atw 2017-09

atw Vol. 62 (2017) | Issue 8/9 ı August/September
566
NUCLEAR TODAY
Links to reference
sources:
NRC announcement:
http://bit.ly/2vpHbgR
NEA annual
report 2015:
http://bit.ly/2vXcCjb
Author
John Shepherd
nuclear 24
41a Beoley Road West
St George’s
Redditch B98 8LR,
United Kingdom
Spotlight Back on HLW with Yucca
Mountain on Trump’s Horizon
John Shepherd
After years of argument and delay could the US be edging closer to resurrecting proposals to build a national ­repository
for high level nuclear waste (HLW) at Yucca Mountain in Nevada?
The federal government has looked at the site with a view to
establishing a repository since the 1970s. However, after
pouring billions of dollars into projects and studies over the
decades, the project remained bogged down in legal battles
and opposition from politicians and pressure groups.
However, in August of this year, the US Nuclear
Regulatory Commission (NRC) said it had directed its staff to
use the equivalent of about EUR 95,000 from the ­national
Nuclear Waste Fund on “information-gathering ­activities”
that could pave the way for resuming a licensing review of
Yucca Mountain as a potential deep geologic ­repository
(DGR).
The US Department of Energy (DOE) discontinued Yucca
Mountain licensing review activities in 2010. A year later,
the NRC suspended the licensing proceedings. In 2013, the
US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
­ordered the NRC to resume its review of the licence
­application – but given the limited funds available, the NRC
chose to complete its staff technical review process and
­issue a safety evaluation report and final supplemental
environmental impact statement.
Now, with those evaluations complete, the NRC ­believes
information-gathering is the next best step forward.
­According to the NRC, “these activities will enable ­efficient,
informed decisions in support of executing any further
­appropriations of funds for the high-level waste ­programme”.
The US Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI) has welcomed the
move as being “concrete progress toward reviving the ­Yucca
Mountain licensing process”. The NEI’s federal ­programmes
director Baker Elmore said President Donald Trump and
energy secretary Rick Perry “have made it clear that solving
our country's nuclear waste situation is a ­priority, and this is
another step in the right direction”.
So why is Yucca Mountain necessary? Well I can do no
better that quote Secretary Perry, who told lawmakers last
June: “We have a moral and national security obligation to
come up with a long-term solution, finding the safest
[­nuclear waste] repositories available.”
Perry said had had been “instructed to move forward
­toward that goal” and that the US “can no longer kick the
can down the road”.
The energy secretary is right. But progress at Yucca
Mountain is not just of importance to the US – the project
has far-reaching international dimensions.
The management of waste has long been the Achilles’
heel of the nuclear industry.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) estimates
that 370,000 metric tonnes of heavy metal (MTHM) in the
form of used fuel have been discharged since the first
­nuclear power plants started operations. Of this, the agency
estimates that 120,000 MTHM has been reprocessed, with
the balance, 250,000 MTHM, in storage.
As most right-thinking people will understand, it is
­political leadership (or the lack of it) that has largely
­hampered the development of HLW repositories worldwide
– not technical knowhow.
Political leaders called on to take the decisions required
for the planning, siting and development of waste facilities
know full well that they will have been long out of office
– probably even dead and forgotten – before such a facility
comes close to starting operations. That might sound ­cruel,
but it’s true. What incentive then is there for ­politicians to
grapple with the HLW issue? No wonder that in many parts
of the world, nuclear waste management is, as the US
­energy secretary said, “a can kicked down the road”.
There are positive highlights in terms of developing
HLW facilities, however. Finland became the first country to
­begin construction of a permanent repository for HLW,
granting a licence to Posiva in November 2015 to construct
a final ­disposal facility for spent nuclear fuel at Olkiluoto.
The final disposal is scheduled to start in 2020’s.
The OECD’s Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) has noted that
Canada’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization ( NWMO)
is “making good progress” towards implementing a longterm
solution for nuclear fuel waste. The ­NWMO’s 2016-
2020 Strategic Plan stated the organisation’s goal of siting
and working with potentially interested communities in
that period as they move through the preliminary assessment
step in the siting process.
In France, the process is ongoing for the proposal of a
DGR for high-level and long-lived, intermediate level waste.
Such a process is also under way in Japan, South Korea and
general licence applications are under review in Sweden.
In Russia, the design process began some time ago for
the development of a DGR for high-level and long-lived
waste in the region of Krasnoyarsk.
Last year, following more than two years of work, a
­commission looking into the storage of Germany's HLW
­submitted its final report to the country's government. The
report provided a recommended method for the disposal of
the waste in a geologic repository.
In Switzerland, the National Cooperative for the Disposal
of Radioactive Waste (NAGRA) has said that over the past
year, extensive field work has been carried out or
­preparations for future work were made. 3D seismic
­examinations in the Jura Ost and Zürich Nordost siting
­regions were completed in February 2016 and the
­examination in Nördlich Lägern was carried out last winter.
Applications have been submitted for permits for
­exploratory boreholes and quaternary boreholes in the Jura
Ost and Zürich Nordost siting regions. The applications for
Nördlich Lägern will follow later this year.
As these examples show, progress on HLW disposal is
­being made. However, even where countries are
­demonstrating leadership, the necessary processes relating
to licensing are painstakingly slow and easily delayed or
thrown off course by non-related events.
This is why news of the Yucca Mountain project being
­revisited could provide a much-needed boost.
President Trump is a self-proclaimed “outsider” and
“non-politician”. His approach, some might argue, is
­refreshingly unconventional. What is certain is that there
appears to have been more positive noises coming from the
White House in terms of nuclear and the question of HLW in
comparison to the previous administration. Politics aside, if
the current flurry of nuclear activity pushes Yucca Mountain
forward, it will be welcome news for the US nuclear energy
industry – and should be welcomed around the world too.
Nuclear Today
Spotlight Back on HLW with Yucca Mountain on Trump’s Horizon ı John Shepherd