Interim Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel - Woods Hole Research Center

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Executive Summary xi ernment’s commitment to accept the utilities’ spent fuel by January 1998, and the delays in the repository program that made it impossible to meet that deadline; and the legacy of public distrust of both government nuclear agencies and the nuclear industry. At the same time, however, efforts to establish additional dry cask storage at reactor sites have been far more successful, with many facilities established, many more planned, and only a few having raised substantial controversy. Any future decisions on interim storage approaches will have to take these past decisions into account, as these experiences substantially shape political reactions to proposals for management of spent fuel. In Japan, efforts to expand interim storage capacity for spent fuel are more recent, but have similarly been shaped and constrained by Japan’s past decisions—including the commitment to a closed fuel cycle with reprocessing of all spent fuel; the related commitment to remove all spent fuel from reactor sites for reprocessing; delays in the reprocessing program; and the complex web of political, legal, and institutional commitments related to construction of the reprocessing facility at Rokkasho-mura. In Japan too, the increased distrust following recent accidents, particularly the criticality accident at Tokai-mura in 1999, is likely to make developing a process that will lead to public support for building a spent fuel storage facility more difficult. In Japan, the current focus is on developing a large centralized facility, not on the at-reactor storage approach that has so far been more successful in the U.S. political context. In both the United States and Japan, there is significant local concern over hosting spent fuel storage facilities. Many communities simply do not want to be host to a facility for storing spent nuclear fuel, for a wide range of reasons. In particular, many communities are concerned about spent fuel storage facilities becoming de facto permanent repository sites. Local opposition has prevented many past proposed interim storage facilities and other nuclear facilities from being successfully established. Such objections pose the largest obstacle to building adequate storage capacity for spent nuclear fuel. An approach emphasizing transparency, democracy, and fairness can help overcome the obstacles to gaining acceptance for siting interim storage facilities. In the past, nuclear decisions have often been made in secret, announced, and then imposed on affected communities over their objections—the so-called “decide, announce, defend” approach. This approach has proved in most cases to generate local opposition rather than support, and has contributed to a number of the recent failures to gain approval for siting nuclear and other facilities. Secrecy surrounding key decisions, in particular, while often justified by the desire to avoid exposing proposals to criticism prematurely, tends to breed mistrust and opposition. Communities want transparent access to all the important information they need about the proposed facility and the process of decision; a democratic process that will allow them to ensure that their concerns are fully addressed; and a process for choosing a site that is fair in its allocation of the burdens and benefits from nuclear energy and storage of spent fuel, and does not single out any one particular community against its will. The process for siting interim spent fuel storage facilities must give the host community high confidence that safety will be assured, that all potential negative impacts of the facility will be addressed, and that the host community will be better off, overall, once the facility is built. Ensuring that stringent safety standards will be reliably met is absolutely essential to building public support for interim storage facilities for spent nuclear fuel. No community will accept a storage facility it does not believe is safe. Strong and fully independent safety regulation, and opportunities for experts from the community itself to confirm that safety is being maintained, are likely to be very important in building local confidence that safety commitments are being met. Other potential negative impacts of a facility, such as traffic and impacts on the value of local property and products, must also be effectively addressed. Ultimately, communities are not likely to support the establishment of spent fuel storage facilities in their vicinities unless there is some benefit to them (and to the nation as a whole) in doing so. Thus, fair compensation to communities for the service to society of hosting interim storage facilities is very important. It should not be assumed, however, that simply offering compensation is enough to build support for such facilities—indeed, the evidence suggests
xii that unless handled with considerable care, such offers of compensation have modest benefit or can even backfire. Building confidence that permanent management options are progressing, and that interim storage facilities will not become permanent “dumps,” is essential to building public support for establishing interim storage facilities. In both the United States and Japan, communities near spent fuel management facilities have placed very high priority on ensuring that facilities built to be temporary will in fact be temporary—that ultimately, there will be some more permanent solution for managing the spent nuclear fuel. Building confidence that permanent solutions are progressing and will be available in a reasonable period of time is likely to be a central part of gaining public support for interim spent fuel storage facilities. A variety of approaches to legally, financially, and institutionally linking interim storage to continued progress toward permanent solutions can be envisioned, and may be useful in building public confidence. At the same time, however, it is important not to repeat past mistakes by setting deadlines that cannot be met or committing too firmly to implementing particular approaches decades in the future that may turn out not to be appropriate when the time comes; such mistakes would undermine the flexibility that is one of the key advantages of interim storage of spent nuclear fuel. The “Facility Siting Credo” offers useful guidance for efforts to implement interim storage approaches that can gain public support. The “Facility Siting Credo,” with the slight modifications described in this report, can provide a useful framework for building support for siting facilities for interim storage of spent nuclear fuel. The modified credo includes the following goals: achieve agreement that a facility is needed, that the status quo without it is unacceptable; institute a broadbased participatory process; seek consensus; work to develop trust; seek acceptable sites through a volunteer process; consider competitive siting processes; set realistic timetables (“go slowly in order to go fast”); keep multiple options open; choose the storage approaches and sites that best address the problem; guarantee that stringent safety standards will be met; build confidence that storage will be temporary and permanent solutions forthcoming; fully address all negative aspects of the facility; make the host community better off; use contingent agreements (specifying what INTERIM STORAGE OF SPENT NUCLEAR FUEL happens if something goes wrong); and work for geographic fairness. Not all of these goals can be achieved in every case, but the credo offers a constructive road-map for a transparent, democratic, and fair process to build support for siting interim storage facilities. At-reactor, centralized, and multiple-site away-fromreactor approaches to interim storage are all acceptable, and each have advantages and disadvantages requiring a case-by-case approach to choosing the best option. In the United States, there has been substantially greater success with establishing at-reactor dry cask storage facilities than with building a large centralized facility. There is no immediate need in the United States for a large, centralized facility. Nevertheless, there appear to be good arguments for providing at least some centralized storage capacity, for example to handle fuel from reactors that are being decommissioned. In Japan, on-site dry cask storage has been built at only one reactor site, and the government and utilities are working to establish a large centralized storage facility. Successful establishment of such a facility would be highly desirable. Governments and industry share responsibility for ensuring that spent nuclear fuel is managed appropriately, and both have a role to play in interim storage. In the United States, legislation has given the government a legal obligation to take responsibility for the spent nuclear fuel generated by nuclear utilities. But with no repository yet available, the spent fuel remains at the utility sites, inevitably creating a shared responsibility for its management. Exactly how this burden will be shared is still being negotiated. In Japan, the spent fuel remains the utilities’ legal responsibility, but the government has key roles to play in providing effective regulation, and defining national plans and policies. At least in the United States, the government may also have a useful role to play in the future in providing limited spent fuel storage capacity on government sites to deal with special needs, such as those of utilities whose spent fuel ponds might be filled before additional storage capacity becomes available. The government could also play an important role in demonstrating the safety and effectiveness of various storage technologies, an approach that could help ease local concerns over the safety of spent fuel storage. These meas-
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48 waste. The NWPA set firm timetab
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70 Past and Current Proposals Conce
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5. Key Issues, Tensions, and Approa
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6. Conclusions and Recommendations
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The Project on Socio-technics of Nu
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