Managing the Nation's Commercial High-Level Radioactive Waste

With the passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (NWPA), Congress for the first time established in law a comprehensive Federal policy for commercial high-level radioactive waste management, including interim storage and permanent disposal. NWPA provides sufficient authority for
developing and operating a high-level radioactive waste management system based on disposal in mined geologic repositories. Authorization
for other types of waste facilities will not be required unless major problems with geologic disposal are discovered, and studies to date have identified no insurmountable technical obstacles to developing geologic repositories.

The 99th Congress will receive three key documents that NWPA requires the Department of Energy DOE) to prepare:

a Mission Plan, containing both a waste management plan with a schedule for transferring waste to Federal facilities and an implementation
program for choosing sites and developing technologies to carry out that plan;

a monitored retrievable storage (MRS) proposal, with designs for long-term Federal storage facilities, evaluations of whether they are
needed and feasible, and analysis of how they would be integrated with the repository program if authorized by Congress; and

a study of alternative institutional mechanisms for financing and managing the radioactive waste system, including the option of establishing
an independent waste management organization outside of DOE.

Each of these documents will raise issues of potentially significant concern to Congress and the Nation.