The demise of Yucca Mountain.

• Author: Beaver, William
• Position: Report

The Obama administration's recent announcement that it would cut funding for the development of a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, may be the beginning of the end for one of the country's longest and most contentious political battles. Although the project was not officially canceled, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) declared that "Yucca Mountain is not an option," and Energy Secretary Steven Chu stated that radioactive wastes can be stored safely in concrete and steel containers at nuclear plants until a new strategy is developed (Vogel 2009). The new policy contrasts sharply with that of the Bush administration, which sought to increase the size of the Yucca Mountain repository significantly to avoid the need for a second storage facility and to have it open by 2017.

The announcement elicited mixed reactions. Senate majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who had fought the Yucca Mountain project for years and was instrumental in the funding reductions, was elated. "I'm glad I was able to make these cuts and bring the Yucca Mountain project another step closer to its rightful end," he stated. In contrast, the nuclear industry was frustrated by the decision. An industry spokesperson said, "We continue to ask the federal government to provide a clear solution for what the long-term storage of spent fuel will be" (Hawthorne 2009). The industry frustration was undoubtedly deepened by the fact that the nation's utility companies have paid the government more than $22 billion in fees to help build the repository.

Regardless of one's view about the project, the decision to halt its development represents a significant government failure. Consider that Congress selected Yucca Mountain in 1987 and that the government has already spent almost $10 billion on it. In the meantime, nearly 60,000 tons of spent fuel have piled up at the country's 104 commercial nuclear plants, for which the federal government bears ultimate responsibility. Many believe that failure to develop a permanent solution to the waste problem leaves the future of nuclear power up in the air because utilities may be reluctant to order new reactors with so much uncertainty still present. This development comes at a time when estimates indicate that the United States will need to increase electrical output by 25 percent over the next two decades. Just as important, nuclear plants emit no greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. In fact, several prominent environmentalists have endorsed the technology for that reason (Moore 2006). In any event, the Obama decision raises the questions, Why was this decision taken now, and what comes next? To understand how we arrived at this point, it is important first to examine the policies that produced it.

A Government Responsibility

The Atomic Energy Act of 1954 made the federal government ultimately responsible for disposal of the spent fuel that commercial nuclear plants would generate. The most obvious reason for this assignment of responsibility is that significant dangers are involved. Nuclear reactors have thousands of fuel rods that periodically must be replaced, and they will be radioactive for thousands of years. For this reason alone, long-term on-site storage of the spent fuel was considered unacceptable because power plants are often located near population centers and along waterways, where leaks or acts of terrorism might have disastrous consequences. So the plan was to place the used rods in 40-foot-deep steel-and-concrete swimming pools (each nuclear plant has one), and then the federal government, utilizing its expertise and resources, would at some future point remove them for ultimate disposal elsewhere.

The government also took responsibility for the waste for reasons tied to economics and politics. Put simply, few utilities would have agreed to construct a nuclear plant if they were to be held responsible for dealing with the waste. Nuclear power, particularly in the 1950s and 1960s, made little economic sense. Conventional generating plants met the growing demand as electricity prices declined and utility profits increased. The country had not yet become concerned about the environmental problems associated with burning coal. Therefore, if utilities were going to consider the nuclear option, sloughing off the costs and risks of waste disposal would be necessary. Why then did the government promote nuclear power before the economics of the technology were more favorable for commercial development? In short, the answer is that nuclear power emerged at the height of the Cold War and quickly became part of the ideological struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union. By developing the peaceful atom, the U.S. government hoped to demonstrate its technological superiority over the Soviet Union. Senator John Pastore of Rhode Island expressed a widely held view when he warned, "If we are outdistanced by the Russians in this race it would be catastrophic" (U.S. Congress 1956, 14). In this light, it seemed essential that the United States take the lead in developing civilian reactors, and, in view of the costs and risks, the federal government would have to be the driving force in doing so. Even President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was always leery of government involvement in technological development, threatened to build "Nuclear TVAs [Tennessee Valley Authorities]" if the nation's utilities didn't begin to construct reactors on their own.

Some people fervently believed that nuclear power, beyond winning a significant foreign-policy struggle with the Soviet Union, would usher in a new era of prosperity if urgently pursued. Harnessing the atom's power would not only provide abundant, inexpensive electricity, but also power our automobiles, planes, and rockets, among other things. This emphasis on developing peaceful uses of atomic energy emerged shortly after World War II and was tied to the idea that something so powerful and potentially destructive should be put to positive use for the benefit of mankind. In December 1953, President Eisenhower echoed these sentiments in his "Atoms for Peace" speech at the United Nations, in which he urged all nations (with U.S. help) to develop peaceful uses of atomic energy (Pilat, Pendler, and Ebinger 1985).

Early Attempts to Dispose of Wastes

In such an atmosphere, the rather mundane subject of waste disposal did not receive much attention. More than 90 percent of government funding in those early years, not surprisingly, was channeled into reactor development. However, the waste problem was not totally ignored, and, at the time, it was not considered to be highly perplexing. The assumption made early on was that radioactive waste could be placed in bullet-shaped canisters and dumped into ocean sediments thousands of feet below the surface. The navy did bury low-level wastes at sea, but this option was eventually ruled out because in such deposits the waste would be difficult, if not impossible, to monitor. The idea of burying wastes at the South Pole was also dropped. Another bizarre plan called for launching the spent fuel into outer space to orbit the sun or Venus. (Shapiro 1980, 228) The problem, of course, is that rocket technology would have to made fail-safe, a perfection never achieved.

A more practical alternative involved storing radioactive wastes in underground salt domes, which tend to be stable and dry. The Atomic Energy Commission did operate a demonstration project in Kansas in the 1970s. Several safety issues were unfortunately not resolved, however, including the effects of radiation on the salt itself, so the project was ended (Kearney and Garey 1982). In addition, other states with salt domes, including Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, had the political clout to stall any future development (Wald 1989). Nevertheless, in 1974 the DOE constructed the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in a New Mexico salt dome to store government-generated...