The main question before the Transportation and Storage Subcommittee was whether the United States should change its approach to storing and transporting spent nuclear fuel (SNF) and high-level radioactive waste (HLW) while one or more disposal facilities are established.

Dear Mr. Frazier:
At our request, the Commission staff is in the process of assembling information on the costs and financing of the US program to manage used fuel and high-level nuclear wastes. To assist in the completion of this effort, it would be most helpful if the Department could provide the information listed int the attachment.
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After more than 20 years of commercial nuclear power, the Federal Government has yet to develop a broadly supported policy for fulfilling its legal responsibility for the final isolation of high-level radioactive waste. OTA's study concludes that until such a policy is adopted in law, there is a substantial risk that the false starts, shifts of policy, and fluctuating support that have plagued the final isolation program in the past will continue.

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.

The Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future (BRC) asked us to study whether
occupational safety and health conditions in today's U.S. nuclear industry are reasonably safe,
and if those conditions have improved since the Three Mile Island event in 1979. The BRC also
asked us to look to the future, to try to anticipate worker safety and health risks that should be
addressed by the industry, its government regulators and private watchdogs.
Over the eight weeks allotted, we performed a limited review of the literature and spoke with

Dear Tim:
As we work to complete our final recommendations to the Secretary by January 29, 2012,
we have determined that our efforts would be aided by the formation of an ad hoc
subcommittee to investigate the issue of co‐mingling of defense and commercial wastes.
Specifically, the ad hoc subcommittee would review and make a recommendation to the
Commission on the issue of whether the 1985 Presidential decision to co‐mingle defense
and commercial wastes for disposal should be revisited in light of changes that have

The Blue Ribbon Commission staff requested this paper cataloging innovative stakeholder involvement programs within the Department of Energy (DOE). I reviewed a variety of material on public involvement, including papers and presentations on stakeholder involvement in DOE programs, published presentations and comments to the BRC, and research reports on stakeholder and public involvement.

The Construction Industry Research and Policy Center (CIRPC) at the University of Tennessee was awarded a contract by the Center to Protect Workers’ Rights, under their grant program with the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), to analyze injuries of employees of the U. S. Department of Energy (DOE) and their contractors’ working at DOE work sites. The injury data analyzed were injuries recorded in DOE’s Computerized Accident Incident Reporting System (CAIRS).

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (the Act), established a
step-by-step process for the siting of the nation's first repository for
high-level radioactive waste and spent fuel. The Act gave the Department of
Energy (DOE) the primary responsibility for conducting this siting process.
The first step in the process laid out in the Act was the development by
the DOE, with the concurrence of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), of
general guidelines to be used by the Secretary of the DOE (the Secretary) in

The Disposal Subcommittee of the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future (BRC) addressed a wide-ranging set of issues, all bearing directly on the central question: “How can the United States go about establishing one or more disposal sites for high-level nuclear wastes in a manner and within a timeframe that is technically, socially, economically, and politically acceptable?”