Nuclear Waste Stalemate: Political and Scientific Controversies , Robert Vandenbosch and Susanne E. Vandenbosch , U. Utah Press, Salt Lake City, 2007. $25.00 paper (313 pp.). ISBN 978-0-87480-903-9
Nuclear Waste Stalemate: Political and Scientific Controversies, by Robert Vandenbosch and Susanne E. Vandenbosch, promises a great deal from its title. But it fails to deliver much that could be labeled as scientific. Its focus is almost completely on the political science of the issue rather than on the scientific side. Robert Vandenbosch is a professor emeritus of chemistry at the University of Washington and coauthored with John Huizenga the book Nuclear Fission (Academic Press, 1973); his wife, Susanne E. Vandenbosch, is a political scientist with a nuclear chemistry background.
Regardless of the book’s title, the authors clearly state in the introduction that the book “focuses on the politics of the disposal of nuclear waste.” But even that statement is not completely true because the main focus is on the disposal of high-level nuclear waste and used nuclear fuel. There is no discussion of low-level waste disposal, the problems of uranium mill tailings, and so forth. But they go on to state the following:
Many observers, particularly those with a technical background, believe that the nuclear waste problem is primarily a political problem. The political and scientific problems associated with developing a repository are interwoven and in this study an effort has been made to describe and analyze both facets of this effort.
I do not believe the authors have lived up to their goal of explaining the scientific aspects of nuclear waste disposal; even when they focus the discussion on a geological repository, they mention little of the challenges associated with it. The option of reprocessing high-level used nuclear fuel is briefly mentioned only in chapter 2, in about five pages; transmutation of the high-level nuclear waste receives almost twice as much discussion—though the economics of the two approaches is not mentioned.
The book’s coverage on used fuel, what the authors improperly term as “spent fuel,” is filled with errors. But it certainly reflects the conventional wisdom of those opposed to recycling the used fuel, even though such recycling would allow additional electricity to be generated and thus increase the return from the enormous investment already made in nuclear fuel. For example, after the fuel is used, it still has significant amounts of uranium-235 and plutonium-239. Thus it makes sense to recycle those materials into nuclear reactors to generate electricity and reduce fresh uranium consumption. Moreover, the book’s comments on mixed oxide fuel, a blend of uranium and plutonium oxides, are incorrect. For instance, even though the US is moving slowly in using MOX fuel, more than 60 of the 105 nuclear reactors are capable of using that fuel without the need for any reactor modification. The text implies that reactor modifications are a severe roadblock to the technology.
Toward the end of the book is a relatively short chapter, about 10 pages, on transportation of used fuel to Yucca Mountain in Nevada and on the work of the National Academies Committee on Transportation of Radioactive Waste, of which I was a member, that examined the issue. A lot of substance exists in the committee report, but the discussion in the chapter tends to focus on the impact of terrorism on used-fuel shipments.
The final chapter summarizes approaches to high-level waste disposal in other countries. I found the chapter to be interesting from the standpoint of what other countries—those, such as France, Sweden, and the UK, not completely hamstrung by the political maneuvering so prevalent in the US—were doing about those issues. Although the overall discussion is mostly accurate, glaring technical errors are apparent to anyone with experience in the nuclear-waste area.
Nevertheless, I found Nuclear Waste Stalemate an interesting read because of all the gory details of the political and legal maneuverings associated with the disposal of nuclear waste in the US. There is an old saying that government policy is like bologna: It is a lot better if you don’t see how it is made. Even though a recounting of all the laws, acts, resolutions, vetoes, and such may seem uninteresting to a scientist, I found it to be extremely intriguing. A review of the political shenanigans by elected officials at all levels, and of those by a large number of advocacy groups, makes it clear why no satisfactory technical or political resolution of the issue has happened in the US.
