***Over the next series of posts, I will be addressing some of the important issues that set a backdrop for determining our nation's energy future.***

An energy crisis? Yes, our nation is currently in an energy crisis state, despite the lack of headlines attesting to this issue. It is a crisis state when our country feels forced to engage in forcibly occupying other countries halfway around the world in order to try an secure its energy future. It is a crisis state when the major source of our energy (oil) that supports our massive infrastructure has reached its max production capacity yet the demand continues to rise exponentially. It is a crisis state when we are seriously considering building new nuclear power plants when there is still no way to dispose of the radioactive waste that we have already generated, 25 years after the Nuclear Waste Policy Act set a timetable for permanent underground waste repositories and billions of dollars trying to address the issue have been spent, yet there is no resolution in sight. It is this infrequently discussed issue of nuclear waste disposal that this post will attempt to give a background on.



Due to its reputation as a "clean" alternative relative to fossil fuels (extraction of uranium necessary to produce nuclear power still contributes greenhouse gas or co2 to the atmosphere, just much less than burning fossil fuels), nuclear power has recently seen a resurgence in the energy debate in the political arena as our nation continues to look for alternative sources of energy outside the Middle East. Nuclear power however, like all our current energy options, is not a silver bullet for our energy concerns, and comes with a severe list of negatives along with its advantages. The extreme cost of construction of new plants, the diminishing supply of uranium, the threat of nuclear meltdown (Three Mile Island, Chernobyl) and time to plan, design and construct a new plant are all major issues with nuclear power. However, the most immediate issue is the disposal of the nuclear waste that has already been generated; how to store it, where it should go, and how to safely transport it are all major logistical issues that need to be addressed before the next administration throws their support behind new nuclear power plants.

President elect Obama has made it clear during his campaign that new nuclear power plants are on the table as an option to try and address our energy needs, and while I agree there will not be a simple solution to our energy issues, the issue of what to do with the waste we currently have needs to be addressed simultaneously as we proceed addressing our future energy concerns. Currently, although other options such as shooting nuclear waste into space and burying it beneath moving tectonic plates in the ocean floor have been explored, the only feasible solution that could be executed in the short term is the use of Yucca Mountain as a storage site. The government has been studying this site since 1978 as a possible long term storage for nuclear waste, and there have been many pitfalls along the way. First, the logistics of trying to plan for what will happen tens of thousands of years (the time expected for the radiation levels, from the spent rods to be stored there, to drop to harmless levels) in the future are daunting to say the least. There are also issues with the stability of the site since it is located on a fault line and the possibility that the eventual corrosion of the containment tanks that the waste is stored in could leak into the water table, thus contaminating the entire surrounding region. The study and partial construction of the site have already cost hundreds of billions of dollars, and there is no immediate end in sight as there is still dispute over the safety of the site. In July 2004, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found that the 10,000 year regulatory time frame was not consistent with National Academy of Sciences (NAS) recommendations and was too short. The NAS report had recommended standards be set for the time of peak risk, which might approach a period of one million years. By limiting the compliance time to 10,000 years, EPA did not respect a statutory requirement that it develop standards consistent with NAS recommendations.

So, as it currently stands, Yucca Mountain still has not been approved for storage of nuclear waste 30 years after studies on the location began, and nuclear waste around the country continues to pile up in on site containment tanks that were not designed for long term storage, and are either at or near capacity. Taking the "not in my backyard" stance that is a constant when it comes to waste disposal, Senate majority leader Harry Reid, a Democrat from Nevada (where Yucca Mountain is located), is committed to killing the project. However, if he is successful, the question still remains, what do we do with the waste? This is an important issue, that like the energy shortage, does not have any easy answers or quick fixes, but as a corollary to the energy discussion it must be addressed before our country decides to build any future nuclear power plants.