The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board (NWTRB) is an independent federal agency that conducts scientific and technical assessments of the Department of Energy’s (DOE) activities to dispose of the nation’s commercial spent nuclear fuel and defense high-level radioactive waste.
Since the advent of the nuclear age following World War II, government officials have struggled with the daunting problem of what to do with the voluminous amount of nuclear waste produced by nuclear power plants, many of which today are shutdown, and the federal government’s nuclear weapons complex. Because the waste is highly lethal for extremely long periods of time (hundreds of thousands of years in some cases), DOE officials have sought to bury the waste in a remote part of Nevada known as Yucca Mountain.
This 25-year, $15-billion effort was plagued by delays, lawsuits, and multiple controversies, and was defunded in 2009 without any nuclear waste being stored at Yucca Mountain. Although the NWTRB has no regulatory authority over DOE’s work on Yucca Mountain, the board found itself in the thick of the fight between energy officials, nuclear power companies, environmentalists, and Nevada politicians.
By the 1980s, the U.S. reached a critical juncture with nuclear waste produced by civilian and military nuclear programs that had accumulated over four decades since the end of World War II. Spent fuel rods, decommissioned reactors, and various other radioactive refuse were being stored at more than 100 sites spread out across two-thirds of the country.
This massive amount of waste represented a serious threat to human health and the habitats. Currently, U.S. reactors generate about 40,000 cubic meters of low-level radioactive waste per year. By one account, in all total, the U.S. has 52,000 tons of radioactive spent fuel from commercial and defense nuclear reactors, 91 million gallons of high-level waste left over from plutonium processing, scores of tons of plutonium, more than half a million tons of depleted uranium, millions of cubic feet of contaminated tools, metal scraps, clothing, oils, solvents, and other waste, plus some 265 million tons of tailings from milling uranium ore. If all of the tailings were loaded into railroad hopper cars and the 91 million gallons of waste put into tank cars, the train would reach around the entire equator, with some cars to spare.
In the 1970s, government officials and scientists examined numerous solutions for disposing of the waste, some as far-fetched as loading it into rockets and shooting it into space. Realizing a more earthly solution was in order, Congress adopted the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1982, which charged the DOE with the task of locating a suitable location where the waste could be buried for ten thousand years.
The DOE selected nine locations for consideration as potential sites, with the intention of ultimately selecting two repository locations, one in the east and one in the west. The nine sites were studied and preliminary studies were reported in 1985. Based on these reports, the list was reduced to three sites, all in the west: Hanford, Washington; Deaf Smith County, Texas; and Yucca Mountain, Nevada.
Even though the majority of nuclear waste was produced in the eastern half of the country, by 1987 Congress had given up on the idea of permanently burying the waste east of the Mississippi. That year, Congress amended the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and directed DOE officials to study only Yucca Mountain, which had been on the government’s radar since 1978. The same legislation created the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, which assessed the DOE’s studies of Yucca Mountain beginning in the 1990s.
On July 23, 2002, President Bush signed House Joint Resolution 87, allowing the DOE to take the next step in establishing Yucca Mountain as the repository to store the United States’ nuclear waste. This was done in spite of the NWTRB’s lukewarm assessment of the DOE’s readiness to proceed with Yucca Mountain. However, after years of political bickering, numerous lawsuits, and protests by environmental groups, President Obama halted funding of project in 2009. While Republicans and Democrats exchange accusations over the legality of the project shutdown, the NRC has produced a three-volume report on the history and status of the Yucca Mountain project, the final installment of which was released in September 2011. The NRC declared itself evenly divided on shutting down the project and dropped the problem at the doorstep of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. While the matter stews, the DOE appointed a commission to make recommendations on alternatives to Yucca Mountain in early 2012.
US map of radioactive waste storage sites
Nuclear Waste: Amounts and On-Site Storage (Nuclear Energy Institute)
Half Life (by Michael E. Long, National Geographic)
Inyo County Yucca Mountain Repository Assessment Office
NRC releases report on stalled Nevada nuke dump (Associated Press)
Timeline of Events Regarding Yucca Mountain (Lander County, Nevada Online Repository Oversight Program)
From the NWTRB Web Site:
The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board (NWTRB) is an independent federal agency that is part of the executive branch. It is charged with evaluating the technical and scientific work by the DOE to establish Yucca Mountain as the sole repository for nuclear waste. Under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act amendments of 1987, which established the board, the NWTRB has access to draft documents prepared by the DOE and its contractors so that it can conduct its review in “real time,” not after the fact. Twice a year, the board reports its conclusions and recommendations to Congress and to the Secretary of Energy and points out concerns from outside parties. It has no regulatory or implementing authority.
The board consists of 11 members who are nominated by the National Academy of Sciences solely on the basis of expertise, which ranges from geochemistry to materials science to hydrology to transportation. Members are then appointed by the President and serve a four-year term. They can be reappointed and all members serve part-time. The full board meets three or four times per year, usually in Nevada; board panels hold meetings periodically. Board members are supported by a full-time staff consisting of 14 professional and support personnel.
According to the legislation that enacted the board, the NWTRB will stay in existence no later than one year after the first high-level radioactive waste or spent fuel is disposed of in the repository.
NWTRB Reports from 1990 to 2011
According to the NWTRB FY 2013 Budget Request (pdf), the agency proposes that its $3.4 million funding be distributed as follows:
Total Personnel Compensation $1,768,000
Civilian Personnel Benefits $426,000
Travel and Transportation $342,000
Contractual Services (court-reporting service, meeting-room
rentals, equipment rental maintenance, Web site and
systems management) $308,000
Rental Payments to GSA $206,000
Government Services (administrative support, security clearances) $100,000
Consultants $96,000
Supplies and Materials $40,000
Printing and Reproduction $38,000
Communication, Utilities, Miscellaneous $36,000
Total Obligations $3,400,000
Bechtel was the main contractor for the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board (NWTRB) and had been running the day-to-day operations at Yucca Mountain and bored the massive tunnels that were to house the radioactive canisters if the site had become operational. In July 2011, Bechtel came under scrutiny for a claim by the DOE that it used flawed equipment, resulting in serious risks, in its installation at the 560-square-mile site of the country’s largest nuclear waste cleanup operation in Hanford, Washington. A slew of energy corporations and utility companies also monitored the board because of the nuclear power plants (both operational and decommissioned ones) that these stakeholders own. These stakeholders include Ohio Edison, the Tennessee Valley Authority, Duke Power, Exelon Corporation, Constellation Generation, Pacific Gas & Electric, Georgia Power Company, and Southern California Edison.
Because no centralized repository has been established, these companies have had to store, at considerable cost, the spent nuclear fuel and other radioactive wastes at plant sites around the country. Under the 1987 amendments to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act adopted by Congress, the federal government was supposed to begin taking this waste off the hands of power companies by 1998. Having failed to do so, the DOE has been subject to litigation by some energy companies seeking reimbursement for the expense of continuing to store their nuclear waste.
The state of Nevada, where the NWTRB regularly holds its meetings, is another important stakeholder. Nevada officials never embraced the idea of using Yucca Mountain to store nuclear waste, and the state repeatedly filed lawsuits against the federal government, including a DOE statement that it failed to meet the National Environmental Policy Act’s requirements. In addition to litigation, Nevada’s then-Governor Kenny Guinn (R) tried to stop the DOE from moving forward with licensing Yucca Mountain for operation by filing a notice of disapproval, as allowed under federal law. Congress overrode Guinn’s notice.
Other Nevada stakeholders include the city of Las Vegas, which sits only 100 miles southeast of Yucca Mountain, and local public interest groups such as Nevadans for Nuclear Safety and Benefits. Environmental and anti-nuclear organizations also kept watch on the board and the project. Examples of these stakeholders include the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, a worldwide clearinghouse for environmentalists and anti-nuclear activists, and the Sierra Club.
U.S. Nuclear Power Plant Operators, Owners and Holding Companies (Nuclear Energy Institute)
A Refusal To Take Nuclear Waste (by Kenny Guinn, New York Times)
NWTRB Under Scrutiny
Given that the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board (NWTRB) was so closely involved in the Yucca Mountain squabble, there was no shortage of controversy connected to its work. Although most of the rancor stemmed from the issue, not the board, the NWTRB hadn’t been immune to creating its own trouble, thanks to the Bush administration.
In June 2002, President George W. Bush nominated Michael Corradini, a nuclear engineer from the University of Wisconsin who was an outspoken supporter of the nuclear power industry, to serve on the board as its chairman. This appointment provoked immediate outcry from opponents of Yucca Mountain, including all five members of Nevada’s congressional delegation. Corradini publicly endorsed Yucca Mountain, which the other members of the board had not done. Furthermore, Corradini continued to receive funding from the DOE for research on nuclear power even though he promised to stop. After the other NWTRB members wrote a letter asking him to resign, Corradini stepped down in January 2004.
The board also came under criticism in September 2007 during debate over an earthquake fault near Yucca Mountain, which prompted design changes by the DOE for the site. Even though the board claims to conduct “real time” reviews of DOE documents, it was revealed that three months went by before the board was informed about the changes by energy officials.
The board also hadn’t been afraid at times to stick its neck out and question aspects of the Yucca Mountain project. In 2002, while the Bush administration pushed for Congress to officially approve the site and move the project into the NRC licensing phase, the NWTRB said there were considerable gaps in what the DOE knew about the geology of the site. In 2004, the board questioned the DOE’s plan to store radioactive canisters close together inside the mountain, producing a “hot storage” effect, claiming “the high temperatures of the current design and operation will result in perforation of the waste packages, with possible release of radionuclides,” according to the board.
Chair of Key Nuclear Review Board Prompts Concerns About Objectivity on Yucca (by Lisa Gue, Public Citizen)
High-level Nuclear Waste Legislation Update (by American Geological Institute)
Agency Is Seen as Unfazed on Atom Waste (by Matthew L. Wald, New York Times)
Science Will Catch Up At Waste Site, U.S. Says (by Matthew L. Wald, New York Times)
Nuclear Waste Panel Warns of Hot Storage at Yucca Mountain (Environment News Service)
GAO Report on Yucca Mountain (pdf)
Yucca review board in dark: Project design changes revealed only recently (by Keith Rogers, Las Vegas Review-Journal)
Yucca Mountain research leaves doubt: Reworked prediction on water criticized (by Steve Tetreault, Review Journal)
Q+A-Yucca Mountain nuclear waste controversy (Reuters)
U.S. Panel Shifts Focus to Reusing Nuclear Fuel (by Matthew L. Wald, New York
Times)
Managing Spent Nuclear Fuel: Strategy Alternatives and Policy Implications (by Tom
LaTourrette, Thomas Light, Debra Knopman, James T. Bartis; Rand) (pdf)
Current News (Esmeralda County Repository Oversight Program)
What To Do with America’s Nuclear Waste?
The United States has been piling up waste from nuclear power since the 1950s, and still it does not have a long-term solution for disposing of the radioactive leftovers. Successive presidential administrations thought the government would be able to store the waste in Yucca Mountain in Nevada, but President Barack Obama fought to scuttle the plan since concerns were raised about the safety of this solution. As of August 2012, the matter of Yucca Mountain is in the hands of the courts. So, in the meantime, what to do?
Dry Casks
Some scientists and engineers propose storing spent rods in dry casks, which some power plants are already doing. This method involves lowering a steel box into a spent fuel pool, placing the fuel inside the box, draining it of liquid and then pumping it full of an inert gas to prevent rust. The box is then placed in a concrete-and-steel sleeve on a concrete pad surrounded by barbed wire, closed-circuit cameras and security guards. This solution isn’t considered sufficient for long-term disposal.
Restart Yucca Mountain
Politicians outside Nevada, as well as many industry leaders, argue the nation has no choice but to find a physical location where nuclear fuel can be stored for hundreds of years. Many of these advocates add that the U.S. already has one site mostly ready to go—Yucca Mountain—and the government should focus on shoring it up so it can be put to use. The problem with this answer comes down to two words: Harry Reid. The Senate majority leader absolutely refuses to allow the nation to dump its radioactive garbage in his state. Yucca Mountain may become politically viable only after Reid is no longer in power in the Senate.
Reprocessing
The U.S. should take a cue from France, where leaders are seriously weighing nuclear reprocessing as a serious, if only partial answer, supporters say. Reprocessing involves the reuse of spent fuel, producing more fuel for reactors to use, while reducing the amount of leftovers in need of burial somewhere. Two problems exist for reprocessing: (1) It still leaves some fuel behind for disposal, and (2) Some of the leftover is plutonium, one of the most toxic substances in the world that also has applications in military weapons.
What Should We Do with America’s Nuclear Waste? (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)
What To Do With Nuclear Waste (by Lynn Edward Weaver, Ledger.com)
A New Urgency to the Problem of Storing Nuclear Waste (by Kate Galbraith, New York Times)
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