The Commission, led by Lee Hamilton and Brent Scowcroft, will provide recommendations on managing used fuel and nuclear waste
Washington, D.C. – As part of the Obama Administration’s commitment to restarting America’s nuclear industry, U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu today announced the formation of a Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future to provide recommendations for developing a safe, long-term solution to managing the Nation’s used nuclear fuel and nuclear waste. The Commission is being co-chaired by former Congressman Lee Hamilton and former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft.
In light of the Administration’s decision not to proceed with the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, President Obama has directed Secretary Chu to establish the Commission to conduct a comprehensive review of policies for managing the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle. The Commission will provide advice and make recommendations on issues including alternatives for the storage, processing, and disposal of civilian and defense spent nuclear fuel and nuclear waste.
“Nuclear energy provides clean, safe, reliable power and has an important role to play as we build a low-carbon future. The Administration is committed to promoting nuclear power in the United States and developing a safe, long-term solution for the management of used nuclear fuel and nuclear waste. The work of the Blue Ribbon Commission will be invaluable to this process. I want to thank Congressman Hamilton and General Scowcroft for leading the Commission and I look forward to receiving their recommendations,” said Secretary Chu.
“As the world moves to tackle climate change and diversify our national energy portfolio, nuclear energy will play a vital role,” said Carol Browner, Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change. “Today, the Obama Administration has taken an important step. With the creation of the Blue Ribbon Commission, we are bringing together leading experts from around the country to ensure a safe and sustainable nuclear energy future.”
"Finding an acceptable long-term solution to our used nuclear fuel and nuclear waste storage needs is vital to the economic, environmental and security interests of the United States," said Congressman Hamilton. "This will be a thorough, comprehensive review based on the best available science. I'm looking forward to working with the many distinguished experts on this panel to achieve a consensus on the best path forward."
“As the United States responds to climate change and moves forward with a long overdue expansion of nuclear energy, we also need to work together to find a responsible, long-term strategy to deal with the leftover fuel and nuclear waste," said General Scowcroft. "I'm pleased to be part of that effort along with Congressman Hamilton and such an impressive group of scientific and industry experts."
The Commission is made up of 15 members who have a range of expertise and experience in nuclear issues, including scientists, industry representatives, and respected former elected officials. The Commission’s co-chairs have a record of tackling tough challenges in a thoughtful, comprehensive manner and building consensus among an array of interests.
The Commission will produce an interim report within 18 months and a final report within 24 months.
The members of the Blue Ribbon Commission are:
Lee Hamilton, Co-Chair
Lee Hamilton represented Indiana's 9th congressional district from January 1965-January 1999. During his time in Congress, Hamilton served as the ranking member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and chaired the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. He is currently president and director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and director of The Center on Congress at Indiana University.
He is a member of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board and the President's Homeland Security Advisory Council. Previously, Hamilton served as Vice Chairman of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (the 9/11 Commission).
Brent Scowcroft, Co-Chair
Brent Scowcroft is President of The Scowcroft Group, an international business advisory firm. He has served as the National Security Advisor to both Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush. From 1982 to 1989, he was Vice Chairman of Kissinger Associates, Inc., an international consulting firm.
Scowcroft served in the military for 29 years, and concluded at the rank of Lieutenant General following service as the Deputy National Security Advisor. Out of uniform, he continued in a public policy capacity by serving on the President's Advisory Committee on Arms Control, the Commission on Strategic Forces, and the President's Special Review Board, also known as the Tower Commission.
Mark Ayers, President, Building and Construction Trades Department, AFL-CIO
Vicky Bailey, Former Commissioner, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; Former IN PUC Commissioner; Former Department of Energy Assistant Secretary for Policy and International Affairs
Albert Carnesale, Chancellor Emeritus and Professor, UCLA
Pete V. Domenici, Senior Fellow, Bipartisan Policy Center; former U.S. Senator (R-NM)
Susan Eisenhower, President, Eisenhower Group
Chuck Hagel, Former U.S. Senator (R-NE)
Jonathan Lash, President, World Resources Institute
Allison Macfarlane, Associate Professor of Environmental Science and Policy, George Mason University
Dick Meserve, Former Chairman, Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Ernie Moniz, Professor of Physics and Cecil & Ida Green Distinguished Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Per Peterson, Professor and Chair, Department of Nuclear Engineering, University of California - Berkeley
John Rowe, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Exelon Corporation
Phil Sharp, President, Resources for the Future
U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Public Affairs, Washington, D.C.
CRESP Newstories and Links related to risk-based cleanup of the nation’s nuclear weapons production facility waste sites and cost-effective, risk-based management of potential future nuclear sites and wastes. CRESP seeks to improve the scientific and technical basis for environmental management decisions by the Department of Energy (DOE) and by fostering public participation in that search.
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Friday, January 29, 2010
Monday, January 25, 2010
NUCLEAR: Chu says new commission will probe wide range of nuclear waste recycling options (Monday, January 18, 2010)
NUCLEAR: Chu says new commission will probe wide range of nuclear waste recycling options (Monday, January 18, 2010)/ Peter Behr, E&E reporter
Obama administration's proposed blue-ribbon commission on nuclear waste, once appointed, will be given a very long-range mandate, Energy Secretary Steven Chu told reporters last week. It will be asked to look at options for handling spent reactor fuel that may require two decades of research.
"This is a commission that is asked to step back, look at where we are scientifically, technologically, where we think we can be, say, to begin to deploy something in 50 years. That leaves a couple of decades in R&D time," Chu said.
The commission, whose appointment has been expected for months, is supposed to be named soon, but Chu offered no predictions as to when that might be. "It's moving ahead," he said. "This is, remember, a White House charge."
Chu noted, as he has in the past, that current U.S. light water reactors use about 1 percent net of the energy content of their enriched uranium fuel assemblies. "So we are going to be looking at a wide swath of things, from making a once-through cycle that can maybe use 10 percent of the energy," he said. "If it's economically feasible, you've just reduced the amount of waste by a factor of 10, without even recycling."
Experts have stressed the daunting challenges in handling growing volumes of spent nuclear fuel with current reactor designs if nuclear power expands dramatically to help reduce carbon emissions from electricity generation. The recycling of spent fuel for reuse, or the deployment of "fast" reactors that would consume more of the nuclear fuel's energy -- reducing waste volumes -- is on the research agenda.
We're going to have to look at what are the possibilities of recycling in a proliferation-resistant way that's also economically viable. We want this blue-ribbon panel to look at all of those things," Chu said.
But future of Yucca Mountain 'is off the table'
"They have to understand what might occur and form a strategy on what to do. The good news is, we have at least a half-century of safe storage on [existing reactor] sites. That allows us to go forward and still build nuclear power plants, because I think these are solvable problems and we have at least for half a century a way to store the waste safely."
The administration has no choice but to continue storing spent fuel units on existing reactor properties because it has cut off support for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear fuel repository in Nevada. Using current technology that requires disposal of most of the spent fuel, the Yucca Mountain site's current storage capacity would have been filled in this decade, had it become operational.
Chu said the new commission would not go back into the debate over the Nevada site. "The administration has been very clear. Yucca Mountain is off the table. This is not going to a commission that sites" fuel repositories, he said.
Chu was asked how it was that he changed from supporting the licensing of the Yucca Mountain facility in 2008 to opposing it once he joined the Cabinet of President Obama, who came out against it during the 2008 presidential campaign in Nevada. Chu laughed with what appeared to be some embarrassment and said, "I think I had to work with the reality I found myself in. But let me also go on and say that the more I looked at what we could do, going forward, there are better solutions. I really, truly, scientifically believe there are better solutions than what was started 25 years ago, and that is part of what the blue-ribbon panel is supposed to be doing."
Forcing a 'technological leap' could be good for U.S. business
nother issue, Chu said that passing climate legislation that requires a steady reduction in carbon emissions would push U.S. industry toward leadership in a post-carbon economy. He offered as evidence a conversation with an executive of Cummins Inc., the U.S. diesel engine manufacturer, in Columbus, Ohio, last week. Critics of climate policies say U.S. companies that can't afford higher energy prices caused by carbon penalties won't be around to compete for post-carbon supremacy.
Chu had gone to Cummins' Columbus Technical Center to award the company nearly $54 million from the Energy Department for research on fuel efficiency improvements for light- and heavy-duty vehicles.
Chu said that Cummins' president and chief operating officer, Tom Linebarger, recounted how Cummins had opposed federal environmental regulation in the 1990s that required costly improvements to reduce exhaust pollution its diesel engines. "They didn't like it at all. They didn't think it was giving value to customers, because they were concentrating on making higher-efficiency, higher-performance, longer-lasting engines," Chu said. Suddenly, the government was telling the company to engineer emission reductions. "But they had to do it, so they did," Chu added.
Chu said Linebarger told him that if it hadn't been for the federal mandate, Cummins might not have become a world leader in clean diesel technology and might not have been able to continue as an independent company.
Chu said he asked Linebarger how he viewed a cap on carbon emissions. "He said, 'In the end, it would be better for the United States if we did it now and became a leader in that, because although companies might not like it, it will force them to take that technological leap, because in the end, the world is going to be in that place.'"
Obama administration's proposed blue-ribbon commission on nuclear waste, once appointed, will be given a very long-range mandate, Energy Secretary Steven Chu told reporters last week. It will be asked to look at options for handling spent reactor fuel that may require two decades of research.
"This is a commission that is asked to step back, look at where we are scientifically, technologically, where we think we can be, say, to begin to deploy something in 50 years. That leaves a couple of decades in R&D time," Chu said.
The commission, whose appointment has been expected for months, is supposed to be named soon, but Chu offered no predictions as to when that might be. "It's moving ahead," he said. "This is, remember, a White House charge."
Chu noted, as he has in the past, that current U.S. light water reactors use about 1 percent net of the energy content of their enriched uranium fuel assemblies. "So we are going to be looking at a wide swath of things, from making a once-through cycle that can maybe use 10 percent of the energy," he said. "If it's economically feasible, you've just reduced the amount of waste by a factor of 10, without even recycling."
Experts have stressed the daunting challenges in handling growing volumes of spent nuclear fuel with current reactor designs if nuclear power expands dramatically to help reduce carbon emissions from electricity generation. The recycling of spent fuel for reuse, or the deployment of "fast" reactors that would consume more of the nuclear fuel's energy -- reducing waste volumes -- is on the research agenda.
We're going to have to look at what are the possibilities of recycling in a proliferation-resistant way that's also economically viable. We want this blue-ribbon panel to look at all of those things," Chu said.
But future of Yucca Mountain 'is off the table'
"They have to understand what might occur and form a strategy on what to do. The good news is, we have at least a half-century of safe storage on [existing reactor] sites. That allows us to go forward and still build nuclear power plants, because I think these are solvable problems and we have at least for half a century a way to store the waste safely."
The administration has no choice but to continue storing spent fuel units on existing reactor properties because it has cut off support for the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear fuel repository in Nevada. Using current technology that requires disposal of most of the spent fuel, the Yucca Mountain site's current storage capacity would have been filled in this decade, had it become operational.
Chu said the new commission would not go back into the debate over the Nevada site. "The administration has been very clear. Yucca Mountain is off the table. This is not going to a commission that sites" fuel repositories, he said.
Chu was asked how it was that he changed from supporting the licensing of the Yucca Mountain facility in 2008 to opposing it once he joined the Cabinet of President Obama, who came out against it during the 2008 presidential campaign in Nevada. Chu laughed with what appeared to be some embarrassment and said, "I think I had to work with the reality I found myself in. But let me also go on and say that the more I looked at what we could do, going forward, there are better solutions. I really, truly, scientifically believe there are better solutions than what was started 25 years ago, and that is part of what the blue-ribbon panel is supposed to be doing."
Forcing a 'technological leap' could be good for U.S. business
nother issue, Chu said that passing climate legislation that requires a steady reduction in carbon emissions would push U.S. industry toward leadership in a post-carbon economy. He offered as evidence a conversation with an executive of Cummins Inc., the U.S. diesel engine manufacturer, in Columbus, Ohio, last week. Critics of climate policies say U.S. companies that can't afford higher energy prices caused by carbon penalties won't be around to compete for post-carbon supremacy.
Chu had gone to Cummins' Columbus Technical Center to award the company nearly $54 million from the Energy Department for research on fuel efficiency improvements for light- and heavy-duty vehicles.
Chu said that Cummins' president and chief operating officer, Tom Linebarger, recounted how Cummins had opposed federal environmental regulation in the 1990s that required costly improvements to reduce exhaust pollution its diesel engines. "They didn't like it at all. They didn't think it was giving value to customers, because they were concentrating on making higher-efficiency, higher-performance, longer-lasting engines," Chu said. Suddenly, the government was telling the company to engineer emission reductions. "But they had to do it, so they did," Chu added.
Chu said Linebarger told him that if it hadn't been for the federal mandate, Cummins might not have become a world leader in clean diesel technology and might not have been able to continue as an independent company.
Chu said he asked Linebarger how he viewed a cap on carbon emissions. "He said, 'In the end, it would be better for the United States if we did it now and became a leader in that, because although companies might not like it, it will force them to take that technological leap, because in the end, the world is going to be in that place.'"
Monday, January 4, 2010
Special Inquiry on "Review of Allegations Involving Potential Misconduct by a Senior Office of Environmental Management Official
MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY
FROM: Gregory H. Friedman Inspector General
SUBJECT: INFORMATION: Special Inquiry on "Review of Allegations Involving Potential Misconduct by a Senior Office of Environmental Management Official" (OIG No. S09IS024)
INTRODUCTION
In September 2009, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) received multiple allegations concerning improprieties by a senior official with the Office of Environmental Management. The allegations involved potential violations of political activity restrictions, lack of impartiality in performing official duties, misuse of position, and other related misconduct. Specific allegations concerned:
1. Orchestrating a $9 million American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act) payment to certain Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in return for something of value on behalf of a Member of Congress;
2. Asking Federal officials at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (Department) Savannah River Site (Savannah River) in South Carolina to arrange meetings with contractor employee union representatives in violation of the National Labor Relations Act;
3. Ordering Savannah River Federal and contractor officials to access subcontractor personnel files for data mining of demographic information in violation of the procedures for protecting personally identifiable information;
4. Directing Savannah River contractor officials to conduct Recovery Act-related job fairs in those counties represented by a Member of Congress in violation of the Hatch Act and Standards of Ethical Conduct; and,
5. Directing Savannah River contractor personnel to hire three specific individuals contrary to contract law principles.
The OIG initiated a fact-finding inquiry into these matters. Toward this end, we interviewed over 80 current and former Department Federal and contractor employees in South Carolina and Washington, D.C. We analyzed large volumes of documents, including over 150,000 emails, and we identified and reviewed applicable Federal and Department regulations. During the review, a number of additional complaints came to our attention. Several were incorporated into this inquiry, while others will undergo additional review and action will be taken, as appropriate.
FROM: Gregory H. Friedman Inspector General
SUBJECT: INFORMATION: Special Inquiry on "Review of Allegations Involving Potential Misconduct by a Senior Office of Environmental Management Official" (OIG No. S09IS024)
INTRODUCTION
In September 2009, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) received multiple allegations concerning improprieties by a senior official with the Office of Environmental Management. The allegations involved potential violations of political activity restrictions, lack of impartiality in performing official duties, misuse of position, and other related misconduct. Specific allegations concerned:
1. Orchestrating a $9 million American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act) payment to certain Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in return for something of value on behalf of a Member of Congress;
2. Asking Federal officials at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (Department) Savannah River Site (Savannah River) in South Carolina to arrange meetings with contractor employee union representatives in violation of the National Labor Relations Act;
3. Ordering Savannah River Federal and contractor officials to access subcontractor personnel files for data mining of demographic information in violation of the procedures for protecting personally identifiable information;
4. Directing Savannah River contractor officials to conduct Recovery Act-related job fairs in those counties represented by a Member of Congress in violation of the Hatch Act and Standards of Ethical Conduct; and,
5. Directing Savannah River contractor personnel to hire three specific individuals contrary to contract law principles.
The OIG initiated a fact-finding inquiry into these matters. Toward this end, we interviewed over 80 current and former Department Federal and contractor employees in South Carolina and Washington, D.C. We analyzed large volumes of documents, including over 150,000 emails, and we identified and reviewed applicable Federal and Department regulations. During the review, a number of additional complaints came to our attention. Several were incorporated into this inquiry, while others will undergo additional review and action will be taken, as appropriate.
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