{"id":15745,"date":"2025-03-13T19:04:54","date_gmt":"2025-03-13T20:04:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=15745"},"modified":"2025-03-13T20:57:18","modified_gmt":"2025-03-13T20:57:18","slug":"federal-government-inaction-leaves-uranium-along-lake-michigan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=15745","title":{"rendered":"Federal government inaction leaves uranium along Lake Michigan"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.badgerinstitute.org\/federal-government-inaction-leaves-uranium-along-lake-michigan\/<\/a><\/p>\n

There are free-market solutions to storing or using spent nuclear fuel<\/strong><\/em><\/h4>\n

All the uranium used in the past half-century at Wisconsin\u2019s Point Beach Nuclear Plant, a bit over 1,000 metric tons, is still at the plant north of Two Rivers.<\/p>\n

Four miles farther north, all the fuel used at the smaller, now-closed Kewaunee Power Station in its four decades of producing reliable, exhaust-free electricity is still along the Lake Michigan shore.<\/p>\n

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One can be grateful for all the power \u2014 the two plants alone produced one-sixth<\/a> of all electricity made in Wisconsin since 1990 \u2014 while wondering why the radioactive spent fuel sits by the lake. Why won\u2019t the plants\u2019 owners properly dispose of it?<\/p>\n

Simple: Because the federal government won\u2019t let them. Spent uranium isn\u2019t the plant owners\u2019\u00a0responsibility because Uncle Sam bigfooted his way into the matter in 1982, then accomplished nothing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only thing in the way of moving it off those sites is politics,\u201d said Jack Spencer<\/a>, a nuclear expert for the Heritage Foundation.<\/p>\n

That means it\u2019s fixable.<\/p>\n

Every plant has signed a contract to temporarily hold spent fuel until the feds build a permanent repository to hold it until it\u2019s no longer radioactive. That repository, under Yucca Mountain in Nevada, by law will be ready by 1998.<\/p>\n

Oops. Better make that never: The Obama administration killed the project in 2010 and never came up with something else.<\/p>\n

So uranium, little ceramic pellets inside sealed steel-and-concrete casks with walls about three feet thick<\/a>, sits \u2014 at Point Beach, at Kewaunee, at a long-demolished plant\u2019s site south of La Crosse, at the empty site<\/a> of a former power plant just over the Illinois line south of Kenosha, and at every current or past commercial plant.<\/p>\n

Nuclear power, which has produced a fifth of the nation\u2019s electricity since the 1980s, is getting new attention. Utilities are closing coal-fired plants, long the workhorse in Wisconsin<\/a>, due to a regulatory assault begun under Obama. Natural gas has substituted, but it, too, is under attack<\/a>. Windmills and solar panels provide a fraction of America\u2019s needs: 15.8% in the most recent 12 months<\/a>, growing slowly<\/a> \u2014 and they\u2019re unreliable<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So nuclear\u2019s having a moment, including in Wisconsin, where the regional grid operator warns the Midwest could be short of power<\/a> next summer by the equal of four Point Beaches, even as demand seems set to rise<\/a>. Rep. David Steffen and Sen. Julian Bradley seek to put the Wisconsin Legislature on record<\/a> in favor of nuclear power, a big step in a state with a nuclear moratorium until 2016<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The issue is\u00a0bipartisan: Republican lawmakers want regulators<\/a> to research possible sites for nuclear plants; Democrat Gov. Tony Evers made a similar demand<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Yet there\u2019s that spent fuel. It\u2019s safe, notes the Nuclear Regulatory Commission: Standing next to the cask for a year gives you less radiation that a round-trip flight to Hong Kong, and the cylinders can endure jetliner impacts. But the contents are radioactive for 10 millennia.<\/p>\n

The problem, says Spencer, is a \u201cmisalignment of incentives.\u201d Utilities\u2019 costs are covered, by taxpayers because the feds reneged on their contract to take it away. Politicians see no upside in siting a new repository. Antinuclear activists use the standstill to make spent fuel seem<\/a> an insuperable problem.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not insuperable. Finland is finishing its hole<\/a> for spent fuel and Sweden is now building<\/a> another. France recycles its fuel, since most useful uranium remains once fuel is \u201cspent.\u201d Recycling produces new fuel and reduces the volume of waste.<\/p>\n

Recycling fuel was our thing until the Carter administration banned it. Since then, \u201cwe\u2019ve made no progress on it because there\u2019s no one incentivized to do something,\u201d said Spencer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Better, suggests Spencer, who details this in a new book<\/a>, to turn to the private sector, which safely built the industry in the first place.<\/p>\n

He suggests a new entity, federally chartered perhaps, with one job: take existing spent fuel and, using the billions already set aside for disposal, find a place willing to host a repository.<\/p>\n

For new plants, their permits would depend on owners having a disposal plan that satisfies the NRC. Maybe it\u2019s with the new entity, maybe someone else.<\/p>\n

Free the market, says Spencer, to invent better solutions, better reprocessing, better new reactors that use waste<\/a>. Inducing people to profit by solving someone\u2019s problem is what free markets excel at.<\/p>\n

To be sure, he warns against subsidizing new nuclear power, wanting simply more rational regulations and an end to all subsidies, such as the $31.4 billion the feds dumped<\/a> into wind and solar in 2024. He\u2019s confident about nuclear\u2019s chances in open competition.<\/p>\n

This matters because abundant, affordable electricity is a prerequisite for prosperity. If utilities shut down coal and gas, intermittent sources won\u2019t do it unless we regress to a state-sized version of Old World Wisconsin<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But more nuclear requires removing the political problem that\u2019s blocking technical solutions to spent fuel along Lake Michigan. Time to let the market find an answer. The government-centered approach simply has failed to do so.<\/p>\n

Patrick McIlheran is the Director of Policy at the Badger Institute.<\/em><\/p>\n

Any\u202fuse or reproduction of Badger Institute articles or photographs requires prior written\u202fpermission.\u202fTo request permission to post articles on a website or print copies for distribution, contact Badger Institute President Mike Nichols at\u202f<\/em>mike@badgerinstitute.org<\/em><\/a>\u202for 262-389-8239.<\/em><\/p>\n

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