Robert McTaggart opines that developing interim storage facilities for nuclear waste is vital to an efficient energy plan. For decades, consumers have paid for the storage of nuclear waste in a deep-geologic repository via fees in their electric bills. However, with the closure of the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada, the government has refused to use those funds for their intended purpose. So, consumers in effect have paid twice for the storage of spent nuclear fuel from electricity production - once for development of a deep repository that exists but is not operational because of political obstructionism, and once for the actual storage of used fuel at nuclear plants. Although used fuel is stored safely at nuclear plant sites at present in engineered water pools and steel-and-concrete casks, utilities were not supposed to manage used fuel indefinitely. For a scale of the issue, if stacked appropriately, all the used fuel generated in the U.S. to date would cover a single football field about 7 yards deep.
Although the amount of used fuel is not much of an issue now, the growing demand for nuclear power might test that solution. Tasks such as replacing coal or natural gas, producing hydrogen or electricity to power vehicles, desalinating water, or actively removing carbon from the atmosphere will require a lot of carbon-free nuclear energy. But he suggests that the used fuel could then be reprocessed to reduce the amount of waste requiring storage in a permanent repository. Once the used fuel is placed in a repository, it will not be difficult to retrieve it for reprocessing, which recovers more than 90 percent of the energy that originally came with the fuel. The Yucca facility was designed to be a storage site, not a disposal site. The development of interim storage facilities would allow utilities to focus on generating electricity while keeping their options open with regard to waste management.
Original working URL: https://www.argusleader.com/story/opinion/readers/2015/06/21/voice-managing-nuclear-waste/29079279/
Managed & Built by I2M Consulting, LLC | © 2010-
