Nevada Energy Park Fact Sheet

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So the Republican from Tucson’s far-north suburbs has a sweetener he believes will get some people to change their minds: Money.

He is proposing to make Arizona as the place where all the nuclear plants in the country send their spent nuclear fuel rods. Melvin, a long-time proponent of nuclear energy, said the failure of the federal government to set up a planned high-level radioactive waste dump at Yucca Mountain in Nevada creates an opportunity for Arizona.

Read more: http://azdailysun.com/news/local/state-and-regional/senator-send-used-nuclear-fuel-rods-here/article_7378ba55-a7ed-5e6f-bae3-34c1674dafbc.html#ixzz1kK9lEbIu

Nuclear power, for some, is a vast, emissions-free energy source powering a post-fossil-fuel future that doesn’t cook our planet. For others, it is enough to point at Chernobyl, the vast contaminated wasteland surrounding Fukushima, and thousands of spent fuel rods in ominous, temporary storage pools to suggest a fuel not safe to handle for 240,000 years after its use is an unacceptable way to run our lightbulbs and appliances.

For much of the world, however, shutting down nuclear power will not be an economic option (or even desirable one) for quite some time. The 400 or so reactors worldwide–and a spate of new ones under construction and in the proposal stage–are going to dump their fuel somewhere. Or will they?

See the full story from Fast Company here

Thank you for allowing us to submit this statement.

Nevadans 4 Carbon Free Energy (NV4CFE) is a non-profit organization advocating a change in our nation’s nuclear energy policy from one that treats “spent fuel” as “waste” and supports burying it in the ground for centuries; to a policy that supports reprocessing spent fuel so that it can be used to generate power for decades to come. 

We recognize that current technologies don’t make reprocessing (or transmutation) of spent fuel economically viable in the near future, nor do we understand all there is to know about the by product that can be created through reprocessing and recycling.  That is why we urge the Commission to recommend the creation of an international research center to expand the exploration of reprocessing technologies — from accelerators to reactors.  

We believe a nation that put a man on the moon in 10 years can resolve the current dilemma of how to economically reprocess nuclear spent fuel.  We need the equivalent of the JPL to focus on the problem.  That is why we support the creation of the Nevada Energy Research Park and are asking Congress to allocate funds from the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) Trust Fund to develop this research center that will support large scale reprocessing demonstration projects.  

Once the demonstration projects are completed we will know how much reprocessing will cost and know its impacts.  The construction cost for these projects would come from the Trust Fund that the rate payers have already paid, so no tax dollars would be needed to fund this program.   With the billions of dollars the government is spending to subsidize “green” energy, doesn’t it make sense to use this existing fund to explore how to create carbon free, base load power from a current waste product? 

In addition, this program has the potential to pay for itself and solve the nation’s nuclear waste problem forever.  We know that the current rate of 1 mil per KW hour can generate about $1 billion per year. It should not take much more than that to operate a commercial reprocessing unit.

As you know, the amount of spent fuel stored at over 70 sites around the US already exceeds the amount that was to be stored at Yucca.  Considering the extreme expense and political challenges facing the opening of one repository — and the fact that it is still not open — it is highly doubtful that the US will be able to build another repository to house future stock piles.  Thus, reprocessing and reusing nuclear spent fuel is most likely the only way to economically and “politically” dispose of “nuclear waste.” Older technologies being used in other countries are able to reduce the toxicity and volume of spent fuel by over 50%, meaning we would only need one repository. However, we hope that innovation could actually eliminate “nuclear waste” all together, negating the need to have even one repository!   And since experts say that current stock piles of spent fuel can generate over 5 trillion kilowatts of power – why would we bury such a valuable fuel source?

We urge the Commission to recommend that Nevada host this research center, as we have the ideal site.  The existing infrastructure at Yucca Mountain and the former Nevada Test Site, now the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) provide an ideal location for a nuclear research complex.  More space is needed to build pilot demonstration projects that have only been proven in the lab, and that space is abundant at these contiguous sites in southern Nevada. The existing buildings, roads, and tunnels provide the needed infrastructure to support large projects. The tunnels at Yucca and the NNSS are ideal for hosting linear accelerators – one technology that is proving to be a viable option for reprocessing spent fuel.  The vast areas of land and adequate water supplies can also support the construction and operation of small scale “reprocessing” reactors.  The talented workforce already in place at the NNSS as well as researchers at UNLV provide an immediate, skilled labor pool ready to help create this international center for nuclear research.  

Americans have already invested billions of dollars building these sites – now these sites could be put to use for the benefit of all Americans!

Our vision for the Nevada Energy Research Park would be to host teams from national and international labs, universities, and industry to develop and build large-scale demonstration projects to reprocess spent fuel that could then be used to generate power, or to eliminate the fuel entirely. 

The Nevada Energy Research Park should be operated by a non-profit organization that will oversee the construction and operation of the center, similar to the not-for-profit URA Corporation that manages and operates research facilities such as Fermi Lab in Illinois.  URA’s charter is “to acquire, plan, construct, and operate machines, laboratories, and other facilities, under contract with the Government, for research, development and education in the physical and biological sciences…”  This not-for-profit organizational structure will ensure the participation of the many national and international labs and universities that are currently conducting reprocessing research, bringing together the best minds in the world, working toward a common goal – the elimination of “nuclear waste.” 

While we do not support long-term storage of spent fuel at Yucca Mt., we do support the NRC’s completion of the license review as it seems that process must be concluded before Congress will take further action on the issue.  At the same time, we support Congress amending the NWPA to focus more on reprocessing of spent fuel instead of long term burial.  

Yucca could be used to temporarily store spent fuel while reprocessing technologies are developed to a commercial scale, and we see the benefit of having the fuel all in one remote location.  However, the nuclear energy industry has said that on-site storage is safe for 100+ years, and the research process may show us that “regional” reprocessing centers could be built around the US, reducing the need to ship the fuel across the country.  It will be necessary for researchers to have access to spent fuel for their demonstration projects, so having some fuel shipped to Yucca during the research stage will be necessary. 

We urge the Commission to take a bold step and support expanding research into reprocessing.  This could be the Apollo program for the 21^st Century, but the giant leap you’ll be taking will help mankind discover how to take “waste” and create clean energy that will power innovation for decades to come.

Read more

Read more here.

The pools are generally far more packed than the damaged ones at Fukushima. Some scientists argue that the crowding raises the risk of a fire and makes the pools a tempting target for terrorists.

Several members of Congress are calling for the fuel to be moved from the pools into dry casks at a faster clip, noting that the casks are thought to be capable of withstanding an earthquake or a plane crash, they have no moving parts and they require no electricity.

“We should not wait for an American meltdown to beef up American nuclear safety measures,” Representative Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, who advocates greater reliance on casks, said after the accident in March in Japan. “We must heed the lessons to be learned from the nuclear meltdown in Japan and ensure nuclear safety here.”

via Calls Grow for Spent Nuclear Fuel to Be Stored More Securely – NYTimes.com.

All of the above recommendations are things that NV4CFE has been advocating since its creation, so we are pleased to see the direction that the BRC is heading. But the commission was told he had to ignore Yucca — despite the fact that Yucca is still federal law.  So we doubt outcome of this report will have any impact on the current political reality.

Click here to see the draft reports of the BRC. You can also comment on the recommendations on the site.

Key recommendations include the following:

The United States should proceed expeditiously to develop one or more permanent deep geological facilities for the safe disposal of high-level nuclear waste.

The Subcommittee concludes that permanent disposal is needed under all reasonably foreseeable scenarios for nuclear materials with a low probability of re-use. This includes defense and commercial reprocessing wastes and many forms of used fuel currently in government hands. The Subcommittee believes it is also highly likely that permanent disposal will be needed to safely manage at least some portion of the existing commercial spent nuclear fuel inventory. The need for a disposal solution is, in our view, inescapable. It is also independent of policy debates concerning past or future applications of nuclear technology.

A new, single-purpose organization is needed to develop and implement a focused, integrated program for the transportation, storage, and disposal2 of nuclear waste in the United States.

We conclude that a federal corporation chartered by Congress offers the most promising model, although the Subcommittee believes that other organizational models might also be effective

The agency notified Heritage that it had rejected an appeal under the Freedom of Information Act. The NRC’s decision comes eight months after Heritage first requested volumes II and III of the Yucca report in October. The NRC released more than 1,400 pages in February, but redacted the conclusions. Heritage appealed in March. (Full text of the letter is below.)

The NRC’s reports on Yucca have emerged as a contentious issue on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers have charged that the Obama administration ignored scientific information in a quest to halt the nuclear-waste repository at Yucca Mountain.

Continued at The Foundry.