About Social Media Today
Blue Ribbon Commission opts for conventional wisdom
A federal advisory committee on the future management of spent nuclear fuel has labored long to get it hands wrapped around the issue. This week the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future (BRC) issued a series of draft recommendations.
While some of them document obvious choices, others indicate a disheartening lack of imagination and vision. In fact, the BRC has taken a sharp turn into the prevailing seas of conventional wisdom. There is no exploration of new lands here.
Unlike the Russians, who are re-using their site at Angarsk in Siberia for an international fuel bank, the U.S. has no such vision for the Nevada Test Site. And unlike the remote Novaya Zemlya, the Russian nuclear test site in the Arctic sea, the Nevada Test Site in the U.S. is a flat, year round access mesquite spotted desert within 65 miles of downtown Las Vegas.
On one hand, some ideas from the BRC for management of spent fuel are obvious, but the BRC’s reluctance to address fuel reprocessing to the agenda seems inexplicable except when seen in the light of a series of influential reports on nuclear energy from MIT.
Pros and cons of conventional wisdom
It makes sense to accept the BRC's thinking that storing the spent fuel indefinitely at reactor sites is a poor policy and that developing interim storage sites to centrally manage it is a good idea. Also, it makes sense to get the federal role for management of spent fuel out of the Department of Energy and into a quasi-government corporation funded by the Nuclear Waste Fund.
Where the BRC missed the boat is its "central conclusion that reprocessing spent nuclear fuel has no near term likelihood of success. Here's what the BRC said in a nutshell.
"No currently available or reasonably foreseeable reactor and fuel cycle technologies including current or potential reprocess or recycle technologies have the potential to fundamentally alter the waste management challenge this nation confronts over at least the next several decades.
Put another way – we do not believe that new technology developments in the next three to four decades will change the underlying need for an integrated strategy that combines safe, interim storage of spent nuclear fuel with expeditious progress toward siting and licensing a permanent disposal facility."
Weight of MIT studies
Here we see the influence of three table thumping studies by the mandarins of nuclear energy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There are three reports which represent a conventional wisdom that recycling spent fuel has unintended nonproliferation risks and ought not be pursued by the U.S. nor anyone else.
While the U.S. continues to follow the "moral example" set down by President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s, other nations are pursuing this path. France has been recycling nuclear fuel for decades. So has Russia and the U.K. China recently established a roadmap to building a $15 billion fuel recycling center using Areva's technology. South Korea is asserting its right to recycle spent fuel over objections from the U.S.
What makes anyone at MIT or the BRC think the rest of the world will pay attention to the U.S. "moral example?" The BRC would have a much more defensible position if it strongly linked progress with fuel recycling to the development of international fuel banks. While the BRC supports them, there is no explicit link to between the two.
Jobs matter as much as “consultations”
The BRC has a lot of high level hand waving about consultations with affected states regarding location of interim storage sites. That's nice, but what the BRC really needs to think about is incentives for taking the interim storage site. Here's why.
During the Bush administration, proposals for the rushed, and ill-fated, GNEP program carried with them the prospects for a massive public works program. The sheet size of fuel recycling and advanced fuel fabrication sites, not to mention construction of fast reactors, generated 13 proposals for 11 sites nationwide with thunderous support by local communities. While there were many things wrongly handled by the Bush Administration regarding GNEP, the central lesson that jobs matter should not be lost on the BRC.
What Nevada lost by Reid’s hand
So let's start with Nevada. Why would Nevada want to be the site of the Interim Storage site notwithstanding Sen. Harry Reid's line in the sand against Yucca Mountain?
First, anyone who has been following the lists of cities most impacted by the current long-term recession cannot help but notice the terrible numbers associated with the economy in Nevada. An national economy without discretionary income does not go on gambling junkets to Reno, Las Vegas, or anywhere else in the Silver State.
Second, Nevada has exactly the geophysical conditions and infrastructure needed for dry cask storage of spent fuel. It has a desert climate and millions of acres of remote landscape that nobody wants for any useful purpose. It has railroads and roads for safe transportation of the spent fuel to the site.
Third, the state needs a shot in the arm for its economy. It's single focus on tourism and gambling has failed and its economy unlikely to recover for a very long time. If I were an economic developer in Nevada, my first question to the BRC would be how many jobs come with the deal?
There are high paying jobs associated with building and maintaining an interim storage site for spent fuel. There would be a huge number of jobs associated with a 500 ton/year fuel reprocessing site. Developing of an R&D center for fast reactors and advanced fuel fabrication would be a rocket assisted take off for Nevada's universities. In 2007 Energy Solutions estimated the cost of developing these capabilities would be in the range of $20 billion.
BRC missed the beef too
It’s not consultations that matter. It is the answer to the question from the old Wendy’s commercial – where’s the beef? It is a mystery to me why the BRC didn't address the economic incentives associated with interim storage plus fuel recycling and advanced fuel fabrication.
Tell me this, exactly what benefits did Sen. Harry Reid provide to Nevada by stopping the development of Yucca Mountain and closing the door to future nuclear energy projects in his home state?
My guess is Nevada's loss could be a huge gain for states like Arizona and New Mexico. In the case of New Mexico, it has two DOE national laboratories, and a long history of success with transportation and handling of nuclear waste at the WIPP site.
Bottom line the BRC missed the reality of where to put an interim storage site by a mile by sitting on its hands and repeating the conventional wisdom of the MIT mandarins.
It has missed a major opportunity to launch a solution with vision, incentives for progress, and a path for global technology leadership. The current recommendations are drafts. Will the BRC be willing to think about vision instead of status quo in its final report?
Front page image by Idea go.
Video – Failure to Launch
