Nuclear - Energy Policy Analysis: A Conceptual Framework - page 54

of storage space ( Congressional Quarterly 1982, 304-310). The number of operating nuclear
plants has increased significantly since then.
NUCLEAR WASTE POLICY ACT
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (96 Statutes at Large 2201; 42 U.S.C. §10101 et seq.) cre-
ated a timetable and procedure for establishing a permanent underground repository for high-level
radioactive waste by the mid-1990s and provided for some temporary federal storage of waste,
including spent fuel from civilian nuclear reactors. State governments were authorized to veto a
national government decision to place a waste repository within their borders; the veto would stand
unless both houses of Congress voted to override it. The Act also called for developing plans by
1985 to build monitored retrievable storage (MRS) facilities, where wastes could be kept for fifty
to a hundred years or more and then removed for permanent disposal or reprocessing.
Congress assigned responsibility to the U.S. Department of Energy to site, construct, operate,
and close a repository for the disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. An
Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management was established in the Department of Energy
to implement the act. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was directed to set public
health and safety standards for releases of radioactive materials from a repository, and the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission was required to promulgate regulations governing construction, operation,
and closure of a repository. Generators and owners of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive
waste were required to pay the costs of disposal of such radioactive materials. The waste program,
which was expected to cost billions of dollars, would be funded through a fee paid by electric
utilities on nuclear-generated electricity.
Permanent Repositories
The basic concept of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act was to locate a large, stable geologic for-
mation and use mining technology to excavate a tunnel, or large-bore tunnel-boring machines
(similar to those used to drill the Chunnel from England to France) to drill a shaft 500 to 1,000
meters below the surface where rooms or vaults could be excavated for disposal of high-level
radioactive waste. The goal was to permanently isolate nuclear waste from the human environ-
ment ( Congressional Quarterly 1982, 304-310). The act required the secretary of energy to
issue guidelines for selection of sites for construction of two permanent underground nuclear
waste repositories. DOE was to recommend three potential sites to the president by January
1985. Additional sites were to be recommended to the president by July 1, 1989, as possible
locations for a second repository. A full environmental impact statement was required for any
site recommended to the president.
Locations considered to be leading contenders for a permanent repository were basalt
formations at the government's Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington, volcanic tuff
formations at its Nevada nuclear test site, and several salt formations in Utah, Texas, Louisi-
ana, and Mississippi. Salt and granite formations in other states from Maine to Georgia were
also surveyed, but not evaluated in great detail (USDOE 1986; Congressional Quarterly 1982,
304-310). The president was required to review site recommendations and submit to Congress
by March 31, 1987, his recommendation of one site for the first repository and by March 31,
1990, his recommendation for a second repository. The amount of high-level waste or spent
fuel that could be placed in the first repository was limited to the equivalent of 70,000 metric
tons until a second repository was built. The act required the national government to take