Nuke Dump Dilemma

Congressman Mike Levin and the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Associate Deputy Assistant Secretary for Spent Fuel and High-Level Waste Disposition Dr. Kim Petry (yes, that is her official title) came to Del Mar last month to discuss what to do with spent nuclear fuel (SNF) that is currently stored just north at San Onofre. The issues include management of the SNF and the efforts to support “consent-based siting” of one or more SNF consolidated interim storage facilities. While the immediate goal is to provide interim storage of nuclear waste from commercial power plants, conversion of one or more sites to a permanent storage facility is the long-term goal. SNF remains radioactive for many thousand years, so permanent means forever in human terms.

The current status of the process headed by the DOE is outreach to interested communities to obtain local and regional consent for a repository for SNF. This will entail hiring consultants to gather input over the next year, followed by a process of vetting candidate disposal sites. If your immediate response is who would want all this nuclear waste, a similar outreach program in Canada resulted in the selection of two potential disposal sites. Here is a quote from Canada’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization:

“The process to select a site for Canada’s plan to safely manage used nuclear fuel long-term started in 2010, with 22 communities proactively expressing interest by 2012. Today, following a gradual process of narrowing down, two areas remain as potential hosts for Canada’s deep geological repository – the Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation (WLON)- Ignace area and the Saugeen Ojibway Nation (SON)-South Bruce area, both in Ontario.”

Two points are worth noting: 1) the process in Canada took 14 years, and the DOE effort just started last year; and 2), the final competing sites are both in disadvantaged communities where the lure of new employment opportunities is likely to influence the consent for SNF deep underground storage.

The other point of progress presented by Dr. Petry was the certification of a special train called Atlas for transporting SNF canisters. The train is profiled in a separate article in this issue: Atlas Chugged.