Agency needs new plan after Yucca decision

WASHINGTON -- With the Yucca Mountain repository apparently off the table, safety regulators will need to retool to determine whether nuclear waste can remain stored at reactor sites for periods of a hundred years or longer, officials said Wednesday.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is preparing to pivot from its focus on evaluating the proposed Nevada waste storage site in light of the Obama administration declaring it no longer was interested in the repository plan.

The agency will need to determine what environmental and safety issues might come into play if thousands of tons of radioactive spent fuel needs to be kept in steel and concrete containers at reactor sites across the country for extended periods, NRC official Jack Davis said at an agency conference.

Speaking with reporters earlier this week, NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko said nuclear fuel can be stored safely for long periods, and the NRC will "work to see what that time frame is really like -- 100 years, 200 years, 400," according to the New York Times.

NRC staff has indicated that waste-containing canisters can remain robust for another 50-60 years. On Wednesday, Davis, who heads a high-level waste technical review team, said the prospect of keeping highly radioactive material contained for longer periods raises a new set of issues the agency will need to tackle.

NRC safety regulations "are not really optimized for long-term storage," he said. Also, "if you are starting to store for a very long time at individual sites, you are going to have to reconsider the environmental impacts and the assessments that went into that."

Davis' comments echoed those of NRC nominee William Magwood, made at a Senate confirmation hearing last month.

Magwood said nobody had planned for radioactive used fuel to remain at reactor sites that long. "I think we have to go back and take a look at what we have in place now and assure ourselves it is able to stay in place another 50 years if necessary."

Michael Weber, the director of the NRC's Office of Nuclear Material Safety and Safeguards, said Wednesday with Yucca Mountain no longer in consideration, the nation is where it was years ago, before policymakers determined that waste should be buried in Nevada.

"For now the repository at Yucca Mountain is on the off-ramp, and we are staring out in front of our windshield looking at an unmarked road before us," Weber said.