America’s nuclear revival faces dangerous fallout from Washington’s waste failure

Nuclear power is hot and everyone wants a piece of the action. president Donald Trump He announced his vision to quadruple US nuclear capacity by 2050, and 33 countries signed the declaration to triple nuclear capacity during the same period.

Not only are governments demanding new nuclear energy, but private companies are moving full steam ahead. Technology companies are working to bring shuttered plants back online and extend the life and power levels of existing plants. America’s largest, oldest, and most successful companies are turning to new nuclear energy.

But a 90,000-ton vat of nuclear waste lies at the end of this rainbow, posing problems not for safety, but for the dramatic expansion of nuclear power. First, the federal government collected fees Nuclear waste disposal But the waste was not disposed of. Second, because Uncle Sam was put in charge, companies had no incentive to develop waste disposal solutions.

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It’s not a safety issue. Nuclear waste, or more precisely, spent nuclear fuel, is safely stored on-site at nuclear power plants in secure ponds and in dry casks and does not take up much space. All the spent fuel the United States has ever produced would fit on one 10-yard high football field, and a few more reactors would add little to the hill.

However, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act gave the federal government responsibility for disposing of nuclear waste, and gave Washington until 1998 to begin doing its job. To pay these fees, the Department of Energy collected fees mostly from electricity ratepayers totaling more than $65 billion, including accrued interest. The ministry spent $11.5 billion, and the total remaining money in the nuclear waste fund is more than $50 billion.

But the Department of Energy did no service on those funds, collected almost no spent fuel, and poured more than $10 billion into a hole in Yucca Mountain, a proposed waste disposal site, without finalizing the system. It let nuclear companies keep the waste and pay for its storage, sued Washington for failure to meet its contractual obligations, and won. Now taxpayers are responsible for the $44.5 billion cost of the Department of Energy’s failure, according to an audit by the Department of Energy’s Office of Inspector General.

These obligations are paid not from the Department of Energy’s budget, but from the State Judgment Fund, which was established to pay for lawsuits against the federal government. Under current policy waste is produced, nothing happens to it, and taxpayers pay money to make everyone financially sound. This eliminates any incentive to reach a real solution.

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Washington should never have been responsible for waste management. Even if the system worked perfectly, the bureaucrats would have chosen a mandatory waste solution. This inertia 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 the value of fuel consumed. Today’s companies have pioneered such technologies, but if there is no demand for waste management services, the value of these technologies will not be recognized or even measured.

President Trump’s executive order to revitalize the nuclear industrial base may break this stalemate. In compliance with the order, the Department of Energy issued a request for information from countries “interested in hosting potential nuclear life cycle innovation centers.” These campuses will house nuclear energy centers covering all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle, including spent fuel management.

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There are three reasons for optimism and innovation. First, the request requires states to identify themselves as interested hosts – in contrast to the current broken system, which uses political processes to identify a host state. Second, demand requires private sector leadership, which is essential for the success of any plan. Finally, although the application provides substantial details of the desired business activities, these are merely guidelines and management is open to other proposals. This leaves a lot of room for Innovative thinking About how to solve the problem.

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It is not only the government that is looking for solutions. Allison MacFarlane, former chief of nuclear regulation and former acting director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, Lake Barrett, recently released a new nonpartisan report, “The Path Forward for Nuclear Waste in the United States,” offering a strategy for moving nuclear waste policy forward. Full disclosure: I was a contributor.

The report proposes plans to reorganize responsibilities for nuclear waste management, ensuring that funds raised for nuclear waste disposal are spent for their intended purpose. The report provides flexibility to meet today’s and tomorrow’s growing disposal needs by holding the federal government accountable for its current obligations and permitting new regulations. Finally, the report acknowledges the need for permanent geological storage but also allows for other technologies and methods.

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For the first time in decades, Washington points out It may solve the policy failures that have paralyzed nuclear waste management. The Way Forward report outlines a workable strategy, but success now depends on states and private companies stepping up where the federal government has failed.

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