First Page
1037
Abstract
Nuclear power offers the United States one viable path toward decarbonization of the energy sector as the only zero-emission energy source capable of baseload generation. Despite the clear climatic, economic, and energy independence benefits of expanding reliance on nuclear power and the emergence of cheaper, safer, and more efficient advanced reactor technology that has lowered barriers to adoption, buildout of nuclear generation capacity faces impediments. The lack of a comprehensive national nuclear waste management strategy is perhaps the most significant obstacle to the siting of new nuclear power facilities. Currently, due to the federal government’s failure to establish a geologic disposal repository as required by statute, or to put forth an alternative plan for interim storage of waste, radioactive spent nuclear fuel is stored at civilian reactor sites where it will remain until a storage facility or repository is constructed and licensed to accept high-level nuclear waste. With global technology companies expressing interest in the collocation of energyintensive data centers with reactors, the introduction of tax incentives to expand nuclear power production, and the rapid evolution of advanced reactor technology, the production and accumulation of high-level nuclear waste will accelerate.
This Note examines the tension between the need for energy decarbonization and the deficiencies in the United States’ federal nuclear waste management framework that discourage the buildout of nuclear power. It concludes that effective high-level waste management is an environmental imperative, and the development of suitable storage and disposal is a necessary precursor to the expansion of nuclear power. To that end, the federal government must specify and effectuate a coordinated nuclear waste policy. Federal agencies should rely on existing statutory authority to slow the accumulation of spent nuclear fuel at reactor sites, for example, by enabling and incentivizing investment in waste-reduction technologies and processes that are commonplace outside of the United States. Ultimately, Congress must amend unworkable provisions of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to allow the administrative state to pursue nuclear waste solutions.
Recommended Citation
Sydney C. Schoonover,
Energizing Federal Action Toward a More Coherent National Nuclear Waste Policy,
78 Vanderbilt Law Review
1037
(2025)
Available at: https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/vlr/vol78/iss3/6