Question 11. 1) _________ economies are the most effective at pr.docx

Question 1
1. 1) _________ economies are the most effective at promoting
economic growth.
a.
Command
b.
Closed
c.
Open
d.
Inflationary
3 points
Question 2
1. 1) Limiting the immigration of highly educated professionals
hurts U.S. economic growth because
a.
it restricts the supply of high human capital workers and the
new ideas they could potentially generate.
b.
it restricts the knowledge base of the workforce.
c.
immigrants always cost less to hire than native workers do.

d.
both a. and b.
3 points
Question 3
1. 1) Economic growth is positively related to all of the
following except
a.
import tariffs.
b.
the rate of investment.
c.
the rate of saving.
d.
the growth of technology.
3 points
Question 4
1. 1) Supply-side inflation can be caused by a continual
a.
increase in aggregate demand while aggregate supply remains
unchanged.
b.
decrease in aggregate supply while aggregate demand remains
unchanged.
c.
increase in aggregate supply while aggregate demand remains

unchanged.
d.
decrease in aggregate demand while aggregate supply
significantly decreases.
3 points
Question 5
1. 1) The aggregate demand curve would shift to the right as a
result of
a.
a drop in the foreign exchange value of a dollar.
b.
tax increases.
c.
a drop in the price level.
d.
a decrease in the amount of money in circulation.
3 points
Question 6
1. 1) The total of all planned real expenditures in the economy
is
a.
aggregate GDP.
b.
aggregate consumption.

c.
aggregate spending.
d.
aggregate demand.
3 points
Question 7
1. 1) Consider this statement: “Persistent inflation in a growing
economy is possible only if the aggregate demand curve shifts
rightward over time at a faster pace than the rightward
progression of the long-run aggregate supply curve.” This
statement is describing:
a.
demand-side inflation.
b.
supply-side inflation.
c.
demand- and supply-side inflation.
d.
neither demand- nor supply-side inflation.
3 points
Question 8
1. 1) Which of the following best exemplifies Say’s Law?
a.
The more you consume the less additional satisfaction you
receive from additional consumption of the good.
b.

A decrease in the price of a good leads to larger amounts of the
good being purchased.
c.
The production of a $4000 Plasma TV set creates demand for
other goods and services valued at $4000.
d.
Increases in labor eventually lead to smaller and smaller
increases in output.
3 points
Question 9
1. 1) All of the following will shift the short-run aggregate
supply curve and long-run aggregate supply curve except for
a.
a depletion of raw materials.
b.
a temporary change in raw materials.
c.
decreased competition.
d.
increased education and training for the labor force.
3 points
Question 10
1. 1) The LRAS curve is vertical because unemployment is at its
________________.
a.

natural rate
b.
frictional rate
c.
cyclical rate
d.
structural rate
3 points
Question 11
1. 1) Which of the following factors will shift the short-run
aggregate supply curve but not the long-run aggregate supply
curve?
a.
an economy-wide decrease in wages.
b.
Improvements in technology
c.
A permanent decrease in oil production
d.
A decrease in capital
3 points
Question 12
1. 1) In the Keynesian model, equilibrium national income
a.
occurs at the point where the consumption function crosses the

45 degree line.
b.
equals planned consumption, investment, government, and net
export expenditures.
c.
equals planned consumption, investment, government, and
import expenditures.
d.
occurs when the national propensity to consume equals the
multiplier.
3 points
Question 13
1. 1) If MPS is .25 and a nation’s autonomous spending
increases by $150,000, then real GDP should increase by how
much?
a.
$500,000
b.
$600,000
c.
$700,000
d.
$800,000

3 points
Question 14
1. According to the identity DI=C+S, the relationship between
MPC and MPS indicates that the entire decrease in household
disposable income
a.
is distributed between consumption and saving.
b.
is invested and saved.
c.
is saved.
d.
is invested.
3 points
Question 15
1. Saving is the portion of
a.
investment that is spent on machinery.
b.
the stock of consumption.
c.
disposable income that is not consumed.
d.
disposable income that is consumed.
3 points

Question 16
1. There are several time lags involved when fiscal policy is
applied. The first hurdle faced by a government is
a.
the time it takes Congress to pass the bill to enact the policy.
b.
recognizing that the economy is facing a problem that could be
solved by applying fiscal policy.
c.
the time it takes for the policy to have an effect on the
economy.
d.
the time it takes Congress to decide upon the type of fiscal
policy to be used.
3 points
Question 17
1. 1) Fiscal policy refers to
a.
changes in the money supply.
b.
changes in the amount of physical capital in the economy.
c.
discretionary changes in government spending and taxes.
d.

changes in the interest rate.
3 points
Question 18
1. 1) You are a member of Congress. The economy is currently
experiencing a recessionary gap. Which of the following are
fiscal policies that Congress can enact in an attempt to correct
the economy?
a.
A decrease in the interest rate and increase in the money supply.
b.
An increase in government spending and a decrease in the tax
rate.
c.
An increase in the money supply and a decrease in the tax rate.
d.
A decrease in government spending and an increase in the tax
rate.
3 points
Question 19
1. 1) Since the 1940’s more often than not the U.S. federal
government has
a.
steadily reduced its borrowing.
b.
run a budget surplus.
c.

run a budget deficit.
d.
run a balanced budget.
3 points
Question 20
1. 1) Generally, a larger U.S. trade deficit is accompanied by a
a.
a larger U.S. federal budget deficit.
b.
a smaller U.S. federal budget deficit.
c.
a smaller U.S. national debt.
d.
decreased borrowing by the U.S. government.
3 points
Question 21
1. 1) Which of the following is a reason for the resurgent U.S.
budget deficit since 2001?
a.
Lower U.S. government spending but even lower tax receipts
b.
Larger tax receipts outweighed by even larger government
expenditures

c.
Higher interest rates
d.
Tax revenue not keeping pace with growth in spending
3 points
Question 22
1. 1) A natural consequence of the government continually
spending more than what it takes in through tax receipts, ceteris
paribus, is that
a.
consumption takes up a larger percentage of the economic
activity.
b.
investment takes up a larger percentage of the economic
activity.
c.
government spending takes up a larger percentage of the
economic activity.
d.
net exports take up a larger percentage of the economic
activity.
3 points
Question 23
1. 1) If 25 -33 year old's in nation X have an average MPC =
1.07, while 65-70 year old's in nation X have an MPC of .66,
then

a.
both sets of citizens are net savers.
b.
the younger citizens in nation X are dissavers, while the older
citizens in nation X are net savers.
c.
the younger citizens in nation X are net savers, while the older
citizens in nation X are dissavers.
d.
both sets of citizens are dissavers.
3 points
Question 24
1. 1) What is the difference between government budget deficit
and government debt?
a.
Budget deficits indicate a governments tendency to spend more
than the revenue that it brings in, while public debt is the
amount of borrowing private households have collectively
demonstrated.
b.
Budget deficits indicate a governments tendency to earn more
revenue that it spends, while public debt is the amount of
borrowing private households have collectively demonstrated.
c.
Budget deficits indicate a governments tendency to spend more

than the revenue that it brings in, while public debt is the
amount of borrowing the government takes on to support this
difference.
d.
Budget deficits indicate a governments tendency to spend the
exact amount of revenue that it brings in, while public debt is
the amount of borrowing the government takes on to support
this difference.
3 points
Question 25
1. The Fed's initiation of contractionary monetary policy is
intended to achieve which of the following?
a.
Decreasing price levels
b.
Lower interest rates
c.
Increased consumption spending
d.
both a. and b.
3 points
Question 26
1. 1) Please examine the following annual data:
Disposable Income Consumption Savings
$35,000 $36,500 -($1,500)
$48,000 $43,100 $4,900
$65,000 $58,000 $7,000

What is MPC for the household above when it earns higher
amounts of income?
a.
.55 and .88
b.
.51 and .88
c.
.41 and .80
d.
.61 and .91
5 points
Question 27
1. 1) Please examine the following annual data:
Disposable Income Consumption Savings
$35,000 $36,500 -($1,500)
$48,000 $43,100 $4,900
$65,000 $58,000 $7,000
If the above household earns below $35,000, they will probably
a.
net save.
b.
dis-save.

c.
break-even.
d.
urge government for more fiscal policy.
5 points
Question 28
1. In the long-run, Keynesian and Classical economists believe
a.
real GDP can be affected by a shift outward in the AD curve.
b.
real GDP is affected by a change in real wages.
c.
real GDP is unaffected by a change in the price level.
d.
real GDP is reflective of an employment level just below full
employment.
5 points
Question 29
1. Fiscal policy has _______ effect on the economy than
monetary policy.
a.
a smaller

b.
a bigger
c.
the same
d.
no effect
5 points
Question 30
1. Throughout the globe, nations with more efficient
governments tend to
a.
no change in per capita real GDP compared to nations with
inefficient governments.
b.
have higher per capita real GDP amongst its citizens.
c.
have lower per capita real GDP amongst its citizens.
d.
have stronger tendencies toward borrowing from the World
Bank.
CHE115 – Dr. Burnham, Fobare
4/5/14

Case Study #3
Nuclear Waste Management
Refer to the following articles in Science: 325, 151-2 (2009)
333, 148-9 (2011)
333, 150-2 (2011)
1. What are SNF and HLW? What are their sources?
2. Where is nuclear waste currently stored?
3. What was the purpose of Yucca Mountain? What is its current
status?
4. How does the decision on Yucca Mountain impact the future
storage of nuclear waste? What is the current recommendation

for the long-term storage of nuclear waste?
5. What were the issues that led to the decision not to open
Yucca Mountain? How could these issues be overcome when
considering a new permanent storage facility?
6. What are the pro’s and con’s of reprocessing SNF?
1
1
8 JULY 2011 VOL 333 SCIENCE www.sciencemag.org
148

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AFTER KILLING THE PROJECT TO ESTABLISH A
nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain,
Nevada, last year, President Barack Obama
set up a commission to chart a new course
for U.S. nuclear waste policy. The group,
which is set to deliver its interim fi ndings
at the end of this month, is expected to say
that the answers to America’s nuclear waste
conundrum are technically feasible. The
problem, however, is that those solutions are
likely to be, in political terms, radioactive.
The Blue Ribbon Commission on Amer-
ica’s Nuclear Future confronts a challenge
that has stymied Washington for 40 years:
the nation’s relentless production of nuclear
waste. In recent decades, U.S. reactors have
created more than 2000 metric tons of highly
radioactive spent fuel each year. Codifi ed in
law in 1987, the Yucca plan meant the spent
fuel, held in bundles of 4-meter-long zirco-
nium alloy tubes, would be cooled for up to
a decade in storage pools at U.S. reactors.
Then it would be shipped to Yucca Moun-
tain, transferred into steel cylinders, and fur-
ther cooled by fans for 50 years. When the
facility contained 70,000 tons of waste, it
would be closed up.

In the past 24 years, the Department of
Energy (DOE) has built an 8-kilometer-long
tunnel at Yucca and has conducted experi-
ments to ensure that the reposi-
tory could hold the waste for up to
1 million years without releasing
dangerous amounts of radiation.
But although the government has
spent roughly $10 billion on the
project, lawsuits, red tape, and
political opposition have prevented DOE
from disposing of a single ton of commercial
fuel. About 65,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel
are piled up at U.S. reactors in cooling pools
and in steel-and-concrete casks stored out-
doors. Some experts believe the pools rep-
resent unacceptable safety or environmental
risks in the case of natural calam-
ity or terrorist attack. But moving
cooled-down fuel from U.S. pools
into casks, which are considered
safer, would cost utilities billions
of dollars.
To alleviate this pressure on
reactor sites and buy the govern-
ment time to establish a perma-
nent repository, the commission
will likely call for an impor-
tant new step: interim storage of
the fuel in one or several central
locations. After cooling in pools
for a decade, fuel would be trans-
ferred to such a facility to be stored
in outdoor steel-and-concrete

casks for “multiple decades up to
100 years or possibly more.” Over
that period, the commission envi-
sions, expanded federal research
into fuel recycling or other tech-
nologies might reduce the amount
of fuel requiring disposal. Meanwhile, fed-
eral offi cials would have a second chance to
establish a permanent U.S. geologic reposi-
tory—this time, perhaps, in a fashion less
acrimonious than the Yucca effort.
Buying time
“Consolidated interim storage preserves
options while other aspects of an integrated
waste management strategy can be devel-
oped,” says one of three commission sub-
committee reports released in June. Later
this month, an interim report from the full
commission is expected; given the hundreds
of hours of public testimony and published
documents cited in the lengthy subcommit-
tee reports, experts expect the fi nal version,
scheduled to be released in January 2012, to
offer substantially the same conclusions.
In addition to paving the political and
logistical route to disposal, cen-
tral, interim storage sites could
make the repository easier to
design and build. Building the
Yucca repository required a num-
ber of engineering tradeoffs,
explains physicist Charles Fors-

berg of the Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
nology (MIT) in Cambridge, and the site’s
“awkward” design was a stumbling block to
getting it licensed.
One reason was that Yucca Mountain had
to cool waste before permanently storing
it. Spent fuel straight from the reactor can
Online
sciencemag.org
Podcast interview
with author
Eli Kintisch.
Hot stuff. Spent fuel being lowered
into a storage cask at a commercial
nuclear reactor in Virginia.
NEWSFOCUS
Waste Panel Expected
To Back Interim Storage
A blue-ribbon commission signals that spent nuclear fuel should
cool
above ground while the United States fi gures out long-term
disposal
Published by AAAS
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http://www.sciencemag.org/
www.sciencemag.org SCIENCE VOL 333 8 JULY 2011
149
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W Y

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M E
M A
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V T
N H
R I
100
Spent fuel in
metric tons
1000
3000
5000
States with
<1 ton of
spent fuel
States with
no spent fuel
Spent nuclear fuel is piling up at
77 sites (small dots) in 35 states.
Where the Waste Is
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quickly reach 1500ºC, hot enough
to destroy the tubes that hold it.
Cooling for about a decade in stor-
age pools dissipates most of the
heat from the shortest-lived iso-
topes. But after being bundled
together and entombed in the
mountain for centuries, it might
still gradually create enough

heat to aid corrosion of the
tubes, create dangerous steam
within the tunnels, or even, over
time, alter the geology of the
site. First cooling the waste for
at least 5 decades at interim stor-
age sites could eliminate the need
for fans at a permanent reposi-
tory, says Forsberg, co-author of
several infl uential MIT reports on
nuclear waste. The interior of the
long-term repository—compared
with Yucca Mountain—would also
require less ventilation and less
access by remote devices to han-
dle the fuel after emplacement,
and it could be more easily sealed with an
appropriate fi ll.

In any case, experts agree, some new plan
for waste storage is essential. Waste currently
stored in pools and casks at U.S. sites does
not pose “unmanageable … safety or security
risks,” says a subcommittee report. But every
ton that stays at reactor sites makes those
risks slightly greater. Fuel in U.S. spent fuel
pools is packed four times as densely as it was
25 years ago, raising concerns about the risk
of explosions or meltdown if the pools were
to empty in an accident. The tsunami that dev-
astated the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan
in March may have resulted in a loss of water
in one of its ponds (Science, 1 April, p. 24).
A draft commission report says the issue of
the safety of keeping fuel densely packed in
pools should be “reexamined,” although “it is
still too early to draw defi nitive conclusions”

from the Fukushima accident. It calls for an
expert panel at the National Academies to
tackle the subject.
If an interim storage site could
get licensed—a big if, given polit-
ical sensibilities—it might save
money for utilities and the govern-
ment, which is currently paying
hundreds of millions of dollars in
legal claims to utilities for the waste.
Nine decommissioned reactor sites
in the United States currently house
nuclear fuel in aboveground casks.
Centralized storage could save utili-
ties billions in security costs and by
freeing the land for other uses.
As for long-term disposal, commis-
sioners say the government should “expe-

ditiously” move to set up a geologic
repository—they were told not to specify
where. “There is no ethical basis for abroga-
tion of responsibility” for securing nuclear
waste “to future generations,” a subcom-
mittee report says. To avoid repeating the
Yucca Mountain experience, which was
plagued by opposition from the state of
Nevada (see p. 150), the process of choos-
ing a site should include “consultation,
transparency, accountability, and scientifi c
and technical credibility,” a draft report
says. Commissioners are also likely to call
for the project to be managed by a new,
independent entity.
The commission is also likely to recom-
mend expanding research into technolo-
gies such as reprocessing, in which nuclear

waste is converted back into nuclear fuel,
and into advanced or more effi cient reac-
tors that might produce less waste. Nuclear
power will never be completely clean, how-
ever. “No currently available or reasonably
foreseeable reactor and fuel-cycle technolo-
gies … have the potential to fundamentally
alter the waste management challenge,” the
research subcommittee draft says.
The road ahead
Forecasting what the Blue Ribbon Com-
mission will recommend is one thing; pre-
dicting what the Obama Administration and
its successors will actually do with them is
much harder. Several environmental and
antinuclear groups have already spoken out
against creating new storage sites for waste,
and a commission subcommittee admits

in a report that it’s a “contentious issue.”
Commissioners hope the track record of the
57 licensed fuel storage facilities—most at
U.S. reactor sites—will alleviate some fears,
and that an open site-selection process cou-
pled with “incentives” like training and jobs
for local communities and utilities will ulti-
mately carry the day.
But even simply getting money for more
federal research into nuclear power could be a
challenge. As the budget process in Washing-
ton grows ever more contentious, lobbyists
and activists alike are increasingly skeptical
that substantial increases can happen soon. “I
don’t think the budgets are going to expand
beyond what they are now,” says physicist
Thomas Cochran of the Natural Resources
Defense Council in Washington, D.C.

–ELI KINTISCH
Fuel Stored
in Dry Casks
Fuel Stored in
Cooling Pools
2010
20,000
40,000
60,000
80,000
100,000
M
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t
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iu
m
120,000
140,000
2015 2020 2025 2030 2035 2040 2045 2050 2055 2060
Plain spent. Assuming no new plants, used fuel stores will
more than double by 2050.
NUCLEAR WASTE NEWSFOCUS
Published by AAAS
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150
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The Obama Administration’s shutdown of
the quarter-century-long, $15 billion effort
to dispose of 65,000 tons of U.S. spent
nuclear reactor fuel in Nevada’s Yucca
Mountain could be the latest of many les-
sons learned around the world. Unforeseen
technical problems have abounded there and
at proposed disposal sites around the world,
but no certain deal breakers have turned up.
Yet, despite the absence of insurmount-
able geologic or engineering obstacles,
no permanent repository for spent reactor
fuel has been built anywhere. Every coun-
try looking for a place to dispose of its
wastes has stumbled in its early tries to site
repositories. Almost invariably, a govern-
ment decides which site would be suitable,
it announces its decision, an uproar ensues
from the locals, the government defends
its chosen site, but eventually it is forced to
abandon its choice as untenable.
In the wake of the 2010 abandonment of
the Yucca Mountain program, the U.S. advi-

sory Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board
(NWTRB) puts the United States among
those nations whose waste-disposal pro-
grams “either have lost public trust and con-
fi dence or seem never to have merited it at
all,” as the board stated in an April report to
Congress. (Yet, ironically, the United States
is the only country in the world to open and
operate a nuclear waste repository: a facility
for storing waste from the nuclear weapons
program that doesn’t include spent fuel.)
So as the Administration’s Blue Ribbon
Commission on America’s Nuclear Future
prepares to deliver its draft report (see
p. 148), many authoritative groups have
been driving home the lessons learned from
Yucca Mountain and around the world.
NWTRB put it most succinctly: “The
interdependencies, both subtle and overt,
between the technical, social, and political
forces are inescapable.”
Uniformly dismal failure
In the 1950s, when coun-
tries f irst started ponder-
ing how to dispose of
spent nuclear fuel from
power plants and radio-
active waste from nuclear
weapons production, the
solution seemed straight-
forward enough. Nuclear
waste contains isotopes of
elements that will remain
radioactive for thousands

t o m a ny h u n d r e d s o f
thousands of years. Rock
formations hundreds of
meters beneath the sur-
face have been there, lit-
tle disturbed, for millions
if not billions of years.
So put the wastes in tun-
nels in the rock, seal the
tunnels, and the problem
would be solved. Layers of
deeply buried salt were an early favorite; if
there’s salt still there after millions of years,
water—which can corrode stored waste and
carry it back into the environment—won’t
be a factor. But whatever medium was at
hand—salt, granite, clay, or volcanic ash
turned to stone called tuff—looked promis-
ing to the government’s experts charged with
fi nding a suitable site.
Despite the promising geology, the top-
down approach just didn’t pan out. Whether
it was salt in Germany or old bedrock in the
United Kingdom, Canada, or Scandinavia,
“almost all countries that have tried to site
repositories have had one or more failures,”
notes a June draft report, Spent Fuel From
Nuclear Power Reactors, from the Inter-
national Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM),
an independent group of nuclear experts.
In the United States, 4 decades of govern-
ment efforts were marked “by heavy hand-
edness on the part of the federal government

and political uprisings in a succession of
states where it proposed to site repositories,”
notes the IPFM report. An early setback
came near Lyons, Kansas, where in 1970
the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC)—
the forerunner of today’s Department of
Energy (DOE)—decided to entomb highly
radioactive wastes from nuclear weapons
production in an abandoned salt mine. In
1957, a U.S. National Academies report had
Light at the End of the Radwaste
Disposal Tunnel Could Be Real
A long run of failures could fi nally drive the United States to
follow other countries’
lead and accept radioactive waste disposal as the
sociotechnological problem that it is
R A D I O A C T I V E W A S T E D I S P O S A L
Yucca Mountain. The now-
abandoned repository site’s
rock is perhaps the planet’s
most thoroughly studied.
Published by AAAS
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recommended layered salt formations for
such wastes because, over time, salt would
fl ow to seal in the wastes.
But the head of the Kansas Geological
Survey urged more study of the integrity of
the proposed Lyons repository. AEC agreed
but continued its preparatory work anyway.
Fearing a fait accompli, the IPFM report
says, Kansans and their politicians rose to

oppose the plan. Technical revelations then
lit the fuse on a by-now-politically-unstable
situation. It turned out that the site had long
ago been peppered with oil and gas wells
with no assurance they had all been securely
plugged. And several years earlier, a min-
ing company pumping water into the for-
mation nearby to dissolve and extract salt
had 640 cubic meters of water go missing,
suggesting that the salt geology was more
complex and less well understood than the
academies had assumed. AEC abandoned
the site in 1971.
Yucca Mountain’s cycle from decision
to abandonment was far more protracted.
Acting under the 1982 Nuclear Waste
Policy Act, DOE had selected three can-
didate sites: salt in Texas, basalt in Wash-

ington state, and volcanic tuff at Nevada’s
Yucca Mountain.
Technically, Yucca Mountain looked
promising. The spent fuel would be well
above the water table and therefore exposed
to the vanishingly small amount of water
seeping from the desert above. The decisive
factor, however, was political. At the time, the
Democratic Party controlled both houses of
the U.S. Congress, and the powerful speaker
of the House represented Texas while the
House majority leader represented Washing-
ton state. Nevada’s delegation, however, was
split between Democrats and Republicans
and was new to Congress. In 1987, Congress
struck the Texas and Washington sites from
the list, leaving Yucca Mountain the only
candidate in the running. Nevadans still call

the act the “screw Nevada bill.”
If Yucca Mountain had proved to be the
perfect repository site, it might not have
been abandoned, but investigations soon
started to tarnish its luster. That’s normal
for site evaluations; as geophysicist Wendell
Weart told Science in 1999, “You never feel
quite as comfortable about a site as the day
you start to study it.”
Yucca Mountain’s unwelcome surprises
included the possibility of earthquakes and
volcanic eruptions (Science, 8 November
1996, p. 913) and fears, later allayed, that the
repository itself might explode like
a nuclear bomb (Science, 30 June
1995, p. 1836). But the overarching
concern has been the discovery that
water seeps down through the moun-

tain many times faster than had been
thought. So, in the mountain’s oxygen-
rich interior, water laden with salt dis-
solved from the rock would drip onto
spent-fuel assemblies still hot from
their lingering radioactivity. That’s a
great recipe for corrosion. The seep-
ing brine would release radionuclides
from the spent fuel and carry them on
through the rock as far as the water
is going.
To make matters worse, the plan-
ning horizon for Yucca Mountain got
extended by a factor of 100. An acad-
emies study committee requested by
Congress concluded that the risk
of human exposure to radioactivity
should be estimated out to the time

of maximum exposure, when con-
tainment has failed and wastes have
spread. That upped the time scientists had to
predict the behavior of the repository and its
wastes from 10,000 years to 1 million years.
In response to such surprises, DOE hun-
kered down. “DOE lacked transparency in
developing its plans for the Yucca Mountain
repository,” an April report, Commercial
Nuclear Waste, from the U.S. Government
Accountability Off ice (GAO) concluded.
For example, instead of polling the broad
community for ideas, DOE designed tita-
nium drip shields on its own to protect the
waste. DOE did not “establish independent
scientifi c panels or any form of state over-
sight that might have given affected parties
more confi dence in the solutions,” the report

says; nor did it “promote state involvement
in key decisions and oversight.”
Could more transparency and coopera-
tion have saved the day? Mineralogist Rod-
ney Ewing of the University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor, a longtime critic of the Yucca
Mountain program, thinks so. “I really think
if there’s a strong scientifi c basis combined
with public empowerment, you can make
progress,” he says.
A more successful path
As an example of how to do things right,
Ewing and other critics often cite another
The Swedish way.
The KBS design:
copper-clad wastes (yellow)
encased in clay (pink) beneath
500 meters of granite.
Nuclear Waste Repositories —Past and Future?
WIPP Carlsbad, NM
Operating

Salt
Operating
Yucca Mountain, NV
Abandoned 2010
Mostly dry volcanic
tuff, oxidizing
$15 billion spent;
well studied
Hanford, WA
Dropped
Wet basalt reducing
TBD
Status:
Geologic medium:
Advantages:
Deaf Smith County, TX
Dropped
Salt
TBD

NUCLEAR WASTE NEWSFOCUS
Forsmark, Sweden
Selected
Wet basalt reducing
Local support
engineered barriers
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152

NEWSFOCUS
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DOE radwaste repository, the Waste Isola-
tion Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, New

Mexico (Science, 12 March 1999, p. 1626).
“It wasn’t an easy sell,” Ewing says. “There
were substantial objections to WIPP. But
there was a process of public and scientifi c
engagement, so at the end you could say, this
makes sense. It worked, but it took time”—
30 years of time.
WIPP did start with several advantages
over Yucca Mountain. First, the people of
Carlsbad wanted it. When community lead-
ers heard about the abandonment of the
Lyons site, they offered their own layered
salt as a replacement. They had just lost a
major employer, a potash mining company,
and were looking for an economic boost.
And they were already familiar with the
risks of mining, not to mention those from
nearby nuclear testing. Their interest would
never waiver.
The state of New Mexico, having con-
stituencies other than Carlsbad to consider
and a long and sometimes strained history of
state-federal relations, was not so receptive.
Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs),
including environmental groups, objected
to the Carlsbad site as well. But unlike the
way Yucca Mountain turned out, a fl urry of
lawsuits brought by the state and NGOs led
to concessions from DOE and constructive
interventions by Congress. A quasi-inde-
pendent Environmental Evaluation Group
with both state and federal funding provided
credible scientifi c information to the state

and the public when inevitable technical
issues arose. And a signed agreement made
the state “equal partners with DOE in the
development of WIPP,” says Mark Gaffi gan,
lead author of the GAO report.
Congressional legislation helped, too.
It limited WIPP to defense-related waste
such as rags, protective clothes, and tools
contaminated with toxic, long-lived radio-
nuclides including plutonium. The absence
of high-level wastes such as thermally hot
spent fuel eased relations between DOE
and the state and simplifi ed the repository
design. Legislation also gave oversight of
the repository to the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency, which was able to retain
the 10,000-year standard for maintaining
repository integrity without going to a mil-
lion-year standard. And legislation provided
New Mexico with $280 million in compen-
sation over 14 years. WIPP received its fi rst
wastes in 1999; today, 9000 shipments of
wastes totaling 71,000 cubic meters have
been stored there.
No one else has managed to open a
repository for anything but low-level wastes,
but two countries—Sweden and Finland—
have gotten as far as selecting sites, although
they have not yet given them fi nal approval.
As laid out in an IPFM report chapter by
physicist Johan Swahn of the NGO Offi ce
for Nuclear Waste Review (MKG), Sweden

started with some advantages. For one, Swe-
den began its site search with a relatively
robust repository design in hand. Unlike the
approach at Yucca Mountain, the Swedish
KBS method developed by SKB, the nuclear
waste company responsible for ultimate dis-
posal, does not depend solely on geology for
containment. Spent fuel would be encased
in 5 centimeters of copper surrounded by
extremely low-permeability clay.
Sweden was also able to make changes in
midstream. After provoking public outcries
with uninvited exploratory drilling for a site,
SKB backtracked and asked communities to
volunteer as repository sites with the right to
back out at any point. As in the case of WIPP,
volunteers were looking for economic ben-
efi ts. And they also were familiar with things
nuclear; each of the two f inalists already
had a nuclear plant and one had a low-level
waste site, the other a centralized facility for
temporary spent-fuel storage. The Swedish
government instituted a relatively open and
consultative site-approval process, going so
far as to fund NGOs such as MKG to moni-
tor the process. And, in contrast to Yucca
Mountain, that process sets a more practi-
cal standard to shoot for. It does not depend
solely on quantitative calculations of the risk
of repository failure out to a million years.
Beyond a few hundreds of thousands of
years, more qualitative arguments for repos-
itory safety can be made.

A U.S. way ahead?
After seeing these and other reports, hearing
testimony, and making site visits, the Obama
Administration’s Blue Ribbon Commission
looks set to recommend later this month a
consent-based, transparent, and flexible
approach to nuclear waste disposal. How-
ever, even strictly applying lessons learned
from Sweden and WIPP won’t guarantee
smooth sailing. For one thing, the technical
challenges of storing nuclear waste safely
for many millennia have not gone away.
In Sweden, for example, after 30 years of
development, the KBS disposal system has
developed what could be a major problem.
Laboratory studies have lately raised the
possibility that the copper cladding meant to
shield the waste from groundwater may be
much more prone to corrosion than anyone
had suspected. The site-approval process,
now under way, will consider just how sig-
nifi cant a problem that is.
On the social side, the United States is
not Sweden, Swahn points out. “Your polit-
ical system has more diff iculties than we
have dealing with these sorts of issues,”
he says. “Trust is important in this country,
and people trust the system. That is very,
very different.”
–RICHARD A. KERR
Awaiting disposal. These casks contain the spent fuel from the
production of 110 billion kilowatt-hours

of electricity during 28 years by the Connecticut Yankee
nuclear power plant.
Published by AAAS
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151
POLICYFORUM
T
he recent action to shelve Yucca Moun-
tain as the potential geologic repository
for U.S. “spent” (i.e., no longer usable)

nuclear fuel (SNF) and high-level nuclear
waste (HLW) ( 1) brings to a close a 30-year
effort to develop and implement a policy for
nuclear wastes in the United States. Selection
by Congress in 1987 of Yucca Mountain in
Nevada as the only site to be investigated con-
demned the United States to pursue a policy
that had no backup if Yucca Mountain failed
politically or technically.
Abandoning Yucca Mountain will mean
that another destination must be found for
SNF and the solidifi ed HLW from three U.S.
Department of Energy (DOE) sites that had
military reprocessing plants and from a pre-
1973 commercial reprocessing plant. The
country will be left with some combination of
three basic options: (i) indefi nitely store in 35
states and 75 reactor sites, 10 of which have
been decommissioned ( 2– 4); (ii) consolidate
from at least the decommissioned sites at one
or more central storage sites; and (iii) restart
the process of locating and developing one or
more geologic repositories.
Advocates of SNF reprocessing have been
energized by the Yucca Mountain decision, but
reprocessing would not obviate the need for a
geological repository. It only has the political
advantage of providing an interim destination
for the SNF. A thorough assessment of vari-
ous proposals to simplify the U.S. radioactive
waste problem by separating out long-lived
transuranic elements and fi ssion products and
fi ssioning and transmuting them, respectively,

found that the efforts would be extremely
costly and benefits would be marginal ( 5).
Also, the U.S. example would provide civilian
cover for other nations interested in acquiring
separated plutonium for weapons—which is
exactly why the United States reconsidered
its pro-reprocessing policy after India’s 1974
nuclear test, which used plutonium that had
been separated for civilian purposes with U.S.
assistance ( 6). France and Japan maintain their
commitment to reprocessing, but the United
Kingdom is quitting, and a dozen countries
that were sending their SNF to France, Rus-
sia, and the United Kingdom for reprocessing
have not renewed their contracts ( 7).
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
(NRC) is considering extending on-site stor-
age, as a stopgap measure, on the basis of a
decision that SNF can be safely stored in dry
casks at reactor sites for up to 60 years after
reactor operating licenses expire ( 8). This
reflects the reality that storing old SNF in
dry casks is a safe short-term option. Few are
comfortable, however, with the idea of indefi -
nite storage of SNF and HLW on the surface
at about 80 locations.
What Went Wrong?
A geologically complex site. Although there
is great attraction to isolating nuclear waste
in the arid and remote region of Yucca Moun-
tain, there are unresolved scientifi c and tech-
nical issues. The UO

2
in SNF is not stable
under the oxidizing conditions in Yucca
Mountain and would convert rather rapidly
to more soluble higher oxides. Substantial
amounts of water exist in the pores and frac-
tures of the volcanic tuff. The geologic com-
plexity of the Yucca Mountain site, including
seismicity and relatively recent volcanism,
and the proposed reliance on engineered bar-
riers, notably titanium drip shields to protect
the casks from water, make the safety analy-
sis complicated and less than convincing ( 9).
In contrast, two countries that are cur-
rently developing underground SNF reposito-
ries, Sweden ( 10) and Finland ( 11), have cho-
sen stable granitic host rock permeated with
oxygen-depleted water. Their strategy uses
copper canisters surrounded by protective
bentonite clay, and the estimated failure rate
of the canisters is extremely low. France, Bel-
gium, and Switzerland are actively investigat-
ing potential repositories in clay. The great age
and stability of the granite and clay host rocks
increase confi dence in long-term predictions
of repository performance.
Changing performance standard. There
was no U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) performance standard throughout most
of the design process for the Yucca Mountain
repository. In September 2008, the belatedly

issued new standard extended the proposed
regulatory period to 1,000,000 years, a signifi -
cant change from the earlier proposal of only
10,000 years.
Looking forward, there are two important
issues related to the standard. First, the pres-
ent standard is site-specifi c, rather than a gen-
eral requirement of performance and safety.
Second, the compliance period is based on
Nuclear Waste Management in the
United States—Starting Over
ENERGY
Rodney C. Ewing1 and Frank N. von Hippel 2
The debate has begun again over the
disposition of nuclear fuel and waste.
Operating power reactors
Shut-down power reactors
DOE sites
Sites with SNF and/or HLW
Sources: (2, 4); see also (16).
Region IV Region III Region I
Region II

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1Department of Geological Sciences, University of Michi-
gan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109–1005, USA. E-mail:
[email protected]
umich.edu 2Program on Science and Global Security, Princ-
eton University, Princeton, NJ 08542–4601, USA. E-mail:
[email protected]
Published by AAAS
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http://www.sciencemag.org
152
POLICYFORUM
a recommendation from a committee of the
U.S. National Academy of Sciences’ National
Research Council that it should extend to the
time when peak potential risks may occur,
generally hundreds of thousands of years
hence ( 12). The uncertainties in projecting
performance over hundreds of thousands of
years are real and cannot be avoided. The use
of “quantitative” performance assessment for
licensing placed an enormous burden on the
demonstration of compliance over such long
periods. Yet, Congress’s selection of Yucca
Mountain prevented the DOE from pursuing
strategies that might have reduced the impor-
tance of “unknowables,” such as locating the
repository where volcanism and seismicity
are not major factors.
Unreliable funding source. The original
Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 provided
funding for development of a repository by
creating the Nuclear Waste Fund from a tax on
electricity generated by nuclear power. How-
ever, expenditures for repository development
were subject to annual congressional appropri-

ations. Indeed, it is that appropriation process
that is being used to put the Yucca Mountain
repository on hold.
Management failures. Development of the
licensing basis for a site as complex as Yucca
Mountain is inherently diffi cult, but the DOE,
with its limited expertise, continual turnover of
personnel, changing design requirements, and
poor oversight of contractors, allowed the proj-
ect to grow to a size that was both unnecessary
and unmanageable. The department already has
spent $13.5 billion in 2007 dollars on research-
ing the site and projects a fi nal cost of $76 bil-
lion (not including $20 billion for transporta-
tion) for 122,100 tons of SNF ( 13).
Attempt to override local opposition. The
decision to proceed with the Yucca Mountain
project in the face of strong public and polit-
ical opposition in Nevada was a mistake. For
projects that will take decades to complete, sus-
tained local opposition has every chance of pre-
vailing. The successful siting efforts in Scandi-
navia have involved local communities in the
decision-making process and given them a veto
at each stage ( 14). Also, the communities that
have fi nally volunteered to host repositories
already have nuclear power plants, are com-
fortable with nuclear technology, and have an
interest in helping to fi nd a path forward from
surface storage to underground disposal.
What Should a New Policy Include?
Regional solutions. The DOE should be relieved
of the responsibility for management and dis-

position of used nuclear fuel from commercial
nuclear power plants. The states that have the
SNF should be provided with the means and
motivation for developing acceptable interim
storage sites or geologic repositories. The NRC
has organized the distribution of nuclear power
plants into four regions: northeast, southeast,
midwest, and west (see fi gure, page 151) (16).
This could also be an appropriate way to divide
up the country for locating interim storage
facilities or regional repositories. These regions
would provide a variety of possible geological
media for a repository, including granite, shale,
salt, and volcanic tuff.
States within a given region should have
primary responsibility for developing solutions
unique to their own situations. In some cases,
extended on-site or centralized interim storage
may be acceptable. Other states or regions may
move forward without delay to site and develop
a geologic repository. Transportation problems
would be greatly reduced because the distances
to regional repositories are much shorter than
the distance between reactors east of the Mis-
sissippi and Nevada. Funding would be pro-
vided from the Nuclear Waste Fund (with a cur-
rent balance of over $20 billion) ( 16) to organi-
zations established by the states or regions or
their nuclear utilities for the development of an
interim storage facility and/or a geologic repos-
itory. Continued funding would come from the
10th-of-a-cent tax on each kilowatt-hour of
electricity generated by nuclear power plants in
each region. This regional approach for the 104

U.S. reactors would not be too different from
the current approach in Europe, where SNF
and HLW from ~150 reactors and reprocessing
plants is to be moved to a number of national
geologic repositories in a variety of rock types.
The DOE would remain responsible for man-
agement and disposal of low-level, transuranic,
and HLW waste generated by nuclear weapons
and naval reactor programs.
Local acceptance. In addition to requiring
compliance with federal standards and regu-
lations, the local community and state should
make the fi nal siting decision. Local commu-
nities at potential storage and repository sites
should have early and continued involvement
in the process, including funding that would
allow them to retain technical experts.
EPA regulation. It may be appropriate to
leave to the EPA regulation of the environ-
mental impact of the “back end” of the fuel
cycle for commercial nuclear power plants.
The Waste Isolation Pilot Plan in New Mexico
is a successfully operating geologic reposi-
tory for transuranic waste regulated by the
EPA. The EPA should establish a generic, i.e.,
not site-specifi c, performance standard for the
containment of long-lived radioisotopes in
geological repositories.
Each of these proposals will experience stiff
opposition. The main goal, however, should
be to provide the United States with multiple
alternatives and substantial public involve-

ment in an open siting and design process that
requires acceptance by host communities and
states. International experience suggests that
investigation of multiple sites is affordable. In
the meantime, dry-cask on-site SNF storage is
a relatively safe interim strategy that will give
the United States the time required to develop a
permanent, long-term solution.
References and Notes
1. The energy section of the Obama Administration’s outline
of the priorities of its fi scal year 2010 budget concludes,
“The Yucca Mountain program will be scaled back to those
costs necessary to answer inquiries from the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission, while the Administration devises
a new strategy toward nuclear waste disposal” ( 17).
2. Operating reactors from NRC, www.nrc.gov/info-fi nder/
reactor/#USMap.
3. Decommissioned reactors with SNF on site from ( 4).
4. National Research Council, Going the Distance? The Safe
Transport of Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioac-
tive Waste in the United States (National Academies Press,
Washington, DC, 2006), table 5.2.
5. National Research Council, Nuclear Wastes, Technologies
for Separations and Transmutation (National Academy
Press, Washington, DC, 1996).
6. G. Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb (Univ. of California
Press, Berkeley, CA, 1999), pp. 28 and 30.
7. F. N. von Hippel, The Costs and Benefi ts of Reprocessing:

Why Reprocessing Persists in Some Countries and Not in
Others (Nonproliferation Education Center, Washington,
DC, 2009).
8. NRC, Waste confi dence decision update. Fed. Regist. 73,
59551 (2008).
9. A. M. Macfarlane, R. C. Ewing, Eds., Uncertainty Under-
ground—Yucca Mountain and the Nation’s High-Level
Nuclear Waste (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2006), 431 pp.
10. Forsmark, Sweden, SNF disposal site, www.world-
nuclear-news.org/WR_Forsmark_for_Swedish_nuclear_
waste_0306091.html.
11. Olkiluoto, Finland, repository (4 June 2009); www.world-
nuclear-news.org/WR-Approval_for_expanded_Olkiluoto_
repository-0406098.html.
12. National Research Council, Technical Bases for Yucca
Mountain Standards (National Academy Press, Washing-
ton, DC, 1995), 205 pp.
13. DOE, Analysis of the Total System Life Cycle Cost of the
Civilian Radioactive Waste Management Program, Fiscal
Year 2007 (DOE/RW-0591, DOE, Washington, DC, 2008).
14. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Develop-
ment, Public Information, Consultation, and Involvement
in Radioactive Waste Management (OECD Nuclear Energy
Agency, Paris, 2003).
15. In addition to sites shown in the fi gure, SNF is stored at
the never-operated GE Morris, IL, reprocessing plant; an
additional DOE site with HLW is the decommissioned com-
mercial reprocessing plant, West Valley, NY. There is no

SNF or HLW in Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, or the Virgin
Islands.
16. The U.S. Department of the Treasury does not report the
balance. The National Association of Regulatory Utility
Commissioners (NARUC), in a resolution adopted on 18
February 2009, claims a balance of $22 billion ( 18).
17. Offi ce of Management and Budget, in A New Era of
Responsibilities: Renewing America’s Promise (Govern-
ment Printing Offi ce, Washington, DC, 2009), pp. 63–65;
www.whitehouse.gov/omb/assets/fy2010_new_era/
Department_of_Energy.pdf.
18. NARUC, Resolution in Support of Ensuring the Federal
Government Fulfi lls Its Obligation to Remove Spent
Nuclear Fuel from Present Reactor Storage Sites;
www.naruc.org/Resolutions.cfm.
10.1126/science.1174594
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