Re: "Nuclear Waste Really Does Have A Home"

[RuthWeiner@AOL.COM]

To answer Franz's question and at the risk of boring everyone to death,here 

is the spent fuel situation:


In 1982, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act was enacted into law.  It is the law 

today.  It provides for the investigation of three mined geologic disposal 

sites for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste (the 

first-cycle waste from reprocessing).  In 1987, the Act was amended to look 

at one site first -- Yucca Mountain.   The Act requires DOE to construct the 

facility and the NRC to license it to standards set by the EPA.  The Act also 

requires DOE to take tietle to commersial spent fuel.  It is all funded by 

the Nuclear Waste Fund -- a one mil/kw tax on nuclear utilities -- from which 

money is dispenses annually by Congress.  That's a brief overview, with a lot 

of detail left out, but until that Act ir repealed or amended, that's what is 

planned.  The Act does not prohibit reprocessing for commercial use.


There is nothing prohibiting surface storage, and in fact there is on-site 

surface storage of SNF at some Us nuclear plants.  there is also a proposal 

for a surface storage facility, by the Skull Mountain Goshute tribe in Utah.; 

 Such a private storage facility, like all non-federal US nuclear facilities, 

would be licensed by the NRC.


Mined geologic disposal of high-level radioactive waste was proposed by the 

US geologic Survey in 1979 (Circular 779) and the proposal is still a good 

one.


Ruth Weiner, Ph. D.

ruthweiner@aol.com