-E5—April 1978

The Supreme Court reverses the Court of Appeals

in NRDC v. NRC. The Supreme Court holds that the

Appeals Court incorrectly imposed more extensive participatory requirements on AEC than were required by

the Administrative Procedures Act. The Supreme Court

takes no position on the substantive issue of the adequacy of the S-3 Table.

Reference: 111-E6—August 1979

NRC adopts a final version of Table S-3 with Commissioners Bradford and Gilinsky dissenting. The Commission recognizes that some explanatory material is

necessary to interpret the long-term, cumulative effects

of the fuel cycle. NRC also accepts the need to put the

health effects in some more easily understood context.

Work begins to formulate that explanatory material.

DEVELOPMENT OF PLUTONIUM

RECYCLE RULE

Reference: 111-Fl—August 1974

AEC publishes a draft EIS on mixed oxide fuel,

Generic Environmental Statement on Mixed Oxide

Fuels (GESMO), and a proposed rule to specify the conditions under which commercial reprocessing and the

recycling of plutonium might be permitted.

Reference: 111-F2—December 1977

NRC announces that, in response to President Carter’s request, commercial reprocessing and plutonium

recycling will be deferred indefinitely; it is terminating

its GESMO hearings. As a result, commercial nuclear

waste takes on the form of spent fuel rather than

solidified reprocessing waste.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE TRANSURANIC

WASTE RULE

Reference: 111-Gl—September 1974

AEC announces a proposed rule which would require

that all material contaminated with transuranic elements

at a concentration of greater than 10 nanocuries per

gram be disposed of at a Federal repository. The Commission uses the RSSF EIS as a vehicle for supporting

the rule.

Reference: 111-G2—April 1975

ERDA withdraws the RSSF impact statement. The

withdrawal leaves the rule in limbo.

Reference: 111-G3—September 1979

NRC releases a study on waste classification specifying five types of waste: Class A—waste destined for a

repository; Class B—waste which must be administratively controlled after disposal at intermediate depths;

Class C—waste which can be buried at intermediate

depth without administrative control; Class D—waste

which can be disposed of by shallow land burial coupled with administrative control; Class E—waste which

can be disposed of by shallow land burial without administrative control.

PASSAGE OF ENERGY

REORGANIZATION ACT

Reference: III-Hi—October 1974

Congress passes the Energy Reorganization Act of

1974 abolishing AEC and creating a developmental

agency, ERDA and an independent regulatory commission, NRC. The act gives NRC licensing and related

regulatory authority over ERDA, now DOE, facilities

‘‘used primarily for the receipt and storage of high-level

radioactive waste.

DEVELOPMENT OF “CONFIDENCE

J

’

RULEMAKIN G

Reference: III-Ii—June 1976

The State of California passes three laws specifying

the conditions under which nuclear reactors could be
242 • Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

sited within the State. One law prohibits reactor siting

until a finding has been made that “a demonstrated

technology or means of permanent, terminal disposal

of high-level nuclear waste exists and has been approved

by the United States through its authorized agency. ”

Reference: 111-12—December 1976

NRC receives a petition from NRDC which requests

that the Commission conduct a “rulemaking proceeding

to determine whether radioactive waste can be generated in nuclear power reactors and subsequently disposed of without undue risk to the public health and

safety and that the Commission refrain from acting to

grant pending or future requests for operating licenses

until such time as this definitive finding of safety can

be and is made. ”

Reference: 111-13—June 1977

NRC denies the NRDC petition. The Commission

concludes that it ‘‘would not continue to license reactors if it did not have reasonable confidence that the

waste can and will in due course be disposed of safely.

The accumulating evidence continues to support NRC’s

implicit finding of reasonable assurance that methods

of safe permanent disposal of high-level waste can be

available when they are needed. Given this, and the fact

that at present safe storage methods are . . . available

and highly likely to remain so until a safe disposal system

can be demonstrated, the Commission sees in the waste

disposal question no reason to cease licensing reactors. ”

Reference: 111-14—May 1979

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rules in a case

involving expansion of spent fuel storage capacity at the

Prairie Island, Minn., reactor that NRC should reconsider its statement of confidence issued in response to

the NRDC petition. Such reconsideration would be “in

the interest of sound administration’ given developments in the S-3 case and other recent events such as

an IRG report.

Reference: 111-15—October 1979

NRC initiates a rtdemaking proceeding on the storage

and disposal of nuclear waste. The proceeding is intended to provide NRC an opportunity to reassess its

degree of confidence that radioactive waste produced

by licensed nuclear facilities will be safely disposed of

offsite, to determine when any such disposal or offsite

storage will be available, and if disposal or offsite storage

will not be available until after the expiration of the licenses of certain nuclear facilities, to determine whether

the waste generated by those facilities can be safely

stored onsite until such disposal is available.

DEVELOPMENT OF WASTE

MANAGEMENT GOALS

Reference: 111-Jl—June 1978

NRC publishes for comment a task force report on

Proposed Goals for Radioactive Waste Management.

The report and accompanying Essays on Issues ReZevant to the Regulation of Radioactive Waste Management had been completed 18 months earlier but had

been held by NRC.

DEVELOPMENT OF SPENT FUEL

STORAGE REGULATIONS

Reference: 111-Kl—October 1978

NRC reveals a proposed new regulation that specifies

procedures and requirements for issuance of licenses to

store spent fuel in an independent spent fuel storage installation. The proposed regulation contains requirements for the siting, general design criteria, and certain operational aspects of such an activity.

DEVELOPMENT OF HIGH-LEVEL

COMMERCIAL WASTE REGULATION S

Reference: 111-Ll—November 1978

NRC publishes for comment a Proposed General

Statement for Policy outlining procedures for licensing

geologic high-level radioactive waste repositories to be

constructed by DOE.

Reference: 111-L2—December 1979

NRC withdraws its Proposed General Statement of

Policy and substitutes proposed licensing procedures for

a high-level repository. The procedures mandate a site

characterization review, specify that several, three to

five, sites in different geological environments must be

characterized at depth, and indicate that approval must

be obtained prior to repository operation and upon its

decommissioning.

Reference: 111-L3—May 1980

NRC publishes an advanced notice of proposed rulemaking setting forth its current views about the technical

criteria which should govern the licensing of a repository. The proposed rule addresses these issues: the use

of multiple barriers, the process of model validation, the

treatment of geologic uncertainties, and the problem of

human intrusion. One performance objective proposed

is that waste packages be designed so that ‘‘there is

reasonable assurance that radionuclides will be contained for at least the first 1,000 years after decommissioning and for as long thereafter as reasonably achiev-
App. A-2—Major Events in Waste Management History-1944-81 ● 243

able given expected processes and events as well as Reference: 111-L5—March 1981

various water flow conditions including full or partial NRC formally proposed the technical regulations for saturation of the underground facility. a high-level waste repository.

Reference: 111-L4—February 1981

NRC adopts final procedural regulations for licensing a high-level waste repository.

PART W

Federal Waste Management

Reference: IV-A1—1955-70

The responsibility for radioactive waste management

was highly fragmented. The organizations within AEC

with major involvement included:

Division of Production.— Responsible for programs

for high-level waste management and long-term storage

of radioactive waste from AEC chemical processing

operations located at Hanford, Savannah River, and

Idaho-after 1936. Most of the work and policy development is delegated to the contractors operating those facilities.

Division of Operational Safety .—Responsible for

developing radiation protection standards and for appraising and evaluating the performance of AEC, field

offices in the protection of health, safety, and property.

Division of Reactor Development and Technology.

—Responsible for planning and technical direction of

research and development on processes for the treatment

and storage of high-level radioactive waste resulting or

expected to result from chemical reprocessing operations

in connection with the nuclear power industry. Much

of its work in waste management is undertaken by Oak

Ridge National Laboratory, the Pacific Northwest Laboratory, and other national laboratories.

Division of Materials Licensing.—Under the Director of Regulation: Responsible for licensing facilities for

reprocessing irradiated source and special nuclear materials and therefore concerned with the adequacy of

waste management activities at those facilities. Also

responsible for low-level waste disposal activities.

It should be noted that most of these divisions underwent several metamorphoses during this 15-year period.

Their names changed; their programs grew in size and

were assigned to varying subunits.

Reference: IV-Bl—May 1970

Division of Waste and Scrap Management formed as

a staff division. It took over some responsibilities from

the Division of Operational Safety, the Production DiviStructure and Responsibilities

sion, the Division of Operational Safety, and the Division of Reactor Development and Technology but had

no independent budget. Thus, it had policy, planning,

and appraisal functions but was not a strong technical

division.

Reference: IV-Cl—June 1971

Division of Waste Management and Transportation

created. It has its own budget and took over policymaking for management of waste from the commercial nuclear industry.

Reference: IV-Dl—January 1975

AEC is abolished; ERDA and NRC are established

in its place. The Division of Production, Operational

Safety, and Waste Management and Transportation become part of ERDA. A waste management branch is

established as part of the Office of Nuclear Material

Safety and Safeguards at NRC.

Reference: IV-El—June 1975

ERDA reorganizes its waste management program.

The Division of Waste Management and Transportation is abolished and its programs transferred to two new

divisions. Commercial and military waste programs are

brought under the umbrella of the Division of Nuclear

Fuel Cycle and Production. All program planning, nearterrn research, development, demonstration, and operation of facilities for treatment, storage, and disposal of

commercial radioactive waste, and the establishment

and operation of Federal repositories for the ultimate

disposal of all radioactive waste become the responsibility of an Assistant Director for Reactor Products and

Inventory Management. A Division of Environmental

Control Technology takes over responsibility for very,

long-term waste management research. The Division

of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Production later becomes

known as the Division of Waste Management, Production, and Reprocessing.
244 “ Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

Reference: IV-Fl—January 1976

ERDA contracts with Oak Ridge National Laboratory to create an OfEce of Waste Isolation (OWI). OWI

was responsible for managing the research and development aspects of the National Waste Terminal Storage

Program.

Reference: IV-Gl—March 1977

NRC expands its waste management organization.

An Assistant Director for Waste Management position

is created. The Assistant Director is in charge of two

branches, one dealing with high-level and transuranic

waste, the other dealing with low-level waste.

Reference: IV-Hi—October 1977

DOE comes into existence. Policymaking takes place

largely in the Office of the Director of Energy Research.

Operations are carried out in the OffIce of Nuclear

Waste Management. That OffIce contains three major

divisions: Waste Isolation, Waste Products, and Transportation and Fuel Storage. The Office initially reports

to the Director of Nuclear Programs. Later on, ONWM

reports to the Assistant Secretary for Energy Technology. The change is designed to give the Office of

Nuclear Waste Management more public visibility and

significance.

Reference: IV-Ii—October 1978

The contract with OWI expires and is not renewed

at the request of Union Carbide, the operator of Oak

Ridge National Laboratory. Battelle Memorial Institute

is selected to take over the management of the National

Terminal Waste Storage Program. Battelle creates the

Office of Nuclear Waste Isolation to carry out this task.

Reference: IV-Jl—January 1979

NRC further expands its waste management operations, creating a Division of Nuclear Waste Management.

Table A-2.–Time Line–Parts I-IV, 1944-81

Year Part I Part II Part Ill Part IV

1944 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Al

1952 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A2

1953 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C1,C2

1954 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B-1

1955. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . –

1956 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A-3

1957 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B-2

1958 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A-4

1959. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . —

1860. , . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B-3

1961 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . —

1962. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . –

1963. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C2,DI

1964. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . –

1965 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A5

1966 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . D2

1967 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A6

1968. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . –

1969. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . —

1970 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C3

1971 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A7

1972 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . D3,E1

1973 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A8,A9

1974 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . E2

1975. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . E3

1976 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . C4,D4

1977. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . F1,F2

1978. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . –

1979. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . D5

1980. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . –

1981 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . F3

—

—

—

.

—

—

Al

c l

A2

—

—

A3 —

—

B1

B3,C2

62 —

—

B4,B5,B6,C3

A4,B7

A5,B8,C4,C5,D1—

A6,B9

A7,D2

A8,A9,D3

A12

A13,A14,A15,A16, B1O,B1 1

AlO

Al 1,A17,B12,B13,B14

—

Al

—

—

A2

61

—

—

C1,D1

—

A3,E1 —

E2,F1,G1,H1

G2

A4,E3,E4,11 ,12

F2,13

E5,J1,K1,L1

E6,G3,14,15

L3

L4.L5

—

—

—

—

Al

Al

Al

Al

Al

Al

Al

Al

Al

Al

Al

Al

Al

Al

Al

A1,B1

c l

—

—

—

D1,E1

F2

G1,H1

l-l

J1 —

—
Appendix B

Waste Management System Issues

Resolved in the Nuclear Waste

Policy Act of 1982

Introduction

This appendix discusses the major waste management

system issues that were debated in the 97th Congress

and addressed in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982

(NWPA). Questions concerning development and operation of the waste management system authorized by

NWPA are discussed in chapter 6.

When the 97th Congress began its debate of radioactive waste management legislation, no firm agreement

had been reached on whether final isolation of radioactive waste would be accomplished through storage or

disposal, where and when to develop final isolation facilities, or how to store the waste before final isolation.

Several factors complicated congressional decisionmaking about storage and disposal. First, the unavailability of disposal and reprocessing had created the need

for greater and longer term spent fuel storage capacity

than originally envisioned. Because of the delays in developing both reprocessing and disposal facilities, it appeared likely that most of the spent fuel generated in

this century would still be in interim storage facilities

at the end of the century—even if direct disposal of spent

fuel were to begin on the earliest possible schedule estimated by the Department of Energy (DOE). Furthermore, the possibility that reprocessing might become

economical sometime in the future raised questions

about whether to plan for storage of spent fuel as a potential resource or disposal of spent fuel as a waste—or

both.

Thus, for the next several decades, waste management would consist almost entirely of spent fuel storage, and any reprocessing that occurred would simply

convert some of the stored spent fuel into stored wastes

of various types (solidified high-level waste, transuranic

waste) and, perhaps, unrecycled plutonium. Moreover,

it appeared that even after the capacity for disposal were

available, storage might continue to be a major part of

waste management—either because disposal would be

deferred after disposal facilities were available (e. g., to

maintain access to spent fuel for possible reprocessing

or to reduce the heat output of the waste before disposal)

or simply because it would take a long time to eliminate the backlogs of spent fuel built up in storage by

the time disposal began.

The following policy issues address:

1.

2.

3.

4.

the overall Federal strategy for developing a final

isolation system for high-level radioactive waste;

the schedule for developing final isolation facilities;

whether the final isolation system should accept

only high-level waste, spent fuel, or both; and

the Government’s role in interim spent fuel storage until final repositories are available.

These issue discussions were written prior to the passage of NWPA, and were the basis for OTA’S summary

report published in April 1982 during the debate on the

Act and for extensive OTA testimony and staff analyses provided to Congress during that debate. These issue

discussions are presented in the present tense, as they

were originally written, to give a clear picture of how

the issues and possible options were viewed during the

debate that occurred before final passage of the act. Each

issue discussion is followed by a brief description of the

resolution contained in the NWPA.

ISSUE 1:

What approach should be used for developing facilities for final isolation of high-level

radioactive waste?

Prior to passage of the NWPA, existing laws and regulations gave DOE the authority and responsibility to

develop a final isolation system for high-level radioactive waste. While there was broad agreement that the

Federal Government should proceed to develop such a

system, there was less agreement about the kind of isolation needed and the pace of the program for developing isolation facilities.

In particular, there was disagreement about whether

final isolation should be accomplished through disposal,

which does not depend on continued human maintenance and monitoring to provide isolation, or through

storage, which does. Existing law did not specify which

approach to final isolation would satisfy the obligations

of the Federal Government and did not even clearly distinguish between the terms ‘‘storage’ and “disposal.

No generally accepted approach for the final isolation

I See app. note.

245
—

246 . Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Leve/ Radioactive Waste

program had yet emerged from the congressional debates or from the administration’s review of waste management policy. The history of the waste management

program made it clear that resolution of this issue in

law would be needed to avoid continued shifts of direction in the waste management program.

OPTION: 1. Develop a disposal system of mined geologic repositories.

2. Defer developing geologic disposal and do

research on many disposal technologies

before selecting one for full-scale development.

3. Develop a permanent storage system.

The Debate

The three options differ in the degree of commitment

to the development of a disposal system. Option 1 immediately commits to developing the disposal technology that is best understood—the mined geologic repository. Option 2 assumes that a disposal system must be

developed sooner or later, but defers that action for an

extended period—say, 50 years or more. Option 3, in

contrast to the others, favors developing a permanent

storage system instead of a disposal system, based on

the assumption that such storage would be an acceptable method for final isolation.

Since there is no alternative to continued storage of

spent fuel (or reprocessed waste) until a disposal system is available, the options also entail different emphases on the development of Federal storage facilities.

Option 1 is compatible with the provision of little, if any,

Federal spent fuel storage capacity (see issue 4), since

the option emphasizes prompt development of geologic

repositories to which utilities could deliver their spent

fuel. With option 2, the immediate focus of the waste

management program would probably be development

of centralized Federal facilities for extended storage of

spent fuel and high-level waste; meanwhile, research and

development (R&D) activities could be conducted on

a number of disposal technologies until a decision were

made to select one and develop it full-scale.

In option 3, like option 2, the immediate focus would

be on development of appropriate storage technology,

location of suitable sites, and construction of facilities.

In fact, since a permanent storage program may involve

use of facilities designed to be replaced periodically, perhaps every 50 to 100 years, there may be little if any

difference between the storage facilities developed under

options 2 and 3. The following discussion briefly summarizes the principal arguments cited in favor of each

option and compares the options in terms of a range

of criteria.

OPTION 1:

Develop a geologic disposal system.

Some supporters of this option feel that an acceptable disposal technology, not necessarily the best possible one, is needed to complete the nuclear fuel cycle and

that there is enough agreement about the potential of

the mined geologic repository to justify its development

as the first-generation nuclear waste disposal system. A

commitment to developing a disposal system of mined

geologic repositories—the most well-defined and extensively studied disposal concept—is justified by the fact

that geologic disposal has survived many intensive reviews without identification of any insurmountable scientific or technical barriers to its safe implementation.

Moreover, development of geologic disposal provides

continuity with Federal waste management policy of the

last several decades and is consistent with the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) proposed general

regulatory criteria, which preclude reliance on institutional control of a repository for longer than several hundred years.

Perhaps the principal argument in its favor is that it

would avoid deferring an ultimate solution of the waste

problem to future generations.z Because disposal, unlike

storage, does not require perpetual human control to

assure continued safe isolation, it avoids burdening

future generations with a problem they did not create,

Moreover, a disposal system provides better assurance

that long-term safety will not be compromised by the

loss or abandonment of adequate institutional control

of the repositories before the emplaced waste has decayed to innocuous levels. Such concerns prompt some

people to view development of a disposal system as a

necessary step for removing the waste problem as a hindrance to future use of nuclear power.

OPTION 2:

Defer development of geologic disposal and do research on many disposal technologies before selecting

one for full-scale development.

Those who agree that disposal will ultimately be required for final isolation of high-level waste disagree

about how quickly a commercial-scale disposal system

should be developed. This disagreement results from

concerns about existing uncertainties associated with

various disposal technologies and from not knowing

when and if spent fuel will ever be reprocessed. Because

the future role of reprocessing is unclear, it is also uncer21nteragency Review Group on Nuclear Waste Management (IRG), Report

to the President, TIO-29442, March 1979, p. 37; see also U.S. Atomic Energy

Commission, Preliminary Drafi Environmental Statement: Retrievable Surface Storage Faciiity-Commercia/ High-Level Radioactive Wastes (Richland,

Wash.: Nov. 8, 1974).
—

App. B—Waste Management System Issues Resolved in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 “ 247

tain when there would be any solidified high-level waste

for disposal and when or if it would be economical to

dispose of spent fuel directly as waste. This consideration leads some to conclude that there is ample time to

explore a number of disposal alternatives before selecting one for development.

Completion of R&D on a number of disposal technologies would allow disposal techniques to be selected

when required. Supporters of this approach argue that

since there appear to be no compelling health and safety

reasons for rapid disposal of high-level radioactive waste,

and since safe and relatively inexpensive extended storage facilities can be developed, there is simply no urgency to choose a specific disposal technology immediately. In addition, extended storage prior to disposal

would simplify the task of disposal by allowing the waste

to cool longer and would allow easy retrieval of spent

fuel in case reprocessing is begun in that period. Thus,

an extended period of storage would avoid any irreversible actions while uncertainties about disposal technologies and the economic value of spent fuel are resolved.

The concept of extended storage was embodied in the

Retrievable Surface Storage Facility (RSSF) that was

proposed by the Atomic Energy Commission in 1974

but was subsequently dropped in favor of an aggressive

pursuit of the development of mined repositories. Interest in development of facilities for extended, and perhaps permanent, storage was renewed in 1979 by a proposal to use existing tunnels at the Nevada Test Site for

this purpose3 and was subsequently embodied in a bill

(S. 2189) approved by the Senate in 1980 that would

have provided for the construction of Monitored Retrievable Storage (MRS) facilities.

OPTION 3:

Develop a permanent storage system.

Several principal arguments are made in favor of permanent storage over disposal for final isolation. First,

permanent storage avoids the uncertainties about the

long-term performance of geologic barriers that have

been the center of the debate about geologic disposal.

Second, since suitable storage facilities could probably

be available earlier and at less cost than disposal facilities, they could provide an earlier demonstration of longterm isolation than would be possible with geologic repositories.

Third, since isolation in a storage facility does not depend on the properties of the facility site, suitable storage sites closer to the sources of waste generation could

be found more easily and quickly than sites for geologic

disposal facilities. Finally, storage provides ready re3Phillip Hammond, “Nuclear Wastes and Public Acceptance, ” American

Scientist, vol. 67, No. 2, March-April 1979, pp. 146-150.

trieval of spent fuel for later reprocessing or for final

isolation using a better technology, if one is developed

later. It thus preserves options for future generations.

Comparison of Options

PUBLIC HEALTH AND SAFETY

The principal objective of waste management is isolation of radioactive waste from the biosphere so that it

poses no significant threat to human health and life. Several safety-related factors affect the choice between the

three options under consideration.

All options could involve extended storage before disposal because they either defer availability of a disposal

system for many decades (options 2 and 3) or might continue storage even after disposal facilities are available

(option 1). Thus, the decision addressed in this issue

is not when to dispose of waste irretrievably, but when

to make available the capacity to do so. However, in

order to highlight the differences between the options,

this discussion of safety questions assumes that under

option 1, disposal would begin as soon as a geologic repository becomes available.

Both the Interagency Review Group (IRG) report

and DOE’s environmental impact statement on highlevel radioactive waste explicitly considered the safety

benefits of early disposal in mined geologic repositories

(Option 1) compared with those of extended storage (up

to 40 years) to allow development and possible use of

alternative disposal technologies (option 2). The reports

concluded that there are no compelling reasons of public health and safety for rapid disposal of high-level radioactive waste, since safe interim storage for such periods could be accomplished. +

On the other hand, they also concluded that mined

repositories offered the most immediate and sure choice

for development of an adequately safe disposal system

and that there were no clear safety advantages to waiting

for development of a better system, so long as a technically conservative repository development process were

used.5 In addition, EPA’s proposed general criteria for

radioactive waste disposal implicitly rule out storage as

a permanent solution by excluding reliance on long-term

institutional control as a means of assuring isolation. G

Finally, the IRG agreed that a disposal system should

be developed:

‘IRG, Subgroup Report on Alternative Technology Strategies for the isolation of Nuclear Waste, TID-28818, October 1978, p. 53; U.S. Department

of Energy (DOE), Final Environmental Impact Statement on Management of

CommerciaJJy Generated Radioactive Waste (FJHS) vol. 1, DOE/EIS-0046F,

October 1980, p. 131.

5DOE, op. cit,, pp. 7.39-7,4 I; IRG, Report to the President, ch, 2.

W .S. Environmental Protection Agency, Drdt Environmental Impact Statement for 40 CFR J91: Environmental Standards for Management and Disposal of Spent NucJear Fuel, High -LeveJ and Transuranic Radioactive Wastes,

December 1982, p. 123.
-

248 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

The responsibility for establishing a waste management program shall not be deferred to future generations. Moreover, the system should not depend upon

the long-term stability or operation of social or governmental institutions for the security of waste isolation

after disposal. ’

As noted in chapter 3, the possible ways that radioactive waste might escape from a geologic repository over

periods of a million years or longer have been considered in great detail by many analysts. In developing release standards for geologic disposal, EPA evaluated a

wide range of possible release mechanisms, including

inadvertent human intrusion, and concluded that a geologic repository could produce health effects over a

10,000-year period that are small compared with the effects of background radiation. The expected health effects would also be within the range of effects that could

be caused by exposure to the bodies of uranium ore

needed to produce the amount of fuel that would be contained in the repository.

No analysis comparable in time horizon or range of

accident conditions now exists of the safety of storage

as a substitute for, rather than simply as a prelude to,

disposal as a means of permanent waste isolation (option 3). Potential risks of storage over a 10,000-year

period would have to be analyzed in order to allow a

consistent comparison with geologic disposal in terms

of the proposed EPA standards.

Perhaps the basic question in comparing the safety

of permanent storage with geologic disposal is whether

the uncertainties about the reliability of the barrier provided by continued institutional control and maintenance are greater or less over such a long time period

than those related to the performance of the geologic

barriers they are intended to replace. Some qualitative

insight can be gained by comparing the risks from a permanent storage facility with those from a geologic repository under two possible scenarios for institutional

control: 1) the technical capacity and the societal will

to maintain such control continue for the required period

of isolation, and 2) the capacity or the will is lost at some

point during that period.

1. Institutional Control Is Maintained. —Permanent

storage may provide greater assurance than could geologic disposal that radioactive waste will not escape into

the biosphere as long as the storage facility is kept under

adequate control by today’s standards and as long as

repairs and replacements are made, as needed, to ensure continued isolation. Moreover, waste leaked from

a storage facility could be easier to detect and clean up

than waste leaked from a geologic repository. It should

be noted that published calculations of the long-term

health effects of geologic disposal, such as those per71RG, Report to the President, p. 16.

formed by EPA, generally assume that the releases from

the repository are undetected and therefore that no efforts are made to mitigate them or to prohibit the use

of contaminated water and food.

In either case, as long as society can and will continue to monitor a waste repository so that leaks can be

detected, such leaks will not impose an involuntary

health risk on future generations. They would have the

choice of accepting the risks or bearing the financial and

social costs of mitigating the effects of the leaks. While

permanent storage instead of disposal could reduce the

cost of cleanup and mitigation measures in the unlikely

event of significant unanticipated releases from a repository these potential savings would have to be balanced

against the certain higher financial costs, as well as radiation exposures to workers involved in maintaining

a storage facility and in providing replacement facilities,

as needed, for millennia.

2. Institutional Control Is Lost or Abandoned.—If

there is significant concern that adequate institutional

control will be terminated prematurely, geologic disposal

may appear to be the safest final isolation alternative.

In that event, the risk from a permanent storage repository would probably be greater than from a geologic

repository since the former would more likely be located

at or near the Earth’s surface and would be designed

to provide long-term isolation only with continued human care. In contrast, a geologic disposal facility would

be several thousand feet deep at a site carefully selected

to minimize the likelihood of significant releases—on the

assumption that institutional control would not be used

to provide the desired degree of isolation.

Adequate institutional control could cease either because of loss of social ability to care for the waste

(through war or social regression) or because of carelessness or neglect. It can be argued that if something

serious enough to cause society to lose its ability to care

for radioactive materials occurs, then the possibility of

low-level leakage from a waste repository may be one

of the less important problems that society faces. On

the other hand, it can be argued that the acceptability

of the risks imposed on future generations should be independent of any consideration of unrelated risks they

may be facing.

It can also be argued that the Government can be expected to act responsibly as long as it has the technical

capacity to do so and that, in any case, this generation

cannot take responsibility for the decisions of future generations. On the other hand, stored nuclear waste might

be mishandled in the future in the same way that some

toxic chemicals have been mishandled in the past, posing a risk not only to the generation responsible, but

also to the generations that follow it. In some cases, the

immediate risk to the generation responsible or to its
App. B—Waste Management System Issues Resolved in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 249

immediate descendants might be relatively low, since

the waste canisters should provide a barrier to release

for perhaps a century or longer (depending on the

design).

The risk would be imposed on later generations when

the facility and the waste packages have deteriorated

substantially and the waste has had time to leach into

water and be transported to drinking water or food—a

process that could take centuries. Thus, reliance on continued institutional control as the principal means of protecting future generations requires confidence that each

successive generation will have the same ability to manage waste and will maintain our degree of concern and

responsibility for the safety of the generations that come

after them. In contrast, permanent disposal in facilities

that do not require continued care and maintenance is

not vulnerable to the possibility that today’s standards

for protection of health and safety of future generations

will not be maintained.

Permanent storage involves one additional safety consideration if spent fuel rather than reprocessed waste

were to be stored—the possibility of theft to recover the

plutonium in the spent fuel for use in nuclear weapons.

As long as the storage facilities are under control, this

risk is low, particularly with spent fuel that is less than

100 years old and therefore too highly radioactive to

handle easily. Older spent fuel could be a more attractive target for theft—a serious concern in case institutional control of the facility were lost. While spent fuel

that had been disposed of in a geologic repository could

also theoretically be recovered for use in nuclear weapons, this clearly would entail a much more difficult and

time-consuming process than recovery from a surface

storage facility.

STATUS OF TECHNOLOGY AND LICENSING’

Technical reviews have concluded that suitable sites

for a geologic repository could be found, and a repository could be developed, licensed, and operating by the

end of the century (perhaps earlier), provided adequate

and stable resources were devoted to the task. The steps

required in the National Environmental Policy Act

(NEPA) for a DOE decision to develop a geologic disposal system have been completed, and the technical

basis for the decision has been published in the required

environmental impact statement. g

The remaining uncertainties about geologic disposal

can only be reduced by proceeding to locate, characterize, and develop candidate repository sites, a process now being carried out by DOE. Moreover, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has issued final

———. ——

‘See ch. 3 for a more extended discussion of the status of storage and disposal technology,

‘DOE, FELS.

regulations for procedures to be used in licensing a

geologic repository and for technical requirements for

such a repository. EPA has developed tentative performance criteria for geologic repositories, and issued them

for comment. It appears likely that the entire regulatory structure for licensing geologic repositories could

be in place within several years.

Little technical doubt appears to remain that storage

facilities suitable for extended periods can be designed

and operated to meet current radiation protection standards as long as institutional control is maintained. One

of the new dry storage technologies would probably be

used for this purpose. 10

NRC has issued regulations (10 CFR 72) for facilities designed for interim spent fuel storage for periods

of up to 20 years, renewable at the discretion of NRC.

Analysis by DOE suggests that a facility to meet these

regulations could be designed, constructed, and licensed

in about 10 years. However, it is not certain that these

regulations would apply without modification to a facility explicitly designed for extended storage, as contemplated in option 2.

This regulatory uncertainty is even greater for a permanent storage facility (option 3). If the 10,000-year release criteria now under development by EPA for geologic repositories would also apply to a permanent

storage facility, additional design requirements (e. g.,

a more complex and long-lasting waste package design)

might be needed to protect against loss of institutional

control during that period. It might also be necessary

for NRC to develop a special set of technical regulations for permanent or extended storage facilities analagous to those proposed for geologic repositories.

COST

A detailed comparison of the costs of the three options must await both clarification of the regulatory requirements for storage and disposal facilities and development and analysis of alternative system designs that

are comparable in total capacity and annual handling

rates. Available studies indicate, however, that for several reasons it will be less expensive to develop storage

facilities than disposal facilities.

First, the less stringent technical requirements for

storage sites should reduce the initial costs of system development. Determining the suitability of potential sites

for geologic repositories requires extensive and expensive tests at the proposed repository depth—estimated

to cost more than $100 million per site. Such testing is

not required for siting surface storage facilities. In addition, it may be necessary to incur these high costs at

IIJD, E, Rasmussen, Comparison of Cask and Drywell Storage Concepts for

a Monitored Retrievable Storage/Interim Storage System, Battelle Memorial

Institute, Pacific Northwest Laboratory, PNL-4450, December 1982.
2&I . Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

a number of sites in order to find one that survives the

entire evaluation process.

Second, the construction costs would probably be

lower for a storage facility located at or near the Earth’s

surface than for a geologic repository mined at a depth

of several thousand feet. The initial capital costs of a

geologic repository are likely to exceed $3 billion,ll compared with initial capital costs of perhaps $500 million

for a long-term surface dry storage facility using casks

or drywells. 12 Even if mined tunnels (as proposed in one

design) were used for storage, such a facility should involve less mining than a geologic repository for a given

amount of waste because the continued ventilation in

an open storage facility would allow more waste to be

emplaced in a given area while maintaining temperatures at acceptable levels.

In addition, the acceptable temperatures might be

higher in a storage facility than in a geologic repository.

With a storage system there is less concern about the

long-term effects of heat on the characteristics of the site,

and any adverse effects on the facility or the waste canisters could be repaired. Higher acceptable temperatures

could further reduce the comparative cost of a storage

facility.

It is difficult to compare long-term costs because storage involves a perpetual stream of payment for maintenance, repair, and replacement of facilities, while

geologic disposal involves, at most, the continued cost

of monitoring once the facility has been filled and sealed.

Disposal thus concentrates costs nearest the time the

waste is generated, while storage spreads the costs out

over many generations. Therefore, the costs of permanent storage over the entire period of monitoring and

maintenance could exceed the costs of disposal, which

can be fairly well defined and bounded because they are

limited to a relatively short period of time.13

If storage were intended only for an extended period

(say 50 to 100 years) prior to development of a disposal

system (option 2), then the costs of storage would be

an addition to, not a substitute for, the costs of the prospective disposal system. However, extended storage

might reduce the direct costs of disposal somewhat because the cooling of the waste over that period could

allow greater loading of waste in a geologic repository.

(It should be noted that if the intention is to increase

the long-term safety of the repository or the predictability of its long-term performance by cooling the waste

before it is emplaced in the repository, thereby lowering repository temperature, it may not be possible to

f I DOE, RePfl on Fin~cing the Disposal of Commemial Spt?rIt Nucfear Fu~

and Processed High-LeveI Radioactive Waste, DOEIS-0020, June 1983, table

3.4, p. 13.

iZRa~mu~~en, op. cit., tables A.27 and A.28, PP. A.28-A.29.

I$DOE, The Monitored Retrievable Storage Concept, DOE/NE-0019, December 1981, p. 2-35.

increase significantly the amount of waste emplaced

without losing this advantage. )

Any discussion of long-term costs must take account

of discounting, a procedure that gives more weight to

early expenditures than to later ones in order to reflect

the time value of money. Discounting is used to calculate the present value of a future expenditure by determining what amount of money would have to be invested in the present at the assumed discount rate (or

interest rate) to yield an amount equal to the future expenditure by the time that expenditure is incurred. For

example, since $1 invested at 10 percent would yield

$1. 10a year from now, the present value of an expenditure of $1.10 a year from now, using a 10 percent discount rate, is $1. At a 3 percent annual discount rate,

$1 spent 100 years from now would have a discounted

present value of 5 cents.

The discounted total cost of permanent storage could

be less than the total cost of disposal, since the discounted cost would be determined primarily by the costs

of construction and maintenance of the initial storage

facilities, which should be less than the same costs for

disposal facilities. The cost of replacing storage facilities,

which might be necessary after the first 100 years or so,

would have little effect on the discounted total cost. For

the same reason, the discounted cost of interim storage

followed by disposal (option 2) could be less than the

cost of early disposal, simply because deferral of disposal

costs reduces the contribution of disposal to the present

value of total waste management costs. 14

There is no consensus about whether it is appropriate to use discounting when considering costs and benefits that affect many generations, because discounting

strongly favors present benefits over future costs. To

avoid shifting the costs of maintaining a storage system

to future generations, the present generation would have

to collect the discounted present value of those costs now

and invest them at a rate of return sufficient to earn the

discount rate assumed in calculating the present value,

over and above the rate needed to keep pace with inflation. No analysis has been done of possible financial

mechanisms that could be used to assure that the costs

of perpetual care of radioactive waste would be borne

primarily by the generation that created the waste.

FLEXIBILITY

All three options for final isolation offer some flexibility for taking advantage of more desirable alternatives in the future or for maintaining access to radioactive waste; even option 1 allows the choice to continue

‘

+ Ibid.

l~see, for exampk, Robert E. Goodin, “Uncertainty as an Excuse for Cheating our Children: The Case of Nuclear Wastes, Policy Sciences, 10, 1978,

pp. 25-43.
App. B—Waste Management System Issues Resolved in the Nuc/ear Waste Policy Act of 1982 ● 251

storage even after disposal facilities are available. Thus,

a decision to develop a disposal system is not the same

as a decision to dispose of anything irretrievably on any

particular schedule in the future; indeed, it is difficult

to imagine how a decision could be made that would

effectively force future decisionmakers to dispose of

waste irretrievably on any fixed schedule if it appeared

unsafe or unwise at that future time to do so.

The capacity for surface storage could be provided

at mined repository sites for a relatively small incremental cost, since a mined repository would have a waste

receiving and packaging facility that could package

waste for emplacement either in a surface storage system or in the repository. 16 In fact, a mined repository

may require surface storage capacity to handle surges

in deliveries to the repository, to continue receiving

waste if loading of the repository were temporarily

halted, or to allow the repository to be unloaded expeditiously if that became necessary. Thus, the higher

cost of developing a system of mined repositories would

provide the technical capacity and the sites for both storage and disposal.

From this perspective, the difference between option

1, on the one hand, and options 2 and 3, on the other,

is not whether Federal facilities for long-term storage

would ever be built, but where they would be built—at

sites that are suitable for untended disposal or at sites

that are only suitable for monitored and maintained

storage.

Option 3, and the initial phase of option 2, would provide the option only of storage. A later decision that a

disposal system was needed would entail the expenditure of additional billions of dollars by future generations to find and develop suitable disposal sites and to

construct additional handling and packaging facilities

at those sites. Thus, a decision to store waste for an extended period would be more reversible if the storage

were done at a mined repository site than at a site suitable only for storage, since the capacity for disposal

would be immediately available onsite (if the repository

were already built and money were available) and the

costs of moving the waste from storage into the disposal

facility would be minimal. In addition, the extended

storage period at the repository site could be used to continue analysis of the suitability of the site for permanent

geologic disposal, thus providing a larger body of data

on which to base a decision about irretrievable disposal.

A decision to develop long-term, easily expandable

Federal storage facilities instead of or before disposal

facilities would probably create strong budgetary pressures to continue to expand the storage capacity and to

defer raising and spending the additional funds needed

16Ra~mu~sen, Op. cit., pp. 1.5-1 6“

to develop a disposal system. Availability of Federal storage facilities would remove a major source of pressure

for developing a disposal system by providing an effective solution to the waste problem for utilities. In addition, expansion of storage facilities using modular dry

storage technologies would be easier and cheaper than

developing a disposal system. These advantages lead

some to conclude that the decision in option 2 to defer

commitment to development of disposal facilities could

be, by default, a decision to store waste permanently.

If approval of permanent storage for final isolation

(option 3) satisfied State laws linking continued licensing of reactors to the existence of an approved final isolation method, it might imply that no other system need

be developed as a precondition for continued generation of waste. Moreover, if permanent storage were approved, it might be difficult to justify charging nuclear

utilities and their ratepayers any more than is required

to cover the costs of a Federal storage system. In that

event, a waste management trust fund financed by direct fees on the users of nuclear electricity would be adequate only to assure continued maintenance and replacement of storage facilities as needed. The longer the

period of storage, the more difficult it could be to raise

the additional billions of dollars needed for disposal from

future utility ratepayers or Federal taxpayers who did

not contribute to the generation of the waste or to decisions about how waste would be managed.

Thus, development of a stand-alone storage system,

required for options 2 and 3, may be less reversible than

development of a geologic disposal system, which provides a relatively easy choice between continued storage or disposal. In fact, there maybe little practical difference in reversibility between options 2 and 3, even

though the storage facilities required in option 2 are only

intended to be used as an interim step prior to final

disposal.

PUBLIC ACCEPTABILITY

There appears to be little disagreement that developing a disposal system that meets appropriate safety

standards would satisfy public concerns about the obligation to protect the health and safety of this and future

generations. However, there is disagreement about

whether it is necesszuy to develop a disposal system now,

or whether development of a Federal storage system

would be sufficient to allow the continued generation

of waste. The history of strong and successful opposition to Federal efforts to develop storage facilities (first

the retrievable surface storage facilities, later an awayfrom-reactor facility) demonstrates that some feel strongly that storage is not an acceptable alternative to disposal. Moreover, they fear that the availability of Federal
252 Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

storage facilities might lead to continued deferral of development of disposal technology. 17

Supporters of options 2 or 3 argue that storage for

the foreseeable future might be more acceptable because

it avoids the technical uncertainties in geologic disposal

that result from reliance on predictions of very long-term

performance of natural and manmade barriers. They

are concerned that an exclusive focus on development

of a geologic disposal system would make the demonstration of a satisfactory solution of the waste problem

dependent on resolution of many complex technical debates about the performance of a geologic repository,

a process that may take decades. They contend that an

adequately safe storage system could be demonstrated

more quickly and with greater confidence.

On the other hand, a shift in focus from disposal back

to storage could create the impression that the Federal

Government has serious doubts that technical uncertainties can be dealt with at all—an impression that could

heighten, rather than reduce, public concerns about the

waste problem.

Some argue that storage simply changes the nature

of the uncertainties about safety from technical (associated with performance of geologic and manmade barriers) to social (associated with the dependability of continued institutional control). No hard evidence suggests

that the public would be significantly less concerned

about social uncertainties than about technical ones.

From this perspective, demonstrating that waste can be

safely stored as long as institutional control is maintained

would simply not address the unavoidable long-term institutional uncertainties of final waste isolation.

The history of resistance to any deferral of the development of a disposal system suggests that if the Federal

Government decided to construct a storage system (as

either an interim or a permanent measure), concerns

about the lack of progress on disposal could in the future

become a major encumbrance on the use of nuclear

power; for example, if there were efforts to expand the

nuclear power system substantially before a disposal system were developed.

EASE OF SITING FACILITIES

Storage facilities may be technically easier to site than

geologic repositories. Since the storage site would not

be the major barrier to release of the contents of the facility, the technical requirements of the site would be

less stringent, and the long-term performance of the site

would not have to be demonstrated in the licensing process. (This advantage might be offset considerably in the

case of permanent storage [option 3] if assurance of conI TDOE, The Monitored Retrievable Storage Concept, p. 2-37.

tinued institutional control for a period of millennia

must be demonstrated in the licensing process. )

It should be noted that various storage technologies

may differ significantly in ease of siting. A preliminary

screening by DOE indicates that about 20 percent of

the area of the United States would be favorable for surface storage facilities (e.g., surface drywells), while only

about 2 percent of the United States would be favorable

for tunnel facilities (e. g., the tunnel rack system).la

The less demanding siting requirements for surface

or near-surface storage compared to geologic disposal

may not translate directly into substantially greater ease

and speed in siting facilities. An underlying not-in-mybackyard sentiment may be a major obstacle to siting,

regardless of the type of facility being sited. 19 Although

the greater number of potential storage sites should

make it easier to find some States willing to accept a

storage facility, site selection on that basis may limit the

flexibility to locate facilities near the site of waste generation— one of the potential advantages of storage facilities compared with geologic repositories.

In practice, the relative flexibility of siting for storage facilities may increase their vulnerability to not-inmy-backyard sentiments precisely because the technical reasons for choosing any particular site would be

much less strong than would be the case with a geologic

repository. State and local resistance to a waste facility

may be stronger if there is no compelling safety-related

reason why it could not be located somewhere else just

as easily. In addition, if a storage facility were proposed

as a way to deal with delays in a disposal program resulting from political resistance to siting a geologic repository, it might not be unreasonable to expect the

same sort of resistance to siting the storage facility.

INSTITUTIONAL IMPLICATIONS

It maybe more difficult for the Federal Government

to adopt and implement a commitment to the more expensive and complicated goal of developing a disposal

system than to the less expensive and more incremental

option of constructing storage facilities. The normal

Federal policymaking and budgeting process tends to

favor incremental actions for the most pressing problems, to defer decisions about issues that seem to require no immediate action to avoid serious consequences, and to avoid irreversible actions wherever

possible—particularly when there is substantial uncertainty about the outcome of those actions.

‘

s

Ibid., p. 3-17.

19A DOE study Ccmc]uded that the mitigating measures needed to deal with

State and local concerns would be very similar, if not identical, for either geologic

repositories or long-term storage facilities. DOE, The Monitored Retrievable

Storage Concept, p. 2-38.
App. B—Waste Management System Issues Resolved in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 253

For several reasons, this Federal decisionmaking process appears to be more compatible with the implementation of options 2 and 3 than with option 1. For instance, development of a Federal storage system would

deal with what some see as the most pressing waste management problem—the utilities’ need for some way to

end their open-ended liability for growing inventories

of spent fuel—while allowing the problems of siting geologic disposal facilities to be deferred. In addition, the

annual Federal budget process may tend to favor storage over disposal, since it will be less expensive in the

short run to construct a new storage facility or expand

an existing one than to build a disposal facility.

The near-term cost advantage of storage would be increased by use of the dry storage technologies, now

under development, that allow easy incremental expansion of storage capacity. While the continuing costs of

maintaining storage facilities may make the total budget outlays for storage much greater than for disposal

in the long run,

20 the near term cost advantages could

tend to dominate decisions.

Substantial changes in the institutional approach to

waste management may be needed to give high credibility to a commitment to option 1 (see ch. 7), whereas

no such changes would be necessary for options 2 or 3.

The very flexibility and high degree of annual oversight

and control normal in Federal programs opens the possibility that an option 1 policy would be changed in the

future and storage facilities built as a way to buy time

if problems arose in the disposal program or if the Federal budget were particularly tight when large appropriations for construction of a full-scale geologic repository were required.

The Resolution

In adopting the NWPA, Congress in effect chose option 1 by making an explicit commitment to development of mined geologic repositories, thus embodying

in law the policy that had earlier been adopted by DOE.

With regard to long-term storage of spent fuel or highlevel waste, the Act recognizes that such storage is a potentially useful waste management option and requires

DOE to submit an analysis of the need for MRS facilities and site-specific designs for the first such facility.

However, the Act requires that disposal in geologic repositories should proceed regardless of whether an MRS

facility is built. Development of a plan for long-term

storage facilities would thus provide a backup option in

case serious problems arise in the geologic repository

program.

The remaining issues in this chapter discuss primarily those decisions that logically followed the selection

tO1bid. , table 2-5, p. 2-25.

of option 1 of issue 1. The question of the role of MRS

facilities in the waste management program is considered at greater length in the discussion of the radioactive waste Mission Plan in chapter 6.

ISSUE 2:

What kind of schedule should be adopted for developing mined repositories?

One principal obstacle to development of a widely accepted waste disposal policy has been disagreement

about the appropriate pace for developing geologic repositories. People who believe that the current base of

knowledge will permit an acceptably safe system to be

developed and implemented fairly quickly recommend

rapid action to allay public concerns about waste disposal. Others believe that pressures for hasty action

could lead to premature commitment to a repository site

that is inadequate or, at the very least, to actions that

would jeopardize the credibility of the Federal waste disposal program.

OPTION: 1. Accelerated schedule.

2. Conservative schedule.

The Debate

OPTION 1:

Accelerated schedule.

An accelerated schedule for developing a repository

would involve evaluating the minimum number of possible sites (three) and geologic media (two) —required

by NRC for selecting the candidate site for the first

geologic disposal repository-so that submission of a

license application for a repository would not be delayed

while a broader range of alternatives was examined.

Proponents of the accelerated schedule believe that a

geologic disposal repository can be developed rapidly

with little risk of failure and that any further delay would

be interpreted by the general public as a lack of Federal commitment to complete the task and, perhaps, even

as evidence that the job cannot be done at all. If successful, this approach could lead to a licensed repository in the late 1990’s.

An accelerated schedule carries several potential risks.

First, such a schedule could raise fears that safety might

be compromised, in turn leading to continued efforts

to delay or change the schedule yet again, as well as to

criticisms of the program that could increase the doubts

of the general public. Second, accelerating the schedule

of development of a technology and licensing process

for which there is no previous experience increases the

risk of real or perceived failures to find or license sites.
254 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

Such failures could reduce public confidence in the Federal waste management program.

A basic problem in establishing a schedule for development of a geologic repository is the first-of-a-kind

nature of the process in terms of both the technical and

institutional steps involved. Concerning this point, an

official of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) stated:

The types of information needed for site characterization and performance evaluation for licensing are fairly

well understood by the interested agencies; however,

the time required to perform the tests to obtain this information is uncertain . . . The site characterization

phases will be a learn-as-we-go procedure in which we

cannot accurately predict schedules, To complicate the

scheduling, sociopolitical aspects of State and public participation can also impose unplanned delays in obtaining technical information. z’

Adoption of an accelerated schedule in the face of uncertainties about siting poses three major risks. First,

it may lead to premature selection of candidate sites on

the basis of inadequate data, which could increase the

chances that the first site recommended to NRC would

not be approved. Considering the great political importance attached to the first repository, the negative effects on public confidence of rejection of the first site

could be severe, especially if the selection were accompanied by considerable optimism about the ease of developing a repository. Second, slippages in the schedule,

more likely to occur in an accelerated schedule, could

weaken the credibility of the entire schedule, particularly if they occurred in the early stages of the process.

Third, to the extent that the feasibility of an accelerated schedule is questioned by the technical community

and the involved agencies, the responsibility for real or

perceived failures resulting from the schedule will be

shifted to some extent from the involved executive

branch agencies to Congress. This shift could reduce

the extent to which the agencies could be held accountable for progress. Agency accountability will be greater

if the agencies themselves develop and certify the feasibility of the schedule they are to meet.

OPTION 2:

A conservative schedule.

Advocates of a more conservative schedule for repository development—one that allows for unforeseen delays and provides ample time to review more sites and

media and to resolve the remaining technical uncertainties—argue that a conservative approach is needed to

build public confidence that the job is being done safely

and that no corners are being cut in haste. (This approach is typified by the IRG recommendation of a cau21 Te~timony ~fjmes F. Devine, Assistant Director of Engineering Geology

of the USGS, before the Committees on Energy and Natural Resources and

on Environment and Public Works, of the U.S. Senate, Oct. 6, 1981.

tious repository development process involving review

of four to five sites in two to three geologic media before

selecting a site for development. )

A conservative schedule poses risks of its own. In the

first place, it maybe no more capable of gaining broad

public support than an accelerated schedule. While a

conservative schedule deals with the concerns of those

who fear that haste could compromise safety, it may not

be responsive to concerns of those who believe that a

rapid demonstration by the Federal Government of both

the will and the technical capacity to dispose of radioactive waste is needed. In fact, strong dissatisfaction with

the schedule implied by the Carter administration policy, which envisioned a repository perhaps not available

until 2007, was a major reason for congressional efforts

to accelerate the schedule and for the decision by the

Reagan administration to speed up the process by examining only three sites in two media, the minimum required by NRC, before selecting a site for development.

Such a distant target date could generate a relaxed

attitude towards the program schedule by those responsible for implementing it and may increase the risk of

planning being minimal, of milestones being missed

with few apparent consequences, and of the goal continuing to recede into the future.

Moreover, the further away the target date for a repository, the more strongly the utilities could argue that

the Federal Government has a responsibility to take

some earlier action to relieve them of the storage problem created by the slow Federal approach to repository

development. If this action involved construction of a

new Federal storage facility, such a facility would probably use one of the easily expandable dry storage technologies, such as the surface drywell, thus further reducing pressures for development of a repository and

creating a relatively easy and economical way to continue to defer the costs of the disposal system.

Selection of the pace for repository development requires balancing the concerns that too fast a pace would

not be consistent with safety against the concerns that

too leisurely a pace would not allay public fears about

waste disposal in a timely manner and would not adequately address utilities’ concerns about an open-ended

liability for storing growing inventories of spent fuel.

Agreement about an appropriate schedule maybe facilitated by shifting the focus of the argument from the

speed of the. schedule to its certainty and commitment.

Analysis performed by OTA suggests that what is most

important in securing and sustaining public confidence,

and in providing utilities with a solution to their spent

fuel storage problem, is not how quickly a repository

can be made available, but whether it will be available

according to a firm schedule, backed by a firm Federal

commitment, and accepted widely (by utilities, environmentalists, and all other interested parties) as feasible
App. B—Waste Management System Issues Resolved in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 255

and reasonable in view of the remaining technical and

institutional uncertainties about siting.

A firm Federal commitment to accept waste at a repository on a fixed but relatively cautious date would

represent a strengthening of Federal determination and

could provide the most complete and credible solution

to the waste disposal problem for both the public and

the nuclear utilities. Such commitment to a date might

greatly ease the utilities’ job of providing interim storage until that date by removing one of the major sources

of objection to expanded at-reactor storage: the concern

that such storage would become de facto final isolation.

A major concern with this approach is that the credibility of any future Federal schedules may be very low

because schedules for the availability of a geologic repository have slipped drastically from 1985, as estimated

in 1976, to 2006—at the latest—according to 1982 DOE

estimates. 22 The problem is compounded by the significant institutional and technical uncertainties affecting

progress in waste disposal.

A credible commitment to a firm date would require

both a realistic target date and a conservative technical

program for meeting it. The target date must strike a

balance between speed and certainty. On the one hand,

locating sites as early as possible would limit the buildup

of spent fuel in interim storage facilities. On the other

hand, too optimistic a date runs the risk of failure, which

could have significant political impacts and could create

difficulties for utilities that have made storage plans

based on that date. To the extent that utilities need a

firm schedule for their own planning, the reliability of

the schedule may be more important than the speed.

A conservative target date for operation of the first

repository would allow ample time for a second candidate site to be identified and carried through the licensing process independently of the first-thus increasing

the confidence that a firm commitment to the target date

could be met even if the first site were rejected by NRC.

Such a possibility must be considered because of the lack

of technical consensus about the likelihood of a site that

appears acceptable after characterization ultimately receiving an operating license. If the first site proves to

be acceptable to NRC, a repository could be available

earlier than promised.

Recent DOE analysis concludes that a site in a medium (granite) not now under consideration for the first

repository could be licensed by early 1999.29 This suggests that a full-scale repository could be in operation

by 2008 even if none of the sites under consideration

ZZDOE Natlon~ plan for Siting High-Level Radioactive Waste Repositories

and Environmental Assessment—Public Dr&t, DOE/NWTS-4, February 1982,

p. 112.

Zj~E&flssion P],wI for the Civilian Radioactive Waste Management program, DOE RW-0005 Draft, April 1984, vol. I, p. 3-A-44.

at the time NWPA was being debated proved acceptable, provided that a backup siting program is pursued.

An acceleration and expansion of ongoing DOE activities may be needed to give high confidence that a commitment to a firm schedule—even a conservative one—

can be kept in spite of technical and institutional uncertainties. In particular, the technical program would require enough backups to each component of the disposal

technology and to each site to ensure that at least one

acceptable combination would be available by the target date, even though more or less predictable difficulties

and failures occur. 24

There is now no technical consensus about the likelihood that any particular site that appears suitable for

licensing at the end of site characterization will, in fact,

survive the entire licensing process. For this reason,

commitment to a schedule for the activities involved in

identifying a first candidate repository site and taking

it through the licensing process is not equivalent to a

commitment to a schedule for availability of a licensed

repository site.

The relevant agencies could meet every deadline in

a schedule for the first candidate site and still wind up

at the end of the licensing process with a rejection from

NRC and thus no operating repository. While another

site could be submitted if the first were rejected, the repository availability date would slip significantly, a fact

which the public might well perceive as a major failure

in the waste management program.

The most straightforward way to reduce the risk of

licensing rejection is to provide the time and resources

necessary to carry more sites than necessary through the

site characterization process and into the licensing process so that backups are immediately available if the first

site considered cannot be licensed. This redundant approach might increase the initial costs of developing the

repository system. However, it appears certain that

more than one site will eventually be needed anyway,

so the effect on total management costs in the long run

may be less significant.

Commitment to a fixed schedule will thus be more

expensive, if the probability of failures is minimized,

than commitment to a more flexible target date because

of the greater redundancy needed to assure success on

schedule. A detailed analysis of the additional cost would

require development of a more detailed program plan

than has been available to date.

In any case, the additional cost should have no significant effect on the economic competitiveness of nuclear power. For example, a program that was 160 percent more expensive than DOE’s proposed program

would add only about O. 1 cent per kilowatt-hour to the

t+Redu~danCy is a standard design procedure in the development of highly

reliable systems, and is routinely used in the U. S, space program.
—

256 . Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

disposal of spent fuel. A spent fuel disposal package and

the equipment and facilities for packaging and emplacing spent fuel in a repository would not be developed,

and sites with geochemical conditions suited for spent

fuel disposal would not be sought. Second, provisions

would probably have to be made for extended and indefinite storage of spent fuel because of the uncertainty

about when reprocessing would be economical. This is

quite compatible with a decision to provide a disposal

system on a fixed schedule (issue 1). Once disposal sites

were licensed, construction of full-scale disposal facilities could be deferred, if desired, and extended storage

facilities could be constructed at the sites instead.

This option allows continued access to the unused

uranium and plutonium in spent fuel and greater flexibility in the choice of a disposal systetn. Geologic disposal of reprocessed waste, and not spent fuel, permits

tailoring the waste form to the characteristics of a particular repository and would allow separation and separate disposal of the heat-producing, but relatively shortIived fission products from the cool, but very long-lived

transuranic elements in the waste. This option might

also allow use of disposal systems such as space disposal

that are not practical with spent fuel.

On the other hand, it now appears possible, if not

likely, that even if the demand for electricity increases

sharply enough to warrant large-scale use of breeder

reactors, only part of the spent fuel expected to be generated by light-water reactors might have to be reprocessed to provide enough plutonium to start up the breeders. If breeder reactors are not used, there may be little

commercial incentive to recycle uranium and plutonium

for use in light-water reactors. Even if some recycling

occurs, there could be an economic incentive to dispose

of spent fuel containing plutonium that had been recycled several times previously.

Furthermore, a requirement that only reprocessed

waste be disposed of could increase the cost of waste disposal by requiring reprocessing of spent fuel in some

cases in which the cost of reprocessing could not be offset by sale of the recovered uranium and plutonium.

Since this situation would probably require expenditure

of billions of dollars for construction and operation of

federally owned reprocessing plants, and since existing

and proposed regulations would allow direct disposal

of spent fuel without reprocessing, it seems likely that

the choice would be made to continue to store spent fuel

while developing the capacity to dispose of it directly.

Thus, a decision not to provide the capability to dispose of spent fuel may lead to additional disposal costs

in the future, either for uneconomic reprocessing of

some spent fuel or for additional storage of that spent

fuel while the capacity to dispose of it is developed,
App. B—Waste Management System Issues Resolved in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 ● 257

OPTION 2:

Design the disposal system assuming that no spent

fuel will be reprocessed.

Developing the disposal system for spent fuel alone

would involve planning for the use of disposal capacity

as soon as it is available. The policy of the Carter administration appeared in many respects to be similar to this

option, Reprocessing was deferred, work on waste forms

was limited to the military program, and most studies

of disposal policy published by the administration

showed spent fuel being directly disposed of as rapidly

as repositories could be made operational; however, the

policy’s stated purpose was to develop a disposal system that did not preclude future decisions to reprocess.

Developing the capacity to dispose of spent fuel directly would enable an earlier large-scale demonstration

of waste disposal than would occur if the disposal system were designed only for reprocessed waste. Significant quantities of spent fuel could be disposed of as soon

as a repository was available. A demonstration of disposal at commercial scale—which could involve emplacement of perhaps a thousand tonnes of spent fuel

or more over a period of years—could answer questions

about ability to license and operate a full-scale disposal

system more completely than could a small-scale unlicensed technical demonstration .28 1t would also permit

observation of repository performance under a significant heat load for an extended period.

One cost of the demonstration would be loss of the

potential resource value of the spent fuel used. However, since existing reactors and those with construction permits alone would generate over 100,000 tonnes

of spent fuel during their lifetimes, disposal of even

10,000 tonnes would represent less than 10 percent of

the total and would lead to only a small increase in total

uranium requirements if recycling and an expansion of

nuclear power ultimately occurred. 29 The benefit of an

early, tangible demonstration of commercial-scale waste

disposal could offset the lost resource potential.

There are several disadvantages to designing repositories for spent fuel only. First, since practically all military high-level waste is reprocessed waste, designing

a commercial system to manage only spent fuel would

limit the range of options for dealing with military

wastes. Second, the burden of developing the capacity

———— —

ZS~Ong these ]ine~, one nuclear indust~ group recommended that some spent

fuel should be placed in terminal waste disposal repositories for near-term demonstration purposes, although they did not recommend that spent fuel be routinely disposed of in repositories, “Spent Fuel and Nuclear Waste, ’ a statement by the Atomic Industrial Forum’s Study Group on Waste Management,

Oct. 18, 1978.

Zgone study has concIuded that a policy of disposing of spent fuel when it

is 20 years old would not significantly limit the ability to develop breeder reactors. Brian G, Chow and Gregory S. Jones, Nonproliferation and Spent Fuel

Disposa/ Policy, a report prepared for the Council on Environmental Quality

(Marina Del Rey, Cafif.: Pan Heuristics, October 1980).

to dispose of reprocessed waste may shift to the future

if it turns out to be more economic to reprocess spent

fuel than to dispose of it directly. Modifying the initial

spent fuel disposal system design later to handle reprocessed waste could increase disposal costs.

OPTION 3:

Design the disposal system to accommodate both

spent fuel and reprocessed waste.

The major advantage of this option is that it gives

future decisionmakers the greatest range of choices and

leaves open the option to reprocess spent fuel. This neutrality aboul reprocessing may be seen as a disadvantage by those who favor or oppose reprocessing for reasons not related to waste management. As discussed

above, it is not clear that either option 1 or 2 can do

more than inconvenience future decisionmakers, who

can always use extended storage if reprocessing or direct disposal of spent fuel do not appear advisable.

As noted in chapter 3, recent major studies of the subject have concluded that mined repositories could be designed for both spent fuel and reprocessed waste without compromising safety. Of course, a system designed

to handle both forms may be somewhat more expensive over the short term than a system optimized for one

or the other, although no data are available to support

an estimate of the additional cost. However, such a system may be less expensive in the long run since it avoids

the possible costs of extended storage and system redesign necessary for conversion from a single-waste form

system to a multiwaste-form system.

The Resolution

The NWPA provides that geologic repositories shall

be capable of receiving either spent fuel or reprocessed

high-level waste.

ISSUE 4:

What responsibility should the Federal Government assume for interim spent fuel storage before a

permanent repository is available?

The delays in availability of both reprocessing and

a Federal waste repository have presented utilities with

two related problems. First, the existing spent fuel storage basins at reactors are filling up. Even if the capacity of existing basins is expanded by reracking to the

maximum extent possible, and if utilities are allowed

to transship fuel from reactors whose basins are filled

to unfilled basins at other reactors, some face the risk

of forced reactor shutdowns by the 1990’s unless additional storage space is made available on a timely basis .30

SODOE, spent Fud Storage Requirements, DOE/RL-83- 1, January 1983,

table 4, p, 17.
258 “ Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Levei Radioactive Waste

Many utilities have expressed concern about whether

they would be able to provide the needed additional storage capacity quickly enough to prevent reactor

shutdowns.

Second, even if utilities were certain that they could

provide additional storage when needed, the uncertainty

about when spent fuel could be shipped to a reprocessing plant or a Federal waste repository leaves the utilities with an open-ended liability for growing inventories

of spent fuel and no clear basis for planning their longterm storage needs. There is an important linkage between this long-term problem and the near-term problem of providing additional storage quickly enough to

prevent reactor shutdowns. As noted in chapter 4, there

has been growing opposition to efforts to provide additional spent fuel storage capacity because of fear that

availability of interim storage would reduce pressures

for developing long-term solutions, thus turning interim

storage facilities into de facto permanent waste repositories.

The effectiveness of a storage policy in preventing

reactor shutdowns may be the greatest determinant of

its potential economic impact. As noted in chapter 3,

the cost of replacement power for a l-GWe reactor for

1 year could exceed the total discounted cost of permanent storage in a new water basin for all the spent fuel

the reactor would generate during its operating lifetime.

The ability to ensure timely availability of additional

interim storage capacity is therefore a primary criterion

for evaluating interim storage options. However, because the uncertainties about the long-term fate of spent

fuel may constitute a serious obstacle to gaining the necessary approvals for interim storage facilities, it may be

difficult to resolve the near-term storage problem in a

timely manner without at the same time addressing the

long-term question.

At present, it appears unlikely that the development

of large-scale commercial reprocessing could provide a

very timely or predictable way to ease the spent fuel storage problem at reactors. The private sector appears to

have no interest in constructing and operating reprocessing facilities now, since reprocessing may not become

economical until sometime in the next decade, at the

earliest.

Even if the Allied General Nuclear Services (AGNS)

reprocessing plant at Barnwell, S. C., began reprocessing operations at its projected full capacity of 1,500

tonnes per year in the early 1990’s, it would at most

be able to handle only the expected overflow of spent

fuel from existing basins. It could not handle the total

annual discharges from reactors expected to be in operation at that time. It would take one such plant over

25 years to eliminate the backlog of spent fuel that would

have accumulated in reactor basins by that time. Because of the high cost of such plants and the very uncertain market for the uranium and plutonium recovered

from spent fuel, it appears unlikely that the plants will

be constructed on a reliable schedule by either the private sector or the Federal Government.

While a Federal waste repository would provide utilities with a way to get rid of spent fuel, a licensed, fullscale geologic repository could probably not be available before the late 1990’s, leaving a need for additional

spent fuel storage capacity for the interim period. DOE

estimates that by 1998 over 60 reactors will need storage capacity beyond that available in their existing

pools. s

~ The interim period could be considerably extended if a very conservative schedule for availability

of a repository were adopted (issue 2). Thus, the choice

of a Federal interim spent fuel storage policy may depend significantly on the final isolation policy that is

selected.

The Carter administration raised the possibility of a

direct Federal role in interim spent fuel storage when

it advocated that the Federal Government acquire an

away-from-reactor (AFR) storage facility and offer to

accept commercial spent fuel for storage until permanent disposal facilities were available. The 96th Congress did not authorize acquisition of an AFR facility,

and the Reagan administration concentrated its efforts

instead on helping the utilities provide their own storage capacity. The question of the appropriate Federal

role in interim spent fuel storage was debated again in

the 97th Congress. The following discussion evaluates

the principal options considered in that debate, in light

of the proposed options for providing a final isolation

system considered in the preceding issues.

As background for this discussion, it is useful to understand the relationship between the two distinct storage issues considered in the 97th Congress: 1) the

“AFR” issue, i.e., the question of the Federal role in

interim spent fuel storage, and 2) the “MRS’ issue,

i.e., the question of whether the Federal Government

should construct MRS facilities designed to store spent

fuel and high-level waste for a long and perhaps indefinite period.

The distinction between these two concepts is not

clear. An MRS has generally been thought of as being

located away from reactor sites, and thus could be considered an AFR. Similarly, any storage facility, even

if intended only for interim storage, as contemplated

for AFRs, would be monitored and retrievable, and thus

could be considered an MRS. Furthermore, it is possible that the same type of storage technology—metal

casks or drywells—would be used in either case. 32

~llbid., table C-3, pp. 73-76.

WSee Ra~mu93en, op. cit., which evaluates casks and d~wclls for both interim storage and monitored retrievable storage.
App. B—Waste Management System Issues Resolved in the Nuc/ear Waste Policy Act of 1982 . 259

Finally, there is some overlap in intended function in

that proponents of a Federal AFR argued that it would

provide some flexibility in the event of slippages of the

geologic repository schedule—one of the arguments for

a Federal MRS facility.

The principal difference is that the AFR debate has

tended to focus on the question of providing additional

storage capacity until a geologic repository is available,

with emphasis on the near-term problem of providing

such storage in time to prevent reactor shutdowns. In

contrast, the MRS debate has focused on the longerterrn questions of whether to provide Federal storage

facilities either as an alternative to rapid development

of geologic repositories (considered in issue 1) or as a

backup in case of slippage in the repository program

(discussed in the chapter 6). Since a full-scale MRS facility could probably not be designed, sited, licensed,

and constructed before 1994 or 1995,33 such a facility

would not address the immediate problems of the utilities which will exhaust the capacity of their reactor

basins before then—the more immediate focus of the

AFR debate.

The following discussion will concentrate on the interim storage questions raised in the AFR debate, while

the question of the role of MRS facilities as a backup

in case of slippages in the repository program is discussed in chapter 6.

OPTION: 1. No Federal role in interim storage; complete responsibility of private industry.

2. Federal assistance to private storage efforts by reducing legal obstacles; speeding

the iicensingprocess; and accelerating research, development, and demonstration

of new storage technologies.

3. Federzdprovision ofa limited amount of

storage capacity for emergency use only.

4. FederaJ storage capacity as an alternative

to construction of new storage facilities by

utilities.

The Debate

OPTION 1:

No Federal role in interim storage; complete responsibility of private industry.

In 1982, DOE analysis of utility-provided data

showed that conventional reracking could meet all utility storage needs until 1986 or 1987 if transshipment

were aUowed.34 The need for additional storage could

“Ibid., p. 6.2.

~~~E,s~ntFuel Storage Requirements, DOE/RL-82- 1, June 1982. An

update of that analysis in 1983 reached the same conclusion, although it identified one reactor that might need 13 tonnes of additional storage in 1984—

DOE, Spent Fuel Storage Requirements, 1983, op. cit.

be deferred several more years if reactors did not maintain full core reserve—the amount of space needed to

discharge the entire reactor core—although this would

involve some risk of extended shutdown if the core had

to be removed for maintenance or repairs. Moreover,

it appears that new water basins or other new storage

technologies could be constructed at reactors by 1988,

perhaps sooner, if begun in 1981 or 1982 (when the AFR

issue was being debated) .35

Thus, it appears theoretically possible that even with

no Federal action, no reactor would have to shut down

for lack of spent fuel storage capacity. There are, however, two important cautions in this conclusion. First,

although several of the new storage technologies, especially casks, have the potential for faster implementation than conventional water basins, they will not be

realistic alternatives for most utilities facing immediate

storage decisions until their technical feasibility and their

ability to be licensed have been demonstrated.

Second, it is not known whether the private sector

will receive timely permission for constructing and operating any new spent fuel storage facilities, or even for

reracking or transshipment. The primary potential

sources of delays are complications in the licensing process and State and local laws and regulations that limit

the quantity of fuel that can be stored at a reactor. Previously, such factors have not adversely affected reactor

operations, although there appears to be considerable

concern among utilities that this could be a serious problem in the future, particularly with new technologies for

which there is no licensing experience. This concern

underlies the utilities’ desire for a Federal AFR facility, since many believe that the Federal Government

will be better able to provide additional storage capacity in the face of opposition than utilities could.

One drawback is the concern that interim storage

might become de facto permanent storage because of

the uncertain status of spent fuel. Thus, adoption of a

very conservative or open-ended schedule for availability

of a Federal waste repository may make it more difficult for utilities to provide additional interim storage capacity on their own than would a program that included

a fixed schedule for a repository.

OPTION 2:

Federal assistance to private storage efforts by reducing legal obstacles; speeding the licensing process; and accelerating research, development, and demonstration of new storage technologies.

Several Federal actions could help utilities provide

adequate spent fuel storage capacity in time to prevent

35)3. R. Johnson AssWiates, Inc. , A Preliminary Assessment of Alternative

Dry Storage Methods for the Storage of Commercial Spent Nuclear Fuel, JAI180 (DOE/ET/47929-l), November 1981, table 7-1, p. 7-3.
260 Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

reactor shutdowns. One would be Federal support of

an accelerated program for rapidly developing new dry

storage technologies and demonstrating their ability to

be licensed for use at reactor sites. Many utilities may

prefer to stick with proven technology-water basins

with conventional reracking—for providing new storage capacity, even though the likelihood that at least

some of the new technologies will prove acceptable appears high. However, one large utility, the Tennessee

Valley Authority (TVA), is already planning to demonstrate some of the new technologies-rod compaction

and dry storage—in the next few years before it commits to the construction of new interim storage facilities.

The availability of these technologies for general use

by utilities might be significantly accelerated by an aggressive Federal research, development, and demonstration program to resolve remaining technical and economic questions and to share some of the costs of

licensed demonstrations.

Approval of interim storage capacity might be hastened by an explicit statement of congressional intent

about interim storage in existing or new storage facilities. Such a statement might speed the resolution of

questions of Federal preeminence over State and local

restrictions on spent fuel storage.

Adoption of a firm, credible schedule for the availability of a final isolation facility could reduce both the

opposition to utilities’ efforts to provide their own interim storage facilities and the financial risks created by

the uncertainty about how long such facilities would be

needed. Potential problems might be further lessened

by a favorable resolution of NRC’s ongoing generic confidence proceeding about the timely ultimate disposal

of spent fuel and about the safety of continued storage

until disposal is available. The proceeding was initiated

precisely because of objections to provision of indefinite

interim storage.36

OPTION 3:

Federal provision of a limited amount of storage

capacity for emergency use only.

Although it is possible that utilities will be able to provide all their own interim storage capacity, it is not certain that all would be able to do so before their existing

storage capacity is exhausted. Thus an argument can

be made for providing some Federal storage capacity

as a last-resort backup to prevent unavoidable reactor

shutdowns while utilities construct their own new stor-

$cIn AuWst 1984, NRC issued a final rule embodying the resuhs of the waste

confidence proceeding, in which it stated that ‘‘there is reasonable assurance

that one or more mined geologic repositories for commercial high-level radioactive waste and spent fuel will be available by the years 2007-2009, and that

in any case, spent fuel could safety be stored at either reactor sites or offsite

for up to 30 years after the expiration of the reactor’s operating license. Federal Register, vol. 49, No. 171, Aug. 31, 1984, p. 34659-34660.

age capacity. The need for such capacity depends on

the importance attached to avoiding the risk of shutdowns and the associated economic costs of providing

replacement power.

The amount of Federal storage needed as a last resort backup to utilities’ storage programs could be much

smaller than would be needed if Federal storage were

intended to handle all spent fuel storage in excess of the

capacity of existing basins. The major source of demand

for emergency capacity would probably occur in the late

1980’s and early 1990’s as a result of possible delays in

bringing new storage facilities online. Only 1,000 tonnes

of storage, approximately the lifetime capacity needed

for a l-GWe reactor, would be required to give every

one of the 24 reactors projected to need new storage capacity before 1990 an additional 2 years to provide that

capacity themselves. 37

However, if Federal storage were used as a substitute for additional utility storage, rather than a backup

in case of delays in utilities’ efforts, about 5,000 tonnes

of Federal storage would be needed to handle the needs

of those same 24 reactors until 1998, the target date for

operation of a geologic repository established by

NWPA.38 Of course, provision of limited Federal storage capacity for emergency use only would not deal with

the utilities’ long-term problem of liability for growing

inventories of spent fuel, and thus might be more compatible with a fixed schedule for a Federal waste repository, which would solve that problem, than with a flexible or indefinite schedule.

A clear decision to provide Federal storage facilities

for use only in emergency cases would demonstrate to

utilities that they must immediately begin planning to

provide their own facilities. Any possibility that the Federal Government might later provide an alternative to

construction of new facilities by utilities could encourage

them to defer action and could also discourage private

efforts to develop new storage technologies.

To prevent Federal emergency storage capacity from

dampening utility efforts to provide storage, several actions could be taken. First, utilities could be required

to show that they have made their best effort to provide

their own storage. Second, existence of State or local

prohibitions on increased storage could be disallowed

as a justification for use of the Federal storage option,

thereby facing the affected communities with the choice

of shutting down a reactor or allowing increased storage.

Several options for providing Federal storage capacity may be available in the next decade. The most

readily available appears to be use of modular dry storage (casks or drywells) at existing Federal facilities on

~~E, spent Fuel Storage Requirements, 1983, table C-1, p. 65.

381 bjd., table C-3, pp. 73-76.
App. B–Waste Management System Issues Resolved in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 261

Federal reservations. Availability of space in Federal facilities could enable deferral of acquisition of other facilities for several years, allowing questions about the

availability of new storage technologies for utility use

to be resolved and permitting a more accurate estimate

of the needs for Federal storage. While these facilities

would probably not be licensed, they could be available

quickly.

Federal acquisition of existing private facilities with

storage basins has also been considered .39

OPTION 4:

Federal storage capacity as an alternative to construction of new storage facilities by utilities.

An offer to accept spent fuel at a Federal AFR facility would be an effective alternative for reducing the utilities’ open-ended liability for spent fuel if the availability of final isolation facilities remains uncertain. However, several objections have been made to providing

such a facility for this purpose. Some argue that the Government should not subsidize nuclear power by removing the burden of uncertainty about interim storage from

the generators and users of nuclear electricity, which

is a commercial responsibility. In addition, some object that a Federal AFR facility could take the pressure

off Government and industry to decide whether and

when to develop disposal capacity.

In support of this option, it can be argued that since

the Federal Government has the responsibility to provide for permanent isolation of high-level radioactive

waste and is itself directly responsible for the delays and

uncertainties about providing this service, it has an obligation to the users of nuclear power to share the burden of spent fuel storage created by its own inaction.

Provision of an open-ended Federal interim storage

capacity is the storage option most compatible with continued flexibility about the date of availability of a permanent repository. However, the amount of spent fuel

moved to Federal interim facilities could increase rapidly

if the availability of final isolation sites is deferred much

beyond the turn of the century. Thus, providing Federal spent fuel storage capacity as an alternative to constructing new facilities by utilities may lead to an increasing amount of spent fuel being stored at AFR

interim sites, since it appears that utilities, left to their

own devices, may have an economic incentive to provide additional capacity at reactor sites, if possible .40

There would be several effects of this action.

.- ——-—

3Whese include the General Electric facility at Morris, Ill., which is already

storing some commercial spent fuel, and the AGNS facility at Barnwell, S. C.,

which has an unused storage basin that could be reracked to provide 1,750

tonnes of capacity. DOE, Spent Fuel Storage Fact Book, DOE/NE-0005, Aprif

1980, table 4, p. 24.

*OA~ noted in ~h, 3, the new modular dry storage technologies may be less

expensive to implement at reactor sites, which already have handling facilities,

than at a centralized site which would require new facilities.

SAFETY

NRC has concluded that spent fuel can be safely

stored either at reactor sites or at AFRs.41 The additional handling and transportation involved in AFR

storage could lead to some increase in worker and public radiation exposure compared to onsite storage.

TRANSPORTATION

DOE estimates that by 1998, over 7,000 tonnes of

spent fuel will require storage outside the basins of the

reactors in which they were produced .42 Interim storage of that spent fuel at sites other than those at which

they were generated will increase the total amount of

handling and transportation of spent fuel, and could increase the total number of communities affected by radioactive waste management activities.

Movement of significant amounts of spent fuel to interim storage facilities away from the site of generation

may occur before a repository is available even if the

Federal Government plays no role in interim storage,

because transshipment is more economically attractive

than is construction of new facilities. In fact, DOE estimates that about 2,100 tonnes of the storage needed by

1998 could be met in this way.43 (This amount could

be reduced if rod consolidation—not considered in

DOE’s estimates of the maximum capacity of existing

basins—proves to be usable at many reactors.)

However, provision of Federal AFR storage as an alternative to utility efforts once existing basins are full

could more than triple the amount of spent fuel moved

to interim storage before 1998.44 In addition to increasing transportation impacts, use of a Federal AFR facility for this purpose could increase the likelihood of confrontations between the Federal Government and

affected States or localities over transportation issues.

COST

Various DOE analyses of the costs of storage have

concluded that federally owned facilities would be less

costly to utilities than would privately owned facilities.

To some extent, this is a result of the economies of scale

involved in a large Federal AFR facility, an advantage

that may be offset by transportation costs or the availability of less-expensive dry storage technologies for atreactor use. To a significant extent, it is simply the result of the economics of Federal ownership. For example, DOE analyses indicate that the cost of privately

owned facilities could be up to 100 percent higher than

“U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Firsaf Generic Environmental impact Statement on Handling and Storage of Spent Light Water Power Reactor

Fuel, August 1979, NUREG-0575, vol. 1, p. S-3.

4ZDOE S%n[ Fue~ Storage Rquimments, 1983, table 3, p. 16.

+jIbid. ‘Derived from table 3.

*

+ Ibid.
—

262 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

identical federally owned facilities because of the lower

cost of capital for the Federal Government and because

of the Government’s immunity to Federal, State, and

local taxes.45

There has been no systematic comparison of the costs

of at-reactor and AFR interim storage that includes the

cost of transportation, that considers use of the new

modular dry storage technologies both at reactors and

at independent AFR facilities, and that uses a consistent set of financial assumptions for ail facilities, regardless of ownership. However, available studies suggest

that at-reactor storage using modular dry storage technologies could be less expensive than AFR storage, even

without considering the additional cost of transportation to an AFR facility.46

Nonetheless, any conclusions about the relative costs

of at-reactor and AFR storage must remain tentative

until a fully consistent comparison of at-reactor and

AFR options is made. Since the modular dry storage

technologies may have significant cost advantages compared with water basins, whether used at reactors or

away from reactors, accelerated development and licensed demonstrations of those technologies could be

very useful for determining their actual costs more precisely.

EQUITY CONSIDERATIONS

There may be significant differences among spent fuel

storage systems in the distribution of their impacts

among the private sector, the Federal Government, and

various regions of the country. For example, with an

at-reactor storage system, the health and safety risks and

social impacts of storage are distributed among communities that have presumably benefited directly from

the electricity generated by the spent fuel. These same

communities would have to bear the costs of reactor

shutdowns if additional storage space were not provided.

With an AFR system, the risks and impacts of storage are localized to those few communities in the vicinity

of the AFR facility, which may or may not have benefited from the electricity generated by the spent fuel.

Many additional communities would be affected by increased spent fuel transportation to the AFR facility.

As a result of such distributional effects, provision by

the Federal Government of a significant amount of AFR

storage capacity as an alternative to utility provision of

+~~E ~~no]W for CommemjaJ Radioactive Waste Management,

DOE/ET~O028, May 1979, vol. 3, p. 5.7.55.

*6E R Johnmn A~~iates op. cit. , estimated that the cost Of at-reaCtOr 9t0r-

. .

,

age using surface drywells could be as low as $117 per kilogram of spent fuel.

DOE, The Monitored Retrievable Storage Concept, p. 2-6, concluded that storage in a centralized privately financed 10,000-tonne drywell facility could cost

from $100 to $170 per kilogram, with $160 per kilogram as the estimated fee

based on the set of assumptions judged most likely to be accepted. Transportation from the reactor to an AFR could add around $16 per kilogram to this

amount (table 2-4, p. 2-22). See also chapter note 1 in ch. 6.

new storage facilities raises more equity considerations

than do the options for Federal involvement which have

less direct effect on the location of storage. As noted in

chapter 4, such considerations have played an important role in debates about radioactive waste management issues.

ASSURANCE OF STORAGE CAPACITY

Reliance of utilities on the Federal Government for

provision of a significant portion of their interim storage needs could increase the vulnerability of the storage system to failures. Analysis by DOE shows that by

1998, over 60 of the currently operating reactors could

be relying on a Federal AFR facility for storage.47 In

this situation, any licensing delays, failures in acquiring additional AFR capacity, shutdowns of an AFR facility because of accidents or sabotage, or serious transportation problems could make many reactors vulnerable to potential shutdowns simultaneously. In contrast,

a storage system in which utilities provide lifetime interim storage onsite, which would be encouraged by limiting Federal storage to backup use only, would completely insulate the utility and its ratepayers from any

bottlenecks or failures elsewhere in the spent fuel storage and waste management system.

The Resolution

The NWPA incorporated a combination of options

2 and 3. Utilities are given the primary responsibility

for providing the additional spent fuel storage needed

until a Federal repository is available. To assist utilities in this effort, the Act provides for an accelerated

program for licensed demonstrations of new storage

technologies and encourages generic licensing of such

technologies when possible. At the same time, the Act

provides for a limited amount (1 ,900 tonnes) of last-resort Federal storage in existing Federal facilities, with

NRC to make the determination about which utilities

are entitled to use that storage. Federal acquisition of

existing private facilities for spent fuel storage was not

authorized.

Appendix Note

The original Atomic Energy Act made no reference

to either radioactive waste or to waste disposal. The first

formal regulations on the subject were promulgated by

the Atomic Energy Commission in 1970 (Appendix F

to Part 50 of Title 10 of the Code of Federal Regulations). These regulations required liquid high-level waste

produced by reprocessing of spent fuel to be solidified

47~E, Swnt Fuel stora~ Requirements, 1983, table C-3, pp. 73 -74.
App. B—Waste Management System Issues Resolved in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1962 263

and delivered to a Federal repository within 10 years

of reprocessing, at which time the industry would pay

a fee calculated to cover the costs of ‘disposal and perpetual surveillance. While the regulations distinguish

between temporary storage, which can take place on privately owned property, and disposal, which can take

place only on federally owned and controlled land, there

is no clear definition of either term, and the reference

to perpetual surveillance suggests that “disposal” could

be interpreted to mean permanent storage.

It should be noted, however, that the Atomic Energy

Commission, in proposing the Retrievable Surface Storage Facility, did distinguish between storage and disposal in terms of the continued human control and

maintenance that is required for storage but not for permanent disposal.48

The Energy Reorganization Act of 1974 (Public Law

93-438), which split the functions of the Atomic Energy

Commission between the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA), gave the new NRC the licensing and

regulatory authority over ERDA facilities used primarily

for the receipt and storage of high-level radioactive

wastes resulting from activities licensed under the act

[Sec. 202(3)] and over Retrievable Surface Storage Facilities and other facilities authorized explicitly for subsequent long-term storage of high-level radioactive waste

generated by ERDA, which are not used for or part of

research and development activities [Sec. 202(4)]. These

sections, which form the basis for NRC licensing authority, make no references to disposal facilities and do

not define storage.

40U,S, Atomic Ener~ Commission, op. cit., pp. 1.2-11,12; and p. 2.3-21.

NRC has interpreted storage to include disposal,

which it takes to mean emplacement of waste with no

intention to retrieve. However, this definition is silent

on the acceptability of a requirement for continued institutional control, since emplacement with no intention

to retrieve could be effected in a storage facility that

nonetheless required control to ensure safety. NRC has

so far applied the term disposal only to geologic disposal

facilities and has developed regulations only for such facilities.

Finally, the Department of Energy Organization Act

(Public Law 95-91, August 1977,91 Stat. 565) explicitly

gave the new DOE responsibilities for “the establishment of temporary and permanent facilities for storage,

management, and ultimate disposal of nuclear wastes’

[Title 42, Ch. 84, Sec. 7133. (8)(C)], and “establishment of programs for the treatment, management, storage, and disposal of nuclear wastes” [Sec. 7133 (8)(E)].

However, once again no definitions were given for storage and disposal, and the statement in (8)(C) can be

read as allowing for permanent storage facilities. In addition, section 7133 (8)(F) gives DOE authority to establish fees or user charges only for nuclear waste treatment or storage facilities and makes no mention of

disposal facilities, thus perpetuating the confusion between the two concepts.

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (Public Law

97-425) clarified the distinction by defining disposal as

emplacement of waste in a repository with no foreseeable

intent of recovery, and also defining a repository as a

system for permanent deep geologic disposal. Since deep

geologic repositories are designed not to rely on longterm institutional control and maintenance, this definition implicitly incorporates the idea that disposal does

not require such continued care.
Appendix C

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of .1982

PUBLIC LAW 97-425—JAN;

Public Law 97-425

97th Congress

7, 1983

To provide for the development of repositories for the disposal of high-level radioac- Jan. 7, 1983

tive waste and spent nuclear fuel, to establish a program of research, develo ment,

and demonstration regarding the disposal of high-level radioactive waste an spent [H.R. 3809]

nuclear fuel, and for other purposes.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Repmsentatiues of the Nuclear ~mti

United States ofAmerica in Cong.mss assembl~

SHORT TITLE AND TABLE OF CONTENTS

SECTION 1. This Act may be cited as the “Nuclear

Act of 1982”.

:;13:Y Act of

42 USC 10101

Waste Policy ‘o*’

E: i

sec. 3.

sec. 4.

sec. 5.

E: !:

Sec. 8.

sec. 9.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Short title and table of contents.

Definitions.

Separability.

Territories and

Ocean disposal. ~ions .

Limitation on spending authority.

Protection of classified national security information.

Applicability.

Applicability,

TITLE I–DISPOSAL AND STORAGE OF HIGH-LEVEL RADIOACI’IVE WASTEj

SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL AND LOW-LEVEL RADIOACX’IVE WASTE

Sec. 101. State and affected Indian tribe participation in development of proposed

repositories for defense waste.

sua’rrTLE A—RmwarroRIEs POB DISPOSAL OF H:GH-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WMTE AND

sec. 111.

sec. 112.

sec. 113.

sec. 114.

sec. 115.

Sec. 116.

sec. 1170

Sec. 118.

sec. 119.

sec. 120.

sec. 121.

sec. 122.

sec. 123.

sec. 124.

sec. 125.

sec. 131.

Sec. 132.

sec. 133.

sec. 134.

sec. 135.

Sec. 136.

sec. 137.

SPEHT NUCLEAR FUEL

Findinga and purposes.

Recommendation of candidate sites for site characterization.

Site characterization.

Site approval and construction authorization.

Review of repository si~ selection.

Participation of States.

Consultation with States and Indian tribea.

Participation of Indian tribea.

Judicial review of agency actions.

Expedited authorizations.

(Mtain standards and criteria.

Disposal of spent nuclear fuel.

Title to material.

Consideration of effect of acquisition of water rights.

Termination of certain provisiona.

suaTrrLE B-INTERIM SmxtAGE PROGRAM

Findings and purposes.

Available capacity for interim storage of spent nuclear fuel.

Interim atireactor storage.

Licensing of f~ility expansions and transshipmenta.

Storage of spent nuclear fuel.

Interim Storage Fund.

‘Mnqmtation.

264
App. C—The Nuclear Waste Po/icy Act of 1962 265

96 STAT. 2202 PUBLIC LAW 97-425—JAN. 7, 1983

$UBTITLB

Sec. 141. Monitored retrievable storage.

Sec. 151. Financial arrangements for site closure.

TITLE II–RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT, AND DEMONSTRATION REGARDING

DISPOSAL OF HIGH-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTE AND SPENT NUCLEAR

FUEL

sec. 211.

Sec. 213.

Sec. 214.

Sec. 215.

Sec. 216.

Sec. 217.

Sec. 218.

Sec. 219.

sec. 220.

sec. 221.

sec. 222.

sec. 223.

Purpose.

Applicability.

Identification of sites.

Siting research and related activities.

Test and evaluation facility siting review and reports.

Federal agency actions.

Research and development on disposal of high-level radioactive waste.

Payments to States and ti Indian tribes.

Judicial review.

tive waste.

Technical assistance to non-nuclear weapon states in the field of ment

fuel storage and disposal.

TITLE III-OTHER PROVISIONS RELATING TO RADIOACTIVE WASTE

Sec. 301. Mission lan.

Sec. 302. Nuclear aste Fund. %

Sec. 303. Alternate means of financing.

Sec. 304. office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management.

Sec. 305. Location of test and evaluation facility.

Sec. 306. Nuclear Regulatory Commission training authorization.

DEFINITIONS

42 USC 10101. SEC. 2. For purposes of this Act:

Environmental Protection Agency.

(A) within whose reservation boundaries a monitored

retrievable storage facility, test and evaluation facility, or a

repository for high-level radioactive waste or spent fuel is

proposed to be located;

(B) whose federally defined possessor or usage rights to

other lands outside of the reservation’s boundaries arising

out of congressionally ratified treaties may be substantially

and adversely affcted by the locating of such a facility:

Provided, That the Secretary of the Interior finds, upon the

petition of the aropriate governmental offlcia.ls of the

tribe, that such e ects are both substantial and adverse to / ?

the tribe;

(3) The term “atomic energy defense activity” means any

activity of the Secreta

7

performed in whole or in part in

carrying out any of the fo lowing functions:

(A) naval reacto~odevelopment;

(B) we?po~ actlvltles including defense inertial confinement fusnon;

(0 verification and control technology;

(D) defense nuclear materials production;

(E) defense nuclear waste and materials by-products management;
—

266 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

PUBLIC LAW 97-425-JAN. 7, 1983 96 STAT. 2203

(F) defense nuclear materials security and safeguards and

security investigations; and

(G) defense research and development.

(4) The term “candidate site” means an area within a geologic and hydrologics tern, that is recommended by the Secretary undersection 112 for site characterization, approved by the r

President under section 112 for site characterization, or undergoing site characterization under section 113.

(5) The term “civilian nuclear activity” means any atomic

activity other than an atomic energy defense activity.

(6) the term “civilian nuclear power reactor” means a civilian nuclear powerplant required to be licensed under section

103 or 104 b. of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (42 U.S.C. 2133,

2134(M).

(7) The term Commussuib“~means the Nuclear Regulator y

c o

(8) The term “Department” means the Department of Energy.

(9) The term “disposal” means the emplacement in a reposihigh-Ievel radioactive waste,

forseeable

nt nuclear fuel, or other

& % i

f

~tive material wi tforesseable~le intent of recovery, whether or not such emplacement permits the recovery of

such Waste

(10) The ~

primary container that holds

h-level radioactive waste, spent nuclear fuel, or other radi~

active mate- and any overpacks that are emplaced at a

repository.

(11) The term “engineered barriers” means manmade Comp

nents of a disposal system designed to prevent the release of

radionuclides into the geologic medium involved. Such term

includes the high-level radioactive waste form, high-level radio

active waste canisters, and other materials placed over and

around such canisters.

(12) The term h-level radioactive waste” means—

(A) the higly radioactive material resulting from the

reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, including liquid waste

derived from such liquid waste that contains fission proj- J

ucts in sufficent concentrations; and

(B) other highly radioactive material that the Commission, consistent with existing law, determines by rule

requires permanent isolation.

(13)The term “Federal agency” means any Executive agency,

as defined in section 105 of title 5, United States Code.

(14) The term “Governor” means the chief executive officer of

a State.

(15) The term “Indian tribe” means any Indian tribe, band,

nation, or other organ

Y

ized group or community of Indians recognized as el’ “ble or the seMces provided to Indians b the

Secretary o the Interior because of their status as In ians, di

including an Alaska Native village, as defined in section 3(c) of

the Alaska ative Claims Settlement Act (43 U.S.C. 1602(c)). 5

(16) The term “low-level radioactive waste” means radioactive

material that—

(A) is not high-level radioactive waste, spent nuclear fuel,

transuranic waste, or by-product material as defined in
App. C—The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 .267

96 STAT. 2204 PUBLIC LAW 97-425-JAN. 7, 1983

Post, p. 2262.

section 11e(2) of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (42 U.S.C.

2014(e)(2)); and

(B) the Commission, consistent with existing law, classifies as low-level radioactive waste.

(17) The term “Office” means the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management established in section 305.

(18) The term ‘ repository” means any system licensed by the

Commission that is intended toebe used for,. or may be used for,

the permaanent

waste and spent nuclear ‘ 

designed to permit the recovery, for a limited period during

initial operation, of an materials placed in such system. Such

term includes boths ace and subsurface areas at which highlevel radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel handling activities are conducted.

(19) The term “resrvation” means—

(A) any Indian reservation or dependent Indian community referred to in clause (a) or (b) of section 1151 of title

18, United States Code; or

(B) any land selected by an Alaska Native village or

regional corporation under the provisions of the A Alaska Y

Native Claims Settlement Act (43 U.S.C. 1601 et seq).

(20) The term “Secretary” means the Secretary of Energy.

(21) The term “site characterization” means—

(A) siting research activities with respect to a test and

evaluation facility at a candidate site; and

(B) activities, whether in the laboratory or in the field,

undertaken to establish the geologic condition and the

ranges of the parameters of a candidate site relevant to the

location of a repository, including borings , surface excavations, excavations of exploratory shafts, Limmited Y subsurface

lateral excavations and borings, and in situ testing needed

to evaluate the suitability of a candidate site for the location of a repository, but not including preliminary borings

and geophysical testing needed to assess whether site characterization should be undertaken.

(22) The term “siting research” means activities, including

borings, surface excavations, shaft excavations, subsurface lateral excavations and borings, and in situ testing, to determine

the suitability of a site for a test and evaluation facility.

(23) The term “spent nuclear fuel” means fuel that has been

withdrawn from a nuclear reactor following irradiation, the

constituent elementa of which have not been separated by

reprocessing.

(24) The term “state” means each of the several States, the

District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the

Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana

Islands, the Trust Territo of the Pacific Islands, and any other

territory or possession oft e United States. fice

(25) Teh term “story e“ means retention of high-level radioactive waste, spent nuclear fuel, or transuranic waste with the

intent to recover such waste or fuel for subsequent use, processing, or disposal.

(26) The term “Storage Fund” means the Interim Storage

Fund established in section 137(c).

(2’7) The term “test and evaluation facility” means an ati

depth, prototypic, underground cavity with subsurface lateral
268 “ Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

PUBLIC LAW 97-425–JAN. 7, 1983 96 STAT. 2205

excavations extending from a central shaft that is used for

research and development purposes, including the development

of data and experience for the safe handling and disposal of

solidified high-level radioactive waste, transuranic waste, or

spent nuclear fuel.

(28) The term “unit of general local government” means any

borough, city, county, parish, town, township, village, or other

general purpose political subdivision of a State.

“

-

(29)-The term "Waste Fund” means the Nuclear Waste Fund

established in section 302(c). Post, p. 2257.

SEPARABILITY

SEC. 3. If any provision of this Act, or the application of such 42 usc 10102.

provision to any person or circumstance, is held invalid, the remainder of this Act, or the application of such provision to persons or

circumstances other than those as to which it is held invalid, shall

not be affected thereby.

TERRITORIES AND POSSESSIONS

SEC. 4. Nothing in this Act shall be deemed to repeal, modify, or 42 USC 10103.

amend the provisions of section 605 of the Act of March 12, 1980 (48

USC. 1491).

OCEAN DISPOSAL

SEC. 5. Nothing in this Act shall be deemed to affect the Marine 42 USC 10104.

Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act of 1972 (33 U.S.C. 1401 et

seq.).

LIMITATION ON SPENDING AUTHORITY

SEC. 6. The authority under this Act to incur indebtedness, or 42 USC 10105.

enter into contracts, obligating amounts to be expended by the

Federal Government shall be effective for any fiscal year only to

such extent or in such amounts as are provided in advance by

appropriation Acts.

PROTECTION OF CLASSIFIED NATIONAL SECURITY INFORMATION

SEC. 7. Nothing in this Act shall require the release or disclosure 42 USC 10106.

to any person or to the Commission of any classified national

security information.

APPLICABILITY

SEC. 8. (a) ATOMIC ENERGY DEFENSE Activities.-Subject to the 42 USC~ 101OT.

provisions of subsection (c), the provisions of this Act shal not apply i

with respect to any atomic energy defense activity or to any faci ity f

used in connection with any such activity .

(b) EVALUATION BY PRESIDENT .-(1)Not d later than 2 years after

the date of the enactment of this Act, the President shall evaluate

the use of disposal capacity at one or more repositories to be

developed under subtitle A of title I for the disposal of high-level post P. 2207.

radioactive waste resulting from atomic energy defense activities.

Such evaluation shall take into consideration factors relating to cost
App. C—The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1962 ● 269

96 STAT. 2206 PUBLIC LAW 97-425–JAN. 7, 1983

post, p. 2207.

Post, p. 2257.

42 USC 10108.

42 USC 10121.

efficiency, health and safety, regulation, transportation, public

acceptability, and national security.

(’2) Unless the President finds, after conducting the evaluation

required in paragraph (l), that the development of a repository for

the disposal of high-level radioactive waste resulting from atomic

energy defense activities only is required, taking into account all of

the factors described in such subsection, the Secretary shall proceed

promptly with arrangement for the use of one or more of the

repositories to be developed under subtitle A of title I for the

disposal of such waste. Such arrangements shall include the allocation of costs of developing, constructing, and operating this repository or repositories. The costs resulting from permanent disposal of

high-level radioactive waste from atomic energy defense activities

shall be paid by the Federal Government, into the special account

established under section 302.

(3) Any repository for the disposal of high-level radioactive waste

resulting from atomic energy defense activities only shall (A) be

subject to licensing under section 202 of the Energy Reorganization

Act of 1973 (42 U.S.C. 5842); and (B) comply withal requirements of

the Commission for the siting, development, construction, and operation of a repository.

(c) APPLICABILITY TO CERTAIN REPOSITORIES . —The provisions of

this Act shall apply with respect to any repository not used exclusively for the disposal of high-level radioactive waste or spent

nuclear fuel resulting from atomic energy defense activities,

research and development activities of the Secretary, or both.

APPLICABILITY

SEC. 9. TRANSPORTATION.—Nothing in this Act shall be construed

to affect Federal, State, or local laws pertaining to the transportation of spent nuclear fuel or high-level radioactive waste.

TITLE I–DISPOSAL AND STORAGE OF HIGH-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTE, SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL, AND LOW-LEVEL

RADIOACTIVE WASTE

STATE AND AFFECTED INDIAN TRIBE PARTICIPATION IN DEVELOPMENT

OF PROPOSED REPOSITORIES FOR DEFENSE WASTE

S E C. 101. (a) N OTIFICATION TO S TATES AND A FFECTED INDIA N

TRIBEs.—Notwithstanding the

F

revisions of section 8, upon any

decision by the Secretary or the resident to develop a repository for

the disposal of high-level radioactive waste or spent nuclear fuel

resulting exclusively from atomic energy defense activities, research

and development activities of the Secretary, or both, and before

proceeding with any site-specific investigations with respect to such

repository, the Secretary shall notify the Governor and legislature

of the State in which such repository is proposed to be located, or the

governing body of the affected Indian tribe on whose reservation

such repository is proposed to be located, as the case may be, of such

decision.

(b) PARTICIPATION OF STATES AND AFFECTED INDIAN TRIBES. -FOllowing the receipt of any notification under subsection (a), the State

or Indian tribe involved shall be entitled, with respect to the proposed repository involved, to rights of participation and consultation

identical to those provided in sections 115 through 118, except that
270 Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

PUBLIC LAW 97-425-JAN. 7, 1983 96 STAT. 2207

an financial assistance authorized to be provided to such State or

affected Indian tribe under section 116(c) or 118(b) shall be made

from amounts appropriated to the Secretary for purposes of carrying

out this section.

SUBTITLE A—REPOSITORIES for DISPOSAL OF HIGH-LEVEL

RADIOACTIVE WASTE AND SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL

FINDINGS AND PURPOSES

SEC. 111. (a) Findings.-The Congress finds that— 42 USC 10131.

(1) radioactive waste creates potential risks and requires safe

and environmental acceptable methods of die ;

(2) a national problem has been created by the accumulation

of(A) spent nuclear fuel from nuclear reactors; and (B) radioactive waste from (i) reprocess of spent nuclear fuel; (ii) activities related to medical research, diagnosis, and treatment; and

(iii) other sources;

(3) Federal efforts during the past 30 years to devise a permanent solution to the problems of civilian radioactive waste

disposal have not been adequate;

(4) while the Federal Government has the responsibilityoto

fuel‘“=ifm~h*v~l#!/’%l;~

provide for the permant disposa l

waste and such spent nuclear

order to protect the public health and safety and t e environment, the costs of such disposal should be the responsibility of

the generators and owners of such waste and spent fuel;

(5) the generators and owners of high-level radioactive waste

and spent nuclear fuel have the primary responsibility to provide or, and the responsibility to pay the costs of, the interim

storage of such waste and spent fuel until such waste and spent

fuel is accepted by the secretary of Energy in accordance with

the provisions of this act;

(6) State and public participation in the planning and develop

ment of repositories is essential in order to promote public

confidence in the safety of disposal of such waste and spent fuel;

and

(7) high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel have

become mjor subjects of public concern, and approriate precautions must be taken to ensure that such waste an spent fuel

do not adversely affect the public health and safety and the

environment for this or future generations.

(b) Purposes.-The purposes of this subtitle are-

(1) to establish a schedule for the siting, construction, and

operation of repositories that will provide a reasonable assurance that the public and the environment will be adequately

protected from the hazards posed by high-level radioactive

waste and such spent nuclear fuel as may be disposed of in a

repository;

(2) to establish the Federal responsibility, and a definite

Federal policy, for the disposal of such waste and spent fuel;

(3) to define the relationship between the Federal Government and the State government with respect to the disposal of

such waste and spent fuel; and

(4) to establish a Nuclear Waste Fund, composed of payments

made by the generators and owners of such waste an spent

fuel, that will ensure that the costs of carrying out activities
App. C—The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 .271

96 STAT. 2208 PUBLIC LAW 97-425—JAN. 7, 1983

relating to the disposal of such waste and spent fuel will be

borne by the persons responsible for generating such waste and

spent fuel.

RECOMMENDATION OF CANDIDATE SITES FOR SITE CHARACTERIZATION

42 USC 10132. SEC. 112. (a) Guidelines.-Not later than 180 days afterr the date

of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary, following consultation

with the Council on Environmental Quality , the Administrator of

the Environmental Protection Agency, the Director of the Geological Survey, and interested Governors, and the concurrence of the

Commission shall issue general guidelines for the recommendation

of sites for repositories. Such

be 

Guidelines shall specify detailed geologic considerations that shall primary criteria for the selection

of sites in various geologic media. Such guidelines shall specify

factors that qualifiy or disqualify any site from development as a

repository, including factors pertaining to the location of valuable

natural resources, hydrology, geophysics, seismic activity, and

atomic energy defense activities, proximity to water supplies, proximity to populations, the effect u n the rights of users of water, and

W

proximity to components of the National Park System, the National

ildlife Refuge System, the National Wild and Scenic Rivers

System, the National Wilderness Preservation System, or National

Forest Lands. Such Guidelines shall take into consideration the

proximity to sites were high-level radioactive waste and spent

nuclear Fuel is generated or temporarily stored and the transportation and safety factors involved in moving such waste to a repository. Such guidelines shall specify population factors that will disqualify any site from development as a repository if any surface

facility of such repository would be located (1) in a highly populated

area; or (2) adjacent to an area 1 mile by 1 mile having a population

of not less than 1,000 individuals. Such guidelines also shall require

the Secretary to consider the cost and impact of transporting to the

repository site the solidified high-level radioactive waste and spent

fuel to be disposed of in the repository and the advantages of

regional distribution in the siting of repositories. Such guidelines

shall require the Secretary to consider the various geologic media in

which sites for repositories may be located an , to the extent

practicable, to recommend sites in different geologic media. The

Secretary shall use guidelines established under this subsection in

considering candidate sites for recommendation under subsection

(b). The Secretary may revise such guidelines from time to time,

consistent with the provisions of this subsection.

(b) R=MMENDATION BY SBCRETARY TO THE PRESIDENT.-(1)(A)

Following the issuance of guidelines under subsection (a) and consultation with the Governors of aihcted States, the Secretary shall

nominate at least 5 sites that he determines suitable for site characterization for selection of the first repository sit.&.

Recommend a(B) Su-uent to such nomination, the Secretary shall recom- tion date. mend to the President 3 of the nominated sites not later than

Janua 1, 1985 for characterization as candidate sites.

(C) %t later than July 1, 1989, the Secretary shall nominate 5

sites, which shall include at least 3 additional sites not nominated

under subparagraph (A), and recommend by such date to the President from such 5 nominated sites 3 candidate sites the Secretary

determines suitable for site characterization for selection of the

second repository. The Secretary may not nominate any site previ-
272 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

PUBLIC LAW 97-425—JAN. 7, 1983 96 STAT. 2209

ously nominated under subparagraph (A), that was not recommended as a candidate site under subparagraph (B).

(D) Such recommendations under subparagraphs (B) and (C) shall

be consistent with the provisions of section 305.

(E) Each nomination of a site under this subsection shall

accompamed by an environmental assessment, which shall include a

detailed statement of the basis for such recommendation and of the

probable impacts of the site characterization activities planned for

such site, and a discussion of alternative activities relating to site

characterization that may be undertaken to avoid such impacts.

Such environmental assessment shall include—

(i) an evaluation by the Secretary as to whether such site is

suitable for site characterization under the guidelines established under subsection (a);

(ii) an evaluation by the Secretary as to whether such site is

suitable for development as a repository under each such guideline that does not reuire site characterization as a prerequisite

for application of suc guideline;

(iii an evaluation by the Secretary of the effects of the site )

characterization activities at such site on the public health and

safety and the environment;

(iv) a reasonable comparative evaluation by the Secretary of

such site with other sites and locations that have been considered;

(v) a descrip ignd of the decision process by which such site was

recommend

(vi) an assessment of the regional and local impacts of locating the proposed repos itory at such site.

(F)(i) The issuance o any environmental assessment under this

paragraph shall be considered to be a final agency action subject to

judicial review in accordance with the provisions of chapter 7 of title

5, United States Code, and section 119. Such judicial review shall be

limited to the sufficiency of such environmental assessment with

respect to the items described in clauses (i) through (vi) of subparagra h (E).

(t) Each environmental assessment prepared under this paragraph shall be made available to the public.

(H) Before nominatin a site, the Secretary shall notify the Governor and legislature oft e State in which such site is located, or the #i

governing body of the affected Indian tribe where such site is

located, as the case may be, of such nomination and the basis for

such nomination.

(2 Before nominating any site the Secretary shall hold public

hearings in the vicinity of such site to inform the residents of the

area in which such site is located of the proposed nomination of such

site and to receive their comments. At such hearings, the Secretary

shall also solicit and receive an recommendations of such residents

with respect to issues that shou d be addressed in the environmental r

assessment described in paragraph (1) and the site characterization

plan described in section l13(b)(l).

(3) In evaluating the sites nominated under this section prior to

any decision to recommend a site as a candidate site, the Secretary

shall use available geophysical, geologic, geochemical and hydrolo-

“c, and other information and shall not conduct any preliminary

rings or excavations at a site unless (i) such preliminary boring or

excavation activities were in progress upon the date of enactment of

this Act or (ii) the Secretary certifies that such available informaPost, p. 2262.

Environmental

assessment.

Judicial review.

5 USC 701 et seq

Public

availability.

Hearings.
App. C—The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 . 273

96 STAT. 2210 PUBLIC LAW 97-425—JAN. 7, 1983

tion from other sources, in the absence of preliminary borings or

excavations, will not be adequate to satisfy applicable requirements

of this Act or any other law: Provided, That preliminary borings or

expectations under this section shall not exceed a diameter of 6

.

(c) PRESIDENTIAL REVIEW OF RECOMMENDED CANDIDATE SITES.-(1)

The President shall review each candidate site recommendation

Decision made by the Secretary under subsection (b). Not later than 60 days

transmittal or after the submission by the Secretary of a recommendation of a notification. candidate site, the President, in his discretion, may either approve

or disapprove such candidate site, and shall transmit any such

decision to the Secretary and to either the Governor and legislature

of the State in which such candidate site is located, or the governing

body of the affected Indian tribe where such candidate site is

located, as the case may be. If, during such 60-day period, the

President fails to approve or disapprove such candidate site, or fails

to invoke his authority under par aph (2) to delay his decision,

such candidate site shall be considered to be approved, and the

Secretary shall notif such Governor and legislature, or governing

body of the affcted ndian tribe, of the approval of such candidate Ir

site by reason of the inaction of the President.

(2) The President ma delay for not more than 6 months his

decision under paragrap (1) to approve or disapprove a candidate i

site, upon determining that the information provided with the

recommendation of the Secretary is insufficient to permit a decision

within the 60-day period referred to in paragraph (l). The President

may invoke his authority under this paragraph by submitting written notice to the Congress, within such 60day period, of his intent to

invoke such authority. If the President invokes such authority, but

fails to approve or disapprove the candidate site involved by the end

of such 6-month period, such candidate site shall be considered to be

approved, and the Secretary shall notify such Governor and legislature, or governing body of the affected Indian tribe, of the approval i

of such candidate site by reason of the inaction of the President.

(d). Conrtinuation OF CANDIDATE SITE ~REENING.—After the

requmed recommendation of candidate sites under subsection (b),

the Secretary

x

may continue, as he determines necessary, to identify

and study ot er sites to determine their suitability for recommendation for site characterization, in accordance with the procedures

described in this section.

(e) PRELIMINARY Activities~.—Except as otherwise provided in this

section, each activity of the President or the Secretary under this

section shall be considered to be a preliminary decisionmaking

activity. No such activity shall require the preparation of an environmental impact statement under section 102(2)(C) of the National

Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (42 U.S.C. 4332(2XC)), or to require

an environmental review under subparagraph (E) or (F) of section

1022) of such Act.

(f) TIMELY Sit CHARACTERI zation-Nothing in this section may

be construed as prohibiting the Secretary from continuing ongoing

or presently planned site characterization at any site on Department of Energy land for which the location of the principal borehole

has been approved b the Secretary by August 1, 1982, except that

(1) the environment assessment described in subsection (b)(l) shall 1’

be prepared and made available to the ublic before proceeding to

sink shafts at any such site; and (2) the cretary shall not continue &

site characterization at any such site unless such site is among the
274 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

PUBLIC LAW 97-425-JAN. 7, 1983 96 STAT. 2211

candidate sites recommended b the Secretary under the first sentence of subsection (b) for site c Chacterization and approved by the

President under subsection (c); and (3) the Secretary shall conduct Hearings.

public hearings under l13(b)(2) and comply with requirements under

section 117 of this Act within one year of the date of enactment.

SITE CHARACTERIZATION

SEC. 113. (a) IN general—The Secretary shall carry out, in 42 UX 10133.

accordance with the provisions of this section, appropriate site

characterization activities beginning with the candidate sites that

have been a ● proved under section 112 and are located in various

geologic m The Secretary shall consider fully the comments

received under subsection (M(2) and section l12(b)(2) and shall, to the

maximum extent practicable and in consultation with the Governor

of the State involved or the governing body of the affected Indian

tribe involved, conduct site characterization activities in a manner

that minimizes any significant adverse environmental impacts identified in such comments or in the environmental assessment submib

ted under subsection (b)(l).

(b) C OMMISSION AND STATES.-(1) Before proceeding to sink shafts ti,

at any candidate site, the Secretary shall submit for such candidate

site to the Commission and to either the Governor and legislature of

the State in which such candidate site is located, or the governing

body of the affected Indian tribe on whose reservation such candidate site is located, as the case may be, for their review and

comment—

(A) a general plan for site characterization activities to be

conducted at such candidate site, which plan shall include

 a description of such candidate sib;

(M) a descriptlon of such site characterization a~ititi=,

incluchng the following the extant of planned excavations,

plans for any onsite testing with radioactive or nonradioactive material, plans for an investigation activities that

ma affect the capability o such candidate site to isolate

high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel, and

plans to control any adverse, safety-related impacts from

such site characterization activities;

(iii) Plans for the decontamination and decommissioning

of such candidate site, and for the mitigation of any signifi

cant adverse environmental impacts caused by site characterization activities if it is determined unsuitable for application for a construction authorization for a repository;

(iv) criteria to be used to determine the suitability of such

candidate site for the location of a repository, developed

pursuant to section 112(a); and

(v) any other information required by the Commission;

(B) a descricription of the possible form or packaging for the

high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel to be emplaced in such repository ,

s

a description, to the extent practicable, of the relationship between such waste form or packaging

and the geologic medium of such site, and a description of the

activities being conducted by the Secretary with respect to such

possible waste form or packaging or such relationship; and

(C) a conceptual repository design that takes into account

likely site-specific requirement.
App. C—The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 275

96 STAT. 2212 PUBLIC LAW 97-425-JAN. 7, 1983

Report.

Public (2) Before preceding to sink shafts at any candidate site, the availability;

hearings. Secretary shall (A) make available to the public the site characterization plan described in paragraph (l); and 03) hold public hearings

in the vicinity of such candidate site to inform the residents of the

area in which such candidate site is located of such plan, and to

receive their comments.

(3)0 During the conduct of site characterization activities at

Candidate site, the Secretary shall report not less than once every 6

months to the Commission and to either the Governor and legislature of the State in which such candidate site is located, or the

governing body of the affected Indian tribe where such candidate

site is located, as the case may be, on the nature and extent of such

activities and the information developed from such activities.

(c) Restrictions The Secretary may conduct at any candidate

site only such site characterization activities as the Secretary considers necessary to provide the data required for evaluation of the

suitability of such candidate site for an application to be submitted

to the Commission for a construction authorization for a repository

at such candidate site, and for compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (42 U.S.C. 4321 et seq.).

(2) In conducting site characterization activities—

(A) the secretary may not use any radioactive material at a

candidate site unless the Commission concurs that such use is

necessary to provide data for the preparation of the required

environmental reports and an application for a construction

authorization for a repository at such candidate site; and

(B) if any radioactive material is used at a candidate site(-

i) the Secretary shall use the minimum quantity necessary to determine the suitability of such candidate site for a

repository, but in no event more than the curie equivalent

of 10 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel; and

(ii) such radioactive material shall be fully retrievable.

Notification of (3) If siti ckarachter~tion activities are terminated at a candidate

site terrninatlon” site for any reason, the Secretary shall (A) notify the Congress, the

Governors and legislatures of all States in which candidate sites are

located, and the governing bodies of all fiiwted Indian tribes where

candidate sites are located, of such termination and the reasons for

such termination; and (B) remove any high-level radioactive waste,

spent nuclear fuel, or other radioactive materials at or in such

candidate site as promptly as practicable.

(4) If a site is determined to be unsuitable for application for a

construction authorization for a repository, the Secretary shall take

reasonable and necessary steps to reclaim the site and to mitigate

any significant adverse environmental impacts caused by site characterization activities.

(d) PRELIMINARY ACTIVITIES.—Each activity of the Secretary under

this section that is in compliance with the provisions of subsection

(c) shall be considered a preliminary decisionmaking activity. No

such activity shall require the preparation of an environmental

impact statement under section 102(2)(C) of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (42 U.S.C. 4332(2)(C)), or to require any

environmental review under subparagraph (E) or (F) of section

102(2) of such Act.
276 Managing the Nation’s Commercial H/gh-Leve/ Radioactive Waste

PUBLIC LAW 97-425—JAN. 7, 1983 96 STAT. 2213

SITE APPROVAL AND CONSTRUCTION AUTHORIZATION

SEC. 114. (a) HEARINGS AND PRESIDENTIAL RECOMMENDATION .-(1) 42~ 10134.

The Secretary shall hold public hearings in the vicinity of each site

under consideration for recommendation to the President under this

paragraph as a site for the development of a repository, for the

r

purposes of informing the residents of the area in which such site is

ocated of such consideration and receiving their comments regarding the possible recommendation of such site. If, upon completion of

such hearings and completion of site characterization activities at

not less than 3 candidate sites for the first proposed repository, or

from all of the characterized sites for the development of subsequent

repositories, under section 113, the Secretary decides to recommend

approval of such site to the President, the Secretary shall notify the

Governor and legislature of the State in which such site is located,

or the governing body of the affected Indian tribe where such site is

located, as the case may be, of such decision. No sooner than the

expiration of the 30day

r

riod following such notification, the

Secretary shall submit to t e President a recommendation that the

President approve such site for the development of a repository. Any

such recommendation by the Secretary shall be based on the record

of information developed by the Secretary under section 113 and

this section, including the information described in subparagraph

(A) through subparagraph (G). In making site recommendations and

approvals subsequent to the first site recommendation, the Secretary and the President, respectively, shall also consider the need for

regional distribution of repositories and the need to minimize, to the

extent practicable, the impacts and cost of transyrtin? ‘ ~

nt 

‘

u e l

and sohdified high-level radioactive waste. Toget er with any rec- public . .

ommendation of a site under this paragraph, the Secretary shall avallablllt Y.

make available to the public, and submit to the President, a comprehensive statement of the basis of such recommendation, including

the following:

(A) a description of the proposed repository, including preliminary engineering specifications for the facility;

(B) a description of the waste form or packaging proposed for

use at such repository, and an explanation of the relationship

between such waste form or packaging and the geologic medium

of such site;

(C) a discussion of data, obtained in site characterization

activities, relating to the safety of such site;

(D) a final environmental impact statement prepared pursuant to subsection (f) and the National Environmental Policy Act

of 1969 (42 U.S.C. 4321 et seq.), including an analysis of the

consideration given by the Secretary to not less than 3 candidate sites for the first proposed respositor or to all of the

characterized sites for the development of su equent repositor- L

ies, with respect to which site characterization is completed

under section 113, together with comments made concerning

such environmental impact statement by the Secretary of the

Interior, the Council on Environmental Quality, the Administrator, and the Commission, except that any such environmental impact statement concerning the first repository to be developed under this Act shall not be required to consider the need

for a repository or the alternatives to geologic disposal;

(E) preliminary comments of the Commission concerning the

extent to which the atdepth site characterization analysis and
App. C—The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 ● 277

96 STAT. 2214 PUBLIC LAW 97-425—JAN. 7, 1983

Deadlines,

extensions.

the waste form proposal for such site seem to be sufficient for

inclusion in any application to be submitted by the Secretary

for licensing of suc site as a repository ; E

(F) the views and comments of the Governor and legislature of

any State, or the governing body of any affected Indian tribe, as

determined by the Secretary, together with the response of the

Secretary to such-views;

(G) such other reformation as the Secretary considers appropriate; and

(H) any impact report submitted under section 116(cM2XB) by

the State in which such site is located, or under section

l18(bX3)(B) by the affected Indian tribe where such site is

located, as the case maybe.

Submittal to

Congress. (2)(A) Not later than March 31, 1987, the President shall submit to

the Congress a recommendation of one site from the three sites

initially characterized that the President considers qualified for

application for a construction authorization for a repository. Not

later than March 31, 1990, the President shall submit to the Congress a recommendation of a second site from any sites already

characterized that the President considers qualified for a construction authorization for a second repository . The President shall

submit with such recommendation a copy o the report for such site

prepared by the Secretary under paragraph (l). After submission of

the second such recommendation, the President may submit to the

Congress recommendations for other sites, in accorance with the

provisions of this subtitle.

(B) ‘I’he President ma extend the deadlines described in subparagraph (A) by not more t an 12 months if, before March 31, 1986, for i

the first site, and March 31, 1989, for the second site, (i) the

President determines that such extension is necessary; and (ii)

transmits to the Congress a report setting forth the reasons for such

extension.

Submittal (3) If approval of any such site recommendation does not take

Congress. effect as a result of a disapproval by the Governor or legislature of a

State under section 116 or the governing body of an affected Indian

tribe under section 118, the President s all submit to the Congress, h

not later than ear after the disapproval of such recommendation,

a recommendation of another site for the first or subsequent

reposito .

(4)(A) %e President may not recommend the approval of any site

under this subsection unless the Secreta has recommended to the

President under paragraph (1) approval o such site and has submitted to the President a report for such site as required under such

paragraph.

(B) NO recommendation of a site by the President under this

subsection shall require the preparation of an environmental impact

statement under section 102(2XC) of the National Environmental

Policy Act of 1969 (42 U.S.C. 4332(2)(C)), or to r quire any environmental review under subparagraph (E) or (F) o section 102(2) of

such Act.

(b) SUBMISSION OF APPLICATION.—If the President recommends to

the Congress a site for a repository under subsection (a) and the site

designation is permitted to take effect under section 115, the Secre

tary shall submit to the Commission an application for a construction authorization for a repository at such site not later than 90 days

after the date on which the recommendation of the site designation

is effective under such section and shall provide to the Governor and
—

278 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

PUBLIC LAW 97-425-JAN. 7, 1983 96 STAT. 2215

legislature of the State in which such site is located, or the governing body of the affected Indian tribe where such site is located, as

the case may be, a copy of such application.

(c) Status report ON APPLICATION.-NOt later than r

the date on which an application for a construction authorization is

submitted under subsection (b), and annually thereafter until the

date on which such authorization is granted, the Commission shall

submit a report to the Congress describin the proceedings undertaken through the date of such report wit regard to such application, including a description of—

(1) any major unresolved safet issues, and the explanation of

the Secretary

T

with respect to esign and operation plans for d

resolving Suc issues;

(2) any matters of contention regarding such application; and

(3) my Commission actgions regarding the granting or denial

of such authorization.

cation for a construction authorization for all or part of a repository ~PPliatiO~

in accordance with the laws applicable to such applications, except

that the Commission shall issue a final decision approving or disapproving the issuance of a construction authorization not later

than—

(1) Jan 1, 1989, for the first such application, and January 1, 1992, or the second such application; or

(2) the expiration of 3 years after the date of the submission of

such application, except that the Commission may extend such

deadline b not more than 12 months if, not less than 30 days

before suc deadline, the Commission complies with the report- h i

ing requirements established in subsection (eX2);

whichever occurs later. The Commission decision approving the first

such aplication shall prohibit the emacement in the first repository o a quantity of spent fuel contairun in excess of 70,000 metric

tons of heavy metal or a quantity of soli “fied high-level radioactive t

waste resulting from the reprocessing of such a quantity of spent

fuel until such time as a second repository is in operation. In the

event that a monitored retrievable storage facility, approved pursuant to subtitle C of this Act, shall be located, or is planned to be

located, within 50 miles of the first repository, then the Commission

decision approving the first such application shall prohibit the

em placement of a quantity of spent uel containing m excess of f

70,k0 metric tons of heavy metal or a quantity of solidified highlevel radioactive waste resulting fmm the reprocessing of spent fuel

in both the repository and monitored retrievable storage facility

until such time as a second repository is in operation.

(e) ~oJ- Project decision schedule(l) The Secretary shall re ea~

and u~te, as approprmte, in coo ration with all affected

3

Fed’

agencx~ a project decision sched e that portrays the optimum way

to attain the operation of the repoeito involved, within the time

periods specified in this subtitle. Suc schedule shall include a Y

description of objectives and a sequence of deadlines for all Federal

agencms required to take action, including an identification of the

activities in which a delay in the start, or completion, of such

activities will cause a delay in beginning repository operation.

(2) Any Federal agency that determines that it cannot comply ~~tisubrnittal

with any deadline in the project decision schedule, or fails to so ~~w~

~ry ‘d

comply, shall submit to the Secretary and to the Congress a written

report explaining the reason for its failure or expected failure to
App. C—The Nuclear Waste Po/icy Act of 1982 279

96 STAT. 2216 PUBLIC LAW 97-425—JAN. 7, 1983

Report response,

filing with

Congress.

42 USC! 4321 et

seq.

42 USC 5841.

meet such deadline, the reason why such agency could not reach an

agreement with the Secretary, the estimated time for completion of

the activity or activities involved, the associated effect on its other

deadlines in the project decision schedule, and any recommendations it may have or actions it intends to take regarding any

improvements in its operation or organization, or changes to its

statutory directives or authority, so that it will be able to mitigate

the delay involved. The Secretar , within 30 days after receiving

any such report, shall file with t e Congress his response to such h

report, including the reasons why the Secretary cou d not amend 1’

the reject decision schedule to accommodate the Federal agency

invo veal. f

(f)l ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT. —Any recommendation

made b the Secretary under this section shall be considered a

major ederal action significantly affcting the uality of the f

human environment for urposes of the National nvironmental i

Policy Act of 1969 (42 U.~.C. 4321 et seq.). A final environmental

impact statement prepared by the Secretary under such Act shall

accompany any recommendation to the President to approve a site

for a repository. With respect to the re uirements imposed by the

National Environmental Policy Act of 1 69 (42 U.S.C. 4321 et seq.), 8

compliance with the procedures and requirements of this Act shall

be deemed adequate consideration of the need for a repository, the

time of the initial availability of a repository, and all alternatives to

the isolation of high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel

in a repository. For purposes of complying with the requirements of

the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (42 U.S.C. 1321 et

seq.) and this section, the Secretary shall consider as alternate sites

for the first repository to be developed under this subtitle 3 candidate sites with respect to which (1) site characterization has been

completed under section 113; and (2) the Secretary has made a

prehminary determination, that such sites are suitable for develop

ment as repositories consistent with the guidelines promulgated

under section 112(a). The Secretary shall consider as alternative

itories at least three of the remaining sites

by January 1, 1985, and by July 1,

1989, ursuant to section 112 ) and approved by the President for

site c aracterization pursuant to section 112(c) for which (1) site {

characterization has been completed under section 113; and (2) the

Secretary has made a preliminary determination that such sites are

suitable for development as repositories consistent with the guidelines promulgated under section l12(a). Any environmental impact

statement repared in connection with a repository proposed to be

construeJ by the Secretary under this subtitle shall, to the extent

practicable, be adopted by the Commission in connection with the

issuance by the Commission of a construction authorization and

license for such repository. To the extent such statement is adopted

by the Commission, such adoption shall be deemed to also satisfy the

responsibilities of the Comm~ion under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (42 U.S.C. 4321 et seq.) and no further

consideration shall be required, except that nothing in this subsection shall affect any independent responsibilities of the Commission

to protect the public health and safety under the Atomic Energy Act

of 1954 (42 U.S.C. 2011 et seq.). Nothing in this Act shall be construed to amend or otherwise detract from the licensing requirements of the Nucler Regulatory Commission as established in title 11

of the Enera Reorganization Act of - “ 1974 (Public Law 93-438). In .— - - ——- —— - - ---, . . . .
280 c Managing the Nation’s Commercia/ High-Level Radioactive Waste

PUBLIC LAW 97-425—JAN. 7, 1983 96 STAT. 2217

any such statement pre red with res

r F

to the first repository to

be constructed under t is subtitle, t e need for a m itory or

nongeologic alternatives to the site of such repository r6 all not be

considered.

REVIEW OF REPOSITORY SITE SELECTION

SEC. 115. (a) hmwmoN.-For purposes of this section, the term AZ uw 10135.

“resolution of repository siting approval” means a joint resolution of

the Congress, the matter after the resolvin clause of which is as

follows: “That there hereb is approved t e site at . . . . . . . . . . for a t

3

re itory, with respect to w ich a notice of disapproval was i submitby . . . . . . . . . . on . . . . . . . . . . . . . The first blank space m such resolution

shall be filled with the name of the geographic location of the

proposed site of the re~ito

T

to which such resolution pertains; the

second blank s ce m suc

r

resolution shall be filled with the

designation of t e State Governor and le@slature or Indian tribe

governing body submitting the notice of dmapproval to which such

resolution pertains; and the last blank space in such resolution shall

be filled with the date of such submission.

(b) STATE OR INDIAN ‘htIBE PETITIONS. —The designation of a site as

suitable for application for a construction authorization for a repository shall be effective at the end of the 60da period beginning on

the date that the President recommends suc1 site to the Con ess

under section 114, unless the Governor and legislature of the rtate

in which such site is located, or the governing body of an Indian

tribe on whose reservation such site is located, as the case may be,

has submitted to the Congress a notice of disapproval under section

116 or 118. If any such notice of disa proval has been submitted, the Notice of

designation of such site shall not L eff~tive except as provided $~~~;~~a~

under subsection (c).

(c) wNCRESslOIUAL REVIEW OF pETITIONS.— If any notice of disap- Cmgreaa.

proval of a reposito~ site designation has been submitted to the

Congress under Section 116 or 118 after a recommendation for

approval of such site is made by the President under section 114,

such site shall be disapproved unless, during the first period of 90

calendar days of continuous session of the Congress after the date of

the receipt by the Con@ess of such notice of disap roval, the

Congress passes a resolution of reposito siting ap rova in Y accordance with this subsection approving suc T site, an such resolution $

thereafter becomes law.

(d) PROCEDURES APPLICABLE TO THE SENATE.-(1) The provisions of

this subsection are enacted by the Con —

(A) as an exercise of the rulemarin~power of the Senate, and

as such they are deemed a part of the rules of the Senate, but

applicable only with respect to the procedure to be followed

in the Senate in the case of resolutions of repository siting

approval, and such provisions supersede other rules of the

Senate only to the extent that they are inconsistent with such

other rules; and

(B) with full recognition of the constitutional right of the

Senate to change the rules (so far as relating to the procedure of

the Senate) at any time, in the same manner and to the same

extent as in the case of any other rule of the Senate.

(2)(A) Not later than the first day of session following the day on ~~~~k~on of

which any notice of disapproval of a repository site selection is

submitted to the Congress under section 116 or 118, a resolution of
App. C—The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 ● 281

96 STAT. 2218 PUBLIC LAW 97-425-JAN. 7, 1983

repository siting approval shall be introduced (by request) in the

Senate by the chairman of the committee to which such notice of

disapproval is referred, or by a Member or Members of the Senate

designated by such chairman.

Committee (B Upon introduction, a resolution of repository siting approval recommendations. shall be referred to the appropriate committee or committees of the

Senate by the President of the Senate, and all such resolutions with

respect to the same repository site shall be referred to the same

committee or committees. Upon the expiration of 60 calendar days

of continuous session after the introduction of the first resolution of

repository siting approval with respect to any site, each committee

to which such resolution was referred shall make its recommendations to the Senate.

Discharge of (3) If anycommittee to which is referred a resolution of siting committee. approval introduced under paragraph (2)(A), or, in the absence of

such a resolution, any other resolution of siting approval introduced

with respect to the site involved, has not reported such resolution at

the end of 60 days of continuous session of Congress after introduction of such resolution, such committee shall be deemed to be

discharged from further consideration of such resolution, and such

resolution shall be placed on the appropriate calendar of the Senate.

(4)(A) When each committee to which a resolution of siting ap

proval has been referred has reported, or has been deemed to be

discharged from further consideration of, a resolution described in

paragraph (3), it shall at an time thereafter be in order (even

though a previous motion to the same effbct has been disagreed to) i

for an Member of the Senate to move to proceed to the consideration o such resolution. Such motion shall be highly privileged and f

shall not be debatable. Such motion shall not be subject to amendment, to a motion to postpone, or to a motion to proceed to the

consideration of other business. A motion to reconsider the vote by

which such motion is to or disagreed to shall not be in order.

If a motion tn p to the consideration of such resolution is

_ @ such resolution shall remain the unfinished business of

the Senate until disposed of.

(B) Debate on a resolution of siting approval, and on all debatable

motions and appeals in connection with such resolution, shall be

limited to not more than 10 hours, which shall be divided equally

between Members favoring and Members opposing such resolution.

A motion further to limit debate shall be in order and shall not be

debatable. Such motion shall not be subject to amendment, to a

motion to postpone, or to a motion to proceed to the consideration of

other business, and a motion to recommit such resolution shall not

be in order. A motion to reconsider the vote by which such resolution is agreed to or disagreed to shall not be in order.

(C) Immediately following the conclusion of the debate on a

resolution of siting approval, and a single uorum till at the

conclusion of such debate if requested in acco ance with the rules J

of the Senate, the vote on final approval of such resolution shall

occur.

(D) Appeals fmm the decisions of the Chair relating to the application of the rules of the Senate to the procedure relating to a

resolution of siting approval shall be decided without debate.

(5) If the Senate receives from the House a resolution of repository

siting approval with respect to any site, then the following procedure shall apply:

Appeals.
282 “ Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

PUBLIC LAW 97-425—JAN. 7, 1983 96 STAT. 2219

(A) The resolution of the House with respect to such site shall

not be referred to a committee.

(B) With respect to the resolution of the Senate with respect

to such site—

(i) the procedure with respect to that or other resolutions

of the Senate with respect to such site shall be the same as

if no resolution from the House with respect to such site

had been received; but

(ii) on any vote on final passage of a resolution of the

Senate with respect to suc site, a resolution from the [

House with respect to such site where the text is identical

shall be automatically substituted for the resolution of the

Senate.

(e) PROCEDURES APPLICABLE ~ THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES .—

(1) The provisions of this section are enacted by the Congress—

(A) as an exercise of the rulemaking power of the House of

Representatives, and as such the are deemed a part of the

rules of the House, but ap Iicab e only with res f R

t to the

procedure to be followed in t e House in the case o resolutions

of repository siting approval, and such provisions supersede

other rules of the House onl to the extent that they are

inconsistent with such other ru es; and r

(B) with full recognition of the constitutional right of the

House to change the rules (so far as relating to the procedure of

the House) at any time, in the same manner and to the same

extent as in the case of any other rule of the House.

(2) Resolutions of reposito

3

siting a proval shall u n introduction, be immediately referr by the peaker of the ouse to the 8 E

appropriate committee or committees of the House. Any such resolution received from the Senate shall be held at the Speaker’s table.

(3) Upon the expiration of 60 days of continuous session after the ~i::::~of

introduction of the first resolution of repository siting approval with

respect to an site, each committee to which such resolution was

referred shal be discharged from further consideration of such r

resolution, and such resolution shall be referred to the appropriate

calendar, unless such resolution or an identical resolution was

previousl reported by each committee to which it was referred.

(4) It skl be in order for the Speaker to recognize a Member Resolution,

favoring a resolution to call up a resolution of repository siting ~~~s$~&/~on

approval after it has been on the appropriate calendar for 5 legislative da .

z

When an such resolution is called up, the House shall

proc to its imm iate consideration and the Speaker shall recog- d

nize the Member calling up such resolution and a Member opposed

to such resolution for 2 hours of debate in the House, to be equally

divided and controlled by such Members. When such time has

expired, the previous question shall be considered as ordered on the

resolution to adoption without in@=vening motion. No amendment

to any such resolution shall be in order, nor shall it be in order to

move to reconsider the vote by which such resolution is agreed to or

disagreed to.

(5) If the House receives from the Senate a resolution of repository

siting ap roval with respect to any site, then the following procedure shal apply: Y

(A) The resolution of the Senate with respect to such site shall

not be referred to a committee.

su~~)s~~ resped to the resolution of the House with respect to
App. C—The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 ● 283

96 STAT. 2220 PUBLIC LAW 97-425-JAN. 7, 1983

42 USC 10136.

“Potentially

acceptable site.”

Notice of

disapproval,

submittal to

Congress.

(i) the procedure with respect to that or other resolutions

of the House with respect to such site shall be the same as if

no resolution from the Senate with respect to such site had

been received; but

(ii) on any vote on final assage of a resolution of the

House with respect to suci site, a resolution from the

Senate with respect to such site where the text is identical

shall be automatically substituted for the resolution of the

House.

(f) COMPUTATION OF DAYS.— For purposes of this section—

(1) continuity of session of Congress is broken only by an

adjournment sine die; and

(2) the days on which either House is not in session because Of

an ad ournment of more than 3 days to a day certain are

exclu ed in the computation of the d 90day period referred to in

subsection (c) and the 60day period referred to in subsections (d)

and (e).

@ INFOmT1oN PROVIDED TO ~NGRESS.-1n considering any

notice of disapproval submitted to the Congress under section 116 or

118, the Congress may obtain any comments of the (%mmission with

respect to such notice of disap roval. The provision of such comments by the Commission sh 1 not be construed as binding the J

Commission with respect to any licensing or authorization action

concerning the repository involved.

PARTICIPATION OF STATES

SEC. 116. (a) NOTIFICATION OF STATES AND AFFECTED TRIBEs.—The

Secretary shall identify the States with one or more potentially

acceptable sites for a repository within 90 da s after the date of

enactment of this Act. Within 90 days of suci identification, the

Secretary shall notify the Governor, the State legislature, and the

tribal council of any aff~ted Indian tribe in any State of the

potentially acceptable sites within such State. For the purposes of

this title, the term “potentially acceptable site” means any site at

which, after geologic studies and field mapping but before detailed

geologic data gathering, the Department undertakes preliminary

drillin and eophysical testing for the definition of site location.

(b) #TATE ANTICIPATION IN $ REPOSITORY SITING DECISIONS.-(1)

Unless othemvke

Y

rovided b State law, the Governor or legislature

of each State shal have aut ority to submit a notice of disapproval i

to the (kmgress under paragraph (2). In any case in which State law

provides for submission of any such notice of disapproval by any

other person or entit ,

1

any reference in this subtitle to the Governor

or legdature of suc State shall be considered to refer instead to

such other person or entity.

(2) Upon the submission by the President to the Congress of a

recommendation of a site for a repository, the Governor or legislature of the State in which such site is located may disapprove the

site designation and submit to the Cangress a notice of disapproval.

Such Governor or legislature may submit such a notice of disap

proval to the Congress not later than the 60 days after the date that

the President recommends such site to the Congress under section

114. A notice of disapproval shall be considered to be submitted to the

Congress on the date of the transmittal of such notice of disapproval

P

to the S er of the House and the President pro tempore of the

Senate. uch notice of disapproval shall be accompanied by a state
284 ● Manag/ng the Nation’s Commercial High-Levei Radioactive Waste

PUBLIC LAW 97-425-JAN. 7, 1983 96 STAT. 2221

ment of reasons explaining why such Governor or legislature disap

proved the recommended repomtory site invalved.

(3) The authority of the hvernor or legislature of each State

under this subsection shall not be applicable with respect to any site

located on a reservation.

(c) IMANCIAL ASSISTANCE.-(1)(A) The Secretary shall make Gran@.

grants to each State notified under subjection (a) for the purpose of

participating in activities required by sections 116 and 117 or authorized by written agreement entered into pursuant to subsection

117(c). Any salary or travel expense that would ordinarily be incurred by such State, or by any Iitical subdivision of such State,

ma not be considered eligible or funding under this paragraph. r

&) The Secretary shall make grants to each State in which a

candidate sita for a repository is a proved under section 112(c). Such

grants maybe made to each such 8tab only for purposes of enabling

such Stata-

(i) to review activities taken under this subtitle with respect

to such site for pu

r

of determining any potential economic,

social, public heal and safety, and environmental impacta of

such repository on the State and its residents;

(ii) to develop a request for impact assistance under paragraph (2k

(W be-e in any monitoring, testing, or evaluation activities with respect to site characterization programs with regard

to such site;

(iv) to provide information to its residents regarding an

activities of such State, the Secretary, or the Commission witz

respect to such site; and

(v) ~ Wu@t information from, and make comments ad

recommendations to, the Secretary regarding any activities

taken under this subtitle with respect to such site.

(C) An salary or travel expense that would ordinarily be incurred

by such 8tate, or by any political subdivision of such State, may not

be considered eligible for funding under this paragraph.

(2)(A) The Secretary shall provide financial and technical assist- ~;;;:u~t~~~

~~”~~&sZ~[~%~%ZZ~oYhma;t~h&t;Z%~l~t “

of a repository. Such assistance shall be designed to mitigate the

impact on such State of the development of such repository. Such

assistance to such State shall commence within 6 months following

the granting by the Commission of a construction authorization for

such repository and following the initiation of construction activities

at such site.

(B) Any State desiring assistance under this paragraph shall ~~POOti

prepare and submit to the Secretary a report on any economic,

social, public health and safety, and environmental impacts that are

likely as a result of the development of a repository at a site in such

State. Such report shall be submitted to the Secretary following the

completion of site characterization activities at such site and before

the recommendation of such site to the President by the Secretary

for application for a construction authorization for a repository. As

soon as practicable following the granting of a construction authorization for such repository, the Secretary shall seek to enter into a

binding agreement with the State involved settin forth the amount

of assistance to be provided to such State under t “s paragraph and L

the procedures to be followed in providing such assistance.
App. C—The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 .285

96 STAT. 2222 PUBLIC LAW 97-425—JAN. 7,.1983

(3) The Secretary shall also grant to each State and unit of eneral

local government in which a site for a repository is approv under J

section 112(c) an amount each fiscal year equal to the amount such

State and unit of general local government, respectively, would

receive were they authorized to tax site characterization activities at

such site, and the development and operation of such repository, as

such State and unit of eneral local government tax the other real

property and industdactivities occurring within such State and

unit of general local overnment. Such granta shall continue until

such time as all suc activities, development, and operation are %

terminated at such site.

Grants, (4)(A) A State may not receive an limitations. ?Wtmder

paragraph (1) after

theexp~ration of the 1- ear period o owmg—

(!) the ate on w Lch the Secretary notifies the Governor ~d

legudature of the State revolved of the termination of site

characterization activities at the candidate site involved in such

state;

(ii) the date on which the site in such State is disapproved

under section 115; or

(M) the date on which the ~ti”Ion disapproves an application for a construction authorization for a repository at such

site;

whichever occurs fix unless there is another candidate site in the

State ap roved under section 112(c) with respect to which the

actions Jescribed in clauses (i), (ii), and (iii) have not been taken.

(B) A State may not receive any fiwther assistance under paragra h (2) with respect to a site if repository construction activities at

suc site are terminated by the Secretary or if such activities are R

pe~

Funding (C) At‘nt1ye70hdb$ay the en of the year permd mu@” beginning on the eff&ctive date limitations. of any license to receive and possess for a repository in a State, no

Federal fhnds shall be made available to such State under paragraph (1) or (2), except for-

(i) such funds as maybe necessmy to support State activities

related to any other repository located in, or proposed to be

located in, such State, and for which a license to receive and

_ has not been in effect for more than 1 year; and

(II) such funds as maybe n~to support State activities

pursuant to

Y

ments or contracts for impact assistance entered into, un er paragraph (2), by such State with the Secre-

~ dur i such Z-year period.

(5) -c~ RSStice authorized in this su=ion sh~ ~

made out of amounts held in the Nuclear Waste Fund established in

Post, p. 2257. section 302.

(d) ADD~oNfi y-cAmON AND ~NSULTAITON.-whWlever the

Secretary IS reqwred under any revision of this Act to notify or

consult with the governing body o an F afhcted Indian tribe where a

site is located, the Secretary shall also noti& or consult with, as the

case may be, the Governor of the State in which such reservation is

located.

CONSULTATION WITH STATES AND AFFECTED INDIAN TRIBES

42 USC! 10137. SEC. 117. (a) PROVISION OF INFORMATION.-(1) The Secretary, the

Commission, and other agencies involved in the construction, o ration, or re lation of any as

r Y

of a repository in a State s all r

provide to t e Governor and egislature of such State, and to the
2% c Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive w(3Stt)

PUBLIC LAW 97-425—JAN. 7, 1983 96 STAT. 2223

$overning body of any tiected Indian tribe, timely and complete

reformation regarding determinations or plans made with respect to

the site characterization siting, development, design, licensing, construction, operation, regulation, or decommissioning of such reposito.

7( ) Upon written request for such information b the Governor or ~:~r~;tion

legislature of such State, or by the governing dy of any affected

Indian tribe, as the case may be, the Secretary shall provide a ‘Wwn=o

written response to such r uest within 30 da s of the receipt of

such request. Such responses all provide the in ormation requested 3 f

or, in the alternative, the reasons why the information cannot be so

provided. If the Secretary fds to so respond within such 30 days,

the Governor or legislature of such State, or the governing body of

an? affected Indian tribe, as the case may be, ma transmit a formal

written objection to such failure to respond to t e President. If the i

President or Secretary f~ to respond to such written request

within 30 days of the receipt by the President of such formal written

objection, the Secretary shall immediately sus nd all activities in

such State authorized by this subtitle, and s all not renew such r

activities until the Governor or legislature of such State, or the

governing body of any affected Indian tribe, as the case may be, has

received the written response to such written request required by

this subsection.

(b) CONSULTATION AND COOpEMTION. —In performing any study of

an area within a State for the purpose of determining the suitability

of such area for a repository pursuant to section 112(c), and in

subsequently developing and loadin any repository within such

State, the Secretary shall consult an cooperate with the Governor i

and legislature of such State and the overning bod of an affected

Indian tribe in an effort to resolve t e concerns o such tate and t [6

any affected Indian tribe regarding the ublic health and safet ,

environmental, and economic impacts o any such repository. n f T

carrying out his duties under this subtitle, the Secretary shall take

such concerns into account to the maximum extent feasible and as

specified in written agreements entered into under subsection (c).

(c) w mTEN kmxmawr.-Not later than 60 days after (1) the

approval of a site for site characterization for such a repository

under section 112(c), or (2) the written request of the State or Indian

tribe in any affected State notified under section l16(a) to the

Secretary, whichever, first occurs, the Secretary shall seek to enter

into a binding written agreement, and shall begin negotiations, with

such State aned, where appropriate, to enter into a se arate binding

_ment wth the governing body of my dfdIndian tribe,

setting forth (but not limited to) the procedures under which the

rec@rements of subsections (a) and (b), and the provisions of such

wmtten

ments=

ment, shall be carried out. Any such written agreenot affect the authority of the Commission under existing law. Each such written agreement shall, to the maximum extent

feasible, be completed not later than 6 months after such notification. If such written agreement is not completed within such period, &~oti

the Secretary shall report to the Congress in writing within 30 days

on the status of negotiations to develop such agreement and the

reasons why such agreement has not been completed. Prior to wPofi, review

submission of such report to the Congress, the Secretary shall and COrnrne”~”

transmit such m rt to the Governor of such State or the governing

body of such xacted Indian tribe, as the case may be, for their

review and comments. Such comments shall be included in such
App. C—The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 “ 287

96 STAT. 2224 PUBLIC LAW 97-425—JAN. 7, 1983

Review and

modification.

Report.

Transportation

of radioactive

waste and spent

nuclear fuel,

state

notification.

Monitoring and

bating.

report prior to submission to the Congress. Such written agreement

shall specify procedures—

(1) by which such State or governing body of an affected

Indian tribe, as the case may be, may study, determine, comment on, and make recommendations with regard to the possible public health and safety, environmental, social, and economic impacts of any such repository;

(2) by which the Secretary shal consider and respond to

comments and recommendations made by such State or governing body of an affected Indian tribe, including the period in

which the Secretary shall so respond;

(3) by which the and such State or governing body

of an affixted Indian tribe may review or modify the agreement

periodically;

(4) by which such State or governing body of an affcted

Indian tribe is to submit an impact report and request for

impact assistance under section 116(c) or section l18(b), as the

case may be;

(5) by which the Secretary shall assist such State, and the

units of general local government in the vicinity of the repository site, in resolving the offsite concerns of such State and

units of general local government, including, but not limited to,

questions of State liability arising from accidents, necessary

road upgrading and access to the site, ongoing emergency preparedness and emergency response, monitoring of transportation of high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel

through such State, conduct of baseline health studies of inhabitants in neighboring communities near the repository site and

reasonable periodic monitoring thereafter, and monitoring of

the repository site upon any decommissioning and decontamination;

(6) b which the Secretary shall consult and cooperate with

such tate on a regular, ongoing basis and provide for an 1

orderly process and timely schedule for State review and evaluation, includin identification in the agreement of ke events,

milestones, an decision points in the activities of the f retary

at the potential repository site;

(7) by which the Secretary shall notify such State prior to the

transportation of an high-level radioactive waste and spent

nuclear fuel into suc State for disposal at the repository site; i

(8) by which such State may conduct reasonable independent

monitoring and testing of activities on the repository site,

except that such monitoring and testing shall not unreasonably

interfere with or delay onsite activities;

(9) for sharing, in accordance with applicable law, of all

technical and licensing information, the utilization of available

expertise, the facilitating of permit procedures, joint project

review, and the formulation of joint surveillance and monitor-

@g arrangements to carry out applicable Federal and State

laws;

(10) for public notification of the procedures specified under

the preceding paragraphs; and

11) for resolving o Bjections of a State and affti Indian

tribes at any stage of the planning, siting, developmen~ construction, operation, or closure of such a facility within such

State through negotiation, arbitration, or other appropriate

.
.

2&3 ● Manag\ng the Nation’s Commercial H/gh-Leve/ Radioactive w&M8

PUBLIC LAW 97-425-JAN. 7, 1983 96 STAT. 2225

PARTICIPATION OF INDIAN ~

S=. 118. (a) P ARTICIPATION OF km ‘1’knms N wPosIToltY y.:::al

ha kxmoNs.-Upon the submission by the President to the

Congrem of a recommendation of a site for a repositcq located on &~mittil d

the reservation of an afkted kdh $rh?, ~e qovemmg body of 42 @?%138.

such Indian tribe may disa

the.(lmqem3 a notice,of CA?R:%R%!%%3;U:’%

:ti2.-ti%8e&ti&nE:ti%:pcA%:2=

mends -~& & .Gngrees under section 114. A notice of

disa

e

nmdemd to be submitted to the Co

the of the tmuumu“M of such notice of disapprov to rti’i~

-r of the Ho= and the President pro tern re of the Senate.

Such notice ~ ~ppmval shall be accompaniZ by a statement of

mamns why the governing body of such Indian tribe

remended reposito site involved.

AN- Aas18rANcZ-(1) TheLtary shall make grants Gran~.

to each afhcted tribe notified under section l16(a) for the urpose of

participating in activities required by section 117 or au~OriZd by

written nt entered mto

salary or= rll$dwll

-t.to section l17(c). An

expense that wo d O y be incurred by SUCi

tribe, may not be considered eligible for tiding under this paragra h.

(&A) The Secrek& shall make grants to each afhcted Indian

tribe where a can “ te site fw a m “tory is approved under

section 1lMc). Such granta may be e to each such Indian tribe

of enabling such Indian tribe-

~~seun~~ this subtitle with respect

rmmng any potential economic,

asmstance under paragmph (2k

(M) ti engage in any monitoringrkfjri or evaluation activit$suwih*dM#pect bate charade rograms with regard

.

(iv) ~ pr&vide information to the residents of its reservation

~ activities of such Indian tribe, the Secretary, or

w -on ~th respect to such site; and

(v) @ qua Lnfonnation km, and -e Commen@ ~d

recommendations to, the Secretary mgardmg any activities

taken under this subtitle with res

P

to such site.

(B) The amountpoftiundindiy rovid to any afkcted Indian tribe

under this paragra L

of the costs incurred by such khan tn ‘--LnO&%%g%%*l%:

activities described in clauses (i) thm

S** srdlnanl

O(V). of sub

or travel expense that “,R%R!&i(:;

Indmn tribe may not be considered eligible for funding under

this

(9x&?Eph”&wre@ry shall provide financial and technical assisti

an= to any affbctd Indian tribe requesting such assistance and

where there is a site with respect to which the Commission has

authorized constmctz“on of a repository. Such “ asmstance shall be

designed to mitigate the impact on such Indian tribe of the develo

ment of such repository. Such “ asmtance to such hdian tribedS 1

commence within 6 months following the granting by the Comm&
App. C—The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 . 289

96 STAT. 2226 PUBLIC LAW 97-425-JAN. 7, 1983

Report

submittal.

Granta,

limitation.

Funding.

sion of a construction authorization for such repository and following the initiation of construction activities at such site.

(B) Any affected Indian tribe. desiring assistance under this paragraph shall prepare and submit to the Secretary a report on any

economic, social, public health and safety, and environmental

impacts that are likely as a result of the development of a repository

at a site on the reservation of such Indian tribe. Such report shall be

submitted to the Secretary following the completion of site characterization activities at such site and before the recommendation of

such site to the President by the Secretary for application for a

construction authorization for a repository. As soon as practicable

following the granting of a construction authorization for such

repository, the Secretary shall seek to enter into a binding agreement with the Indian tribe involved setting forth the amount of

assistance to be provided to such Indian tribe under this paragraph

and the procedures to be followed in providing such assistance.

(4) The Secretary shall grmt to each affected Indian tribe where a

site for a repository is approved under section 112(c) an amount each

fisal year equal to the amount such Indian tribe would receive were

it authorized to tax site characterization activities at such site, and

the development and operation of such repository, as such Indian

tribe taxes the other commercial activities occurring on such reservation. Such grants shall continue until such time as all such

activities, development, and operation are terminated at such site.

(5) An affcted Indian tribe may not receive any grant under

paragraph (1) after the expiration of the l-year period following—

(i) the date on which the Secretary notifies such Indian tribe

of the termination of site characterization activities at the

candidate site involved on the reservation of such Indian tribe;

(ii) the date on which such site is disapproved under section

115; or

(iii) the date on which the Commission disapproves an application for a construction authorization for a repository at such

site;

whichever occurs first, unless there is another candidate site on the

reservation of such Indian tribe that is approved under section

112(c) and with respect to which the actions described in clauses (i),

(ii), and (iii) have not been taken.

(B) An affected Indian tribe may not receive any further assistance under paragraph (2) with respect to a site if repository construction activities at such site are terminated by the Secretary or if

such activities are permanently e~”oined by any court.

(C) At the end of the 2-year period beginning on the effective date

of any license to receive and possess for a repository at a site on the

reservation of an affcted Indian tribe, no Federal funds shall be

made available under paragraph (1) or (2) to such Indian tribe,

except for—

(i) such funds as maybe necessary to support activities of such

Indian tribe related to any other repository where a license to

receive and possess has not been in effect for more than 1 year;

and

(ii) such funds as may be necessary to support activities of

such Indian tribe pursuant to agreements or contracts for

impact assistance entered into, under paragraph (2), by such

Indian tribe with the Secretary during such 2-year period.
.

2~ . Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive waste

PUBLIC LAW 97-425—JAN. 7, 1983 96 STAT. 2227

(6) Financial assistance autho- in this subsection shall be

made out of amounts held in the Nuclear Waste Fund established in

section 302. Post, p. 2257.

JUDICIAL REVIEW OF AGENCY ACTIONS

SEC. 119. (a) JURISDI~ON OF UNITED STA- COURTS OF APPEAIS.— 42 USC 10139.

(1) Exce t for review in the Supreme Court of the United States, the

United 8tates courts of appeals shall have original and exclusive

jurisdiction over any civil action—

(A) for review of an final decision or action of the Secretary,

the President, or the &remission under this subtitle;

(B) alleging the failure of the Secreta , the President, or the

Commission to make any decision, or Ze any action, required

under this subtitle;

(C) challengi

Y

the constitutional of any decision made, or

action taken, un er any provision of t is subtitle; ‘%

(D) for review of any environmental impact statement pre

pared pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act of

1969 (42 U.S.C. 4321 et seq.) with respect to an action under

this subtitle, or as required under section 135(c)(r ), or alleging a

failure to prepare such statement with respect to any such

action;

(E) for review of any environmental assessment prepared

under section 1120(1) or 135(c)(2); or

(F) for review of any research and development activity under

title II. Post, p. 2245.

(2) The venue of any roceeding under this section shall be in the

judicial circuit in whic the petitioner involved resides or has its [

b

@cipal office, or in the United States Court of Appeals for the

trict of Columbia.

($) DEADLINE NR COMMENCING ACTION.-A civil action for judici~

renew described under subsection (a)(l) may be brought not later

than the 180th day after the date of the decision or action or failure

to act involved, as the case may be, except that if a party shows that

he did not know of the decision or action complained of (or of the

ftilure to act), and that a reasonable

r

rson acting under the

circumstances would not have known, suc party may brin a civil

action not later than the ~80th da after the date sucf party

7

a umed actual or constructure know edge of such decision, action, r

or ailure to act.

EXPED_ AUTHORKZA’MONS

SEC. 120. (a) ISSUANCE OF AUTHORIZATION S.-(1) To the extent that 42 u~ 1014O.

the taking of any action related to the site characterization of a si~

or the construction or initial operation of a repository under this

subtitle requires a certificate, right-of-way,

F

rmit, lease, or other

authorization fkom a Federal agency or o leer, such agency or

officer shall issue or grant any such authorization at the earlieat

practicable date, to the extent

r

rmitted by the applicable provisions of law administered by suc agency or offker. All actions of a

Federal agency or oflker with respect to consideration of a~plications or requests for the issuance or grant of any such authorization

shall be expedited, and any such application or request shall take

precedence over any similar applications or requests not related to

such repositories.
App. C—The Nuc/ear Waste Policy Act of 1982 .291

96 STAT. 2228 PUBLIC LAW 97-425—JAN. 7, 1983

(Z) The Provisions of paragraph (1) shall not apply to any certificate, right-of-way, permit, lease, or other authorization issued or

granted by, or requested from, the Commission.

(b) TERMS OF kYIHORIZATIONS.-AnY authorization issued or

granted pursuant to subsection (a) shall include such terms and

conditions as may be required by law, and may include terms and

conditions permitted by law.

CERTAIN STANDARDS AND CRITERIA

42 USC 10141. SEC. 121. (a) ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY STANDARDS.—

Not later than 1 year after the date of the enactment of this Act, the

Administrator, pursuant to authority under other provisions of law,

shall, by rule, promulgate generally applicable standards for protection of the general environment from offsite releases from radioactive material in repositories

(b) WMMISSION REQUIREMENTS AND ~“~lXA) Not later

than January 1, 1984, the Commission, pursuant to authority under

other provisions of law, shall, by rule, promul ate technical require

ments and criteria that it will ap 1 , under t e Atomic Ener k

Z{ T

Act

of 1954 (42 U.S.C. 2011 et seq.) an t e Ene

Y

Reorganization ct of

1974 (42 U.S.C. 5801 et seq.), in approving or isapproving—

(i) applications for authorization to construct repositories;

(ii) applications for licenses to receive and possess spent

nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste in such repositories; and

(iii) applications for authorization for closure and decommissioning of such repositories.

(B) Such criteria shall provide for the use of a system of multiple

barriers in the design of the re sitory and shall include such

restrictions on the retrievability o the solidified high-level radioac- Y

tive waste and spent fuel emplaced in the repository as the Commission deems appropriate.

(C) Such r uirementa and criteria shall not be inconsistent with

any comparab7 e standards promulgated by the Administrator under

subsection (a).

(2) For purposes of this Act, nothing in this section shall be

construed to prohibit the Commission from promulgating requirements and criteria under

r

ragraph (1) before the Administrator

promulgates standards un er subsection (a). If the Administrator

promulgates standards under subsection (a) after requirements and

criteria are promulgated by the Commission under paragraph (l),

such requirements and criteria shall be revised by the timmission if

necessary to comply with paragraph (lXC).

(c) ENvlRONMEN’rAL IMPACT ~ATEMEXW. —The promulgation of

standards or criteria in accordance with the provisions of this

section shall not

7

uire the pre aration of an environmental

impact statement un er section 10 2)(C) of the National Environ- 8

mental Policy Act of 1969 (42 U.S.C. 4332(2)(C)), or to require any

environmental review under subparagraph (E) or (F) of section

102(2) of such Act.

DISPOSAL OF SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL

42 USC 10142. Sw. 122. Notwithstanding any other provision of this subtitle, any

repository constructed on a site approved under this subtitle shall be

designed and constructed to permit the retrieval of any spent
292 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

PUBLIC LAW 97-425-JAN. 7, 1983 96 STAT. 2229

nuclear fuel placed in such repository, during an appropriate period of

operation of the facility, for any reason pertaining to the public

health and safety, or the environment, or for the purpose of permitting the recovery of the economically valuable contents of such

spent fuel. The Secretary shall specify the appropriate period of

retrievability with respect to any repository at the time of design of

such repository, and such aspect of such repository shall be subject

to approval or disapproval by the Commission as part of the construction authorization process under subsections (b) through (d) of

section 114.

TITLE ‘m MATERIAL

SEC. 123. Delivery, and acceptance by the &mWary, of any high- 42 USC 10143.

level radioactive waste or s nt nuclear fhel for a repository

constructed under this subtir e shall constitute a transfer to the

Secretary of title to such waste or spent fuel.

CONSIDERATfON OF EFFECT OF ACQUISITION OF WATER RIGHTS

SEC. 124. The Secretary shall give fbll consideration to whether w usc 10144.

the development, construction, and operation of a repository may

require any purchase or other acquisition of water righta that will

have a significant adverse effiwt on the present or fbture develop

ment of the area in which such repository is located. The Secretary

shall mitigate any such adverse efkta to the maximum extent

practicable.

TERMINATION OF CERTAIN PROVISION8

SEC. 125. ~ions 119 and 120 shall cease to have effect at such 42 USC 10145.

time as a repository developed under this subtitle is licensed to

receive and possess high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear

fuel.

SUBTITLE &kERIIU %’ORAGE ~OCRAM

FINDINGS AND PURPOSES

SEC. 131. (a) IWmws.-The Congress finds that– 42 USC 10151.

(1) the PWWNM O~ing ~d operating civilian nuclear power

reactors have the prunary responsibility for providing interim

storage of spent nuclear fuel fmm such reacto~ by maximizing,

to the extent practical, the efhctive use of existing storage

facilities at the site of each civilian nuclear power reactor, and

by adding new onsite storage capacity in a timely manner

where practical;

(2) the Federal Government has the responsibility to encourage and expedite the efkctive use of existing storage facilities

and the addition of needed new storage capacity at the site of

each civilian nuclear power reactor; and

(3) the Federal Government has the responsibility to provide,

in accordance with the provisions of this subtitle, not more than

1,900 metric tons of capacity for interim stprage of spent

nuclear fuel for civilian nuclear power reactors that cannot

reasonably provide adequate storage capacity at the sites of such
App. C—The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 ● 293

96 STAT. 2230 PUBLIC LAW 97-425—JAN. 7, 1983

reactors when needed to assure the continued, orderly operation

of such reactors.

Purposes.-The purposes of this subtitle are-

(1) to provide for the utilization of available spent nuclear fuel

pools at the site of each civilian nuclear power reactor to the

extent practical and the addition of new spent nuclear fuel

storage capacity where practical at the site of such reactor; and

(2) to provide, in accordance with the provisions of this subtitle, for the establishment of a federally owned and operated

system for the interim storage of spent nuclear fuel at one or

more failities owned by the Federal Government with not more

than 1,900 metric tons of capacity to prevent disruptions in the

orderly operation of any civilian nuclear power reactor that

cannot reasonably provide adequate spent nuclear fuel storage

capacity at the site of such reactor when needed.

AVAILABLE CAPACITY FOR INTERIM STORAGE OF SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL

42 USC 10152. SEC. 132. The Secre

Y

, the Commission, and other authorized

Federal officials shall eac take such actions as such official considers necessary to encourage and expedite the effective use of available storage, and necessary additional storage, at the site of each

civilian nuclear power reactor consistent with—

(1) the protection of the public health and safety, and the

environment;

(2) economic ~nsiderations;

(3) continued o ration of such reactor;

(4) any applica le provisions of law; and r

(5) the mews of the population surrounding such reactor.

INTERIM AT REACTOR STORAGE

Licensing SEC. 133. The Commission shall, by rule, establish procedures for procedures. the licensing of any technology approved by the Commission under 42 USC 10153. section 219(a) for use at the site of any civilian nuclear power

reactor. The establishment of such procedures shall not preclude the

licensing, under any applicable rocedures or rules of the Commission in effect prior to such estab ishment, of any technology for the Y

storage of civilian spent nuclear fuel at the site of any civilian

nuclear power reactor.

LICENSING OF FACILITY EXPANSIONS AND TRANSSHIPMENT

42 USC 10154. SEC. 134. (a) ORAL &GuMm+rr.-In any Commission hearing under

section 189 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (42 U.S.C. 2239) on an

a plication for a license, or for an amendment to an existing license,

f~ed after the date of the enactment of this A% to expand the spent

nuclear fiel stor e capacit at the site of a civilian nuclear power

reactor, through t e use of Y L“ hdensity fuel storage racks, fuel rod

compaction, the transshipment of spent nuclear fuel to another

civilian nuclear power reactor within the same utility system, the

construction of additional spent nuclear fuel pool capacity or dry

storage capacity, or by other means, the Commission shall, at the

request of any party, provide an op rtunity for oral argument with

respect to any matter which the G remission determines to be in

controversy among the parties. The oral argument shall be preceded

by such discovery procedures as the rules of the Commission shall
294l Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

PUBLIC LAW 97-425-JAN. 7, 1983 96 STAT. 2231

such party proposes to rely that are known at such time to such

party. Only facts and data in the form of sworn testimony or written

submission may be relied upon by the parties during oral argument.

Of the materials that may be submitted by the parties during oral

argument, the Commission shall only consider those facts and data

that are submitted in the form of sworn testimony or written

submission.

(b) ADJUDICATORY HEARINg.-(l) At the conclusion of any oral

argument under subsection (a), the Commission shall designate any

disputed question of fact, together with any remaining questions of

law, for resolution in an adjudicatory hearing only if it determines

that—

(A) there is a genuine and substantial dispute of fact which

can only be resolved with sufficient accuracy by the introduction of evidence in an adjudicatory hearing; and

(B) the decision of the Commission is likely to depend in whole

or in part on the resolution of such dispute.

—

(A) shall designate in writing the specific facts that are in

genuine and substantial dispute, the reason why the decision of

the agency is likely to depend on the resolution of such facts,

and the reason why an adjudicatory hearing is likely to resolve

the dispute; and

(B) shall no! consider—

(d an issue relating to the design, construction, or operation o any civilian nuclear power reactor already licensed !

to operate at such site, or any civilian nuclear power reactor for which a construction permit has been granted at

such site, unless the Commission determines that any such

issue substantially afhcts the design, constr@ion, or operation of the facility or activity for which such license

application, authorization, or amendment is being considered; or

(ii) my siting or design issue fully considered and decided

by the Commission in connection with the issuance of a

construction permit or operating license for a civilian nuclear power reactor at such site, unless (I) such issue results

from any revision of siting or design criteria b the Commission following such decision; and (II) the & remission

determines that such issue substantially affecta the design,

construction, or operation of the facility or activity for

which such license application, authorization, or amendment is being considered.

(3) The provisions of paragraph (2)(B) shall apply only with respect

to licenses, authorizations, or amendments to hcenses or authorizations, applied for under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (42 U.S.C.

2011 et seq.) before December 31,2005.

(4) The provisions of this section shall not apply to the first

application for a license or license amendment received by the

Commission to expand onsite spent fuel stor e capacity by the use

of a new technol~ mm~io nnot reviously approved or use at any nuclear Y

powerplant by the .
App. C—The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 . 295

96 STAT. 2232 PUBLIC LAW 97-425—JAN. 7, 1983

(c) Judicial REVIEW:-~NO COUrt shall hold unlawful or set ~ide a

deaslon of the Comrnmnon in any proceeding described in subsection (a) because of a failure by the Ummission to use a particular

procedure pursuant to this section unless—

(1) an objection to the procedure used was presented to the

Commission in a timely fashion or there are extraordinary

circumstances that excuse the failure to present a timely objection; and

(2) the COUrt fin~ that such failure has precluded a fair

consideration and informed resolution of a significant issue of

the proceeding taken as a whole.

STORAGE OF SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL

Ante, p. 2205. SEC. 135. (a) STORAGE CAPACITY.-(1) Subject to section 8, the

42 USC! 10155. Secretary shall provide, in accordance with paragraph (5), not more

than 1,900 metric tons of capacity for the storage of spent nuclear

fuel from civilian nuclear power reactors. Such storage capacity

shall be provided through any one or more of the following methods,

used in any combination determined by the Secretary to be

appropriate:

(A) use of available capacity at one or more facilities owned by

the Federal Government on the date of the enactment of this

Act, including the modification and expansion of any such

facilities, if the Commission determines that such use will

adequatel protect the public health and safety, except that

such uses all not— i

(i) render such facilities subject to licensing under the

Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (42 U.S.C. 2011 et seq.) or the

Energy Reorganization Act of 1974 (42 U.S.C. 5801 et seq.);

‘

r

(ii) except as provided in subsection (c) require the preparation of an environmental impact statement under section

102(2)(C) of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969

(42 U.S.C. 4332(2)(C)), such facility is already being used, or

has previously been used, for such storage or for any similar purpose.

(B) acquisition of an modular or mobile spent nuclear fuel

storage equipment, inc uding spent nuclear fuel storage casks, T

and provision of such equipment, to any person eneratin or

holding title to spent nuclear fuel, at the site o any civi ian F f

nuclear power reactor operated by such person or at any site

owned by the Federal Government on the date of enactment of

this Act;

(C) construction of storage capacity at any site of a civilian

nuclear power reactor.

(2) Storage ca city authorized by paragra h (1) shall not be

provided at any ederal or non-Federal site wnt P “ ~whichthere isa

candidate site for a re

P“T ”

The restriction in the preceding

sentence shall only app ~ untl such time as the Secretary decides

that such candidate site M no lower a candidate site under consideration for development as a repomtory.

(3) In select”

%cr e

methods of roviding storage capacity under paragra h (l), the

2

tary shal comider the timehness of the avail- Y

ab” ity of each such method and shall seek to minimize the transportation of spent nuclear fuel, the public health and safety impacts,

and the costa of providing such storage capacity.
~ ● Managing the Nation’s commercial High-Level Radioactive waste

PUBLIC LAW 97-425-JAN. 7, 1983 96 STAT. 2233

(4) In providin storage capacity through any method described in

paragraph (l), t e Secretary shall comply with any ap f licable re

quirementi for licensing or authorization of such meth , except as d

provided in ragraph (l)(A)(i).

(5) me Gtary shall ensure that storage capacity is made

available under paragra h (1) when needed, as determined on the

basis of the sto e n

T

& specifkl in contracts entered into under

section IW(a), an shall accept upon request any spent nuclear fuel

as covered under such contracts.

(6) For p~of ~Ph (lXA)$ the t=m “fa~litY” m=~ “F’’ility””

an building or structure.

&) ComaAem.-(U Subject to the capacity limitation established

in subsections (a) (1) and (d), the Secretary shall offer to enter into,

and may enter into, contracta under section 136(a) with any person

generating or owning spent nuclear fuel for purposes of providing

storage capacity for such spent fuel under this section only if the

c oremission determines that—

(A) adequate StO

7

capacity to ensure the continued orderl

operation of the ci ian nuclear power reactor at which suci

spent nuclear fuel is generated pot reasonably be rovided

by the person own’

atthesitiofmy%e?$~~~%{~h~=ka~~c!~~~

by such person, and such capacit cannot be made availa le in a

timely manner through any met %od described in subparagraph

(B); and

(B) such person is diligently pursuin licensed alternatives to

the use of Federal sto e capacity or the storage of spent f

nuclear fiel expected to% generated by such person in the

future, incMing—

(i) eqlon of storage facilities at the site of any civilian

nuclear power reactor operated by such person;

(ii) construction of new or ackhtional storage facilities at

the site of any civilian nuclear power reactor operated by

such person;

(iii) acqu$ition of modular or mobile s nt nuclear fuel

storage eqtupment, includin spent nuc ear fuel storage Y

casks, for use at the site o any civilian nuclear power 1!

reactor operated by such person; and

(iv) tr~eshipment to another civilian nuclear power reactor owned b such person.

(2) In making the ietermmation described in paragraph (lXA), the

Commission shall ensure maintenance of a fill core reserve storage

capability at the site of the civilian nuclear power reactor involved

unless the Commission determines that maintenance of such capability is not neessary for the continued orderly operation of such

reactor.

(3) The Commission shall complete the determinations required in

1’

aragraph (1) with respect to any request for stir e capacity not

ater than 6 months after receipt of such request by e Commission. %

(c) ENVIRON MENTAL REVIEW:-(1) me provision of 300 or more

metric tons of storage capmnty at any one Federal site under

subsection (aXIXA) shall be considered to be a mqjor Federal action

requiring reparation of an environmental impact statement under

section 10 !!(2XC) of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969

(42 U.S.C. 43W2XC)).

(2XA) The Secretary shall prepare, and make available to the fiblic

public, an environmental assessment of the probable impacts of any av~abflity”
App. C—The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 297

96 STAT. 2234 PUBLIC LAW 97-425-JAN. 7, 1983

provision of less than 300 metric tons of storage capacity at any one

Federal site under subsection that requires the modification

or expansion of any facility at the site, and a discussion of altemaEnvironmental tive activities that may be undertaken to avoid such impacts. Such

assessment. environmental assessment shall include-

(i) an estimate of the amount of storage capacity to be made

available at such site;

(ii) an evaluation as to whether the facilities to be used at

such site are suitable for the provision of such storage capacity;

(iii) a description of activitms planned by the Secretary with

respect to the modification or expansion of the facilities to be

used at such site;

(iv) an evaluation of the effixts of the provision of such

storage capacity at such site on the public health and safety,

and the environment;

(v) a reasonable comparative evaluation of current information with respect to such site and facilities and other sites and

facilities available for the provision of such storage capacity;

(vi) a description of any other sites and facilities that have

been considered by the Secretary for the provision of such

storage capacity; and

(vii) an assessment of the regional and local impacts of providing such storage capacity at such site, including the impacts on

transportation.

Judicial review. (B) The issuance of any environmental assessment under this

paragraph shall be considered to be a final agency action subject to

judicial review in accordance with the provisions of chapter 7 of title

5 USC 701 et seq. 5, United States Code. Such judicial review shall be limited to the

sufficiency of such assessment with respect to the items described in

clauses (i) through (vii) of subparagraph (A).

(3) Judicial review of any environmental impact statement or

environmental assessment prepared pursuant to this subsection

shall be conducted in accordance with the provisions of section 119.

(d) REVIEW ● OF SITESOAND ~A~oPARTICIPATION.-(l) In carrying

out the provmons of th~ subtitle wth regard to any interim storage

of spent fuel from civilian nuclear power reactors which the Secretary is authorized by section 135 to provide, the Secretary shall, as

soon as practicable, noti&, in writing, the Governor and the State

legislature of any State and the Tribal Council of an afhcted

Indian tribe in such State in which is located a tenti ly accept- J

able site or facility for such interim storage o spent fuel of his F

intention to investigate that site or f~ility.

Investigation. (2) DUrin the COUrSe of investigation of such site or facility, the

Secretary s all keep the Governor, State legislature, and af&ted [

Tribal Council currently informed of the progress of the work, and

resulta of the investigation. At the time of selection by the Secretary

of an site or existing facility, but prior to undertaking any sitespeci I? C work or alterations, the Secretary shall romptly notl& the

Governor, the legislature, and any M&ted Trid Council in writing

of such selection, and subject to the provisions of paragraph (6) of

this subsection, shall romptly enter into negotiations wnth such

State and affected TriL Council to establish a cooperative qpw+

ment under which such State and Council shall have the right to

partici

r

te ina

t

recess of consultation and cooperation, based on

public ealth an safety and environmental concerns, in all stages

of the planning, development, modification, expansion, operation,

and closure of storage capacity at a site or facility within such State
2@ ● Managing the NatIon’s Commercial High-Leve/ Radioactive Waste

PUBLIC LAW 97-425-JAN. 7, 1983 96 STAT. 2235

for the interim storage of spent fuel from civilian nuclear power

reactors. Public partici tion in the negotiation of such an agreement shall be providz for and encouraged by the Secretary, the

State, and the affected Tribal Council. The Secretary, in cooperation

with the States and Indian tribes, shall develop and publish minimum guidelines for public participation in such negotiations, but

the adequacy of such guidelines or and failure to comply with such

guidelines shaIl not be a basis for judicial review.

(3) The cooperative agreement shall include, but need not be

limited to, the sharing in accordance with applicable law of all

technical and licensing information, the utilization of available

expertise, the facilitating of permitting procedures, “oint project

review, and the formulation of joint surveillance an monitoring d

arrangements to carry out applicable Federal and State laws. The

cooperative agreement also shall include a detailed plan or schedule

of milestones, decision points and opportunities for State or eligible

Tribal Council review and objection. Such cooperative agreement

shall provide rocedures for negotiating and resolving objections of

the State an affected Tribal Council in any stage of planning, f

development, modification, expansion, operation, or closure of storage capacity at a site or facility within such State. The terms of any

cooperative agreement shall not affect the authority of the Nuclear

Regulato Commission under existing law.

(4 Fort e purpose of this subsection, “process of consultation and %

cooperation” means a methodology by which the Secretary (A) keeps

the State and eligible Tribal Council fully and currently informed

about the aspects of the reject related to any potential impact on

the public health and sa ety and environment; (B) solicits, receives, / ’

and evaluates concerns and objections of such State and Council

with re ard to such aspects of t e project on an on oing basis; and L

(C) wor diligently and cooperatively to resolve, t rough arbitra- L t

tion or other a propriate mechanisms, such concerns and objections.

The process o consultation and coo ration shall not inc ude the F !

grant of a right to any State or “bal Council to exercise an

absolute veto of any aspect of the planning, development, modification, expansion, or operation of the project.

(5) The Secretary and the State and affected Tribal tiuncil shall

seek to conclude the agreement required b paragraph (2) as soon as

practicable, but not later than 180 days folowin the date of notification of the selection under paragraph (2). & e Secretary shall

periodically report to the Congress thereafter on the status of the

agreemenb approved under paragra h (3). Any report to the Congress on the status of negotiations o such agreement by the Secre- / ’

tary shall be accom

Y

ied by comments solicited by the Secretary

from the State and e igible Tribal Council.

(6)(A) Upon deciding to provide an aggregate of 300 or more metric

tons of storage capacity under subsection (a)(l) at any one site, the

Secretary shall notify the Governor and legislature of the State

where such site is located, or the governing body of the Indian tribe

in whose reservation such site is located, as the case may be, of such

decision. During the 60day period following receipt of notification

by the Secretary of his decision to provide an aggregate of 300 or

more metric tons of storage capacity at any one site, the Governor or

legislature of the State in which such site is located, or the governing body of the affected Indian tribe where such site is located, as

the case may be, may disapprove the provision of 300 or more metric

tons of storage capacity at the site involved and submit to the

Guidelines.

Cooperative

agreement.

“Process of

consultation and

cooperation. ”

Report to

Congress.
App. C—The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 . 299

96 STAT. 2236 PUBLIC LAW 97-425—JAN. 7, 1983

Notice of

disapproval,

submittal tQ

Congresa.

Ante, p. 2217.

“Resolution.”

“Affected Tribal

Council.”

Congress a notice of such disapproval. A notice of disapproval shall

be considered to be submitted to the Congress on the date of the

transmittal of such notice of disapproval to the Speaker of the

House and the President pro tempore of the Senate. Such notice of

disapproval shall be accompanied by a statement of reasons explaining why the provision of such storage capacity at such site was

disapproved by such Governor or legislature or the governing body

of such Indian tribe.

(B) Unless otherwise provided by State law, the Governor or

legislature of each State shall have authority to submit a notice of

disapproval to the Congress under subparagraph (A). In any case in

which State law provides for submission of any such notice of

disapproval by any other person or entity, any reference in this

subtitle to the Governor or legislature of such State shall be considered to refer instead to such other person or entity.

(C) The authority of the Governor and legislature of each State

under this paragraph shall not be applicable with respect to any site

located on a reservation.

(D) If any notice of disapproval is submitted to the Congress under

subparagraph (A), the proposed provision of 300 or more metric tons

of storage capacity at the site involved shall be disapproved unless,

during the first period of 90 calendar days of continuous session of

the Congress following the date of the receipt by the Congress of

such notice of disapproval, the Congress passes a resolution approving such proposed provision of storage capacity in accordance with

the procedures established in this paragraph and subsections (d)

through (f) of section 115 and such resolution thereafter becomes

law. For purposes of this paragraph, the term “resolution” means a

joint resolution uf either House of the Congress, the matter after the

resolving clause of which is as follows: “That there hereby is ap

proved the provision of 300 or more metric tons of spent nuclear fuel

storage capacity at the site located at_ with respect

to which a notice of was aproval was submitted by

. The first blank space in such resolution shall

&

n filled with the geographic location of the site involved; the second

blank space in such resolution shall be filled with the designation of

the State Governor and legislature or affected Indian tribe governing body submitting the notice of disapproval involved; and the last

blank space in such resolution shall be filled with the date of

submission of such notice of disapproval.

(E) For purposes of the consideration of any resolution described

in subparagraph (D), each reference in subsections (d) and (e) of

section 115 to a resolution of repository siting approval shall be

considered to refer to the resolution described in such subparagraph.

(7) AS used in this section, the term “affected Tribal Council”

means the governing body of any Indian tribe within whose reservation boundaries there is located a potentially acceptable site for

interim storage capacity of spent nuclear fuel from civilian nuclear

power reactors, or within whose boundaries a site for such capacity

is selected by the Secretary, or whose federally defined possessor or

usage rights to other lands outside of the reservation’s boundaries

arising out of congressionally ratified treaties, as determined by the

Secretary of the Interior pursuant to a petition filed with him by the

appropriate governmental officials of such tribe, may be substantially and adversely affected by the establishment of any such

storage capacity.
~ . Manag/ng the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

PUBLIC LAW 97-425-JAN. 7, 1983 96 STAT. 2237

@ LIMITATIONS. —Any spent nuclear fuel stored under this section

shall be removed from the storage site or facility involved as soon as

practicable, but in any event not later than 3 years following the

date on which a re

r

Itory or monitored retrievable storage fxility

developed under t is Act is available for disposal of such spent

nuclear fiel.

(f) -~.—’hehe %ret=y shall annually repare and submit to

the Congress a report on any plans of the &retary for ~roviding

stor~ capacity under this section. Such report shall include a

desmption of thes

r

ific manner of providing such storage selected

by the Secretary, i any. The Secretary shall prepare and submit the

first such report not later than 1 year after the date of the enactment of this Act.

(g) CRITERIA FOR DETERMINING ADEQUACY OF AVAILABLE STORAGE

CApAcrrY.-Not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of

this A% the Commission ursuant to section 553 of the Administrative Procedures Am dpropose, by rule, procedures and criteria

for making the determination required by subsection (b) that a

person owning and operating a civilian nuclear power reactor

cannot reasonably provide adequate spent nuclear fuel stor e capacity at the cimlian nuclear power reactor site when n ed to 3

ensure the continued orderly operation of such reactor. Such crite

ria shall ensure the maintenance of a full core reserve storage

capability at the site of such reactor unless the Commission determmes that maintenance of such capability is not necessary for the

continued orderl operation of such reactor. Such criteria shall

identi~ the feasi ility of reasonably t providing such adequate spent

nuclear fhel storage capacity, taking mto account economic, technical, r

Y

latory, and public health and safety factors, through the use

of hig density fuel storage racks, fuel rod compaction, transship

ment of spent nuclear fuel to another civilian nuclear

r

wer reactor

within the same utility system, construction of ad itional spent

nuclear fuel

r

1 capacity, or such other technologies as may be

ap roved by t e ~mmission.

&) APFZJCXTIOIW.- Notwithstanding any other provision of law,

nothing in this Act shall be construed to encourage, authorize, or

require the private or Federal use, purchase, lease, or other acquisition of any storage facility located away from the site of any civilian

nuclear power reactor and not owned by the Federal Government on

the date of the enactment of this Act.

(i) ~RDINN1’10~ WITH kSEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM.—

To the extent avadable, and consistent with the provisions of this

section, the Secretary shall provide spent nuclear fuel for the research and development program authorized in section 217 from

spent nuclear fuel received b the Secreta for storage under this

section. Such spent nuclear uel shall not r % subject to the provisions of subsection (e).

INTERIM STORAGE FUND

‘=” 13of the enactment of ’” (a)tiN-w”+l)Durin th~ Act, but not ater t an January 1, 1990, the PhefFfid ‘O1lOwingthedak Secretary is authorized to enter into contracts with rsons who

generate or own spent nuclear fuel resulting from civi ian nuclear r

activities for the storage of such spent nuclear fuel in any storage

capacity provided under this subtitle: Fmuided, howeuer, That the

Secretary shall not enter into contracts for spent nuclear fuel in

5 USC 553.

42 USC 10156.
App. C—The Nuc/ear Waste Po/icy Act of 1982 . 301

96 STAT. 2238 PUBLIC LAW 97-425—JAN. 7, 1983

Study; report to

C0ngre8s.

Publication in

Federal

Register.

Fees.

amounta in excess of the available storage capacity specified in

section 135(a). Those contracts shall provide that the Federal Government will (1) take title at the civilian nuclear power reactor site,

to such amounts of spent nuclear fuel from the civilian nuclear

power reactor as the timmission determines cannot be stored

onsite, (2) transport the spent nuclear fuel to a federally owned and

operated interim awa -from-reactor storage facility, and (3) store

such fuel in the fac” ity pending further processing, storage, or J

disposal. Each such contract shall (A) provide for payment to the

Secretary of fees determined in accordance with the provisions of

this section; and (B) speci& the amount of storage capacity to be

provided for the person involved.

(2) The Secretary shall undertake a study and, not later than 180

days after the date of the enactment of this Act, submit to the

Congress a report, establishing payment charges that shall be calculated on an annual basis, commencing on or before January 1, 1984.

Such payment c

3

es and the calculation thereof shall be pub

lished in the Fede -r,and shall become effective not lees

than 30 da after publication. Each pa ent charge published in

the Feder Register under this 2 paragrap shall remain effective for r

a period of 12 months from the effective date as the charge for the

cost of the interim storage of any spent nuclear fuel. The report of

the Secretary shall specify the method and manner of collection

(including the rates and manner of payment) and any legislative

recommendations determined by the Secretary to be appropriate.

nI~~oF~ for tirage ●rider this subtitle shall be established on a

wnwmnatory barns. The fees to be paid by each person entering

into a contract with the Secretary under this subsection shall be

based upon an estimate of the pro rata coste of storage and related

activities under this subtitle with respect to such person, including

the acquisition, construction, operation, and maintenance of any

fa~]it&~eu.e~this subtitle.

T

shall establish in writing criteria setting forth

the terms and con “tions under which such storage services shall be

made available.

(5) Except aq provided in section 137, nothing in this or any other

Act requires the Secretary, in carrying out the responsibilities of

this section, to obtain a license or permit to possess or own spent

nuclear fuel.

(b) LIMITATION.-NO spent nuclear fhel generated or owned by any

department of the United States referred to in section 101 or 102 of

title 5, United States me, may be stored b the Secretary in any

storage capacity provided under this subtit e unless such departi T

ment transfers to the Secretary, for deposit in the Interim Storage

Fund, amounts uivalent to the f- that would be paid to the

Secretary under t e contracts referred to in this section if such \

spent nuclear fuel were generated by any other person;

(c) ESTABLISHMENT or INTERXM STORAGE ~xuD.-T’here hereb is

established in the Treasury of the United States a separate fun , to J

beme~~ as the Interim Storage Fund. The Storage Fund shall

(1)21 receipts, proceeds, and recoveries realized by the Sem+

tary under subsections (a), (b), and (e), which shall be deposited

in the Storage Fund immediate upon their realization;

*@~~mydappropriations made y the Congress to the Storage t

.*
302 “ Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

PUBLIC LAW 97-425–JAN. 7, 1983 96 STAT. 2239

(3) any unex

r

nded balances available on the date of the

enactment of t is Act for functions or activities necessary or

incident to the interim storage of civilian spent nuclear fuel,

which shall automatically be transferred to the Storage Fund

on such date.

(d) USE OF STORAGE F U N D. —The Secretary may make expenditures from the Storage Fund, subject to subsection (e), for any

purpose necessa or appropriate to the conduct of the functions and

activities of theLretary, or the provision or anticipated provision

of services, under this subtitle, including—

(1) the identification, development, licensing, construction,

operation, decommissioning, and postdecommissioning maintenance and monitoring of any interim storage facility provided

under this subtitle;

(2) the administrative cost of the interim storage program;

(3) the costs associated with acquisition, design, modification,

replacement, operation, and construction of facilities at an in-

~3~m storage site, consistent with the restrictions in section

.

(~) the coat of~ransportation ofs nt nuclear fuel; and

(5) lmP@ asm$tance as clescridin subsection (e).

(e) IMPACX ASSISTANCE.-(D Beginning the first f=al year which

commences after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Seer*

tary shall make annual impact assistance payments to a State or

appropriate unit of local government, or both, in order to mitigate

social or economic impacts occasioned by the establishment and

subsequent o ration of an interim storage capacity within the

jurisdicationaY boundaries o such government or overnments and [

authorized under this subtitle: tivicleci, howeuer, !hat such impact

assistance payments shall not exceed (A) ten per centum of the costs

incurred in paragraphs (1) and (2), or (B) $15 per kilogram of spent

fuel, whichever is less;

(2) Payments made available to States and units of local government pursuant to this section shall be—

(A) allocated in a fair ~d

3

uitable manner with a priority to

those States or units of loc government suffering the most

severe impacts; and

(B) utilized by States or units of local governments only for (i)

planning, (ii) construction and maintenance of public services,

(iii) provision of public services related to the providing of such

interim stir e authorized under this title, and (iv) compensation for loss o taxable property equivalent to that if the storage T

had been provided under private ownership.

(3) Such payments shall be subject to such terms and conditions as

the Secretary determines necessary to ensure that the purposes of

this subsection shall be achieved. The Secretary shall issue such

lations as may be necessary to carry out the provisions of this

s=ion.

(4) Payments under this subsection shall be made available solely

from the fees determined under subsection (a).

(5) The Secretary is authorized to consult with States and apprm

priate units of local government in advance of c~mmencement of

establishment of storage ca

Y

city authorized under this subtitle in

an effort to determine the evel of the payment such government

would be eli “ble to receive pursuant to this subsection.

(6) k us$in this subsection, the term “unit of local government”

means a county, parish, township, municipality, and shall include a

Payments.

Regulation.

“Unit of local

government.”
App. C—The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 ● 303

96 STAT. 2240 PUBLIC LAW 97-425—JAN. 7, 1983

borough existing in the State of Alaska on the date of the enactment

of this subsection, and any other unit of government below the State

level which is a unit of general government as determined by the

Secretary.

Report to (0 ADMINISTRATION OF STORAGE FuND.—(1) The Secretary of the Congress. Treasury shall hold the Storage Fund and, after consultation with

the Secretary, annually report to the Congress on the financial

condition and operations of the Storage Fund during the preceding

fwal ear.

Budget (2) fieSecretary shall submit the budget of the Storage Fund to submittal. the OffIce of Management and Budget triennially along with the

budget of the Department of Energy submitted at such time in

Ante, p. 907. accordance with chapter 11 of title 31, United States Code. The

budget of the Storage Fund shall consist of estimates made by the

Secreta of expenditures from the Storage Fund and other relevant

financi matters for the succeeding 3 3 f-l years, and shall be

included in the Budget of the Umted States Government. The

Secretary may make expenditures from the Stor e Fund, sub”ect to

ap~ropriations which shall remain available unt” expended. Y ippro

pnations shall be subject to triennial authorization.

(3) If the Secreta~ determines that the Storage Fund contains at

any time amounts m excess of current needs, the Secretary may

request the Secretary of the Treasury to invest such amounts, or

any portion of such amounts as the Secretary determines to be

appropriate, in obligations of the United States—

(A) having maturities determined b the Secretary of the

Treasury to be appropriate to the ne s of the Storage Fund; J

and

(B) bearing interest at rates determined to be ap ropriate by

the Secretary of the Treasury, taking into consii eration the

current aver e market yield on outstanding marketable obligations of the nited States with remaining periods to maturity V

comparable to the maturities of such investments, except that

the interest rate on such investments shall not exceed the

average interest rate applicable to existing borrowings.

(4) Receipts, proceeds, and recoveries realized by the Secretary

under this section, and expenditures of amounts from the Storage

Fund, shall be exempt from annual apportionment under the proviAnte, p. 927. sions of subchapter II of chapter 15 of title 31, United States Code.

(5) If at any time the moneys available in the Storage Fund are

insufficient to enable the Secretary to discharge his responsibilities

under this subtitle, the Secretary shall issue to the Secretary of the

Treasu~ obligations in such forms and denominations, bearing such

maturitws, and subject to such terms and conditions as may be

agreed to by the Secretary and the Secretary of the Treasu . The

total of such obligations shall not exceed amounts provi7ed in

appropriation Acts. Redemption of such obl” ations shall be made b

the Secretary from moneys available in t e Storage Fund. Suc % i

obligations shall bear interest at a rate determined by the Secretary

of the Treasury, which shall be not less than a rate determined by

taking into consideration the average market ield on outstanding

marketable obligations of the United States o comparable maturi- {

ties during the month preceding the issuance of the obligations

under this paragraph. The Secretary of the Treasu

L

shall purchase

any issued obligations, and for such purpose the retary of the

TreasuV is authorized to use as a public debt transaction the

proceeds from the sale of any securities issued under chapter 31 of
~ ● Manag]ng the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

PUBLIC LAW 97-425–JAN. 7, 1983 96 STAT. 2241

title 31, United States Code, and the purposes for which securities A~~e P. 93’7.

may be issued under such Act are extended to include any purchase

of such obl” tions. The Secretary of the Treasury may at any time

sell any oft e robl” ations acquired by him under this aragraph. All

redemptions, pure 1%ases, and sales by the Secretary o the Treasury r

of obligations under this paragraph shall be treated as public debt

transactions of the United States.

(6) Anjapprop+tiom made available to the Storage Fund for any Intereet

FUT described m subsection (d) shall be repaid into the general IXW’nti.un of the Treasury, together with interest from the date of avail-

~b#i~o~&e&pp~ riations until the date of repayment. Such

I

r

on the cumulative amount of a~ ropriations

available to the tor e Fund, less the average und~Eursed cash

balance in the Storage%nd account during the fwal year involved.

The rate of such interest shall be determined by the Secretary of the

Treasury taking into consideration the average market yield during

the month precedin each f-l year on outstanding marketable

obligations of the #“mted states of comparable maturity. Interest ~ferral.

!k3Sllry, b t

aymenta maybe deferred with the approval of the Secretary of the

u any interest payments so deferred shall themselves

bear interest.

SBC. 137. (a) T RANSPORTATION .-(1) Transportation of spent AZ UX 10MT.

nuclear fuel under section 136(a) shall be subject to licensing and

regulation by the Commission and b the Secretary of Transportation as provided for transportation o commercial spent nuclear fuel {

under existing law.

(2) me secrem, in rovidin for the transposition of spent

nuclear fuel under this et, shal utilize by contract private indus- If

try to the fullest extent possible in each aspect of such transportation. The Secretary shall use direct Federal seMces for such transportation only upon a determination of the Secretary of Transportation, in consultation with the Secretary, that private industry is

unable or unwilling to provide such transportation services at reasonable cost.

SUBTITLE C —MONITORED RETRIEVABLE STORAGE

MONITORED RETRIEVABLE STORAGE

SEC. 141. (a) FINDINGa.-~e bngress findS that— 42 USC 10161.

(1) lon -term storage of high-level radioactive waste or spent

nuclear fuel in monitored retrievable storage facilities is an

option for providing safe and reliable management of such

waste or spent fuel;

(2) ~h~ executive branch and the ~

Y

should pI’OCeed as

expechtlously as possible to consider fu ly a proposal for construction of one or more monitored retrievable storage facilities

to provide such lon -term stor e;

(3) the Federal (%vernment as the responsibility to ensure 3

that site-specific designs for such facilities are available as

provided in this section;

(40 the generators and owners of the high-level radioactive

waste and spent nuclear fuel to be stored in such facilities have

the responmbility to ay the costs of the long-term storage of

such waste ands nt Fuel; and

(5) disposal of P@h-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear

fuel in a repository developed under this Act should proceed
App. C—The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 ● 305

96 STAT. 2242 PUBLIC LAW 97-425-JAN. 7, 1983

regardless of any construction of a monitored retrievable stm=-

e facility pursuant to this section.

(b)?kJBMISSION OF PROPOSAL BY sECR~ARY.-(l) On or before June

1, 1985, the Secretary shall complete a detailed study of the need for

and feasibility of, and shall submit to the Congress a proposal for,

the construction of one or more monitored retrievable storage facilities for high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel. Each

such facility shall be designed—

(A) to accommodate spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste resulting from civilian nuclear activities;

(B) to permit continuous monitoring, management, and maintenance of suchs nt fuel and waste for the foreseeable future;

(C) to provide or the ready retrieval of such spent fuel and F

waste for further processing or disposal; and

(D) to safely store such spent fuel and waste as long as maybe

necessa~ by maintaining such facility through a propriate

means, including any

?

uired replacement of suc{

(2) Such pro~~ shall inclu efacility.

(A) the estabhshment of a Federal program for the siting,

development, construction, and operation of facilities capable of

safely storin h~h-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear

fuel, which !acihties are to be licensed by the Commission;

(B) a plan for the funding of the construction and operation of

such facilities, which plan shall provide that the costs of such

activities shall be borne by the generators and owners of the

high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel to be stored

in such facilities;

(C) site-specific designs, specifications, and cost estimates sufficient to (i) solicit bids for the construction of the first such

facilit ; (ii) support con

1’ r

ssional authorization of the construction o such facility; an (iii) enable com letion and operation of

such facility as soon as practicable ollowing F congressional

authorization of such facility; and

(D) a plan for integrating facilities constructed pursuant to

this section with other storage and disposal facilities authorized

in this Act.

Consultations. (3) 1n formulating such proposal, the Secretary shall consult with

the Commission and the Administrator, and shall submit their

comments on such proposal to the Congress at the time such proposal is submitted.

(4) The proposal shall include, for the first such facility, at least 3

alternative sites and at least 5 alternative combinations of such

proposed sites and facility designs consistent with the criteria of

paragraph (b)(l). The Secreta

%

shall recommend the combination

among the alternatives that t e Secretary deems referable. The

environmental assessment under subsection (c) ah 1 include a full J

analysis of the relative advantages and disadvantages of all 5 such

alternative combinations of proposed sites and proposed facility

designs.

(c) E NVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENTS .-(1) Preparation and

submission to the Congress of the reposal required in this section

shall not require the re

1P

ration o an environmental impact state- r

ment under section 1 2( XC) of the National Environmental Policy

Environmental Act of 1969 (42 U.S.C. 4332(2)(C)). The Secretary shall prepare, in

assessment. accordance with regulations issued by the Secretary implementing

such Act, an environmental assessment with respect to such proposal. Such environmental assessment shall be based upon available
3~ ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

PUBLIC LAW 97-425—JAN. 7, 1983 96 STAT. 2243

information

f

regarding alternative technologies for the storage of

s pent nuclear uel and high-level radioactive waste. The Secretary

s all submit such environmental assessment to the Congress at the r

time such proposal is submitted.

(2) If the Congress by law, after review of the reposal submitted

by the Secretary under subsection (b), specifica ly authorizes con- r

struction of a monitored retrievable storage facility, the re uirements of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (42 .S.C. 8

4321 et seq.) shall apply with respect to construction of such facility,

except that an environmental impact statement pre ared with

res

r

to such acility shall not be r uired to consider t e need for f’ {

suc facility or any alternative to the esign criteria for such facility a

set forth in subsection (b)(l).

(d) LICENSING.— Any facility authorized pursuant to this section

shall be subject to licensing under section 202(3) of the Energy

Reorganization Act of 1974 (42 U.S.C. 5842(3)). In reviewing the

application filed by the Secretary for licensing of the first such

facility, the Commission may not consider the need for such facility

or any alternative to the design criteria for such facility set forth in

subsection (b)(l).

(e) CLARIFICATION.—Nothing in this section limits the consideration of alternative facility designs consistent with the criteria of

1’

aragraph (b)(l) in an environmental impact statement, or in any

icensing procedure o the Commission, with res [

r

to any monitored, retrievable facility authorized pursuant tot is section.

(f) IMPACT ASSISTANCE .-(1) Upon receipt by the Secretary of

congressional authorization to construct a facility described in subsection (b), the Secretary shall commence making annual impact aid

payments to appropriate units of general local government in order

to mitigate any social or economic im acts resulting from the

construction and subsequent operation o any such facility within f

the jurisdictional boundaries of any such unit.

(2) Payments made available to units of general local government

under this subsection shall be—

(A) allocated in a fair and equitable manner, with priority

&

“ven to units of general local government determined by the

reta~ to be most severely affected; and

(B) utdized by units of $eneral local overnment only for

planning, construction, mahenance, an provision of public f

services related to the sitin of such facility.

(3) Such payments shall be su ject to such terms and conditions as %

the Secretary determines are necessary to ensure achievement of

the urposes of this subsection. The Secretary shall issue such

E

re fations as may be necessary to carry out the provisions of this

su ection.

(4) Such pa

P

ents shall be made available entirely from funds

held in the uclear Waste Fund established in section 302(c) and

shall be available only to the extent provided in advance in appr~

priation Acts.

(5) The SeCre~ may consult with appropriate units of general

local government m advance of commencement of construction of

any such facility in an effort to determine the level of payments

each such unit is el” “ble to receive under this subsection.

(g) LIMITATION .–R o monitored retrievable storage facilit developed pursuant to this section may be constructed in any tate in J

which there is located any site approved for site characterization

under section 112. The restriction m the preceding sentence shall

Submittal to

Congress.

Payments.

Regulations.

Consultations.

Ante, p. 2208.
App. C—The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 ● 307

96 STAT. 2244 PUBLIC LAW 97-425—JAN. 7, 1983

, pp. 2217 ,

2220, 2222, 2225.

42 USC 10171.

only apply until such time as the Secretary decides that such

candidate site is no longer a candidate site under consideration for

development as a repository. Such restriction shall continue to apply

to any site selected for construction as a repository.

(h) Participation of STATES AND I NDIAN facility

authorued pursuant to this section shall be subject to the provisions

of sections 115, l16(a), l16(b), l16(d), 117, and 118. For purposes of

carrying out the provisions of this subsection, any reference in

sections 115 through 118 to a repository shall be considered to refer

to a monitored retrievable storage facility.

D-LOW-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTE

FINANCIAL ARIMNGEMENTS FOR U3W-LEVEL RADIOACTIVE WASTE SITE

SE C. 151. (a) FINANCIAL ARRANGEMENTS .-(1) The Commission

shall establish by rule, regulation, or order, after public notice, and

in accordance with section 181 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (42

U.S.C. 2231), such standards and instructions as the Commission

may deem necessary or desirable to ensure in the case of each

license for the disposal of low-level radioactive waste that an adequate bond, surety, or other financial arrangement (as determined

by the Commission) will be provided by a licensee to permit completion of all requirements established by the Commission for the

decontamination, decommissioning, site closure, and reclamation of

sites, structures, and equipment used in conjunction with such lowlevel radioactive waste. Such financial arrangements shall be pro

vialed and approved by the Commission, or, in the case of sites

within the boundaries of any agreement State under section 274 of

the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (42 U.S.C. 2021), by the appropriate

State or State entity, prior to issuance of licenses for low-level

radioactive waste disposal or, in the case of licenses in effkxt on the

date of the enactment of this Act, prior to termination of such

licenses.

(2) If the Commission determines that any long-term maintenance

or monitoring, or both, will be necewary at a site described in

paragraph (l), the Commission shall ensure before termination of

the license involved that the licensee has made available such

bonding, surety, or other financial arrangements as may be necessary to ensure that any necessary long-term maintenance or monitoring needed for such site will be carried out by the person having

title and custody for such site following license termination.

(b) TXTLE AND CUSTODY .-(1) The Secretary shall have authority to

assume title and custody of low-level radioactive waste and the land

on which such waste is disposed of, upon request of the owner of

such waste and land and following termination of the license issued

by the Commission for such disposal, if the Commission determines

that—

(A) the requirements of the Commission for site Clmure ,

decommwslonmg, and decontamination have been met by the

licensee involved and that such licensee is in compliance with

the provisions of subsection (a);

(B) such title and custody will be transferred to the Secretary

without cost to the Federal Government; and
~ ● Managing the Nation’s @mmerc/al H/gh-Level Radioactive Waste

PUBLIC LAW 97-425-JAN. 7, 1983 96 STAT. 2245

(C) Federal ownership and management of such site is necessary or desirable in order to protect the public health and

safe , and the environment.

(2) If t?e Secretary assumes title and custody of any such waste

and land under this subsection, the Secretary shall maintain such

waste and land in a manner that will protect the public health and

safety and the environment.

(c) $PBcIAL SrTES.-If the low-level radioactive waste involved is

the result of a licensed activity to recover zirconium, hafnium, and

rare earths fkom source material, the Secretary, upon request of the

owner of the site involved, shall assume title and custody of such

waste and the land on which it is disposed when such site has been

decontammated and stabilized in accordance with the requirements

established by the (hnmission and when such owner has made

ad Uate financial

?

arrangements approved by the Commission for

the ong-term maintenance and monitoring of such site.

TITLE 11-RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT, AND DEMONSTRATION REGARDING DISPOSAL OF HIGH-LEVEL RADIOAC

TIVE WASTE AND SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL

PURPOsE

SW. 211. It is the purpoae of this title- 42 USC 10191.

,(V to pro~de direction to the Secretary with respect to the

‘iPofmo

h-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel;

( ) toauthom the Secretary, pursuant to this title-

(A) to rovide for the construction, operation, and maintenance o a dee geologic test and evaluation ! facili ; and

(B) to prow e for a focused and integrated t higx -level

radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel reaearch and de

velopment ~rograrn, including the develo ment of a test

and evaluation facility w carry out researc { and provide an

integrated demonstration of the technology for deep glogic diqmal of high-level radioactive waste, and the development of the facilities to demonstrate dry storage of spent

nuclear fhel; and

(3) to provide for an improved coo rative role between the

Federal Government and States, xected Indian tribes, and

units of general local government in the siting of a test and

evaluation facility.

APPLICABILITY

SEC. 212. The provisions of this title are subject to section 8 and A~@ P. 2205.

shall not apply to facilities that are used for the disposal of high- 42 USC 10192.

level radioactwe waste, low-level radioactive waste, transuranic

waste, or spent nuclear fuel resulting from atomic energy defense

activities.

IDENTIFICATION OF 51TES

SEC. 213. (a) Guidelines.-N0t later than 6 months after the date 42 u~ 10193.

of the enactment of this Act and notwithstanding the failure of

other agencies to promulgate standards ursuant to a plicable law,

the Secretary, in consultation with the &remission, t e Director of {

the Geological Survey, the Administrator, the Council on Environ-
App. C—The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 “ 309

96 STAT. 2246 PUBLIC LAW 97-425-JAN. 7, 1983

mental Quality, and such other Federal agencies as the Secretary

considers a propriate, is authorized to issue, ~ursuant to section 553

of title 5, nited States Code, general J guidehnes for the selection of

a site for a test and evaluation facility. Under such guidelines the

Secretary shall specify factors that qualify or disqualif a site for

development as a test and evaluation facility, incluz ing factors

pertaining to the location of valuable natural resources, hydrogphysics, seismic activity, and atomic energy defense activities, proximity to water supplies, proximity to populations, the effect upon

the rights of users of water, and proximit to components of the

National Park System, the National Wil ife Refuge S tern, the d?

National Wild and Scenic Rivers System, the National#ilderness

Preservation System, or National Forest Lands. Such guidelines

shall require the Secretary to consider the various geol “c media in

which the site for a test and evaluation facility may beTocated and,

to the extent practicable, to identify sites in different eologic

media. The Secretary shall use guidelines established un er this !

subsection in considering and selecting sites under this title.

(b) SITE IDBNTIFICAmON BY THE SBCXUWARY.-(1) Not later than 1

year after the date of the enactment of this Act, and following

promulgation of guidelines under subsection (a), the Secretary is

authorized to ident~ 3 or more sites, at least 2 of which shall be in

different eologic media in the continental United States, and at

least 1 0 which shall be in media other than salt. Subject to f

Commission requirements, the Secretary shall “ve preference to

sites for the test and evaluation facility in m ia possessing 3 geochemical characteristics that retard aqueous transport of radionuelides. In order to provide a greater possible protection of public

health and safety as operating experience is gamed at the test and

evaluation facility, and with the exception of the primary areas

under review by the Secretary on the date of the enactment of this

Act for the location of a test and evaluation facility or repository, all

sites identified under this subsection shall be more than 15 statute

miles from towns having a population of greater than 1,000 persons

as determined by the most recent census unless such sitea contain

high-level radioactive waste rior to identfilcation under this title.

Environmental Each identification of a sites all be [ su ported by an environmental

assessment. assessment, which shall include a detai ed statement of the basis for r

such identification and of the probable impacts of the siting research

activities planned for such site, and a discussion of alternative

activities relating to siting research that may be undertaken to

avoid such impacts. Such environmental assessment shall include—

(A) an evaluation by the Secretary as to whether such site is

suitable for siting research under the guidelines established

under subsection (a);

(B) an evaluation by the Secreta of the effects of the siting

research activities at such site on t e public health and safety T

and the environment;

(0 a reasonable comparative evaluation by the Secretary of

such site with other sites and locations that have been

considered;

(D) a description of the decision process by which such site

was recommended; and

(E) an assessment of the regional and local impacts of locating

the proposed test and evaluation facility at such site.

(2) When the Secretary identifies a site, the Secretary shall as

soon as possible notify the Governor of the State in which such site
310 Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

PUBLIC LAW 97-425—JAN. 7, 1983 96 STAT. 2247

is located, or the governing bod7 of the affected Indian tribe where

such site is located, of such i entification and the basis of such d

identification. Additional sites for the location of the test and evaluation facility authorized in section 302(d) may be identified after

such 1 year period, following the same procedure as if such sites had

been identified within such period.

SITING RESEARCH AND RELATED ACTIVITIES

SEC. 214. (a) IN General-Not later than 30 months after the 42 Usc 10194.

date on which the Secretary completes the identification of sites

under section 213, the Secretary is authorized to complete sufficient

evaluation of 3 sites to select a site for expanded siting research

activities and for other activities under section 218. The Secretary is

authorized to conduct such preconstruction activities relative to

such site selection for the test and evaluation facility as he deems

appropriate. Additional sites for the location of the test and evaluation facility authorized in section 302(d) maybe evaluated after such

30-month period, following the same procedures as if such sites were

to be evaluated within such period.

(b) Public M EETINGS AND E NVIRONMENTAL Assesment.-Not

later than 6 months after the date on which the Secretary completes

the identification of sites under section 213, and before beginning

siting research activities, the Secretary shall hold at least 1 public

meeting in the vicinity of each site to inform the residents of the

area of the activities to be conducted at such site and to receive their

views.

(c) RESTRICTIONS .—Except as rovided in section 218 with respect

to a test and evaluation faciity, in conducting siting research 1’

activities pursuant to subsection (a)-

(1) the Secretary shall use the minimum quantity of highlevel radioactive waste or other radioactive materials, if any,

necessary to achieve the test or research objectives;

(2) the Secretary shall ensure that any radioactive material

used or placed on a site shall be fully retrievable; and

(3) upon termination of siting research activities at a site for

any reason, the Secretary shall remove any radioactive material

at or in the site as promptly as practicable.

(d) TITLE TO MATERIAL. The secreti

T

may take title, in the

name of the Federal Government, to t e high-level radioactive

waste, spent nuclear fuel, or other radioactive material emplaced in

a test and evaluation facility. If the Secretary takes title to any such

material, the Secreta

3

shall enter into the appropriate financial

arrangements describe in subsection (a) or (b) of section 302 for the

disposal of such material.

TEST AND EVALUATION FACILITY SITING REVIEW AND REPORTS

SEC. 215. (a) Consultation and Cooperation the Governor of a 42 UX 10195.

State, or the governing body of an affected Indian tribe, notified of a

site identification under section 213 shall have the right to participate in a process of consultation and cooperation as soon as the site

involved has been identified pursuant to such section and throughsection, the term “process of consultation an cooperation” means a J

methodolow— cooperation.”

(1) b~”which the Secretary—
—

— .

App. C—The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 311

96 STAT. 2248 PUBLIC LAW 97-425—JAN. 7, 1983

(A) keeps the Governor or governing body involved fully

and currently informed about any potential economic or

public health and safety impacts in all stages of the siting,

development, construction, and operation of a test and

evaluation facility;

(B) solicits, receives, and evaluates concerns and objections of such Governor or governing body with regar to d’

such test and evaluation facility on an ongoing basis; and

(C) works diligently and cooperatively to resolve such

concerns and objections; and

(2) bY which the tate or affected Indian tribe k involved can

exercise reasonable independent monitoring and testing of

onsite activities related to all stages of the siting, development,

construction and o ration of the test and evaluation facility,

except that any suc monitoring and testing shall not unreason- P

ably interfere with onsite activities.

(b) WRITTEN AGREEMENTS.-The secretary shall enter into written

agreements with the Governor of the State in which an identified

site is located or with the governing body of any affkcted Indian

tribe where an identified site is located in order to expedite the

consultation and cooperation process. Any such written agreement

shall specify—

(1) procedures by which such Governor or governing body may

study, determine, comment on, and make recommendations

with regard to the possible health, safety, and economic impacts

of the test and evaluation facility;

(2) procedures by which the Secretary shall consider and

respond to commenta and recommendations made by such Governor or governing body, including the period in which the

Secretary shall sores nd;

(3) the documents t e Department is to submit to such Gover- P

nor or overning body, the timing for such submissions, the

timing or such Governor or governing body to identify public

health and safety concerns and the process to be followed to try

to eliminate those concerns;

(4) procedures by which the Secretary and either such Governor or governing body may review or modify the agreement

periodically; and

(5) procedures for public notification of the procedures specified under subparagraphs (A) through (D).

(C) LIMITATION.—Except as specifically provided in this section,

nothing in this title is intended to grant any State or affected Indian

tribe any authority with respect to the siting, development, or

loading of the test and evaluation facility.

FEDERAL AGENCY ACtiONS

42 USC 10196.

SEC. 216. (a) COOPERATION AND ordination.-&k?ra1 agencies

shall assist the Secretary by coo rating and coordinating with the

Secretary in the preparation o any necessary reports under this r

title and the mission plan under section 301.

(b) ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW.-(1) No action of the Secretary or

any other Federal agency required by this title or section 301 with

respect to a test and evaluation facility to be taken prior to the

initiation of onsite construction of a test and evaluation facility

shall require the preparation of an environmental impact statement

under section I02(2)(C) of the Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (42
312 Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

PUBLIC LAW 97-425–JAN. 7, 1983 96

U.S.C. 4332(2)(C)), or to require the preparation of environmental

reports, except as otherwise specifically provided for in this title.

(2) The Secretary and the heads of all other Federal agencies

shall, to the maximum extent possible, avoid duplication of efforts in

the preparation of reports under the National Environmental Policy

Act of 1969 (42 U.S.C. 4321 et seq.).

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT ON DISPOSAL OF HIGH-LEVEL

RADIOACTIVE WASTE

SEC. 217. (a) Purpose E.-Not later than 64 months after the date of

the enactment of this Act, the Secretary is authorized to, to the

extent practicable, begin at a site evaluated under section 214, as

part of and as an extension of siting research activities of such site

under such section, the mining and construction of a test and

evaluation facility. Prior b the mining and construction of such

facility, the Secretary shall pre pare an environmental assessment.

The purpose of such facility shal be-

(1) to supplement and focus the repository site characterization process;

(2) to provide the conditions under which known technological

components can be integrated to demonstrate a functioning

repository-like system;

(3) to provide a means of identifying, evaluating, and resolving potential repository licensing issues that could not be

resolved during the siting research program conducted under

section 212;

(4).@ validate, under actual conditions, the scientific models

used m the design of a repository;

(5) to refine the design and engineering of repository components and systems and to confirm the predicted behavior of such

components and systems;

(6) to supplement the siting data, the generic and specific

geological characteristics developed under section 214 relating

to isolating disposal materials in the physical environment of a

repository;

(7) to evaluate the design concepts for packaging, handling,

and emplacement of high-level radioactive waste and spent

nuclear fuel at the design rate; and

(8) to establish operating capability without exposing workers

to excessive radiation.

(b) Design.-The Secretary shall design each test and evaluation

facility—

(1) to be capable of receiving not more than 100 full-sized

canisters of solidified high-level radioactive waste (which canisters shall not exceed an aggregate weight of 100 metric tons),

except that spent nuclear fuel may be used instead of such

waste if such waste cannot be obtained under reasonable conditions;

(2) to permit full retrieval of solidified high-level radioactive

waste, or other radioactive material used by the Secretary for

testing, upon completion of the technology demonstration activities; and

(3) based upon the principle that the high-level radioactive

waste, spent nuclear fuel, or other radioactive material involved

shall be isolated from the biosphere in such a way that the

STAT. 2249

42 WC 10197.

Environmental

assessment.
App. C—The /VUC/8i3f Waste Policy Act of 19B2 ● 313

96 STAT. 2250 PUBLIC LAW 97-425—JAN. 7, 1983

Testing.

initial isolation is provided by engineered barriers fiumtioning

as a system with the geologic environment.

(c) @E~moNofil) Not later than 88 months after the date of the

enactment of ths Act, the Secretary shall begin an in situ testing

program at the test and evaluation facilit in accordance with the

mission plan developed under section 301, or { urposes of—

(A) conducting in situ testa of bore i ole ~~” , gml~c

media fracture sealing, and room closure to establis % the techniques and performance for isolation of high-level radioactive

waste, spent nuclear fuel, or other radioactive materials from

the biosphere;

(B) conducti

3

in situ tests with radioactive sources and

materials to ev uate and improve reliable models for radionuclide migration, absorption, and containment within the engineered barriers and geologic media involved, if the Secretary

finds there is reasonable assurance that such radioactive

sources and materials will not threaten the use of such site as a

repository;

(C) conducting in situ tests to evaluate and improve models

fbrti~und water or brine flow through fkactured geologic

●

(D) &mdu “

9

in situ tests under conditions re resenting the

real time and t e accelerated time behavior oft e engineered \

barriers with@ the g@ogic environment involved;

(E) condu~W in situ testa to evaluate the efkcta of heat tmcl

pressure on the geol

T

“c media involti on the hydrology of the

surrounding ~ an on the integrity of the dis

r

1 packages;

(F) ~ndu~ in situ te@s under both norm and abnormal

repository comhtions to establish safe design limiti for disposal

packages and to determine the effects of the gross release of

radionuclidea into surrounm and the effects of various credible failure mod- inclu “ —

(i) seismic evenb9-to the coupling of aquifers

through the test and evaluation fiwility;

(ii) thermal ;um~ significantly greater than the maximum calculaJ

(iii) human intrusion creating a direct pathway to the

biosphere; and

(G) ~nducting such other sarch and development activities

as the Secreta considem appro riate, includin such activities

necessary to oTtain the use o high-level ra #’ fioactive waste,

spent nuclear fhel, or other radioactive materials (such as any

highly radioactive material from the Three Mile Island nuclear

powerplant or from the West Vane Demonstration Project) for

test and evaluation p~ifsuc other activities are reason- i

ably necessary to support the repository program and if there is

reasonable assurance that the radioactive sources involved will

not threaten the use of such site as a m

(?) Tht? in situ testing authorized in t%i~ubion shall be

demgned to ensure that the suitability of the site involved for

licensing by the Commission as a repository will not be adversely

affected.

(d) USE OF EXISTING DEPARTMENT FAcmrrms.-I)uring the conducting of siting research activities under section 214 and for such

period thereafter as the Secretary considers appropriate, the Secretary shall use Department facilities owned by the Federal Government on the date of the enactment of this Act for the conducting of
314 . Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

PUBLIC LAW 97-425-JAN. 7, 1983 96 STAT. 2251

generically applicable tests regarding packaging, handling, and emplacement technology for solidified high-level radioactive waste and

spent nuclear fuel from civilian nuclear activities.

(e) ENGINEERED Barriers.-The system of engineered barriers and

selected geology used in a test and evaluation facility shall have a

design life at least as long as that which the commission requires by

regulations issued under this Act, or under the Atomic Energy Act

of 1954 (42 U.S.C. 2011 et seq.), for repositories.

(f) ROLE OF COMMISSION .-(1)(A) Not later than 1 year after the

date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary and the Commission

shall reach a written understanding establishing the procedures for

review, consultation, and coordination in the lanning, construction,

and operation of the test and evaluation faci ity under this section. f

Such understanding shall establish a schedule, consistent with the

deadlines set forth in this subtitle, for submission by the Secretary

of, and review by the Commission of and necessary action on—

(i) the mission plan prepared under section 301; and

(ii) such reports and other information as the Commission

may reasonably require to evaluate any health and safety

impacts of the test and evaluation facility.

(B) Such understanding shall also establish the conditions under

which the Commission may have access to the test and evaluation

facility for the purpose of assessing any public health and safety

concerns that it may have. No shafts may be excavated for the test

and evaluation until the Secretary and the Commission enter into

such understanding.

(2) Subject to section 305, the test and evaluation facility, and the

facilities authorized in section 217, shall be constructed and o crated as research, development, and demonstration facilities, ands all R

not be subject to licensing under section 202 of the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974 (42 U.S.C. 5842).

(3)(A) The Commission shall carry out a continuing anal sis of the

activities undertaken under this sedion to evaluate the a equacy of J

the consideration of public health and safet issues.

(B) The Commission shall report to the resident, the Secretary, #

and the Congress as the Commission considers appropriate with

respect to the conduct of activities under this section.

(g) ENVIRONM~AL REVIEW. —The Secretary shall prepare an

environmental impact statement under section 102(2)(C) of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (42 U.S.C. 4332(2)(C)) prior

to conducting tests with radioactive materials at the test and evaluation facility. Such environmental impact statement shall incorporate, to the extent practicable, the environmental assessment prepared under section 217(a). Nothing in this subsection may be

construed to limit siting research activities conducted under section

214. This subsection shall apply only to activities performed exclusively for a test and evaluation facility.

(h) LIMITATIONS .--(1) If the teat and evaluation facility is not

located at the site of a repository, the Secretary shall obtain the

concurrence of the commission with respect to the decontamination

and decommissioning of such facility .

(2) If the test and evaluation faci ity is not located at a candidate f

site or repository site, the Secretary shall conduct only the portion

of the in situ testing program requred in subsection (c) determined

]ytithe Secretary to be useful in carrying out the purposes of this

.
.

App. C—The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 ● 315

96 STAT. 2252 PUBLIC LAW 97-425-JAN. 7, 1983

Termination. (3) The operation of the test and evaluation facility shall terminati not later than—

(A) 5 years after the date on which the initial repository

begins operation; or

(B) at such time as the Secretary determines that the continued operation of a test and evaluation facility is not necessary

for research, development, and demonstration purposes;

whichever occurs sooner.

(4) Notwithstanding any other provisions of this subsection, as

soon as practicable following any determination by the Secretary,

with the concurrence of the Commission, that the test and evaluation facility is unsuitable for continued operation, the Secretary

shall take such actions as are n to remove from such site

any radioactive material placed on such site as a result of testing “

and evaluation activities conducted under this section. Such requirement may be waived if the Secretary, with the concurrence of the

Commission, finds that short-term testing and evaluation activities

using radioactive material will not endanger the public health and

safety.

RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT ON SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL

42 USC 10198. SE C. 218. (a) DEMO N-TION AND C OOPERATIVE PROGRAMS-The

Secretary shall establish a demonstration program, in cooperation

with the private sector, for the dry storage of spent nuclear fuel at

civilian nuclear power reactor sites, with the objective of establishing one or more technologies that the Commission may, by rule,

approve for use at the sites of civilian nuclear power reactors

without, to the maximum extent practicable, the need for additional

sitespecific approvals by the Commission. Not later than 1 year

after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary shall select

at least 1, but not more than 3, sites evaluated under section 214 at

such power reactors. In selecting such site or sites, the Secretary

shall give preference to civilian nuclear power reactors that will

soon have a sho

Y

e of interim storage capacity for spent nuclear

fuel. Subject to reac ing agreement as provided in subsection (b), the

Secretary shall undertake activities to assist such power reactors

with demonstration projects at such sites, which may use one of the

following types of alternate storage technologies: spent nuclear fuel

storage casks, caissons, or silos. The Secretary shall also undertake a

cooperative program with civilian nuclear power reactors to encourage the development of the technology for spent nuclear fuel rod

consolidation in existing power reactor water stor e basins.

(b) coOPERATIVE A GREEMENT S.-TO c a r

Y

out t e programs de %

scribed in subsection (a), the Secreta shal enter into a cooperative

agreement with each utility involv3 ’that specifies, at a minimum,

that—

(1) such utilit shall select the alternate storage technique to

be used, make t e land and spent nuclear fuel available for the i

dry storage demonstration, submit and provide site-specific documentation for a license ap lication to the timmission, obtain

a license relating to the faci ity involved, construct such facility, f

operate such facilit after licensing, pay the costs required to

construct such faci ity, and ay all costs f

?

associated with the

operation and maintenance o such facility;

(2) the Secretary shall provide, on a cost-sharing basis,

consultative and technical assistance, including design support
316 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radloactlve Waste

PUBLIC LAW 97-425-JAN. 7, 1983 96 STAT. 2253

and generic licensing documentation, to assist such utility in

obtaining the construction authorization and appropriate license from the Commission; and

(3) the SeCre~ shall provide generic research and develop

ment of alternative spent nuclear fuel storage techniques to

enhance utility-provided, atireactor storage capabilities, if authorized in any other provision of this Act or in any other

provision of law.

(c) DRY STORAG= RmmAIUX AND DEVELO Pram.-(l) The consultative and technical assistance referred to in subsection (M(2) ma

include, but shall not be limited to, the establishment of a researc z

and development program for the d storage of not more than 300

metric tons of spent nuclear fuel at 7acilities owned by the Federal

Government on the date of the enactment of this Act. The purpose

“ T“

of such p shall be to collect necessary data to assist the

utilities mvo ved’m the licensing recess.

(2) TO the extent available, an consistent with the provisions of $

section 135, the Secretary shall provide spent nuclear. fuel for the

research and development ?

from spent nuclear fuel recav!%rt{:zz;?o::z::!:i::

section 135. Such spent nuclear fuel shall not be subject to the

provisions of section 135(0).

(d) FUnlN~.-~e total contribution from the Secretary from

Federal finds and the use of Federal facilities or seMces shall not

exceed 25 percent of the total costs of the demonstration program

authorized in subsection (a), as estimated by the Secretary. All

remaining costs of such pr

r

am shall be paid by the utilities

involved or shall be provid by the Secretary from the Interim

Stor e Fund established in section 136.

(e) %E~mON ~ SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL STORAGE pROGRAM.-Th0

spent nuclear fuel sto

Y

e program authorized in section 135 shall

not be construed to aut orize the use of research development or

demonstration ftilitiea owned by the Department unless—

(1) a period of 30 calendar days (not including any day in ~~&~O~al

which either House of Congress is not in session because of ~O~~it~

a~oumment of more than 3 calendar days to a da certain) has

r

after the Secretary has transmitted to the remittee on /!0

ience and Technology of the House of Representatives and the

Committee on Ene~ and Natural Resources of the Senate a

written report contamin~ a full and complete statement concerning (A) the facility revolved; (B) any necessary modifications; (C) the cost thereof; and (D) the impact on the authorized

research and development p

T

am; or

(2) each such committee, be ore the expiration of such period,

has transmitted to the Secretary a written notice to the effect

that such committee has no objection to the proposed use of

such facility.

PAYMENTS TO STATES AND INDIAN TRIBES

SEC. 219. (a) PAYwnms.—Subject to subsection (b), the &cretary 42 USC 10199.

shall make payments to each State or affected Indian tribe that has

entered into an agreement pursuant to section 215. The Secretary

shall pay an amount equal to 100 percent of the expenses incurred

by such State or Indian tribe in engaging in any monitoring, testing,

evaluation, or other consultation and cooperation activity under

section 215 with respect to any site. The amount paid by the
,

App. C—The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 ● 317

96 STAT. 2254 PUBLIC LAW 97-425—JAN. 7, 1983

Secretary under this paragraph shall not exceed $3,000,000 per year

from the date on which the site involved was identified to the date

on which the decontamination and decommission of the facility is

complete pursuant to section 217(h). Any such payment may only be

made to a State in which a potential site for a test and evaluation

facility has been identified under section 213, or to an affected

Indian tribe where the potential site has been identified under such

section.

(b) LIMITATION.—The Secretary shall make any payment to a

State under subsection (a) only if such State agrees to provide, to

each unit of general local government within the jurisdictional

boundaries of which the potential site or effectively selected site

involved is located, at least one tenth of the payments made by the

Secretary to such State under such subsection. A State or affected

Indian tribe receiving any payment under subsection (a) shall otherwise have discretion to use such payment for whatever purpose it

deems necessary, including the State or tribal activities pursuant to

agreements entered into in accordance with section 215. Annual

payments shall be prorated on a 365 day basis to the specified dates.

Report to

Congress.

42 USC 10200.

42 USC 10201.

Ante, p. 222’7.

42 USC 10202.

42 USC 10203.

Joint notice,

F

ublication in

ederal

Register.

STUDY OF RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT NEEDS FOR MONITORED

RETRIEVABLE STORAGE PROPOSAL

SEC. 220. Not later than 6 months after the date of the enactment

of this Act, the Secretary shall submit to the Congress a report

describing the research and development activities the Secretary

considers necessary to develop the proposal required in section

141(b) with respect to a monitored retrievable storage facility.

JUDICIAL REVIEW

SW. 221. Judicial review of research and development activities

under this title shall be in accordance with the provisions of section

119.

SE C. 222. RESEARCH ON ALTERNATIVES FOR THE PERMANENT

DISPOSAL OF HIGH-LEVEL RADIOActIVE WASTE. —The Secretary shall

continue and accelerate a program of research, development, and

investigation of alternative means and technologies for the permanent disposal of high-level radioactive waste from civilian nuclear

activities and Federal research and development activities except

that funding shall be made from amounts appropriated to the

Secreta for purposes of carrying out this section. Such program

shall inc ude examination of various waste disposal options. 7

TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE TO NON-NUCLEAR WEAPON STATES IN THE

FIELD OF SPENT FUEL STORAGE AND DISPOSAL

SEC. 223. (a) It shall be the policy of the United States to cooperate

with and provide technical assistance to non-nuclear weapon states

in the field of spent fuel storage and dis sal.

(b)(l) Within 90 da s of enactment o this Act, the Secretary and r

the Commission shal publish a joint notice in the Federal Register

stating that the United States is prepared to cooperate with and

provide technical assistance to non-nuclear weapon states in the

fields of at-reactor spent fuel storage; away-from-reactor spent fuel

storage; monitored, retrievable spent fuel storage; geologic disposal

of spent fuel; and the health, safety, and environmental regulation
318 c Managing the Nation’s Commercial H/gh-Leve/ Radioactive Waste

PUBLIC LAW 97-425-JAN. 7, 1983 96 STAT. 2255

of such activities. The notice shall summarize the resources that can

be made available for international cooperation and assistance in

these fields through existing programs of the Department and the

Commission, including the availability of: (i) data from past or

ongoin research and development projects; (ii) consultations with

expert partment or Commission personnel or contractors; and (iii) k

liaison with private business entities and organizations working in

these fields.

(2) The joint notice described in the preceding subparagraph shall

be updated and reissued annually for 5 succeeding years.

(c) Folloting ublication of the annual “oint notice referred to in

paragraph (2), t e Secretary of State shal inform the governments R !

of non-nuclear weapon states and, as feasible, the organizations

operating nuclear powerplants in such states, that the United States

is prepared to cooperate with and rovide technical assistance to

non-nuclear weapon states in theflelds of spent fuel storage and

disposal, as set forth in the joint notice. The Secretary of State shall

also solicit expressions of interest from non-nuclear weapon state

governments and non-nuclear weapon state nuclear power reactor

operators concerni

3

their participation in expanded United States

cooperation and tec nical assistance programs in these fields. The

Secretary of State shall transmit any such expressions of interest to

the De artment and the Commission.

(d) *ith his budget presentation materials for the Department

and the Commission for f~al years 1984 through 1989, the President shall include fundin requesta for an expanded program of

cooperation and technicJ assistance with non-nuclear weapon

states in the fields of spent fuel stnrage and disposal as appropriate

%

in 1. ht of expressions of interest in such cooperation and assistance

on t e part of non-nuclear weapon state governments and nonnuclear weapon state nuclear power reactor o raters.

(e) For the purposes of this subsection, t e term “non-nuclear r

weapon state” shall have the same meaning as that set forth in

article IX of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (21 U.S.C. 438).

(f) Nothing in this subsection shall authorize the Department or

& Commission to take any action not authorized under existing

.

TITLE III-OTHER PROVISI~~SF&LATING TO RADIOACTIVE

MISSION PLAN

SEC 301. (a) CONTENTS OF MISSION PmN.-The Secretary shall

prepare a comprehensive re

r

rt, to be known as the mission plan,

which shall provide an in ormational basis sufficient to permit

informed deasions to be made in carrying out the repository pre

gram and the research, development, and demonstration programs

required under this Act. The mission plan shall include-

(1) an ident~fication ● of the primary scientific, engineering,

and techmcal mformatlon, including any necessary demonstration of engineering or systems integration, with respect to the

siting and construction of a test and evaluation facility and

repositories;

(2) an identification of any information described in paragraph (1) that is not available because of any unresolved scienJoint notice,

reissuance.

Expressions of

interest.

“Non-nuclear

weapon state.”

42 USC 10221.
App. C—The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 ● 319

P

96 STAT. 2256 PUBLIC LAW 97-425-JAN. 7, 1983

Ante, p. 2208.

tifi~, engineering, or technical questions, or undemonstra@d

enP

eering or systems integration, a schedule including speCi IC v

“or milestones for the research, development, and technology emonstration program required under this Act and any

additional activities to be undertaken to provide such information, a schedule for the activities necessary to achieve important

programmatic milestones, and an estimate of the costs required

to carry out such research, development, and demonstration

programs;

(3) an evaluation of financial, political, legal, or institutional

problems that may impede the implementation of this Act, the

plans of the Secretary to resolve such problems, and recommendations for any necessary legislation to resolve such problems;

(4) any comments of the Secretary with respect to the purpose

and program of the test and evaluation facility;

(5) a discussion of the significant results of research and

development programs conducted and the implications for each

of the different geologic media under consideration for the

siting of repositories, and, on the basis of such information, a

comparison of the advantages and disadvantages associated

with the use of such media for repository sites;

(6) the gui#el@es issued under section l12(a);

(?) ~odescrlptlon of known Sites at which site characterization

actnntms should be undertaken, a description of such siting

characterization activities, including the extent of planned excavations, plans for onsite testing with radioactive or nonradioactive material, plans for any investigations activities which may

affect the capability of any such site to isolate high-level radioactive waste or spent nuclear fuel, plans to control any adverse,

safety-related impacts from such site characterization activities,

and plans for the decontamination and decommissioning of such

site if it is determined unsuitable for licensing as a repository;

(8) an identification of the process for solidifying high-level

radioactive waste or packaging spent nuclear fuel, including a

summary and analysis of the data to support the selection of the

solidification process and packaging techniques, an analysis of

the requirements for the number of solidification packaging

facilities needed, a description of the state of the art for the

materials proposed to be used in packaging such waste or spent

fuel and the availability of such materials including impacts on

strategic supplies and any requirements for new or reactivated

facilities to produce any such materials needed, and a descrip

tion of a plan, and the schedule for implementing such plan, for

an aggressive research and development program to provide

when needed a high-integrity disposal package at a reasonable

price;

(9) an estimate of (A) the total reposito capacit r uired to

safely accommodate the dis sal of all igh-leve ra ioactive 7 r7

waste and spent nuclear fue expected to be generated through r

December 31, 2020, in the event that no commercial reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel occurs, as well as the repository

capacity that will be required if such reprocessing does occur;

(B) the number and type of repositories required to be

constructed to provide such disposal capacity; (C) a schedule for

the construction of such repositories; and (D) an estimate of the

period during which each repository listed in such schedule will
.-

3~ ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Rad/oact/ve Waste

PUBLIC LAW 97-425-JAN. 7, 1983 96 STAT. 2257

be accepting high-level radioactive waste or spent nuclear fuel

for disposal;

(10) an estimate, on an annual basis, of the costs required (A)

to construct and operate the repositories anticipated to be

needed under paragraph (9) based on each of the assumptions

referred to in such aragraph; (B) to construct and operate a

test and evaluation facility, or any other facilities, other than

repositories described in subparagraph (A), determined to be

fi=d~; and (C) to~ out any other activities under t~

(l’l) an identification of the possible adverse economic and

other impacts to the State or Indian tribe involved that may

arise from the development of a test and evaluation facility or

itory at a site.

(b)m&&SMON OF MISSION PLAN.+) Not later than 15 months

after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary shall

submit a draft mission plan to the States, the afhcted Indian tribes,

the Commission, and other Government agencies as the Secretary

deems appropriate for their commenti.

(2) In preparing any commenta on the mission plan, such agencies

shall speci& with pr@sion any objections that the may have. U n

submission of the mission plan to such agencies, t e Secretarys 1 { G

publish a notice in the Federal

?

ter of the submission of the

mission plan and of its availability or public inspection, and, upon

receipt of any comments of such agencies respecting the mission

plan, the Secretary shall publish a notice in the Federal Register of

the receipt of commenta and of the availability of the commenta for

P

public ins “on. If the Secretary does not revise the mission plan

to meet o jections specii%d in such comments, the Secretary shall

publish in the Federal Register a detailed statement for not so

revis”

%

the mission plan.

(3) e Secretary, after reviewing any other comments made by

such agencies and revising the mission plan to the extent that the

Secreta may consider to be appropriate, shall submit the mission

plan tot eap 7 ropriatecommittees of the Congress not later than 17

months aRer t e date of the enactment of this Act. The mission plan \

shall be used by the Secretary at the end of the first period of 30

calendar days (not including any day on which either House of

Congms is not in session because of adjournment of more than 3

calendar days to a day certain) following receipt of the mission plan

by the (hgress.

NU~R WASTE FUND

SEC 302. (a) Co-crs.-(l) In the performan ce of his functions

under this Act, the Secretary is authorized to enter into contracts

with any person who generates or holds title to high-level radioactive waste, ors nt nuclear fuel, of domestic origin for the accept-

%

ance of title, su uent transportation, and disposal of such waste

or spent fuel. Suc contracts shall provide for payment to the

Secretary of f- pursuant to paragraphs (2) and (3) suficient to

o-t expenditures described in subsection (d).

(2) For electricity generated b a civilian nuclear wer reactor

and sold on or after the date 90 Lys after the date o enactment of r

this Act, the f= under paragraph (1) shall be equal to 1.0 mil per

kilowatt+hour.

Publication in

Federal

Re “ ter.

Pu lic r

inspection and

agency

comments.

Plan submittal

to congressional

committees.

42 USC 10222.

Fees.
App. C—The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 7982 ● 321

96 STAT. 2258 PUBLIC LAW 97-425-JAN. 7, 1983

Fees.

Ante, p. 2229,

Collection and

payment

procedures.

Review.

Transmittal to

Congress.

42 USC! 6421.

Disposal

services, terms

and conditions.

License renewal

or issuance.

(3) For spent nuclear fuel, or solidified high-level radioactive

waste derived from spent nuclear fuel, which fuel was. used to

generate electricity in a civilian nuclear power reactor-prior to the

application of the fee under paragraph (2) to such reactor, the

Secretary shall, not later than 90 days after the date of enactment of

this Act, establish a 1 time fee per kilogram of heavy metal in spent

nuclear fuel, or in solidified high-level radioactive waste. Such fee

shall be in an amount equivalent to an average charge of 1.0 mil per

kilowatt-hour for electricity generated by such spent nuclear fuel, or

such solidified high-level waste derived therefrom, to be collected

from any person delivering such spent nuclear fuel or high-level

waste, pursuant to section 123, to the Federal Government. Such fee

shall be paid to the Treasury of the United States and shall be

deposited in the separate fund established by subsection (c) 126(b). In

paying such a fee, the person delivering spent fuel, or solidified

high-level radioactive wastes derived therefrom, to the Federal Government shall have no further financial obligation to the Federal

Government for the long-term storage and permanent disposal of

such spent fuel, or the solidified high-level radioactive waste derived

therefrom.

(4) Not later than 180 days after the date of enactment of this Act,

the Secretary shall establish procedures for the collection and payment of the f- established by paragraph (2) and paragraph (3). The

Secretary shall annually review the amount of the fees established

by paragraphs (2) and (3) above to evaluate whether collection of the

fee will provide sufficient revenues to offset the costs as defined in

subsection (d) herein. In the event the Secretary determines that

either insufficient or excess revenues are being collected, in order to

recover the costs incurred by the Federal Government that are

specified in subsection (d), the Secretary shall propose an adjustment to the fee to insure full cost recovery. The Secretary shall

immediately transmit this proposal for such an adjustment to Congress. The adjusted fee proposed by the Secretary shall be effective

after a period of 90 days of continuous session have elapsed

following the rcei t of such transmittal unless during such 90-

day period either # ouse of Congress adopts a resolution disapproving the Secretary’s proposed adjustment” in accordance with the

procedures set forth for congressional review of an energy action

under section 551 of the Energy Policy and Conservation Act.

(s) Contracts entered into under this section shall provide that—

(A) following commencement of operation of a repository, the

Secretary shall take title to the high-level radioactive waste or

spent nuclear fuel involved as expeditiously as practicable upon

the request of the generator or owner of such waste or spent

fuel; and

(B) in return for the payment of fees established by this

section, the Secretary, beginning not later than January 31,

1998, will dispose of the high-level radioactive waste or spent

nuclear fuel involved as provided in this subtitle.

(6) The Secreta

7

shall establish in writing criteria setting forth

the terms and con itions under which such disposal services shall be

made available.

shall not issue or renew a license to any person to use a utilization

or production facility under the authority of section 103 or 104 of the

Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (42 U.S.C. 2133, 2134) unless—
322 . Manag/ng the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive w8St8

PUBLIC LAW 97-425-JAN. 7, 1983 96 STAT. 2259

(i) such person has entered into a contract with the Secretary

under this section; or

(ii) the Secretary affirms in writing that such person is

actively and in ood ftith negotiating with the Secretary for a

contract under &s“ section.

(B) The Commission,. as it deems necessary or appropriate, may

require as a preconchtlon to the issuance or renewal of a license

under section 103 or 104 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 (42 U.S.C.

2133, 2134) that the a plicant for such license shall have entered

into an agreement wit the Secretary for the E dispoaal of high-level

radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel that may result from the

use of such license.

.(2) Except as provided in paragraph (l), no spent nuclear fuel or

%

h-level radioactive waste generated or owned by any person

(ot er than a de rtment of the United States referred to in section

101 or 102 of tit e 5, P United States Code) ma be disposed of by the

Secretary in any repository constructed uni er this Act unless the

generator or owner of such spent fiel or waste has entered into a

contract with the Secretary under this section by not later than—

(A) June 30, 1933; or

(B) the date on which such generator or owner commences

%

eneration of, or takes title to, such spent fuel or waste;

whic ever occurs later.

(3) me ~hk and duties of a party to a contract entered into

under this section may be assignable with transfer of title to the

spent nucleear fuel or lugh-level radioactive waste involved.

(4) No

9

h-level radioactive waste or spent nuclear fuel generated ~~~l~/i:O

or owned y any de~ment of the United States refe~ to in ~Wti ~~ Swnt

section 101 or 102 of title 5, Umted States Code, may ~ d~posed of ~UCl~~~ fU~l.

by the Secretary m any repomtory constructed under tlus ~ttii~n~~g

such department transfers to the Secretary, for de

Nuclear Waste Fund, amounts equivalent to the fees t at would be r

paid to the Secretary under the contracts referred to in this section

d such waste or spent fiel were n~~~lbi an other Pewn.

(c) E STABLISHMENT OF N UCLEAR v .—Aere hereb is

established in the Treasu of the United States a separate fun , to J

be known as the Nuclear aste Fund. The Waste Fund shall consist 8

of—

(1) all recei , proceeds,

L

and recoveries realized by the Secretary under su ions (a), (b), and (e), which shall be deposited

in the Waste Fund immediately upon their realization;

(2) any appropriations made by the Congress to the Waste

Fund; and

(3) any unex

E

nded balances available on the date of the

enactment of t “ Act for functions or activities necessary or

incident to the disposal of civilian hi h-level radioactive waste

or civilian spent nuclear fuel, whict shall automatically be

transferred to the Waste Fund on such date.

(d) USE OF WASTB FUND.-Th(? secretary may make expenditures

from the Waste Fund, sub”ect to subsection (e), onl for purposes of

radioactive waste disposa/ activities under titles r and II, includ- j:~:? PP. 2~~J

ing—

(1) the identification, develo ment, licensing, construction,

operation, decommissioning, an ipoatdecomrnissioning maintenance and monitoring of any repository, monitored, retrievable

storage facility or test and evaluation facility constructed under

this Act;
App. C—The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 323

96 STAT. 2260 PUBLIC LAW 97-425–JAN. 7, 1983

Ante, p. 2220,

2225, !253.

Report to

Congrees.

Budget

submittal.

Ante, p. 907.

Ante, p. 927.

(2) the conducting of nongenetic research, development, and

demonstration activities under this Act;

(3) the administrative cost of the radioactive waste disposal

program;

(4) any costs that may be incurred by the Secretary in connection with the transportation, treating, or packaging of spent

nuclear fuel or high-level radioactive waste to be disposed of in

a repository, to be stored in a monitored, retrievable storage site

or to be used in a test and evaluation facility;

(5) the costs associated with acquisition, design, modification,

replacement, operation, and construction of facilities at a

repository site, a monitored, retrievable storage site or a test

and evaluation facility site and necessary or incident to such

repository, monitored, retrievable storage facility or test and

evaluation facility; and

(6) the provision of assistance to States, units of general local

government, and Indian tribes under sections 116, 118, and 219.

No amount maybe expended by the Secretary under this subtitle for

the construction or expansion of an facility unless such construction or expansion is expressly aut orized by this or subsequent t

legislation. The Secretary hereby is authorized to construct one

repository and one test and evaluation facility.

(e) ADMINISTRATION OF WASTE FuND.-(1) The Secretary of the

Treasury shall hold the Waste Fund and, after consultation with the

Secretary, annually report to the Congress on the financial condition and operations of the Waste Fund during the preceding fiscal

year.

(2) The Secretary shall submit the budget of the Waste Fund to

the Offlce of Management and Budget triennially along with the

budget of the Department of Energy submitted at such time in

accordance with chapter 11 of title 31, United States Code. The

budget of the Waste Fund shall consist of the estimates made by the

Secretary of expenditures from the Waste Fund and other relevant

financial matters for the succeeding 3 fiscal years, and shall be

included in the Budget of the United States Government. The

Secretary may make expenditures from the Waste Fund, subject to

appropriations which shall remain available until expended. Appropriations shall be subject to triennial authorization.

(3) If the Secretary determines that the Waste Fund contains at

any time amounts in excess of current needs, the Secretary may

request the Secretary of the Treasury to invest such amounts, or

any portion of such amounts as the Secretary determines to be

appropriate, in obligations of the United States—

(A) having maturities determined by the Secretary of the

Treasury to be appropriate to the needs of the Waste Fund; and

(B) bearing interest at rates determined to be appropriate by

the Secretary of the Treasury, taking into consideration the

current average market yield on outstanding marketable obligations of the United States with remaining periods to maturity

comparable to the maturities of such investments, except that

the interest rate on such investments shall not exceed the

average interest rate applicable to existing borrowings.

(4) Receipts, proceeds, and recoveries realized by the Secretary

under this section, and expenditures of amounts from the Waste

Fund, shall be exempt from annual apportionment under the provisions of subchapter II of chapter 15 of title 31, United States Code.
324 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

PUBLIC LAW 97-425-JAN. 7, 1983 96 STAT. 2261

(5) If at any time the moneys available in the Waste Fund are

insufficient to enable the Secretary to discharge his responsibilities

under this subtitle, the Secretary shall issue to the Secretary of the

Treasu~ obligations in such forms and denominations, bearing such

maturitms, and subject to such terms and conditions as may be

_tO by the Secretary and the Secretary of the Treasu . The

total of such obligations shall not exceed amounta provi ed in T

appropriation Acts. Redemption of such obligations shall be made b

the Secretary from moneys available in the Waste Fund. Suc i

obl” ations shall bear interest at a rate determined by the Secretary

oft e % Treasury, which shall be not less than a rate determined by

taking into consideration the average market “eld on outstanding

marketable obligations of the United States o comparable maturi- P

ties during the month preceding the issuance of the obligations

under this paragraph. The Secretary of the Treasu shall purchase

any issued obligations, and for such pu

r

the %ecretary of the

Treasury is authorized to use as a pu lic debt transaction the

proceeds from the sale of any securities issued under chapter 31 of

title 31, United States Code, and the purposes for which securities A~ti, P. 93’7.

may be issued under such Act are extended to include any purchase

of such obl” tions. The Secretary of the Treasury may at any time

sell any oft e r obl” tions acquired by him under this ragraph. All

redemptions, fpurcL, and sales by the Secretary o the Treasury P

of obligations under this paragraph shall be treated as public debt

transactions of the United States.

(6) Any appropriations made available to the Waste Fund for any 1n~~t

FUY

described in subsection (d) shall be repaid into the general ~Ymen~.

un of the Treasury, together with interest from the date of availability of the app~ riations until the date of repayment. Such

interest shall be 1

%’

on the cumulative amount of ap ropriations

available to the aste Fund, less the average undistursed cash

balance in the Waste Fund account during the f-l year involved.

The rate of such interest shall be determined by the Secretary of the

Treasury taking into consideration the average market yield during

the month pmcedi

r

each fti year on outstanding marketable

obligations of the nited States of comparable maturity. Interest Wferral.

F

ayments maybe deferred with the approval of the Secretary of the

reasury, but any interest payments so deferred shall themselves

bear interest.

ALTERNATIVE MEAN5 OF FINANCING

SEC. 303. The Secretary shall undertake a study with respect to ~:uj& ~0223

alternative approaches to managing the construction and operation

of all civilian radioactive waste management facilities, including the

feasibility of establishin a rivate co

conducti

a

such study, t e % LmkwxiYz::Yiz:k:;:r&k:

of the m of Management and Budget, the Chairman of the

Commission, and such other Federal agency representatives as may

beuap ropriate. Such study shall be completed, and a m rt contain- &~@~=~

Je results of such study shall be submitted to t e Congress, r

within 1 year after the date of the enactment of this Act.

OFFICE OF CIVILIAN RADIOACMVE WASTE MANAGEMENT

Sw. $04. (a) EBTmHsHMmrr.-There hereby is established within 42 LJSC KYZ4.

the Department of Energy an Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste
App. C—The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 “ 325

96 STAT. 2262 PUBLIC LAW 97-425—JAN. 7, 1983

Report to

Congress

42 USC 10225.

Ante, p. 2206.

Ante, p. 2217.

Regulations or

guidance.

42 USC 10226.

Management. The OffIce shall be headed by a Director, who shall be

appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of

the Senate, and who shall be compensated at the rate payable for

level IV of the Executive Schedule under section 5315 of title 5,

United States Code.

(b) FUNCTIONS OF DI R EctO R. —The Director of the OffIce shall be

responsible for carrying out the functions of the Secretary under

this Act, subject to the general supervision of the Secretary. The

Director of the Office shall be directly res risible to the Secretary.

(c) ANNUAL REPORT TO iNGRESS.—The irector of the Office shall r

annually prepare and submit to the Congress a comprehensive

report on the activities and expenditures of the Office.

(d) ANNUAL AUDIT BY COMPTROLLER GENERAL.-The comptroller

General of the United States shall annually make an audit of the

OffIce, in accordance with such regulations as the Comptroller

General may prescribe. The Comptroller General shall have access

to such books, records, accounts, and other materials of the Office as

the Comptroller General determines to be necessary for the preparation of such audit. The Corn troller General shall submit to the

Congress a report on the resu s of each audit conducted under this f

section.

LOCATION OF TEST AND EVALUATION FACILITY

SEC. 305. (a) REPORT TO CoNGREss.-Not later than 1 ear after the

date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary sha 1 transmit to

the Congress a report setting forth whether the Secretary plans to

locate the test and evaluation facility at the site of a repository.

(b) PRNEDURES.-(1) If the test and evaluation facility is to be

located at any candidate site or repository site (A) site selection and

development of such facility shall be conducted in accordance with

the procedures and requirements established in title i with respect

to the site selection and development of repositories; and (B) the

Secretary may not commence construction of any surface facility for

such test and evaluation facility prior to issuance by the Commission of a construction authorization for a repository at the site

involved.

(2) No test and evaluation facility may be converted into a repository unless site selection and development of such facility was

conducted in accordance with the procedures and requirements

established in title I with respect to the site selection and develop

ment of repositories.

(3) The Secretary may not commence construction of a test and

evaluation facility at a candidate site or site recommended as the

location for a repository prior to the date on which the designation

of such site is effective under section 115.

NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION TRAINING AUTHORIZATION

S E C. 306. N UCLEAR R EGULATORY C OMMISSION T RAINING A UTHOR IzATIoN.-The Nuclear Regulatory commission is authorized and

directed to promulgate regulations, or other appropriate Commission regulatory guidance, for the training an qualifications of :

civilian nuclear powerplant operators, supervisors, technicians and

other appropriate operating personnel. Such regulations or guidance

shall establish simulator training requirements for applicants for

civilian nuclear powerplant operator licenses and for operator re-
326 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

PUBLIC LAW 97-425—JAN. 7, 1983 96 STAT. 2263

qualification programs; requirements governing NRC administration of requalification examinations; requirements for operating

tests at civilian nuclear powerplant simulators, and instructional

requirements for civilian nuclear powerplant licensee personnel

training programs.

shall be promulgated b the Commission within the 12-month period

following enactment o this Act, and the Commission within the 12- {

month period following enactment of this Act shall submit a report

to Congress setting forth the actions the Commission has taken with

respect to fulfilling its obligations under this section.

Approved January 7, 1983.

LEGISLATIVE HISTORY-H.R. 3809:

HOUSE REPORT No. 97-491 t.1 (Comm. on Interior and Insular Affairs) and pt. 2

(Comm. on rmed Services). I

CONGRESSIONAL RECORD, Vol. 128 (1982):

Sept.30, Nov. 29,30, Dec. 2, considered and passed House.

Dec. 20, considered and passed Senate, amended; House agreed to Senate

amendments.

WEEKLY COMPILATION OF PRESIDENTIAL DOCUMENTS, Vol. 19, No. 1 (1983):

Jan. 7, Presidential statement.
,

.

Appendix D

Performance Requirements for a Geologic

Repository as Specified in Nuclear Regulatory

Commission Regulation 10 CFR Part 60

Paragraph Performance requirement

60. 113(a)(l) Engineered Barrier System—Containment of the high-level waste within the

waste package must be substantially

complete during the period when radiation and thermal conditions in the engineered barrier system are dominated by

fission products decay. Such period

would be between 300 and 1,000 years

as determined by the NRC for individual cases according to factors specified

in 60. 113(b).

Any subsequent release of radionuclides shall be a gradual process of small

fractional releases to the geologic setting

over long periods of time. For disposal

in the saturated zone, both partial and

complete filling with ground water of

available void spaces in the underground

facility shall be appropriately considered

and analyzed among the anticipated

processes and events in designing the engineered barrier system.

The release rate for any radionuclide

shall not exceed 10-5 per year of its inventory calculated to be present 1,000

years after emplacement [60.113(a)(l)(B)].

This requirement does not apply to any

radionuclide which is released at a rate

less than 0.1 percent of the calculated

total release rate limit. The calculated

total release rate limit shall be taken to

be one part in 100,000 per year of the

inventory of radioactive waste originally

emplaced in the underground facility

that remains after 1,000 years of radioactive decay. Other fractional release limits

may be specified by NRC for individual

cases [60. 113(b)].

60. 113(a)(2) Geologic Setting—The repository shall

be located so that pre-waste-emplacement ground water travel time from the

disturbed zone to the accessible environment shall be at least 1,000 years, or

other travel time approved or specified

by the Commission [60.l13(b)].

Paragraph Performance requirement

60. 113(b) On a case-by-case basis NRC may determine the required waste package containment period, subsequent radioactive

nuchde release rates, or pre-waste-emplacement ground water travel time, taking into account the overall system performance objective and factors such as

the following:

—generally applicable EPA standards

for radioactivity;

—age and nature of waste as well as design of the underground facility, particularly with respect to the time when

the thermal pulse is dominated by the

decay heat of fission products;

—geochemical characteristics of the host

rock, surrounding strata, and ground

water; and

—particular sources of uncertainty in

predicting the repository performance.

60.131 General design criteria for the geologic

repository operations area.

60. 131(a) Radiological Protection—The geologic

repository operation area shall be designed to maintain radiation doses, levels, and concentrations of radioactive

material in air-restrictedl areas within

the limits specified in part 202 of this

chapter.

60. 131(b) Structures, Systems, and Components

Important to Safety—The repository

system must include the following protective features:

—protection against anticipated natural

phenomena and environmental conditions,

—protection against dynamic effects of

equipment failure and similar events,

1A restricted area is any area, access to which is controlled for purposes of

protection of individuals from exposure to radiation.

2

10 CFR 20 establishes standards for protection against radiation hazards

from licensed activities. Standards are established to protect both the workers

and the general public.

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Energy.

3 2 7
328 “ Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

Paragraph Performance requirement

—protection against fires and explosions,

—emergency capability,

—utility services under normal and accident conditions,

—periodic inspection testing and maintenance,

Paragraph Performance requirement

—control against critical conditions

under normal and accidental conditions,

—instrumentation and control systems,

—compliance with mining regulations,

—safe shaft conveyances for radioactive

waste handling.
,

Appendix E

Procedure for Establishing a Repository

for Commercial Nuclear Waste

Governing law

Procedural step or regulation

Governing law

Procedural step or regulation

Site Selection:

● Secretary of DOE issues NWPA—sec.

guidelines. 1 12(a)

● State or affected Indian tribe NWPA—sees.

may submit notice of disap- 115(b), 116(b),

proval of site to Congress 118(a)

within 60 days.

● Secretary of DOE nominates NWPA—sec.

at least five sites 110 ,

for characterization, accompa- (E)

nied by environmental

assessment.

● Secretary of DOE recommends NWPA—sec.

to the President three 1 1 0

of at least five sites for site

characterization.

● President approves or disap- NWPA—sec.

proves recommended sites 1 12(C)(1)

for site characterization.

● President may delay decision NWPA—sec.

for 6 months. 1 12(C)(2)

● Secretary of DOE submits site NWPA—sec.

characterization plan. 113(b)(l)

● NRC prepares site charac- 10 CFR

terization analysis. 60.1 l(d),(e),(f)

● DOE submits semiannual pro- NWP.4—sec.

gress reports to Congress and 113(b)(3)

NRC during site characteri- 10 CFR

zation activities. 60.1 l(g)

● Secretary of DOE submits rec- NWPA—sec.

ommendation of a site for de- 1 14(a),(f)

velopment of a repository to

President, accompanied by

supporting documentation and

an Environmental Impact

Statement.

● President may submit request NWPA—sec.

to Congress to delay recom- 1 1 0

mendation of a site for a repository.

● President submits recommen- NWPA—sec.

dation to Congress for the site 1 1 0

to be developed as a repository.

 Congress may override disap- NWPA—sec.

proval notice within 90 days of 115(c)

continuous session.

● If first site recommended is NWPA—sec.

not approved, President must 1 14(a)(3)

submit another recommendation within 1 year after disapproval.

Construction Authorization and License:

● Following site designation and NWPA—sees.

within 90 days after approval l14(b), 115

by Congress, the Secretary of

DOE submits an application

for construction authorization

to NRC.

● NRC submits annual progress NWPA—sec.

reports to Congress on status 1 14(C)

of application.

● NRC may adopt Environ- NWPA—sec.

mental Impact Statement 114(f)

of DOE to fulfill its obligation

to prepare same.

● NRC may approve or dis- NWPA—sec.

approve issuance of con- 114(d)

struction authorization.

● NRC must issue final decision NWPA—sec.

on application within 3 years 114(d)

after application is submitted.

Decision may be delayed up to

one additional year.

Consultation and Cooperation by States,

Affected Indian Tribes, and Public:

 States or affected Indian tribes NWPA sees.

must be notified and public lo ;

hearings held prior to site 112(b)(2)

nomination,

329
330 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

-.

Governing law

Procedural step or regulation—

● The Secretary of DOE must NWPA—sec.

seek to enter into binding 1 17(C)

written agreement with State

or affected Indian tribe regarding procedures for consultation

and cooperation.

● President or Secretary of DOE NWPA—sec.

must submit notice to State 1 12(C)

or affected Indian tribe regarding decisions on sites recommended by DOE for characterization.

● Secretary of DOE must submit NWPA—sec.

copies of site characterization 113(b)

plan to States or affected Indian tribe for their review and

comment.

 Secretary of DOE must submit NWPA—sec.

semiannual reports on site 113(b)(3)

characterization activities to

State or affected Indian tribe.

● DOE must notify State or af- NWPA—sec.

fected Indian tribe if site 1 13(C)(3)

characterization activities are

terminated.

● The Secretary of DOE must NWPA—sec.

conduct public hearings 1 14(a)(l)

at each site under consideration prior to recommending a

site for a repository.

Governing law

Procedural step or regulation

● State or affected Indian tribe NWPA—sees.

may submit notice of dis- 116(b), 118(a)

approval of site to Congress.

● Site is disapproved unless NWPA—sec .

—

Congress passes a joint 115(C)

resolution of repository siting

approval within 90 days of

continuous session.

● State or affected Indian tribe NWPA—sec.

must be provided with a 114(b)

copy of the application for

construction authorization.

Scheduling:

● Secretary of DOE must NWPA—sec.

prepare project decision 1 14(e)(l)

schedule.

● Agencies that cannot comply NWPA—sec.

with schedule must so notify 1 14(e)(2)

Secretary of DOE and Congress.

Funding:

● All costs paid out of Nuclear NWPA—sees.

Waste Fund. 116(c)(5),

18(b)(6);

302(d\

● Cost for disposal of defense NWPA—sees.

high-level waste will be paid 8(b)(2),

into Nuclear Waste Fund by 302(b)(4)

Federal Government.

SOURCE U.S Depanment of Energy,

● Secretary of DOE must notify NWPA—sec.

State or affected Indian 1 14(a)(l)

tribe prior to recommending a

site for a repository.
.

.

Appendix F

Spent Fuel Projections

Each table provides the following information for each year out to the projected end of life for all plants involved:

● the projected annual spent fuel discharges;

● the projected cumulative spent fuel inventories; and

● the projected annual and cumulative requirements for additional storage capacity outside of the reactor basin,

based on the “maximum at-reactor capacity” case. (See U.S. Department of Energy, Spent Fuel Storage

Requirements, DOE-RL-83-1. These data are based on inventories and projections as of Sept. 30, 1982.)

All results are given both in number of assemblies and in metric tons of uranium. The inventories as of Dec.

31, 1982, are given in the first line of table F-1. (No such inventories exist for the light-water-reactors that are

not currently operating. )

The cumulative inventories given in tables F-1 and F-2 do not include spent fuel that is currently stored at the

West Valley and GE-Morris facilities. A breakdown of this fuel is as follows:

West Valley

MTU Assemblies

Boiling-water reactor . . . . . 75.1 515

Pressurized-water reactor. 93. 4 235 — .

Totals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168.5 750

Aggregate totals:

GE-Morris

MTU Assemblies

141.6 753

177.3 459 — .

318.9 1,212

487.4 1,962

The cumulative inventories also do not include any corrections for possible future shipments of spent fuel to or

from nonreactor destinations, because there are no accurate projections of such shipments. Any such shipments

would reduce requirements for additional spent fuel storage at reactor sites.

The assumed storage capacity of existing basins does not reflect potential technical measures that can increase

the pool capacity, including burnup credit reracking and rod consolidation.

331
.-

332 “ Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

Table F= I.—Spent Fuel Storage Projections: Total Currently Operating Light-Water Reactors

Annual Cumulative Annual storagea Cumulative storage

discharge inventory requirements requirements

Year Tonnes Assemblies Tonnes Assemblies Tonnes Assemblies Tonnes Assemblies

1982 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . –

1983 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,301

1984 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,427

1985 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,391

1986 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,380

1987 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,556

1968 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,487

1989 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,316

1990 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,611

1991 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,415

1992 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,359

1993 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,575

1994 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,401

1995 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,371

1996 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,618

1997 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,368

1998 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,336

1999 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,717

2000 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,397

2001 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,302

2002 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,632

2003 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,371

2004 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,455

2005 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,564

2006 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,651

2007 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,679

2008 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,245

2009 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,152

2010 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . W6

2011 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 958

2012 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 752

2013 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 567

2014 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 714

2015 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 506

2016 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 614

2017 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 561

2018 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270

2019 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189

2020 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

2021 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214

2022 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168

2023 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0

—

4,595

4,903

4,804

4,693

5,616

5,120

4,582

5,664

4,990

4,699

5,710

4,837

4,839

5,814

4,745

4,754

6,010

4,664

4,674

5,817

4,735

5,228

5,541

6,233

5,783

8,278

3,486

3,195

3,592

2,475

2,342

2,640

1,907

2,264

2,239

690

761

326

x

o

8,507

9,808

11,234

12,624

14,004

15,560

17,047

18,363

19,984

20,390

22,749

24,324

25,726

27,097

28,715

30,103

31,439

33,156

34,553

35,856

37,489

38,859

40,315

41,880

43,531

45,209

47,454

48,607

49,512

50,741

51,223

51,789

52,504

53,011

53,624

54,188

54,454

54,643

54,773

54,967

55,155

55,155

31,260

35,855

40,758

45,346

50,255

55,871

60,991

65,573

71,437

76,427

81,126

86,836

91,673

96,512

102,326

107,071

111,825

117,835

122,699

127,373

133,190

137,925

143,153

148,694

154,927

160,710

168,988

172,492

175,669

179,261

181,736

184,078

166,718

188,625

190,889

193,128

193,318

194,579

194,905

195,408

195,794

195,794

0

0

13

:

174

201

297

520

408

596

676

641

766

1,050

941

1,051

1,461

1,203

1,191

1.548

1;273

1,260

1,498

1,191

1,262

1,104

806

638

641

397

436

572

282

355

262

181

87

57

136

0

0

0

0

28

0

227

402

675

947

2,072

1,461

2,120

2,503

2,204

2,567

3,745

3,062

3,828

5,232

4,140

4,282

5,586

4,523

4,443

5,397

4,088

4,567

3,579

2,676

2,332

2,207

1,454

1,701

2,313

950

1,354

1,121

497

201

133

326

0

0

0

0

13

13

112

286

487

784

1,304

1,712

2,308

2,984

3,625

4,391

5,441

6,383

7,434

8,916

10,118

11,308

12,857

14,130

15,391

16,389

18,080

19,342

20,446

21,312

21,889

22,531

22,927

23,163

23,936

24,218

24,572

24,853

25,015

25,102

25,160

25,296

25,296

0

0

28

28

255

657

1,332

2,279

4,351

5,812

7,932

10,435

12,639

15,206

18,951

22,013

25,841

31,073

35,213

39,495

45,081

49,604

54,047

59,444

63,532

68,099

71,678

74,354

76,686

78,893

80,347

82,048

64,361

85,311

86,647

87,786

88,283

88,484

68,617

88,943

66,943

25;296 , 88.943

.

.

%torage requirad outside of existing reactor basins.
—

App. F—Spent Fuel Projections . 333

Table F-2.—Spent Fuel Storage Projections: Totai Light-Water Reactors With Construction Permits

Annual Cumulative Annual storagea Cumulative storage

discharge inventory requirements requirements

Year Tonnes Assemblies Tonnes Assemblies Tonnes Assemblies Tonnes Assemblies

1982 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1983 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1984 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1985 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1986 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1987 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1988 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1989 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1990 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1991 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1992 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1993 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1994 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1995 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1996 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1997 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1998 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1999 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2000 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2001 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2002 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2003 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2004 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2005 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2006 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2007 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2008 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2009 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2010 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2011 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2012 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2013 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2014 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2015 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2016 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2017 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2018 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2019 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2020 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2021 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2022 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2023 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2024 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2025 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2026 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2027 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2028 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2029 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

2030 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

0

0

193

515

831

936

1,265

1,256

1,627

1,517

1,478

1,508

1,511

1,549

1,522

1,525

1,608

1,502

1,519

1,478

1,594

1,581

1,479

1,569

1,481

1,608

1,466

1,504

1,609

1,501

1,548

1,638

1,460

1,663

1,220

1,367

1,540

1,308

1,310

1,017

1,207

1,638

1,288

1,027

788

669

577

104

0

0

0

708

1,809

3,032

3,365

4,266

4,066

5,419

5,177

4,887

5,269

4,978

5,256

5,139

5,169

5,393

4,920

5,332

4,765

5,464

5,473

4,773

5,395

4,917

5,384

5,040

5,144

5,398

4,916

5,388

6,119

4,996

6,218

3,788

4,519

5,146

3,988

4,070

3,320

3,591

6,333

4,025

3,299

2,584

2,014

2,225

193

0

0

0

193

708

1,539

2,475

3,740

4,996

6,623

8,140

9,618

11,126

12,637

14,186

15,708

17,233

18,841

20,343

21,862

23,340

24,934

26,515

27,994

29,563

31,044

36,252

34,138

35,642

37,251

38,752

40,300

42,138

43,618

45,281

46,501

47,866

49,408

50,716

52,026

53,043

54,250

55,888

57,176

58,203

58,991

59,660

60,237

60,341

60,341

0

7 :

2,517

5,549

8,914

13,180

17,246

22,665

27,842

32,729

37,998

42,976

48,232

53,371

58,540

63,933

68,853

74,165

78,950

64,414

89,887

94,660

100,055

104,972

110,356

115,396

120,540

125,938

130,854

136,242

142,361

147,357

153,575

157,363

161,682

167,028

171,016

175,086

178,406

181,997

188,330

192,355

195,654

196,236

200,252

202,477

202,670

202,670

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

46

0

74

46

64

151

253

348

343

485

501

620

: :

933

952

1,159

1,141

1,339

1,279

1,345

1,406

1,368

1,376

1,366

1,173

1,301

1,173

1,311

1,285

1,096

1,079

991

997

961

871

1,027

766

669

577

104

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

252

31:

252

150

498

827

1,399

1,214

1,944

1,669

2,615

2,214

3,207

3,472

3,264

4,104

3,898

4,539

4,426

4,709

4,789

4,626

4,954

4,575

3,953

4,401

3,639

4,397

4,223

3,516

3,550

3,262

3,109

3,426

2,705

3,299

2,584

2,014

2,225

193

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

0

46

46

120

166

230

381

635

982

1,325

1,810

2,311

2,931

3,515

4,382

5,316

6,268

7,427

8,568

9,907

11,185

12,530

13,936

15,303

16,679

18,046

19,218

20,519

21,691

23,002

24,286

25,384

26,463

27,454

28,451

29,412

30,283

31,310

32,098

32,767

33,344

33.448

33:448

o

0

0

0

0

0

0

252

252

570

822

972

1,470

2,297

3,696

4,910

6,854

8,723

11,338

13,552

16,759

20,231

23,495

27,599

31,497

36,036

40,462

45,171

49,960

54,586

59,540

64,115

68,068

72,469

76,108

80,505

64,728

88,244

91,794

95,056

98,165

101,591

104,296

107,595

110,179

112,193

114,418

114,611

114,611

%torage requirecfoutside of existing reactor basins.
Repository or MRS Loading

Appendix G

Capacity

Required To Remove Spent Fuel From

Reactor Sites Within 10 and 15 Years

After Reactor Decommissioning

Practically all of the spent fuel discharged by the end

of this century is likely to still be in storage at that time,

most likely storage basins at the sites of the reactors that

produced it. The possibility of further delays in the availability of reprocessing or disposal facilities has led to concern that existing reactor sites might become de facto

long-term repositories. This appendix is an effort to estimate how long spent fuel might have to remain at reactor sites if geologic repositories (or alternative Federal

waste management facilities) do not become available

until the high-confidence dates discussed in chapter 6—

2008 and 2012 for the two geologic repositories, or as

late as 2012 for both of two monitored retrievable storage (MRS) facilities. For purposes of comparison, the

Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has determined that spent fuel can be stored at reactor sites

‘‘safely and without significant environmental impacts”

for at least 30 years after the reactor ceases operational

There are two key determinants of the time spent fuel

would have to remain at reactor sites: 1) the maximum

rate at which spent fuel can be unloaded from storage

at reactor sites; and 2) the maximum rate at which it

can be loaded at Federal waste management facilties.

This analysis assumes that a loading rate of 3,000 tonnes

per year (tonnes/yr) can be achieved for either a geologic

repository or an MRS facility. Consequently, the feasible loading schedule is primarily determined by the

dates on which such facilities become available. The

curves bounding area “C” in table G-1 show the total

cumulative loading capacity that will be available if two

3,000-tonnes/yr repositories or MRS facilities begin

operating in 2008 and 2012, or if both begin operating

(upper bound) in 2012 (lower bound).

The other crucial assumption in these calculations is

the rate at which spent fuel can be removed from reactor sites. A precise analysis of achievable reactor unloading scenarios would require a detailed evaluation

of the conditions at each reactor, an analysis that was

beyond the scope of this study. To estimate a reasona-

‘U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, ‘‘10 CFR Parts 50 and 51: Waste

Confidence Decision, ” Federd Re&”ster, vol. 49, No. 171 (Aug. 31, 1984),

p. 34660.

334

ble upper bound of the time it would take to unload reactor sites, OTA made the following assumptions:

1.

2.

3.

4.

Only legaf weight truck casks are used. This is a

conservative assumption, since many reactors have

a railroad spur that would allow the use of rail casks

with a much larger capacity than truck casks.

No rod consolidation is done at the reactor site

prior to shipment. This also adds conservatism, because consolidation (which may prove to be an economically attractive means of providing additional

storage capacity) could increase the amount of

spent fuel in each cask and thus reduce the number of shipments needed to remove a given amount

of fuel from the reactor site.

The truck casks are designed for fuel that is at least

10 years old. Existing casks are designed for very

hot spent fuel; casks designed for fuel that is at least

10 years old could hold about twice as much spent

fuel as current designs (see ch. 3). Thus a legal

weight truck cask opimized for unconsolidated older spent fuel could hold two pressurized-water reactor (PWR) assemblies (about 0.9 tonne), or perhaps four boiling water reactor (BWR) assemblies

(about 0.75 tonne). Existing casks, by comparison,

hold only one PWR assembly or two BWR assemblies.

This assumption does not add conservatism, but

it appears to be quite reasonable in view of the economic incentives to increase cask capacity where

possible.

Ail spent fuel must be loaded into transportation

casks using the existing handling facilities the reactor site. This is also a conservative consumption,

since some technologies for additional on-site storage would allow the stored fuel to be shipped without first returning to the reactor’s water basin for

loading into transportation casks. If such technologies are used, the result would be a higher total

rate at which fuel can be removed from the site.

Using these assumptions, an unloading rate of 100

to 150 tonnes/yr appears technically feasible at most reactors. A recent study of spent fuel transportation options for several Tennessee Valley Authority reactors
App. G—Repository or MRS Loading Capacity Required To Remove Spent Fuel From Reactor Sites ● 335

150

4 0

Figure G“I.—Spent Fuel Loading Scenarios

.

30

20

10

0I

2000

Key:

=

=

Capacity needed to accommodate all spent fuel

within 15 years of decommissioning

Capacity needed to accommodate all spent fuel

within 10 years of decommissioning

Capacity available under OTA Mission Plan, with two

repositories or MRS facilities both starting in 2008

(high range) or in 2008 and 2012 (low range) /

v I 1 1 1 1 1 1

2ooi - 2oio -

2015 2020 2025 2030 2035 2040 2045

Year

— .

2050

Assumptions:

1. Projections are for reactors operating or under construction on June 31, 19S4. Reactor discharge data and estimated dates of decommissioning supplied by U.S.

Department of Energy.

2. Shared basins we aasumed to be unloaded after the last reactor using the basin is decommissioned.

3. For 4 reactors raaching end-of-life before 1998, decommissioning is assumed to occur in 1998.

4. Repositories or MRS facilities achieve a loading rate of 3,000 tonnes per year in 4 years, beginning with 375 tonnes the first year, 750 tonnes the second, and 1,500

tonnes the third.

5. Repository or MRS capacity assumed to be 70,000 tonnes each.

SOURCE: Office of Technology Assessment.
336 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

(including both BWRS and PWRS) indicates that about

16 hours, or two 8-hour work shifts, would be required

to load one truck cask using the existing reactor facilities. 2 If only one truck cask were loaded at a time (in

some cases, twp or three could be loaded at once without a proportionate increase in time), and each held

about 0.75 tonnes (BWR assemblies), it would take 200

shipments each year to achieve a 150-tonnes/yr unloading rate. While this could not be accomplished using

only one shift per day, it appears possible with doubleshifting. Since a rate of 100 tonnes/yr would require 133

shipments (or 266 8-hour shifts), that rate might be accomplished with only one shift per day.

Regulations limiting the annual radiation exposure

of workers might become a constraint for such large

numbers of shipments per year, even if the technical

ability exists. If so, this would have to be taken into account in determining the desired unloading rate for

those reactors where this problem was encountered. The

amount of worker exposure may also depend on whether

all spent fuel has to be returned to the reactor’s storage

basin for loading into transportation casks. Thus, it

could be an additional reason why the choice of technologies for out-of-basin storage would significantly affect the achievable reactor site unloading rate, as discussed below.

The curves bounding areas “A” and “B” in figure

G-1 show the cumulative amounts of spent fuel that

would have to be shipped from reactors to enable all

fuel to be removed from each reactor site within 10 years

(area “B”) or 15 years (area “A”) after the currently

projected dates of decommissioning of the reactors,

using two assumed unloading rates for each reactor {100

tonnes/yr and 150 tonnes/yr) to define the upper and

lower bounds. Where two or more reactors share storage facilities, shipment is assumed to begin when the

last reactor using the facilities is decommissioned. The

lower the achievable unloading rate, the soonerr offsite loading capacity will be required to allow spent

fuel to be removed from reactor sites within a specified period.

Area “B” shows that if a 150-tonne/yr average unloading rate can be achieved for each reactor (lower

bound), it is not necessary to start removing spent fuel

from reactor sites until 2007 in order to complete the

process for each reactor within 10 years of expected decommissioning (with the exception of the four reactors

reaching end-of-life before 1998). If the maximum

achievable unloading rate is 100 tonnes/yr (upper

bound), it would be necessary to start shipments in 2001

in order to remove spent fuel from all sites within 10

‘Boeing Nuclear Power Systems, Inc., Spent Fued Shipping Cask Design and

Transport Study, D275-50002 (prepared for TVA under contract No.

TV51222A), March 1981, pp. 54-61.

years of decommissioning. To unload sites within 15

years of decommissioning (area “A”), shipments need

not begin until 2006 (at 100 tonnes/yr) or even 2012 (at

150 tonnes/yr).

If a first repository or MRS facility begins loading

at the rate of 3,000 tonnes/yr in 2008 (“C” upper

bound), by the end of 2009 it will have exceeded the

cumulative loading capacity needed to remove spent fuel

from reactors within 10 years of decommissioning if the

unloading rate is 150 tonnes/yr (’‘B’ lower bound), or

within 15 years regardless of unloading rate (“A’ ‘). If

the second repository is available by 2012, their combined cumulative loading capacity by 2019 would exceed the amount needed for the most extreme case—unloading all reactors within only 10 years of decommissioning, at an average rate of only 100 tonnes/yr at

each reactor (’‘B” upper bound).

Even if the two 3,000-tonne/yr facilities did not begin

loading until 2012 (“C” lower bound), they could still

accept the spent fuel from practically all reactor sites

within 15 years of decommissioning at an average 150-

tonne/yr unloading rate per reactor (“A” lower bound).

If reactor sites could only unload at 100 tonnes/yr, by

the end of 2015 the two facilities would exceed the cumulative loading capacity required to remove spent fuel

from reactors within 15 years of decommissioning (“A”

upper bound), although some reactors that would have

to begin unloading before that date to meet this goal.

Two facilities that begin loading in 2012 would not allow

all reactors to be unloaded within 10 years of decommissioning, although their combined capacity would

catch up with demand by 2020 or 2025, even in the most

extreme case (’‘B’ lower and upper bounds, respectively). Some spent fuel would have to remain in storage

at a few reactor sites for 15 or 20 years.

These calculations are intended only as an approximate assessment of the implications of the high-confidence repository loading schedule in chapter 6: geologic

repositories available in 2008 and 2012, or two alternative waste management facilities available in 2012 in the

event of unexpected problems with geologic disposal.

This analysis suggests that the postulated repository

schedule would allow spent fuel to be removed from

practically all reactor sites within 10 to 15 years of expected decommissioning, and the postulated backup facility schedule would allow removal within about 15

years for most reactors. In either case, it appears possible to remove spent fuel from reactors sites well

within the 30-year period during which NRC has determined that spent fuel could safely be stored at the

sites after the reactors are decommissioned.

This analysis also indicates that the choice of technologies for out-of-basin storage may have important

implications for the achievable annual unloading rate.

.
—

App. G—Repository or MRS Loading Capacity Required To Remove Spent Fuel From Reactor Sites ● 337

With some technologies, such as the drywell, fuel assemblies stored outside the basin would have to be returned to the basin to be loaded into shipping casks.

As a result, the handling facilities at the basin could become a major bottleneck. With other technologies, such

as the horizontal concrete cask concept being demonstrated by Carolina Power and Light in cooperation with

the Department of Energy, stored fuel could be moved

directly from the storage module into a transportation

cask. If combination storage/transportation or ‘ ‘universal’ casks prove feasible, the fuel would be stored in

the cask that is ultimately used for transportation, so

that no transfer from a storage facility to the transportation cask is required. In such cases, the potential bottleneck of existing handling facilities could be avoided.

In addition, such technologies could reduce the worker

exposures involved in unloading the stored spent fuel,

thus avoiding another potential constraint on unloading

rates.

Because these individual storage decisions could constrain the long-term reactor unloading plan, it is important that the analysis of an optimized system design

(discussed inch. 6) be completed quickly, before utilities have made irreversible storage decisions. It is also

important to complete and evaluate the demonstrations

of at-reactor dry storage technologies to determine the

feasibility of those concepts that would allow spent fuel

to be transported from the site without first returning

to the reactor basin.
—

Appendix H -

Glossary, Acronyms, and Abbreviations

actinides: elements with atomic numbers beween 89

and 103 inclusive; all actinide isotopes are radioactive

activation: the process of making non-radioactive material radioactive by bombardment with neutrons,

protons, or other nuclear particles

activity (radioactivity): the rate at which radioactive

material emits radiation, given in terms of the number of nuclear disintegrations occurring in a unit of

time; the common unit of radioactivity is the curie

(Ci)

AEC: Atomic Energy Commission; most of its functions

have been assumed by DOE and NRC

AFR: away-from-reactor storage

AGNS: Allied-General Nuclear Services, Inc.

ALARA: as low as reasonably achievable; the principle that specifies that all radiation doses are to be

maintained as far below prescribed standards as is

reasonably achievable. This is a requirement for all

Nuclear Regulatory Commission licensees

alpha particle: a positively charged particle emitted by

certain radioactive material, made up of two neutrons

and two protons; it is identical to the nucleus of a

helium atom, An alpha particle cannot penetrate

clothing or the outer layer of human skin

aquifer: a water-bearing layer of permeable rock or soil

at-reactor: refers to storage in the originally designed

basin or to another storage facility added later; usually the latter definition pertains

atomic number: the number of protons within the

atomic nucleus of each chemical element

background radiation (natural): nuclear radiation due

to the natural environment and to naturally occurring radioactivity within the body

banking (of sites): setting aside public lands for possible future use

basalt: a fine-grained igneous rock, usually formed by

lava flows

beta particle: a negatively charged particle emitted in

the radioactive decay of certain nuclides; a free electron; it has a short range in air and low ability to

penetrate other materials

biosphere: the part of the earth in which life exists, including the lithosphere, hydrosphere, and

atmosphere

BLM: Bureau of Land Management, DOI

burnup: a measure of reactor fuel consumption expressed as the percentage of fuel atoms that have

undergone fission, or the amount of energy produced

per unit weight of fuel

BWR: boiling water reactor

byproducts: 1) any radioactive material (except special

nuclear material) yielded in, or made radioactive by,

exposure to the radiation incident to the production

or utilization of special nuclear material, i.e., fission

products and/or activation products; 2) the tailings

or wastes produced by the extraction or concentration

of uranium or thorium from any ore processed primarily for its source material content. This second

category has been added by the Uranium Mill Tailings Act of 1978.

canister: a container for radioactive solid waste forms

cask: a container that provides shielding during transportation of canisters of radioactive materials

CFR: Code of Federal Regulations

cladding: the outer jacket of nuclear fuel elements which

contains and supports the fuel material, protects the

fuel from interaction with the coolant, and prevents

the release of fission products into the coolant; commercial power reactors use a zirconium alloy for cladding, while special purpose reactors frequently use

aluminum

Climax Spent Fuel Test Facility: this facility is at the

1,400-ft depth in the Climax Stock granite formation

on the Nevada Test Site. Eleven encapsulated commercial spent fuel assemblies and 26 auxiliary electric heaters have been emplaced in three parallel

shafts to simulate repository conditions. The test will

determine the generic behavior of granite under the

influence of heat and radiation

co-located: refers to location of facilities at a common

site, thereby minimizing transportation needs

consolidation (compaction): reduction in the spacing

of racks that hold spent fuel in a water storage basin

so that the basin can hold more fuel and still remain

subcritical

contamination: the deposition of radioactive material

on a surface

criterion: a standard rule or test on which a judgment

or decision may be based

critical mass: the minimum mass of fissionable material that, with appropriate geometrical arrangement

and material composition, will sustain fission

criticality: state of being critical; a self-sustaining neutron chain reaction in which the number of neutrons

lost by absorption or leakage just equals the number

produced by the fission process

curie: the unit of radioactivity, abbreviated Ci. One

curie equals 3.700 x 10]0 nuclear transformations

per second

daughter product: nuclides resulting from the radioacSOURCE: Adapted from U.S. Department of Energy, Information Base for Commercial Radioactive Waste Management, DOE/ET/401 10-1, July 1982.

338
App. H—Glossary, Acronyms, and Abbreviations . 339

tive decay of other nuclides. A daughter product may

be either stable or radioactive

decommissioning: the process of removing a facility

from operation; its contents may be entombed,

decontaminated and dismantled, or converted to

another use

decontamination: the removal of unwanted material

(especially radioactive material) from the surface or

from within another material

deep-well injection: pumping waste-containing slurries or liquids into subterranean voids or porous

strata

defense waste: radioactive waste due to research and

development on weapons, the operations of naval reactors, the production of weapons materials, or the

reprocessing of defense nuclear fuel

DEIS: Draft Environmental Impact Statement

deuterium: a natural isotope of hydrogen with one

neutron and one proton in its nucleus (atomic weight

= 2)

disposal: operations designed to provide final

isolation—with no provision for easy recovery of the

emplaced waste—by relying on a combination of

manmade and natural barriers rather than on continuous human control and maintenance to ensure

the isolation of the waste; NWPA specifies emplacement in mined geologic repositories. While disposal

sites and facilities must be designed to provide disposal, as just defined, they may also be used for storage or other activities prior to disposal

DOE: U.S. Department of Energy

DOI: U.S. Department of the Interior

dome, salt: a diapiric or piercement structure with a

central, nearly circular salt plug, generally one to two

kilometers in diameter, that has risen through the enclosing sediments from a deep mother bed of salt

DOT: U.S. Department of Transportation

EA: Environmental Assessment

EIS: Environmental Impact Statement

emplacement medium: the material (e. g., granite or

salt) in which a repository is built and into which the

waste will be placed

enriched uranium: uranium in which the percentage

of the fissionable isotope U -

235 has been increased

above the 0.7 percent normally found in natural

uranium

EPA: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

ERDA: U.S. Energy Research and Development

Administration, now DOE

Federal repository: see repository

FEIS: Final Environmental Impact Statement

FEMA: Federal Emergency Management Agency

fertile atoms: nonfissile isotopes, notably uranium-238,

which after absorbing a neutron will subsequently

decay to fissile isotopes like plutonium-239

FGEIS: Final Generic Environmental Impact

Statement

final isolation: placement of radioactive material in a

final resting place so that removal to another site is

neither necessary nor expected for as long as it takes

for the material to decay to a prescribed low level of

radioactivity. Synonymous with permanent isolation

and terminal isolation

fissile material: one of several actinides which undergo

fission when a thermal neutron is captured

fission (nuclear): the splitting of a heavy nucleus into

two or more radioactive nuclei, accompanied by the

release of a large amount of energy and generally one

or more neutrons. Fission is usually initiated by neutrons, but it can also occur spontaneously

fission products: a general term for the complex mixture of nuclides produced as a result of nuclear fission. Most, but not all nuclides in the mixture are

radioactive and decay, forming additional (daughter)

products, with the result that the complex mixture

of fission products so formed contains about 200 different isotopes of over 35 elements

fissionable material: any material fissionable by

neutrons, such as certain isotopes of uranium and

plutonium

fuel (nuclear reactor): fissionable material used as a

source of power when placed in a critical arrangement in a nuclear reactor

fuel assembly: a grouping of fuel rods which is not taken

apart during the charging and discharging of a reactor core

fuel cycle: the uranium fuel cycle to support the operation of light ,water reactors involves a number of

stages, including: mining, milling, conversion (U308

to UFG), enrichment, fuel fabrication, nuclear reactor

operation, fuel reprocessing, waste management, and

transportation between stages

fuel element: a tube, rod or other form into which fuel

material is fabricated for use in a reactor

fuel reprocessing plant: a chemical plant where irradiated fuel elements are processed to separate fission

products from uranium and plutonium

f%el residue waste: solid wastes consisting of the residue (fuel element hardware and chopped cladding

material) after the bulk of fuel core material, including most of the actinides and fission products, has

been dissolved in nitric acid in a chop and leach process. It is contaminated with low levels of actinides

and fission products and contains nearly all the activation products formed in the hardware and cladding material

full-core reserve: space reserved in the reactor basin

to accommodate all of the fuel contained in the

reactor

full cost recovery: includes charges to the user that
.

340 . Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

compensate the government for budgetary spending,

for capital and operating costs, for return on invested

capital, and for costs to cover unusual hazards, e.g.,

insurance premiums, premium pay for hazardous

work, workmen’s compensation

FY: fiscal year

gamma rays: short-wavelength electromagnetic radiation emitted in the radioactive decay of certain nuelides. Gamma rays are highly penetrating

GEIS: Generic Environmental Impact Statement

geologic disposal: disposal in a repository constructed

in a geologic formation

GESMO: Generic Environmental Statement on the Use

of Recycle Plutonium in Mixed Oxide Fuel in Light

Water Cooled Reactors, NUREG-0002

granite: a generally light-colored, coarse-grained igneous rock with substantial amounts of quartz and feldspars rich in sodium and potassium

groundwater: water that exists or flows in a zone of saturation between land surfaces

GWe: gigawatts electric, i.e., 1 billion (109

) watts or

1,000 megawatts

half-life: time required for a radioactive substance to

lose 50 percent of its activity by decay. After a period

equal to 10 half-lives, the radioactivity has decreased

to about 0.1 percent of its original value

head cnd of the fuel cycle: mining, milling, enrichment, and fabrication of Uoz fuel

high-level waste (HLW): highly radioactive material

resulting from chemical processing of spent fuel to

recover usable uranium and plutonium; contains fission products, traces of uranium and plutonium, and

other TRU elements. Originally produced in liquid

form, HLW must be solidified before disposal

high-level radioactive waste: high-level liquid wastes,

products from solidification of high-level liquid waste,

and irradiated (spent) fuel elements, if discarded

without reprocessing

hydrofracture: a process of producing underground

openings by injection of fluids (usually water) at pressures greater than the weight of the overlying rock

and soil

IAEA: International Atomic Energy Agency—established as an autonomous member of the United Nations, the IAEA currently includes over 100 participating countries. It is located in Vienna, Austria

ICRP: International Commission on Radiological

Protection—located in Sutton, Surrey, England

igneous: rock formed through solidification of partially

molten materials

immobilization: treatment and/or emplacement of

wastes to impede their movement

induced radioactivity: radioactivity produced in certain materials as a result of nuclear reactions, particularly the capture of neutrons, which are accompanied by the formation of radioactive nuclei

INEL: Idaho National Engineering Laboratory—near

Idaho Falls, Idaho

INFCE: International Nuclear Fuel Cycle Evaluation—established in 1977, INFCE includes approximately 50 countries and four international agencies.

The purpose of the INFCE was to prepare an evaluation of the nuclear fuel cycle. The final report was

issued in March 1980

in-situ: in the natural or original location

interim storage: temporary storage with the intention

and expectation that radioactive materials will be removed for subsequent treatment, transportation, or

isolation. Limited interim storage is defined by the

Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) as 20 years

renewable at the option of NRC. Extended interim

storage would be such storage for a very long (30 +

years) and relatively open-ended, undefined period.

IRG: Interagency Review Group on Nuclear Waste

Management— established by President Carter

(March 1978) to formulate recommendations for the

management of radioactive waste. Chaired by DOE,

the IRG included 14 Federal agencies

irradiation: exposure to any form of radiation

isolation: the placement of radioactive materials so that

contact between the waste and humans or the environment is highly unlkely for a specified period of

time

isotopes: atoms of the same element which contain different numbers of neutrons in their nucleus. Isotopes

which decay spontaneously emitting radiation are

called radioisotopes.

kilo: a prefix indicating 1,000 (103

) times the affixed

unit, abbreviated (k)

kilogram: kg = 1,000 grams = 2.2 pounds

kwh: kilowatt-hour, a unit of energy generation or consumption in a given hour

leaching: the process of extracting a soluble component

from a solid by the percolation of a solvent, such as

water, through the solid

long-lived nuclides: radioactive isotopes with half-lives

greater than 30 years

low-level waste (LLW): radioactive waste not classified as high-level radioactive waste, transuranic

waste,, spent nuclear fuel, or byproduct material as

defined in Section 1 le(2) of the Atomic Energy Act

of 1954, amended

LWR: light water reactor

metric ton (MT or tonne): unit of weight; 1 MT =

1,000 kilograms = 2,205 pounds

mill tailings: see uranium mill tailings

mrem: millirem, one-thousandth of a rem

MTHM: metric tons of heavy metal (nuclear fuel)
App. H—Glossary, Acronyms, and Abbreviations ● 341

MTU: metric tons of uranium

monitoring: measuring the quantity and type of discharges or migration of radioactive waste from a

waste management facility, chemical, or biological

characteristics of the site and the surrounding area

MOX: mixed oxide fuel (uranium and plutonium

oxides)

MRS: monitored retrievable storage

multibarrier: a system using the waste form, container, canister, overpack, and emplacement medium as

multiple barriers to isolate the waste from the biosphere

MWe: megawatt electric (1 MW = 1 million watts),

a unit of the rate of energy production or consumption

MWt-d/MTHM: megawatt (thermal) days per metric

ton of heavy metal, a measure of burnup

nanocurie (nCi): one billionth of a curie (10- 9Ci),

equivalent to 37 disintegrations per second

NAS: National Academy of Sciences

NASA: National Aeronautics and Space Administration

NCRP: National Council on Radiation Protection and

Measurement—located in Bethesda, Md., this is a

nongovernmental not-for-profit council chartered by

Congress

NEPA: National Environmental Policy Act of 1969

neutron: an uncharged particle in a nucleus; of slightly

greater mass than a proton; highly penetrating. Unlike the absorption of alpha, beta, or gamma radiation, the capture of neutrons by a substance can cause

this substance to become radioactive

NFS: Nuclear Fuel Services, Inc.

NRC: Nuclear Regulatory Commission

NTS: Nevada Test Site

nuclear radiation: particulate and electromagnetic radiation omitted from nuclei. Important nuclear radiations are ionizing radiations

nuclear reaction: neutron reactions with materials that

cause fission with the simultaneous release of energy

nuclear safety: the application of technical knowledge

and administrative control to prevent an unplanned,

uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction

nuclear waste: this term is usually used interchangeably

with radioactive waste (see waste, radioactive)

nucleus: the inner core of an atom, consisting primarily of neutrons and protons, which makes up almost

the entire mass of the atom, but only a minute part

of its volume

nuclide: an atom characterized by the number of neutrons and protons and sometimes by the energy state

in its nucleus

OCRWM: Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, DOE

ONWI: Office of Nuclear Waste Isolation, Battelle

Memorial Institute, Columbus, Ohio

ORNL: Oak Ridge National Laboratory

overpack: secondary or additional external containment

of packaged radioactive waste

partition: to separate one element from others; in processing operations, the separation of elements such as

uranium and plutonium

permanent storage: storage used as a means of providing final isolation, with no intentions of ever retrieving the waste

plutonium: a radioactive element with an atomic number of 94. Its most important isotope is fissionable

Pu-239, produced by neutron h-radiation of U-238

PNL: Pacific Northwest Laboratory—operated by Battelle Northwest Laboratories at Richland, Wash.

pool: a concrete chamber filled with water to provide

shielding for irradiated fuel elements

PWR: pressurized water reactor: a reactor system that

uses a pressurized water primary cooling system;

steam formed in a secondary cooling system drives

turbines to generate electricity

R&D: research and development

rad: radiation absorbed dose: a unit of absorbed dose

of ionizing radiation, equivalent to the absorption of

100 ergs of radiation energy per gram of absorbing

material

radioactive: unstable in a manner shown by spontaneous nuclear disintegration with accompanying

emission of radiation and particles

radioactive decay: the spontaneous transformation of

one nuclide into another or into a different energy

state of the same one, accompanied by the emission

of alpha or beta particles and/or gamma rays

radioactivity: the rate at which radioactive material is

emitting radiation, given in terms of the number of

nuclear disintegrations occurring in a unit of time.

The common unit of radioactivity is the curie (Ci)

radioisotope: a radioactive isotope of an element

radionuclide: a radioactive nuclide

RD&D: research, development, and demonstration

reactor (nuclear): a device in which a fission chain reaction can be initiated, maintained, and controlled

rem: roentgen equivalent man: a quantity used in radiation protection to express the effective dose equivalent for all forms of ionizing radiation; the dose

equivalent in reins is numerically equal to the absorbed dose in rac!s multiplied by the quality factor,

the distribution factor, and any other necessary modifying factors

reprocessing: dissolving spent reactor fuel to recover

useful materials such as thorium, uranium, and plutonium. Other radioactive materials are usually separated and treated as waste

re-racking: the replacement of existing fuel storage

racks in storage basins with racks of modified design
342 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

to increase the amount of spent fuel that can be stored

in the basins

repository (Federal): both a site and attached facilities

designed for final isolation of radioactive materials

retrievability: capability to remove waste from its place

in storage; the method and rate of removal and the

subsequent location of the waste must satisfy retrievability criteria

risk: the product of an event’s frequency and its consequence, yielding an estimate of the expected damage rate; e.g., population dose per year from a specified event

roentgen: a unit for measuring gamma or X-ray radiation; the roentgen is defined by measuring the effect of the radiation on air. It is that amount of

gamma or X-rays required to produce ions carrying

1 electrostatic unit of charge in 1 cubic centimeter

of dry air under standard conditions

seismicity: the tendency for the occurrence of earthquakes

shale: laminated, easily fractured sedimentary rock produced from clay

shielding: a material interposed between a source of radiation and personnel for protection against the danger of radiation; common shielding materials are concrete, water, and lead

shipping cask: a specially designed container used for

transporting radioactive materials

short-lived nuclides: for purposes of waste isolation,

a relative term generally defined as radioactive isotopes with half-lives no greater than about 30 years,

e.g., CS-137, Sr-90, Kr-85, II-3

spent nuclear fuel: nuclear reactor fuel that has been

used to the extent that it can no longer be used in

a nuclear power plant without reprocessing

storage: operations designed to provide isolation and

easy recovery of radioactive materials; storage relies

on continuous human monitoring, maintenance, and

protection from human intrusion for a specified period of time

storage basin: a water-filled, stainless steel lined pool

for the interim storage of spent fuel

technologies: specific methods for implementing concepts; an example is storing spent fuel in a metal cask

tectonics: a branch of geology dealing with the broad

architecture of the upper part of the Earth’s crust.

Plate tectonics considers a small number (10 to 25)

of large, broad, thick plates (blocks composed of areas

of both continental and oceanic crust and mantle),

each of which ‘‘floats’ on some viscous underlayer

in the mantle and moves more or less independently

of the others and grinds against them like ice floes

in a river

terminal isolation (final isolation): placement of highlevel wastes into a repository with no intention of recovering the emplaced material in the future

ton: English unit of weight, 1 ton = 2,000 pounds (1

short ton)

tonne: metric unit of weight, 1 tonne = 1,000 kg =

2,205 pounds (1 metric ton or 1 long ton)

transmutation: conversion of one element into another

by bombarding it with a nuclear particle

transportation: movement of materials between sites

(intrasite movement is not considered); this includes

alternative methods for packing, handling, and transporting waste materials and plutonium compounds.

Concepts include all conventional methods of land

and water transport required by the waste management sytem

transshipment: shipping spent fuel from one reactor

basin to another reactor within the utility system with

available space

TRU: transuranic

transuranic elements: elements with atomic numbers

greater than 92, including, among others, neptunium, plutonium, americium, and curium

transuranic waste (TRU waste): waste materials contaminated with U-233 (and its daughter products),

certain isotopes of plutonium, and with nuclides with

atomic number greater than 92. In order to be classified as TRU waste, the long-lived alpha activity

from subject isotopes must exceed 100 nCi/g of waste

material independent of the level of beta-gamma activity. This waste, which can vary greatly in its specific gamma activity, is produced primarily from reprocessing spent fuel and from the use of plutonium

in the fabrication of nuclear weapons

tritium: a radioactive isotope of hydrogen containing

two neutrons and one proton in the nucleus, with an

atomic weight of 3

tuff: a rock formed of compacted volcanic ash and dust;

it is usually porous and often soft

USGS: U.S. Geological Survey, DOI

uranium mill tailings: waste material resulting from

the processing of ores for the extraction of uranium;

the word tailings means the remaining portion of metal-bearing ore after some of the uranium has been

extracted

uranium: a naturally radioactive element with the

atomic number 92 and an atomic weight of approximately 238. The two principal naturally occurring

isotopes are the fissionable U-235 (O. 7 percent of natural uranium) and the fertile U-238 (99. 3 percent of

natural uranium)

uranium dioxide (U02): stable chemical compound of

uranium and oxygen; this is the compound for most

power reactor fuel

waste immobilization: the process of converting waste
App. H—Glossary, Acronyms, and Abbreviations ● 343

to a stable, solid form that encases the radionuclides

to prevent or slow their migration to the biosphere

waste management: the planning, execution, and surveillance of essential functions related to the control

of radioactive and nonradioactive waste, including

treatment, solidification, initial or long-term storage,

surveillance, and isolation

waste, radioactive: equipment and materials (from nuclear operations) that are radioactive or have radioactive contamination and for which there is no recognized use or for which recovery is impractical

water basin: a specially designed and operated water

pool for storing, cooling, and shielding spent fuel

elements

WIPP: Waste Isolation Pilot Plant: near Carlsbad, N.

Mex., a non-NRC-licensed facility for disposal of

TRU wastes resulting from national defense activities and programs
Index
—

Index

*

Allied General Nuclear Services (AGNS), 67, 68, 84

Atomic Energy Commission, 83, 84

British Central Electricity Generating Board, 63

Carter administration, 87, 92

Congress:

committees involved in radioactive waste management,

34

Congressional Budget Office, 11

Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, 84, 86

definitions, 26

Department of Energy (DOE), 3-16, 28, 34, 39, 44, 50,

52, 54, 58, 61, 64, 69, 70, 71, 73, 78, 93, 103-111,

120, 123, 130, 137-141, 155-172, 179

Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, 11,

159

Department of Transportation (DOT), 34, 62, 63

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 33, 44, 46, 48,

54

Federal institutional issues, 155-172

Federal interagency coordination, 168

organization of the Federal Waste Management AgenCy, 158-168

alternative means of financing and management, 162

Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management,

11, 159

program funding, 155-158

history of waste management, 83-96

development of Federal waste management policy and

programs, 83

early history (1945-75), 83

recent history, 85

problems for waste management policy, 88

complicating factors, 90

key policy issues, 88

Interagency Review Group, 87

International Commission on Radiation Protection

(ICRP), 30, 45

legislation:

Energy Reorganization Act of 1974, 86

London Dumping Convention, 1972, 50

Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (NWPA), 3, 4, 6,

8-17, 28, 35, 55, 58, 99-111, 117, 132, 155, 182,

245, 264-326

Ocean Dumping Act, 50

Major events in waste management history, 233-244

monitored retrievable storage (MRS), 3, 5, 15, 56, 104,

124, 334

Mission Plan, 3, 12-17, 106, 115-151

achievable initial plan, 115

major advantages, 116

implementation program, 129-150

high-confidence siting plan, 132

present siting program, 129

waste management technology development program,

141

waste management plan, 117-129

repository loading schedule, 4, 12, 117

repository siting program, 4, 13

Technology Development Plan, 5, 14

National Academy of Sciences, 63, 84

National Research Council, 69

National Waste Terminal Storage, 86

Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), 5, 15, 30, 33,

34, 42, 43, 44, 48, 58, 63, 64, 69, 88, 91, 117,

130, 137

Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, 8-17, 83, 99-111, 182,

245, 264-326

institutional measures, 11

radioactive waste management mission plan, 11

single-purpose Waste Management Office, 11

waste disposal fee, 11

relations with States and Indian Tribes, 10

impact compensation, 11

waste management policy, 8

final isolation of nuclear waste, 8

interim storage of spent fuel, 9

Oak Ridge National Laboratory, 52

performance requirements for a geologic repository, 327

policy analysis: NWPA, 99-111

key elements, 99-100

Nuclear Waste Policy Act, 101-111

procedure for establishing a repository for commercial

nuclear waste, 329

radioactive waste: its nature and management, 21-36

forms of radioactive waste, 24

institutional aspects of waste management, 33-36

Federal activities, 33

coordination and management, 34

funding, 34

policymaking, 33

regulation, 33

international activities, 36

non-Federal involvement, 35

public involvement, 35

nature of, 21-23

amounts of radioactive waste, 28

hazards of radioactive waste, 29

comparison of nuclear waste to uranium, 29

comparison of radioactive and other toxic waste, 32

347
— .

348 ● Managing the Nation’s Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

nuclear fuel cycle, 23

backend of fuel cycle, 25

front end of the fuel cycle, 24

reactor operation, 24

nuclear reactions, 21

effects of radiation, 22

fission, 21

radioactivity, 21

radioactive waste management policymaking, 199-232

acceptable safety levels for a geologic repository, 218

context of, 200

coping with interdependence, 227

defining radioactive waste, 204

Federal-State relationship, 221

linking reactor operation with the development of

techniques for radioactive waste disposal, 224

search strategy for sites, 212

storage, 206

utilizing knowledge of the Earth sciences, 209

waste package, 215

Reagan administration, 88, 92

Sandia National Laboratories, 63

spent fuel projections, 331

State and public concerns, 175-195

equity in siting waste facilities, 188

prevention and mitigation of impacts, 184

impact mitigation, 186

State concerns about safety, 184

public involvement, 190

States’ concerns, 175

equity, 176

Federal credibility, 177

waste management impacts, 176

State involvement in waste management decisions, 177

facility siting decisions, 178-184

policy development and oversight, 177

study of alternative institutional mechanisms, 3, 6, 16

technology of waste management, 39-80

integrated waste management system, 73-80

interrelationships, 79

system impacts, 74

cost, 78

distribution of impacts, 79

health effects, 74

nonradiologica.1 impacts, 74

transportation, 76

reprocessing, 67-73

for waste management, 68

effects of plutonium recycle, 71

operations and costs, 69

status of, 67

waste disposal, 39-55

comparison of disposal, 53

ability to retrieve waste, 54

cost, 54

potential international complications, 54

relative degree of safety, 53

technology status, 53

type of waste, 54

mined geologic repositories, 39

cost, 49

safety, 44

technology, 39

other disposal technologies, 50

deep hole disposal, 51

ice sheets, 52

rock melting, 51

space, 52

subseabed disposal, 50

transmutation, 53

well injection, 51

waste storage, 55-61

comparison of interim storage technologies,

cost, 60

flexibility, 59

safety, 58

status of technology development, 58

interim storage technology, 56

dry storage, 57

water-filled basins, 56

waste transportation, 61-67

cost, 67

risk analyses, 64

safety, 62

Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), 58, 120

U.S. Geological Survey, 138

58

Waste management system issues resolved in NWPA, 245

.

.