Reset of America's Nuclear Waste Management Strategy and Policy

The U.S. nuclear waste management program has labored for decades at a cost of billions of dollars each year, and yet there is still no active disposal program either for spent nuclear fuel from commercial reactors or for the high-level radioactive legacy waste and spent nuclear fuel from defense programs. The program has suffered from a number of factors, including major changes to the original law; a series of amendments to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982; a slowly developed but changing regulatory framework; erratic funding; significant changes in policy with changing administrations; conflicting Congressional and Executive policies; and finally, and most significantly, inadequate public engagement in decisions about strategies for the storage and disposal of the nuclear waste. Such disruptions are not unexpected in any extremely large technical megaproject subject to strong debates over value trade-offs extending far into the future. Only the radioactive waste-management program in Finland has been relatively immune to such challenges. The programs in Sweden, France, Switzerland, Germany, Japan, Canada, and the United Kingdom have all faced similar challenges. In some cases, the programs “reset” themselves relatively rapidly; in others, they did so over decades. Currently, Finland is in the process of constructing its repository after receiving a license; Sweden and France have selected sites and are moving through their licensing processes; and Canada and Switzerland are well into a comprehensive siting process. Germany has recently initiated a “reset” of its program with an entirely new, comprehensive siting process. Meanwhile, the U.S. program is an ever-tightening Gordian Knot — the strands of which are technical, scientific, logistical, regulatory, legal, financial, social and political — all subject to a web of agreements with states and communities, regulations, court rulings and the Congressional budgetary process. There is no single group, institution or governmental organization that is incentivized to find a solution, nor is any single institution entirely responsible for the failure of the U.S. Program.