Analysis of U.S. Policy for Managing High-Level Waste

Abstract

The Facility Siting Guidelines provide a means of gaining public acceptance for a facility. Some, but not all, of the guidelines were incorporated into the 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act. In fact, at that point in time, Congress expressed an interest in finding a way to overcome the public and political concerns that had become attached to the repository. However, the subsequent decision to narrow the search to Yucca Mountain is strongly at odds with the guidelines discussed in Chapter 8. This chapter systematically compares the Facility Siting Guidelines to the siting strategies that the federal government has employed between 1982 to 1994. In deviating from the normative guidelines, the federal government has fostered legitimate doubts and objections among Nevada residents; it is not at all surprising that the state has expended so much effort fighting the Yucca Mountain proposal.