Global Security Newswire

A blue-ribbon panel convened by the Obama administration is to recommend creating one or several facilities in the United States where atomic waste would be held in above-ground concrete and metal structures for decades, the New York Times reported on Thursday (see GSN, May 10).

An initial proposal on the matter was to be considered on Friday by the Obama commission, which was created in 2010 by the Energy Department following a White House determination against building a single underground waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

The commission is anticipated to also urge the launching of a new initiative to identify another underground storage site that would be overseen by an entity that is wholly separate from the Energy Department, participants on the panel said.

Panel members said they would advise attaining approval from state and local officials prior to the selection of any underground repository site. They hope that a search that includes discussion of the financial gains that could accompany an atomic waste facility can be conducted in a less acrimonious atmosphere than the one that characterized the longstanding Yucca project.

The panel is slated to release an initial report on its recommendations in summer 2011 and a conclusive report in 2012.

At this time, participants said the commission is not expected to recommend initiating two waste disposal options that have met with heated criticisms: creating a new breed of reactors that would convert the most difficult waste materials into substances that are more simply managed with or recycling used fuel to extract plutonium for further use (Matthew Wald, New York Times, May 12).