Nuclear Waste Stalemate

Nuclear Waste Stalemate: Political and Scientific Controversies . Salt Lake City : The University of Utah Press . xii + 313 pages. ISBN : 978-0-87480-903-9 , $25.00 paperback. Edited by Robert Vandenbosch and Susanne E. Vandenbosch . 2007 . Over the past decade, rising concern about global climate change has sparked predictions of a “nuclear renaissance”: a surge in nuclear power plant construction that would match or surpass that of the 1970s. The specter of climate change has fractured environmentalist opposition to nuclear power, and the prospect of rising fossil fuel prices, together with generous state subsidies for nuclear power production, has led utilities in the United States and elsewhere to express renewed interest in nuclear power production. Even if concerns about cost-effectiveness and operational safety can be laid to rest, however, one major obstacle remains: the problem of radioactive waste disposal. Nuclear power production generates highly toxic waste that will remain hazardous for millions of years. Opponents of nuclear power argue that waste disposal is the industry's fatal flaw, and even many proponents of nuclear power argue that a nuclear renaissance will not materialize until the public perceives that a solution to the waste problem is at hand. In Nuclear Waste Stalemate, Robert and Susanne Vandenbosch examine the problems that bedevil radioactive waste disposal. The political controversies, they argue, are far more daunting than the scientific ones. At present, there is widespread expert consensus that high-level radioactive waste should be stored deep underground, in geological formations that can withstand the tides of geological change for at least one million years. Yet, to date, no country on Earth has opened such a repository, and only two, Sweden and Finland, have selected sites and appear to have cleared the key political and legal obstacles to the construction of them. The centerpiece of Nuclear Waste Stalemate is a fascinating study of the United States' unsuccessful effort to establish a permanent underground repository. In 1987, the U.S. Congress designated Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the sole site for a national radioactive waste repository. Twenty years later, however, the political and legal obstacles to the licensing and construction of the facility had grown so great that its viability was very much in doubt. In the meantime, high-level radioactive waste remained in indefinite “temporary” storage on grounds of the nuclear power plants that produced it. How did the United States find itself in this bind? The answer, Vandenbosch and Vandenbosch argue, is “politics.” The tale of Yucca Mountain is the saga of political maneuvering by the legislative and executive branches to foist a radioactive waste repository upon a state with a weak congressional delegation and little clout in presidential elections—Nevada—and to foreclose all alternatives. Over the ensuing two decades, however, this arrangement unraveled as Nevada assumed an increasingly prominent position in the constellation of American politics. The site-selection process initially devised by the U.S. Congress was not designed to produce such an outcome. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 envisaged two sites, one west and one east of the Mississippi River. State governors were given the power to veto sites selected within their jurisdiction, but this veto could be overridden by majority vote of both Houses of Congress. The Department of Energy (DOE) was given three years to recommend three candidate sites for a western repository to the President, and then four more to recommend three sites for an eastern repository. The short time frame had the effect of greatly reducing the number of sites under consideration as DOE had to draw upon inventory of sites where it had already done preliminary research and also ensured that there would be very little time for public participation in the site selection process (Chapter 4). Over the ensuing five years, congressional and electoral politics combined to undercut this vision of shared sacrifice. Public opposition in the eastern United States was much more intense than in the west. In May 1986, in the wake of the Chernobyl accident, President Reagan announced the indefinite suspension of any further studies east of Mississippi. Vandenbosch and Vandenbosch argue that Reagan's motives were purely political: with the 1986 midterm elections approaching, opposition to “eastern” repositories endangered Republican-held Senate seats in Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Georgia, and North Carolina, and threatened to undermine Vice President George H.W. Bush's prospects in the crucial New Hampshire presidential primary (pp. 59–60). Reagan simultaneously announced that the first—and now, for all practical purposes, only—repository would be built in Washington, Texas, or Nevada. The Yucca Mountain site in Nevada soon emerged as the “winner.” Yucca Mountain was selected not on basis of its geological characteristics, but as a result of politics. In late 1987, House and Senate leaders met in conference committee to reconcile bills to amend the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982. Although Yucca Mountain had not been designated as the sole site in either chamber's version of the bill, the final bill did so—the result of a last-minute deal between the more influential Texas and Washington delegations and representatives from eastern states who wanted to ensure that the indefinite suspension of an “eastern” repository would be permanent (Chapter 5). Almost 15 years later, in the wake of 9/11 terrorist attacks and growing concern about the security of spent nuclear fuel, President George W. Bush formally accepted the DOE's recommendation of Yucca Mountain. As expected, the governor of Nevada vetoed the choice, but Nevada's veto was promptly overridden by both Houses of Congress in July. And there the matter might have ended, had it not been for a court challenge brought by Nevada and the Natural Resources Defense Council against the radioactive protection standards set for Yucca Mountain by the Environmental Protection Agency. In 2004, the court rejected the 10,000-year time frame used by the EPA and instructed the agency to produce new standards using a much longer time period (Chapters 9 and 10). By the time Nuclear Waste Stalemate went to press in 2007, Vandenbosch and Vandenbosch concluded that “the possibility exists that [Yucca Mountain] may never accept spent fuel from nuclear reactors” (p. xi). The greatest obstacle to the Yucca Mountain repository, they argued, was the growing political power of the state of Nevada, culminating in the election of Senator Harry Reid of Nevada as Senate Majority Leader. Subsequent developments have confirmed the authors' expectations. Since taking office in 2009, the Obama administration has announced that Yucca Mountain is no longer the presumed solution to the nation's radioactive waste problem. But if Yucca Mountain is no longer the solution, then what strategy should the United States pursue in its place? This is where Nuclear Waste Stalemate disappoints. Although Vandenbosch and Vandenbosch conclude with a review of radioactive waste disposal policies in other countries, they do not draw explicit lessons from successes and failures elsewhere. That being said, the most obvious point of comparison is the successful experience of Sweden and Finland. In both of these countries, local governments were given an absolute right of veto and the agencies responsible for radioactive waste disposal were successful in attracting volunteers by offering economic incentives to communities with prior experience with, and an economic stake in, the nuclear power industry (Chapter 12). It is not at all clear, however, that a similar approach would work in the United States. As Nuclear Waste Stalemate makes clear, local communities in the United States—including Native American reservations—have on occasion expressed their willingness to host an interim or permanent storage facility, only to be blocked by state governments. In effect, powerful state governments provide unwilling communities with near-veto power over potential “volunteers” in their midst—an institutional dynamic not found in Finland or Sweden. Yucca Mountain may no longer be the certain destination for the nation's radioactive waste, but finding an alternative site will be no easy matter

Environmental ethics · Law and economics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Stalemate · Law · Nuclear and radioactivity studies · Philosophy

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