A federal appeals court has ruled against the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on the indefinite storage of spent nuclear fuel at sites around the country.
Seems the NRC thought it didn’t need to conduct an environmental impact review on the question because it assumed that (1) sooner or later we’d get our act together and crate a long-term storage site, even though we’ve repeatedly failed to do that, and (2) on-site storage would create no risk, even if it took 50-60 years to create a long-term solution. And even though there have been numerous instances of leaks from on-site storage facilities.
And the court didn’t like that.
“The commission’s evaluation of the risks of spent nuclear fuel is deficient,” the three-judge panel said in the latest decision. Spent fuel “poses a dangerous long-term health and environmental risk.”
The decision isn’t too surprising, since the NRC got grilled by the court in a March hearing:
As Chief Judge David Sentelle told the NRC attorney during today’s argument in New York, et al., v. NRC: “We don’t owe any deference to your political predictions.”
“Political predictions,” in this case, referring to NRC’s belief that the US will, somehow, someday, identify a long-term storage site. Even though, to date, any place that’s suggested as a site rises up in arms at the prospect. (Including big empty Nevada and the perennially impoverished Upper Peninsula of Michigan.)
After the jump: An update on what the court actually ordered.
The court ordered the NRC to conduct a more thorough and objective review of the storage of nuclear waste and to do a proper review as mandated by the National Environmental Protection Act.
And this nice little snarky comment:
The appeals court wrote that the NRC “apparently has no long-term plan other than hoping for a geologic repository.”
Ya gotta have hope, that’s what I always say. Coming soon to a stage near you: A revival of “Annie,” with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the title role.
“There’ll be a long-term nuclear waste disposal facility
Tomorrow,
Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow,
There’ll be a long-term nuclear waste disposal facility!
Tomorrow, tomorrow,
I love ya, tomorrow,
You’re always a day away!”
But it is not 4:55 yet.
What will the consequences be? If there are no meaningful consequences, the ruling will do nothing to change the culture at the NRC.
I suspect there will be no consequences; only empty rhetoric.
The brutal truth is that, at minimum, the consequences should include a stipulation that further production of spent fuels rods should be suspended until a truly workable solution has been found (if and when.)
If the ruling leads to a long term storage facility being built much sooner, will the completion of such a facility actually lead to a revival of construction of nuclear plants?
And that’s how long we are going to be stuck with the waste from VT Yankee. The legislature blew it 40 years ago (by one vote) and saddled Vermonters in with radioactive waste for a geologic amount of time. My crystal ball says it’s never going to Nevada, or Texas, or anywhere else.
We should be working up a least-godawful scenario for keeping that stuff out of harm’s way for a thousand generations.