New nuclear power plants provide clean energy

Long-lived transuranic waste from the production of nuclear weapons is stored at a deep-geologic repository in southeastern New Mexico, but there is no comparable permanent, or even temporary, repository for civilian high-level nuclear waste from electricity production.

President Barack Obama directed the Department of Energy to abandon the Yucca Mountain project after $12 billion and 30 years had been spent on site preparation and mining engineering. It had become clear that Nevadans did not want and would not accept the repository.


As DOE prepares to begin its search for an alternative to the Yucca Mountain site, it is worth exploring the possibility that the consent-based approach that was used so successfully in building public acceptance of the defense waste repository in New Mexico can be replicated.


The answer will determine whether a permanent disposal site can be found for the thousands of tons of spent fuel now stored at New York power plant sites.


Recently, a blue-ribbon commission on nuclear waste lauded the bottoms-up approach used in New Mexico to build the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, popularly known as WIPP. WIPP’s construction and operation have gone without incident. Since 1999, there have been more than 10,000 shipments by railroad and truck carrying steel drums loaded with transuranic waste — primarily machinery, tools, gloves and clothes with small amounts of plutonium and other nuclear materials. Some of the shipments originate at nuclear installations and national laboratories more than 1,000 miles away.


The unloaded steel drums are lowered into the repository, which is located in a salt bed a half-mile beneath the desert floor. The waste shipments are expected to continue for another 25 to 35 years, at which time the repository will be covered in soil and concrete. And within 75 years, the salt will have filled in any cracks or fissures and sealed in the repository essentially forever.


WIPP is located 26 miles outside of Carlsbad. This city of 25,000 has benefited economically from WIPP seems obvious. WIPP has created 1,300 permanent jobs, including many for scientists and engineers engaged in research on nuclear waste management, and just as many support jobs.

READ MORE...