The 208: Perspectives on Idaho's nuclear waste waiver
KTVB
[{'start': '1.039', 'end': '4.230', 'text': "On Tuesday we talked about how Idaho and the federal government have agreed to send nuclear waste to the Idaho National Lab for research once again. This would go against the agreement made in 1995, which stopped spent nuclear waste and spent fuel from being shipped to Idaho, which was being done for decades to that point. So a special waiver was needed for this to happen. And maybe you're wondering what constitutes nuclear waste. So here's a long science story simplified with help from our friends at the International Atomic Energy Agency. Let's look at a nuclear reactor used to create energy. You need uranium, and nuclear fission splits the atoms of that uranium that generates a lot of energy and heat, and that heat boils water, which creates steam, which turns a turbine to generate electricity. That process continues until the uranium runs out of, well, steam and so you're left with spent fuel or waste. The waste is carefully stored in stages in deep pools of water and special containers, and that waste also includes the tools, protective gear, and other products, byproducts that is of the process, and that stuff can be pretty toxic and radioactive. OK, so now that we're up to speed on what will be headed to Idaho again, Joe Perris finds out why and what it means. In the desert west of Idaho Falls lives a world class facility, the Idaho National Laboratory, and a new agreement between the state of Idaho and the federal government has opened the door for new opportunities. It's probably about a year-long process to go from concept to execution. John Revere works at INL as executive director of external engagement and communications. This new agreement will allow. I to take limited shipments of spent nuclear fuel or nuclear waste from both commercial and university research reactors for further research. The goals are to move toward energy abundance for our nation, to enable advanced nuclear to move forward, and then ultimately to secure the workforce that can do both of -- those things -- with the renewed push to embrace nuclear energy to power. America's future and build an expert workforce in the field, university research labs are looking to avoid hitting a cap of how much nuclear waste they have. INL taking that waste allows them to continue their research at universities, which, yes, it naturally does yield waste. So from our perspective, we really need this workforce, not just for INL, but if we're going to have a nuclear renaissance in this country. All of these nuclear power stations, all of these nuclear developers have to have this talent base. Regardless of the reason, INL accepting spent nuclear fuel required a special waiver just announced this week. In 1993, Idahoans mobilized in a big way to call out and prevent the gem state from accepting nuclear waste. Idaho had become a storage facility or dumping ground, as some saw it, for spent nuclear fuel from around the country, creating concerns about the impact on the environment and the people of Idaho. In the dark of night, some even gathered, pointing out trains packed with nuclear waste that were headed to INL for treatment and storage. It created the Stop the Shipments campaign. -- The Stop the -- Shipments um campaign was a pretty big success as far as um raising awareness. Um, it was pretty powerful. Lee Ford is executive director of the Snake River Alliance, a group determined to be Idaho's nuclear watchdog and a champion of clean energy. They were the centerpiece of the early 90s campaign. -- Eastern -- Idaho, people got together and would watch the shipments of nuclear waste coming in, but it was the Shoshone Bannock that actually put their police car on the tracks and stopped them. In 1995, a major win for groups like the Alliance, an agreement between the state of Idaho and the federal government, setting clear rules for nuclear waste handling at INL, capping what could come. and requiring removal and treatment of what was already here. It is one of our strongest protections against being the nation's nuclear waste dump right now there's nowhere to put nuclear waste, no long term repository, no interim storage facility for the spent nuclear fuel and high level waste. Over the years, waivers or exceptions have been approved to exceed limits from the 1995 deal. For things like further research, notable events on the timeline happened in 2011, 2014, 2019, 203, and now 2025. Supporters point out this is not about Idaho being a dumping ground. We're not bringing this in simply for a storage mission, and, and that's what the settlement agreement really was about. This is coming in to do research and critical research, vital research and INL is really. One of the only, if not the only places that can really do this research. Although Idaho National Lab has done a really good job cleaning with the clean up, um, we have additional concerns about the new push for nuclear. Another component to the waiver allows a shipment of high burn up fuel casks from the North Anna nuclear power plant in Virginia to INL for examination and testing to support the renewal of US nuclear power licenses. The fuel was left in the reactor a little bit longer, get more energy out of the fuel that way you need less fuel. You need less waste over time or it creates less waste over time. So the fuel was left in the reactor a little bit longer. What we're going to do is look at how that fuel is behaving in storage over say 10 years, and that information is going to feed the relicensing applications of 54 reactors across the country and really it will have applications for the relicensing applications of almost every reactor. In the nation, -- a -- matter of perspective from here. Some argue a resurgence of nuclear power is vital to powering energy heavy fields like growing AI and technology, opportunities to even power entire cities. Others will argue that there are better ways to power our planet. Doing more with solar, doing more with storage. I think that if we put the time and energy that we put into nuclear into those kinds of things, we could go farther. We not. Bringing it in just for the sake of bringing it in, it's all about enabling energy abundance, about enabling the next generation of advanced reactors, and about educating the workforce that can do both of those things. I think the research is going to try to further more nuclear waste creation. Research on cleaning it up, that's one thing, but research on making the problem worse is quite another. That's leaving our children with a huge mess to clean up, and we haven't so far figured out what to do with it. The lab exists to do precisely this kind of research, and the taxpayers of the United States have invested over decades in our capability to do this. And so we're the perfect place to do this kind of research. And I've seen some questions online since we first reported this on Tuesday. There is nothing in this new waiver if you go through and you read it. There's nothing in that that changes this major 2035 deadline. Brian, when I spoke with INL for this story, they even told me that yes, we're on track to hit all the goals that are lined out in that 1995 agreement and in some metrics they're actually ahead of schedule, so it really is a matter of opinion based on how you feel on nuclear power. Clean power energy resources, but this will be interesting to check in over the next several years. 2027 is when that shipment from Virginia is expected to come to Idaho. So well, if it takes like 5 years plus for nuclear waste to kind of, I guess dissipate or kind of handle it, but how is that still going to be on timeline for getting new stuff in? It has to be out of there by 2035. -- So -- there are actually allowances within the 1995 draft to have some materials here in Idaho. For research, the big point of the '95 agreement is to make sure that Idaho really wasn't this dumping ground. But as you heard the expert from INL talk about, the National Lab is one of the most premier nuclear labs in the world, so this is the appropriate place to study some things. However, there will be critics, Brian, to your point that will say it doesn't matter if they're studying waste, it's still waste coming in. -- So a matter of perspective -- there. We'll see what happens over time. Thanks, Joe."}]