Echols: Get feds out of nuclear waste business

The nuclear plant crisis in Japan threatens to chill any nuclear renaissance in the United States. One reason is that it appears the Japanese have procrastinated with regard to the disposal of nuclear waste, just as we have in this country.

I believe it's time to demand that our government turn nuclear waste management over to the private sector. As Heritage Foundation nuclear expert Jack Spencer recently testified, America's disposal strategy has failed.

Established in 1982, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act set Jan. 31, 1998, as the deadline for the federal government to begin collection of spent nuclear fuel. To date, nothing has been done.

Even as the 1979 accident at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, and ensuing regulations, brought nuclear plant construction to a standstill, the lack of an effective waste-handling policy still is problematic. Spencer suggests the federal government's inability to fulfill its legal obligations remains the major obstacle in moving nuclear energy forward. The waste is the Achilles heel of an otherwise great carbon-free form of power.

This country has more than 60,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste stored at more than 100 sites in 39 states. The country's 104 commercial reactors produce approximately 2,000 additional tons of used fuel annually. While I wish the government would take the waste to the partially completed Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada as promised, we'd need nine such repositories by the turn of century to house all the waste we're producing, according to Phillip J. Finck of the Argonne National Laboratory.

Spencer's testimony to President Obama's Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future is instructive. He argued that our current approach to managing used nuclear fuel is broken. The government promised to take title to the used fuel and dispose of it. It did not. With its pledge to take the fuel, the government removed any incentive for power-generating companies to develop better ways to manage it. So, it sits - at our expense - as a liability.

I believe the federal government has had its turn. Let's allow utilities, nuclear technology companies and consumers to

Comment on "Echols: Get feds out of nuclear waste business"