[ loud explosion and rumbling ] TV ANNOUNCER: Now that the world has learned how to tap atomic energy with the atomic bomb, what a blessing it would be if science could harness this vast atomic energy to generate electricity.

[ ♪♪♪ ] MAN: Nuclear, of course, today is our largest essentially zero-carbon source of electricity, nearly 20%.

People tend to think of nuclear waste as a green goo coming out of barrels that are leaking, and things like that.

Nuclear waste disposal was always the problem that we would solve later.

There's every indication we're just going to keep kicking the can down the road.

Because of their failure to perform industry-wide, utilities have sued the Department of Energy and won.

Whether you like nuclear power or not, there is nuclear power.

They've generated waste already, and it's sitting there.

The country needs to make a decision, does it make sense to invest in interim storage?

MAN: And so, can we be a national solution for a problem that's already out there and created?

We think so.

Store it.

Take care of it.

Be a part of the solution.

This program was made possible in part by... and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

[ ♪♪♪ ] Since the dawn of the nuclear age, we have struggled with the problem of what to do with high-level nuclear waste.

At present, most of that waste is stored in temporary cooling pools near nuclear power plants across the country, waiting on the U.S.

government to find a way to dispose of it.

So far, the government has found no site that is both suitable and acceptable to local residents.

But now they are trying something new -- looking for communities that will voluntarily accept long-term storage of nuclear waste -- for a price.

Will it work?

The future of nuclear power itself may be at stake, and the question is playing out in communities affected by changing energy economies.

One of them is Andrews, Texas.

WOMAN: It's one of those places that's truly surprising.

You drive through, and it doesn't look like it's very big.

There's not a lot going on.

But the longer you're here and the more people you meet, you realize how tight the community is.

It's just a great place to live.

Andrews, Texas, is one of many small oil towns across America whose economy is dependent on the rise and fall of oil prices.

Boom and bust economies are really difficult to survive in.

Julia Wallace is the executive director of the Andrews Chamber of Commerce, and she's helping lead the charge to bring nuclear waste to her county.

Our oil fields here provided the oil to help America win World War II.

That's just kind of the way this community has been forever.

We've just kind of been part of the solution to whatever America's needs are.

With oil prices less than half of what they were a couple of years ago, Andrews is trying to diversify its economy.

One plan is for their county to store highly radioactive nuclear waste perhaps for as long as 100 years.

You have to think outside of the box.

You have to diversify.

And this is an industry and an area that I think is going to continue to grow, and it's a need that needs to be met.

So I think we're on to something here.

[ ♪♪♪ ] The United States currently has 100 nuclear reactors operating at 61 nuclear power plants in 31 states.

These reactors supply 20% of the energy America uses.

Scientists at Idaho National Laboratory are studying nuclear energy technologies.

The uranium atom produces 10 million times more energy than a carbon atom in a piece of coal.

It's got this incredibly packed energy density; that's what makes it such an effective electricity producer.

MAN: The nuclear power option, I believe, is important for addressing climate change.

It's important for providing more fuel diversity in the country.

The amount of electricity we need to power our homes and businesses varies during the day.

Nuclear power is the country's largest carbon-free energy source, and it's more reliable than renewables because it can be on all the time, or whenever needed.

So, nuclear power we think is a -- an important component in an overall low, maybe zero-carbon electricity system.

Nuclear power clearly could play a role in mitigating carbon emissions, but it has some unique risks.

This unresolved issue of waste disposal.

It's too inconvenient to worry about the waste.

And this has been the case ever since the dawn of the nuclear era.

Nuclear waste disposal was always the problem that we would solve later.

Nuclear energy generates both low-level and high-level waste.

Low-level waste is radioactive trash.

It can include everything from gloves to machine parts.

High-level waste generally refers to the fuel that is "spent" -- it's the radioactive material left over after energy production.

WOMAN: If you stood next to a nuclear fuel rod without any shielding, you would die.

Okay?

So, it's extremely radioactive.

It has to be shielded and it has to be cooled and protected for a long period of time.

Nuclear waste is regulated by the U.S.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission, or NRC.

Commercial nuclear power plants must comply with NRC safety standards for shielding and cooling the spent nuclear fuel that accumulates every day, resulting in a vast buildup of nuclear waste across the country.

MONIZ: Today, we have about 74,000 tons of spent fuel from commercial nuclear power plants.

If you imagine all of this spent fuel laid out on a football field, it would pile up to about 25 feet for the entire country, all the spent fuel from the decades of operating these plants.

Indian Point Energy Center is located in Buchanan, New York, just 35 miles north of New York City.

Indian Point has been generating waste since it first went online in 1962.

MAN: We store our spent fuel in two methods, which is common in the industry.

The first method is in spent fuel pools.

Every nuclear power plant uses wet pools to cool spent fuel.

Hot, radioactive nuclear rods are immersed and stored in at least 20 feet of water, where they cool off for about three to five years.

Recent NRC regulations allow utilities to rearrange pools where possible to increase the amount of spent fuel that can be stored.

With these new arrangements, the NRC believes spent fuel can be stored safely for over 100 years.

MAN: And then we have what's called dry cask storage.

That's large, robust, 20-foot-high, 360,000-pound containers that sit outside on a seismically engineered pad and keep the fuel cool outdoors.

Utilities began developing dry cask storage as fuel pools neared capacity.

Fuel rods that are cool enough are removed from wet pools and welded inside steel containers, surrounded by inert gas, and then encased in concrete or steel to further protect against radiation leakage.

Spent fuel is being stored in dry casks at 74 sites in 33 states.

[ ♪♪♪ ] Utilities have to spend money to transfer that fuel to dry cask storage, which was not the original plan, and store it on-site indefinitely... [ loud explosion ] even beyond the life of the physical plant.

And that's being done across the country at different sites, and that will continue to be done until the government meets its obligation.

THOMASSON: I don't believe that the energy companies want to keep the waste on their property any longer than they have to.

That would only make sense.

If somebody else has said, I will take care of your waste, take it off my land, you know?

Take care of it for us, so that we don't have to deal with it anymore.

The industry is under significant financial strain.

The low cost of natural gas is cutting into the profits that can be earned from nuclear power, and utilities are looking for ways to cut costs.

They don't want to spend more money than they already do on safety and security.

And that is a very strong pressure here in Washington, and it's inevitable that it does influence the political and the regulatory process.

Utilities have to store and monitor waste even after they no longer generate electricity.

San Onofre's Nuclear Generating Station has been shut down since 2013.

The plant is located right on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, just north of San Diego, California.

Even though the plant is closed, spent nuclear fuel is still stored on-site in both spent fuel pools and in dozens of dry storage canisters.

The only reason we have dry fuel storage today and we have to expand it is because of the Department of Energy's failure to perform and take the fuel off-site.

The federal government officially took responsibility for the nation's commercial spent fuel when Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1982.

The law laid out a process for identifying potential permanent repository sites and imposed a fee on commercial utilities to help pay for the management of their nuclear waste.

It also set a deadline for moving spent fuel away from commercial reactors -- January 31, 1998.

When the Nuclear Waste Policy Act was passed in 1982, it had support from the environmentalists, from industry, from government.

It really had everybody onboard thinking, I think we got it here.

This is going to be the right process.

Five years later, Congress decided that Yucca Mountain, a site 80 miles from Las Vegas, Nevada, would be the only site considered as a permanent repository.

A vast majority of Nevadans did not want the facility in their state, however, and Senator Harry Reid staunchly opposed the plan.

Congress basically gave the short straw to Nevada in a moment of political weakness for that state in the late 1980s.

And it went off the rails from then on.

After decades of political wrangling and billions of dollars, the license for Yucca Mountain is still incomplete.

There are still issues that are unresolved, including rights to water, for example, acquisition of land -- in which the state has a major role.

Completing the process -- if even feasible -- could require decades more.

The only option utility companies have is to store their spent nuclear fuel on-site.

PALMISANO: Because of their failure to perform industry-wide, utilities have sued the Department of Energy and won.

So with respect to spent fuel management, we will continue to sue the Department of Energy, we will continue to prevail, and they will continue to reimburse us.

As of September 2015, $5.3 billion has been paid out of the taxpayer-funded judgment fund to reimburse the utilities for some of the expenses incurred.

And the Department of Energy estimates that the total liability, assuming they begin picking up fuel in 2021, will be $29 billion.

With no permanent geologic storage site, and facing additional challenges from the nuclear industry, the Obama Administration appointed the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future in 2010.

The Commission was to conduct a comprehensive review of current policies for managing nuclear waste and suggest a path forward.

[ ♪♪♪ ] A year after the Commission took on its challenge, a massive earthquake and tsunami hit the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan.

Intense media coverage resulted in renewed attention to nuclear waste issues here and the lack of a plan for safe storage.

Fukushima was a massive wake-up call, or it should have been, because what it really did was demonstrate that the assurances that the nuclear industry had been providing to the public are really hollow.

I'm very, very upset that you guys haven't come to visit us.

With public concern mounting after the Fukushima disaster, the Blue Ribbon Commission suggested the DOE find communities willing to accept nuclear waste voluntarily, either in permanent geologic repositories or on an interim basis -- for up to 100 years.

The DOE began by discussing the consent-based siting process with the public.

We're really going to solve the waste problem, start moving spent fuel away from reactors, when we have a consent-based process, by which we mean that we work cooperatively with localities, with states, obviously federal government, all coming to the same place in terms of getting facilities going.

If the consent-based process is approved, facilities in communities like Andrews, Texas, will have to apply for a license and approval as interim storage sites.

The DOE wants to start by moving spent fuel from 13 sites -- known as "stranded sites" -- that no longer have operating nuclear reactors.

Currently, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act requires a licensed permanent facility be in place before interim storage can be designated.

Licensing Yucca Mountain is not a near-term solution, so for this plan to proceed, Congress would need to pass legislation to waive the requirement for a permanent geologic repository.

Several members of Congress have already introduced legislation to do just that.

People tend to think of nuclear waste as a green goo coming out of barrels that are leaking and things like that.

That is definitely not our site and the way we handle things and the way we do it.

Waste Control Specialists, or WCS, has been operating a low-level nuclear waste storage facility near Andrews, Texas, since 2012.

This will be our new high-level storage.

Rod Baltzer is president and CEO.

I tease people that when I get on an airplane, if I want to get some work done and whatnot, then I tell people I'm an accountant.

But if I want a long conversation, I tell them I'm -- I run a radioactive waste management company, and that always opens up the dialogue.

These are the stranded sites that were noted in the Blue Ribbon Commission report.

And our application will cover 80% of those.

In May 2016, they applied to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to accept high-level waste -- the highly irradiated spent fuel from nuclear reactors.

We were very encouraged to see the recent announcement by Waste Control Specialists, or WCS, for a private interim storage facility.

And we were particularly pleased to see that it's supported by the local community where such a facility would be located and by elements of the state's political establishment.

BALTZER: We've got a facility and a community that has been very supportive and a facility and characteristics that are ideal for storing material like this.

And so, can we be a national solution for a problem that's already out there and created?

We think so, the community thinks so, and that's why we're proceeding.

WALLACE: When you grow up in the oil field and it's all around you, and you're accustomed to driving down the road and seeing those signs that say "Danger: poisonous gas may be present," you're just accustomed to that.

You're accustomed to danger.

That's what we're accustomed to.

The waste storage facility is located on a ridge of red bed clay valued because water cannot permeate through it easily.

If it gets any moisture at all on it, it swells up and seals itself off.

So it's actually easier to move water through concrete than it is this red bed clay.

Which makes it a natural -- probably one of the best sites in the country for a disposal facility.

BALTZER: It's on a concrete pad.

It's got security.

We have monitoring set up and things like that.

I don't envision there would ever be any kind of contamination or release or anything like that that would leave the canister, let alone the concrete canister, let alone go outside the fence line, let alone go toward a community.

The same assurances have been provided for waste stored at sites in other parts of the country, and systems have been known to fail.

So, environmentally, it looks like it's in a good location, but again it'll depend on what they bring in as far as the application is concerned.

It's important to note that's not a permanent solution.

It's safe, and it can be stored for decades that way, but you still need to develop a permanent solution, which would be a geologic repository.

To Andrews and the state of Texas, storing the nation's nuclear waste is a significant source of revenue.

Andrews has already received in excess of $7 million from WCS from the low-level waste, and that's a town where the entire annual budget is $12 to $13 million.

MAN: We've bought school buses.

We've bought ambulances.

We bought a swimming pool.

And that's outside the taxing money.

The financial benefits are attractive to other communities, too.

Hobbs, New Mexico, a community geographically closer to WCS, is considering their own storage site.

And the state of Wyoming is warming to storage, too.

LYMAN: It's quite possible they're just getting sold a bill of goods.

Are you taking advantage of economically depressed communities to site these facilities?

They really need to understand all of the risks and the benefits before making an informed decision.

You have the right science, and when you know what you're doing and when you do things correctly and when you pay attention to what you're doing, that just about anything can be done safely and securely.

I check myself nightly, and I haven't glowed in the dark yet.

So I'm feeling pretty secure.

The risks are not nearly as great as some people would try to imagine that it is.

[ bell ringing ] Andrews, Texas, is not the only community that would be taking on this risk.

FETTUS: Once you start moving nuclear waste, it's not just the interim place where it would be going that has to give consent; you also have to talk about all the places that that waste is going to be moved through as well, and are they going to be giving consent?

THOMASSON: Everybody, for the most part, wants the waste taken out of their own backyard.

Siting this will impact anybody who's along the route that this waste is going to be traveling through.

Spent fuel must first cool enough in wet pools before it can be packaged for the long journey by rail to an interim site like Andrews, Texas.

Each package will weigh approximately the same as one and a half oil tanker cars.

Specially designed rail cars will travel slowly up to 2,200 miles, passing through major metropolitan areas like Chicago, Kansas City, or Los Angeles.

The increasing number of oil train accidents raises questions about overall safety.

Compared with oil trains, transporting nuclear waste comes with a unique set of risks.

THOMASSON: And do people really understand what those risks are if an accident were to happen?

That's not to say we shouldn't do it.

We have to.

But until we have a site to put it in, we want to make sure that we're not moving that waste around the country unless it's necessary for the waste safety and the safety of the people around it.

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 set a date for the government to begin accepting commercial spent fuel.

Now, nine presidential elections later, the United States still can't do anything with this spent fuel except leave it sitting at current and former nuclear power plants around the country.

MONIZ: We are certainly committed to interim storage sites being exactly what that word says, interim.

They are areas to stage, if you like, the spent fuel on the way to geological repositories.

I think if you started moving waste to an interim storage site without a final disposal site well underway, or disposal sites well underway, we think you're going to end up with a de facto repository.

I think consolidated interim storage is a sideshow and a distraction, which might impact the goal of achieving a final repository.

We should as a nation be able to band together and get this process right this time rather than try and build a better mousetrap and just give a state more incentives than what Nevada was offered.

SNOW: And no one wants to be like, yes, we have more nuclear waste in our backyard than anywhere else in the country.

But I'll be honest, I enjoy the benefits of it here in the town, too.

I mean, I -- there have been a lot of things that have happened financially for our city because of WCS.

[ ♪♪♪ ] You have to be careful of it, but I wouldn't think that you have to be scared of it.

FETTUS: Nuclear waste is an intergenerational problem.

It's a fuel source that we've used, an energy electricity source that we've used that's going to have ramifications that will go for time beyond human history.

Future generations will decide some of this.

WALLACE: We think that nuclear energy is good for America, and we just want to be a part of that solution.

We don't see it as some big, you know, dangerous, terrible, ominous figure.

We just, we think it's just another day -- it's just another day's work.

Store it.

Take care of it.

Be a part of the solution.

This program was made possible in part by... and by contributions to your PBS station from...