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8 Fuel Cycle to Nowhere any overall plan and now include three federal agencies as well as state and local authorities , needs careful examination to determine whether some form of streamlining or reconfiguration is justified. Evolutionary Dynamics in U.S. Nuclear Waste Law and Policy We intend the history presented in this book not only to provide lessons to help improve future nuclear waste law and policy, but also to be of intrinsic interest for what it reveals about the processes of historical change, the interplay of contingencies and systemic factors, and the nature of U.S. political and legal institutions. The history falls into two distinct eras. During the first three decades—from the beginning of the Cold War to the late 1970s—the problem of disposing of the most highly radioactive wastes was largely ignored. During the second three decades, the nation abruptly changed course and mobilized what was intended to be a crash effort to develop repositories for SNF and HLW. That effort has now ended in apparent failure. We stand on the threshold of a third era. The first three decades were dominated by Cold War weapons production and the push to develop civilian nuclear power. The 1946 Atomic Energy Act gave sweeping powers to the AEC. Environmental concerns took a backseat to the arms race. Many nuclear wastes were stored or buried under unsafe conditions, leading to significant releases of radioactivity to the air, soil, and groundwater at AEC facilities. At the same time, AEC successfully pushed and provided significant subsidies for reprocessing SNF from commercial power plants, postponing any consideration of what to do with the waste that would be generated by reprocessing. The 1957 NAS committee report, calling for development of deep geologic repositories for the most dangerously radioactive wastes, was largely ignored. The policy ground began to shift in the late 1960s, in part due to accident and contingency . The role of chance is reflected in the events that produced WIPP. In 1969, a major fire broke out at AEC’s Rocky Flats, Colorado, weapons production facility, forcing AEC to scramble to find a site for disposal of the wastes that had been generated and were being stored there. After several misadventures, the government responded to an overture from city officials of Carlsbad, New Mexico, who expressed interest in hosting a repository. After many further twists and turns, WIPP eventually opened more than twenty years later. More systemic factors—most notably the rise of the environmental movement along with a growing distrust of government, fueled by its callous nuclear bomb testing, the Vietnam War, and other factors—drove a more far-reaching shift in U.S. nuclear waste law and policy. Congress created a raft of ambitious new environmental statutes, while the courts provided expanded access to and remedies for environmental plaintiffs .3 During the 1970s, nuclear power opponents, using new legal tools created by Congress and the courts, mounted extensive litigation that delayed the construction of new nuclear plants and increased their costs. Opponents also succeeded in securing the adoption in California and a dozen other states of moratoriums on construction of new nuclear power plants until disposal of their wastes was assured. These steps, along with widespread public opposition to nuclear power, contributed to a halt in development of new nuclear power plants in the United States. A contingency—or perhaps an accident ...

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