The US Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy recently issued an update to its “road map for implementing a consent-based siting process” to site one or more federal interim.
Last December, the Department of Energy (DOE) finally announced the next step in its plan to manage nuclear waste, as roughly outlined in its 2013 Strategy for the Management and Disposal of Used Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste.[1] In what the DOE characterized as a “critical step,” it opened a public comment period to gather input on how a new consent-based siting process for nuclear waste facilities might work. The DOE has yet to offer any technical framework or guidelines for what a desirable site would be.
Seth Tuler is an Associate Professor in the Department of Integrative and Global Studies, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, MA and Senior Researcher at the Social and Environmental Research Institute, Shelburne, MA. He works in the areas of risk governance, public participation, and social issues in hazard management. From 2003 to 2006, he served on the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Transportation of Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste. Together with Eugene A. Rosa, Thomas Webler, Sharon Friedman, and Roger Kasperson, Tuler provided input to the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future about public and stakeholder engagement options. They wrote two commissioned reports on social distrust in the spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste management system, and options for public participation. Early in the Commission’s process, they and 11 co-authors wrote an article in the journal