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258 Fuel Cycle to Nowhere braced by IRG in the late 1970s and by Congress in the 1982 NWPA now appears a mirage : a prospect that, after nearly three decades, is further away than ever. To help solve President Obama’s nuclear policy dilemma, the administration has assembled the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future and charged it with the task, among others, of recommending a plan to deal with the nation’s orphaned SNF and HLW. Current Nuclear Waste Dilemmas and Options LLW The Current Situation Most civilian class A, B, and C LLW is currently disposed of in three privately operated facilities located in Barnwell, South Carolina; Clive, Utah; and Richland, Washington.3 The Washington and South Carolina facilities, which were established in the 1960s, accept class A, B, and C LLW, but Richland is open only to the eleven states in the Northwest and Rocky Mountain Compact, and Barnwell is open only to the three states in the Atlantic Compact. The Utah facility, which was developed wholly through private initiative, is open to wastes from all states but accepts only class A LLW.4 It receives large quantities of such wastes, often of very low activity and shipped for long distances. Since passage of the 1980 LLRWPA and the 1985 LLRWPAA, none of the ten approved state compacts, nor any individual state that has not joined a compact, has opened a new LLW waste disposal site.5 The resulting shortages in disposal capacity have produced higher disposal fees, which in turn have led generators to take measures to reduce the amount of wastes generated and also to reduce the volume of those wastes after they are generated. These steps have reduced the magnitude of the orphan LLW problem, but by no means have they eliminated the problem. Because disposal sites are simply not available to generators of class B and C wastes in many states, and because disposal, when available, is costly, generators are storing many of their class B and C wastes on-site for an indefinite period. The costs and burdens of at-generator storage have created serious problems for many generators.6 And the projected generation in the next several decades of large amounts of additional LLW—primarily class A LLW but also more hazardous LLW, as a result of decommissioning nuclear power plants—will put additional strain on current arrangements.7 A new LLW facility designed to accept class A, B, and C LLW is, however, being constructed at Andrews, Texas, under the auspices of the Texas Compact. Initially it would have accepted waste only from compact members Texas and Vermont, as well the federal government. However, the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Commission recently voted to authorize the Andrews facility to accept class A, B, and C LLW from as many as thirty-six states.8 The decision may well be subject to legal challenge by local groups, and opening Andrews to noncompact states would require a vote of the Texas Compact Commission. However, the commission, which is controlled by Texas, is expected to approve it and to exploit its market power to extract high fees from noncompact states for use of the facility. If the facility becomes available to out-of-compact class A, B and C wastes, it would relieve existing class B and C disposal problems and provide competition with the Clive, Utah, facility for disposing of class A LLW. Lessons Learned and Future Choices 259 DOE is responsible for disposal of all classes of defense LLW and for civilian GTCC wastes. DOE’s own facilities provide a disposal pathway for its class A, B, and C LLW, supplemented by commercial facilities. But DOE still has no disposal plan for defense and civilian GTCC wastes, the most hazardous type of LLW. It remains to be seen whether land disposal of some GTCC wastes, with suitable engineered barriers and institutional controls, at existing DOE or other federal sites, will be environmentally and politically acceptable, or whether GTCC wastes will have to be disposed of in a repository such as WIPP or in a HLW/SNF facility yet to be developed. Strategies for Expanding LLW Disposal Capacity The system, adopted by Congress at NGA’s urging in 1980, of decentralized state initiatives , structured by a federal system of compacts and incentives, has proven a failure. Congress envisaged a system of regional compacts composed of contiguous states that would cooperatively site new disposal facilities for each region. Most of the...

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