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

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effects associated with special port facilities and tranportation links will be made.
The practicality of pursuing this concept, recognizing current National and
international laws and agreements will ~e further analyzed.
* Very deep hole disposal warrants some additional study as a possible backup for HLW
disposal only. Further development should emphasize the ability for corrective or
mitigating actions available.(a)
* Space disposal may be profitably studied for its application to special disposal con-
cerns, e.g., more remote isolation of long lived and environmentally mobile radio-
nuclides such as 99 Tc and 1291.(a) However, the overall impact on the total
waste management system will need to be carefully evaluated to determine if such sepa-
ration would provide overall benefit.
* Other technologies studied (island, mined repository, transmutation, rock melt, ice
sheet and well injection) either have no clear advantage over geologic disposal, or
provide no additional complementary function and, in some cases, are clearly less
desirable.
It can be argued that a delay in the program strategy, which would allow for a longer
period of R&D, could conceivably reduce the probability of failure of the chosen disposal
system by producing more knowledge and a greater diversity of choice in selecting a dis-
posal method. DOE concludes that the likelihood of this occurring is small. In addition,
the DOE program allows for a continuing broad based R&D effort, the investigation of a
broad range of alternative media, and technical conservatism in program implementation.
Because this Statement is not site-specific it will be necessary to make other envi-
ronmental analyses addressing the possibility of adverse impacts associated with specific
sites and facilities at such time as the program reaches such decision points.
Recovery of the full costs of research and development and implementation of waste
management and disposal for all modes of operation considered in this EIS, with the as-
sumption of continued nuclear power growth to 250 GWe, resulted in a 2 to 3% increase in
estimated average cost of electrical energy to the consumer. (Complete cessation of nu-
clear power generation at the end of 1980 would result in a significantly higher cost of
waste management per unit of power produced.)
In summary, there appear to be no environmental issues that would reasonably preclude
pursuit of a program strategy favoring disposal of commerically generated radioactive
wastes in deep geologic repositories (regardless of nuclear power growth assumptions).
Thus the proposed action of conducting R&D leading to disposal of radioactive wastes in
deep geologic repositories is believed to be fully supported.
(a) This disposal technology would not be capable of accommodating the full range of waste
types. An alternative technology, i.e., geologic disposal, would be required for
large quantities of solid waste. Thus, this alternative sould be viewed as comple-
mentary to geologic disposal.