WASHINGTON - A presidential commission looking for safe ways to dispose of the nation's nuclear waste said Friday it is considering a plan to build one or more storage sites to replace a long-planned nuclear waste dump in Nevada.
The 15-member commission, created by President Obama, did not identify any proposed site for nuclear storage. Nor did commission members agree on whether there should be one or several sites for a nuclear dump, where waste would be stored for up to 100 years.
The panel, formally known as the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future, also suggested creation of a new organization, independent of the Energy Department, to locate and build a site to permanently bury nuclear waste.
The Obama administration created the panel last year after canceling a longstanding plan to bury nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, a remote site 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
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The group released a series of recommendations by three subcommittees at a meeting on Friday.
Lee Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman from Indiana who co-chairs the panel, said the recommendations may or may not be adopted by the full commission. A draft report on nuclear waste disposal is due in late July, with a final report expected by January.
Commission members stressed that the storage facilities would not be the ultimate solution to the disposal of nuclear waste, some of which takes thousands of years to decay.
An interim site "will only work if it's combined with a process for getting an ultimate disposal site," said commissioner John Rowe, chief executive of Exelon Corp., the nation's largest nuclear supplier.
Commission members also said it was crucial that officials generate local support before choosing an interim storage site or a permanent burial site. The Yucca Mountain plan is fiercely opposed by Nevada lawmakers, most notably Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat.
Commissioner Phil Sharp, another former Democratic House member from Indiana, said it might make sense to build a series of regional storage sites to increase chances of generating local support and to ease transportation of nuclear waste from nuclear sites across the country.
Disputes over what to do about an estimated 71,000 tons of used fuel from the 104 U.S. nuclear reactors have lingered for years. Nuclear waste is currently stored on-site in pools or in dry casks. Regulators say both methods are safe.
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