Civilian Nuclear Waste Disposal


 

Publication Date: March 2005

Publisher: Library of Congress. Congressional Research Service

Author(s):

Research Area: Environment

Type:

Abstract:

Management of civilian radioactive waste has posed difficult issues for Congress since the beginning of the nuclear power industry in the 1950s. Federal policy is based on the premise that nuclear waste can be disposed of safely, but new storage and disposal facilities have frequently been challenged on safety, health, and environmental grounds. Although civilian radioactive waste encompasses a wide range of materials, most of the current debate focuses on the highly radioactive spent fuel from nuclear power plants.

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (NWPA) calls for disposal of spent nuclear fuel in a deep geologic repository that is unlikely to be disturbed for thousands of years. NWPA established an office in the Department of Energy (DOE) to develop such a repository and required the program's civilian costs to be covered by a fee on nuclear-generated electricity, paid into the Nuclear Waste Fund. Amendments to NWPA in 1987 restricted DOE's repository site studies to Yucca Mountain in Nevada. DOE is studying numerous scientific issues at Yucca Mountain in preparing an application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for the planned repository. Questions about the site include the likelihood of earthquakes, volcanoes, groundwater contamination, and human intrusion.

NWPA's goal for loading waste into the repository was 1998, but DOE now does not expect to open the facility until 2012 at the earliest. President Bush recommended the site to Congress February 15, 2002, and Nevada Governor Guinn exercised his right to "veto" the site April 8, 2002. A resolution to allow Yucca Mountain licensing to proceed despite the state veto was signed by the President July 23, 2002 (P.L. 107-200).

Upon releasing the civilian nuclear waste program's FY2006 budget request on February 7, 2005, DOE officials announced that the opening of the Yucca Mountain repository would be delayed at least two years from the previous goal of 2010. The waste program's funding request of $651.4 million is about 14% above the FY2005 level but only about half the amount that last year's budget justification said would have been needed to open the repository by 2010. DOE officials also announced that a Yucca Mountain license application to NRC will be delayed by a year, to the end of 2005.

Delays in the Yucca Mountain project could be exacerbated by a July 2004 federal circuit court decision that the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) 10,000-year regulatory compliance period for the repository was too short. However, the court rejected several other challenges to EPA's Yucca Mountain regulations.

Low-level waste sites are a state responsibility under the Low-Level Radioactive Waste Policy Act of 1980. Pursuant to that act, 10 regional compacts for disposal of lowlevel waste have been approved by Congress. Three commercial low-level waste sites are currently operating, in the states of South Carolina, Utah, and Washington. The Washington facility is accepting waste just from within the Northwest and Rocky Mountain regional compacts, and the Utah site accepts only the least-concentrated class of low-level waste.