Illuminating the Decision Path: The Yucca Mountain Site Recommendation
Illuminating the Decision Path: The Yucca Mountain Site Recommendation
On February 14, 2002, U.S.
On February 14, 2002, U.S.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (NWPA) established a program to deal comprehensively with the waste byproducts of nuclear power generation, as well as defense-related radioactive wastes, if appropriate. Under this program, the federal Department of Energy (DOE) must locate and develop a site for disposal of high-level radioactive wastes in a geologic setting capable of isolating them from adverse public and environmental exposure for at least 10,000 and up to 100,000 years.
The effective termination of the Yucca Mountain program by the U.S. Administration in 2009 has further delayed the construction and operation of a permanent disposal facility for used fuel and high level radioactive waste (HLW) in the United States. In concert with this decision, the President directed the Energy Secretary to establish the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future to review and provide recommendations on options for managing used fuel and HLW.
The United States of America ratified the “Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management” (Joint Convention) on April 9, 2003. The Joint Convention establishes an international peer review process among Contracting Parties and provides incentives for nations to take appropriate steps to bring their nuclear activities into compliance with general safety standards and practices. This first Review Meeting of the Contracting Parties under the Joint Convention is scheduled to take place in November 2003 in Vienna, Austria.
Joint Resolution, Approving the site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, for the development of a repository<br/>for the disposal of high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel, pursuant<br/>to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982.
On 8 December 1997 Belgium has signed the Joint Convention. The Belgian legislator has expressed its consent with the obligations resulting from the Convention via the Law of 2 August 2002. The ratification was obtained on 5 September 2002. The Convention became effective on 4 December 2002, or 90 days after the Ratification Act had been deposited. Belgium belongs to the group of Contracting Parties having at least one operational nuclear generating unit on their territory.
Regardless of the outcome of the ongoing debate about the proposed Yucca Mountain geologic waste repository in Nevada, the storage of spent nuclear fuel (SNF)—also referred to as “high-level nuclear waste”—will continue to be needed and the issue will continue to be debated. The need for SNF storage, even after the first repository is opened, will continue for a few reasons. <br/>• The Obama Administration terminated work on the only planned permanent geologic repository at Yucca Mountain, which was intended to provide a destination for most of the stored SNF.
Presented at the INMM Spent Fuel Seminar
The European Atomic Energy Community (“Euratom”) is a regional organisation, as referred to in Article 39(4) of the Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management. It became a party to the Convention on 2 January 2006. This report is submitted in compliance with Articles 30 and 32 of the Convention for the Second Review Meeting of the Contracting Parties, to be held in Vienna from 15 to 26 May 2006.
Kingdom of Belgium, Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management, Second Review Meeting (May 2006), Answers to the Questions of Contracting Parties on the National Report submitted by Belgium
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as signed by the President on January 7, 1983, authorized, among other<br/>things, a Federal Interim Storage (FIS) program for spent nuclear fuel from domestic civilian power reactors.
News item from NEI summarizing siting process for nuclear waste repositories in Sweden, Finland and France.
Approximately 54,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel are stored at operating nuclear power
plants and several decommissioned power plants throughout the country. Spent fuel
storage at these sites was never intended to be permanent. The current Federal plan is to
place the fuel in a repository for permanent disposal in Nevada at Yucca Mountain.
Recently, appropriations committees in Congress suggested building one or more Federal
sites for consolidated interim storage of spent fuel. Several reasons were identified. The
This Implementation Plan provides the scope, schedule, and funding needed to develop and implement a method for early evaluation of site suitability. The following is the sequence of events which resulted in the preparation of this implementation plan:<br/>1. On December 24, 1990, John W. Bartlett, Director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM), transmitted guidance to Carl P. Gertz, Associate Director of the Office of Geologic Disposal (OGD), to develop an OGD Plan for this effort. <br/>2.
Yucca Mountain—that barren rise in the desert ninety miles from Las Vegas—is the nation‘s only site identified for the potential location of the first ge ological repository for commercially-generated HLNW and SNF. Many assume
that Yucca Mountain has geologic and climatic qualities that make it uniquely
suitable to isolate the thousands of metric tons of the world‘s most lethal, long lived waste currently accumulating at 104 operating nuclear power plants across the United States.
Unfortunately, Yucca Mountain is an exceptionally bad site,
The voluntary siting process for the Monitored Retrievable Storage (MRS) facility set forth in the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act (NWPAA) of 1987 provides a potential host community a unique opportunity to improve its present situation and to gain greater control over its future.
U.S. efforts to site and construct a deep geologic repository for used fuel and high level radioactive waste (HLW) proceeded in fits and starts over a three decade period from the late 1950s until 1982, when the U.S. Congress enacted the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA). This legislation codified a national approach for developing a deep geologic repository. Amendment of the NWPA in 1987 resulted in a number of dramatic changes in direction for the U.S. program, most notably the selection of Yucca Mountain as the only site of the three remaining candidates for continued investigation.
The effective termination of the Yucca Mountain program by the U.S. Administration in 2009 has left the U.S. program for management of used fuel and high level radioactive waste (HLW) in a state of uncertainty.
Nuclear waste disposal in the USA is a difficult policy issue infused with
science, technology, and politics. This issue provides an example of the co-production
of scientific knowledge and politics through public policy. The proponents of a
repository site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, argue that their decision to go ahead
with the site is based on ‘sound science’, but the science they use to uphold their
decision is influenced by politics. In turn, the politics of site selection has been altered
Beginning with the role of "stakeholders" - those whose interests are, knowingly or unknowingly, affected - in the siting of noxious facilities, this paper seeks to develop principles for acceptable and democratically arrived at polices related to problems associated with advances in and products of science and technology. Although widely regarded as a necessary condition for success, the principles underpinning stakeholder involvement, such as representativeness, are often violated in practice.
U.S. efforts to site and construct a deep geologic repository for used fuel and high level radioactive waste (HLW) proceeded sporadically over a three-decade period from the late 1950s until 1982, when the U.S. Congress enacted the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) codifying a national approach for developing a deep geologic repository. Amendment of the NWPA in 1987 resulted in a number of dramatic changes in direction for the U.S. program, most notably the selection of Yucca Mountain as the only site of the three remaining candidates for continued investigation.
What are the essential elements of technically credible, workable, and publicly acceptable regulations for disposal (in geologic repositories)?
The United States (U.S.) of America ratified the Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel<br/>Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management (Joint Convention) on<br/>April 9, 2003. The Joint Convention establishes an international peer review process among<br/>Contracting Parties and provides incentives for nations to take appropriate steps to bring their nuclear activities into compliance with general safety standards and practices.
On 8 December 1997 Belgium signed the Joint Convention. The Belgian legislator has expressed its consent with the obligations resulting from the Convention by the Law of 2 August 2002. The ratification followed on 5 September 2002. The Convention became effective on 4 December 2002, i.e. 90 days following ratification. Belgium belongs to the group of Contracting Parties having at least one operational nuclear power plant on their territory.
Congress designated Yucca Mountain, NV, as the nation’s sole candidate site for a permanent high-level nuclear waste repository in 1987, following years of controversy over the site-selection process. Over the strenuous objections of the State of Nevada, the Department of Energy (DOE) submitted a license application for the proposed Yucca Mountain repository in June 2008 to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).