A comparison of two potential repositories: The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant and Yucca Mountain

Two repositories in the same country, yet Congress and the DOE manage them differently. While Congress encumbers WIPP with unanticipated oversight and inappropriate regulations, Congress streamlines the commercial repository program and promises improved regulations for Yucca Mountain. While DOE encouraged science at the expense of the WIPP infrastructure, DOE postponed its scientific investigations at Yucca Mountain and constructed an infrastructure, large enough to support an ambitious program that was never realized. Somewhere between WIPP and Yucca Mountain lies an ideal repository program. A program where consistent national policy promotes progress; where lucid regulations inspire confidence; where science and infrastructure are balanced; and where oversight groups do not become the tail that wags the dog. Neither WIPP nor Yucca Mountain are ideal programs, but each has its advantages that approach the ideal. Consistent national policy would steer the ideal repository program in a predictable direction. Here Yucca Mountain has the advantage. Successive legislation has streamlined the siting process and promises better regulations. From the beginning, the ideal program would know its regulators and regulations. Again, Yucca Mountain has the advantage. More familiar with regulators and regulations, the Yucca Mountain program had the foresight not to declare HLW to be hazardous and subject to dual regulations. The ideal program would equitably balance its science and infrastructure. Here neither program has the advantage and could possibly represent extremes. The WIPP`s emphasis on scientific investigations left it with little or no infrastructure to deal with regulations and oversight. A regulatory infrastructure, for example, could have forewarned WIPP that its in situ tests were not relevant to the regulations. On the opposite extreme, the Yucca Mountain`s emphasis on infrastructure left it with less money for scientific investigations