Note: This transcript is the raw transcript of this podcast. Minimal edits have been made only for clarity purposes.

Roy Payne (00:10):

We can’t build a greener future and look for a sustainable and environmentally sustainable future unless we clear up the mess that we’ve made in the past. Now, nobody, nobody alive now asked for this mess. Nobody wanted this mess, but it’s there. There is no magic fairy with the wand to make it disappear. And we have a choice. And so for me, it’s very important that we start taking responsibility now for the consequences of our own actions.

Narrator (00:43):

Did you know that there are half a million metric tons of nuclear waste temporarily stored at hundreds of sites worldwide? In the U.S. alone, one in three people live within 50 miles of a storage site. No country has yet successfully disposed of commercial spent nuclear fuel, but it’s not for lack of a solution. So what’s the delay? The answers are complex and controversial. In this series, we explore the nuclear waste issue with people representing various pieces of this complicated puzzle. We hope this podcast will give you a clearer picture of Nuclear Waste: The Whole Story. 

We believe that listening is an important element of a successful nuclear waste disposal program. A core company value is to seek and listen to different perspectives. Opinions expressed by the interviewers and their subjects are not necessarily representative of the company. If there’s a topic discussed in the podcast that is unfamiliar to you, or you’d like to more closely review what was said, please see the show notes at deepisolation.com/podcasts.

​​Kari Hulac (02:05):

Hello, I’m Kari Hulac, Deep Isolations Communication Manager. Today I’m talking to Roy Payne, Executive Director of GDFWatch, a UK based not-for-profit organization that supports geologic disposal of nuclear waste and wants to ensure that it’s done in a way that puts impacted communities and public safety at the core of all decision-making. Roy has more than 30 years of experience running campaigns on complex and often contentious issues. Most recently, he was an advisor to RWM, the UK agency responsible for the country’s nuclear waste management and to the UK government on developing the right approaches to stakeholder and community engagement for the UK geologic disposal program. Thank you so much for joining us today, Roy.

Roy Payne (02:58):

Pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. 

Kari Hulac (03:01):

All right, let’s just jump right into it. We first like to ask our interviewees, how did you end up working in the nuclear waste field? And then how did you come to lead GDFWatch?

Roy Payne (03:14):

I actually joined RWM the UK’s RWMO. Right at the point of weeks, there’d been a review of the previously failed siting experience. And I joined at a time they were rethinking the policy and it struck me at the time that previous siting policies had been linked to the local election cycle. The decision was left with local authorities, local municipal leaders, which meant that we never got anywhere because every four to five years it was an election. And bearing in mind, this process could take decades from the moment you start it to the point at which you actually get approval to start work. And so the election cycle itself is a hindrance. So how do you under a consent based process, create a democratic structure that allows the community to actually have its say, but do so over a much longer period of time, that’s sort of exempt from the electoral cycle.

Roy Payne (04:08):

So we created a thing called the community partnerships and a whole new policy was created, which is the one where we’re now implementing on working with communities. I was then tasked with then, well we’ve got the policy, how do we now communicate and engage with communities? And I’ve a lot of experience in infrastructure and government information campaigns. And so started out with the traditional approach to it all. But given that is consent based, this is a completely different beast from the normal sort of infrastructure government projects, where we’re going to build this here and then we’re going to talk to local people about what the issues are and take on board their concerns. This actually requires people consent even to have a conversation with you, if they don’t wish to have a conversation with you, there’s nothing you can do about that. So I started thinking and looking at it from what does all this look like from the community’s perspective?

Roy Payne (04:56):

And suddenly you’ve got a very different perspective because someone who’s used to working in a big corporates and government, you run a campaign and you speak to the audience was actually looking from the community’s perspective. They just have this massive army of the format of the state, the new dissector rolling over their hills. Most of these communities are rural and isolated areas. They don’t have any experience with the subject at all. And all they hear is this massive group of people with large sums of money and a great palette saying we’d like to bury nuclear waste underneath your hubs. That’s all they’re hearing. So how do you engage with them in a way that allows you to slowly start having a conversation and over time, develop trust, develop relationships, and develop understanding. And so when I started thinking about it from the community perspective, I came to realization that I probably wasn’t as interested in managing a government communications campaign as I was actually looking at it from the community perspective.

Roy Payne (05:59):

And certainly as I explored this on an international level, realized the hugely human parallels that were regardless of political structure, regardless of the culture of a country, really looking at this from a community’s perspective, from ordinary people’s perspective, was the key to unlocking how you can progress geological disposal. And hence I decided that I’d established GDFWatch primarily focused on the UK siting process, but also taken on board and trying to work with international communities as well, because I’d become convinced by this stage of the ethical, the environmental, and the intergenerational issues related to geological disposal. But it wasn’t a really a technical issue. This was very much social and cultural issue, and we needed to look at it from that perspective.

Kari Hulac (06:49):

Many of our listeners may be very new to what geological disposal even is. So could you give an overview of how a geologic disposal facility would work and why scientists have said for decades that this is the best place for nuclear waste?

Roy Payne (07:06):

Yeah, I think it’s probably worth just very quickly talking about the research and the scientific background before we get into what is geologic disposal. I suspect billions of dollars have been spent over the past three or four decades. This has been a huge collaboration of the scientific community around the world. It’s the same issues confronting every nuclear country. And to the extent that we have people buy into the scientific consensus behind climate change, there is the same, if not greater scientific consensus behind geological disposal and in analyzing what was the best way of dealing with our nuclear waste or radioactive waste. Of course, they looked at all the options. So the obvious ones are sending into space. Well, if anyone’s seen the videos and the space industry itself builds in a certain redundancy that certain rockets will not leave the launch pad or blow up shortly after take off, that’s too high a risk if you’re carrying nuclear waste on board to scatter highly radioactive materials, over a large geographic area and into the atmosphere, there’s a non-starter as an option. 

Roy Payne (08:15):

The other option was dumping in the sea, well that’s already been outlawed for best part of half a century under international law. And we’re already seeing from the Russians in the Bering sea, or having to actually pull back all the nuclear submarines they scuttled because it is an environmental threat. And with Western funding and working in cooperation with the Norwegians, the Russians are beginning to remove the nuclear waste from the sea. So if you can’t go in the sea, can’t be sent into space, land. Now you’ve got to leave it on the surface or you bury it. And I come down to there’s lots of people concerns. What happens if, well, if something happens, if there’s a rupture of a package or a human error, you have a choice that that leak of radioactivity could be straight into the air that we breathe and into the soil that we grow our food in, or it can happen a kilometer underground, a long, long way away from us.

Roy Payne (09:11):

So you’ve got to, you either react instantly to an immediate problem that’s poisoning you immediately, or you buy yourself potentially 10,000 years to sort out a solution, should there ever be a need to find a solution? So the geological disposal is rooted in very basic common sense. We have this waste, we need to dispose of it safely. The easiest, safest, and environmentally sound way is to bury it deep underground. If we look at a geological repository, there are certain standards which is that all communities agree to. It must be at least 200 meters underground. Now that’s to allow for glacier scouring of the surface, because much of this material, there’s likely to be several ice ages before it ceases to be harmful to the environment and to humans. So we need to allow for surface scouring, it can go up to about a kilometer deep, because any deeper, the heat of the earth itself would not allow the materials to go down.

Roy Payne (10:08):

So there is this sort of sweet area, but also the rock you build it in, but in different types of rock, but you’ve got to be high degree of satisfaction. There are no fractures, there’s no water coming to the surface. It’s a very particular type of geology. And that’s why identifying a proper site for a repository can be so difficult and time consuming because of the detailed geological analysis that you have to do to actually ascertain, is this a safe piece of rock in which to build a repository and bury our waste. Then the waste itself. Most people sadly around the world, and it’s not a joke, it’s not funny, but most people take their cue of what is radioactive waste from the opening shots of the Simpsons: it’s green gooey stuff. People are worried that it’s going to come percolating up through their drains and into their homes.

Roy Payne (11:01):

Now, sadly, there are real world examples of such things happening. So no, this is not irrational fear, its paged on currencies around the world, there’s similar things happening. But the waste is solidified, its packed inside a very secure steel box that you can stand beside for the next hundred years and you would not have any radioactive. They’re put in these boxes and then like Lego bricks they’re stacked on top of each other in a deep underground chamber. And then when it’s full, you just set it up and leave it alone. It’s effectively, we took uranium from the earth, we’re returning a radioactive waste uranium back to the earth in a safe space where it can basically just biodegrade. It can cease to be a threat or a risk. And by the time you’ve used the manmade engineered barriers and the natural barrier, a rock, over a hundred thousand years, there’s going to be no radioactivity impacting the environment and humans living there.

Roy Payne (12:00):

I think the other issue with keeping on the surface is can we, do we have a high degree of confidence that humans can manage this dangerous material for 10,000, 100,000 years continuously? And can they do that without ever making a mistake? Now its maybe possible to minimize those risks, but it’s very unlikely that we are going to be able to sustain this as a society. I mean, we have history only goes back 4 or 5,000 years. We’re talking timescales, which are beyond our comprehension. And therefore the safest thing to do is to dispose of it safely in a deep geological facility. And that’s what the world scientific community and world governments. What’s quite interesting here is despite the unpopularity of the proposal, politicians and governments around the world have all signed up to it. Occasionally politicians do the right thing. They don’t do something that’s unpopular without some degree of necessity. So I think there’s a lack of trust in politicians, but if they’re proposing something that seems very unpopular, then perhaps you should actually be listening to them that on occasion, politicians will promote unpopular policy because it’s the right thing to do.

Kari Hulac (13:16):

There’s a quote on the homepage of the GDFWatch website that says this issue goes to the core of who we are as a society, our morality, and our maturity. Some of what you just said, kind of leads into this, I believe. Tell us who said that. And could you explain how you see the nuclear waste disposal issues being one is at the core of who we are.

Roy Payne (13:43):

Well I came up with that particular quote cause it actually summed up what I think and feel, and it’s not just about nuclear waste. It’s really about the sort of times we’re in and the challenges that we face as a species on a very small planet. So we look at climate change, there are all sorts of issues. We’ve got an energy crisis at the moment. There are all sorts of resource issues. And we have lived in a society, particularly the west, that makes very short-term decisions. It’s driven by the next election. And so a lot of the things that we need to address, fundamental challenges that we face as a country, as a planet, as a species need long-term thinking, and we need to start planning longer term. So nuclear waste for me is potentially the most difficult subject that we have to deal with.

Roy Payne (14:35):

It’s basically, we’ve made a pile of nuclear poo and we need to actually manage that and get rid of it. We can’t build a greener future and look for an environmentally sustainable future unless we clear up the mess that we’ve made in the past. Now, nobody, nobody alive now asked for this mess. Nobody wanted this mess, but it’s there. There is no magic fairy with a wand to make it disappear. And we have a choice. And so for me, it’s very important that we start taking responsibility now for the consequences of our own actions, rather than as we tend to do as a culture, as a society, kickball manyana, manyana, we’ll just keep moving this forward. At some point, we actually have to start addressing this issue and in doing so in terms of the community engagement, the relationship between communities, local politicians, staff with government obligations, perhaps it’s a model that we can start working through that will help us address other bigger challenges that face us, because it seems to me, again, a lot of our challenges we’re facing are planetary and it can be very difficult for people when a decision is made on an international level, how that filters down. 

Roy Payne (15:55):

How local communities are impacted isn’t always explained to them. So if we can find new methods and ways of engaging with people at our local level, so they understand their contribution to a global challenge, we can also start identifying solutions to other problems as well.

Kari Hulac (16:13):

Thank you. So given your work with the UK government, what has the UK learned about geological disposal from its neighbors across Europe? Maybe could give an overview of what the other countries are doing, share some takeaways. For example, there’s the first spent fuel geologic repository, Onkalo in Finland, Sweden’s making progress. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the significance of this.

Roy Payne (16:45):

I think from a technical perspective, everybody’s learning from everybody else. And I think it’s probably one of the, the nuclear sector doesn’t get applauded very much, but I do think in terms of bringing together the best scientific and academic minds, focusing in on problems, sharing knowledge, establishing common standards, the nuclear sector in some ways is a paradigm for a world that is more connected and facing longer challenges. If you ever go to the IAEA, International Atomic Energy Agencies, HQ in Vienna for me, I went there once and it just seemed like Star Trek academy. You were bringing in people from all cultures to focus in on one thing and all of them commit to doing it as safely as possible. So the nuclear sector is very good technically, a lot of knowledge is shared. Where there seems to be what I consider to be a shortfall is understanding the communities in which they’re trying to operate.

Roy Payne (17:48):

And if you look around Europe at the moment, yes, Finland is more advanced, but the Finns have a very different political culture to the UK, to Sweden, to Germany. In Finland, there’s a high degree of trust. They’re a technocracy, they trust their politicians, they trust their academics. And if the academics and politicians say, this is the right thing to do, Finns will largely trust them to do so. The Swedes have progress, but again, they’re in a Sweden, very different culture, political culture, high degree of trust at a local level. Also a sense of responsibility that the citizens, any community has to support the nation because it’s a small nation, small population. And there’s a greater sense of modularity support. You come to the UK where there’s a high degree of skepticism about politics. It is a very fractured political system, very contentious political system, much harder to get agreement and secure agreement.

Roy Payne (18:52):

And the processes, all of the countries bought into consent based, but all have taken different models. So in the UK, that was a survey of the UK geology putting together all the known information. It wasn’t too identifying where it could be built. It was to identify where it couldn’t be built. And most of the country geologically is a potential host geology for a repository. In Germany they took a slightly different approach, a much more aggressive approach in the sense of identifying areas, which were clearly better. And the Germans have gone for where is the best geology, rather than just focusing on where it couldn’t work, where is the best geology, and then starting a discussion with the communities in those areas. This is what we’re trying to do and explain it. So every country is approaching very similar within its own political.

Roy Payne (19:51):

And I think there’s more that can be learned from these experiences. I think generally speaking, the whole geological disposal in terms of sociopolitical dimensia, there’s insufficient collaboration around the world. Very often, I’ve been around the world and spoken to people from Asia, from across Europe, North America, each community feels like somehow they become the focus of their federal national government who want to come and do something terrible to them. That sends up a very strong, negative resistance, as you would expect, if anybody came in wanting to impose themselves on you, or you feel that you’re being imposed upon, you react badly. But I don’t think people fully realize, it’s only when you start talking to people, is this is a global problem. If somebody makes an error with their waste, it’s not just the locality where the waste escapes, it will get into the atmosphere.

Roy Payne (20:48):

It will travel on the weeds. There is going to be implications for all of this radioactive fallout. It doesn’t know boundaries or borders. So we all have a vested interest in managing this waste safely. And we will have a vested interest in ensuring that when it is done, we know where that’s being buried and that there’s a collective memory. I think that’s probably easier done if it’s seen as an international approach rather than as a sort of local community responsibility. And I also think more broadly we’re moving into a world, look around us now, the values of younger generations across cultures are much more aligned. The challenges that they perceive are climate change and the future of the species and radioactive waste management is part of that media. It’s not a thing on its own. And so again, if we’re looking about building a sustainable future, being more thoughtful about how we interact with the environment, one of the first things we need to do is to take responsibility for the mess that we already have here to make sure that started up.

Kari Hulac (22:02):

Do you think that younger generation will help? Will they be more willing to deal with this, even though it, as you said, has been passed onto them from decades ago? What do you feel when you speak to younger people, do you, what’s the pulse of their thoughts on this?

Roy Payne (22:20):

Generally speaking, because it’s not a subject that’s widely spoken about. It’s one of those: radioactive waste. Most subjects, when you raise something, if you don’t know something, can you meet somebody? You ask question, do you want to find out more? But when you raise this up, radioactive waste, people tend to say I don’t need to know anything about that, I don’t want to ever think about that. They don’t even want to engage in a conversation. But younger people because of the challenges they’re facing, because the culture that, that environment they’re growing up in are, I mean, yes, they resent the burdens being placed upon them and that they feel that they’ve got to take responsibility for, but there’s a much more willingness to understand this isn’t an issue that must be gripped. It is in their interests to actually grip. 

Roy Payne (23:10):

To some extent nuclear waste when it’s just stored in surface facilities is actually a negative use of taxpayers’ money. It’s inert. It just builds a box and it sits there for a hundred years until the next box is required. Whereas actually, if you’ve vetted the GDF, you create jobs, you create economic opportunities. And there is actually, it’s making a valuable contribution to the health and safety of the planet as well. So my general sort of observation of younger people is that they are a lot more responsible collectively for the future of the planet than their parents or grandparents generations are. And that they are much more prepared to engage in a discussion about this because it’s their futures which were at stake. 

Kari Hulac (24:05):

Do you think if Onkalo, assuming it’s successful, will that move things forward maybe more quickly now that finally a deep geologic repository will be actually operating, people can see that it’s safe. You know, what will it mean when that finally is a reality?

Roy Payne (24:22):

I think it, it will help because it will show that it can be done. We’ve got to bear in mind, there is actually already an operational facility in the United States, WIPP, wasn’t meant to be a long-term. WIPP has already shown its value instantly. In 2018, a package, which only weeks before had been stored on the surface, ruptured. Now the radioactive leak was contained on the ground. How’d that happen, you know, in the open air or where it was previously stored, it could have been an environmental and public health catastrophe, at least it’s 400 meters underground. They may not be able to revisit or use that part of the repository ever again, but nobody was harmed and there was no risk. There was no escape of radioactivity. So it did show the value of repository. If there is debate, if an incident does occur, much better than it cause deep underground in a closed environment, rather than on the surface where it affects the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the soil of which we grow our food.

Roy Payne (25:21):

So it will help, but I think its going to be a long process. It’s not just Onkalo. And what’s going to be interesting is looking at the number of countries that are coming behind, and it will be one of those people moving in different paces. That you have Germany, France, the UK, Canada, United States, China, Russia. These are in various stages of development. There’ll come a point where there’s 10, 20, 30 repositories being built simultaneously around the world. And we may be 20, 30 years away from that, but there will come a point where these are being built everywhere. I think as ever been so much with life, other issues, people are sort of reluctant. If they’re just one example, there’s two examples, but when there’s 20 or 30 examples, suddenly everyone’s a lot more relaxed about it, but Onkalo is important in just taking that step forward.

Kari Hulac (26:19):

Now let’s talk about the other side of the coin. Building a large deep mined repository may not be feasible for some countries, for example, countries with small nuclear waste inventories. So can you expand upon what some of their concerns are in such cases?

Roy Payne (26:39):

Yeah, I mean, the UK is a very good example. The UK has probably one of the vastest, the most diverse waste inventories of any country on earth. We were pioneers of nuclear for both civil and military purposes. So both given the volumes and the diversity of the waste, there is both fiscal and environmental sense in bearing it in one location. And we’re also an island. We got limited space to bury waste across the UK. Boreholes would litter the country, just politically unacceptable, but there are other countries and you think of countries like South Africa or the Baltic states that only have one reactor, they have a much more limited waste profile. You have other countries like Slovenia Croatia that share a facility, but each is under coverage rules. Each is obliged to build its own repository, even though there’s only one facility.

Roy Payne (27:38):

So there probably is potential scope saying actually just in terms of cost, its also the carbon footprint of building a geological repository. I don’t know, I’ve never looked at the numbers, but can only assume that drilling a borehole is a lot less carbon intensive than building a full scale repository. So for a variety of reasons, environmental, financial, as well as ethical, I can see that there may be examples where smaller waste inventories can be disposed of through built borehole drilling rather than requiring countries to go to the expense of building a very large facility to store very little waste, particularly where two countries, they have to do exactly the same facility for a shared amount of waste. And I don’t think we should also lose sight if you read a lot of African and Asian media now, the whole issue around not just radioactive waste, but waste generally. These countries may not develop civil nuclear programs, but every country now uses MRI scanners.

Roy Payne (28:44):

There are medical applications, there are industrial applications, there’s academic research, which produces very small, but nevertheless, quantities of higher activity radioactive waste. Now you’re not going to require somebody who’s got a tiny amount of radioactive waste to build a deep geological repository. Again, if we, as a community, as a society, want to have advanced mechanics, want to have advanced industries, but one of the consequences is there is some high level radioactive waste. Those countries are going to have to find solutions. And so I can see how deep boreholes would actually potentially provide a solution, cost effective and environmentally sound solution, to that issue. But while repositories tend to be, if you’ve got a large volume, it just makes sense to bury it. So the UK, France, Russia, America probably will stand in those, but that’s not to say that there isn’t a parallel.

Roy Payne (29:43):

And I think the German Green party or the only Green party I’m aware of it, support geological disposal. And there’s an issue around that because as far as I’m aware, the laws of the universe apply equally in Germany as they do in any other country. But they see both as the least worst solution. IAEA talks about the best available. Well, those are the same thing, the best available at the least worst, depending on your perspective, are exactly the same thing. And of course, we all keep open the option that if somebody comes out with even better solutions, if scientists and technology and future technology means that we can deal with waste in a different way, brilliant, that will work, but we can’t just wait and hope. We haven’t yet found a cure for the common cold. So we can’t just rely upon science or just have a faith that some others will be sold for us. We can take responsibility now, start taking actions now and find solutions which actually meet the environmental, financial, and ethical needs of every community. And some of those borehole may be the way forward. 

Kari Hulac (30:54):

I’d love to hear a little bit about your background as a community activist in Belfast, Northern Ireland. I know you’ve learned to build bridges of trust between opposing groups and that skills likely very helpful in what you ended up doing in your career, you know, advising governments on communicating with stakeholders and communities on waste disposal. So what advice do you give governments to help them be more effective in finding a solution?

Roy Payne (31:20):

The most key one is to listen. You know, you pull it down to basic human relationships. If you want to build a relationship with somebody, you don’t sit down and just talk about yourself the whole evening long, you do have to listen to what the other person thinks and feels. So I do worry sometimes that the nuclear sector, because it is partly academic tend to see this as a massive STEM exercise. If we just teach stupid people about the science, they will understand it, but that’s not how communities and people operate. If you look around now, the issues around vaccination and we are living in a world where there’s a lack of political trust, and there’s a lack of faith in science or people are prepared to listen to whatever homespun ideas happen to come their way. They’re willing to be brave to them.

Roy Payne (32:14):

So a question is listening to people, it is about sometimes going the extra mile, going on meandering. You’re not just going from A to B. You might have to get from A to B, you may have to go through a whole other alphabet to get to the final point, but you need to go on that journey. And even if people are raising issues, which you think are ridiculous, besides the point, they’re important to them. And if you want to take them on the journey with you, you’re going to have to go on that journey with them. And I think the other issue is trust, trust is a two way thing. And at the moment, governments, politicians, the nuclear sector, these are not high on the trust barometers of most people in most countries. There’s also a degree of lack of trust or fear in authorities or letting go too much power and engaging with the community, which to some extent you have to show a bit of trust to receive, to start building trust.

Roy Payne (33:20):

And to some extent, I think it’s probably beholding on the governments and the nuclear sectors to actually take the first steps. We’re the ones asking people to dance with us. So you have to make the first steps to actually ask somebody to dance with you. And therefore you have to show and give a little bit more rather than being defensive, concerned about how that is going to happen. And I think one of the other issues we’ll meet with people in the nuclear sector, I’ve worked in many different sectors: telecomms, broadcasting, media, sport, lots of different commercial sectors, and they will have their own profile and characteristics and ways of thinking and behaving. And I do think nuclear sector, quite rightly, there’s a mindset of risk mitigation, managing risk out and really focusing on managing risk out which is entirely the right approach when it comes to the matter of nuclear, but you can’t apply that same discipline and that same rigor when it comes to people.

Roy Payne (34:25):

People are not radionuclides, do not perform in the same way at the same conditions in all circumstances. And I think there was a need for sort of, again, government and nuclear sector to perhaps they’re going to have to get used to operating outside their comfort zone in areas where we were making judgment calls about how you relate to people, to manage people for people that you can never ever get to the level of risk assurance that you can when you’re actually designing a nuclear reactor or a nuclear waste disposal facility, simply because people don’t feel that way. So my advice to governments is really to listen, be a little bit more giving to trust your communities a little bit more and to be prepared to go on a long amble to the countryside, because rather than trying to get them to make a decision as quickly as possible.

Kari Hulac (35:25):

It’s a journey. That’s what I’m hearing, a long one. Anything I did not ask today that you’d like to close out our conversation with Roy?

Roy Payne (35:35):

I’ve worked with people who work in it, you know, from around the world. I have no doubt of the integrity, the honesty and the earnestness of all those people working radioactive waste, they are doing absolutely the best thing. That’s what we can see. Being somebody who is got the science behind you, it doesn’t mean that people will actually believe you. And to some extent the suspension of trust. So how do you build trust? Now, one of the things for me is one of the things that is not happening at the moment is unmediated connections between the communities who are likely to be impacted by this, one thing we do see for right and for wrong, for good and for bad is that people are much more willing to accept the perspective of someone who’s just like them, who doesn’t seem to have a vested interest.

Roy Payne (36:28):

And so the common human experience of potentially hosting a radioactive waste facility is the same on planet earth. And I do think there’s more that can be done just to allow the impacted communities to talk together, to meet, to share experience, to share their concerns, their fears, their worries. Science, central to science issues comes up in each country and each time you have to revalidate it. Well, the science, you know, copper corrodes in the same way, in the same conditions in Sweden, as it does in Germany, as it does in Argentina. These are the rules of the universe. There’s probably scope here, I think what more could be done by the idea of globalizing this issue rather than seeing it as a national problem, to globalize the issue. If you’re more likely to get people winning to progress discussions, if they’re talking with people who are going through the same experience themselves, a self-help group, if you like, so I think we need just be more sophisticated in the way in which we manage and engage with these communities and not to be frightened by their fears, but actually allow them to share those fears with other people so that it becomes a common understanding. And that I think you will see a lot of the worries, concerns, the barriers will start to shift if you allow people to speak to each other about these issues, rather than trying to over-manage it and see it as purely a sort of STEM and technology exercise. Now, this is a much bigger story about environment, planet, future and local empowerment. People are actually feeling they have some say over the future direction of their own community while also contributing and making a powerful contribution to the safety of the planet.

Kari Hulac (38:33):

Well, thank you so much, Roy. It’s been wonderful talking with you today and thank you for joining us.

Roy Payne (38:38):

Thank you for having me.

Note: This transcript is the raw transcript of this podcast. Minimal edits have been made only for clarity purposes.

Tom Isaacs (0:10):

I would say the first one is that this is a problem that’s solvable. That we know, we, the scientific and technical community know, and in fact, every country around the world who is seriously dealing with this, knows how to dispose of this waste in a way that is permanent.

Narrator (0:30): 

Did you know that there are half a million metric tons of nuclear waste temporarily stored at hundreds of sites worldwide? In the U.S. alone, one in three people live within 50 miles of a storage site. No country has yet successfully disposed of commercial spent nuclear fuel, but it’s not for lack of a solution. So what’s the delay? The answers are complex and controversial. In this series, we explore the nuclear waste issue with people representing various pieces of this complicated puzzle. We hope this podcast will give you a clearer picture of Nuclear Waste: The Whole Story. 

We believe that listening is an important element of a successful nuclear waste disposal program. A core company value is to seek and listen to different perspectives. Opinions expressed by the interviewers and their subjects are not necessarily representative of the company. If there’s a topic discussed in the podcast that is unfamiliar to you, or you’d like to more closely review what was said, please see the show notes at deepisolation.com/podcasts.

Kari Hulac (1:52):

Hello, I’m Kari Hulac, Deep Isolations Communication Manager. Today I’m talking to Tom Isaacs, an engineer and physicist with a great deal of experience in nuclear policy analysis. He is co-principal investigator for the Nuclear Threat Initiative. Tom works with NTIs Developing Spent Fuel Strategies Project coordinating international cooperation on issues at the back end of the fuel cycle with emphasis on spent fuel management and disposal in Pacific Rim countries. He also advises national nuclear waste programs on facility siting, communications, stakeholder engagement, and public trust and confidence. He’s worked with the Canadian Nuclear Waste Management Organization for 15 years. And in 2012 was Lead Advisor to President Obama’s Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future. He’s a long-time Senior Executive at the Department of Energy where he led the siting process for establishing a deep geological repository at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain. Thank you so much for joining us today, Tom.

Tom Isaacs (02:57):

Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity.

Kari Hulac (03:00):

We like to start out by asking our interviewees, how did you choose a career in nuclear waste? What first got you interested in dedicating your career to such a complicated and controversial topic?

Tom Isaacs (03:12):

Yeah, that’s a good question. I’m not sure I know the answer myself. I had started working on nuclear energy development in the Atomic Energy Commission in the old days, and then left the government of DOE what became DOE for a while and got a phone call from someone in the mid-eighties who said, there’s a new law passed and we’re going to create a nuclear waste organization and the Department of Energy and I’d really like you to come work with me. And that person’s name was Ben Rusche, a wonderful human being. And he was the first Director of what was called the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management. And so the opportunity to work with Ben on this issue presented itself. And so I came back into the Department of Energy as the Director of Policy and found that the problem was really fascinating because you’re at the cutting edge of science and technology all the way through to thinking about things that are essentially almost spiritual in nature because you’re dealing with waste that is going to be potentially hazardous for as long as you can think of. And so the gamut of experiences dealing with the science, dealing with the public, dealing with the politics, dealing with how human beings should responsibly deal with this all kind of fit with my interest in these sort of multifaceted problems. So that’s kind of how I got into it. And once you get into it, it’s hard to get out of it.

Kari Hulac (04:40):

Well, that’s fascinating, especially the part about “spiritual”. I haven’t heard that term used with nuclear waste, but essentially it’s so far off into the future. You don’t even know what the planet will look like, or humans will look like or anything.

Tom Isaacs (04:54):

Exactly. Almost anything you can think of, this waste will be around after that’s gone. And that’s an interesting problem. And fortunately, I’m sure we’ll talk about this. I think there’s ways to deal with that.

Kari Hulac (05:06):

Perfect. So, since you have been in the business for 35 years, we’ll never touch on everything today. So I wanted to just ask you what are three big things that you’ve learned over that time that you think the general public should know? Like what would you just like, if you could leave three takeaways from your experience, what might they be?

Tom Isaacs (05:27):

Well, let’s see, I would say the first one is that this is a problem that’s solvable that we know, we, the scientific and technical community know, and in fact, every country around the world who is seriously dealing with this, knows how to dispose of this waste in a way that is permanent, that doesn’t require active administrative control for eons. And that will guarantee that the waste will not come back into the accessible environment during the time in which it’s hazardous. So I think that’s very important. The second thing corollary to that is when we talk about disposing of nuclear waste, we’re not talking about a nuclear dump. If you hear somebody use the word dump, they either don’t understand, or they deliberately don’t want people to understand. This is a very highly engineered facility that’s deep underground.

Tom Isaacs (06:15):

The waste is solid, there’s nothing but solid waste. There’s no liquids or gases or anything. It’s put into a very carefully designed and constructed container to isolate the waste and then put underground only in a place where it’s going to isolate the waste for geologic time periods. And so that would be my second takeaway. And the third takeaway is it’s really hard to find a way to site these facilities. That’s the key issue is developing a narrative, which probably hasn’t been done well yet, to make people understand the true nature of this problem in a way that will allow local communities, surrounding communities, regional communities in the United States, state government, which is a particularly difficult challenge, and the federal government, and the local populations that are involved; for all of them to come to a place where it’s viewed as what I call a win-win-win situation for them. And I think those are the three things I would say are the main reasons that the next generation should come in and work on this problem.

Kari Hulac (07:24):

Well, I think the next question will help tie into some of the points that you made there because as you well know, scientists worldwide have agreed for decades that the waste does belong in deep geologic disposal, yet to date spent nuclear fuel remains in temporary storage. So maybe you could talk about your perspective on that problem. What would it take for permanent disposal to finally happen?

Tom Isaacs (07:50):

Sure. So let’s talk internationally first because there’s some good news there and that’s that there are countries that have made substantial progress. I would highlight Finland and Sweden as probably being the leading countries in the world, in terms of developing and implementing a program to dispose of the spent fuel. They went through a very vigorous siting program in both of those countries. They were able to establish agreements with local communities to site a nuclear waste repository in Finland. They are in the process now, they’ve received the license and are in the process of constructing and operating a license. And that’ll be what I call the existence proof. It’ll show you that it is possible to do that. And I expect in the very near future, Finland will be operating a nuclear waste repository and disposing of spent fuel. I think just somewhat behind that will come Sweden.

Tom Isaacs (08:45):

That’s also extremely far along in this process. So there’s a lot of lessons to be learned in those countries. France as well, has a site under developments as well along and looks to be good. And the Canadians, as you mentioned, that I’ve been working with for quite some time and continue to work with have developed an approach. They call it Adaptive Phase Management, which has taken to heart many of the same recommendations that were in that Blue Ribbon Commission report that was done that I was Lead Advisor for under President Obama that proposed a roadmap forward for how the U.S. should go about disposing of spent nuclear fuel. So I think there’s some very good lessons there. The US has a particular problem. Other countries have problems too, almost all countries do. And almost all countries have to take long periods of time and have lots of changes before they’re successful.

Tom Isaacs (09:42):

But the US has states. And if the federal government could deal directly with local communities, it would be possible, I’m quite confident to site a nuclear waste repository in this country. There are communities who would be interested in, are interested and have shown interest in the past in these kinds of things. Even the elected county commission in Nye county, which is where Yucca Mountain was, was in favor of this program at that point in time. So I think you can find that, but it’ what’s often called the donut effect. The people closest to the repository site are in favor of it. They see the jobs, they see the economic benefits. They see the world-class scientists and technical people coming to the site. They see the notoriety, they see lots of positive things for their community, not all communities, but you only need one. People who are far away who are actually hosting the site with the nuclear waste now, which is mostly nuclear power plants, also are in favor of these because they want to see the waste taken off in their sites.

Tom Isaacs (10:43):

It’s the donut, that’s the problem. It’s the people in the state that you’re thinking of who are not close to the site, but in the state, who see this as potentially environmentally a concern, potentially a safety concern, they don’t see big economic benefits for them because they may be hundreds of miles away. They see possible stigma effects as a result of being the state that hosts these kinds of facilities. And so it’s at the state level that you find state elected officials, both governors and other state elected officials, as well as people in Congress, who have tended to be the ones who have resisted siting in their states mostly. And that’s the big challenge, the biggest challenge, there’s many challenges. That’s the biggest challenge I would say, is changing the narrative that people, so that people understand that for certain communities, this can be an enormous benefit to them and can help them realize the future that they would like. And we’ve seen that in places around the world, like in Olkiluoto Finland, for example, like in New Mexico, where there’s an operating repository for defense waste, where the community has been very much in favor of that and benefited from it. And I think continues to be interested in seeing the mission of that repository expanded.

Kari Hulac (12:05):

So there’s so many things to talk about here. I definitely, there’s kind of three main things that will tie off of what you just said. Well you just mentioned New Mexico so let’s touch on that. That’s the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad where certain types of defense-generated waste: clothing, tools, rags, residues are disposed of. So what can be learned from WIPP since that is in the U.S., and we have Yucca Mountain, which is on hold at the moment. So what have we learned from WIPP and how might this relate to deciding a facility for spent nuclear fuel?

Tom Isaacs (12:43):

So I think that’s a great question. I think there’s a lot to be learned from WIPP. So let me give the short, my short version of how WIPP came about, because the town that hosts the WIPP site is called Carlsbad, New Mexico. It’s fairly isolated in Southern New Mexico, and it was a largely potash mining town. And as mining happens, it goes boom and bust, it went bust at a period of time. And the economic engine for the community of Carlsbad was in serious scrapes as a result of that. Some entrepreneurial people, elected representatives and other people in that region learned that the federal government was trying to find a place to site for nuclear waste disposal and went to the government and said, we’d like to learn more about this. We’d like to see if this is something that would work for us. We’re a mining community.

Tom Isaacs (13:39):

So we’re used to putting holes in the ground. We understand that kind of thing. Would you consider us? That was the beginning of a very long and unexpected process. You know, the Canadians called their process Adapted Phase Management because you have to adapt because the length of time it takes for a program like this to be implemented is decades and things change over time. Science changes, technology changes, political views change, values change, economics change. And so you have to be willing to adapt. And so the process that went forward started with this process, and immediately there was resistance from people within the state of New Mexico. In particular, I would say from the cities far away from Carlsbad, like Albuquerque and particularly Santa Fe, the state capitol, you would go to Santa Fe and you’d see signs there with WIPP with a red circle and a line through it.

Tom Isaacs (14:36):

They didn’t want WIPP in their state. There was a long period of engagement and to their credit, the federal government understood that they needed to engage in a way that would lead to ultimate acceptance. At the state level, there was concern by the governor and other state elected officials that spent nuclear fuel would come into the state of New Mexico. There had been a pilot facility where they had done research and so forth. And so at the state level, the federal government reached an understanding with the state government that in return for allowing WIPP to go forward, no spent nuclear fuel would go into the state of New Mexico into that facility. Only defense waste. The defense waste is radioactive. It’s radioactive for very long periods of time, which is why you have to dispose of it deep underground in a repository. It’s not hot and it’s not nearly as concentrated as the spent nuclear fuel.

Tom Isaacs (15:34):

So what you wound up with what I call the win-win-win. When the local people got the facility, they got tremendous benefits from it in terms of jobs, in terms of economic support, in terms of the hopes and visions of the community being resuscitated, the state government got and promised that spent nuclear fuel would not come into that facility. And what else they got was a bypass around the city of Santa Fe. It was very interesting. If you think about it, who would have thought that this program would hinge on the federal government paying for a bypass road around the city of Santa Fe? A lot of the waste was coming from Idaho which would come through Santa Fe. And because there was no bypass, the waste would’ve come through the city. And the people were understandably saying, we don’t want this waste coming through the middle of our city.

Tom Isaacs (16:24):

So one of the agreements was that the state of New Mexico won, if you will, a bypass built around the city of Santa Fe. And of course the federal government won because they were able to establish a repository which has been operating for over a decade and disposes of this transuranic defense waste. So that’s what I mean by win-win-wins. Ironically, by the way, a lot of the development in Santa Fe over the last 10 plus years has been near that bypass around Santa Fe, even though it was built so that people could move themselves from the waste. People understand that the, I think, that the transportation is very safe, it is very safe, has been very safe. And so they’re willing to move near the bypass, even though it was built as a reason for sort of moving people away from it,

Kari Hulac (17:13):

Like an incredible amount of negotiations that must gone on like about just, you know, kind of working it out. So everyone, like you say, so everyone involved felt like their issues were addressed. I mean, that seems like a huge learning from that. It sounds incredibly adaptive, which you’ve mentioned that term a couple times, Adaptive Phase Management. So it sounds like there’s a lot to be learned there.

Tom Isaacs (17:36):

I think that’s right. I gave you my, what I call the reader’s digest version of what happened, what happened there took place over many, many years with lots of disagreements with lots of one step forward, two steps back with changes of people in positions of influence, but in this case, and this was another lesson learned, it was a small number of people who were highly motivated and highly competent and well-intentioned who wound up making a big part of the difference. The people in Carlsbad are to be applauded for having had the initiative to do this. The scientists who worked on this program, many of them from Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico did world-class science, but also understood how to engage with local communities in a way that respected them and responded to them. The federal government, to its credit, funded this program properly, was willing to do flexible things that you wouldn’t necessarily think at the beginning of a project would be important in order to make this happen. Right?

Tom Isaacs (18:46):

So I think there’s lots of lessons to be learned. And if you went to these other countries that I’ve mentioned, you would find equally interesting histories of how those facilities came about. They also had problems in the beginning. They also had resistance in the beginning and they also made adaptations in order to meet the needs and concerns of the involved citizens and of the people who would be affected by this, both at the facility, and along transportation routes, and because people are concerned legitimately about health, environment, and safety. So I think all of that is what made me get interested in this problem and stay interested in this problem. 

Kari Hulac (19:27):

So I have to now ask about Yucca Mountain, because I guess if you could have the stark opposite of Carlsbad, I don’t know if Yucca Mountain would be it in your opinion, but plans that would house the U.S. spent nuclear fuel is currently not moving forward. So what can we learn maybe by comparing the two cases, maybe you cannot compare them? I’d love to hear from you about that and what should the U.S. government do to restart its spent fuel disposal program. 

Tom Isaacs (20:00):

Yeah. So first of all, as we speak today, I would say Yucca Mountain is stopped and there there’s no prospect for restarting with the current, with the mission it had disposing of spent nuclear fuel. The Blue Ribbon Commission looked at this in great detail, obviously when it decided to come to make the recommendations. It did that. I would say the first issue with the Yucca program was that the law that was passed in 1982, almost 40 years ago and signed into law in 1983 was extremely prescriptive. It, for example, grandfathered in nine sites in six states that were to be the only candidate sites for being a geologic repository. And they were chosen strictly based on the scientific potential to isolate the waste, not on the interest or the willingness of the communities near these sites to be a host, not based on the willingness of a state government to tolerate this in their state.

Tom Isaacs (21:06):

They were picked because there had been a scientific survey and these look promising. So the way the law was set up, it was to do a kind of a beauty contest to investigate these nine sites and sequentially eliminate the sites until you ultimately had three of the best looking sites. And then you would characterize them, which meant years and years of scientific investigation, and then figure out which one looked best. And that’s the one you would pick whether or not the people nearby these sites wanted it or not. It was what some people used to call “decide, announce, defend.” You would decide something you’d tell people, and then you’d defend it against people’s concerns. And that didn’t work very well. In fact, the communities around all nine of those sites were not pleased at being put on this list without having been asked, whether they’re willing to accept that or not.

Tom Isaacs (22:06):

So I think that was a real issue. Then you had the enormous problems of politics that were associated with this at the federal level. It was not so much the Democrats versus Republicans or the House versus the Senate. It was more east versus west, in a way. Most of the nuclear waste, 80% of it in this country, spent nuclear fuel is east of the Mississippi River. Most people expected this repository to be west of the Mississippi River because that’s where a lot of the remote land was. And so that set up a problem. That problem was solved in the nuclear waste law by saying, all right, we’ll build not one but two repositories and you should build the second one. The code language was basically put it in the east if you’re going to build the second one, first one in the west.

Tom Isaacs (22:57):

So now you had this issue of building a second repository and looking for sites in relatively highly densely populated areas, which was also extremely difficult. So now we tried to follow the law. We created nine environmental assessments. Each one of those assessments was over a thousand pages long, really detailed assessments of these sites. And like the law said, and the law had dates in it and the dates were extremely ambitious, really. So it didn’t allow for a lot of discussion or negotiation. It was, you got to do this and you got to do it. And Congress did that on purpose so that the program would have momentum going forward. They didn’t want these problems to stop. And in fact, they gave the governors what was called the right of a notice of disapproval, essentially a veto in the law because they knew wherever they went, the governor was going to probably say no, but then Congress had the right to override that veto with a vote, a majority vote in both houses within 60 days.

Tom Isaacs (24:00):

So it was all set up for controversy, not for negotiation and collaboration. And what happened was the politics got so heated that in the depths of the winter, in Washington in 1987, Congress made a decision to truncate that law and said, we’re not going to look at three sites. We’re going to just pick one of the three. And they picked Yucca Mountain. Yucca Mountain, it has to be said, many people don’t know this, at that point in time was the most promising site based on our science. So it’s not like we were picking an inferior site. Later, we found that there were complications for Yucca Mountain, but it looked like a very promising site. It could probably still be a promising site from a scientific point of view, but people felt like that that rope, the bond that was tenuous to begin with of trust, if you will, that they were going to go through this process and at least pick sites based upon this hierarchy that had been laid out in the law so people in Nevada had been upset in against the program before this decision, they were more upset and more intensely opposed after the decision.

Tom Isaacs (25:15):

And so from a political point of view, they did everything possible to keep that program from going forward. And politics played a role in that program. And there was a Senator from Nevada, Harry Reid, who was very influential at that point in time in Nevada. And he essentially worked with the administration to stop that program. And you can argue whether it was a right decision or wrong decision, but it was the decision. And that program was stopped and has been essentially endorsed to be continued to be stopped ever since. And I don’t see any prospect anytime soon for that changing, even though, as I mentioned it, people around there, there aren’t a lot of people, I kid that Yucca Mountain is not the end of the earth, but you can see it from there. I mean, it’s really remote, but there are people in towns, you know, not too, too far away and those people are not as exercised about this cause they could see potential benefits. But the people, for example, Las Vegas or Carson City adamantly against it and for understandable reasons.

Kari Hulac (26:24):

So what’s next? What should the government do to restart its waste program in the U.S. Is there any hope moving forward?

Tom Isaacs (26:32):

I think there is hope. I think if you get in the waste business, you’d better be an optimist, but, you have to be a realist too, but if you’re not an optimist, you’re probably going to be unhappy. The Blue Ribbon Commission, which is now, you know, almost a decade old, still is the go-to document in my view, in many people’s view, for recommendations about how to restart the program. And it had eight principal recommendations. So I won’t go through all eight with you, but I will go through a few. And this commission by the way, was bi-partisan it was chaired by a prominent Republican and a prominent Democrat.

Tom Isaacs (27:05):

And they worked together extremely well and they came out with eight recommendations and the first was we should use consent-based siting. Don’t pick a site and then try to convince people they should want it. Start by looking for where communities express interest that they can benefit potentially from this. And start by asking them, would they be interested in learning about this process? Would you be interested? With no commitment on their part at all, but would you be willing to sit down and listen in and talk about this and begin a dialogue with them and learn what their interests are, what their hopes for their communities are, what the problems in their communities are, how can this program help them? So consent-based siting was probably the most important recommendation. And there’s good news that as we speak, I think the current administration and Secretary Granholm have indicated they would like to restart the program and they understand it should be done in a consent-based way.

Tom Isaacs (28:02):

Two other very important recommendations were, and this word I’m about to say was discussed greatly during the Blue Ribbon Commission, the word is prompt. We should promptly begin work on developing interim storage facility and we should promptly begin working on the development of a permanent repository. We need both of those things. We need an interim storage facility, particularly since a number of nuclear power plants in this country have shut down and the waste that’s sitting on those sites and they can’t decommission the sites until there’s a place to send the waste. And the repository program, as we’ve already discussed is going to take many decades. You can build an interim storage facility in a much shorter period of time. It’s a more straightforward facility. It has to demonstrate it will work for decades, not for millennia. And we ought to be able to do that. And that’s a siting issue as well.

Tom Isaacs (28:57):

And part of the siting issue is people who will host an interim storage facility want to know that there’s going to be a repository someday to take that waste away. So that’s why you need to do both of those things. So I would say that’s the bones of the program is that you need a program that will use consent-based siting, that will hopefully have the kind of expertise and skill set that is necessary because it’s not just scientists. It’s a variety of types of people who can appreciate and empathize and work with and negotiate through this multifaceted problem that we’ve discussed already. So I think that would be the bones. The other thing that’s really difficult that the Blue Ribbon Commission recommended, and this is I think, a really stretch goal is it should be made an independent organization dedicated to this mission alone.

Tom Isaacs (30:00)

It is that way in every other country in the world, it’s not part of a cabinet level department. It has a degree of independence, if you will. It still needs to be overseen by Congress. It still needs to have its budgets supplied. But when you have a program that is so fragile with each coming election, it makes it very difficult for people to have confidence that they can believe what you say, because you may be in charge of the program one day, an election comes along, there’s a new Congress where there’s a new administration and are they going to have the same view and are they going to be willing to carry on the program that the last administration committed to? And the answer has been no up until now in this country. And so we need to find a way to, I’ll use the word, buffer this from the day to day short-term political considerations. And unfortunately in this country, that’s really difficult.

Kari Hulac (30:58):

So let’s talk about your work with the Canadian Nuclear Waste Management Organization, because they’re having more success. You’ve worked with them for more than a decade. What are some reasons it has been successful? And what can we in any other country learn about nuclear waste disposal from Canada?

Tom Isaacs (31:15):

My first comment would be that they have implemented a program that is very similar to many of the recommendations of our Blue Ribbon Commission. So that it literally reflects some of the work that’s gone in Canada. Canada had a nuclear waste program. When I was in the Department of Energy, I used to work closely with them, and that program was stopped cold around, I think the year 2000, perhaps, when they had an independent commission that said from a scientific and technical point of view, this program is good, but from a public safety point of view, from a public acceptance point of view, it’s not adequate.

Tom Isaacs (32:00):

And they literally stopped the program, took it out of government, created the Nuclear Waste Management Organization as an independent entity. Like we just talked about. It is funded and the board of directors is drawn largely from the waste producers so they have an incentive. It’s overseen by the Canadian government, but not with the level of hands-on detail that we find in the United States. So that would be the first thing is that you have to have a construct that allows a program like this to be successful. They immediately decided that they would go with a consent based approach to this. And so they started by asking for expressions of interest from communities to learn about this. And they had 22 communities from throughout Canada, say, we’re not committing to anything, but we’d like to learn about this. 22 communities. And I have visited most of those communities.

Tom Isaacs (32:58):

Many of them are small and very remote. It’s pretty exciting to go to some of these towns in far off places with wonderful people in them. And they did a sequential process of narrowing 22, and they did it by looking both at the scientific promise of the sites near these communities to isolate the waste. And by looking at the soft science part of this, the willingness, the degree to which this program can help these communities help themselves, to can provide these communities with this kind of resource. So many of them, by the way, were ex mining communities or forestry communities, which experience again, this boom and bust cycle. And in a lot of cases, some of these communities felt like their future didn’t look very good, and the young people were moving away and they wanted to revitalize those towns. And so over a period of time looking at both the hard science and the soft science and engaging with these communities in a very extensive way, they narrowed down the sites because ultimately they need one.

Tom Isaacs (34:03):

And so they have gone through this process and they are now down to two sites that are the final candidate sites. One is in a place called South Bruce near where a lot of the nuclear power plants are. And another one is a town called Ignace, which is a relatively small town farther west than Ontario. That was another provision they said, because the nuclear waste was almost all in the province of Ontario they would put preference on siting in the province of Ontario from an equity point of view. Fairness mattered a lot, it matters a lot to the Canadians. And I think that that’s another lesson learned to really walk the talk of being fair in all respects and they actually had a fairness round table, a group of experts, if you say, in this kind of issue to provide advice to them on how to think about being fair.

Tom Isaacs (35:00):

So they called it an ethics round table. But it was really about being fair and there’s no guarantee as we sit here today, that there’s going to be a repository of either of these two sites, because neither of them had yet agreed to host the site. The Nuclear Waste Management Organization has said they would like to pick a final site by 2023 so that’s not very far off. And they’re going through negotiations now and scientific investigations now, and looking at all the factors that will have to be put in play. And the one additional factor that’s very important in Canada is relations with the indigenous population. It’s very hard to find any place in Canada where indigenous people don’t have a history and rights.

Tom Isaacs (35:49):

And it is the case in both of these locations and Canadians when we talk about fairness, they take that very, very seriously and have really been about as cutting edge in terms of trying to understand and have the relationships with these indigenous organizations and individuals as they possibly can. So that will also play a large role in the site selection process. So I would say that those are probably the lessons learned, these programs often are run by scientists and technical people and science. You know, when you run a project, you think about cost, schedule, and content. You wanna, you know, go fast and you want to spend the least amount of money, and you want to get the project built. And in this case, I often tell people, my advice is go slow to go fast. And what I mean by that is you have to take the time and be willing and actually care about these other aspects of affecting people’s lives in a sincere way if you’re going to get their trust and cooperation. And that’s you mentioned earlier my background, I spent a lot of time thinking about public trust and confidence and how to achieve it, because I think that’s essential and it’s something that’s been very difficult and probably more difficult with passing time in this country, as we’ve seen.

Kari Hulac (37:23):

Just a couple of questions left here today. Tell us about your work on the Nuclear Threat Initiative. That’s, DC-based correct?

Tom Isaacs (37:33):

Right. The Nuclear Threat Initiative now called NTI is an NGO based in Washington DC. And it has worked on a number of nuclear related and other security related issues over time. And the project that we have brings together nuclear waste organizations largely around from the Pacific rim who have interest in common in dealing with nuclear waste. So we’re talking about countries like Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Australia, Canada, the United States. China has been part of it at times. We’ve brought in people from international organizations like the IAEA in Vienna, and the NEA and Nuclear Energy Agency in Paris. And we also invited other countries that are interested as well. And the idea is to come together and say, so what’s on your mind? What problems do you have that we could collaborate on and might benefit from each other? When I was in the government, I managed the international program among my responsibilities for a decade.

Tom Isaacs (38:38):

And I found that some of our biggest allies and colleagues were people doing the same thing that we were, only in another country, and we can learn from each other as a result of that. And so we come together and discuss issues. And as you might expect, based on this conversation, they tend to fall into two camps. Can we agree to work on things that will help all of us on the science and technology side? And there, what we’ve done is we’ve agreed to collaborate on underground research labs because many countries build laboratories underground first in order to study the characterization. And so that’s an ongoing program and very successful. We bring together scientists, technical people and program managers, and the other one is on what we call siting. The difficult part of how do we learn to work together to get best practices along some of the lines I’ve tried to share with you and share those among the various countries, so that we can all do our job better and have better prospects for success.

Kari Hulac (39:40):

Are there any countries there to watch, like any hints you can give us of anyone who’s kind of maybe moving forward well? Or a couple of those countries, you know, ones that we should keep an eye on? I know you’ve already mentioned Finland and Sweden, but anyone from that working group?

Tom Isaacs (40:00):

Okay. So they have had many of the same experiences we have in particularly in Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea, they have very sophisticated, advanced, scientific and technical programs, but those are small densely populated countries with significant parts of them inaccessible for a repository. So they really don’t, the places where you could build a repository, usually have people, lots of people around them. So they have a big siting issue and we talked about that. The Australians don’t have commercial nuclear power, but they do have waste, intermediate level waste that they have to dispose of. And they’re looking at a technique, and this is something that should be of interest to Deep Isolation. They are looking at the boreholes, which is an alternative to a repository for disposing of waste. And so the Australians are beginning a pretty serious focused effort on looking for both the technique and the place to dispose of their low and immediate level waste. So I would say it’ll be very interesting to see how that program unfolds over the coming next years. The Japanese, Koreans, Taiwanese, for example, I think are still early in the siting part of this like we are at this point after all of this work and the Chinese just announced that they’re working on an underground research lab in the Gobi desert. So they’re beginning to get involved with this problem as well. And it’ll be interesting to see how that goes.

Kari Hulac (41:36):

Great. Well, it sounds like you have a really fascinating job. I can see why you’ve done it all these years. It must never get old. Thank you for joining us today.

Tom Isaacs (41:48):

It’s been a pleasure. I’ve enjoyed it. And if I were to leave one comment, I would say that the program needs continual infusion of new blood. And if there are people out there watching this who find this problem interesting, I think it’s a marvelous, frustrating, but marvelous job to bring together all elements of both society and you as an individual in order to be successful, I would encourage you to do that.