Fuel Cycle to Nowhere: U.S. Law and Policy on Nuclear Waste

Acknowledgments

xv Acknowledgments This book emerged out of research that we undertook as part of our work with the Consortium for Risk Evaluation with Stakeholder Participation (CRESP), a multidisciplinary consortium of academics at eight universities and a medical school. CRESP conducts and publishes research on the technical, scientific, economic, legal, and policy elements of U.S. nuclear waste policies.1 We found that parts of the policies and their history had been told, some in great depth and in a number of cases informed by the authors’ participation or close familiarity with the events. But we could not find a work that synthesized the various elements into a single comprehensive and objective account of the history and current situation of U.S. nuclear waste law and policy. This book seeks to meet this need. The authors are an academic and an environmental lawyer who have both long worked in the environmental law and policy realm but were not directly involved in the events recounted. In researching and writing this book, we sought to consult original sources but have also necessarily drawn widely on the important contributions of many earlier authors who have written on specific aspects of the history, and on those of experts in government , the academy, and nongovernmental organizations who have examined particular regulatory and legal topics. We are deeply indebted to all of them. Their works are found in the Bibliography. We are deeply grateful for the steadfast support and assistance of the co-directors of CRESP, David Kosson and Charles Powers, and other CRESP colleagues, including especially Lisa Bliss, Jim Clarke, Michael Greenberg, Henry Meyer, and Frank Parker. We are much indebted to Tom Isaacs for reading through an earlier draft of the entire book and offering many valuable comments and suggestions. This book could not have been written without the extensive work of a raft of New York University law students , who undertook substantial portions of the underlying research and cheerfully and diligently checked citations. They include Jacob Berman, Scott Blair, Bridget Burns, Eli Corin, Kirti Datla, Justin Gundlach, Ryan Hooper, Carolyn Kelly, Daniel Kesack, Isaac MacDonald, Kenneth C. Michaels, George Mustes, Derek Scadden, Brandon Schwartz, Philip Smithback, and Chris Suh. We owe special thanks to Alice Byowitz, who worked full time for six months as our principal research assistant, coordinating and integrating all the parts of the book without dropping a stitch, and to James Chapman, who preceded Alice in this role; to George Minot, who read and edited several drafts of the book to the great benefit of the final product; and to our assistant Basilio Valdehuesa for his xvi Fuel Cycle to Nowhere indefatigable energy, skill, and good cheer in securing research materials, generating the bibliography, handling document formatting and production, and assisting us in countless other ways. We also gratefully acknowledge the financial and other support of CRESP, Vanderbilt University, and the U.S. Department of Energy, and of the Filomen D’Agostino and Max E. Greenberg Research Fund at New York University School of Law.2 We also want to thank our patient and highly supportive team at Vanderbilt University Press: the director , Michael Ames; the managing editor, Ed Huddleston; and our exceptional copy editor, Bobbe Needham. Finally, we thank our children, Ian and Emily, for accepting—in most cases with understanding and patience—all the hours that we spent working on this book on weekends and during summer vacation in Maine, and for insistently reminding us of the many joys in life beyond research and writing. This book is, in many ways, truly for them and their brothers and sister, Will, Paul, and Elizabeth. Fuel Cycle to Nowhere ...