Big Rock Point: Operation, Decommissioning, and the Interim Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel
Big Rock Point: Operation, Decommissioning, and the Interim Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel
Fact Sheet - Big Rock Point
Fact Sheet - Big Rock Point
In mid-1997, a Wyoming-led group of companies announced plans to develop a private interim spent fuel storage project in Wyoming to be known as the Owl Creek Energy Project. The idea for the Wyoming project had been developed under the earlier 1990s Nuclear Waste Negotiator Program. During that earlier activity, the project would have been a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) project.
Although some observers have concluded that the technology required to assure safe disposal of nuclear wastes is currently available, others have expressed concern about the stability of the institutions that might be required to maintain the isolation of nuclear wastes. Questions about institutional stability and other factors associated with nuclear power and nuclear waste have been the subject of some study in public opinion research.
This report focuses on public meetings as a vehicle for public participation in nuclear waste management. The nature of public meetings is reviewed and the functions served by meetings highlighted. The range of participants and their concerns are addressed, including a review of the participants from past nuclear waste management meetings. A sound understanding of the expected participants allows DOE to tailor elements of the meeting, such as notification, format, and agenda to accommodate the attendees.
The director of the Task Force on Civilian Radioactive Waste Management of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, United States Department of Energy, asked the National Academy of Public Administration, to convene a group of approximately one dozen individuals to attend a twoday "state-of-the-art" workshop on the issue of how institutions establish, maintain, or recover trust and confidence among significant members of their task environments.
Survey research on nuclear power issues conducted in the late 1970s has determined that nuclear waste management is now considered to be one of the most important nuclear power issues both by the U.S. public and by key leadership groups. The purpose of this research was to determine the importance placed on specific issues associated with high-level waste disposal. In addition, policy option choices were asked regarding the siting of both low-level and high-level nuclear waste repositories.
Historical inventories of spent fuel are combined with U.S Department of Energy (DOE) projections of future discharges from commercial nuclear reactors in the United States to provide estimates of spent fuel storage requirements over the next 50 years, through the year 2040. The needs for storage capacity beyond that presently available in the pools are estimated. These estimates incorporate the maximum capacities within current-and planned in-pool storage facilities and any planned transshipments of fuel to ther reactors or, facilities.
There are no nuclear power plants in Utah. Despite that, Utah is targeted to be the site of the largest facility ever licensed for storage of spent nuclear fuel rods (high-level nuclear waste) from nuclear power plants. This proposed site would store up to 40,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel. The storage of this amount of waste in one location is equivalent to all the commercial spent nuclear fuel rods in the United States. The Federal government has responsibility for permanently storing this high-level nuclear waste, but after 18 years, it has missed the deadline.
The Department of Energy (DOE) is studying a site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, for a permanent underground repository for highly radioactive spent fuel from nuclear reactors, but delays have pushed back the facility’s opening date to 2010 at the earliest. In the meantime, spent fuel is accumulating at U.S. nuclear plant sites at the rate of about 2,000 metric tons per year. Major options for managing those growing quantities of nuclear spent fuel include continued storage at reactors, construction of a DOE interim storage site near Yucca Mountain, and licensing of private storage facilities.
The U.S. Geological Survey's program for geologic and hydrologic evaluation of physiographic provinces to identify areas potentially suitable for locating repository sites for disposal of high-level nuclear wastes was announced to the Governors of the eight States in the Basin and Range Province on May 6, 1981. Representatives of Arizona, California, Idaho, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Texas, and Utah, were invited to cooperate with the Federal Government in the evaluation process.
This report analyzes public participation as a key component of this openness, one that provides a means of garnering acceptance of, or reducing public opposition to, DOE's radioactive waste management activities, including facility siting and transportation.
There are two waste management R&D programs of national significance that are being administered for ERDA by the Union Carbide Corporation — Nuclear Division (UCC/ND). The National Waste Terminal Storage (NWTS) program is concerned with the development of geologic repositories for commercial nuclear fuel cycle wastes, and is organized as the Office of Waste Isolation within UCC/ND.
In order to gain a satisfactory understanding of public attitudes toward issues in nuclear waste management, it is important to recognize the context in which the public views those issues. Nuclear waste, in the minds of the public, is just one aspect of the nuclear power issue. Nuclear power, in turn, is just one means of avoiding energy shortage.
The generation of knowledge regarding public risk perception general, and perception of risks associated with nuclear power and radioactive waste management in particular, requires the development and use of appropriate survey methodologies. One of the fundamental limitations of many studies of public risk perception is the assumption on the part of the investigators of similarity between themselves and their respondents. In such studies respondents are required to deal with problems of interest to and structured by the investigators.
The thick and regionally extensive sequence of shales and associated clastic sedimentary rocks of Late Devonian and Early Mississippian age has been considered among the “nonsalt geologies” for deep subsurface containment of high-level radioactive wastes.
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 by the scientific knowledge produced.
This report puts forth a number of options and recommendations for how to engage stakeholders and other members of the public in the storage and management of spent nuclear fuel and high level waste in the United States. The options are generated from a scientific review of existing publications proposing criteria for assessing past efforts to engage publics and stakeholders in decision-making about risky technologies.