Yucca Mountain: A Crisis for Policy: Prospects for America's High-Level Nuclear Waste Program

Abstract

The federal government's attempts to site a permanent high-level radioactive waste repository have been frustrating and so far unsuccessful. Many of the problems were recognized more than a decade ago. In 1982, the US Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and established a program to site and develop an underground repository. By 1987, this program was widely considered to be a failure. It was plagued by public opposition, intergovernmental conflict, poor management, scientific questions and concerns, and substantial cost overruns. In December 1987 Congress amended the act and selected Yucca Mountain, Nevada, as the only location to be studied as a potential repository. This halted further work on other potential sites in the western US, the eastern US sites for a second repository, and the monitored retrievable system facility that the US Department of Energy (DOE) wanted to locate in Tennessee. These amendments did not address the basic causes for the fail ures between 1983 and 1987. As a result, although the program was greatly simplified with only one site, it was beset by the same problems that created the original collapse. Now there are new and widespread calls for a congressional review and restructuring of the program from federal, state, and local officials, government agencies, industry, and public groups. This article examines the lessons from these two failed attempts and makes recommendations for devising a new policy.