COLUMN: Take advantage of SRS strengths for waste storage

The Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future issued their long-awaited report after two years of study, interviews and panel discussions. The Commission members were very able people who rendered a great service by serving and we should be grateful to them for doing so.

The recommendations in the report are acceptable and based on common sense. There is a strong emphasis on consent-based siting of future nuclear fuel cycle activities. This means that decisions to locate facilities such as interim used fuel storage sites, recycling centers and waste disposal sites would be contingent on the local community's willingness to host such activities. This is what sounds like the common sense referenced above, but we should remember that the folks in Nye County, Nev., have always wanted the nation's used fuel repository at Yucca Mountain, with its large economic impact, to proceed, but other stakeholders are trying to block it. So we need to define community in a manner that is comprehensive enough to include all the stakeholders who have a potential bearing on the outcome. Yucca Mountain was, by design, excluded from the BRC deliberations.

Decisions concerning nuclear missions have often been complicated by the "Not in my back yard" syndrome. Everybody wants something done, but not in their neck of the woods. But, a new attitude is emerging in some communities, especially in New Mexico, Arizona and Texas which is basically, "Yes in my back yard." Communities in these states, taking their cue from Carlsbad, N.M., have seen the unqualified success of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant which opened in 1999 as a disposal site for transuranic waste from the nation's nuclear weapons complex. This has resulted in positive economic impacts in the community, an improved educational system, an enhanced cultural environment and a generally improved quality of life.

Nuclear alarmists warn against coveting nuclear missions for the economic benefit, protesting that there are significant negatives. But the folks in Carlsbad are hard pressed to identify any negative associated with WIPP except that some folks in the northern part of the state say bad things about them.

So, when requests for expressions of interest come to communities from the government related to any fuel cycle activity, how will Aiken and the Central Savannah River Area respond? The CSRA is the site of the most capable facilities on earth to deal with the nuclear fuel cycle. Part of the ongoing mission at the Department of Energy's Savannah River Site is the interim storage of used fuel. H-Canyon is the only recycling facility in the country. Savannah River National Laboratory has chemists and engineers who are adept at developing techniques to process one of a kind nuclear materials or large quantities of similar nuclear materials. The capability to vitrify waste from reprocessing prior to disposal already exists and is part of an ongoing mission at SRS. The conversion of weapons grade plutonium to mixed oxide fuel will be a reality soon in the NNSA's new fuel fabrication facility. All of these missions are being executed safely.

With this expertise and more already existing at SRS, it would be foolish to try to reproduce these capabilities at any other site. In addition, thousands of skilled craftsmen and nuclear workers will come to the area to build and operate four new nuclear power plants. These plants, two at Southern Company's Vogtle site in Waynesboro, Ga., and two at SCANA's V.C. Summer site in Jenkinsville, S.C., will be the first nuclear power plants built in the United States in 30 years.

SRS's "can do" track record should make the CSRA a shoo-in as the location of choice for these missions, but we will need to have a united community front.

If we don't, communities in the southwest will gladly pursue the good jobs and all of the attendant benefits to their communities.

- Clint Wolfe is Executive Director of Citizens for Nuclear Technology Awareness and formerly chaired the Technical Advisory Panel to the Department of Energy's Plutonium Focus Area.