Nuclear Power: Time to Choose

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Congress three years ago selected Yucca Mountain in a remote part of southwest Nevada as the site for a permanent underground repository. The state has fought the plan in a series of court battles that have helped delay the scheduled opening of the site to 2010. The DOE is meanwhile compiling a library of 10 million computerized documents that will attempt to analyze every aspect of the site to be sure it can safely hold the waste.

In light of all the turmoil, most people might be surprised to learn that a number of scientists say the waste problem can be solved with little fuss. The spent fuel rods can be buried in steel canisters thousands of feet below the surface, and experts can predict with a high degree of probability that a site will remain stable for hundreds or thousands of years. But as the public perceives nuclear waste, that's just not good enough. While the risks of so- called deep geologic disposal appear no greater than many others that Americans accept every day -- crossing the street, driving a car -- no scientist can guarantee that a disposal site will remain unchanged for tens of thousands of years or that groundwater may not seep into the containers at some point during the eons that the waste will remain radioactively hot. As long as the American public demands ironclad assurance that the waste cannot ever escape its containers, people's fears can never be entirely soothed.

In France, where the state runs the nuclear plants, the public seems less fearful of nuclear waste. The French convert their high-level waste into a stable, glassy substance and store it in concrete bunkers at plant sites while experts study where to dispose of it permanently sometime early next century. "The most important thing to remember is that we have time to make a proper decision," says Bernard Tinturier, director of strategic planning for the government's Commissariat for Nuclear Energy. French scientists are considering four locations around the country, including clay deposits about 120 miles north of Paris and a shale site near the Loire valley. If the French seem calmly deliberate about the issue of nuclear waste, that may be because they view atomic power as a necessity rather than an option. With virtually no oil and little coal or natural gas, France has decided to rely on its rich uranium deposits as the primary source of fuel for its power plants. The country is pressing ahead with plans to construct seven new nuclear plants by the end of the decade.

With new nukes out of the picture in the U.S., utilities have been scrambling to find other sources of the electricity they need to prevent summer brownouts and blackouts that hit when demand for air conditioning peaks. To handle the load, utilities have quietly placed orders in recent years for enough gas-fired generators to produce 30,000 megawatts of electricity -- equivalent to 30 large nuclear plants. But gas has drawbacks as a long-term alternative to nuclear energy. Though far cleaner burning than coal, it is still a fossil fuel that emits at least some CO2. Reliance on natural gas would require augmenting pipelines that link the energy-rich U.S. Southwest to the populous North and Northeast, an expensive undertaking with its own environmental hazards.