The commission will be headed by former House member Lee Hamilton (D-Indiana) and former National Security Advisor (to Presidents Ford and George H.W. Bush) Brent Scowcroft. These men volunteer to chair the commission and show considerable devotion to public service in doing so.
The remaining 13 commission members include:
- Mark Ayers, President, Building and Construction Trades Department, AFL-CIO
- Vicky Bailey, Former Commissioner, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; Former IN PUC Commissioner; Former Department of Energy Assistant Secretary for Policy and International Affairs
- Albert Carnesale, Chancellor Emeritus and Professor, UCLA
- Pete V. Domenici, Senior Fellow, Bipartisan Policy Center; former U.S. Senator (R-NM)
- Susan Eisenhower, President, Eisenhower Group
- Chuck Hagel, Former U.S. Senator (R-NE)
- Jonathan Lash, President, World Resources Institute
- Allison Macfarlane, Associate Professor of Environmental Science and Policy, George Mason University
- Dick Meserve, Former Chairman, Nuclear Regulatory Commission
- Ernie Moniz, Professor of Physics and Cecil & Ida Green Distinguished Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Per Peterson, Professor and Chair, Department of Nuclear Engineering, University of California - Berkeley
- John Rowe, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Exelon Corporation
- Phil Sharp, President, Resources for the Future
As you can see, this is an exceptionally well-chosen group, with various political, scientific and industrial constituencies included.
Here are some interesting tidbits:
Yucca Mountain will not be considered an option. For all intents and purposes, it’s dead.
Why not Yucca Mountain? Because, said Chu, “science has advanced dramatically” in the 20 years since Yucca Mountain was chosen and a better, safer solution is preferable and now possible.
Chu made it clear, though, that this is not a siting commission – that is, if it settles around the idea of a repository, it won’t suggest where it might be located – and of course a repository may not be one of the recommendations.
The commission is charged with delivering an interim report in 18 months and a final report in two years. The chairmen said they’d like to finish sooner.
Chu does not consider the focus on nuclear energy in President Obama’s State of the Union or the founding of the commission to represent a “betrayal” of environmentalists who supported the President’s election (nor should he – Obama was muted but definite during the election that he supported nuclear energy.)
Chu noted that nuclear energy is baseload, carbon emission free energy and, compared to fusion, for example, is well understood now.
You can see the Presidential memo ordering this commission here.
We’ll have lots more to say about this in the days and weeks ahead, but we thought you’d want the initial news quickly. As they say in the trade, breaking…
Commission co-chair Lee Hamilton.
Comments
... unless, that is, this science happens to suggest that the long-term solution to our used nuclear fuel and nuclear waste storage is to bury it in a remote area at the edge of the Nevada Test Site, in which case, we'll use the "next best available" science. ;-)
What a joke!
How can this review be "thorough" or "comprehensive" when it already excludes possibilities before it has even begun?
I'm a bit encouraged to see Domenici and Peterson on the commission. On the other hand, I'm sorry, but not surprised, to see Macfarlane among its members. (I anticipate -- or at least hope -- that she will be involved in penning the minority opinion; she has never met a plan for spent fuel that she liked.) I'm also a little disappointed that the only CEO on the commission is the one who is on the record stating that there is no need for new nuclear power plants, mostly because of his very short-term, self-serving thinking.
Because John Rowe puts his company's profitability and its shareholders above new-plant industry zealots? I guess that's self-serving, strictly defined, but it's what a CEO is supposed to do.
Nevertheless, he would not be my first choice for serving on this panel (unless I wanted to game the system for a certain negative outcome). In fact, he would be at the bottom of my list of candidates.
I can tell you right now that no matter how many times you reprocess fuel, you're never going to burn away all the actinides. A repository somewhere is necessary. Not to mention all the legacy waste leftover from weapons production.
So what happens when they say a repository is necessary? "The U.S. needs a repository, and although we didn't consider where such a repository should be, we can say due to the scientific advances of the last 20 years [or rather, due to a political move by Obama/Reid] that it shouldn't be at Yucca mountain."
So, right back to where things were decades ago? The only glimmer of hope is if they decide to endorse reprocessing.
The "Capacity Factor" blog points out that a large fraction of the commission are non-proliferation "experts," so we can assume that Obama told Chu that reprocessing was off the table before he ever selected the commission.
We can bank on an eighteen-month investigation that decides to kick the can 30 more years down the road.
Dontcha love "Science-based decision making?"
Such Federal repositories could be easily protected by state national guard troops and could safely store the tiny amounts of residual radioactive waste for a century or two until final deposition or transmutation in the future. Since the commercial nuclear industry is already paying for spent fuel disposal, this revenue could produce jobs in practically every state in the union that produces radioactive waste material.
Its about jobs, jobs, jobs! Right!
I may be wrong, but I think that WIPP already accomodates the legacy weapons production stuff.
pass commercial, slightly-spent light water reactor fuel is about as far away
from a good answer as possible (and so was the potential logistics with the slated
location). It's refreshing to see the
group clearly stepping beyond the Yucca Mountain debate. Smaller reactors, thorium-
including LFTR (better
addressing proliferation), breeder reactors to
extend burns, fast
reactors, reprocessing,
Brayton
cycles are all in the mix. Deliverables
should include future state use cases, paths
forward and specific key next step recommendations.
Orlando Stevenson
http://thisweekinsecurity.blogspot.com
Disclaimer: This information is provided “AS IS” with no warranties, and confers no rights. These comments do not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my employer. It is solely my opinion and subject to change.
Wrong. Just TRU waste. Not SNF, HLW, surplus Pu, etc.
In my view, the so-called Standard Contract, as well as the legal foundation of the Nuclear Waste Fund and the terms of the NWPA, put the nuclear industry in an obvious position of standing with respect to such legal action. This has already been demonstrated in the many district court lawsuits won by the industry, stemming from DOE’s failure to take possession of SNF in 1998 under the terms of the NWPA.
It would seem to me that DOE’s explicit admission that it will reneg on the NWPA in its entirety, as soon to be codified in the FY 2011 budget, renders it liable to legal action on many fronts, from so-called writs of mandamus and injunctions to recovery of the monies in the Nuclear Waste Fund.
I don’t know if NEI, as the nuclear industry’s representative, would ever pursue such action. But I suspect that they have grounds to do so; the legal history in this sad affair suggests as much. For me personally, I would urge NEI to file suit immediately, simply as a matter of principle. After all, the industry has lived up to its end of the bargain, as evidenced by the $23 billion currently in the NWF.
It might be a stretch, but one also wonders whether ratepayers who contributed this money would be eligible to participate in class-action suits against the industry for essentially charging them a fee for services never rendered. Seems hypothetically feasible, from a legal standpoint, as in other cases where consumers are wrongfully charged for services they never receive. As a potential target of such action, it would seem to be in the industry’s interest to preemptively recover what it can from the government, which has instigated what will soon become a full breach of contract, as opposed to the already decided partial breaches for failure to take possession of SNF.
Then you must not be following the news. There are at least 72 lawsuits about this, altogether seeking $50 billion in damages. The backlash is so huge, Obama is literally hiring more lawyers.
DOJ Wants More Lawyers For Nuclear-Waste Litigation
A bit misleading. The "this" of these lawsuits is the historical failure of DOE, through several administrations of BOTH parties, to take title/possession of SNF from nuclear utilities. NOT Obama's zeroing out of YMP. If there's already a lawsuit on that, specifically, please post particulars. Thanks.
I'm guessing you're not a lawyer.
Ashcroft, Gonzalez, Bush, Cheney and Rove used DOJ to justify elimination of habeus corpus and torturing people. Rove also used DOJ systematically to implement a nationwide system of political largesse, stemming from control of prosecutorial appointments.
Want to amend your claim?
No, I'm not a lawyer, but I know right from wrong. I guess that's why I'm not a lawyer.
Try to keep in mind that this is a blog about nuclear, thx.