(Work in progress)
It's about a year since the Administration's decision to cancel the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste tomb. As energy secretary Steven Chu discussed then, the White House intended to assemble an expert panel to review the options. (One could wonder why they made their decision before hearing what the experts would recommend, but that's not how policymaking works.)
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Steven Chu: Yucca Mountain as a repository is off the table. What we're going to be doing is saying, let's step back. We realize that we know a lot more today than we did 25 or 30 years ago. The NRC [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] is saying that the dry cask storage at current sites would be safe for many decades, so that gives us time to figure out what we should do for a long-term strategy. We will be assembling a blue-ribbon panel to look at the issue.
[MIT Tech Review] Q & A: Steven Chu
Today the executive branch has selected its "blue ribbon" panelists:
[DoE] Secretary Chu Announces Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future
It appears to me this panel isn't suited for its task -- the purely technical issue of spent nuclear fuel. I only count: one engineer, two physicists, and one geologist, out of 15 experts. Most of the rest are politicians and business suits. I fear this is more of a political game than a legitimate conference of nuclear waste experts.
Perhaps the most worrying name on the list none other than Brent Scowcroft. If you recall, he was the national security advisor for George H.W. Bush -- a key figure in the end of the cold war. Him along with Albert Carnesale (nonproliferation diplomat, figure in SALT treaties -- some writings here), and Susan Eisenhower (nonproliferation consultant, board of Nuclear Threat Initiative). I think we should read between the lines: why did Obama put a national security wonk and two nuclear weapons wonks on this panel? What the US does with spent reactor fuel has nothing to do with weapons or war. But the administration thinks, or perhaps wants to signal, otherwise; that US reprocessing and breeder reactors -- key technical solutions for destroying nuclear waste -- would be a security threat. Looking at history, nuclear weapons fearmongering has been a key political attack against nuclear power, especially closed fuel cycles. Ford's reprocessing ban was ostensibly about weapons. John Kerry and Hazel O'Leary's canceling of Argonne's Integral Fast Reactor research was, again, used with proliferation as a pretext.
Professor Per Peterson is the sole nuclear engineer. Among many other things, he is researching a molten salt (!) reactor design called PB-AHTR. Unlike LFTR, it is only half fluid: the coolant is a molten salt, whereas the fuel elements are solid pebbles.
Richard Meserve seems to be lots of things - PhD physicist, former NRC chairman, sits on board of the electric utility PG&E.
Allison MacFarlane is a geologist who researches spent fuel repositories, and has written a book criticizing Yucca Mountain. Some of her writings are here at the Belfer Center (which she is an associate of). Rod Adams interviews her on Atomic Podcast #61 (haven't watched yet; Rod says they "agree to disagree", which is worrying.)
There are several remembers whose only "qualification" appears to be political stature. Lee Hamilton is a former Democratic congressman. Chuck Hagel is a former Republican Senator. Pete Domenici is a former Republican senator, who sat on the energy subcommittee. Phil Sharp is a former Democratic congressman who now heads the political think tank Resources for the Future.
Several sitting energy industry executives, who likewise have no particular reason to be here, and an in my naive opinion have way too much conflict of interest to be allowed in the first place. Vicky Bailey is director of Chiniere Energy, an importer of liquefied natural gas (LNG) (she was also a former commissioner of FERC). John Rowe is CEO of Exelon, an electric utility whose fleet is largely nuclear reactors.
Mark Ayers is a union boss from AFL-CIO.
Jonathan Lash is a lawyer, formerly with the National Resources Defense Council, presently chairman of the World Resources Institute (environmentalist think tank). Some of his writings are here.
You really should listen to Rod's Allison MacFarlane interview. To put it bluntly (sorry, spoiler), MacFarlane really doesn't have a clue. Some of the things she says in the interview leave one with a "what the hell?!," jaw-dropping expression on one's face. She manages to dredge up some old canards that I haven't heard in years.
ReplyDeleteThat she is asked over and over again to sit on these panels is a testament to how politics works. She's grossly under-qualified, but she has made a few subvertly anti-nuclear statements (and authored a fairly anti-nuclear book), while managing to remain on the very edge of credibility. Thus, her friends keep insisting over and over that she be included in these panels, which she does, because of course, she has nothing better to do.
Sadly, this panel is a joke. The only way it could be a bigger joke is if it were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its efforts -- preferably, by being nominated within a week of being formed. ;-)
In its first year in office, the Obama administration decided not to proceed with the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. This was a political decision based on pressure from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) Reid also saw to it that funding was gutted for review of the license application by the NRC.
ReplyDeleteThe President needs Reid to move his major legislative initiatives through the Senate so the most expedient thing to do is punt with a favorite tool for putting a contentious issue on hold - appoint a blue ribbon commission to study the issue. By the time it reports back, Reid may be gone, a victim of the 2010 mid-term elections, or the president will have gotten what he needs from Reid, and can try to make sense out of the issue instead of being hamstrung over it.
One of the reported reasons for the delay in naming the members of the panel was that some experts simply disagreed with Obama's decision to take the Yucca Mountain site off the table. Presumably, the current members announced today do not have these reservations.
The Commission will produce an interim report within 18 months and a final report within 24 months. Getting it done by then, and having real substance in the recommendations, will take significant persuasion by the panel’s co-chairs. One early test of whether even the panel members take it seriously will be attendance at the first meeting. If it is full of flunkies instead of the principals, you can stop paying attention.
http://djysrv.blogspot.com/2010/01/chu-names-blue-ribbon-panel-on-spent.html
Remember, Yucca Mountain was selected as a political expedience, not because it was the right technical choice. It just happened to be a bit of federal land in a remote part of a state with a small population and few elected members of the House of Representatives.
ReplyDeleteI cannot think of a place in the US where establishing a used fuel storage area would require MORE ton-miles of transportation. It is a long way from any of the operating nuclear power plants and requires a great deal of service from an industry - the freight railroads - that have economic incentives for not liking nuclear energy. The freight rail industry has always been dependent upon moving coal and oil around the country.
We also spent billions on studies of Yucca Mountain, often putting that money into the pockets of geologists, a science with a high concentration of people employed by the coal, oil, and gas discovery and extraction enterprises. Like the rail industry, these folks have an incentive for discouraging nuclear energy because the fossil fuel alternative is more lucrative.
I realize that the chosen committee has a high percentage of political figures and people from the non-proliferation community, but I have met and talked with Susan Eisenhower (daughter of the man who made the Atoms for Peace speech that enabled industrial development of atomic energy in the first place) and I have heard Domenici speak and read his book. I am encouraged by Per Peterson's selection and by Brent Scowcroft's participation. The challenge that the commission will face is political, not technical. Handling used fuel is easy, the difficult part will be showing how much safer the country will be if we use that resource to develop useful energy instead of considering it as a waste product.
Historically, Yucca Mountain was chosen as a political decision, but that does not mean that Yucca Mountain was the wrong technical choice. Historically, there were supposed to be two repositories, with the second one to be located in the eastern US. This is still encapsulated in the law: the full space that is available in the Yucca Mountain repository cannot be used until a second repository is available.
ReplyDeleteThe argument about transportation requirements is a very silly one. The amount of transportation required to ship "waste" to Yucca Mountain is trivial. Even if the mountain is filled to its current statutory limit, that's only 77,000 tonnes of heavy metal that needs to be shipped. Meanwhile, just three of Peabody Energy's coal mines in the Powder River Basin ship more than 100 million tons of coal each year to customers throughout the United States and around the world.
Finally, I'm amazed by the insinuation that a geological repository is a bad choice because it relies on geologists to perform scientific studies and these geologists might have coal or oil ties. Are you really serious?! That's just truly bizarre.
I agree with Brian, some of the things MacFarlane says on the podcast are just jaw-dropping outrageous. I posted a video of the MIT video she was in back in March 2007 and was also surprised at her strong anti-nuclear sentiment. It makes zero sense that she is on the panel.
ReplyDeleteBrian - though 77,000 tons is a trivial amount of material to move, do you realize just how much additional "stuff" is associated with moving that material if it is used nuclear fuel? Have you ever read about the tens of thousands of people who turn up to slow down or stop trains with used nuclear fuel as they try to move material from nuclear plants in Germany to UK or French recycling facilities?
ReplyDeleteHere is a link to a video clip produced by the Department of Energy describing the plans for constructing a new rail line from the town of Caliente to the mountain. It would be a single purpose line requiring the construction of 385 miles through "rugged" Nevada territory. The projected time for construction is in excess of 4 years with a PROJECTED cost of $800 million - and that video was produced nearly 6 years ago.
http://www.archive.org/details/yucca_rail
Please do not call concerns about a transportation effort where just one tiny portion is projected to cost close to a billion dollars and take 4 years to complete "very silly."
With regard to the idea of a geological repository - I recognize that I am an outlier here, but WHY is it considered necessary to bury material that is not hurting anyone? Why not keep it above ground where it is easy to monitor? If the containers leak, they can be fixed or replaced with far less effort.
I am a very cynical person when it comes to economic motivation in a business where hundreds of billions in annual sales are at stake. I know for a fact that the anti-nuclear industry has planned for years to use "waste disposal" as an issue that can constipate the industry. How do I know there were not some geologists who suggested a geological repository KNOWING that the investigations and research could be dragged out for years without actually solving the uncertainties - especially if the standards were as tight as 25 mrem per year with a time horizon stretching into the tens of thousand if not millions of years. Do you really want me to believe that humans are fundamentally honest and would never stoop to planning ways to handicap their competitors?
The fossil fuel industry has always known that fission is a threat to its prosperity. From the very earliest investigations of the phenomena, scientists who understood the vast energy density have made quoted statements to journalists about how this new energy source could replace the need to burn coal, oil and gas. Do you really believe that no one whose wealth and power rested on selling those products in a market of perceived scarcity was listening?
Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights
Host and producer, The Atomic Show Podcast
Brian:
ReplyDeleteI found a later estimate for the cost of that rail line from Caliente to Yucca Mountain. This one dated 2007 quotes a cost of $3 billion but includes a warning that the project definition is still underway and costs will continue to be updated.
http://www.lvrj.com/news/8677422.html
In other words - moving used material to a remote location in Nevada is not a trivial matter - at least from a cost and potential choke point point of view.
BTW - I am still surprised that you considered my concern to be "very silly". Do you really think that the research that I do merits that kind of description?
Rod - You seem to misunderstand. I used "very silly" to describe the notion that Yucca Mountain is so much worse than any other site because of transportation issues, which you seemed to imply. Do you want to claim that the costs would be significantly less for a site in the Eastern US? The big advantage of building a railroad through the middle of the desert in Nevada is that it passes through virtually nobody's back yard. Can you imagine the cost (both financial and political) if such a rail line were built in the more densely populated East?
ReplyDeleteThe $3 billion might seem like a lot to you and me, but the electricity sector pulled in over $360 billion in retail sales in 2008. In fact, in the past decade, electricity producers have pulled in over $3 trillion in revenue. This $3 billion rail line is going to accommodate all of the spent fuel for four or more decades for an industry that supplies about 1/5th of this electricity. When put into perspective, this $3 billion (which was estimated in 2007, when commodity prices were high, can you give an estimate of what it would cost today?) is little more than "decimal dust," to use a term that you seem to like.
In 2008, US nuclear plants generated 806 billion kWr of electricity, which translates to $806 million paid into the Nuclear Waste Fund. At this rate, this "expensive" rail line would be paid off in a few years.
The remoteness has other advantages. For example, in the case of protesters, I say let them show up. All you need is a picture of these morons with pickets standing in the middle of nothing, and the public will understand. France and Germany don't have the luxury of space like the US does.
Speaking of space, spent nuclear fuel is located from Minnesota to the tip of the Florida peninsula in the Eastern US. In the west, Yucca Mountain is actually located relatively close to the remaining nuclear plants in Southern California and Arizona. Transportation costs are always going to be there. You can argue that the location is sub-optimal, but it is a very weak argument as a show stopper.
Next, I can't follow your logic when it comes to the politics of this issue. You freely admit that the "anti-nuclear industry has planned for years to use 'waste disposal' as an issue that can constipate the industry," yet you fail to realize that their big success has come from postponing the licensing and opening of Yucca Mountain.
So what is your solution?
Indefinite above-ground storage? Well, you played straight in the hands of the anti-nuclear crowd, because they can now claim that there is no solution, just as they do today, even though we are able to safely store the material on site and have been doing so for decades. Furthermore, once Yucca is gone, they can claim that there never will be a solution.
Implementing Recycling and/or building advanced burner reactors? Sorry, but that was tried several years ago by the Bush administration's GNEP program. The program had a rough start, but just as it began to gain the confidence of industry, it had its knees cut out from under it, mostly by "scientific panels" that were manned by some of the same people appointed to this new "blue ribbon panel." Don't expect that recycle or burn anytime soon will be the recommendation of this group.
Returning ownership of the "nuclear waste" to its producers (along with the remaining funds in the Nuclear Waste Fund) to be dealt with by the private sector? Sorry, but that idea will go over like a lead balloon. The anti-nuclear-leaning part of the public already extremely distrusts corporations and private industry. You'd just be throwing fuel on the fire. Besides, the political climate today is not right for that. Think of it this way: how many companies that were completely private a year ago are now predominately owned by the government; in the same time, how many government services have been privatized? Yeah ... it ain't going to happen.
Finally, I'd like to point out that I'm also a cynical person, and I am also quite skeptical. Thus, I'm willing to believe that geologists might have promoted a geological repository because of the scientific work that it would entail (after all, much of the DOE is a make-work program for scientists employed by the various National Labs, regardless of whether anything ultimately comes of their work ... I'm speaking from experience here). However, I find it difficult to believe in a conspiracy of USGS scientists to prop up the interests of coal and oil producers. Sorry, but I think you've gone off the deep end here.
ReplyDeleteSo to summarize, I find your arguments long on paranoia, but short on facts, context, and reason. Perhaps you should explain exactly what should be done with this material and why.
I think we should make the case for closing nuclear cycles (and our favorite solutions) in letters to every commisioner. Perhaps public letters?
ReplyDelete