STATE REGULATION OCRWM addressed the issue of state regulation very early in the development of the transportation system. Because of the close working relationship they had with OCRWM through the regional groups, the states had every expectation that OCRWM would respect their role overseeing shipments of spent fuel and high-level waste to a national repository. The states’ role as co-regulators of shipments along with the NRC and DOT guaranteed they would have a place at the table in planning the transportation system. OCRWM’s commitment to work with the states as partners in planning came into question in 2006 with proposed legislation to amend the NWPA. If passed, Section 7 of the Nuclear Fuel Management and Disposal Act (S. 2589) would have facilitated OCRWM’s efforts to seek preemption of state laws related to shipments of radioactive waste. The legislation was defeated, but a similar proposal surfaced the following year. OCRWM’s expressed support for the legislation seriously eroded the states’ trust in the program — trust that had taken literally decades to build. The Transportation Institutional Plan identified “state, tribal, and local regulation of transportation” as an “added issue” that resulted from discussions with stakeholders in 1984. The discussion paper in the Transportation Institutional Plan addresses the history of transportation regulation, noting that —“to ensure the free flow of interstate commerce and, where necessary, to provide adequately for national safety”—much of the authority over shipments rests with the federal government (DOE 1986c, p. A-113). State and local governments, however, are afforded a role over some aspects of transportation, generally to ensure that local safety concerns are addressed. The discussion paper cites examples of “valid state and local regulations” based on DOT “inconsistency rulings” and court cases. Among the examples of “activities falling within the scope of legitimate State and local regulatory authority” are vehicle inspections “at loading and unloading points,”“immediate accident reporting to appropriate State or local officials to facilitate emergency response,” and “local regulation of traffic, including restrictions concerning the actual operation of motor vehicles and penalty actions for traffic violations” (ibid., pp. A-121-122). OCRWM’s discussion paper addressed the matter of state fees and permits, observing that “the extent to which States and local governments can enforce permit and fee requirements…remains somewhat unclear” (ibid., p. A-122). OCRWM acknowledged that states traditionally have enforced “permit and fee systems for highway transportation involving overweight trucks”— even trucks carrying radioactive waste. However, the paper goes on to state that “the validity of permit and fee systems that are directly related to the hazardous nature of cargo being shipped, but are imposed for the purpose of supporting State and local police- power responsibilities, has not been firmly established” (ibid.). A DOT inconsistency ruling — recently decided, at the time the Transportation Institutional Plan was written — had determined that a “transit fee” imposed by the state of Illinois per cask of
In their joint comments on Rev. 0 of OCRWM’s “National Transportation Plan,” the regional groups in the Midwest, West, and Northeast mentioned the need for OCRWM to make decisions regarding the shipping queue (Niles et al. 2009, p. 2). The West’s JimWilliams prepared a detailed treatment of “the question of queue” in a paper delivered at the Waste Management Conference earlier that year. Williams cautioned that the “SNF acceptance rankings established by the Standard Contract”would be a “barrier [to] best practice cross-country transport of the nation’s inventory of SNF” (Williams 2009b, p. 1). The paper discussed four possible “elements of best practice” for the cross-country transport of spent fuel: the shipment mode, the age of spent fuel transported, prioritization of certain origin sites, and concentrated acceptance at transportation origins (ibid., pp. 2-3). Williams noted OCRWM’s reluctance to provide detailed responses to stakeholder questions about the shipping queue, attributing the program’s reticence to the “ongoing litigation with nuclear utilities” over OCRWM’s failure to begin accepting spent fuel in 1998 (ibid., p. 3).
Looking at the acceptance priority rankings for the first 500 metric tons of spent fuel to be accepted, Williams noted several inefficiencies, particularly the fact that “500 MT can be transported in 18 dedicated train shipments, [however] the ‘Standard Contract’ campaign requires 114 overweight truck, 11 dedicated train, and 6 mixed freight shipments” (ibid., p. 5). Williams suggested that OCRWM develop a market-based system by which it would “offer money for…queue slots” so as to structure the acceptance order in a manner that emphasizes “best practice transport” (ibid., p. 9). Williams acknowledged that additional work would be needed to refine his proposal; however, the work was cut short as a result of the Yucca Mountain program being canceled.
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