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U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday debated amendments for a bill that would establish a national commission to study options for disposal of radioactive wastes from nuclear power plants. With the Obama administration essentially shelving the long delayed nuclear waste dump site at Yucca Mountain, the bill would set up an 11 member federal advisory panel that would conduct a two-year analysis and recommend alternatives to Congress for managing nuclear waste. Earlier this year, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said he planned to create a blue ribbon panel to come up with a comprehensive plan to handle nuclear waste.

After receiving the smallest budget in its history through the work of Nevada Senator Harry Reid, the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump will be shutdown. "It's over with -- Yucca Mountain is gone," said Reid. The Obama Administration's budget plan for the upcoming fiscal year, officially released today, follows through on the president's commitment to end the failed Yucca Mountain proposal and instead pursue responsible alternatives for storage of the nation's nuclear waste. The project will have a budget of less than $197 million - a cut of more than $90 million from last year. Remaining funding for Yucca Mountain will be spent on the Blue Ribbon Commission examining alternate options and on phasing out work on the project in preparation for its final shutdown.

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Wednesday that the government is moving "aggressively" to try to get nuclear-power loan guarantees going. "I believe that nuclear power has to be part of the energy mix in this century," Chu said at a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing. He cited differences with the White House's Office of Management and Budget and said that "we're certainly moving as aggressively as we possibly can to work out the differences with OMB to try to get those initial loan guarantees going." He also said that the Obama administration is planning to appoint a blue- ribbon panel to "take a fresh look" at how to deal with nuclear waste. The Obama administration earlier this year reversed U.S. policy and said that storing waste at Yucca Mountain was "no longer an option." For years, the U.S. has planned to begin hauling spent fuel from the nation's nuclear plants and burying it at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Chu also cited "serious proliferation issues" associated with nuclear power.

The Obama administration's decision to drop a plan to store nuclear power plant waste in an underground repository in Nevada has renewed consideration of alternative ways to dispose of the highly radioactive material, the Salt Lake Tribune reported yesterday (see GSN, March 13). Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced this month that the administration would create a blue-ribbon commission to offer waste storage solutions besides the two-decade-old plan to put it in Yucca Mountain (see GSN, March 12). Alternative plans include reprocessing the waste to remove its plutonium, which could then be used again in nuclear power reactors. Environmental and nonproliferation activists have historically opposed reprocessing, arguing that it creates new, more dangerous waste and produces weapon-usable materials. U.S. Senator Robert Bennett (R-Utah), however, told the Tribune that he believes reprocessing can be conducted safely.

"Fast Breeder Reactor/ - Major Implications Seen for Obama Blue-Ribbon Waste Panel, New Interest in "Generation IV" Reactors; U.S., Russia, UK, France, India and Japan Programs are Evaluated in the Study. (PRINCETON, N.J.) - Do concerns about inadequate options for long-term nuclear reactor waste disposal now mean that it is time to make a new commitment to the development of fast reactors? What of the related concerns about the cost, reliability, safety and proliferation issues associated with fast reactors? These questions are addressed in a major new report from the International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM) to be released during a live phone-based news conference set for 1:30 p.m. EST/1830 GMT on February 17, 2010. In assessing the potential for fast reactors, the IPFM report looks at the historical experience and current status of fast breeder reactor programs in France, India, Japan, the Soviet Union/Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. The possibility of a plutonium-fueled nuclear reactor that could produce more fuel than it consumed (hence the term "breeder reactor") was first raised during World War II in the United States by scientists in the atomic bomb program. Programs in the United States and elsewhere around the globe were driven by the hope of solving the long-term energy supply problem using the large-scale deployment of nuclear energy for electric power."

"Ongoing problems with nuclear waste might resurrect plans for reactors that would leave less of it dry-cask-for-nuclear-waste NUCLEAR WASTE: Will fast breeder reactors solve the issue of nuclear waste? On February 16, President Barack Obama announced loan guarantees totaling more than $8 billion for two new light-water reactors in Georgia, part of an initiative to restart the nuclear power industry in the U.S. Just three weeks earlier, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu had announced the formation of a Blue-Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future to resolve what to do with the waste produced by those future reactors-as well as the 2,000 metric tons a year produced by the 104 reactors currently in operation in the U.S. After all, the Obama administration has halted plans to store spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain in Nevada-a geologic repository that never opened.

"Per Peterson, professor and chair of nuclear engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, with expertise in advanced reactor systems, nuclear waste processing, and inertial fusion energy, has been named to a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future. DOE Secretary Steven Chu, former director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a former UC Berkeley physics professor, announced the 15 members of the commission on Friday, Jan. 29. The panel is charged with providing recommendations for a safe, long-term solution to managing the country's used nuclear fuel and nuclear waste. The recommendations will provide an alternative to storing spent nuclear reactor fuel at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, a proposal that the Obama administration rejected in 2009. "

"The White House has proposed barring Energy Department research on fast reactor recycling of nuclear waste and technical support for licensing of small, modular light-water reactors, drawing protests from Energy Secretary Steven Chu that such prohibitions will have broad adverse effects, including hurting the U.S. nuclear industry's renaissance; crimping U.S. ability to influence other countries' fast reactor designs to address proliferation concerns; and taking away nuclear waste disposal options that might be considered by the administration's planned blue-ribbon panel on alternatives to the Yucca Mountain repository. In the letter, Chu said he "strongly disagree[s] with the policy direction [proposed by OMB] concerning allowable nuclear energy R&D activities.""

"A year since US President Barack Obama effectively killed the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository - and his 2011 budget is expected to barely keep the lights on as the Energy Department clears out the offices - the administration and the energy department have so far failed to launch the blue-ribbon panel promised some nine months ago to study alternative nuclear waste proposals. Charles Digges, 19/01-2010 Meanwhile, 60,000 metric tons of US civilian and military waste continue to pile up, and high-level nuclear observers from the non-governmental sector are getting a little nervous. The build up of waste may also land the US government in hot water with the industry as Yucca Mountain has, for the past 20 years, been the Congressionally mandated end of the road for US spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste. "

"The six governors of the New England states recently forwarded a letter to the Department of Energy requesting it remove spent fuel and high level waste from nuclear reactor sites in the region "at the earliest possible date." Steven Chu, the secretary of DOE, announced earlier this year that he was establishing a "blue ribbon" commission to look for ways DOE can deal with the nuclear waste accumulating at the 104 operating reactors and the 31 decommissioned reactors in the United States. Originally, DOE had planned to move the waste to a national repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Due to environmental concerns and opposition from Nevada's congressional delegation, the repository has been delayed by more than two decades. "

"While President Obama's fiscal 2011 budget proposal is expected to sound a death knell for the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, the administration has so far failed to launch the blue-ribbon commission it promised almost a year ago to decide on a waste-disposal alternative. Hanging in the balance is 60,000 metric tons of commercial and defense nuclear waste."

"Expanding our Nation's capacity to generate clean nuclear energy is crucial to our ability to combat climate change, enhance energy security, and increase economic prosperity. My Administration is undertaking substantial steps to expand the safe, secure, and responsible use of nuclear energy. These efforts are critical to accomplishing many of my Administration's most significant goals. An important part of a sound, comprehensive, and long-term domestic nuclear energy strategy is a well-considered policy for managing used nuclear fuel and other aspects of the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle. Yet the Nation's approach, developed more than 20 years ago, to managing materials derived from nuclear activities, including nuclear fuel and nuclear waste, has not proven effective. Fortunately, over the past two decades scientists and engineers in our country and abroad have learned a great deal about effective strategies for managing nuclear material. My Administration is committed to using this advanced knowledge to meet the Government's obligation to dispose of our Nation's used nuclear material."

"A Blue Ribbon Commission was named Friday to recommend what the nation should do not only with its spent commercial nuclear fuel but also weapons waste, such as the glassified high level waste from Hanford's vitrification plant. The waste was expected to go to the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository until President Obama said last year said the Nevada site was not suitable. The nation has spent $10 billion to $12 billion over the last 25 years to study the site. The commission will look at options for storing, processing and disposing of the waste, which are expected to include reprocessing commercial nuclear fuel that now is used just once in U.S. reactors. "

"Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu named former U.S. Senator Pete Domenici to a panel to study alternatives for nuclear waste disposal. The Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future "will provide recommendations for developing a safe, long-term solution to managing the Nation's used nuclear fuel and nuclear waste" according to Peter St. Cyr. The panel will be co-chaired by former Congressman Lee Hamilton and former Deputy National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft."

"What To Do With Nuclear Waste President Barack Obama's Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future will have its first meeting this week. The commission, formed after Obama cancelled the Yucca Mountain spent nuclear fuel repository in January, is tasked with rebooting the country's five-decade-plus effort to manage its high-level radioactive waste. The problems the commission will consider are far from new. In 1957 the National Academy of Sciences warned that "[t]he hazard related to radioactive waste is so great that no element of doubt should be allowed to exist regarding safety." In that same year the academy recommended that the U.S. government establish deep geologic disposal as the best solution to the problem. In 1982, after embarrassing failures by the Atomic Energy Commission (the predecessor of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the Energy Department) to select a waste site on its own, Congress enacted the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which began the selection process for multiple sites throughout the United States. This process was scrapped five years later due to eastern states derailing the selection process. At that time Congress voted to make Yucca Mountain the only site to be considered. Yet Yucca's proposed opening date slipped by more than 20 years as the project encountered major technical hurdles and fierce local and state opposition."

"Utah's role » Observers wonder how state facilities might figure into a national solution. Two recent announcements from the Obama administration have energized nuclear power advocates. The first is his plan to offer $18.5 billion in loan guarantees for new nuclear plants; the other, a task force to look at the dangerously radioactive waste often blamed for delaying what some anticipate will be a nuclear renaissance. More than a few Utahns are keeping an eye on the new Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future. Tooele County includes the nation's largest low-level radioactive waste disposal site, the mile-square EnergySolutions landfill, and the nation's only high-level nuclear site licensed in the past three decades, the derailed Private Fuel Storage facility on the Goshute reservation in Skull Valley. Both sites have generated controversy in Utah for decades. Now, they could become part of a national nuclear strategy. That's what Utah leaders and advocates on both sides of the nuclear debate plan to watch in the two years the commission takes to develop its final report. "

"'Under the Radar': Outgoing Bush White House Hiked Likely Penalties Borne by Taxpayers By Inking Deals With Over a Dozen Utilities; 170 Groups in All 50 States Release Principles Urging an Upgrade in Spent Reactor Fuel Storage Safety to Withstand Equivalent of '9/11 Attacks' Between the output of existing commercial nuclear reactors and 21 proposed nuclear reactors covered by agreements quietly signed by the outgoing Bush Administration with more than a dozen electric utilities, the United States already has agreed to store enough spent (used) reactor fuel to fill the equivalent of not one, but two, Yucca Mountain high-level radioactive waste repositories, according to documents acquired under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Given that the U.S. is back to square one for the first repository, U.S. taxpayers would be on the hook for potentially tens of billions of dollars in penalties that would have to be paid to utilities if the 21 proposed reactor projects proceed. This new information about the daunting scale of the challenge that faces the United States in disposing of spent fuel from commercial nuclear reactors comes one day before the first meeting of the Obama Administration's "Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future." In addition to highlighting the serious consequences of the eleventh-hour deals stuck by the Bush White House, experts also focused public attention on the fact that the recently cancelled Yucca Mountain repository -- even if it were open today, 35 years after the process to create it started -- would already be filled to its legal limit of 63,000 metric tons of commercial waste by this spring. A second repository the same size would be filled with the 42,000 additional metric tons of spent fuel yet to be produced by existing nuclear reactors and the 21,000 metric tons that would be produced by the 21 proposed reactors covered under the Bush-industry agreements."

"France Uses Less than 1 Percent of the Natural Uranium Resource, Has Higher Waste Volume; Reprocessing Still Requires a Repository and Increases Costs, Proliferation Risks WASHINGTON, April 8 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Contrary to some prevailing opinion, reprocessing would not eliminate the need for a deep geologic disposal program to replace Yucca Mountain. It aggravates waste, proliferation, and cost problems. The volume of waste to be disposed of in deep geologic repository is increased about six times on a life-cycle basis in the French approach compared to the once-through no-reprocessing approach of the United States. A new report by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER), a nonprofit scientific research group, shows that France uses less than 1 percent of the natural uranium resource, contrary to an impression among some policy makers. The report has several recommendations for President Obama's Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future, which was created to address U.S. nuclear waste issues after the administration's cancellation of the Yucca Mountain program."

"President Obama promised to eliminate 34 tons of plutonium from the U.S. nuclear weapons program as part of this week's nuclear security summit. But how does one actually get rid of bomb-making material that has a half-life of more than 20,000 years? One way is to burn it in nuclear reactors. Already, roughly half of the electricity generated from nuclear power plants in the U.S. comes from the fissile materials out of Russian warheads, albeit highly enriched uranium, the other fissile material used in bombs. Such reprocessing might also help cope with nuclear waste. In fact, Obama's recently appointed Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future has specifically chosen to investigate the possibility of reprocessing spent nuclear fuel rods."

"Reprocessing of nuclear waste is neither an affordable remedy for future waste disposal in the United States nor will it eliminate the need for a deep geologic repository to replace Yucca Mountain, according to a recent study released by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER), a nonprofit and nonpartisan research group. Even as some are urging the Obama Administration's blue-ribbon panel on nuclear waste to consider the options of reprocessing and breeder reactors, the IEER study looks at the global experience - including those of France and Britain - and finds that both approaches are widely misunderstood in the United States. France has not solved its nuclear waste problems and now needs a repository in face of strong public opposition to the development of such a facility."