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

1.24
1.7 ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS OF PROGRAMMATIC ALTERNATIVES FOR THE ONCE-THROUGH AND THE
REPROCESSING FUEL CYCLE OPTIONS AND VARIOUS NUCLEAR POWER GROWTH ASSUMPTIONS
To assess and compare the overall impacts of implementing the three programmatic alter-
natives addressed in this Statement, an analysis was made using a computer simulation of
the complete waste management system functioning over the entire post-fission lifetime of a
nuclear power system. This analysis considers treatment and disposal of all post-fission
high-level wastes (spent fuel or reprocessing HLW), airborne wastes(a) and transuranic (TRU)
wastes including decommissioning wastes. In this analysis all waste management functions are
accounted for and all radioactive waste streams are tracked each year from origin through
treatment, storage, transport and accumulation in a disposal repository.
Both the once-through cycle and the reprocessing cycle are addressed for the proposed
and alternative programmatic actions for the nuclear power scenarios presented in
Table 1.1.1. For the no-action alternative, indefinite storage of spent fuel in water basin
facilities with no ultimate disposal was assumed and reprocessing is not considered. Only
the first three nuclear growth cases are considered for the no-action alternative, because,
without disposal, growth of nuclear power beyond year 2000 does not appear credible.
DOE estimates that implementation of the proposed program will result in the establish-
ment of operating geologic repositories within the time range of 1997 to 2006. An exact
date of operation, depending on a number of variables, will be determined by the outcome of
existing programs. To cover additional contingencies such as an accelerated effort to open
a repository or, at the other extreme, additional delays for reasons not yet foreseen, a
range of repository startup dates from 1990 to 2010 is considered here. The range of
impacts is important in this simulation rather than the specific dates of repository
startup.
Implementation of the alternative program would result in extending the time to opera-
tion of the first disposal system. This action implies a further period of research and
development to bring the development status of the selected disposal alternatives to an
approximately equal status with current knowledge regarding geologic disposal. At that
time, a preferred technology would be selected and effort would be concentrated on develop-
ing this preferred technology with a program similar to the currently planned program for
implementing geologic disposal. Thus a substantial time delay is inherent in this alterna-
tive. Implementation of this alternative program is simulated by a range of repository
startup dates from 2010 to 2030.
In the system analysis, mined geologic repositories are used to simulate the disposal
method ultimately selected under the alternative program. (This concept is the only one
developed sufficiently to model impacts and costs reasonably well, and any alternative dis-
posal concept that might be selected would only be selected if it did not have significantly
greater impacts or costs.) The principal effects of the alternative program implementation
are the required interim storage for spent fuel or reprocessing wastes, the additional
(a) Airborne wastes from nuclear power plants are not considered in this Statement because
such wastes are considered in the EIS prepared for each nuclear power plant.