Nuclear Waste Disposal Continues to Plague the United States ─ Does No One Have Persuasive Common Sense?

© 2010 Peter Free

 

01 October 2010

 

Background to the nuclear waste disposal problem

 

The United States has implemented no reasonably safe disposal site for radioactive nuclear waste.  Creating one has eluded 10 American presidents.

 

The 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act (amended in 1987) designated Yucca Mountain (Nevada) as our single geologic depository.  It was supposed to open in 1998.  It hasn’t, due to not-safe-enough-itis and not-in-my-backyard resistance.

 

So the Obama Administration (probably not so cleverly) killed Yucca Mountain in 2010 and appointed a Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future.

 

Meanwhile, nuclear generating expansion and easier licensing is increasing the amounts of already stockpiled nuclear waste stored temporarily (therefore unsafely) around the country.

 

Citation

 

Eugene A. Rosa et al., Nuclear Waste: Knowledge Waste?, Science 329(5993): 762-763 (13 August 2010)

 

Yet another study commission

 

When in political doubt, appoint a study panel.  That might be funny, even the third time around.  Now decades into the problem of disposing of nuclear waste, it is not wryly or even cynically humorous.

 

The irony is

 

The irony is that Americans’ irrational fear of nuclear power generating technology overlooks the more significant safety concerns posed by the waste materials that we already have lying around with no way to make them safe.

 

Our problem is nuclear garbage.  It is not nuclear fission technology.  People miss this essential point.

 

It should seem odd that the United States would have embarked on civilian nuclear power generation without first designing a safe place to put waste products.  Yet we did just that.  The process was akin to putting a toilet on the second floor of one’s house without connecting it to a proper disposal site of any kind. 

 

Avoidance

 

So currently, the Obama Administration gets away with appointing another time-wasting panel, when action should be the goal.

 

We can’t isolate the President in the Blame Pool for this.  He is essentially following in the footsteps of his nine predecessors.

 

But being in the company of nine other presidents ─ who also ineffectively dealt with a clear and present danger ─ simply means that there is something systemically wrong with the Executive and Legislative Branches of our federal government.

 

So what has gone wrong?

 

Eugene A. Rosa et al. identified the problem in America’s approach to nuclear energy.

 

Our technocratic Department of Energy apparently never learned that getting site approval for a nuclear waste depository requires public acquiescence.  Obtaining public approval means studying and implementing the sociological means to encourage it.

 

This public approval process is called “persuasion.”  Persuasion often requires a combination of education and advocacy.

 

Since America is fundamentally in the business of selling ─ just turn on the television ─ the persuasion/sales concept should not be the hard sell it seems to have been for the people at the Department of Energy.

 

Given that the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management have been negotiating the obstacles to public approval for decades, it makes little sense that the Department of Energy has been resistant to meaningfully involving the public in designing America’s future.

 

Fundamentally, the responsibility for failing to persuade the public that nuclear waste disposal is important comes back to each presidential administration.  The Department of Energy (DOE) works for the President.

 

In this regard, the current Administration might note these excerpts from the Rosa group’s paper:

 

Trust is a key factor in risk perceptions.  The DOE is especially mistrusted.

 

Case studies show the benefits of public involvement . . . .

 

However, despite decades of social science, guidance to promote adaptive learning, social trust, and legitimacy has not been followed in addressing waste and other challenges to nuclear power.

 

Institutional cultures typically frame challenges as technical problems rather than societal challenges.

 

Addressing relevant social issues does not guarantee success, but ignoring them increases the chances of repeating past failures.

 

© 2010 Eugene A. Rosa et al., Nuclear Waste: Knowledge Waste?, Science 329(5993): 762-763 (13 August 2010)

 

Psychology done backwards

 

Hostility to the federal government, especially in the American West, is directly attributable to the widespread feeling that “them citified morons from Washington are coming over to tell us what we have to do.”

 

It doesn’t take exceptional street smarts to recognize that you don’t walk onto (even federal) land and tell the locals what they are going to have to do.  You persuade them, instead.

 

Another irony

 

One has to go far to find a place more enthusiastic about defending this nation’s homeland security and energy interests than rural Westerners.

 

When they tell you to take a hike, you obviously have not even attempted to present an effective case regarding the nation’s well being.

 

The President’s Blue Ribbon Panel is going to have to act differently than its predecessors

 

Otherwise, we are all going to be up to our eyeballs in radioactive waste that government was too ineffectual to safely get rid off.

 

That’s a hard one to blame on the People.