Will spent nuclear fuel find a home in Idaho?

Sep 13 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Rocky Barker The Idaho Statesman, Boise

Just as the Idaho National Laboratory finished cleaning up one of its nastiest nuclear waste dumps, some leaders in eastern Idaho are looking for ways to bring a different kind of nuclear material to the state.

Last week, INL officials hailed that their cleanup of the infamous Pit 9 was ahead of schedule and under budget.

Wednesday, Lt. Gov. Brad Little and a contingent from eastern Idaho are going to Denver to testify before the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future on expanding the nuclear mission at the INL.

No one is openly calling for bringing in spent nuclear fuel from the nation's 104 commercial nuclear reactors -- yet.

But some supporters want it on the agenda.

"There are people who would like us to investigate an interim storage site in the state somewhere," said Lane Allgood, executive director of the Idaho Falls-based Partnership for Science and Technology. "We're way too early in the process to decide if this is something in our best interest."

Idaho's Republican Central Committee approved a resolution earlier in July that said "used nuclear fuel is not a waste product, rather that it should be considered by the state as an asset-based material with all the legal ramification included under federal law," and that "it may be used for research, nuclear fuel manufacturing, giving significant economic benefit to the state of Idaho and enhancing the energy independence of the United States of America."

To support Idaho as a consolidated interim storage site would be a direct challenge to the nuclear waste agreement Idaho Gov. Phil Batt negotiated in 1995 that prohibited commercial waste shipments to Idaho.

The deal followed years of protests and political battles that touched on the merits of national security and Idaho economics and the danger of storing potentially hazardous materials over the giant aquifer under the Snake River Plain. In 1996, Idaho voters overwhelmingly endorsed Batt's agreement.

Gov. Butch Otter made a minor amendment to the agreement earlier this year so a small amount of waste could be brought into the state for research, and even that was scrutinized.

Former Gov. Cecil Andrus was critical in part because the state got no guarantees it would get any benefits from the decision and because it opens the door to becoming a dump.

The Yucca Mountain deep disposal site in Nevada was supposed to be part of a solution to meet the Batt agreement, which stipulated all of the waste stored at INL be removed by 2035.

When the Obama administration decided to cancel that project, though, it took away the resting place for the spent fuel taken from government reactors, including those that powered our nuclear Navy -- some of which is stored in pools or on concrete pads at the INL.

Nationally, U.S. reactors have generated 65,000 metric tons of spent fuel, of which 75 percent is stored in pools, according to Nuclear Energy Institute data. A spent fuel rod gives off enough radiation to kill people a foot away in a matter of seconds.

With 30 million rods sitting in pools like those that failed at the ill-fated Fukushima Dai-ichi plants in Japan, this is a problem now and will be in the future.

After the Japanese earthquake, the work of the Obama-appointed Blue Ribbon Commission became even more important.

These issues are important here, too, because any spent fuel shipped around the Northwest will come through Idaho on roads and rails, perhaps right through Boise.

The commission members released a draft report at the end of July and is in the middle of a series of public meetings designed to give states, tribes and the public a chance to comment on their conclusions and recommendations. They propose an immediate new process to find consolidated interim storage facilities along with a new longterm storage siting process.

A key to their plan is that the search processes be "consent-based" -- as opposed to the process developed in the 1970s and 1980s that ended up forcing Yucca Mountain on Nevada, which never wanted it. The commission wants a new organization solely dedicated to waste management with the power and access to the funds to succeed.

"INL is the center for reactor and fuel cycle research in the United States, with unique capabilities and infrastructure to support such a research program," Idaho Falls Mayor Jared Fuhriman said. "There is no reason to duplicate these capabilities somewhere else when it can be done easily at INL."

There is a lot at stake. More than 24,000 Idaho jobs are dependent on the INL, which generates $3.5 billion in economic impact, according to Boise State University economists. The Department of Energy research facility itself employs more than 8,000 people, making it the second-largest employer in the state after state government, the BSU study said.

Like people in other areas that have nuclear waste facilities, eastern Idahoans want to ensure they keep what nuclear jobs they have and expand, perhaps even with a formal interim storage facility.

But no one is saying that yet.

Fuhriman said Eastern Idaho has long been considered one of the most supportive regions in the nation for nuclear programs, industry, education and workforce development.

"These recommendations present potential opportunities that spill beyond the boundaries of the INL to other reaches of our state," he said.

Beatrice Brailsford, the Snake River Alliance's nuclear program director in Pocatello, opposes bringing new spent fuel into the state for storage. Overall, the group, along with other anti-nuclear groups, want the waste nationwide removed from the pools and placed in dry casks in buildings that can safely store it for decades in the same place it was generated.

She wants the same treatment for the INL's spent fuel as the rest of the nation's.

"That's what the government should be doing instead of playing let's pretend it's going someplace else," Brailsford said.

Rocky Barker: 377-6484