The Quad Report

It’s time to face reality and move on. The U.S. nuclear waste program is a failure, and a new approach is needed. That’s the conclusion of a three-year study from Stanford’s Freeman Spogli  Institute for International Studies.

The study – “Reset of America’s Nuclear Waste Management Strategy and Policy” – says it is time to divorce management of spent nuclear fuel and military wastes from the government and turn it over to an “independent, nonprofit, utility-owned and –funded nuclear waste management organization.” Nuclear waste has been piling up in the U.S. for almost 75 years, all of it historically seen as a responsibility of the federal government. Program after program has failed, including the current, clearly collapsed, 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act and its 1987 amendments.

“No single group, institution or governmental organization is incentivized to find a solution,” said Rod Ewing, a Stanford geology professor and lead of the study. It finds that the nation’s attempts to deal with nuclear waste have suffered from erratic funding  — despite a $40 billion nuke waste fund paid for by customers of nuclear electric generation — changing policies as administrations in Washington have changed, conflicts within and between Congress and the executive branch, and lack of public interest and engagement(except in states where the government is threatening to dispose of the waste).

The report says, “The U.S. program is in an ever-tightening Gordian knot – the strands of which are technical, logistical, regulatory,legal, financial, social and political – all caught in a web of agreements with states and communities, regulations, court rulings and the congressional budgetary process.”

Allison Macfarlane, former head of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the Obama administration and a member of the Stanford study panel, says that “the United States has taken its eyes off the prize, that is, disposal of highly radioactive nuclear waste in a deep-mined geologic repository. Spent nuclear fuel stored above ground –either in pools or dry casks – is not a solution. These facilities will eventually degrade. And, if not monitored and cared for, they will contaminate our environment.”

The Stanford group recommends an approach taken Finland, Sweden, Switzerland and Canada, where private sector approaches to nuclear waste that appear to be working, or at least working far better than the U.S. government-owned policy. “Initially, I was skeptical about placing utilities with nuclear power plants in control of the spent fuel from commercial reactors,” says Ewing. “But as we discussed the advantages of this cradle-to-grave approach, I was persuaded, particularly because this is the approach taken by other successful programs.”

A key to the proposal is transferring the $40 billion or so in the Nuclear Waste Fund to the new organization “over several decades.” If the program succeeds with civilian spent fuel, to could be used to handle the bigger problem of high-level defense radioactive waste.”

One is entitled to some skepticism about the Stanford approach, which would require action by Congress.It would immediately become controversial, and many legislators would be reluctant to give up control of the waste fund, since even government money is fungible. Anti-nuclear groups, which might view the utility-owned program as a backdoor to reprocessing, would raise objections.

Nor has privatizing a heretofore government nuclear fuel program – this time at the front end of the fuel cycle — been entirely successful. A 1992 law turned over the Energy Department’s uranium enrichment program to a new private venture – the U.S.Enrichment Corp. – including the aged enrichment facilities. After a troubled 20 years, ending in bankruptcy, the business emerged from Chapt. 11 reorganization in 2014 as Centrus Energy Corp. The company’s stock is now trading at$1.78/share.

— Kennedy Maize