America can’t duck and cover from Washington’s nuclear waste disposal failure

Nuclear energy is hot and everyone wants a piece of the action. President Donald Trump has announced his vision to quadruple America’s nuclear capacity by 2050, and 33 countries signed a declaration to triple nuclear capacity over the same period.

Not only are governments clamoring for new nuclear power, but private companies are moving full steam ahead. Tech companies are working to restart shuttered plants and to extend lives and power levels of existing ones. America’s largest, oldest and most successful companies are moving towards new nuclear energy.

But a 90,000-ton pot of nuclear waste lies at the end of this rainbow and poses problems not for safety but for a significant nuclear energy expansion. First, the federal government collected fees for nuclear waste disposal but did not dispose of the waste. Second, because Uncle Sam was assigned responsibility, companies had no incentive to develop disposal solutions.

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It is not a safety issue. Nuclear waste, or more accurately, spent nuclear fuel is safely stored on site at nuclear power plants in secure pools and in dry casks and takes little space. All U.S. spent fuel ever produced would fit on a single football field stacked 10 yards high, and a few more reactors would add little to the mound.

However, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act gave the federal government responsibility for disposing of nuclear waste, and it gave Washington until 1998 to start doing its job. To pay, the Energy Department collected fees predominantly from electricity ratepayers totaling over $65 billion, including accrued interest. The Department spent $11.5 billion, and the remaining funds held in the Nuclear Waste Fund total over $50 billion.

But the Energy Department has provided no service for these funds, collecting virtually no spent fuel, pouring over $10 billion down a hole in Yucca Mountain, a proposed disposal site, without finalizing the system. Nuclear companies left holding waste and paying for storage, sued Washington for not meeting its contractual obligation — and won. Now taxpayers are liable for $44.5 billion, the cost of the Energy Department’s failure, according to an audit conducted for DOE’s Office of Inspector General.

This liability is paid not from the Energy Department’s budget, but from the government’s Judgment Fund, set up to pay for court judgments against the federal government. Under current policy waste is produced, nothing happens to it and taxpayers pay to make everyone financially whole. This decimates any incentive for a real solution.

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Washington should never have been made responsible for waste management. Even if the system worked perfectly, bureaucrats would have chosen a compulsory waste solution. This rigidity would have undermined incentives for the private sector to innovate by finding more economical ways to manage waste; reactors that produce more efficient waste streams; or value from spent fuel. Today’s firms have pioneered such technologies, but if there is no demand for waste management services, the value of these technologies cannot be captured or even measured.

President Trump’s executive order Reinvigorating The Nuclear Industrial Base may break this stalemate. In compliance with the order, the Energy Department has issued a request for information from states "interested in hosting potential Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses." These campuses would house nuclear energy hubs that would include all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle, including spent fuel management.

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Three reasons for optimism and innovation exist. First, the request asks states to self-identify as interested hosts — in contrast to the current broken system, which used political processes to identify the host state. Second, the request requires private sector leadership, imperative for any successful plan. Finally, although the request provides substantial detail on desired commercial activities, these are only guidelines and the Department is open to other proposals. This leaves a lot of room for innovative thinking on how to solve the problem.

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It is not only government seeking solutions. Former Nuclear Regulatory Chair Allison MacFarlane and former acting director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, Lake Barrett recently issued a new nonpartisan report, The Path Forward for Nuclear Waste in the U.S., laying out a strategy for moving nuclear waste policy forward. Full disclosure: I was a contributor.

The report suggests plans to realign responsibilities for nuclear waste management, ensuring that the money collected for nuclear waste disposal gets spent on its intended purpose. The report provides flexibility to meet today’s and tomorrow’s growing disposal needs by holding the federal government responsible for its current obligations and allowing for new systems. Lastly, the report recognizes the need for permanent geologic storage but also allows for other technologies and approaches.

For the first time in decades, Washington is signaling that it may untangle the policy failures that have paralyzed nuclear waste management. The Path Forward report outlines a workable strategy, but success now depends on states and private firms stepping up where the federal government has fallen short. 

If we want abundant clean energy and a thriving nuclear industry, we must replace bureaucratic stagnation with competition, innovation, and genuine accountability.