The question of how to dispose of nuclear waste in the United States remains unanswered half a century after the first power reactor opened.

As the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada remains controversial and slowed by legal issues, President Barrack Obama has appointed a commission to make recommendations on how to dispose and store nuclear waste from energy to defense uses.

Last week Audeen Fentiman, Purdue University professor of nuclear engineering, testified to that group -- the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future -- in Washington, D.C.

She was representing the American Nuclear Society's Special Committee on Used Nuclear Fuel Management Options and offering a summary of its upcoming final report that will be considered by the Blue Ribbon Commission.

Fentiman, who is also Purdue's associate dean of engineering, is considered an expert on nuclear waste management and has co-authored a textbook on the subject.

The American Nuclear Society's final report will be submitted in January. The Blue Ribbon Commission's final report is due by January 2012.

The J&C spoke with Fentiman about storing nuclear waste.

Question: How did you get involved in nuclear waste management?

Answer: My first job as a nuclear engineer was at Battelle, in Columbus, Ohio, where I worked for about 10 years. Most of my work there was related to nuclear waste management. The first project, which lasted for several years, was related to safe transportation of used nuclear fuel and high level waste. That was followed by a long-term project on the design and performance assessment of a deep geological repository for used nuclear fuel and high level waste.

Q: What is used nuclear fuel?

A: It is fuel that has been used in a reactor and taken out of it.

Q: What kind of challenges are there related to storing spent fuel?

A: First of all, for many years it was called spent fuel. But it is now called used fuel because it can be reprocessed and reused.

When you first take it out of the reactor, the fission products are highly radioactive and the fuel is very hot -- thermally hot. It is put into a deep pool filled with water while it cools down. Usually after five years or so it is put into a cask that is kept on the site. ... (Based on federal policy) the fuel will be buried in a deep geological repository. Some countries, like Japan and France, reprocess the used fuel.

Q: What did you testify about to the commission in Washington, D.C?

A: The (American Nuclear Society) committee has found three major findings. The first was the country needs to have a long-term, stable policy toward used fuel management. In order for us to move forward with the various (nuclear) facilities, we have to have a long-term policy. Second, we have to have a geological depository.

Whether we just bury the spent fuel or reprocess it, we will still need a geological deposit. And third, we will need some long-term interim storage.

Q: In your testimony, you said the main obstacles to a rational fuel cycle policy are political, financial and social, but not technological. Why is that?

A: That is a major point that we made. All of the things that we are saying we need -- geological storage, interim storage sites or even recycling -- all of those things are being done and have been done to some extent somewhere in the world. So technically we know how to build them. We need a long-term policy and for that, we need financial, political and social (support).

Q: Protesting against nuclear energy was once a hallmark of college campus activism but rarely seen now. Why is that?

A: Nuclear energy now enjoys a great deal of public support. It is a proven technology that can provide the huge amounts of electricity needed by industrial and industrializing nations at a competitive cost without CO2 emissions. Furthermore, the 104 commercial nuclear power plants in the US have operated safely and reliably for decades, providing about 20 percent of our nation's electricity. Some well-known environmental leaders who used to oppose nuclear power now support it.

This article first appeared in the Journal and Courier on November 21, 2010
By Eric Weddle