The U.S. nuclear waste management policy in the 1960s was focused on underground storage in salt. From 1987 on it was all about Yucca Mountain. In 2009 newly elected President Obama thwarted the plan and a commission was founded to study possible disposal: the nuclear waste policy is back to square one. Awaiting a final disposal facility, spent fuel is stored on site of nuclear power plants. U.S. nuclear utilities are eager to demonstrate that the spent fuel will not stay on-site indefinitely. Thus far, however, all efforts to establish central interim storage facilities have been unsuccessful.(*01) The U.S. dumped between 1949 –1967 in an unknown number of operations radioactive waste in the Atlantic Ocean, and between 1946-1970 in the Pacific Ocean.(*02) No commercial reprocessing has taken place.

No high-level radioactive waste in salt
Already in 1957 the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) called storage of nuclear waste in salt the best option.(*03) Also the Atomic Energy Commission developed plans in that direction. In 1963 test drilling in salt began at Lyons, Kansas for a national repository. Because this produced unfavorable results, one went to other places to drill in salt. Also without success.(*04)
Then the eye fell on salt at Carlsbad, New Mexico. The construction of the storage mine (called Waste Isolation Pilot Plant -WIPP) was expected to cost US$ 100 million in 1974,(*05) was cancelled by president Carter in 1980, but Congress restored budget to keep it alive.(*06) The storage would initially begin in 1988, but, although the underground facility was finished by then, because water leaked into the mine (*07) the start of disposal is delayed many times.(*08,09,10) The first waste arrived at WIPP on March 26, 1999. (*11) Construction costs were estimated at US$ 2 billion. (*12)
Around 64,000 m3 of waste – out of the maximum allowed quantity of 175,600 m3 – was stored by the end of 2009.
Storage is planned to continue until the end of the 2020s when the maximum allowed capacity will be reached; the mine will be closed in 2038.(*13) It is the world’s first geological repository. However, not all nuclear waste can be stored at WIPP. The U.S. government makes a distinction between nuclear waste generated from the production of nuclear weapons and nuclear waste generated by the production of electricity from nuclear power plants. In Carlsbad, the storage of low and high level radioactive waste (including spent fuel) from nuclear power plants for electricity production has been expressly prohibited by the government.(*14) However, one part of the radioactive waste from nuclear weapons production was allowed to go there. Generally, TRU (Transuranic) waste consists of clothing, tools, rags, residues, debris, soil and other items contaminated with radioactive elements, mostly plutonium.(*15)
In 1982, the government established the Nuclear Waste Policy Act. This Act gave states with possible locations an important role in the supervision on the choice of location, including federal funds for its own investigation into the suitability of the site, for an amount of US$10 million per year. States also had the power to prevent the storage. The NWPA mandated that the DOE select three candidate sites for a geological repository for U.S. spent fuel and high-level waste.(*16)
The government adapted the rules. In 1984, the DOE put salt lower on the list and a year later only one salt layer remained on the list: Deaf Smith, Texas.(*17) In 1986, the DOE nominated sites in Texas (salt), Washington state (basalt) and in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain (volcanic tuff).(*17) At the time, two of the most politically powerful members of Congress, the Speaker of the House and the House Majority Leader, represented Texas and Washington state respectively. They opposed siting the repository in their states. By comparison, the delegation from Nevada was politically relatively weak and so Yucca Mountain became the focus of attention.(*19) In 1987, therefore, Congress amended the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to direct that Yucca Mountain would be the only site to be examined for suitability for the first U.S. Geological repository. (*US20) The 1982 NWPA had mandated that the second repository be in crystalline rock, i.e., in the eastern half of the country, where most of the country’s power reactors are located. However, the 1987 amendments also instructed the DOE to “phase out in an orderly manner funding for all research programs … designed to evaluate the suitability of crystalline rock as a potential repository host medium.” (*21)
To reassure Nevada that other states would ultimately share the burden of hosting the nation’s radioactive waste, Congress also set a legal limit on the amount of radioactive
waste that could be emplaced in Yucca Mountain “until such time as a second repository is in operation.” The limit was established as “a quantity of spent fuel containing in excess of 70,000 metric tons of heavy metal or a quantity of solidified high level radioactive waste resulting from the reprocessing of such a quantity of spent fuel.”(*22)

No high-level radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain
The implementation of the decision to dispose nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain did not go smoothly. “Yucca Mountain is not selected through a scientific method, but through a political process,” said Robert Loux. He worked for the government of the state of Nevada as a leader of the real estate developer for radioactive waste. “The choice of the repository led to much resistance. The governor, congress delegates, local authorities and almost the entire population was against it.”
Yucca Mountain is located in an earthquake zone. Loux: “There are 32 underground fractures and four young volcanoes. In the summer of 1992, an earthquake occurred with a magnitude of 5.4 on the Richter scale. This led to considerable damage. Therefore Yucca Mountain is unsuitable. The government of Nevada has made laws that prohibit the storage.”(*23) In March 1998, a survey of the California Institute of Technology found that the risk of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions is larger than hitherto assumed.(*24)
The Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository would have to come in operation in 2010, according to plans made in the 1980s. But it took until July 2002, when President Bush signed a resolution clearing the way for disposal at Yucca Mountain, (*25) and until June 2008 before the DOE applied for a permit to build the storage.(*26) President Barack Obama stopped the storage at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, in late February 2009,(*27) although DOE had spent US$14 billion (in 2009 dollars) from 1983 through 2008 for the Yucca Mountain repository. The construction of the storage mine and exploitation would have cost between US$41 and US$67 billion (2009 dollars) according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).(*28) Obama finds Yucca Mountain unsuitable and unsafe for the disposal of radioactive waste and therefore “no option”. A new strategy for the disposal of nuclear waste must be developed and on 29 January 2010, Obama appointed a commission to work out a new policy: the ‘Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future’.(*29)
On 27 January 2012, after nearly two years of work, the Blue Ribbon Commission has issued its final recommendations for “creating a safe, long-term solution” for dealing with spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. Efforts to develop a waste repository and a central storage facility should start immediately, it says. “Put simply, this nation’s failure to come to grips with the nuclear waste issue has already proved damaging and costly. It will be even more damaging and more costly the longer it continues.” It continued, “The need for a new strategy is urgent, not just to address these damages and costs but because this generation has a fundamental, ethical obligation to avoid overburdening future generations with the entire task of finding a safe, permanent solution for managing hazardous nuclear materials they had no part in creating.”(*30)
Experience in the U.S. and in other nations suggests that any attempt to force a top down, federally mandated solution over the objections of a state or community – far from being more efficient – will take longer, cost more, and have lower odds of ultimate success. By contrast, the approach the commission recommends is explicitly adaptive, staged, and consent-based. In practical terms, this means encouraging communities to volunteer to be considered to host a new nuclear waste management facility while also allowing for the waste management organization to approach communities that it believes can meet the siting requirements. Siting processes for waste management facilities should include a flexible and substantial incentive program.(*31) On 31 January 2012, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said that the U.S. will likely need more than one permanent repository for commercial nuclear fuel.(*32) The U.S. nuclear waste policy is therefore back to square one. Except that there is no chance of returning to the option of salt domes or layers. This follows from the 2008 “Nuclear waste trust decision” of the U.S. government,(*33) stating: “Salt formations currently are being considered as hosts only for reprocessed nuclear materials because heat-generating waste, like spent nuclear fuel, exacerbates a process by which salt can rapidly deform. This process could potentially cause problems for keeping drifts stable and open during the operating period of a repository”

*01- IPFM: Managing spent fuel from nuclear power reactors, 2011, p.106
*02- IAEA: Inventory of radioactive waste disposals at sea, IAEA-Tecdoc-1105, August 1999
*03- Department of Energy: WIPP Chronology,5 February 2007
*04- For a detailed discussion on the history of the plans for the storage of nuclear waste in the U.S. we refer to: 1- Ronnie Lipschutz: Radioactive Waste: Politics, Technology and Risk, Cambrigde USA, 1980; 2- A.A. Albert de la Bruhèze, Political Construction of Technology. Nuclear Waste disposal in the United States, 1945-1972, WMW-publication 10, Faculteit Wijsbegeerte en Maatschappijwetenschappen Universiteit Twente, Netherlands, 1992; 3- Roger E. Kasperson, Social Issues in Radioactive Waste Management: The National Experience, in: Roger E. Kasperson (ed), Equity Issues in Radioactive Waste Management, Oelgeschlager, Gunn & Hain Publishers, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1983, chapter 2.
*05-World Watch: WIPP-Lash: nuclear burial plan assailed, Vol 4, No 6 , Nov/Dec 1991, p.7
*06- Science: Radwaste dump WIPPs up a controversy,19 March 1982
*07- US Guardian weekly: Pilot waste dump is already in trouble, 12 October 1988
*08- Nucleonics Week: WIPP moves toward 1993 waste tests, senate okays bill in 11th
hour, 15 October 1992. p 8
*09- WISE News Communique: US DOE delays (abandons?) giant waste projects, no 389, 19 November 1993, p 6
*10- WISE News Communique, US: WIPP is delayed again and again…, no. 496, 21 August 1998, p 2
*11- WISE News Communique: First waste at WIPP, but problem not solved, no 508, 9 April 1999
*12- Nuclear Fuel: After two decades and $2billion, DOE targets spring for WIPP operations, 9 March 1998, p 6-7
*13- Waste Isolation Pilot Plant: Renewal Application Chapter 1, Closure Plan, May 2009
*14- WIPP: Why WIPP, 5 February 2007
*15- Luther. J. Carter, Waste Management; Current Controversies over the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant; in: Environment, Vol. 31, no. 7, September 1989, p 5, 40-41
*16- Ralph. L. Keeney and Detlof von Winterfeldt: Managing Waste from Power Plants, in: Risk Analysis, Vol. 14, No. 1, 1994, pp 107-130.
*17- Department of Energy: Mission Plan for the Civilian Radioactive Waste Management Program, June 1985, Volume 1, p 41
*18- Department of Energy: A Multi-attribute utility analysis of sites nominated for characterization for the first radioactive waste repository – A decision aiding methodology, DOE/RW-0074, 1986
*19- IPFM: Managing spent nuclear fuel from power reactors, 2011, p.109
*20- United States of America Congress: Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, The Act was extensively amended on 22 December 1987, Sec. 160
*21- NWPA, Sec. 161
*22- NWPA, Sec. 114, d
*23- Interview Robert Loux by Herman Damveld, in: Herman Damveld, Steef van Duin en Dirk Bannink: Kernafval in zee of zout? Nee fout! (Nuclear waste in sea or salt? No wrong!), Greenpeace Netherlands, 1994, p. 29-30
*24- Nuclear Fuel: 6 April 1998, p 13.
*25- Reuters: Bush clears way for Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump, 23 July 2002
*26- Barry D. Solomon: High-level radioactive waste management in the USA, in: Journal of Risk Research, Volume 12 Issue 7 & 8 2009, p. 1009–1024
*27- World Nuclear News: Obama dumps Yucca Mountain, 27 February 2009
*28- Government Accountability Office: Nuclear Waste Management. Key attributes, challenges, and costs for the Yucca Mountain repository and two potential Alternatives, GAO-10-48, November 2009. p.19
*29- World Nuclear News: Post-Yucca nuclear waste strategy group, 1 February 2010. One issue that will not be on the table is the exact location of any eventual waste facilities. The ‘Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future’ is only to consider
strategy, not implementation
*30- World Nuclear News: Immediate action needed on US waste policy, 27 January 2012
*31- Blue Ribbon Commission: Report to the Secretary of Energy, 26 January 2012
*32- Platts: More than one permanent US nuclear repository likely needed: Chu, 31 January 2012
*33- Nuclear Regulatory Commission: Waste Confidence Decision Update, 9 October 2008, p. 5955