BY MATT BOWEN |JANUARY 28, 2021
“……..A new report, part of wider work on nuclear energy at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, explains how the United States reached its current stalemate over nuclear waste disposal. It then examines productive approaches in other countries and a few domestic ones that could guide U.S. policy makers through options for improving the prospects of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste disposal going forward, including the following:
Create a new organization whose sole mission is nuclear waste management (and whose approach is consent-based). Since the 1970s, reports have noted that a single-purpose organization would have a number of advantages over a program residing within Department of Energy, which has multiple missions and competing priorities. Accordingly, Congress could pass legislation to create a separate nuclear waste management organization that has full access to needed funding and employs a consent-based approach to achieve greater support from state and local communities for the siting of facilities.