January 26, 2011

Could N.M. Seek Nuke Waste?

By John Fleck
From the Albuquerque Journal

Our nation's struggle to find a way to dispose of its high-level nuclear waste will descend on New Mexico this week in what could presage a battle over bringing it here.

Boosters from southeastern New Mexico hope to convince members of a federal advisory panel that the region should be considered as a permanent destination for the waste, left over from more than 50 years of U.S. nuclear power generation.

Critics say any move in that direction would violate a deal made nearly two decades ago when New Mexicans agreed to take modestly radioactive waste in return for a federal commitment not to bring any of the high level stuff here.

The Obama administration chartered the 15-member Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future to study our nation's nuclear waste problems following the administration's decision to halt work on Yucca Mountain, a site 90 miles from Las Vegas, Nev., where the waste had been headed. The panel is charged with recommending approaches to dealing with some 65,000 metric tons of highly radioactive waste from commercial U.S. nuclear power plants, along with smaller amounts from military and other government projects.

Congress decided in 1987 that the waste should go to Yucca Mountain, but after decades of political and scientific struggles to certify the site's safety, the Obama administration decided in 2009 to abandon the facility and chart a new course. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., was a longtime opponent of storing the waste at Yucca Mountain.

Currently, the waste is kept in storage where it was generated, primarily at nuclear power plants. Its handling and disposal has been a magnet for controversy because of potential danger. Without shielding, it can deliver a lethal radiation dose in as little as 15 minutes,
according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

N.M. option

The commission's charter is to make recommendations about research into how to dispose of waste and decision-making processes for choosing a site. Commission staff and members have repeatedly pointed out that they will not recommend a specific site and that none is under consideration.

But it appears that won't keep this week's meetings from turning into a forum for discussing whether southeastern New Mexico is a suitable option. It is home to deep underground salt beds where radioactive waste has been disposed of since 1999 at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. The salt beds also have been studied as a possible high-level waste disposal site.

The panel will hold meetings Thursday in Carlsbad and Friday in Albuquerque. In addition to taking public comment, the commission will hear from expert panels and local and state officials both days.

Southeastern New Mexico has earned a reputation for its "bring-it-on" attitude toward nuclear projects. While acknowledging more research is needed, the community
plans to offer the commission an enthusiastic embrace when it arrives this week. "If that research proves to be positive," said former Carlsbad-area state legislator John Heaton, "we are enthusiastic about a high-level waste repository."

The reason: jobs. Heaton figures a high-level waste project could employ 2,000 people. In addition to WIPP, the region is home to a uranium enrichment plant built by Louisiana Energy Services to process uranium for use in nuclear reactor fuel.

Across the border in Texas is the proposed Waste Control radioactive waste disposal site, and a company called International Isotopes is pursuing a license for a new radioactive waste treatment plant near Hobbs. The projects employ more than 1,500 people in the area.

The region's supportive attitude toward those projects and a possible new high-level waste site has earned it a reputation in a nuclear industry more accustomed to opposition, leading to this quip in a headline this week in the trade publication Energy Daily: "Man Bites Dog: Carlsbad Seeks High-Level Nuke Waste."

But the bruising political battles over the disposal of far milder radioactive waste at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant beginning in 1999 suggest local enthusiasm might not be shared elsewhere in the state.

"A lot of people in the state don't agree," said Don Hancock, director of the Nuclear Waste Safety Project at the Southwest Research and Information Center in Albuquerque.
Hancock noted that the carefully crafted political comprise that allowed WIPP to open explicitly prohibited bringing high-level waste to federal land in southeast New Mexico.

Congress approved that deal, making WIPP and the federal land around it, which Heaton and others favor studying for high-level explicitly off the table under current law. Heaton and Hancock agree Congress would have to act to change that. "If such guarantees are not enduring," Hancock wrote in a submission to the Blue Ribbon Commission, "any other state or tribe has no reason to believe in binding commitments related to any other nuclear waste facilities."