successively larger grants as their interest in hosting a facility grew. However, then Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico successfully blocked new funding for study grants to Tribes or states, effectively ending the Mescalero Apache’s efforts to be considered for a federal MRS facility (Sachs 1996, p. 884-5). The ONWN was abolished by Congress in 1995. Subsequent CBS efforts by Private Fuel Storage (PFS), a consortium of nuclear energy utilities, to develop their own MRS facility with the Mescalero Apache failed; in 2006, PFS came close to succeeding when the NRC issued a license to build an MRS facility on the Goshute Indian Tribe’s Skull Valley Reservation in Utah. Unfortunately, PFS’s efforts were effectively killed when the Bureau of Land Management — spurred by then U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah — refused to allow preliminary work necessary to prepare for construction of the rail spur that would make it possible to transport SNF by rail to the site. As progress on the permanent repository at Yucca Mountain slowed and failed through the 1990s and 2000s, the Obama Administration convened the 15-member BRC. In its final report, the BRC emphasized the importance of CBS, saying that siting storage and/or repository facilities had been “the most consistent and most intractable challenge for the U.S. nuclear waste management program” (BRC 2012, p viii). In fact, a new CBS approach was the number one recommendation of the BRC. The BRC did not go so far as to define “consent,” but left it up to whatever potential hosts would feel constituted a willing,
freely given, and legally binding agreement with the facility operator(s). A CBS approach, according to the BRC, went beyond giving communities the opportunity to approve or disapprove a SNF facility on their land. In addition to being consent-based, the approach should be: • Transparent — in the sense that all stakeholders have an opportunity to understand key decisions and engage the process in a meaningful way; • Phased — in the sense that key decisions are revisited and modified as necessary along the way rather than being pre-determined; • Adaptive — in the sense that [the] process itself is flexible and produces decisions that are responsive to new information and new technical, social, or political developments; • Standards- and science-based — in the sense that the public can have confidence that all facilities meet rigorous, objective, and consistently-applied standards of safety and environmental protection; [and] • Governed by partnership arrangements or legally enforceable agreements between the implementing organization and host states, tribes, and local communities (BRC 2012, p. 47 8). When making these recommendations, the BRC looked to successful historical examples of CBS, both in the United States and abroad. At home, the most apparent and successful example is that of WIPP. The selection of the site outside of Carlsbad, New Mexico, had characteristics that are necessary for a successful, deep-mined geologic repository. As expected, “detailed and quantitative technical requirements have to be met” but “sites could be disqualified because of considerations such as ‘lack of social acceptance, high population density, difficulty of access’” (Metlay 2013, p. 29). On the technical requirements side, the WIPP site is well suited, seeing that salt formations, in general, and the Permian Basin in southeastern New Mexico, in particular, are ideal for long-term emplacement of transuranic (TRU) waste. The other side, especially requiring social acceptance, was more of a mixed bag. After Carlsbad’s mining industry started to slow, local leaders were eager to host the WIPP site. Officials with the state of New Mexico were less excited, but never outwardly antagonistic in the same way Nevada has actively opposed the Yucca Mountain repository. The state created the Environmental Evaluation Group, which acted as an independent examiner of the health and safety impacts of the potential site, often pushing DOE to take a more cautious approach. The state, along with nongovernmental organizations, also challenged the legality of the land withdrawal. This was resolved with the WIPP LandWithdrawal Act in 1992. Also resolved by act was the dispute over what kind of waste the facility would accept. “Despite informal understandings with the DOE, the state insisted that the [Act] include a provision that limited WIPP’s mission to the disposal of defense-generated TRU waste” (Metlay 2013, p. 34). Local officials have since expressed interest in expanding WIPP’s waste acceptance beyond TRU waste, but that remains unlikely without state support.
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