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4 Fuel Cycle to Nowhere should be built—at Yucca Mountain. Nevada steadfastly opposed the facility and delayed its development. Nevada’s resistance and the fortuities of the presidential campaign process led candidate Obama to oppose Yucca. Now that he is president, his administration has dropped Yucca, and with it the longstanding statutory design for developing a repository. Today we seem to be no closer to solving our HLW-SNF waste disposal challenge than we were over fifty year ago, when the NAS issued its call to action . A repository to dispose of these wastes is a mirage on the policy horizon, steadily receding even as we attempt to claim it. The LLRWPA has also failed. In thirty years, the regional compact system that Congress sought to establish has not developed any new disposal facilities to handle the growing stocks of the more hazardous class B and C low-level radioactive wastes (LLW) stored at generator sites in many states that lack access to disposal facilities licensed to receive these wastes. In addition, DOE, which is responsible for the most hazardous category of LLW wastes—those greater-than-class C (GTCC)—has yet to identify a method for their disposal. Dangerous wastes from medical, industrial, and commercial radioactive devices are not adequately regulated. The third and only successful federal nuclear waste disposal program is WIPP. It was not designed in Washington but emerged gradually over twenty years through a step-by-step process of contestation, litigation, and negotiation between DOE and the State of New Mexico, which finally accepted the facility after its concerns and interests had substantially been accommodated. Congress played a largely reactive role through intermittent legislation that determined and cemented some important elements of the evolving WIPP project. Since the facility opened in 1999, WIPP has been disposing of long-lived transuranic (TRU) wastes from nuclear weapons production, without major incident. The tale of the two repositories—failed Yucca and successful WIPP—has important lessons for future policy. Nuclear Waste Disposal: Meeting the Political and Institutional Challenge There are significant technical challenges in identifying the most suitable sites and designing and constructing secure nuclear waste repositories and storage facilities, but—as WIPP demonstrates—we have the means to overcome them. The history shows that the most important and difficult challenges are not technical but political, institutional, and social. Siting and developing repositories and other nuclear waste facilities is a politically fraught enterprise. Many nuclear wastes are indeed highly hazardous if not properly managed. The knowledge and technical means are available to safely manage, store, and dispose of these wastes. But jurisdictional fragmentation, misguided federal policies , and political challenges have impeded our progress in doing so, most notably in the failure to develop and open a repository for disposition of the most highly radioactive defense wastes and spent fuel from civilian nuclear power reactors. The policy challenges of waste disposal are magnified by the public perception of the risks of nuclear waste storage, transportation, and disposal as far greater than most experts estimate. This public perception also has its basis in an important nontechnical reality, however: the government has in the past failed to safely manage the vast amounts of nuclear waste generated at its weapons production facilities. Moreover, there continue to be significant Introduction 5 concerns raised about the adequacy of federal government safety regulation of the tens of thousands of tons of SNF stored at nuclear power plants near populated localities and tribes across the nation, most of it packed in cooling ponds that are potential targets for terrorist attacks. Seen in this light, it is not too difficult to understand public skepticism of the notion that a repository will be safely sited by the government and that the nuclear wastes disposed there will be safely isolated from people and environmental resources in perpetuity. Understanding these and other key factors that shape public perception of nuclear waste risks can help point to sound solutions. Public views of risks are significantly influenced by equity concerns. Localities and states tend to oppose hosting nuclear or other wastes generated elsewhere and want assurances that the burden of hosting nuclear facilities is being fairly shared. Familiarity with nuclear risks and economic factors is also important. There are indications that people who live and work near existing nuclear facilities regard the risks that they present as appreciably lower than do those who live farther away. This difference in perceived risk directly informs political support or opposition. Some localities have expressed interest...

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