U.S. Watching Canada’s Nuclear Approach – Editorial from Tom Isaacs
Tom Isaacs. Supplied photo
The editorial below is from Tom Isaacs a member of the United States’ National Academy of Science Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board; OntarioNewsNorth.com believed it may be of interest to readers debating communities learning more about the NWMO and potentially becoming hosts for a deep geological repository. Tom Isaacs holds degrees in Engineering and Applied Physics from Harvard University and Chemical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. He has recently returned to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory providing strategic advice on the fusion energy program after three years as a consulting professor at Stanford University’s Center for Security and International Cooperation.
HANDLE WITH CARE:
COMMUNITIES, COLLABORATION, AND WHAT CANADA CAN TEACH THE U.S. ABOUT MANAGING USED NUCLEAR FUEL
In 2009, the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository was cancelled and the U.S. found itself without a long-term strategy for managing its growing stockpiles of used nuclear fuel. In the wake of that failure President Obama asked the Secretary of Energy to convene a Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future. Its mission was twofold: to review existing policies and relevant experiences for managing used nuclear fuel and to recommend a new plan.
My role on the Commission was that of lead advisor, and over the course of two years, from 2010 to 2012, we heard from thousands of individuals and organizations on a wide range of issues. There were numerous public meetings and numerous fact-finding missions, both in the U.S. and abroad.
One of the key lessons to emerge from our work was that the Yucca Mountain Project was halted not because the science was bad—on the contrary, the repository approach is one that many other technologically advanced countries are actively pursuing—but because the process did not adequately involve the public, their elected representatives, and other key parties in decision-making. The process, in other words, needs to be transparent and the public needs to be involved in all stages of planning. This is especially true of communities in the vicinity of the site: not only must they be active partners in the process, they must also want the project.
This made learning from consensually driven projects a vital part of the work the Commission did. The idea behind the Yucca Mountain Project—safely isolating used nuclear fuel in a deep geological repository—is based on the best available science. Assurances of safety must always be the first principle and it is on that basis that essentially every country in the world that has a substantive program for waste management has chosen the development of a deep geologic repository for the permanent disposal of used fuel and/or high-level radioactive waste.
International experience shows it takes several decades to plan and develop a repository. Finland and Sweden have already advanced to the stage of selecting a specific site for their used nuclear fuel repositories. Finland is far along, with construction scheduled to begin in or around 2015 and actual operations five years after that. Sweden’s program is also well advanced, and is now in the process of seeking regulatory approvals for a facility in the municipality of Östhammar.
Finland and Sweden got to this stage in some measure by making consent a vital part of the process. In Finland, the application for a site could not go forward without the consent of the host community. In Sweden, communities had veto-power over the process.
It may be countered that European countries are so different, politically as well as culturally, that they hold few useful lessons for the U.S. But there is an example much closer at hand: Canada.
Canada’s nuclear waste management program was itself born out of the collapse of a decades-long, technically-oriented effort to establish a repository. The program foundered following a ten-year Environmental Assessment of the repository concept. The core conclusion of that assessment was that from a technical perspective the safety of the geological repository concept had been adequately demonstrated, but that from a social perspective it had not.
In 2002 the Canadian government passed legislation requiring the establishment of a national Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO). From the very beginning the NWMO consulted Canadians broadly, and in particular Aboriginal people, about long-term management approaches for used nuclear fuel. From the very beginning the NWMO engaged in a national dialogue designed to understand the deeply-held values of Canadians and ensure that those values were reflected both in the plan it recommended and in the ways it went about implementing that plan.
Canadians call their plan Adaptive Phased Management. Like many other technologically advanced countries Canada has opted for a deep geological repository as the safest way to contain and isolate used nuclear fuel for the indefinite future. But it is the way that Canada is going about this that stands out. It is not enough for a site to be geologically sound: the local community must understand exactly what is involved and willingly give its consent to the project. The process, moreover, is collaborative: the initiative must come from interested communities, and at each step, up to entering into a formal agreement to host a repository, a community may withdraw its name from consideration. It is the community that drives the process, the community that decides whether to proceed to the next step, and together with NWMO, under what circumstances.
A great deal of effort has also gone into planning for the project’s wider impacts. Hence the focus on involving neighboring communities and potentially affected Aboriginal people, and hence, too, the close attention that will be given to communities along transportation routes.
The plan is advancing. So far, 18 Canadian communities have expressed an interest in learning more about the project and the process. As the site selection process moves forward some communities will doubtless decide that a repository is not in their best interest. But that is precisely the point: by giving communities the leeway and tools to make the best decision for themselves Canada has set in motion a process that makes a complex decision significantly less contentious.
So what did the Blue Ribbon Commission learn from studying Canada’s plan? That the process of developing a deep geological repository has to be as good as the science—and that it must be done in collaboration with those who will be affected by it.
Canada’s progress to date provides insight and confidence in the Commission’s recommendations to our own government.
Two of those recommendations are already part of the Canadian plan. The first is the construction of permanent deep geological facilities for the safe long-term management of used nuclear fuel and high-level nuclear waste. But in also recommending a more thoughtful and inclusive process the Commission is hoping to avoid repeating a past failure by building on the present successes of the Canadian plan.
Tom Isaacs
Livermore, California
