Hearing of the Energy and Water Development Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee - Department of Energy Nuclear Energy and Nuclear Waste

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Hearing of the Energy and Water Development Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee - Department of Energy Nuclear Energy and Nuclear Waste

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REP. JO ANN EMERSON (R-MO): Thanks, Chairman.

Thanks, you all, for being here today.

I want to ask Secretary Sproat a question about recycling, or reprocessing.

Recycling spent nuclear fuel will, I mean, technically reduce the amount of waste destined for repository, but we're still going to need radioactive waste depositories, correct?

MR. SPROAT: That is correct.

REP. EMERSON: So how would -- or how will adoption of recycling technologies affect the need for sites such as Yucca Mountain?

MR. SPROAT: Well, in -- first of all, if -- as you point out in your question, the -- if we were to move to full recycling and closing the nuclear fuel cycle, we still need a deep geologic repository. The countries that are currently doing recycling -- like France, Japan -- they are all pursuing a deep geologic repository for their high-level waste stream that comes out of the recycling process. So that's a given.

One of the key things, though, about the recycling process is that while it does reduce the amount of high-level waste, it does produce significant amounts of Greater Than Class C waste. So there are other waste streams that come out of it. If you think about taking multiple nuclear fuel rods and recycling them to create a new nuclear fuel rod for an advanced reactor, you still have a volume of material that comes out of the waste stream from that process that has to go somewhere. So -- and just in terms of volume, while the toxicity may be reduced and the amount of high-level waste may be reduced, the -- there is still a significant waste stream that comes from that process that needs to go somewhere.

REP. EMERSON: So, and then you'll have to keep track of all those materials. Well, and how do you -- how will you deal with the logistics of moving those? Just -- we're obviously talking in a hypothetical fashion here. You move it now, we just don't know about it? I mean -- (laughs) --

MR. SPROAT: (Laughs.) It's actually -- it's not that clandestine. The -- there have been literally hundreds of shipments of both commercial spent nuclear fuel as well as defense spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste across the country incident-free for decades. And the regulatory regime is set up. The transportation infrastructure is set up. This is something we know how to do and know how to do safely and have been doing for a long time. So it is a bit of a misconception that the public, quite frankly, has, that we don't know how to move these things, we don't know how to do it safely and it's never been done before. It's just not true.

REP. EMERSON: But given -- I mean, and hypothetically, again, if we move more toward a recycling regime, will we not -- I mean, and we -- so we may need more Yucca facilities, or something like that. And if, you know, we're already having the trouble that we're having now with perhaps getting agreement on using Yucca as a site, what in the world's the backup plan?

MR. SPROAT: Well, in terms of the backup plan, so to speak, we have an issue in this country today on -- if you think about nuclear waste, there's not only the high-level nuclear waste that the law currently says is destined for Yucca Mountain, but there are less -- other lower levels of nuclear waste -- Class A, Class B, Class C and Greater Than Class C. We don't have in this country designated facilities to dispose of those waste streams yet, and quite frankly one of our dilemmas is what to do with some of that.

And so there's -- the issue of not only the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle and the high-level waste issue which is at Yucca, and we have the transuranic waste going to the Waste Isolation Pilot project in New Mexico, but the other commercial-level facilities that are currently in place for Class A and Class B and Class C, they're having -- they're getting filled and they're having difficulty finding places that want to host another facility for those. So we do have some issues -- (inaudible) -- the nuclear waste stream.

REP. EMERSON: And how will we resolve them, then?

MR. SPROAT: One of the -- I think one of the biggest issues -- now I'm talking personal opinion and observation -- one of the biggest issues is the "not in my back yard" scenario. And while all of us -- while all of us think we have our favorite place that obviously wants to welcome this facility, Nevada was one of those areas, too, at one time. And so, unfortunately, because of the long period of time it takes to develop these facilities and to license them, my observation of the political process is that eventually local opposition will develop and can find a way to slow things down. So it's a dilemma that I'm not sure I have a very good answer for in terms of how you overcome that.

REP. EMERSON: Go ahead, David.

REP. HOBSON: Why don't you put a competition on the street? You know, there are people out there -- we did this, and there are people out there who say, "Let us take a look at it."

MR. SPROAT: Sure.

REP. HOBSON: "We might be willing to do it." We have one of the greatest formations in this country. It's in a number of states. And the WIP has been a wonderful success. There was a politician the other day that suggested that that might be used as a model for something else -- not a member of this body, I might add, although I did do it before. But if you allow people the opportunity -- what was the thing we put the competition out for and all of a sudden -- interim storage, I think it was -- and there were people -- there were a number of people came forward and said, "We're interested."

MR. SPROAT: Yes.

REP. HOBSON: I think we defeat ourselves before we start, Mr. Sproat, by saying there are -- you know, the NIMBY effect is there. There's no question. There are certain parts of this country that aren't going to take this stuff. There are other parts that'll stand up and say, "You know, this means jobs in our area. It's clean, good jobs, and it works." And we've got a model. WIP is a great model.

MR. SPURGEON: Mr. Hobson, we have done that, as you know, and ended up with 11 sites that did volunteer. Two of them happened to be in the general vicinity of where WIP is. And the other thing we do find with respect to the acceptance of nuclear facilities -- this includes reactors, and I think it could be extended to the fuel cycle facilities -- is those people living nearest ones that are already operating are the most supportive. You know, we're looking at polling data that would show something like 85 percent of people living near a nuclear facility are supportive of that -- of nuclear power and that kind of a facility. It's folks that are not -- don't have the experience with it that have a fear factor associated with it.

So can we move forward? The answer is yes. And can we look at downstream, you know, with when you do recycle, you do create a waste form that doesn't have to be retrievable. In so doing, you can have many alternative geologies that you can then consider that might be both less expensive and perhaps more acceptable to the local population.

REP. EMERSON: When we were talking at the very beginning, at the outset, about both France and Japan looking for deep storage facilities, are they facing the same kinds of public opinion issues that we are?

MR. SPROAT: Yes, they are. France has done a very good job, in my opinion, in terms of laying out a multiyear plan laid out by their assembly -- their general assembly -- that they're following. But they have not selected their final repository site. They're still studying it. Japan is a very interesting case study in that they looked for volunteer communities because they felt it was very important that the local community embrace the idea of having a high- level waste repository. They actually had a town volunteer.

The mayor was voted out of office six months later -- (laughter) -- on the basis of the anti-nuclear candidate came in and basically kicked him out. Now, I'm just saying --

REP. : (Off mike.)

MR. SPROAT: -- and the Swedes and the Finns -- matter of fact, I'm going there in two weeks -- they have -- of course, they only have two nuclear plants or three nuclear plants in their country -- and they are putting their -- planning on putting their repository on one of those sites. And as Dennis said, the local population around those plants are very familiar with nuclear. They're very comfortable with them. And they kind of have a little bit of ownership about the nuclear waste that's already there. So they don't have a big problem with putting it underground permanently in that facility. I'm not sure the -- that example is directly translatable to us in our culture and our 104 nuclear plants.

MR. SPURGEON: The difference, though, is that in Japan and in France they do take their used fuel and they do process it. And so what they in effect are doing is interim storage on the back end, where they go through and process it, create vitrified glass logs and then store those glass logs on site in a -- it looks like a great big hockey rink is what it looks like, but you can walk in there and literally walk on top of all the high-level waste generated by the French nuclear program since it began in one kind of a facility.

REP. EMERSON: And there really hasn't been a huge public outcry about that at all, has there?

MR. SPURGEON: No, not in the area of La Hague.

REP. EMERSON: Thank you all very much.

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