Beyond Yucca Mountain: Decentralization and Innovation for U.S

BEYOND YUCCA MOUNTAIN: DECENTRALIZATION AND INNOVATION FOR U.S. NUCLEAR WASTE MANAGEMENT

SEPTEMBER 2019 JAMESON MCBRIDE, JESSICA LOVERING, TED NORDHAUS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The future of nuclear power in the United States depends on the future of nuclear waste management. For nuclear to have a sustainable future in providing clean and reliable electricity, spent fuel from commercial reactors must be handled safely, se- curely, and with the consent of local communities.

Little progress has been made on a nationally centralized nuclear waste repository, as the effort has been dogged by controversy and partisan conflict. Since the pas- sage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, every administration has vacillated on key aspects of commercial nuclear waste policy, including construction of the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository, pursuit of reprocessing capacity, and planning for interim storage facilities.

Over time, the federal government has effectively foreclosed every potential solution other than building the repository at Yucca Mountain. However, since the government is not building the repository, it is failing to meet its self-imposed legal obligations to own and manage waste, and taxpayers are paying legal penalties that amount to billions of dollars per year. Meanwhile, the federal government has suspended collection of the Nuclear Waste Fund from utilities and ratepayers.

Concerns about nuclear waste and its disposal continue to represent a significant source of public opposition to nuclear power, and several states have moratoria on the construction of new commercial reactors until a solution for waste is identified. Because nuclear energy remains the largest source of clean electricity in the Unit- ed States, and expanding nuclear capacity is virtually necessary to achieve deep reductions in carbon emissions, the failure to develop a politically acceptable approach to nuclear waste management is a climate issue too.

The key recommendations of this report are consent-based, decentralized waste storage in the near term, and public investment in innovative waste management technologies for the long term.

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In Part I, we analyze the historical development of US waste policy through to its current impasse. We note the sources of the current dysfunction, as the federal government narrowed the options for waste management and made no substantive progress toward constructing a centralized disposal site.

In Part II, we propose ending the current federally centralized, one-site model and instead decentralizing nuclear waste management by formalizing the existing system of interim dry cask storage.

Currently, nuclear waste is safely managed in cooling pools and dry casks at the sites of existing power plants. Dry cask storage has had a flawless safety record and allows waste to be easily monitored, accessed, and managed. We argue that these decentralized storage sites should be formally licensed as interim storage sites with the consent of local communities. Then, as designated nuclear waste management facilities, the sites can provide benefits to their communities through payments from the Nuclear Waste Fund. For communities that do not consent to on-site storage, waste should be moved to the closest available consolidated interim storage sites that gain consent. Rather than expecting the federal government to build a single, centralized repository, this decentralized policy would formalize the existing successful system and enable it to evolve, with local communities as formal stakeholders.

In Part III, we discuss the need for innovation in advanced waste management technologies to ensure a sustainable nuclear fuel cycle in the long term. We canvass a suite of emerging technologies for waste disposal, waste-fueled reactors, alternative reprocessing techniques, and proposed reforms to the international fuel cycle. We propose expanding the current federal funding and policies for promoting advanced nuclear energy generation to include technologies that would explicitly improve waste management; we also envision the use of decentralized interim waste storage facilities as sites for ongoing innovation for both advanced nuclear generation and disposal technologies.

3 CONTENTS

5 I. The Waste Challenge Reaching the Waste Impasse Expanding the Options and a Vision for the Future 10 II. Formalizing and Improving the Existing Waste System Decentralization Consent-Based Site Selection 17 III. Innovating for the Nuclear Future Alternative Disposal Technologies Waste-Fueled Reactors Recycling and Reprocessing An Innovation Agenda for Waste 35 References

4 THE BREAKTHROUGH INSTITUTE / BEYOND YUCCA MOUNTAIN I. THE WASTE CHALLENGE

The future of nuclear power in the United States depends on the future of nuclear waste management. For political, legal, economic, environmental, and public health reasons, nuclear waste matters. The failure of US nuclear waste management policy is holding back nuclear power, and a change to the current policy is desperately needed.

Nuclear waste continues to be a significant source of public opposition to nuclear power, and the American public is not confident in the government’s current plans for waste management.1 Public opinion polls illustrate a distrust for centralized nuclear waste disposal.2 On occasion, nuclear advocates dismiss the nuclear waste issue as merely “political” and not technical in nature, with the implication that the technical questions have been solved.3 But the remaining public concern around waste management should serve as ample reason to take the issue seriously.

There are numerous economic and legal ramifications from the current dysfunction. The federal government has faced lawsuits due to its inaction on nuclear waste, and taxpayers have been forced to pay at least $7.4 billion to utilities in damages.4 A total of seven states have moratoria on the construction of new nuclear power plants until a waste disposal or reprocessing technology is identified and approved.5 These states include California, Illinois, and New Jersey — three of the biggest potential markets for new nuclear plants. Regardless of the future of nuclear generation technology, these states will have no new nuclear capacity until the waste issue is resolved.

Nuclear waste management matters for public health and environmental steward- ship. Although the existing commercial nuclear waste at reactor sites around the country is stored safely, and properly managed nuclear waste poses little threat to human welfare, public health should still be the primary criterion for nuclear waste policy. The experience with weapons-related military waste can be instructive for the commercial power sector. Difficulties in radioactive cleanup at the nuclear military sites at Hanford, Washington, and Savannah River, South Carolina, illustrate the

5 public health risks of poor waste management. Creating a sustainable nuclear waste regime for the power sector would help mitigate public health risks in the future.

Managing nuclear waste is also a climate issue. A majority of climate stabilization scenarios published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change require nuclear generation to be either sustained or expanded.6 Countries with a high share of their electric generation from nuclear power, like France, have some of the lowest carbon intensities of electricity in the world — whereas Germany, which is phasing out its nuclear reactors, is set to miss its climate targets.7 Current efforts to protect American nuclear plants from closing are driven largely by concerns about carbon dioxide emissions. When reactors have closed, they have been replaced mostly by fossil fuels.8 Thus, achieving rapid decarbonization in the United States requires pro- tecting or expanding our nuclear power supply. Policy solutions for nuclear waste management will help ensure that can happen.

US Power Sector Nuclear Waste by the Numbers

How much waste is there? 81,518 tonnes of high-level waste in storage in the US at the end of 201779 97 percent of all nuclear waste by volume is low- or intermediate-level waste, like contaminated clothing, tools, filters, and reactor components80 3 percent of waste is HLW, mostly spent fuel, but this waste accounts for 95 percent of the radiotoxicity81 Where is it stored? 90 storage installations, mainly near reactor sites, in cooling pools and dry concrete casks82 How much is generated per year? 2,200 tonnes of spent fuel per year in the United States83

Reaching the Waste Impasse

The earliest regimes of US nuclear waste management were characterized by strong federal control and an overwhelming focus on military waste. The first declassified government document on nuclear waste disposal dates from 1957.9 It proposed using geological formations of salt deposits to store waste from nuclear weapons production, which had been stored in the interim at federal sites in Hanford, Wash-

6 THE BREAKTHROUGH INSTITUTE / BEYOND YUCCA MOUNTAIN ington; Oak Ridge, Tennessee; and Savannah River, South Carolina.10 At that point, commercial nuclear power was still in its infancy. Notably, this early report was confident that a future adoption of fuel reprocessing and breeder reactors would limit waste from commercial reactors significantly. Commercial nuclear power grew rapidly in the 1960s and 1970s, largely with light-water reactor designs that used fresh fuel. However, the federal government decided not to reprocess spent nuclear fuel and justified its decision based on perceived proliferation risks.11 The case for the “once-through” (non-reprocessed) nuclear fuel “cycle” was bolstered in the 1980s and 1990s as the decline in Cold War weapons demand and a growth in mining supply drove down the price of uranium, further lessening the need for reprocessed fuel.

In 1982, Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which began the modern era of federal nuclear waste management policy.12 The law mandated that the US Department of Energy (DOE) take ownership of and manage all commercial spent fuel. It also created a Nuclear Waste Fund to collect money from utilities to be used exclusively for waste management and initiated the search for suitable geologic disposal sites. The search for a site continued for five years, focusing on varying geologic regions of Washington, Nevada, Utah, Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana.13 In 1987, Congress abruptly halted the search process and designated Yucca Mountain in southwestern Nevada as the sole site to be studied (or “characterized”) for the disposal of high-level waste (HLW) from commercial reactors. Nevada politicians were angry, and the national media dubbed the move the “Screw Nevada Bill.”14 A freshman Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), just months into his first term, inveighed against the plan on the Senate floor.

The Yucca Mountain site was studied extensively throughout the 1990s, while politicians and analysts raised concerns about the suitability of the geology of the site to be the sole national repository. The legally mandated deadline in 1998 to construct a federal repository, imposed by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, came and went with no repository in sight. In the early 2000s, the Bush administration and Con- gress attempted to move forward with Yucca Mountain as the sole repository site for the US, over the continued objections of Nevada state leaders.15 The DOE and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) began planning and licensing in earnest, until the project was halted at the executive level in 2010 by the Obama administration, under pressure from Harry Reid, who had risen to become the Senate Majority

7 Leader. That same year, President Obama chartered the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future to study the waste problem and present recommendations. The DOE endorsed elements of the Blue Ribbon Commission’s recommendations, such as consent-based siting, in a policy document released in 2013.16 However, the Commission’s main recommendations — including interim storage sites and a new nuclear waste management organization — have not been implemented by Con- gress. A bill reintroduced in the Senate by Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) in April 2019, the Nuclear Waste Administration Act, attempts to implement these Blue Ribbon Com- mission recommendations.17 Similar legislation has been reintroduced multiple times since its initial introduction in 2013. If passed, this would be a promising step forward, though the bill notably still calls for “centralized” storage and repository disposal.

As of mid-2019, the Trump administration has vacillated about Yucca Mountain. The administration has made budget proposals to spend $120 million to restart licensing for the site, but in October 2018, Trump told a Nevada audience that he “would be very inclined to be against it.”18 After a half-century of experience with commercial nuclear power, the history of American waste management has been characterized by narrowing options, political uncertainty, and no substantive progress.

Expanding the Options and a Vision for the Future

After decades of American experience with nuclear technology, no clear policy solutions for commercial nuclear waste have been achieved. The federal government still has the legal responsibility to own and manage waste, but it is failing to do so. This failure has resulted in the federal government being held liable for damages to utilities that amount to billions of dollars — more than $7 billion has been paid back to utilities from the Judgment Fund administered by the Justice Department.19 Absent a change in law or policy, the federal government will continue to have to pay out penalties to utilities for its failure to manage waste. Since 2014, the Nuclear Waste Fund has suspended collection of fees from ratepayers.20 If action is not taken, taxpayers will continue to pay the federal government penalties while the Nuclear Waste Fund sits idle. Each day of inaction threatens to make the problem more difficult — and costly — to solve.

What is the path forward? This report offers a set of policy options to move beyond the spent-fuel stalemate in the near term while articulating a vision for a sustainable

8 THE BREAKTHROUGH INSTITUTE / BEYOND YUCCA MOUNTAIN nuclear fuel cycle in the long term. In Part II, we propose that the United States aban- don its de jure focus on a single, centralized repository and instead formalize the de facto system of dry cask storage to build a regime around regulated, decentralized, and consent-based interim waste storage. In Part III, we discuss innovative waste management options for the long term. These include alternative long-term disposal solutions such as boreholes and vitrification as well as advanced reactors to consume spent fuel. Next, we take a look at the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, ana- lyzing both the US history and international experience with the technology to iden- tify its potential. Finally, we discuss the implications of a renewed American waste management strategy that would promote international security and cooperation.

9 II. FORMALIZING AND IMPROVING THE CURRENT SYSTEM

The current policy regime for nuclear waste management is broken. Here we propose specific reforms in the short term to move beyond the political impasse and make substantive progress. Our framework consists of two recommendations: (1) formalizing the existing system of interim decentralized storage of waste in dry casks and (2) improving the existing system by implementing consent-based siting practices to ensure community involvement.

Decentralization

Current waste management policy is maximally centralized: the federal government is responsible for taking ownership of the waste and conducting disposal. The laws on the books require a centralized federal repository at Yucca Mountain.21 But even if Yucca Mountain were built today, the amount of spent fuel already generated by commercial reactors in the United States would exceed its statutory capacity.22 The federal government would then have to begin the arduous and unlikely process of designing, licensing, and building a second or expanded centralized facility. This is not a sustainable solution. Reform of the scope and scale of waste policy is desperately needed.

The answer might be right in front of us. As US Representative Paul Tonko noted in a House hearing in 2015:

Ironically, we have a long-term storage facility [at Yucca Moun- tain], and yet we do not. And we do not have interim storage facilities or a policy of establishing them, and yet we do. Essen- tially the storage facilities at each of the powerplant sites around the country now serve as de facto interim storage facilities.84

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Despite the de jure policy that requires centralized disposal, the de facto nuclear waste management policy of the US is interim storage in dry casks and spent fuel pools at commercial nuclear power plants. This de facto decentralized regime provides a road map toward a constructive and politically viable waste management system.

A crucial distinction is that decentralized nuclear waste management is not “dereg- ulated” nuclear waste management. The federal government should still exercise strict oversight of all nuclear waste management activities, as they currently do at the dry cask storage installations. However, by starting from the model of the existing dry cask storage regime (which regulators have decades of experience with), there would be less regulatory upheaval than in constructing a single centralized facility, mired in political and technical uncertainties as well as national security risks. De- centralized nuclear waste management sites would also provide more opportunities for regulators to observe and test best practices, which could then be implemented across the country. In comparison, if there were a design flaw at Yucca Mountain, the entire national nuclear waste management system would grind to a halt.

The Success of Dry Cask Storage

Decentralized dry cask storage is the de facto nuclear waste management policy of the United States, but it is widely misunderstood. At first glance, it might appear to be a haphazard solution — dry casks look a bit like concrete silos in a parking lot (Figure 2.1). In reality, dry cask storage has had an excellent safety record, and has been widely implemented both in the US and around the world. It should therefore be a model for sustainable, decentralized nuclear waste management policy.

11 Figure 2.1: Vertical dry cask storage.23

Casks contain spent fuel rods that have cooled in pools for at least three years and for an average of ten years.24 In form, casks are steel canisters that are surrounded by layers of steel and cement to shield radiation.25 The first dry cask storage site was built in 1986 at Surry Station in Virginia. As nuclear power plants ran out of room in their spent fuel pools, and the federal government was unprepared to take custody of the spent fuel, plant operators built dry cask storage sites. As of 2018, 90 decentralized dry cask storage sites were licensed in the US.26 Dry casks are licensed for 20 to 40 years, but the NRC estimates that spent fuel can be managed in pools and casks for 120 years without significant environmental effects.27 Dry casks are not by themselves a solution for long-term disposal, but they function well for near-term management.

Dry cask facilities are known by the NRC as “independent spent fuel storage installations” (ISFSIs) and are licensed in a public process. Sites receive either general licenses, allowing them to accept spent fuel from any source, or specific licenses, which restrict storage to spent fuel from a single source, usually the nearby power plant.28 Most of these ISFSIs are located at operating reactor sites, but ten are

12 THE BREAKTHROUGH INSTITUTE / BEYOND YUCCA MOUNTAIN standalone sites, centered around national laboratories or decommissioned power plants.29 Figure 2.2 illustrates these locations around the country.

Midwest US INDEPENDENT SPENT FUEL 1 Dresden 2 GE Morris (wet) STORAGE INSTALLATIONS 3 Braidwood 4 LaSalle 5 Byron 6 Duane Arnold 7 Quad Cities 8 Clinton Columbia Trojan Big Rock Pt DOE TMI-2 Storage Fitzpatrick Monticello Kewaunee DOE Idaho Spent Fuel Facility Prairie Island Point Beach Palisades Ginna Nine Mile Pt Humboldt Bay LaCrosse Zion Cook Perry 9 6 5 Fermi 11 Northeast Ft Calhoun 10 13 7 41 12 1 23 Beaver Valley 14 Maine Yankee Private Fuel Storage Cooper Davis 15 8 Besse 2 Seabrook Rancho Seco Ft Saint Vrain 16 3 Vermont Yankee Wolf Creek North Anna 4 Yankee Rowe Callaway Surry 5 Pilgrim Shearon Harris Diablo Canyon Watts Bar McGuire 6 Haddam Neck San Onofre Sequoyah Oconee Robinson 7 Millstone Catawba 8 Indian Point Arkansas Browns Ferry Brunswick Summer 9 Palo Verde Nuclear One Vogtle Susquehana 10 Three Mile Island Grand Gulf Farley Hatch 11 Limerick Comanche River Bend 12 Peak Peach Bottom 13 Oyster Creek Waterford 14 Hope Creek South Texas Project St Lucie 15 Crystal River Salem 16 Calvert Cliffs Reactor sites operating general Turkey Point 12 licensed ISFSIs

9 Reactor sites pursuing a general licensed ISFSI 3 Reactor sites have not announced intentions regarding ISFSI

Speciﬁed licensed ISFSIs (at or away from reactor sites) States have at least one ISFSI 15 (No known sites are pursuing a future speciﬁc licensed ISFSI) 34

Figure 2.2: Map of dry cask storage installations which would fit on approximately two and a quarter container ships. Source: NRC.30

The safety record of dry cask storage in the US has been flawless. According to the NRC, in more than three decades since dry cask storage began in the US in 1986, dry casks “have released no radiation that affected the public or contaminated the environment.”31 Furthermore, there have been “no known or suspected attempts to sabotage cask storage facilities.”32 Dry cask storage has advantages over geologic disposal because the aboveground casks can be easily monitored, repaired, and moved. Decentralized dry cask storage has enabled commercial nuclear power to continue in the absence of a centralized waste repository. While politicians and the public have either ignored or criticized them, dry casks have been a success.

13 Federal law should be formalized to license interim storage facilities at decentralized sites across the country. The NRC should continue to inspect decentralized sites regularly in a public, consent-based process. This fundamental transformation in the structure of nuclear waste policy is necessary. The current policy of “railroading” a community into accepting a single top-down, centralized facility has clearly failed.

Consent-Based Site Selection

Decentralized storage would give utilities and regulators the opportunity to expand the search for sites beyond the single congressionally-mandated site at Yucca Mountain. But how should sites be chosen? A host of Obama-era federal nuclear waste policy reviews — including the Blue Ribbon Commission and the 2013 DOE Strategy for the Management and Disposal of Used Nuclear Fuel — have proposed using consent-based siting for future nuclear waste management facilities. Before construction starts, or upon recharacterization, facilities must get explicit consent from local communities, tribes, states, and others directly affected. The 2013 DOE strategy defines consent-based siting:

In practical terms, [consent-based siting] means encourag- ing communities to volunteer to be considered to host a nuclear waste management facility while also allowing for the waste management organization to approach communities that it believes can meet the siting requirements.85

For practical, principled, and political reasons, consent-based siting is a crucial part of any constructive future for US waste management policy and has been the main recommendation of multiple recent reports from independent researchers.33 At first glance, consent-based siting may seem to slow down the site selection process. However, it can actually accelerate the process by allowing multiple sites to be considered in parallel and attracting the most promising sites by acting as a “re- verse auction” in which communities compete for the benefits of hosting interim management sites. These practices have succeeded in peer countries like Finland and Sweden, where they have resulted in speedier and more productive site selection processes than in the US.34 Public support for the principles of consent-based siting

14 THE BREAKTHROUGH INSTITUTE / BEYOND YUCCA MOUNTAIN has been demonstrated in polling.35 Consent-based siting could thus alleviate many of the political concerns that have stalled past waste management efforts.

Figure 2.3: There are currently about 6,500 dry casks’ worth of spent fuel in the US. With each cask roughly the size of a shipping container, all US waste would fit on approximately two-and-a-quarter container ships. Note that in 2013, about 80% of spent fuel assemblies were kept in cooling pools.36

Decentralized and consent-based nuclear waste management has a wide array of benefits. For example, a major political objection to the construction of a centralized nuclear waste repository has been that it would require transportation of waste from reactor sites to the central repository. With long-term, decentralized waste management sites, the need for transportation could be significantly reduced.

The safety record of dry cask storage in the US has been flawless.

If existing ISFSI sites become decentralized interim storage sites, another benefit de- rives from the fact that they are already planned, secured, and licensed — in short, they are already “well-characterized” for nuclear activities. Operating nuclear reactors and ISFSIs at closed reactor sites have disaster preparedness plans and incident response systems that have been regulated and refined for decades. In contrast, a

15 brand-new centralized facility would require entirely new characterization. Further- more, many operating commercial reactors already have strong public support from local communities. A moderate portion of the Nuclear Waste Fund expenditures should be directed to benefit local communities, thus improving the local economic case for storage. If a local community does not consent to long-term licensed waste management, waste should be moved to a nearby storage site in a community that will.

A more robust policy for decentralized nuclear waste management could help ensure that existing nuclear sites continue to provide economic benefits beyond the current lifetime of reactors. For example, some of these sites — which are already licensed and secured — could be redeveloped as innovation hubs for advanced nuclear research, demonstration, and deployment.37 Establishing decentralized nuclear waste facilities could be combined with site-specific incentives for advanced nuclear companies while creating synergies for the nuclear fuel cycle more broadly.

One challenge for decentralized nuclear waste management is selecting the best technology for interim and long-term waste disposal. Dry casks appear adequate for at least medium-term storage of spent fuel, but there are uncertainties about their safety after more than a few centuries. According to the World Nuclear Associa- tion, the safest option for “permanent” management is geological (underground) disposal.38 Fortunately, innovative ideas have been proposed for long-term nuclear waste management that would not require building “miniature Yucca Mountains” at decentralized reactor sites. These emerging technological alternatives for long- term nuclear waste management could work well at decentralized sites and are discussed further in Part III.

16 THE BREAKTHROUGH INSTITUTE / BEYOND YUCCA MOUNTAIN III. INNOVATING FOR THE NUCLEAR FUTURE

The long-term future of nuclear power in the United States depends on the options available for nuclear waste management. If nuclear generation expands in response to concerns about climate change or energy security, concerns about waste would increase as well. In recent years, the federal government has succeeded in promoting advanced nuclear generation technology through innovation policy, and we argue that this framework should be extended to advanced waste disposal technologies.

Recent nuclear power plant construction in the US has, like Yucca Mountain, been fraught with high costs, long delays, and political controversy. Both of the recent large nuclear builds have suffered from these challenges, namely Summer in South Carolina and Vogtle in Georgia.39 Advanced nuclear technology attempts to circumvent the challenges of building traditional nuclear reactors by changing the scale and shape of nuclear power generation to make it smaller, safer, and easier to install. Laws to promote innovation in nuclear energy have passed with bipartisan support in Congress.40 Because the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is clear that nuclear will be necessary for climate change mitigation, nuclear innovation is one of the very few issues on which both American political parties agree with international scientific recommendations for climate action.

Waste disposal can learn from the successes of nuclear innovation. Despite a frac- tious, hyper-polarized political climate, nuclear innovation bills have sailed through Congress, suggesting that a focus on technological innovation may be a viable path for nuclear waste reform to circumvent partisan gridlock.

Alternative Disposal Technologies

The basic disposal technology proposed for Yucca Mountain — digging a large underground cavern in a geologically stable place and sealing off rows of waste casks from the outside world — does not sound like an especially difficult technical endeavor. Nuclear advocates frequently dismiss the technical challenges involved in waste management, claiming that the problems are entirely political.41 But that is a

17 false dichotomy. The political opposition to Yucca Mountain and the technical challenges and costs involved at that site have combined to stall progress on waste disposal in the US altogether. Innovation in waste technology could kill two birds with one stone, by forging bipartisan consensus while creating more options for disposal.

Nuclear advocates frequently dismiss the technical challenges involved in waste management, claiming that the problems are entirely political. But that is a false dichotomy.

As an alternative to the Yucca Mountain model, one long-established idea has been to use deep boreholes to store waste. A large research group at MIT has focused on this technology, and the concept has had personal support from former Secretary of Energy Ernie Moniz.42 The most recent example of innovation in deep borehole technology is Deep Isolation. This start-up uses horizontal drilling, a technology developed for shale gas extraction, to create boreholes that are thousands of feet underground — several times deeper than Yucca Mountain’s. Canisters of waste are then emplaced into the boreholes, deep enough to reduce risks to aquifers and from seismicity. Deep Isolation claims that it can achieve this disposal at a fraction of the cost of traditional “cavern-like” geological disposal and demonstrated the technology for the first time in January 2019.43 Because the land area required for borehole disposal is relatively small, this technique could function as decentralized waste disposal. It could be used at individual nuclear plant sites to keep the spent fuel where it was generated and decrease the need for transportation. However, significant challenges remain — such as securing federal and local regulatory ap- proval, ensuring community consent, and beginning construction on a first-of-a-kind operating disposal facility.

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Figure 3.1: Schematic of Deep Isolation technology.44

Another alternative technology for waste management is vitrification. This process creates glass using silica and liquid radioactive material, which results in the radioactive material becoming immobilized and thus safer to manage. A vitrification plant is already in construction at the Hanford site for US military waste, and multiple vitrification plants operate abroad.45 Vitrification could also have synergies with reprocessing, since reprocessing generates high-level liquid waste, which is a particularly suitable form for vitrification.46

Federal research, development, and demonstration funding for vitrification could bring down costs and make the technology more competitive with other solutions for managing commercial waste. For example, researchers at the University of Sheffield demonstrated that vitrification of plutonium waste using slag from blast furnaces has

19 the potential to reduce the volume of waste by as much as 95 percent.47 Mean- while, Rutgers engineers have launched a significant research program to investigate glass- and ceramic-based storage technologies.48 If the federal government provided funding for disposal, vitrification could be implemented widely today. In 2017, vitrification capacity for (post-reprocessing) waste in Western Europe was estimated at 1,000 metric tons per year — nearly half of the 2,200 tons of (non-reprocessed) waste produced in the US per year.49 Vitrification is not a complete solution, as the glass product must still be safely managed. Nevertheless, expanding the use of vitrification could make nuclear waste easier, cheaper, and safer to manage — and could be implemented on sites in a decentralized system.

Figure 3.2: A vitrification experiment at the Pacific Northwest National Labora- tory.50

Many technologies have less obvious roles to play in the waste disposal process. For example, advances in tunnel boring could directly help with constructing geological repositories, though they are more commonly discussed in the context of high-speed transportation.51 Air caster technology has been demonstrated to make on-site transport of some radioactive materials faster and safer.52 And materials science promises to improve our ability to make protective casks and canisters longer

20 THE BREAKTHROUGH INSTITUTE / BEYOND YUCCA MOUNTAIN lasting and more resistant to accidents.53 As is often the case in innovation policy, significant spillover happens between seemingly discrete areas of technological advancement.

Waste-Fueled Reactors

The concept of a reactor that can “consume” waste has been long discussed — and long understood to be technically feasible — but has never widely taken hold in the US. Breeder and “burner” reactors, which can help “recycle” fuel and thus result in significantly less waste, have been proposed in the US since the beginning of commercial nuclear power in the 1950s. On the site of the first commercial nuclear plant in the US, at Shippingport in Pennsylvania, a demonstration breeder reactor operated from 1977 to 1982.54 However, in order to support a large fleet of traditional breeder reactors, waste reprocessing would be necessary. As discussed below, the US historically chose not to pursue large-scale reprocessing owing to political concerns about nuclear weapons proliferation, so early breeder technology was stifled.

A new generation of innovative reactor designs has been proposed to give waste-burning technology another chance. The most prominent start-up was Tran- satomic Power, which designed a molten-salt reactor that was originally intended to consume non-reprocessed waste as fuel. However, the company folded in late 2018 after it emerged that some of the research behind its core concept was incor- rect.55 However, Transatomic open-sourced its technology to help give the design a chance to thrive outside of a single company.

Meanwhile, other companies are still pressing forward. A consortium involving Gen- eral Electric and Hitachi is developing a reactor called PRISM, a high-energy neu- tron (“fast”) reactor that can run on spent fuel.56 The companies claim that PRISM re- cycles 95 percent of the usable energy of nuclear waste. Another company, Moltex Energy, based in the United Kingdom, has a stable salt reactor design that also aims to use waste as fuel. That design has already attracted interest from governments in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Estonia.57 Most of these designs are also smaller and more modular than traditional-scale reactors, aiming to be less expensive over- all and faster to produce. However, government support in the form of funding for demonstrations or market incentives, like those given to renewable energy projects, will be needed to accelerate the commercialization of these reactors.

21 Recycling and Reprocessing

In the long term, recycling and reprocessing nuclear waste in the US could lead to a more sustainable nuclear fuel cycle. If US nuclear generation grew rapidly as a response to the threat of climate change, or if world uranium supply suddenly be- came constrained, reprocessing could become an indispensable solution for both waste management and fuel production. However, owing to limitations on current technology and low prevailing uranium prices, the best path forward is to accelerate research and development (R & D) for alternative reprocessing technologies.

In the long term, recycling or reprocessing nuclear waste in the US could lead to a more sustainable nuclear fuel cycle.

Reprocessing helps close the fuel cycle by recycling spent fuel to generate electricity. After fuel has been used in a reactor, it still contains as much as 95 percent of its useful energy.58 Spent fuel is already reprocessed in several countries in Europe and Asia, but not currently in the US. Reprocessing technologies have the potential to decrease the amount of commercial HLW to be stored and disposed, while improving the performance of existing reactors and expanding the domestic supply of nuclear fuel. The federal government should increase R & D funding for reprocessing technology, aiming to bring the cost down to compete with a once-through fuel cycle. Additionally, the government could subsidize reprocessing as a service to reduce the radiotoxicity of existing waste. Government-sponsored innovation is needed to ensure that reprocessing can be a viable option in our long-term nuclear waste management strategy.

Technological Options for Reprocessing

The globally dominant form of reprocessing technology uses a metallurgical method called PUREX (plutonium uranium redox extraction) to salvage useful plutonium and

22 THE BREAKTHROUGH INSTITUTE / BEYOND YUCCA MOUNTAIN uranium from spent fuel rods. The PUREX process can recover as much as 25 percent more energy from fuel when compared with conventional once-through use.59 Once recovered, the recycled plutonium and uranium-235 are used to fabricate MOX (mixed-oxide) fuel, which could be used in most conventional American light-water reactors with relatively minor adjustments.

Figure 3.3: The French reprocessing facility at La Hague has more than half of the world’s total light-water reactor fuel reprocessing capacity.60

Reprocessing technology has a long history of operation across multiple countries. The best-known reprocessing facility is in France, at La Hague, which takes waste from domestic French reactors and international sources to create MOX fuel. France also uses a large amount of reprocessed fuel in its commercial nuclear fleet — twen- ty of the French reactors run on 30 percent reprocessed MOX fuel.61 But reprocessing is not just a French phenomenon — it is also done in the United Kingdom, Russia, Japan, and India to fabricate a variety of different types of fuel (Figure 3.4).

23 Figure 3.4: Global commercial reprocessing capacity in 2018. Source: World Nuclear Association.62

To be clear, reprocessing does not eliminate nuclear waste altogether. Reprocessing still generates a significant amount of waste — but crucially, much of this waste is low-level waste, which can be managed relatively easily and does not require iso- lated disposal for thousands of years.63 Reprocessing technologies have the potential to decrease amounts of HLW, which is the “hottest” and most problematic waste to dispose.64

In particular, advanced (non-PUREX) reprocessing technologies have the potential to decrease volumes of HLW by more than a factor of five (Figure 3.5). UREX (ura-

24 THE BREAKTHROUGH INSTITUTE / BEYOND YUCCA MOUNTAIN nium extraction) removes the remaining uranium from used fuel, which can then be used as reprocessed uranium and thus significantly decrease the volume of resultant wastes. However, because reprocessed uranium is unlikely to be economically useful, given currently low prices in the uranium market, the primary motivation for this technology would be to reduce the volume of waste. Pyroprocessing uses electrore- fining techniques to extract more uranium and actinides (heavy radioactive elements) from used fuel at high temperatures, which can then be consumed by fast reactors.65 The technology was first developed at the Argonne National Laboratory, which continues to lead pyroprocessing research.66 Although these two techniques are some of the most prominent alternative reprocessing technologies, there are many others under consideration, including TRUEX (transuranic extraction), DIAMEX (diamide extraction), SANEX (selective actinide extraction), strontium-based aqueous methods, and electrochemical ion-exchange reprocessing.

Figure 3.5: Reprocessing technologies and annual waste production scenarios for the United States.67

25 Reprocessing has long been hotly debated in the nuclear waste management dis- course. Whereas opponents of reprocessing often claim that it increases the amount of total waste, they often fail to account for the significant difference in the kinds of waste produced as well as the significant variation in technologies and processes used, as illustrated above.68 Nonetheless, reprocessing is not a panacea. We are not proposing that the US should aim to completely close its fuel cycle in the next few decades. Instead, with sufficient R & D funding, reprocessing should be seen as a way to expand the potential options for long-term waste management and a possi- ble means to achieve a more sustainable fuel cycle in the future.

American Experience with Reprocessing

The “nuclear fuel cycle” is not really a cycle in the US. After nuclear fuel is used in a US reactor, it is placed in a cooling pool, and eventually a dry cask, while awaiting final isolation and disposal. This “open” or “once-through” fuel cycle has been part of the implicit nuclear waste management policy of the US for decades. But like much of our de facto waste policy, our reprocessing policy has had a tumultuous and indecisive formation.

The history of reprocessing in the US is widely misunderstood. Opponents frequently claim that it was permanently banned by the federal government during the Carter administration, thus forever foreclosing it as an option in the US. The ban was actually temporary, so the real history is more complex. Reprocessing was actually done in the US, including at a commercial, privately owned facility called the West Valley Project that operated in Upstate New York between 1966 and 1972.69 The West Valley Project reprocessed only weapons-related waste and suffered problems due to poor management, immature technology, and regulatory uncertainty, which forced it to close after six years.

After the West Valley Project closed, several decades of rudderless inaction on reprocessing in the US followed. The Carter administration announced that commercial reprocessing efforts would be “indefinitely banned” after 1977, owing to concerns about the proliferation of nuclear weapons.70 Just four years later, in 1981, the Reagan administration reversed Carter’s policy and lifted the short-lived ban on reprocessing. But the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 collected fees for the disposal of nuclear waste that were relatively low and therefore did not incentivize the development of

26 THE BREAKTHROUGH INSTITUTE / BEYOND YUCCA MOUNTAIN reprocessing technology.71 Meanwhile, reprocessed fuel remained more expensive than newly fabricated fresh fuel. In the following decades, presidents George H.W. Bush and Clinton both recognized that the implicit policy of the US was not to reprocess spent fuel.72 From 1977 to 2000, the federal government achieved no progress on reprocessing, in terms of either deployment or lowering costs — while the plan for the long-term repository at Yucca Mountain likewise achieved nothing.

In 2000, the US and Russia signed an international nuclear weapons accord, the Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement, which revived interest in Amer- ican reprocessing of nuclear waste. Under the treaty, the US was obligated to construct a reprocessing facility to handle weapons-grade and military-related waste.73 A facility was planned at the federal Savannah River Site in South Carolina, which would have fabricated MOX fuel that could be used in commercial power reactors. However, the project faced significant economic and political headwinds and was shelved in 2018 after being about 70 percent completed, amid souring US-Russia relations.74 As of 2019, there are no other plans for reprocessing facilities in the US.

International Examples of Reprocessing Facilities

France The French facility at La Hague, in Normandy on the English Channel, is the world’s largest reprocessing facility with a capacity of 1,700 tonnes per year (Figure 3.4).86 It was construct- ed to support the French nuclear military program but was converted to civilian operations in the 1970s and is now operated by the French nuclear company Orano. Many countries have shipped spent fuel here, including Japan, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Italy.87 It provides recycled MOX fuel, which is used in the commercial French nuclear energy fleet.

United Kingdom The British facility at Sellafield, in Northwest England, is near the site of one of the world’s first commercial-scale nuclear power reactors at Calder Hall. It consists of 1,500 tonnes of Mag- nox (magnesium-aluminum) fuel reprocessing capacity and 600 tonnes of THORP (thermal oxide) reprocessing capacity (Figure 3.4).88 The reprocessing facilities at Sellafield are undergoing decommissioning, as they have reached the end of their designed life spans and using up all technically usable fuel. Final decommissioning of the THORP capacity was completed in 2018, and decommissioning of the Magnox reprocessing capacity is expected in 2020.89 In the near term, the United Kingdom appears to be exiting reprocessing.

27 Japan Japan has an active and ambitious reprocessing program, in part because the country has negligible domestic uranium resources. A pilot MOX facility at Tokai, which began operation in 1977, is currently undergoing decommissioning.90 Meanwhile, a large and controversial MOX facility at Rokkasho has been under construction and testing since the early 1990s, has seen significant delays, and expects initial operation in 2021.91 The Rokkasho site is also nota- ble for including a vitrification facility and a storage facility for HLW. Plans have been made to utilize the resultant MOX fuel in Japanese reactors; however, regulatory changes after the 2011 earthquake have significantly delayed progress, and reprocessing remains a contested issue of nuclear policy in Japan.

India India has four PUREX reprocessing plants at three sites in Trombay, Tarapur, and Kalpakkam. A plant at Tarapur began operation in 2011, and another entirely new plant at Kalpakkam has been under construction since 2011.92 Reprocessing in India has been a persistent source of concern from the international community because India is a nuclear weapons state that has not signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons or the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Additionally, most Indian reprocessing facilities are not protected by Interna- tional Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards, and it is unclear whether they are also used to produce plutonium for weapons.93 However, India has a unique arrangement with the IAEA and a waiver from the Nuclear Suppliers Group, which enable its participation in the global nuclear industry.94 Nonetheless, for these reasons, reprocessing in India remains controversial.

Russia The official goal of the Russian state-owned nuclear corporation Rosatom is to close the fuel cycle by 2030; however, as of 2011, only 16 percent of Russian spent fuel was being reprocessed.95 Commercial reprocessing started in 1977, and including military capacity, Russian reprocessing capacity in 2013 had reached 880 tonnes per year.96 As discussed in the following box, a major goal of Russian nuclear policy is to increase exports and acquire more leverage in the international nuclear market. Russian reprocessing has enabled the creation of “takeback” agreements for used fuel that make Russia more attractive as a nuclear supplier.

Pathways to Reprocessing in the United States

Reprocessing should be considered in any thorough re-evaluation of US nuclear waste policy. The most obvious, though perhaps suboptimal pathway to begin reprocessing at scale in the US would be to complete construction of the military MOX plant at the Savannah River Site, discussed above. Completing the large reprocessing plant would help the US meet its treaty obligations, decrease weapons-material

28 THE BREAKTHROUGH INSTITUTE / BEYOND YUCCA MOUNTAIN stockpiles, and create a domestic source of reprocessed MOX fuel. But without significant, focused political will, the high costs and unpopularity of the Savannah River Site mean that progress there is unlikely in the near term.

A better pathway than developing the Savannah River Site would be to increase federal support for research, development, and demonstration of alternative reprocessing technologies, aiming to bring down costs and expand technological options. Although the basic PUREX and MOX-fabrication processes are well established internationally, other technologies could fare better in the heterogenous and decentralized US market. As Figure 3.5 illustrates, adopting alternative reprocessing technologies could result in greater reductions in waste quantities. To that end, the US should focus on R & D for a range of reprocessing technologies as opposed to focusing on a large Savannah River–style plant. A small percentage of the Nuclear Waste Fund should be disbursed to research projects and firms that work on reprocessing. In 2018, less than 10 percent of the DOE’s nuclear research budget was spent on R & D for used fuel disposition. Meanwhile, the federal government could study the feasibility of sending US waste to be reprocessed internationally, likely in France, in order to support the international reprocessing market.

29 Figure 3.6: After spiking in the mid-2000s, uranium prices have remained low.75

As with all aspects of nuclear waste policy, significant challenges remain to reprocessing in the US. First among them are the low prevailing uranium prices in recent years (Figure 3.6). Low commodity prices reduce the economic incentives to reprocess waste and have resulted in several North American uranium mines suspending production.76 However, the global supply glut may not persist in the long term, especially if demand for nuclear power grows in a carbon-constrained world, particularly from emerging economies in Asia and Africa.

Meanwhile, there are national security benefits to having a domestic source of nuclear fuel, which would reduce US exposure to political risk in countries like Ka- zakhstan, Niger, Namibia, and Russia — four of the six largest producers of uranium globally.77 Reprocessing could also reduce the need for uranium mining, which has long been a source of environmental justice concerns, as mining has caused public health problems in Native American communities. Whereas low uranium prices make commercial-scale reprocessing uneconomic in the near term, increasing R & D funding would help ensure that reprocessing would provide a “backstop” option if uranium becomes scarce in the long term. Reducing uranium mining and creating a sustainable recycled nuclear fuel cycle are ancillary, noneconomic reasons to keep the reprocessing option open.

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Another persistent source of opposition has been concerns about proliferation — in- deed, President Carter’s short-lived ban on US reprocessing was originally intended to set a good example for the world to reduce nuclear proliferation risks. Howev- er, close allies like France, Japan, and the United Kingdom pursued reprocessing anyway. Another common proliferation-related concern is that it would increase the quantity of plutonium in the US, which could potentially be stolen or fall into the hands of terrorist groups seeking to make a bomb. These are legitimate concerns. If a facility enters operation, a strong system of safeguards should be implemented as well. But in a post-Cold War era faced with the threat of climate change, it is much less clear how domestic US reprocessing would cause overwhelming proliferation risks. American policymakers will need to weigh the strength of international safeguards regimes, the threat of climate change, and the need for reprocessed nuclear fuel against the potential proliferation risks. Regardless, other countries have ignored the US and moved forward with reprocessing, diminishing the US’s importance in the global nuclear market and making a symbolic American position less relevant. As we discuss in the box below “Internationalizing the Fuel Cycle,” rationalizing the US nuclear waste regime could provide benefits for international security and cooperation.

31 Internationalizing the Fuel Cycle

The failure of the United States to create a sustainable policy regime for nuclear waste management has made the American nuclear industry less competitive and has reduced the power of the US to influence international cooperation and security.

The US has a long history of using commercial nuclear trade to ensure nuclear security by putting strict limitations on foreign countries’ bilateral trade agreements to control US-origin nuclear technologies and sensitive materials. In this way, the US has historically been the global leader in nonproliferation standards. However, as US exports of nuclear technology have declined in recent decades and given way to increased competition from Russia, China, and South Korea, our ability to set international security standards is also at risk.

Because the US has not solved the back end of its own fuel cycle, American nuclear export- ers are less competitive on the international market. In contrast, Russia offers fuel takeback, reprocessing, and repatriation of spent fuel for Russian-origin reactors operating abroad. For countries looking to build their very first nuclear power plant, these fuel services can be very attractive, eliminating or delaying the development of domestic waste management capabilities. Russia also makes a profit on these fuel service contracts.97 France and the United Kingdom have also handled waste from foreign countries, further reducing the number of countries that can legitimately claim a need for domestic reprocessing facilities.

The concept of an internationally coordinated nuclear fuel cycle has been discussed since the dawn of the commercial industry but revived in the 1970s with a cohort of nuclear newcom- ers.98 Although complete international control of the fuel cycle is politically infeasible today, the idea of international facilities for spent fuel is more realistic and could provide significant security benefits. In the mid-2000s, in response to an anticipated nuclear renaissance, another round of reports called for internationalization of the fuel cycle.99,100 These tended to focus on the front end of the fuel cycle, where the US would not be a natural leader. However, the concept of hosting spent fuel for other countries still holds promise for the US.

The government of Australia has formally explored the concept of hosting nuclear waste.101 Such an international facility would make nuclear power more feasible in less developed countries and reduce the amount of nuclear materials dispersed globally. A recent MIT anal- ysis of South Australia’s ability to host spent fuel found that such a program could generate significant revenue that could then be invested in the country’s first nuclear power projects.102

Ultimately, making progress on spent fuel management in the US would not only help the domestic industry but also strengthen nuclear security internationally.

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An Innovation Agenda for Waste

How can we make the promise of advanced nuclear waste management technologies a reality? The federal government must play a leading role. Although it seems unable to construct a centralized repository, the government is actually quite good at supporting high-risk, early-stage technologies, as has been empirically demonstrated in dozens of cases since World War II.78 Federal nuclear policy is in transition, as Congress and federal regulators reorient toward bringing advanced reactors to market. During this transition, explicit policy support should be given to innovative firms that propose new techniques for managing nuclear waste. Useful policy levers include loan guarantees, streamlined and clarified licensing regimes, and increased funding for basic research and demonstration projects.

How can we make the promise of advanced nuclear waste management technologies a reality? The federal government must play a leading role.

There are many synergies between an innovation policy for nuclear waste and other key waste policy objectives. For example, given an increased focus on decentralized interim storage, more sites could be characterized for waste disposal and demonstration using a variety of technologies. Furthermore, if the Nuclear Waste Fund were opened to decentralized long-term waste management sites and solutions, these sites could also be characterized as “innovation hubs” for emerging nuclear generation and waste management technologies. In the nearer term, there seem to be obvious parallels between nuclear waste and climate change. Although the US government seems unable to act in a coordinated fashion on climate change, it is actually very good at supporting energy innovation across diverse technologies that would help mitigate it. Similarly, although the US government has repeatedly failed to comprehensively address the nation’s nuclear waste disposal needs, an innovation agenda for waste could break the deadlock and set the stage for real progress.

33 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Breakthrough Institute is a 501(c)3 nonprofit environmental research center based in Oakland, California that identifies and promotes technological solutions to environmental and human development challenges.

The authors are grateful to the following peers who reviewed and provided helpful suggestions for sections of this report: Matt Bowen (Clean Air Task Force), Rod Baltzer and Samuel Brinton (Deep Isolation), Ashley Finan (Nuclear Innovation Alliance), Michael McBride (Van Ness Feldman), and Katie Tubb (Heritage Foun- dation). The authors extend a special thanks to Kenton de Kirby, the Breakthrough Institute’s Content Director, for managing the production process and providing con- tinuous research and writing help.

Design, layout, images, and graphics were overseen by Alyssa Codamon, the Breakthrough Institute’s Multimedia Producer.

Fact-checking and copy editing were performed by Lisa J. Smith.

All errors and opinions are those of the authors.

Jameson McBride is the Senior Research Analyst at the Breakthrough Institute, where he studies clean energy economics and policy. His writing on US nuclear and climate issues has been published in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Greentech Media.

Jessica Lovering is a PhD student in Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mel- lon University and was Director of Energy at Breakthrough from 2015 to 2019.

Ted Nordhaus is the Executive Director and cofounder of the Breakthrough Institute.

34 THE BREAKTHROUGH INSTITUTE / BEYOND YUCCA MOUNTAIN REFERENCES 1 MIT, “The Future of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle,” 2011, http://medcontent.meta press.com/index/A65RM03P4874243N.pdf%0Ahttps://mitei.mit.edu/system/ files/The_Nuclear_Fuel_Cycle-all.pdf; OECD Nuclear Energy Agency, “Public At- titudes to Nuclear Power,” 2010, https://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/reports/2010/ nea6859-public-attitudes.pdf.

2 National Research Council, Disposition of High-Level Radioactive Waste Through Geological Isolation: Development, Current Status, and Technical and Poli- cy Challenges (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 1999), https://doi. org/10.17226/9674; OECD Nuclear Energy Agency. “Public Attitudes to Nuclear Power,” 2010. https://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/reports/2010/nea6859-public-attitudes.pdf.

3 See for example Jim Hopf, “An Illustration of the Real Nature of the Nuclear Waste Problem,” ANS Nuclear Cafe, February 24, 2016, http://ansnuclearcafe. org/2016/02/24/an-illustration-of-the-real-nature-of-the-nuclear-waste-problem/#sthash.cV1ldyqh.dpbs.

4 Sonal Patel, “Industry Groups to Congress: Inaction on Nuclear Waste Not an Option,” POWERMag, December 6, 2018, https://www.powermag.com/industry-groups-to-congress-inaction-on-nuclear-waste-not-an-option/.

5 Scott Hendrick, “State Restrictions on New Nuclear Power Facility Construc- tion,” 2017, http://www.ncsl.org/research/environment-and-natural-resources/ states-restrictions-on-new-nuclear-power-facility.aspx.

6 Jameson McBride, “Nuclear for 1.5 C: Hope and Fantasy in Equal Mea- sure,” The Breakthrough Institute, 2018, https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/nuclear-for-1-5-c.

7 Andrea Thomas, “Germany Falling Short of Emissions Targets,” The Wall Street Journal, January 24, 2018, https://www.wsj.com/articles/germany-falling-short-of-emissions-targets-1516813406.

35 8 Katherine Tweed, “US Nuclear Retirements Largely Replaced by Fossil Fu- els,” Greentech Media, October 31, 2016, https://www.greentechmedia.com/ articles/read/us-nuclear-retirements-largely-replaced-by-fossil-fuels#gs.gq9z7k.

9 Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board, "The Disposal of Radioactive Waste on Land," 1957, http://dels.nas.edu/Report/Disposal-Radioactive-Waste/10294.

10 National Research Council, Disposition of High-Level Radioactive Waste Through Geological Isolation: Development, Current Status, and Technical and Pol- icy Challenges. Also note that this essentially happened: the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico stores weapons-related waste in salt.

11 Ibid. See Part III for more discussion of reprocessing.

12 Lander Country Nuclear Waste Program, “History of Yucca Mountain Proj- ect,” 2014, http://landercountynwop.com/historical.htm.

13 Barry D Solomon and Diane M Cameron, “Nuclear Waste Repository Sit- ing: An Alternative Approach,” Energy Policy 13, no. 6 (1985): 567, https://doi. org/https://doi.org/10.1016/0301-4215(85)90007-2.

14 John J. Fialka, “The ‘screw Nevada Bill’ and How It Stymied US Nuclear Waste Policy,” The New York Times, May 11, 2009.

15 Jackson, Brooks. “Yucca Mountain Mudslide: Both Sides Dissemble on Nu- clear Waste Dump in Nevada.” FactCheck.Org (blog), August 25, 2004. https:// www.factcheck.org/2004/08/yucca-mountain-mudslide-both-sides-dissemble- on/.

16 Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, “Blue Ribbon Com- mssion on America’s Nuclear Future: Report to the Secretary of Energy” (Wash- ington, DC, 2012); US Department of Energy, “Strategy for the Management and Disposal of Used Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste,” 2013.

17 Lisa Murkowski, “Nuclear Waste Administration Act of 2019” (2019), https:// doi.org/10.1177/0002716211038002S06.

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18 Ari Natter, “Democrats Seize on Trump’s Remarks About Nevada’s Yucca Nuclear Dump,” Bloomberg Climate Changed, October 29, 2018.

19 Patel, “Industry Groups to Congress: Inaction on Nuclear Waste Not an Option.”

20 Robert Nordhaus, Michael McBride, and Athena Kennedy, “Nuclear Waste Fee to Be Suspended Indefinitely,” Van Ness Feldman Alerts, November 21, 2013, https://www.vnf.com/1099.

21 Namely, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (1982, as amended 1987).

22 Aaron Ford, “The Fight Against Yucca Mountain,” Nevada Attorney General, 2012, http://ag.nv.gov/Hot_Topics/Issue/Yucca/.

23 US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Photos & Video Web Portal. https:// www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/photo-gallery/

24 US NRC, “Spent Fuel Storage in Pools and Dry Casks: Key Points and Ques- tions & Answers,” US NRC Backgrounders, 2017, https://www.nrc.gov/waste/ spent-fuel-storage/faqs.html.

25 US NRC, “Dry Cask Storage,” 2019, https://www.nrc.gov/waste/spent-fuel-storage/dry-cask-storage.html.

26 US NRC, “US Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installations (ISFSI) Map,” NRC, 2018, https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1826/ML18269A344.pdf.

27 US NRC, “Spent Fuel Storage in Pools and Dry Casks: Key Points and Ques- tions & Answers.” Thanks to Brett Rampal of Clean Air Task Force for clarification on this point.

28 US NRC Office of Public Affairs, “Dry Cask Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel,” US NRC Backgrounders, 2016, https://doi.org/10.3327/jaesj.31.331.

29 US NRC, “US Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installations (ISFSI) Map.”

37 30 Ibid.

31 US NRC Office of Public Affairs, “Dry Cask Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel.”

32 Ibid.

33 Bipartisan Policy Center Nuclear Waste Council, “Moving Forward with Consent-Based Siting for Nuclear Waste Facilities,” 2016; Reset Initiative, “Reset of America’s Nuclear Waste Management: Strategy and Policy,” 2018.

34 Katie Tubb and Jack Spencer, “Real Consent for Nuclear Waste Manage- ment Starts with a Free Market,” 2016, http://www.heritage.org/environment/report/real-consent-nuclear-waste-management-starts-free-market.

35 Hank C Jenkins-Smith et al., “Public Views and Preferences about Con- sent-Based Siting in the United States,” Sandia National Laboratory SAND2017, no. 1760C (2017): 1–5.

36 “Updated EIA Survey Provides Data on Spent Nuclear Fuel in the United States - Today in Energy - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).” Accessed September 17, 2019. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=24052.

37 “First Partner Announced for New Brunswick SMR Project,” World Nuclear News, July 10, 2018, http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NN-First-partner-announced-for-New-Brunswick-SMR-project-1007187.html.

38 World Nuclear Association, “Radioactive Waste Management,” WNA In- formation Library, 2018, https://doi.org/10.1115/icem2010-40058.

39 Sonal Patel, “How the Vogtle Nuclear Expansion’s Costs Escalated,” POW- ERMag, September 24, 2018.

40 Julian Spector, “Trump Signs Another Bipartisan Law to Boost Advanced Nu- clear,” Greentech Media, January 17, 2019, https://www.greentechmedia.com/ articles/read/bipartisan-law-advanced-nuclear.

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41 See for example Hopf, “An Illustration of the Real Nature of the Nuclear Waste Problem.”

42 MIT Energy Initiative, https://energy.mit.edu/research/deep-borehole-disposal-spent-nuclear-fuel/, and James Conca, “Can’t We Just Throw Our Nuclear Waste Down A Deep Hole ?,” Forbes, March 5, 2015.

43 “Private Company Successfully Demonstrates Deep Geologic Disposal of Prototype Nuclear Waste Canister,” POWERMag, 2019, https://www.powermag. com/press-releases/private-company-successfully-demonstrates-deep-geologic-disposal-of-prototype-nuclear-waste-canister/.

44 “Technology.” Deep Isolation (blog). Accessed September 17, 2019. https:// www.deepisolation.com/technology/.

45 World Nuclear Association, “Treatment and Conditioning of Nuclear Wastes,” WNA Information Library, 2017, https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-wastes/treatment-and-conditioning-of-nuclear-wastes.aspx, and US Department of Energy Office of River Protection, “What Is Vitrification?,” Hanford Vit Plant, 2007, https://www.hanfordvitplant.com/vitrification-101.

46 IAEA, “Design And Operation Of High Level Waste Vitrification And Storage Facilities,” Technical Report Series No. 339, 1992, 2-3.

47 Shemina Davis, “Volume of Nuclear Waste Could Be Reduced by 90 per Cent Says New Research,” Univerity of Sheffield, 2013, https://www.sheffield. ac.uk/news/nr/nuclear-research-sheffield-university-fukushima-1.324913.

48 Todd Bates, “Can Radioactive Waste Be Immobilized in Glass for Millions of Years ?,” Phys.Org, November 3, 2016, https://phys.org/news/2016-11-radioactive-immobilized-glass-millions-years.html.

39 49 World Nuclear Association, “Treatment and Conditioning of Nuclear Wastes,” WNA Information Library, 2017, https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-wastes/treatment-and-conditioning-of-nuclear-wastes.aspx; US Government Accountability Office, “Spent Nuclear Fuel Management: Outreach Needed to Help Gain Public Acceptance for Federal Activities That Address Liability” (Washington, DC, 2014).

50 Wikimedia image [public domain]. Usage statement: "Photos and graphics obtained from PictureThis are to be used for lawful purposes only and such use shall not claim any expressed or implied affiliation with, or endorsement by, Battelle Me- morial Institute, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory or the U.S. Department of Energy." https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vitrification.png

51 The Economist, “The Search for Quicker, Cheaper Ways of Tunnelling,” The Economist, July 27, 2017, https://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21725544-boring-technology-gets-interesting-search-quicker-cheaper-ways; Rigzone, “How Does Directional Drilling Work? | Rigzone,” 2019, https://www. rigzone.com/training/insight.asp?insight_id=295&c_id=1#sthash.ttKZt62j.dpuf.

52 Randy Manus, “How Air Bearings Moved Tons of Nuclear Waste,” POW- ERMag, 2019, 1–5, https://www.powermag.com/how-air-bearings-moved-tons- of-nuclear-waste/?printmode=1.

53 Paul Alongi, “New Materials Inspired by Nature Could Make It Safer to Store Nuclear Waste,” Clemson University Newsstand, 2014, https://newsstand. clemson.edu/mediarelations/new-materials-inspired-by-nature-could-make-it-safer-to-store-nuclear-waste/.

54 “Shippingport Nuclear Power Station,” The American Society of Mechani- cal Engineers, 2019, https://www.asme.org/about-asme/who-we-are/engineering-history/landmarks/47-shippingport-nuclear-power-station.

55 Ted Nordhaus, “RIP Transatomic Power,” The Breakthrough Institute, 2019, https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/rip-transatomic-power.

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56 General Electric PRISM, “PRISM Overview,” 2019, https://nuclear.gepow- er.com/build-a-plant/products/nuclear-power-plants-overview/prism1.

57 Moltex, “Estonian Energy Company Selects Moltex as Preferred Technol- ogy,” Moltex Energy, 2019, https://www.moltexenergy.com/news/details.aspx- ?positionId=114.

58 World Nuclear Association, “The Nuclear Fuel Cycle,” WNA Information Library, 2018.

59 IAEA, “Spent Fuel Reprocessing Options,” 2008, https://www-pub.iaea. org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/TE_1587_web.pdf.

60 Wikimedia image [CC BY-SA 2.5], user Truzguiladh, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:UsineHague.jpg

61 Mycle Schneider and Yves Marignac, “Spent Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing in France” (Princeton, 2008), http://fissilematerials.org/library/rr04.pdf.

62 World Nuclear Association, “Processing of Used Nuclear Fuel,” WNA In- formation Library, 2018, http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/fuel-recycling/processing-of-used-nuclear-fuel.aspx.

63 Ibid.

64 Ibid.

65 Argonne National Laboratory, “Pyroprocessing Technologies,” n.d.

66 Ibid.

67 PPH Wilson, “Comparing Nuclear Fuel Cycle Options,” Brc.Gov, 2012, 1–24, http://www.brc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/wilson.fuel_.cycle_. comparisons_final.pdf.

41 68 Union of Concerned Scientists, “Nuclear Reprocessing: Dangerous, Dirty, and Expensive,” 2011, http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/nuclear_power_ risk/nuclear_proliferation_and_terrorism/nuclear-reprocessing.html.

69 US NRC, “West Valley Demonstration Project,” NRC Complex Materials Facility Locator, 2018, https://www.nrc.gov/info-finder/decommissioning/complex/wv.html.

70 Anthony Andrews, “Nuclear Fuel Reprocessing: U.S. Policy Development,” Congressional Research Services Reports for Congress RS22542 (2008), http:// large.stanford.edu/courses/2014/ph241/parekh2/docs/RS22542.pdf.

71 CBO Testimony, “Costs of Reprocessing Versus Directly Disposing of Spent Nuclear Fuel,” Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, November 14, 2007, https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/ftpdocs/88xx/ doc8808/11-14-nuclearfuel.pdf.

72 Ibid.

73 Pavel Povdig, “Can the US-Russia Plutonium Disposition Agreement Be Saved?,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, April 28, 2016, http://thebulletin.org/ can-us-russia-plutonium-disposition-agreement-be-saved9389.

74 “Perry Scraps Completion of US MOX Facility,” World Nuclear News, May 16, 2018, http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/UF-Perry-scraps-completion-of- US-MOX-facility-1605184.html.

75 “U.S. Uranium Production, Prices, and Employment All Fell in 2016 - Today in Energy - U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).” Accessed September 17, 2019. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=31772.

76 Gord Struthers and Rachelle Girard, “Cameco to Suspend Production from McArthur River and Key Lake Operations and Reduce Its Dividend,” Cameco Press Release, 2017, https://www.cameco.com/media/news/cameco-to-suspend-production-from-mcarthur-river-and-key-lake-operations-an.

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77 World Nuclear Association, “World Uranium Mining Production,” WNA Information Library, no. March (2019): 1–4, http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/mining-of-uranium/world-uranium-mining-production.aspx.

78 See Mazzucato, M. (2015). The entrepreneurial state: debunking public vs. private sector myths. New York: PublicAffairs.

79 Nuclear Energy Institute, “Used Fuel Storage and Nuclear Waste Fund Pay- ments by State,” May 2019, https://www.nei.org/resources/statistics/used-fuel- storage-and-nuclear-waste-fund-payments

80 World Nuclear Association, “What are nuclear wastes and how are they managed?,” http://www.world-nuclear.org/nuclear-basics/what-are-nuclear- wastes.aspx.

81 Ibid.

82 US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, “Backgrounder on Radioactive Waste,” https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/radwaste.html.

83 US Government Accountability Office, “What GAO Found,” https://www. gao.gov/products/GAO-15-141.

84 US House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Environment and the Econo- my, Committee on Energy and Commerce Hearing, May 15, 2015.

85 US Department of Energy, “Strategy for the Management and Disposal of Used Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste.”

86 WNA table supra.

87 Katherine Ling, “Is the Solution to the US Nuclear Waste Problem in France?,” The New York Times, May 18, 2009, https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes. com/cwire/2009/05/18/18climatewire-is-the-solution-to-the-us-nuclear-waste- prob-12208.html?

43 88 WNA table supra.

89 Emma Law, “Cleaning up Our Nuclear Past: Faster, Safer and Sooner,” GOV.UK, October 23, 2018, https://nda.blog.gov.uk/2018/10/23/what-is-reprocessing/.

90 “Japan Approves 70-Year Plan to Scrap Nuclear Reprocessing Plant,” Japan Times, June 13, 2018, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/06/13/national/japan-approves-70-year-plan-scrap-nuclear-reprocessing-plant/#.XS-MWN- FKh60.

91 World Nuclear Association, “Japan’s Nuclear Fuel Cycle,” 2019, https:// www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-g-n/japan-nuclear-fuel-cycle.aspx.

92 “India Opens New Reprocessing Plant,” World Nuclear News, January 7, 2011, http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/WR_India_opens_new_reprocess- ing_plant_1601111.html.

93 “Kalpakkam Atomic Reprocessing Plant,” Nuclear Threat Initiative, 2003, https://www.nti.org/learn/facilities/851/.

94 “Indian Nuclear Weapons Program,” Nuclear Threat Initiative, 2016, https:// www.nti.org/learn/countries/india/nuclear/.

95 World Nuclear Association, “Russia’s Nuclear Fuel Cycle,” 2019, http:// www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf45a_Russia_nuclear_fuel_cycle.html.

96 Ibid.

97 Matthew Bunn, “Russian Import of Foreign Spent Fuel: Status and Policy Im- plications,” in Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Meeting of the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management (Indian Wells, CA: Harvard Kennedy School, 2001), 1.

98 Yager, Joseph. International Cooperation in Nuclear Energy. (1981) The Brookings Institution, Washington. Pg. 124

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99 IAEA Expert Group, “Multilateral Approaches to the Nuclear Fuel Cycle” (Vienna, 2005).

100 U.S. Committee on the Internationalization of the Civilian Nuclear Fuel Cy- cle, Internationalization of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle (Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press, 2009), https://doi.org/10.17226/12477.

101 Kevin Scarce, Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission Report (Government of South Australia, 2016).

102 Jacopo Buongiorno, Nestor Sepulveda, and Lucas Rush, “Potential Applica- tions of the Modern Nuclear Fuel Cycle to (South) Australia,” 2018.

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