GAO Questions Need for Interim Nuclear Waste Site

The General Accounting Office reported Thursday that the Reagan Administration has failed to justify a planned $3.2-billion facility in Tennessee for the interim storage of high-level nuclear wastes.

The congressional watchdog agency, in a report to House panels, echoed complaints by Gov. Ned McWherter and the Tennessee congressional delegation about the so-called Monitored Retrievable Storage proposal.

The Department of Energy wants to build the facility at the site of the canceled Clinch River breeder reactor. It would be used for storing and packaging spent nuclear fuel rods from Eastern reactors before they are sent to a permanent repository in the West. The facility would be opened in 1998, five years before the scheduled completion of a permanent nuclear waste dump.

The GAO said: “We do not believe that (the Energy Department’s) proposal is sufficiently comprehensive for the Congress to make an informed decision on the cost of, need for or consequences of integrating (the Monitored Retrievable Storage facility) into the waste management system, or whether the benefits attributed to the MRS can be better achieved by other means.”

The GAO said the department failed to fully consider alternatives to the facility, such as improving on-site storage of wastes at nuclear plants that produce them and bolstering transportation systems for direct shipment, eventually, to the permanent repository. Now, all high-level wastes are stored near the reactors.

Moreover, the GAO reported, the department may have underestimated costs of such a facility. The department estimates it will cost $900 million to open, $73 million annually to operate for 31 years and $83 million to decommission. The GAO said it found internal department estimates that were 10% to 15% higher than those presented to Congress.