Year
2024
Abstract
| Siting a nuclear facility is one of the earliest questions a country must address when exploring the possibility of a nuclear energy program. The United States is home to two contrasting examples of nuclear facilities which were similar in purpose but experienced vastly different siting outcomes--the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in Carlsbad, New Mexico and the Yucca Mountain geological repository in Nevada. While WIPP opened and received its first shipment of waste in 1999 and enjoys high levels of support in its local community today, Yucca Mountain has never opened and there are no current plans to revive the project due to opposition in Nevada. This paper compares the processes which identified Carlsbad and Yucca Mountain as the locations for their respective repositories. While the community in Carlsbad, New Mexico expressed interest in hosting a nuclear waste repository, the U.S. Congress and Department of Energy identified Yucca Mountain despite opposition from Nevada’s elected officials. This paper offers insights potentially relevant to the Department of Energy’s ongoing Consent-Based Siting process for a Consolidated Interim Storage (CIS) facility and for other countries interested in the stakeholder engagement piece of siting nuclear facilities. |