Overview of the Section 180(c) Program: History, Lessons Learned, and Potential Next Steps
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The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM) is responsible, under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, for the transportation of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste from point of origin to destination at a federal storage or disposal facility. Section 180(c), written into the Nuclear Waste Policy Act Amendments of 1987, requires OCRWM to prepare public safety officials along the routes for these shipments.
From 1998 to 2008 OCRWM attempted to design and implement a program that met the requirements of Section 180(c) of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. Their efforts, while successful in part, were hindered by several factors. This paper investigates those factors and distills the experience into options about Section 180(c)’s potential role in future shipments.
This paper is divided into four sections. The first section introduces the language of Section 180(c) and the major hurdles the OCRWM faced in implementing Section 180(c). It discusses how competing visions for Section 180(c)’s role within the transportation program hindered progress and how varying interpretations of the language of the Act led to shifting policy outcomes.
The second section tells the history of Section 180(c) by describing the three separate attempts OCRWM made to implement the program. It evaluates both the stakeholder participation process and the policy outcomes of each attempt. The lesson that should be drawn from this section is that the third attempt was very nearly successful and strongly supported by the stakeholders involved. The consultative model and the policy outcome it produced could easily be reconstituted and quickly implemented for future shipments of spent nuclear fuel and high-level nuclear waste.
The third section of this paper discusses similar grant and training programs operated by DOE and other federal agencies. This paper compares the scope, policy, and development process of these programs to OCRWM’s handling of Section 180(c). Most of these programs were developed in the 1990s and are now functioning successfully. The DOE’s Office of Environmental Management’s (EM) Transportation Emergency Preparedness Program (TEPP) offers training and technical assistance for DOE’s shipments of radioactive material and seems the natural partner for Section 180(c). The other programs offer lessons in designing and implementing programs to fund training and technical assistance but otherwise their scope does not overlap with Section 180(c)’s.
Section four summarizes the implementation options possible from OCRWM’s experience and suggests the potential role for Section 180(c) in future shipments conducted under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.
