Learning

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• During World War II, the United States began its pursuit of nuclear weapons. The Manhattan Project started in June 1942, and it took less than three years to develop a working atomic bomb.
• Shortly after World War II, the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union began, and the research and development of nuclear weapons intensified. Up until the late 1980s, work was done in a network of facilities across the country that came to be known as the “nuclear weapons complex.”
• Congress encouraged the use of nuclear energy in the civilian sector. The Atomic Energy Act of 1946 created the Atomic Energy Commission to look beyond building a stockpile of nuclear weapons to the peaceful use of atomic energy, including the production of electricity.
• In the 1950s, nuclear reactors started to be used to generate electric power. As with weapons production, the utilities assumed that the nuclear fuel, once “spent,” would be recycled and reused. However, commercial reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel was done in the United States with only limited success.
• Read full history here

Following the administration’s announcement in 2009 that it planned to withdraw the license application for a geologic repository at Yucca Mountain and study other disposal options, the Secretary of Energy established the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future (the Commission) to consider alternatives to the nation’s current institutional arrangements for managing and disposing of commercial spent nuclear fuel and high-level nuclear waste.

In January 2012, the Blue Ribbon Commission issued a final report that reaffirmed the broad outlines of the waste management policy adopted in 1982, but announced several new steps to reset the program and restart progress toward a long-term solution to the nuclear waste issue.

The Blue Ribbon Commission’s recommendations focused on ways to sustain the public trust and confidence necessary to see controversial facilities, such as geologic repositories, through to completion.

Specifically, the Blue Ribbon Commission recommended that Congress amend the NWPA to authorize a new consent-based siting process that encourages communities to volunteer to be considered to host a new spent nuclear fuel management facility and that includes a flexible and substantial incentive program.

The Blue Ribbon Commission also recommended that Congress ensure access to dedicated funding for the spent nuclear fuel management program and establish an independent spent nuclear fuel management organization.

The passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) in 1982 marked the beginning of a new chapter in U.S. efforts to deal with the nuclear waste issue.

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (NWPA) provided the basic policy framework for U.S. efforts to manage commercial spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste.

The NWPA made the management and permanent disposal of commercial spent nuclear fuel a federal responsibility. The NWPA also established procedures to evaluate and select sites for geologic repositories and for the interaction of state and federal governments.

The act also addressed several key elements of the nation’s spent fuel program:

• Siting and constructing a geologic repository for the permanent disposal of spent nuclear fuel
• Developing consolidated interim storage
• Financing the program through the Nuclear Waste Fund