Nuclear Waste: Yes, In (or Under) My Backyard

By Matthew L. Wald

There is good news for everyone concerned about the spent nuclear fuel stranded at scores of sites around the United States: another country, with a democratic and federal system of government somewhat like our own, appears to have found a political consensus on where to put a permanent repository.

Demonstrating anywhere that a voluntary process can work gives hope that the U.S. government can reduce its liability for spent fuel. The size of which Department of Energy (DOE) auditors state in surprisingly vague terms, but appears likely to be over $50 billion, perhaps well over. This year’s estimate is up about $4 billion from last year’s.

The recent success was in Canada, which is following a path that differs from the one that the United States recently started on. Nominally, both countries are pursuing “consent-based siting,” which means finding a willing host for spent nuclear fuel, rather than forcing it on reluctant towns, tribes or states. But the Canadians do three things we haven’t, at least not yet: they have moved the management outside the regular government bureaucracy, they have talked very openly with potential hosts about financial inducements, and they have promised the hosts substantial input in the process. Moving in that direction would improve our chances of success too.

The recent breakthrough is that the Canadian Waste Management Organization, a utility-owned nonprofit, says it has reached agreement with a tribe and a municipality to host a permanent repository. The site is in northwest Ontario, about 130 miles northeast of International Falls, Minn., and is located between the Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation, known as WLON, and the township of Ignace. It was one of two sites that were willing and had suitable geology. When completed, the repository’s underground tunnels will cover an area about 2 kilometers by 3 kilometers, or about 1.2 miles by 1.8 miles. Canada’s goal is for an “informed and willing” host. Canada embarked on that process in 2010. The United States is now following the same approach, as the path of last resort, following the stalemate at Yucca Mountain. Congress chose Yucca, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, over the objections of Nevada, but the effort was checkmated by Senator Harry Reid of Nevada after he became the Democratic leader in 2005 and then Senate Majority leader. Yucca is still technically the law of the land, but Congress has not appropriated significant money since 2012 to get it licensed.

With political deadlock, Congress followed the time-honored Washington path and ordered a study of what to do next. The Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future reported back in January 2012 and called for consent-based siting.

In May 2024 the Department of Energy formally launched the process, in a less ambitious way. At the moment, it is looking for a location for consolidated interim storage, not an underground repository. “Interim” storage would probably comprise above-ground casks, or casks buried just below the surface. The casks that would be used for centralized interim storage are the same kind already used around the country filled with inert gas to prevent corrosion. They are steel with heavy concrete shielding and are guarded and inspected. They will be functional for many decades wherever they are. But moving them to a single federally operated site would allow the department to begin accepting wastes from the utilities they signed contracts with in the 80s and 90s. The contracts called for the government to start receiving shipments in January 1998, and the courts have ruled that the government must pay for breaching those contracts, reimbursing the utilities for all their extra costs.

A Multi-Billion Dollar Leak at the Treasury

The audit, in November, estimates the compensation that the government will have to pay until it starts taking the waste, but does not give a date for that event. Twelve to fifteen years is probably the earliest that can be hoped for. It says in a footnote that the government’s liability is “in the range of between $37.6 billion and $44.5 billion,” in addition to the $11.1 billion that has already been paid. The fact that operators are applying to extend their licenses to 80 years means the government’s tab is getting bigger. And the money does not come out of the Energy Department’s budget; it is paid for by the Treasury’s “Judgment Fund,” the same account you collect from if you sue because your car was rear-ended by a government car. The fund is automatically replenished, without a vote by Congress, which has reduced the visibility of the problem.

Opening a consolidated interim storage facility would get some economies of scale. The first casks moved to consolidated interim storage, if such a place can be built, would probably be from the growing number of sites where reactors have been decommissioned, leaving nothing at the site but a cluster of casks. The casks require 24/7 protection, and effectively preclude re-use of the sites, even though the area has been cleaned up to meet Environmental Protection Agency standards. Those standards are meant to protect future generations from drinking or eating contaminated water or food. It requires that the soil be cleaned up to an extremely high degree, so that a hypothetical future family of subsistence farmers, getting all its food and water from the site, even if it drilled a well on the most polluted spot on the site and used that water to irrigate the fields (so that radioactive materials could be absorbed into the food, and then into their bodies) the radiation dose would be so low that it would not pose a significant health threat. The scenario is somewhat fanciful because the United States does not have significant subsistence farming. The plant sites are in places that are unlikely to ever be used for farming anyway because they are prime industrial land.

But no matter how clean it is, re-use for industry or farming is unlikely while the casks are present.

Getting Started

The Energy Department has a long list of tasks ahead, including developing a working definition of what “consent” means and who must buy in. Several localities have already sought to host the interim site, but activists from distant parts of the same state have persuaded governors and legislatures to say no.

To get started, in June 2023 the Department set up 13 regional consortia and gave them each $2 million to initiate discussions about volunteering. That is supposed to be a two-year process. At some point, the department will ask for expressions of interest and will then enter further discussions with a smaller group.

How many communities in the U.S. will volunteer is an open question. Canada initially got 22 expressions of interest. The development in November was the Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s selection of one of the two finalists. Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation has not quite agreed to all the details but said it had “voted in a willingness decision/referendum to determine if Nation will progress into a site characterization process.” The vote count was not disclosed. The announcement said that the final project would have to uphold the tribe’s “laws and values.”

It is notable that the other party to the agreement is not the Canadian federal government, but rather a corporate group. Oddly, an enduring relationship and a long-term policy is more likely to come from the private sector than the public, since government policies can change with each election. The demise of Yucca is an example of how government plans can change.

The process requires policy stability because it is so slow. Even if all goes as Canada plans, regulatory approval will not come until 2032, and it won’t open until the mid-2040s

Finland and Sweden have also delegated the process to non-governmental entities, although repositories must still be licensed by government safety organizations, as would a Canadian or a U.S. repository. Finland and Sweden have simpler governmental structures, with a strong central government and local governments. They do not have states or provinces that could block plans despite local acceptance.

Lake Barrett, a former head of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, the part of the Energy Department that was developing Yucca Mountain, said in an e-mail, that the countries that have created private-sector entities to manage the waste are the world leaders—Finland, Sweden, and now Canada. The strength of such a waste management organization is that “it is fairly insulated from political swings,” Barret wrote.

“We need to get the U.S. program out of DOE and, in my view, into a non-profit organization, like [Canada’s] Nuclear Waste Management Organization,” he said

The Canadian experience shows that the issue really is political rather than technical. In fact, the very geologic structure that Canada plans to use is not even unique to Canada, although it is called the Canadian Shield. It extends as far south as central Iowa and is more than 2 billion years old.

Barrett and others believe that with U.S. government cost of maintaining the current nuclear waste paradigm running at more than $2 million a day and rising, there is reason for Washington to to offer enough in benefits to a host location and still minimize total costs for taxpayers and electricity users. The key is “to establish a respectful business-like partnership hosting agreement that benefits all parties,” Barret argues.

The Blue Ribbon Commission’s report made a similar point, calling for “a new, independent, government-chartered corporation focused solely on carrying out that program.” The Energy Department, a descendant of the Atomic Energy Commission, with its legacy of Cold War environmental atrocities, starts at a trust deficit when negotiating with tribes and states.

Another reason that the waste issue remains unresolved in the U.S. is the varying level of emphasis that the parties put on the problem. In some places, like San Onofre in California or the Prairie Island Indian Community, adjacent to the reactors of the same name, the locals are adamant that the waste should be moved. In other places, there is not much fuss over the matter. The most politic\ally powerful entities in the game, the utilities, are divided. Those with operating reactors find the dry casks as an annoying add-on, but those with reactors that have been decommissioned are more eager. Advanced reactor developers have other priorities on the table but would welcome progress that would remove a talking-point against deploying new reactors.

Canada has one advantage that strategy changes can’t fix: all but two of its reactors are in Ontario, the province that will host the site. In contrast, Nevada pointed out over and over that it had no reactors. (Although Yucca was intended for both civilian and military waste, and Nevada did host a major weapons asset, the Nevada Test Site.)

But the underlying point, that there are jobs for decades, and lots of local spending, would seem to be a strong selling point here as well.

• This article has been corrected to clarify that the government’s estimated liability of $47.6 billion to $44.5 billion is in addition to the $11.1 billion it has already paid out in damages.