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Down in the dumps
OPINION
Down in the dumps A decision to veto an underground repository for the UK shows how hard it is to find a solution to nuclear waste, say William M. Alley and Rosemarie Alley THERE are 437 nuclear power reactors in 31 countries around the world. The number of repositories for high-level radioactive waste? Zero. The typical lifespan of a nuclear power plant is 60 years. The waste from nuclear power is dangerous for up to one million years. Clearly, the waste problem is not going to go away any time soon. In fact, it is going to get a lot worse. The World Nuclear Association says that 45 countries without nuclear power are giving it serious consideration. Several others, including China, South Korea and India, are planning to massively expand their existing programmes. Meanwhile, dealing with the waste from nuclear energy can be put off for another day, decade or century. It’s not that we haven’t tried. By the 1970s, countries that produced nuclear power were promising that repositories would be built hundreds of metres underground to permanently isolate the waste. Small groups of technical experts and government officials laboured behind closed doors to identify potential sites. The results – produced with almost no public consultation – were disastrous. In 1976, West German politicians unilaterally selected a site near the village of Gorleben on the East German border for a repository, fuelling a boisterous anti-nuclear movement that seems to have no end in sight. In the UK, the practice of choosing candidate sites with little public input was lampooned as “decide, announce, defend”. 28 | NewScientist | 16 February 2013
In the US, backroom political strategy: look for a community manoeuvring led to the 1987 willing to host a repository, using selection of Yucca Mountain in lots of touchy-feely language such Nevada, at the time an underas consent-based, transparent, populated gambling Mecca with adaptive, phased and terminable. no political muscle. Nevadans On paper, it is win-win. Sweden have been fighting what they and Finland, those paragons of call the “Screw Nevada Bill” ever Nordic cooperation and efficiency, since. The Obama administration are now in the home stretch for pulled funding from Yucca opening the world’s first nuclear Mountain to appease Senate waste repositories, and are held majority leader Harry Reid, who up as proof-positive that the new is from Nevada, but the decision policy can work. is still being battled in the courts Yet finding a volunteer and Congress, and the site is not community is the relatively completely off the table. “It is now over half a century It took a while, but since the dawn of the governments began to catch nuclear age; dangerous on that the top-down approach waste continues to pile up” wasn’t working. Time for a new
easy part, because nuclear waste repositories bring jobs and money. But this doesn’t mean their neighbours, or the regional powers that be, are going to go along with it. This unfortunate aspect of policymaking became readily apparent in the UK last month. Everything seemed a sure shot for taking the next exploratory steps toward a nuclear waste repository in west Cumbria. Located next door to Sellafield, the granddaddy of the UK’s nuclear facilities, two local communities comfortable with nuclear matters were in favour. The bugles and bunting were practically being unfurled when Cumbria County Council, concerned about tourism in the Lake District and possible future leaks, vetoed the plan. No other volunteers are in line as a backup. The US recently announced its own volunteer-based policy, including promises to have an interim storage site up and running within eight years and a repository by 2048. It should know better. Is it forgetting its own track record, even with interim storage facilities? In the 1980s, the community of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, agreed to host an interim facility. Statewide opposition shut it down. In the 1990s, the Skull Valley Band Of The Goshute Nation, a recognised Native American sovereign nation, volunteered to host an interim facility on its reservation in Utah. Last December, after more than 15 years of legal sparring with the state, the utilities working with the Goshute finally gave up.
Comment on these stories at newscientist.com/opinion
William M. Alley oversaw the US Geological Survey’s Yucca Mountain project from 2002 to 2010. He and Rosemarie Alley are authors of Too Hot To Touch: The problem of high-level nuclear waste (Cambridge University Press)
One minute with...
Alan Stern
Fed up with dull names for exoplanets, the scientist asked the public for help. Will it be so long 2M 0746+20b, hello Obama? How did you come up with the idea for a list of potential names for exoplanets? The number of planets in the Milky Way was recently estimated at more than 100 billion. We realised that that’s far, far too many names for astronomers to supply, that it would take the general public too. We also realised how much fun this could be for people. How do people submit names? For $0.99, anyone can put in a name, as long as it isn’t already nominated and isn't profane or pejorative. People can also vote on which names they like best. We only have a few hundred now, but the idea is that we will have hundreds of thousands of names in the database. We will take the thousand most popular, which will correspond to the thousand or so exoplanets that we already know about, and hand those to exoplanet scientists. What kinds of names are people suggesting? It is pretty interesting. People are putting in names of friends, spouses. They are putting in lots of science-fiction names like Alderaan and Yuggoth, names of authors such as Heinlein and Asimov, and even politicians like Obama and Romney. As this gets out to the general public, we expect there to be a lot of interesting contests going on – maybe Lady Gaga versus Madonna.
Profile Alan Stern is the former head of science missions at NASA. He and a group of fellow scientists and educators launched Uwingu’s hunt for names last year at uwingu.com
What else is Uwingu trying to accomplish? The mission of the company is two-fold. Priority one is to better connect the general public with space and the sky. Two is to operate a fund for space research, exploration and education.
What’s wrong with the existing names? There are none – just “license plate” designations like 2M 0746+20b or OGLE235-MOA53b!
What is the Uwingu fund? It comes from revenues generated by people nominating and voting for their favourite exoplanet names, and it goes toward needy space projects, such as SETI’s Allen Telescope Array.
Isn’t it a problem that your company, Uwingu, has no formal ties to the International Astronomical Union’s naming committee? I think most people get that this is for fun and engagement. It’s not meant to be official. In a sense, it’s a social experiment. Naming celestial objects is usually done by astronomers and professionals. Other people who are interested in space never get the opportunity to do that kind of thing. What if they did? What would the people of Earth choose? What would their imagination do that we wouldn’t do, as astronomers?
Why should the public trust you with their money? People in the research and education community recognise our names, so they will come to us in ways that they wouldn’t otherwise. We are professional scientists and educators, and we will do the quality control. Our intent is to be worldwide, not only in our revenue, but in our expenditures. Uwingu is the only thing around like this; nobody else has thought of anything similar. Interview by Stephen P. Craft
16 February 2013 | NewScientist | 29
nasa
The most recent volunteer community to be snubbed is Nye County, where Yucca Mountain is situated. After a commission chartered by the Obama administration recommended a new “consent-based” approach to break the deadlock over the site, Nye County officials wrote to US energy secretary Steven Chu giving their consent to host the repository at Yucca Mountain. Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval subsequently informed Chu that the state of Nevada will never consent to a repository. It’s now over half a century since the dawn of nuclear energy and dangerous and long-lived waste continues to pile up all over the globe. Something needs to be done. Although touted as the solution, finding a consenting community is merely the first step. The harder part is getting everyone else to sign on. And then comes the real challenge – to determine if the ground beneath a volunteer community is geologically suitable for a repository. This daunting endeavour requires a decades-long process that is both politically sensitive and technically complex. Inevitably, surprises occur as studies go underground. Here, the public needs an independent, technically savvy group whom they trust to address their concerns and interpret the scientific results. The difficulties of finding a happily-ever-after triad of volunteer community, consenting neighbours and geologically suitable site cannot be lightly dismissed. Replacing a top-down approach with a consent-based one is a step in the right direction, but it doesn’t fundamentally solve the problem. n
Down in the dumps A decision to veto an underground repository for the UK shows how hard it is to find a solution to nuclear waste, say William M. Alley and Rosemarie Alley THERE are 437 nuclear power reactors in 31 countries around the world. The number of repositories for high-level radioactive waste? Zero. The typical lifespan of a nuclear power plant is 60 years. The waste from nuclear power is dangerous for up to one million years. Clearly, the waste problem is not going to go away any time soon. In fact, it is going to get a lot worse. The World Nuclear Association says that 45 countries without nuclear power are giving it serious consideration. Several others, including China, South Korea and India, are planning to massively expand their existing programmes. Meanwhile, dealing with the waste from nuclear energy can be put off for another day, decade or century. It’s not that we haven’t tried. By the 1970s, countries that produced nuclear power were promising that repositories would be built hundreds of metres underground to permanently isolate the waste. Small groups of technical experts and government officials laboured behind closed doors to identify potential sites. The results – produced with almost no public consultation – were disastrous. In 1976, West German politicians unilaterally selected a site near the village of Gorleben on the East German border for a repository, fuelling a boisterous anti-nuclear movement that seems to have no end in sight. In the UK, the practice of choosing candidate sites with little public input was lampooned as “decide, announce, defend”. 28 | NewScientist | 16 February 2013
In the US, backroom political strategy: look for a community manoeuvring led to the 1987 willing to host a repository, using selection of Yucca Mountain in lots of touchy-feely language such Nevada, at the time an underas consent-based, transparent, populated gambling Mecca with adaptive, phased and terminable. no political muscle. Nevadans On paper, it is win-win. Sweden have been fighting what they and Finland, those paragons of call the “Screw Nevada Bill” ever Nordic cooperation and efficiency, since. The Obama administration are now in the home stretch for pulled funding from Yucca opening the world’s first nuclear Mountain to appease Senate waste repositories, and are held majority leader Harry Reid, who up as proof-positive that the new is from Nevada, but the decision policy can work. is still being battled in the courts Yet finding a volunteer and Congress, and the site is not community is the relatively completely off the table. “It is now over half a century It took a while, but since the dawn of the governments began to catch nuclear age; dangerous on that the top-down approach waste continues to pile up” wasn’t working. Time for a new
easy part, because nuclear waste repositories bring jobs and money. But this doesn’t mean their neighbours, or the regional powers that be, are going to go along with it. This unfortunate aspect of policymaking became readily apparent in the UK last month. Everything seemed a sure shot for taking the next exploratory steps toward a nuclear waste repository in west Cumbria. Located next door to Sellafield, the granddaddy of the UK’s nuclear facilities, two local communities comfortable with nuclear matters were in favour. The bugles and bunting were practically being unfurled when Cumbria County Council, concerned about tourism in the Lake District and possible future leaks, vetoed the plan. No other volunteers are in line as a backup. The US recently announced its own volunteer-based policy, including promises to have an interim storage site up and running within eight years and a repository by 2048. It should know better. Is it forgetting its own track record, even with interim storage facilities? In the 1980s, the community of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, agreed to host an interim facility. Statewide opposition shut it down. In the 1990s, the Skull Valley Band Of The Goshute Nation, a recognised Native American sovereign nation, volunteered to host an interim facility on its reservation in Utah. Last December, after more than 15 years of legal sparring with the state, the utilities working with the Goshute finally gave up.
Comment on these stories at newscientist.com/opinion
William M. Alley oversaw the US Geological Survey’s Yucca Mountain project from 2002 to 2010. He and Rosemarie Alley are authors of Too Hot To Touch: The problem of high-level nuclear waste (Cambridge University Press)
One minute with...
Alan Stern
Fed up with dull names for exoplanets, the scientist asked the public for help. Will it be so long 2M 0746+20b, hello Obama? How did you come up with the idea for a list of potential names for exoplanets? The number of planets in the Milky Way was recently estimated at more than 100 billion. We realised that that’s far, far too many names for astronomers to supply, that it would take the general public too. We also realised how much fun this could be for people. How do people submit names? For $0.99, anyone can put in a name, as long as it isn’t already nominated and isn't profane or pejorative. People can also vote on which names they like best. We only have a few hundred now, but the idea is that we will have hundreds of thousands of names in the database. We will take the thousand most popular, which will correspond to the thousand or so exoplanets that we already know about, and hand those to exoplanet scientists. What kinds of names are people suggesting? It is pretty interesting. People are putting in names of friends, spouses. They are putting in lots of science-fiction names like Alderaan and Yuggoth, names of authors such as Heinlein and Asimov, and even politicians like Obama and Romney. As this gets out to the general public, we expect there to be a lot of interesting contests going on – maybe Lady Gaga versus Madonna.
Profile Alan Stern is the former head of science missions at NASA. He and a group of fellow scientists and educators launched Uwingu’s hunt for names last year at uwingu.com
What else is Uwingu trying to accomplish? The mission of the company is two-fold. Priority one is to better connect the general public with space and the sky. Two is to operate a fund for space research, exploration and education.
What’s wrong with the existing names? There are none – just “license plate” designations like 2M 0746+20b or OGLE235-MOA53b!
What is the Uwingu fund? It comes from revenues generated by people nominating and voting for their favourite exoplanet names, and it goes toward needy space projects, such as SETI’s Allen Telescope Array.
Isn’t it a problem that your company, Uwingu, has no formal ties to the International Astronomical Union’s naming committee? I think most people get that this is for fun and engagement. It’s not meant to be official. In a sense, it’s a social experiment. Naming celestial objects is usually done by astronomers and professionals. Other people who are interested in space never get the opportunity to do that kind of thing. What if they did? What would the people of Earth choose? What would their imagination do that we wouldn’t do, as astronomers?
Why should the public trust you with their money? People in the research and education community recognise our names, so they will come to us in ways that they wouldn’t otherwise. We are professional scientists and educators, and we will do the quality control. Our intent is to be worldwide, not only in our revenue, but in our expenditures. Uwingu is the only thing around like this; nobody else has thought of anything similar. Interview by Stephen P. Craft
16 February 2013 | NewScientist | 29
nasa
The most recent volunteer community to be snubbed is Nye County, where Yucca Mountain is situated. After a commission chartered by the Obama administration recommended a new “consent-based” approach to break the deadlock over the site, Nye County officials wrote to US energy secretary Steven Chu giving their consent to host the repository at Yucca Mountain. Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval subsequently informed Chu that the state of Nevada will never consent to a repository. It’s now over half a century since the dawn of nuclear energy and dangerous and long-lived waste continues to pile up all over the globe. Something needs to be done. Although touted as the solution, finding a consenting community is merely the first step. The harder part is getting everyone else to sign on. And then comes the real challenge – to determine if the ground beneath a volunteer community is geologically suitable for a repository. This daunting endeavour requires a decades-long process that is both politically sensitive and technically complex. Inevitably, surprises occur as studies go underground. Here, the public needs an independent, technically savvy group whom they trust to address their concerns and interpret the scientific results. The difficulties of finding a happily-ever-after triad of volunteer community, consenting neighbours and geologically suitable site cannot be lightly dismissed. Replacing a top-down approach with a consent-based one is a step in the right direction, but it doesn’t fundamentally solve the problem. n