Openness and Accountability
PUBLIC INFORMATION AND OUTREACH Despite acknowledging a need to inform people about the repository program and associated shipments, OCRWM’s public outreach activities often did not reflect a concerted effort to produce materials that were responsive to public concerns. Early efforts like the OCRWM Bulletin and a high school curriculum on nuclear waste management were good examples of a carefully planned program. In later years, however, OCRWM’s public information materials did not reflect the same quality of thoughtful planning but rather gave the appearance of responding to events as they unfolded (e.g., producing a brochure on transportation as Congress debated the Yucca Mountain site selection in 2002). Moreover, it was rare for the states and other stakeholders to be consulted on information products. When they were, OCRWM sought their input far into the process, often when it was too late to incorporate substantive feedback. To succeed in reaching out to the public, OCRWM needs to develop a concerted plan for explaining the risks and benefits of shipments to the public and presenting it in a way that is meaningful to various audiences. Being on the “front lines,” the states need to be engaged at the very earliest stages of this effort. In the early days of the repository program, OCRWM recognized the value of public understanding leading to acceptance of the transportation system. Indeed, OCRWM revealed this understanding in the very first line of the 1986 Transportation Institutional Plan : “The Department of Energy (DOE) recognizes that the success of its program to develop and implement a national system for nuclear waste management and disposal, as directed by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (NWPA), depends not only on safety, but on broad-based public understanding of and confidence in program activities and objectives. While each program element has its particular sensitivity, the transportation of the waste to facilities developed under the NWPA may be the most visible element nationwide” (DOE 1986c, p. i). OCRWM had an ambitious plan for maintaining a “communication network” comprised of OCRWM and other federal agency staff, state, tribal, and local governments,
program activities. In the 1990s, the transportation program competed unsuccessfully with the disposal element as OCRWM management responded to budget constraints by devoting all of the program’s resources to site characterization. The five-year interruption in transportation activities from 1998 to 2003 proved to be a significant impediment to program progress when the work finally resumed in earnest in 2004. The loss of momentum and the loss of institutional knowledge over that period resulted in the transportation institutional program producing few tangible accomplishments in the final five years of the program—with advancements in Section 180(c) program development being a notable exception. Any new attempt to develop and operate a national repository, therefore, must take an integrated approach to long-term management of spent fuel and high-level waste rather than fragment the program, even in the face of continuing budget shortfalls. Once momentum is lost, it cannot be recovered; it must be built anew. It is possible, however, to preserve at least some of the institutional knowledge built up over a period of more than two decades. This archive of issues is intended to do just that: to contribute to the written record on transportation issue resolution, highlighting the Midwestern states’ role in the process. By documenting the attempts the Midwestern states and other stakeholders made over the years to resolve transportation institutional issues, the archive should make it easier for new personnel to learn about what came before. Armed with an understanding of what was done, what worked, what did not, and why, the people charged with carrying a new program forward may have a greater chance of success.
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