Fuel Cycle to Nowhere (PDF)

The first comprehensive history and overview of U.S. nuclear waste law and regulation, Fuel Cycle to Nowhere traces sixty years of nuclear weapons programs, the growth of nuclear power, and their waste legacies, the rise of environmentalism, and the responses of federal agencies. Richard and Jane Stewart expertly analyze the changing policies for storing low-level waste, transuranic waste, spent nuclear fuel, and high-level waste and for regulating their transport by rail and by truck. They also chronicle "a tale of two repositories"--one, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, known as WIPP, the world's only operating deep geologic nuclear waste disposal facility, which emerged from a contentious but ultimately successful struggle between federal and state interests; the other, Yucca Mountain, mandated top down by Congress and a failure.

Fuel Cycle to Nowhere provides the critical information and analysis on the waste disposal issues and solutions that the commission, Congress, the administration, journalists, policymakers, and the public so urgently need.

This book is a project of the Consortium for Risk Evaluation with Stakeholder Participation (CRESP), a Vanderbilt University-led, multi-university consortium supported as a cooperative agreement by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Environmental This book is a project of the Consortium for Risk Evaluation with Stakeholder Participation (CRESP), a Vanderbilt University-led, multi-university consortium supported as a cooperative agreement by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Environmental Management to support safe, effective, publicly credible, risk informed management of existing and future nuclear waste from government and civilian sources through independent strategic analysis, review, applied research and education.