Coupling Fuel Cycles with Repositories: How Repository Institutional Choices May Impact Fuel Cycle Design

The United States repository for high-level waste (HLW) and spent nuclear fuel (SNF) is currently scheduled to open in 2048—more than a century after generation of the first HLW. This failure is a consequence of the cold war history and an institutional structure that provided insufficient confidence and incentives to states and communities to host a repository. The U.S. government is now considering an alternative repository siting strategy based on voluntary agreements with state governments. If that occurs, state governments become key decision makers. They have different priorities. Those priorities may change the characteristics of the repository and the fuel cycle. Historically the federal government has attempted to site repositories with a top-down approach driven by Administration and Congressional political considerations. This leads to siting fuel cycle facilities with associated jobs and taxes in different states.It follows that a repository will have less than optimum capabilities and benefits to the local community and state due to its geographic separation from related fuel cycle facilities. State government priorities, when considering hosting a repository, are safety, financial incentives and jobs. It follows that states will demand that a repository be the center of the back end of the fuel cycle as a condition of hostingit. For example, states will push for collocation of transportation services, safeguards training, and navy/private SNF inspection at the repository site. Such activities would more than double local employment relative to what was planned for the Yucca Mountain (YM)-type repository. States may demand (1) the right to take future title of the SNF so if recycle became economic the reprocessing plant would be built at the repository site and (2) the right of a certain fraction of the repository capacity for foreign SNF. That would open the future option of leasing of fuel to foreign utilities with disposal of the SNF in the repository—but with the state-government condition that the front-end fuel-cycle enrichment and fuel fabrication facilities be located in that state. Such a reorganization of the fuel cycle would reflect the end of the cold war as a major driver in fuel cycle decisions. If more than one state hosts a repository it could result in the development of a more traditional conventional industrial structure for the fuel cycle.