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Jim: jdipeso@rep.org
(253) 740-2066 / 2012
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Archive / 2010
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Honey
Beats Vinegar
January 26, 2012
Who’s up for having a nuclear waste repository in their backyard?
Maybe
more people than one would think at first blush, if Europe’s experience
is any guide to finding a permanent home for the radioactive residue of
commercial nuclear power generation.
A blue ribbon commission
examining an issue that has bedeviled the federal government for more
than a quarter century issued a report January 26 calling for a
“consent-based approach” to locating a burial site for spent nuclear
fuel. I.e., find a suitable site and negotiate with the locals on
conditions and benefits for hosting the facility, rather than force it
on them through congressional or executive diktat.
Regardless of
the technical merits of the proposed Yucca Mountain repository, the
process for selecting that southern Nevada site was a crass political
maneuver that contaminated debate on whether the site was the best
available for safe nuclear waste disposal.
The 1987
congressional legislation that designated Yucca Mountain as the sole
candidate site will forever be known in the Silver State as the “screw
Nevada” bill. The state’s congressional representatives, Republicans
and Democrats alike, have fought to kill Yucca Mountain, including one
Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader who persuaded the administration
to pull the plug on Yucca Mountain in 2010.
Hence, the
appointment of a panel of experts to figure out where to put some
70,000 metric tons of waste, a figure expected to double by 2050 even
if no more nuclear power plants are developed.
The commission
concluded there is no practical alternative to “deep geologic
disposal.” The stuff will have to be buried somewhere and somewhere
inevitably will be in someone’s backyard. This is where the waste
management issue spreads from the relatively clear-cut arena of the
hard sciences—e.g. making sure the candidate site is geologically
stable and will keep hot waste isolated—to the squishier realm of the
social sciences. How to approach host communities, earn their trust,
communicate clearly and respectfully, allay suspicions, offer credible
promises of benefits, and give them a real voice that influences the
process and is not a PR hood ornament for a pre-determined outcome.
That
sort of approach of integrating the hard and soft sciences seems to
have worked well in places such as Sweden and Finland. In Sweden, for
example, a candidate geologic disposal site was selected in 2009 with
the consent of the host community, following a lengthy process of
public outreach that gave the community a voice, negotiating power, and
cold cash for economic development if the site is licensed.
A little honey works better than a lot of vinegar.
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