Nuclear Waste
Wednesday I wrote about B and C radioactive waste. While that is a serious issue, it is child's play compared to storage of spent fuel rods from nuclear power plants. The used rods -- thousands of times more radioactive than B and C waste -- are building up at nuclear power plants across the country, increasing pressure for a disposal site. Two sites are on the map -- the permanent site at Yucca Mountain, NV, and the "temporary" site in Skull Valley, Utah, just west of Salt Lake City.
The Deseret News ran an article today, titled "Utah in nuclear waste crosshairs." The article rightly states that Utah should be concerned that funding for Yucca Mountain is being cut. If that project is slowing, and the pressure to move the fuel rods away from the plants is increasing, what does that mean? Clearly, it means that the likelihood of the waste being "temporarily" stored in Utah will increase.
I've seen this coming for a while, and touched the third rail in 2003 when I proposed that Utah study its options to avoid this situation. It's clearly an issue that politicians would rather avoid. As Congressman Matheson daringly opined in the D-News article, "Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, doesn't see the Yucca and Skull Valley plans as linked, says Matheson spokeswoman Alyson Heyrend." That, of course, is a comfortable political position to take. The problem is, it denies reality.
The rest of the nation clearly does see the two plans as linked. As the spokeswoman for the Skull Valley project gleefully states, "[I]t could mean that utilities would be even more interested in our facility." In December, Matthew Wald (an influential writer for the New York Times) wrote a disturbing article on storage of the fuel rods in MIT's Technology Review magazine. There, he discussed growing concerns and difficulties with storing the rods at Yucca Mountain. He also questioned the wisdom of permanently storing the rods there or anywhere. What we need, he reasoned, is a place to store the rods (for 100 years or so) until the march of technology presents us with better alternatives; a "suboptimal" alternative is needed to buy time.
Wald writes,
But after 20 years of pursuing geologic disposal, and 15 years of chasing Yucca and avoiding any mention of a plan B, just such an ad hoc, and suboptimal, solution is emerging. . . . Cask storage is not pretty, but what’s wrong with the idea of an industrial repository, a few hectares set aside for the next century or so, a single, guarded location in a little-populated area, a location that in ten years or so will be remarkable only because it’s a place where the snow doesn’t stick? Macfarlane of MIT says making such site secure and terrorist-proof would cost $6.5 billion, at most. “Isn’t that worth it? How much have we spent on Iraq? Look what we got for that money. And there’s more at risk here,” she says.
Hmm. Where might he conclude we should do that? Walds continues,
Finding a central site poses obvious challenges; nobody wants any type of radioactive waste site in his or her backyard. But after extended negotiations, a group of utility engineers . . . cut a deal with the Skull Valley band of the Goshute Indian tribe for a long lease on part of its reservation 80 kilometers west of Salt Lake City. The area already hosts an air-force bombing range, a nerve gas depot and incinerator, and a dump for low-level radioactive waste; the Goshutes figure they can use the rent to buy themselves land in a nicer neighborhood.
If Congressman Matheson and other federal leaders continue to allege they "don't see" any link between Yucca Mountain and Skull Valley, I'm concerned that Utah will be stuck with a lot of nuclear waste, and we'll walk around saying, "We never saw it coming."
The Deseret News ran an article today, titled "Utah in nuclear waste crosshairs." The article rightly states that Utah should be concerned that funding for Yucca Mountain is being cut. If that project is slowing, and the pressure to move the fuel rods away from the plants is increasing, what does that mean? Clearly, it means that the likelihood of the waste being "temporarily" stored in Utah will increase.
I've seen this coming for a while, and touched the third rail in 2003 when I proposed that Utah study its options to avoid this situation. It's clearly an issue that politicians would rather avoid. As Congressman Matheson daringly opined in the D-News article, "Rep. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, doesn't see the Yucca and Skull Valley plans as linked, says Matheson spokeswoman Alyson Heyrend." That, of course, is a comfortable political position to take. The problem is, it denies reality.
The rest of the nation clearly does see the two plans as linked. As the spokeswoman for the Skull Valley project gleefully states, "[I]t could mean that utilities would be even more interested in our facility." In December, Matthew Wald (an influential writer for the New York Times) wrote a disturbing article on storage of the fuel rods in MIT's Technology Review magazine. There, he discussed growing concerns and difficulties with storing the rods at Yucca Mountain. He also questioned the wisdom of permanently storing the rods there or anywhere. What we need, he reasoned, is a place to store the rods (for 100 years or so) until the march of technology presents us with better alternatives; a "suboptimal" alternative is needed to buy time.
Wald writes,
But after 20 years of pursuing geologic disposal, and 15 years of chasing Yucca and avoiding any mention of a plan B, just such an ad hoc, and suboptimal, solution is emerging. . . . Cask storage is not pretty, but what’s wrong with the idea of an industrial repository, a few hectares set aside for the next century or so, a single, guarded location in a little-populated area, a location that in ten years or so will be remarkable only because it’s a place where the snow doesn’t stick? Macfarlane of MIT says making such site secure and terrorist-proof would cost $6.5 billion, at most. “Isn’t that worth it? How much have we spent on Iraq? Look what we got for that money. And there’s more at risk here,” she says.
Hmm. Where might he conclude we should do that? Walds continues,
Finding a central site poses obvious challenges; nobody wants any type of radioactive waste site in his or her backyard. But after extended negotiations, a group of utility engineers . . . cut a deal with the Skull Valley band of the Goshute Indian tribe for a long lease on part of its reservation 80 kilometers west of Salt Lake City. The area already hosts an air-force bombing range, a nerve gas depot and incinerator, and a dump for low-level radioactive waste; the Goshutes figure they can use the rent to buy themselves land in a nicer neighborhood.
If Congressman Matheson and other federal leaders continue to allege they "don't see" any link between Yucca Mountain and Skull Valley, I'm concerned that Utah will be stuck with a lot of nuclear waste, and we'll walk around saying, "We never saw it coming."
posted by steve u. at 2/05/2005
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3 Comments:
I remember talking Enid Greene and Nolan Karras a while back, the mentioned to me that if spent rods were ever stored on Goshute indian reservation that could also spell problems for Hill Air Force Base. Since there is a bombing range, we wouldn't be able to use it because of that danger. This would spell cuts for Hill. I could be wrong but I see more problems rising from this than just nuclear waste.
You raised the evil I dared not speak. In Wald's article, he talks about the one flaw in the perfectness of the Skull Valley project -- Hill Air Force Base. If it becomes important enough to the other states that nuclear waste have a home, they might look for ways to make the Skull Valley project entirely perfect. Perhaps you have raised the most important reason our federal leaders need to get serious about this issue.
I think the points about Hill AFB are very valid...we need to protect the base. Looking at this whole issue in more philosophical terms though, it bothers me that no one wants to accept this problem as their own. While we may not have the benefits (or problems) of a nuclear plant in Utah, our economy has benefited from Uranium mining in the past and I view this problem as a national one. That is why finding the best place nationally is a good idea. Even if we go with Wald's idea of "temporary" storage, why not still use Yucca? O
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