Used Nuclear Fuel and Government Responsibility

ProPublica, an independent investigative journalism outlet, brings out an interesting point about used nuclear fuel: there's a lot of money to do something with it, but nothing is being done with the money. How much money?

There is $24 billion sitting in a "nuclear waste fund" that can't actually be used to pay for a safer way to store the waste at reactors.

And why might this be?

The idea at the time [of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982] was to build a repository inside volcanic rock on Yucca Mountain, about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. That plan proved to be wildly controversial and was eventually abandoned by the Obama administration in 2010. After 29 years, there are billions of dollars in the fund and no plan for the waste.

And this failure has led to a battery of lawsuits that may cost the government almost as much as is in the waste fund.

The companies have filed dozens of lawsuits, for $6.4 billion in total claims, according to figures maintained by the Department of Justice. The government has already paid out $956 million. It's also spent nearly $170 million simply defending itself against the claims.[...]Department of Energy statistics show that new lawsuits and other costs could eventually push the government's legal liability to $16.2 billion.

ProPublica pushes the issue of used nuclear fuel at the plants as unsafe further than reality dictates in order to give the story a little more urgency. And if ProPublica were being completely fair, it would have brought up the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Energy Future, which is seriously exploring this issue.

Those lapses hurt the story a bit, but the premise is sound: there's a lot of money to fund a permanent solution to the issue of used nuclear fuel and the government has failed to live up to its end of the bargain.

Worth a read.
---
NEI has a comprehensive set of Fact Sheets on these issues. Go here and look at the last group on the page, under Nuclear Waste and Used Nuclear Fuel Management. Won't lead you wrong.

The Yucca Mountain used fuel repository when it was still under construction.

Comments

How Nanomaterials Can Make Nuclear Reactors Safer and More Efficient

The following is a guest post from Matt Wald, senior communications advisor at NEI. Follow Matt on Twitter at @MattLWald.

From the batteries in our cell phones to the clothes on our backs, "nanomaterials" that are designed molecule by molecule are working their way into our economy and our lives. Now there’s some promising work on new materials for nuclear reactors.

Reactors are a tough environment. The sub atomic particles that sustain the chain reaction, neutrons, are great for splitting additional uranium atoms, but not all of them hit a uranium atom; some of them end up in various metal components of the reactor. The metal is usually a crystalline structure, meaning it is as orderly as a ladder or a sheet of graph paper, but the neutrons rearrange the atoms, leaving some infinitesimal voids in the structure and some areas of extra density. The components literally grow, getting longer and thicker. The phenomenon is well understood and designers compensate for it with a …

Missing the Point about Pennsylvania’s Nuclear Plants

A group that includes oil and gas companies in Pennsylvania released a study on Monday that argues that twenty years ago, planners underestimated the value of nuclear plants in the electricity market. According to the group, that means the state should now let the plants close.

Huh?

The question confronting the state now isn’t what the companies that owned the reactors at the time of de-regulation got or didn’t get. It’s not a question of whether they were profitable in the '80s, '90s and '00s. It’s about now. Business works by looking at the present and making projections about the future.

Is losing the nuclear plants what’s best for the state going forward?

Pennsylvania needs clean air. It needs jobs. And it needs protection against over-reliance on a single fuel source.

What the reactors need is recognition of all the value they provide. The electricity market is depressed, and if electricity is treated as a simple commodity, with no regard for its benefit to clean air o…

Why Nuclear Plant Closures Are a Crisis for Small Town USA

Nuclear plants occupy an unusual spot in the towns where they operate: integral but so much in the background that they may seem almost invisible. But when they close, it can be like the earth shifting underfoot.

Lohud.com, the Gannett newspaper that covers the Lower Hudson Valley in New York, took a look around at the experience of towns where reactors have closed, because the Indian Point reactors in Buchanan are scheduled to be shut down under an agreement with Gov. Mario Cuomo.

From sea to shining sea, it was dismal. It wasn’t just the plant employees who were hurt. The losses of hundreds of jobs, tens of millions of dollars in payrolls and millions in property taxes depressed whole towns and surrounding areas. For example:

Vernon, Vermont, home to Vermont Yankee for more than 40 years, had to cut its municipal budget in half. The town closed its police department and let the county take over; the youth sports teams lost their volunteer coaches, and Vernon Elementary School lost th…

NEI Nuclear Notes

Search This Blog