Management of Commercially Generated Radioactive Waste - U.S. ...

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GENERAL COMMENTS
In addition to the comments on policy aspects of commercial waste management, a number
of comments were received which advocated points of interest or suggested items that were
beyond the scope of this document. A number of these comments are discussed here, in gen-
eral terms.
A number of letters were received that suggested slowing down or halting generation of
electricity by nuclear power to stop the production of any more nuclear waste. (42, 57, 60,
65, 68, 90, 91, 96, 98, 102, 103, 105, 106, 109, 110, 111, 117, 128, 131, 134, 137, 138,
140, 142, 143, 145, 153, 155, 159, 160, 162, 165, 169, 171, 172, 174, 186, 194, 197, 199,
204, 206, 212, 216) Other commenters stated that generation of nuclear power should be
halted until there is an accepted means of disposal of such waste..;, (59, 67, 69, 74, 78, 93,
118, 123, 125, 127, 135, 141, 146, 149, 177, 185, 195, 209, 213) As. the Introduction to the
Statement points out, the issue of waste production has been addressed bnly from the stand-
point of the waste management impacts that would be associated with various future industry
growth scenarios (including present inventory only).
Several letters contained statements about the future of fuel reprocessing. (27, 29,
35, 55, 82, 128, 147, 153, 158, 180, 181, 198, 205,) At present, reprocessing is indefi-
nitely postponed under Presidential directive and this Statement has considered alternative
approaches to treatment and disposal of commercial wastes including those that would require
no reprocessing. Consideration of an alternative in no way endorses the alternative. DOE
agrees that the Presidential deferral of reprocessing would have to be rescinded before any
such reprocessing could take place. The waste disposal program should be applicable to all
potential waste and waste forms. Since reprocessing is deferred but not banned, reproces-
singi wastes are potential waste forms and have been considered in this generic impact state-
ment. An anaiTysis of the pros and cons of reprocessing spent fuel and recycling uranium and
plutonium, can be found in NUREG-ES-0002 (NRC 1976a).
Commenters; mentioned the undesirability of a breeder reactor program. (29, 96, 153)
The breeder ana1llys~is is not covered in the Statement nor is this Statement the appropriate
forum for a discussion of the appropriateness of instituting such a program. Such discus-
sions have been covered in another impact statement (ERDA 1975).
Other methods for generating energy or encouraging energy development (e.g., solar
installations, fusion reactors, and various tax incentives) as well as analysis of imple-
menting these methods (e.g., comparison of expected exposures from nuclear sources to non-
nuclear sources) were advocated. (7, 15, 20, 29, 63, 67, 72, 74, 76, 83, 91, 96, 102, 105,
108, 117, 138, 141, 142, 145, 171, 172, 173) This Statement evaluates only the alternatives
for disposing of post-fission waste from commercial nuclear power production. Discussions
of alternate forms of energy production or mechanisms to stimulate energy production and
their impacts are outside the scope of this document.