Finding Common Ground

Abstract

It was 1993, and the nuclear waste negotiator was a desperate man. I am not making up this title. The Office of the Nuclear Waste Negotiator was a short-lived independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the placement and storage of nuclear waste from 1987 to 1995. Its head was responsible for finding some place—any place—willing to store spent fuel rods from the country’s 111 nuclear power plants. This highlevel radioactive waste was being kept at each plant in unsafe conditions, and both the public and the administration insisted on a safe, secure facility ASAP. David Leroy, the nuclear waste negotiator, sent letters to every state, tribe, and county soliciting a host for a temporary MRS (monitored retrievable storage) facility for the waste. Permanent underground storage was being negotiated at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, but even under the most optimistic scenario that site would not be ready for forty years. What was urgently needed was a place to house the spent fuel rods in the interim, a nice, well-monitored aboveground facility.