United States high-level radioactive waste management programme: Current status and plans

Abstract

Commercial reactor nuclear power generation in the United States is produced by 107 units and, during 1996, represented over 21 per cent of the nation's electricity generation in 34 of the 50 states and, through electric power wheeling, between states in most of the 48 contiguous states. Spent fuel is stored in fuel pools at 70 sites around the country and the projected rate of spent fuel production indicates that the current pool storage will be exceeded in the out years of 2000, 2010 and 2020 at 40, 67 and 69 of these sites respectively. The total accumulation projected by the end of 1996 at reactor sites is 33 700 metric tons of heavy metal (MTHM), with projections for increasing accumulations at annual rates of between 1800 and 2000 to produce an end of life for all commercial nuclear reactors of about 86 000 MTHM. There are presently eight facilities in six states with out-of-pool dry storage amounting to 1010 MTHM and this dry storage demand will increase. Based on all current commercial reactors achieving their 40 year licensed operation lifetimes, the dry storage needs will increase to 3128 MTHM at 28 sites and 20 states by 2000 and 11 307 MTHM at 58 sites in 32 states by 2010; the year 2010 is the present scheduled operation date for the federal mined geological disposal repository being characterized by the USDOE at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The enabling statute for the federal high-level radioactive waste management programme is the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) which charges the USDOE with the responsibility for the disposal of HLW and spent nuclear fuel. The Act also charges the utilities with the responsibility for managing their spent nuclear fuel until the USDOE can accept it into the federal waste management system. The funding for the federal programme is also stipulated by the Act with the creation of the Nuclear Waste Fund, through which the electric utilities entered into contract with the USDOE by payment of a fee of 1 mill per kilowatt hour sold and for which the USDOE would start collection of spent fuel from the reactor sites starting 31 January 1998.