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.

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

Talia Martin (0:10): 

What’s another interesting part of this is that private federal partnership where you had advanced reactors and a cooperative agreement between DOE and that private company. So where do the tribes fit in has always been a question that is not entirely been answered by DOE nor by the company. 

Narrator (0:37): 

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 (01:58):

Hello, I’m Kari Hulac, Deep Isolation’s Communications Manager. Today I’m talking with Talia Martin, Director of the Tribal Department of Energy for the Shoshone Bannock tribes located on the Fort Hall reservation in Fort Hall, Idaho near the Idaho National Laboratory. The Tribal Department of Energy’s mission is to monitor DOE activities to ensure they are protective of the tribe’s natural, cultural, and human health. The Tribal Department of Energy promotes the responsible management of tribal energy resources in a manner that is self-sustainable, economically feasible, as well as biologically and culturally sensitive for the Shoshone Bannock tribes. Welcome, Talia. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Talia Martin (02:44):

Thank you. It’s good to be here. And when I say here, I mean, virtually since I’m still in Fort Hall.

Kari Hulac (02:50):

That’s all right, are you up in Fort Hall right now? 

Talia Martin (02:53):

Yes, I’m actually at our Tribal DOE offices amongst the tribal business buildings.

Kari Hulac (03:00):

Great. Great. All right, well, let’s just get started here. Just first of all tell me about yourself and how you became interested in nuclear issues through the work that you do with the tribe.

Talia Martin (03:12):

Sure. Well, currently I’m the Tribal DOE Director for the Shoshone-Bannock tribes and we operate as more of a liaison between the tribes and the Department of Energy, which is the office of Idaho operations is who we mainly work with. But before that, and so I’ve been here six years, but before that, I was as an environmental scientist. I’ve worked with tribes for about 10 to 11 years, and I worked for the Environmental Waste Management program for the tribes, which dealt with different types of environmental issues completely different than what I do here now, working with the DOE and nuclear energy issues. 

Kari Hulac (03:53):

Before we get more into the nuclear issues, I would love to hear some of the history of the reservation and the culture of the tribes to help our listeners better understand the community at large and feel free to describe challenges that their tribes have faced.

Talia Martin (04:08):

Sure. So you mentioned that we’re from Fort Hall, Idaho. So this is the Fort Hall Indian reservation. We’re in Southeastern Idaho. It’s somewhat of a desert compared to Northern Idaho where people like to just speak about. Nonetheless, we have about 6,000 tribal members here, a pretty thriving economy in this area with gaming, agriculture and we were established initially by the Fort Bridger Treaty of 1868. And we adopted, the tribe adopted a constitution about 1934. So our governmental structure and all of that are different. Something that if you’re working with different tribes that’s probably one of the key things you should understand is the governmental structure for us. The governing body is the Fort Hall Business Council and is comprised of seven members. Well, six members and one chairman. We have elections every two years, the terms by every two years.

Talia Martin (05:09):

So that’s the leadership AKA my bosses. But you know, they’re elected representatives of the people, and as a tribal member as well, I need to be involved in that, those elections. So we own about 98%, the tribes owned by 98% of the tribal land. We also have contaminated environmental health issues that we deal with. 

So as far as the challenges with environmental issues that the Fort Hall reservation deals with, one of them being the Eastern Michaud Flats superfund site. That has to deal with phosphorus processing from some of the private industry. Additionally, we have the game mine where they mine phosphate ore since, oh gosh, I think the forties, and maybe even before that. And the game mine site is actually within the boundaries of the reservation and that’s actually on the national priorities list. But that’s about the south to us. But when you go to the north of us and our ancestral lands, you have the Idaho National Laboratory and Department of Energy reservation, and that’s about 50 miles, a little less than 50 miles north of our boundary. 

Kari Hulac (06:24):

Yes, I’ve definitely wanted to ask about the relationship with the Lab. So this is a great segue here, you know, what is your relationship with the Lab and how do you feel – has it been responsive to tribal input and concerns? What are some of the issues that you deal with being in that location?

Talia Martin (06:43):

Right. You know, I think it’s best to understand some of the history between the tribes and DOE, the Labs. So when I say the tribes, I mean the Shoshone-Bannock tribes. The Idaho National Laboratory sits on ancestral lands and so I mentioned earlier that the tribe is actually composed of two tribes: Shoshone and Bannock, and we’re descendants of both tribes put on one reservation. But the ancestral lands, there’s evidence that our ancestors had used it as a transportation quarter, has also used it in other ways, you know, whether it’s ceremonial. They inhabited those areas at different times of the season. So it has ancestral value, significant ancestral value to the tribes. Of course now we’re one tribe, Shoshone-Bannock tribe, so not a lot of people know that, but some of the culturally significant sites that are on there are ceremonial. 

Talia Martin (07:54):

Some are to do with the landscape there, like the view, the caves, there’s a lot of volcanic activity in that area. So there are some caves that were in use by some of our ancestors. There’s also hunting and gathering areas that the tribes had been able to use prior to the INL placing their site there. So there’s quite a bit of use that the tribes had used it for prior. And so we have inherent rights to the ancestral lands where INL sits. So I’m kind of fast-forwarding to the future here around 1992 or close to the nineties and a little prior before that the tribes said have seen shipments coming on the interstate, which the interstate goes right through the reservation. And a lot of these shipments had to do with spent nuclear fuel, transuranic.

Talia Martin (08:57):

There’s also a railroad that goes through our reservation, and those are actually transuranic shipments from the Department of Defense from nuclear waste or spent fuel from submarines that use nuclear reactors. So a lot of that was being shipped through our reservation to the INL site, without any type of agreement, input, any type of tribal involvement during that time because the tribes are a sovereign nation, self-governing. There was a responsibility for the Department of Energy as well as DOD to confirm and work with the tribes because they’re going directly through the tribal lands, but also due to ancestral lands that they committed and obligated to be protective of. So that 1992 tribe had put a Fort Hall police department, they parked a vehicle there on the railroad and block transuranic shipments, which forced DOD and DOE to work with the tribes and come to some type of agreement.

Talia Martin (10:09):

And out of that came a working agreement around 1982 and there was a series of agreements from there that just, you know, continued to renew. They provided funding so that the tribes could work with DOE and DOE could provide personnel to make sure that they’re monitoring any DOD activities. Hence, this is where tribal DOE came out of. And the main objective was to monitor cultural resources that were on the INL site, environmental resources, natural and cultural. So we’ve had a working agreement for over 25 years with DOE and they’ve helped the tribes to manage and to be involved, you know with DOE in anything they might be doing as far as cultural resources management, environment management. But the primary focus of the tribe’s work with the DOE is on making sure they’re protecting the Snake River Plain aquifer, which is, you know, the sole source aquifer in this region. One downside to that is the tribes don’t have any regulatory oversight like the state does. Idaho Department of Environmental Quality – they regulate environmental regulations, and we’re able to work with IDEQ and DOE to make sure that the information that they’re collecting and providing is true and kind of give us assurances and confirmation that we’re receiving information, the right information. 

Kari Hulac (11:49):

So you touched on transportation being a large issue, obviously, that sounded like a struggle that you overcame. Are there other nuclear waste issues that you’re working on, or would you say transportation is the main piece that you have to monitor and work with?

Talia Martin (12:08):

Yeah, I would say that transportation is one of the major issues, you know, shipments going to WIPP, spent nuclear fuel shipments coming to INL for research. But also we do a lot of environment monitoring specifically in this office. And we have technicians that work with USGS to provide groundwater monitoring or staff to work with USGS to provide groundwater monitoring. We also have technicians that will work with cultural resources when they’re on the site, they do a lot of cultural resource survey if there’s land that will be disturbed by any type of construction or cleanup activities. We have cultural resources staff from the tribes that will work with Battelle Energy Alliance with contractors from INL that actually operate the INL site. They’ll work with them doing surveying and making sure there aren’t artifacts or anything that is relevant to the tribes, that they’re protected. And they follow the cultural resources management procedure that is in alignment with what the tribes have put input into.

Kari Hulac (13:24):

So would you say overall that you’ve seen progress? Do you feel optimistic for that relationship?

Talia Martin (13:31):

You know, gosh, I honestly, I’m relatively new for six years, but we do see some cycling of the same patterns and work. The tribes are always enforcing and trying to maintain consultation between DOE and the tribes and, you know, with DOE’s some internal rehab where we’re re-educating some of the staff to ensure that they are updating and getting input from our Fort Hall Business Council and, you know, our governing body. But we really rely on the trust responsibility of the Department of Energy and make sure that the consultation is meaningful and timely. And sometimes we’re not always seeing it, except when it has to do with the regulatory drivers, such as NEPA, which is the National Environmental Protection Act. When there’s public commenting going on, there’s usually, they’re very good at maintaining that checklist. Making sure that they’re following the schedule and getting the input as far as concerns being addressed.

Talia Martin (14:40):

I think it really depends on case by case, especially if there’s a regulatory driver, then the state is very much involved in and they’ll take our concerns. You know, it’s kind of, it’s an interesting place we would find ourselves in when, you know, they take our concern and information, and it’s well-documented. And it’s not always the type of consultation that we expect. We, again, want it to be a meaningful two-way dialogue, then addressing concerns. And sometimes you get that, sometimes you don’t, and we’ve seen some progress and sometimes we do take a couple steps backwards. But that working agreement has done pretty good as far as making sure there’s communication. Can there be improvement? Absolutely. You know, on both sides and no matter who we’re talking about, whether it’s our tribal staff and making sure we’re maintaining the presence on the site. The DOE, making sure that their tribal liaisons are informing and updating, and notifying our governing body to make sure they’re addressing those concerns. So we’re always enforcing consultation and I really do see some improvement and need for improvement as well. 

Kari Hulac (16:06):

So the nuclear waste disposal situation is at an impasse right now in the US as you well know Yucca Mountain in Nevada. The situation there, do you have thoughts about the primary reasons for this? Is there a vision that you’d like to see happen for moving past that and finding a solution?

Talia Martin (16:27):

This is an interesting question because you can get the typical response about the political issues that the geological repository has brought up, the legal challenges, the licensing activities, and from tribal perspective, you know, you see some social barriers from the communities themselves. And so what’s interesting is in 2015, when I first came on consent-based siting was a major approach they were using, and considering at least to help drive an approval for a geological repository. It went away with the next administration, and then when we went full circle to consent-based siting again, and it’s worked for some areas like you know, up in Canada, I think there are some areas where it’s actually worse even with the indigenous population. But there’s still questions. You know, this is a great approach, but there’s still questions from the Indian tribes that are actually affected by the location of the proposed geological repositories.

Talia Martin (17:40):

Another interesting part of this is we’re still generating nuclear waste. Commercial reactors are still operating. And to this day on the Idaho National Laboratory site, we have siting nuclear reactors for the advanced reactor mission. And we, one of our major concerns is the fact that the nuclear waste or the spent fuel that will be generated has no place to go, no home. You know, once after the cooling process of course, it goes into wet storage and has to be stored somewhere else, or I guess you call it disposal of the waste. So right now we’re seeing interim storage, which was something that was predicted decades ago by many, many proponents and opponents of the nuclear waste issue. So we’re seeing interim storage at the sites of the reactor sites and from the advanced reactors we’re hearing of – there’s definitely a huge push for interim storage at other areas where there are tribes within those places.

Talia Martin (19:02):

You’re still gonna have to have that engagement with these tribes in some way. What’s another interesting part of this is that private federal partnership where you had advanced reactors and a cooperative agreement between DOE and that private company. So where do the tribes fit in? It has always been a question that is not entirely been answered by DOE nor by the company. And we’re starting to see some of their licensee applications go through where we don’t consider that they’ve done a thorough job of cultural resource and environmental impacts that can occur. And so we’ve had a late tribal input. So we’re still open to this discussion and we’d like to be, all tribes would like to be engaged upon if we see any type of federal actions or activities that could impact tribal interests.

Kari Hulac (20:13):

And I know this is a huge challenge for many Native American reservations across the US. Those lands are often near these types of sites or are often targeted for disposal. We do feel if the consent-based siting process is properly followed that, you know, are tribes that you’re aware of open to hosting disposal or storage sites? 

Talia Martin (20:42):

Some of our tribal working groups, you know, we play around with that same question and challenge if their tribes open to this. And, you know, we have different representatives on these working groups because there’s so many viewpoints that are valid, you know, in their area of interest and their locations and that the DOE sites they work with. So like generally speaking tribes have been involved in this discussion and nobody has closed their doors to being involved at least in the discussion of consent-based siting process, because that process is still up in the air on how that is going to involve Indian tribes and we’re still asking that question. There has been some history as far as tribes were involved in the monitoring, retrieval, storage, but there was some pushback from the state itself. So, you know, if you reverse that and state is actually the ones that consent to it, you know, where are Indian tribes? Were they allowed to voice their opinion and have their concerns addressed adequately is a question. So are we open to these questions, to the process? We have been in the past. So I think it’s really up in the air. You know, it’s kind of open-ended right now.

Kari Hulac (22:15):

How have you approached your role in a way that’s helped you be successful interacting with such a wide group of stakeholders? 

Talia Martin (22:23):

One of the biggest strengths I think in working with federal agencies and state and the tribes is being able to be involved in relationship building as well as maintaining communication is vital. And again, we talk about two way dialogue and enforcing it and sometimes the tribes, they feel that they’re being spoken to rather than listening as well. And so at this level, we really have to work at the staff and technical level. We really have to work on our communication skills to make sure that everybody is heard in the room and our tribes issues and concerns are addressed as well. 

Kari Hulac (23:04):

Anything I didn’t ask so far that you’d like our listeners to take away from our conversation?

Talia Martin (23:10):

You know, you did kind of allude to it. We talked a little bit about STGWG and I’m not doing any type of shameless plug, but I, you know, this group is it’s been around a long time and they’ve had a lot of great accomplishments and instrumental in working with the Office of Legacy Management, in helping to advocate for the formation of the long-term stewardship working group. And that’s because one of their two priorities is long-term stewardship of the cleanup sites. Once the work is done, clean-up has occurred, remediation, these sites will go into long-term monitoring to ensure that they remain protected. One thing you might hear from tribes is the reservation, the people, they’re not going anywhere, we’re connected to the land, and even after the DOE leaves and the other federal agencies that might’ve been there and they leave, we’re going to continue to be there.

Kari Hulac (24:12):

I think touching back, just to kind of follow up on a question I asked earlier I mean, does the tribes that you work with have a wish for what happens to the waste, or you don’t take an opinion on that at this point, or, you know, you’re just kind of managing the tribal interests, like for example, the transportation going through, You have kind of a perfect world, like a wish you’d like for a final resolution? 

Talia Martin (24:44):

Right. Well, at the Idaho National Laboratory, there are two different offices there, which is NE, Nuclear Energy, and then Environmental Management, and the tribes understand that they’re always going to have a research mission there, and that’s important to them. And sometimes we will have shipments that go through the reservation that have to do with nuclear materials or spent fuel that they’re researching on. We’ve had, we like to stay involved in those conversations, you know, because it continues to go through the reservation on transportation corridor. As far as the cleanup mission goes, the state of Idaho, the tribes, we’ve all agreed on one thing: that you don’t want there to be perpetual waste up here is something you hear often. And so ideally we would like the waste, the by-products and materials from the waste to be shipped out. You know, there’s a lot of other types of waste that have come from other sites like Rocky Flats, Three Mile Island that are being stored here. And so we continuously say we want that out. And that would, of course, be the ideal world.

Kari Hulac (26:05):

And when you say out, do you have a destination in mind?

Talia Martin (26:10):

We don’t have to have a destination. You know, we don’t wish upon waste to be involuntarily put on someone else, but we definitely don’t want it on our ancestral lands, on our tribal lands. I mean, this is part of our preservation of our culture and in our practices or traditions. So we’re constantly working hard, our cultural resources staff work very hard to protect those resources, whether it’s as special as on INL site or in sister lands, you know, in Montana and Colorado area where we’re constantly working to protect and preserve our culture. 

Kari Hulac (26:54):

Thank you. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. Talia, really appreciate it.

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

Kent Cole (0:10):

Safety is always top of mind in the nuclear industry, and we work really hard to embed essential traits like compliance and a questioning attitude into NAC’s culture.

Narrator (0:26): 

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.

Elizabeth Muller (01:48):

Well, hello, Kent. It’s really great to have you here today. My name is Elizabeth Muller. I’m the CEO of Deep Isolation and Kent Cole is the CEO and President of NAC International. I should also add that Kent and NAC were the lead investor in Deep Isolation’s Series A last year in 2020. So we’re really happy to have you here today Kent.

Kent Cole (02:12):

Thanks, Liz. It’s really great to be with you today.

Elizabeth Muller (02:16):

And maybe you could just start by giving us a little bit information on your background. How did you get interested in nuclear and how did you end up as CEO of NAC International?

Kent Cole (02:26):

Well first I studied nuclear engineering at Texas A&M University, and I actually began working on co-op assignments at the South Texas Project in the spring of my sophomore year. And that experience and advice from some engineers that I worked with there led me to change my major to get into mechanical engineering, but after graduating from A&M the nuclear industry came calling and I joined General Electric’s nuclear energy business. And I worked there for 16 years in a variety of engineering, project management and business management assignments. And the key to me in each of the assignments was to dive in and learn as much as I could. Try to exceed the expectations of my managers and my coworkers, and then build on those experiences as I moved to my next assignment. Joining NAC in 2003 presented me with some new learnings. First, it was focused on the backend of the nuclear fuel cycle. I got to dive into storage, transportation, and disposal, parts of the business that I was not involved in at General Electric. And it also put me in a small company environment, which was also refreshing and challenging as well. And I eventually became CEO in 2006.

Elizabeth Muller (03:58):

Thank you for that Kent. NAC is really known as a leader in nuclear waste storage and transportation and consulting services. What are the biggest issues that you think are top of mind for the nuclear industry and for NAC international today?

Kent Cole (04:17):

Safety is always top of mind in the nuclear industry, and we work really hard to embed essential traits like compliance and a questioning attitude into NACs culture. I think another is really focusing on integrating the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle. Right now in many countries, including the US, there’s not a comprehensive plan or program to integrate the nearer-term needs for safe, secure spent fuel storage with the longer-term needs for safe, secure disposal. There are clear opportunities for a more efficient system solution. However, in the US the DOE is responsible for disposal but is hamstrung by politics. Nuclear power plant owners are responsible for near and interim-term storage and are doing so safely, but without definition of the disposal system and package requirements. So they are optimizing for the near-term and immediate-term needs. There’s a real opportunity here.

Elizabeth Muller (05:37):

So what do you think is needed? What would be helpful with that? What could help with nuclear waste disposal issues?

Kent Cole (05:48):

Yeah, well, I think disposal is absolutely vital to the industry and our obligation to the next generation is to be good stewards of the environment and to be responsible for the safe disposal of the waste that we generate. If that’s your perspective, and it should be, then waste disposal solutions are essential to new nuclear power initiatives, including new small modular reactors. Sure. There are some technical challenges for disposal, but the solutions are there. The key is to flip the political imperative from avoidance or kicking the can down the road to addressing the issues with a determined commitment. Some have advocated for moving the responsibility outside of the federal government to private industry or a fed corp, and these structural fixes need action.

Elizabeth Muller (06:52):

Hmm. That’s a powerful statement you just made Kent about what’s needed for nuclear waste disposal. I’d love to just go into the safety issue a little bit more. You touched on the safety culture and how important that is for the work you do. How do you develop that safety culture and how do you convey it to the public who is concerned about safety?

Kent Cole (07:20):

First, I think the public should understand that the nuclear industry is highly regulated by a very rigorous and independent regulator. They’re just plain tough. Second, the regulations are demanding. They require proving that our designs will work under very extreme and even hypothetical accident conditions. Third, all of our designs and all of their supporting evaluations and analysis are subject to detailed review by the regulator. And fourth, the regulators frequently inspect our work at our premises and our adherence to the regulations and to our own operating procedures. Finally, with a focus at NAC, we train our team on the regulations and procedures and we promote and enforce rigorous compliance. We foster a questioning attitude and we promote everyone’s right to raise concerns.

Elizabeth Muller (08:26):

For our audience members. NAC is working with us, with Deep Isolation on the supply of canisters for our disposal solutions. Can you tell our audience a bit about why that is so important?

Kent Cole (08:40):

The disposal canisters are really the most central element of the disposal solution. They contain the waste and isolate it from the environment. They will be loaded above ground, either in a hot cell or a pool, and they may need to be stored and, or transported prior to disposal. So they’re vital, they’re touched in all elements of the operation. We have the necessary processes, background technology, technical resources, and innovative spirit to help the isolation advance its deep wormhole disposal solutions. 

Elizabeth Muller (09:23):

Yeah, thank you. That innovative spirit, I think, is so important when we’re trying to do something that nobody has ever successfully done before. What do you see as the biggest challenge regarding the canister design and manufacturing development?

Kent Cole (09:39):

The biggest learnings for us actually have been getting up to speed on the remarkable advancements in directional drilling technology that now make Deep Isolation’s innovative solution a reality. The process we follow to design a canister for disposal is pretty similar to the one we use to design a canister for storage and transportation. Once we define the requirements of what the canister has to do and how it has to perform, our skill design and engineering teams will use their experience and expertise to create a design that meets those requirements. What is new in this case is the technology that will be used to deliver the canister to its destination. Instead of a crane or a heavy haul vehicle traveling a hundred yards, we now have an advanced tooling system placing the canister up to one mile underground. It’s been a really interesting experience for our team learning about new equipment that we will interface with.

Elizabeth Muller (10:51):

And what do you think is the future of nuclear waste disposal?

Kent Cole (10:54):

It looks to me a little bit like this, and this is kind of more of a vision of how I want to see it, but I think I’m looking for clear and applicable regulatory requirements and frameworks. You know, well Liz, is that we’re dealing with a lot of legacy requirements that in some cases don’t make a lot of sense, for instance, a a drill hole or a borehole solution. I’m looking for a single entity in each country that has the responsibility and is driving an efficient and integrated management system. That’s well-funded and free of political meddling. I’m looking for local communities that support the facilities and consented in hosting them that trust and communicate frequently with the operators or sponsors. And most of all, I’m looking forward to actually moving forward and accomplishing the mission of safe and secure disposal. Deep isolation is I believe a very, very significant part of that future.

Elizabeth Muller (12:09):

So do you think the nuclear industry is where it should be when it comes to innovating new solutions for disposing of nuclear waste? And where would you like to see the industry 5, 10, 20 years from now?

Kent Cole (12:25):

Innovation is essential. In business, if you don’t innovate, you will lose your customers and lose your business. There are unique challenges with managing innovation, of course, particularly in the nuclear industry. First, decision-makers, in general, are really conservative. Many of them view change as risk. And so innovations must be very well demonstrated and proven. Second, it takes a significant amount of time and expense to get innovations reviewed and approved by skeptical regulators. So there can be a significant lag in time from the the concept of the innovation to implementation. As noted earlier, there needs to be integration between nearer term storage and longer term disposal solutions. To get started, one needs to begin with the end in mind and specify and design a robust disposal package that can be integrated efficiently into nearer-term storage and transportation solutions. To do this, modern regulations for disposal that are inclusive of a broad range of solutions is a near-term imperative. We recognize the benefits of disposal at such depth that assure isolation of the waste over the very significant time horizons when they can be a threat and the associated beneficial reduction in performance requirements that this enables for engineered safety features. We also love that the drilling and in placement techniques are well-proven and have been successfully practiced daily around the world. 

Elizabeth Muller (14:25):

I will just say thank you so much for participating in this podcast. And where can listeners go for more information?

Kent Cole (14:32):

We can always go to our website NACINTL.com. 

Elizabeth Muller (14:40):

All right, well, thank you so much. It was a pleasure having you.

Kent Cole (14:43):

Thank you Liz.