Expert Recommendations On Nuclear Waste May Fall On Deaf Ears – Yet Again forbes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from forbes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Radioactive waste barrels. Credit: Recognize Productions from Pexels. Public domain.
Almost a decade has passed since the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future recommended a new management approach for the country’s growing inventory of commercial spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. The commission reported that the United States’ failure to develop a safe and timely program for managing these wastes resulted from a top-down approach that never achieved technical consensus or social acceptance. To forge a more successful path, the commission called for a consent-based approach in which communities with adequate knowledge of risks, benefits, and technical requirements could volunteer to host one or more geological repositories and interim storage facilities. The Energy Department made some preliminary progress on defining what such a process might look like during the Obama administration, but that initiative was soon squelched by the Trump adminis
Seth Tuler is an Associate Professor in the Department of Integrative and Global Studies, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, MA and Senior Researcher at the Social and Environmental Research Institute, Shelburne, MA. He works in the areas of risk governance, public participation, and social issues in hazard management. From 2003 to 2006, he served on the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Transportation of Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste. Together with Eugene A. Rosa, Thomas Webler, Sharon Friedman, and Roger Kasperson, Tuler provided input to the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future about public and stakeholder engagement options. They wrote two commissioned reports on social distrust in the spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste management system, and options for public participation. Early in the Commission’s process, they and 11 co-authors wrote an article in the journal
Leadership Lessons from our 34th President
Wednesday, March 3, 2021 12:40 pm MST | 11:40 am PST
• FREE • VIRTUAL EVENT • About the Event
If the question is, “Who was the greatest American leader of the 20th century?” it would be hard to answer with any name other than “Dwight David Eisenhower.” Yes, admirers of Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt can make a case for their being the premier political leaders of their eras, but Ike can match the Roosevelt cousins in politics and then raise them one with his military accomplishments as the victorious Supreme Allied Commander in World War II.
Eisenhower’s granddaughter Susan has had a long run as an esteemed political consultant, historian, and think-tank leader. Now in her late sixties, she decided now was the time to write the equivalent of a textbook on leadership, as personified by the career of her historic ancestor, in
Why Biden should designate a nuclear waste negotiator
An Atlas railcar carrying test weights on a test track. The US Energy Department is developing special railcars to transport casks of spent nuclear fuel to storage sites. Credit: Energy Department
(Editor’s Note: This Opinion piece is being published as a companion article to the essays in the January issue of our magazine, on “Advice to the Next President.”)
When President-elect Joe Biden comes to office, there will be a window of opportunity for the United States to make real progress on the management and disposition of nuclear waste. Once envisioned as a permanent waste storage site but now abandoned by both parties, Yucca Mountain is no longer a political lightning rod. And if the Nuclear Regulatory Commission grants licenses to one or more proposed interim storage sites in 2021, as seems likely, opponents of those sites will probably call for federal action on the many unaddressed issues associated with interi