Take nuclear waste storage out of US DOE's hands, past agency officials urge

The best thing the US can do to find a permanent solution for its spent nuclear fuel is to take that responsibility out of the US Energy Department's hands, a panel of former DOE officials urged on May 20.

"Break waste out of DOE, put it in the hands of an independent organization funded by industry," William Magwood, director of the DOE's Office of Nuclear Energy under the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, said during a roundtable hosted by the American Nuclear Society. Magwood serves as head of the Paris-based Nuclear Energy Agency, which operates under the umbrella of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

When asked what they would do as absolute rulers for a day, the creation of a nuclear waste management authority topped two other former nuclear chiefs' wish lists.

The DOE has committed to taking a "consent-based" approach to siting interim nuclear waste storage after failing to commission a permanent repository and struggling to gain approval for other short-term proposals.

The agency recently approved a decision to build a consolidated interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel, which would be delivered by rail to a yet-to-be-determined location. But the full siting process, including research, site screenings, negotiations with host communities and implementation, could take as long as 15 years, according to the DOE's plan.

The US government has yet to formalize a plan for permanent storage, though early efforts underway in Congress could resurrect a stalled proposal to store spent fuel at the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada.

But Dennis Spurgeon, head of the Office of Nuclear Energy during Bush's second term, argued for the resurrection of another bill to create a nuclear waste management authority.

The proposed organization had been patterned after the Tennessee Valley Authority with a budget that would have been separate from the DOE's, ensuring a steadier stream of funding. "Unfortunately, the bottom line is, we got to the end of the administration and it wasn't done," Spurgeon said.

The creation of a separate entity was also one of the recommendations of the Obama administration's "Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future," the origin of the DOE's current consent-based siting strategy.

"For a program like that to have the greatest chance of success, you need to have it run by an organization that's credible and that has access to the funding needed to make and keep commitments and that has continuity across administrations," said John Kotek, who was staff director of the Blue Ribbon Commission before heading the Obama DOE's nuclear energy programs.

The US would not be the first to create a quasi-governmental organization to manage its spent nuclear fuel. Canada's Nuclear Waste Management Organization was formed at the direction of the government in 2002 by the country's nuclear power producers. Similar organizations exist in Sweden and France.

Industry funding, support needed

When looking at other countries' success stories, "there's always these organizations that are funded by industry, driven by industry, with industry customers," Magwood said. Managing nuclear energy waste within basic government "really has not worked, and if I could do one thing to make a change, it would probably be that."

Pete Miller, assistant secretary for nuclear energy in Obama's first term, agreed with his counterparts. "I don't know how I could come up with anything, as king, more gainful than that," he said.