Monitored Retrievable Storage Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Monitored Retrievable Storage (MRS) is a temporary facility used to store radioactive materials. MRS installations are for holding High Level Waste (HLW) radioactive materials that are very “hot,” or radioactive, because they are usually spent fuel rods from a nuclear power plant. The term Monitored Retrievable Storage Installation was defined by Congress in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) in 1987 (as amended). The Nuclear Regulatory Commission was given authority to monitor all MRS installations and the Department of Energy (DOE) is responsible for operating MRS installations.

The Code of Federal Regulations uses the term MRS to mean an installation with a complex designed, constructed, and operated by the DOE “for the receipt, transfer, handling, packaging, possession, safeguarding, and storage of spent nuclear fuel aged for at least one year, solidified high-level radioactive waste resulting from civilian nuclear activities, and solid reactor-related GTCC [Greater than Class C] waste, pending shipment to a HLW repository or other disposal.”

A Monitored Retrievable Storage installation includes any installation that meets this definition. GTCC waste is “low-level radioactive waste that exceeds the concentration limits of radionuclides established for Class C waste.” The regulations also establish requirements, procedures, and criteria for the issuance of Certificates of Compliance approving spent fuel storage cask designs. Current law requires all federal agencies to fully support the DOE’s efforts to site and license MRS facilities. In addition, they are charged with fully supporting the Nuclear Waste Negotiator’s effort to locate sites for MRS facilities.

Current law also restrains endless litigation efforts that would attempt to block timely locating and development of MRS facilities. Because HLW nuclear waste will be dangerous for centuries to come, the political phenomenon of NIMBY (“Not In My Back Yard”) has hampered attempts to build MRS facilities. Governors of states and antinuclear interest groups routinely oppose efforts to transport waste, citing dangers from possible accidents that could permanently damage the natural environment.

Proposals to locate sites on Native American reservations have raised issues of sovereignty because of the status of tribal lands. A proposal by the Mescalero Apache Indians that their lands could host MRS facilities raised issues regarding political sovereignty, democratic consent, and environmental justice.

Bibliography:

Monitored Retrievable Storage of High Level Radioactive Waste: Routing Implications and Emergency Response to Transportation Accidents (National Conference of State Legislatures, 1990);
National Research Council, End Points for Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste in Russia and the United States (National Academies Press, 2003);
National Research Council, Improving the Scientific Basis for Managing DOE’s Excess Nuclear Materials and Spent Nuclear Fuel (National Academies Press, 2003);
Nuclear Waste: Is There a Need for Federal Interim Storage? (The Monitored Retrievable Storage Review Commission, 1989).