NIMBY:

It's Complicated

Just when you think you know that "everyone" loves renewable energy and hates nuclear power, some news pops up to recalibrate your thinking.

Last week, I saw almost back-to-back news articles that upended the "conventional wisdom."  The first was a report on the opposition of German residents to the installation of new windmills.  The article talks about more than 600 citizen initiatives against the installations, which are central to the German goal of weaning itself from the use of coal and nuclear power.  A classic case of NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard), I thought.

The very next day, a news article arrived in my inbox that announced that government officials in Nye County, New Mexico, were open to discussing the development of a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, which is located in their county.  Yucca Mountain, as many people reading this blog will know, was selected decades ago as the site for the disposal of waste from U.S. nuclear power plants, but stalled due to opposition from the State of New Mexico.  Wait, I thought--what about NIMBY?

Now, obviously, both situations are very complicated.  The brief news article on the opposition to new windmills in Germany mentions factors including a drop in government funding and the intervention of a far-right political party of climate skeptics.  These factors could be pumping up the opposition.

In New Mexico, of course, there is a start contrast between the views of the state and the views of the county.  To date, the state views have dominated.  The views of the county, of course, are not motivated by a love for nuclear power so much as they are by the economic benefits such a major facility in their county would bring.  However, it is important to note that they emphasize that they would only approve the facility if the analyses show that it is safe.  What they are asking at this point is only for the assessment to be done.

The message I draw from this is not that the people of Nye County are opportunists.  Far from it.  Rather, they are pragmatists.  They are insisting that safety comes first, but if the safety standards are met, they see benefits that offset the impacts on their community, such as the disruption of construction, the increase in traffic, etc.  And the people of Germany are also being pragmatic.  Nuclear power-related facilities generally bring a lot of high-paying jobs, and wind-power installations generally don't, so in their case, there is little benefit to offset the disruption in their communities.

Admittedly, there have been cases where local communities have opposed a facility, even though it would bring jobs or other benefits, so the issue of public acceptance around any kind of large installations--power plants, waste repositories, factories, or anything else--is complicated, and there is no guarantee that the community reactions we see in these 2 cases will always occur in other cases.

Nevertheless, the contrast in the reactions to the windmills in Germany and the nuclear waste repository in Nye County are instructive.  Most of us tend to think mainly of the big picture, which mainly means that we think of how power plants and other facilities benefit the greater good.  But we have to keep in mind that all such facilities inevitably bring some disruption to a community.  In cases where the only impacts are negative ones, it is quite logical for communities to oppose these facilities.  In cases where there are positive impacts as well, the local communities may be more receptive to hosting such facilities. 

In all cases, of course, the first focus should be on safety.  The second should be on building and operating the installation to minimize any negative impacts on the community.  But those measures alone may not be strong enough to combat the NIMBY factor.  Ultimately, the potential benefits to a community may also be a factor in public acceptance at the local level.

***

Yucca Mountain:

A View from Some Experts

The long-standing debate over Yucca Mountain has recently taken a new turn, with action by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to shut down its review, and objections by Members of Congress and others to that decision. Articles in the press and elsewhere have detailed most of the issues, including views on the legality of the action and the confrontation it is causing within the Commission.

Among the actions reported, former NRC Commissioner Kenneth C. Rogers has written to the Commissioners and the NRC Inspector General on this matter. His action appears to be related to a recent article he co-authored. Whenever issues such as Yucca Mountain are debated, it is a good idea to recall the history of the issue. The article that he co-authored does so. Therefore, I'd like to take this opportunity to step back and report on that article.

Specifically, the fall issue of the National Academy of Sciences publication, Issues in Science and Technology, carries an article on Yucca Mountain that is well worth seeking out in a library, if you do not have a subscription. (Because it is a subscription publication, I can't link to it.) Co-authored by Luther Carter, Lake Barrett, and Ken Rogers, the article lays out systematically what the issues are and what they think needs to be done.

The authors are all very well qualified to write on this subject. Luther Carter is a journalist who has written extensively on the subject of nuclear waste, Lake Barrett formerly headed the Department of Energy's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, and as noted above, Ken Rogers is a former Commissioner at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. (In the interests of full disclosure, I worked for Ken Rogers for his first term as an NRC Commissioner.)

I will not try to recap all the points made in this article. I will simply note that it covers a number of important points in the long and convoluted history of the Yucca Mountain program, from the early days where three sites were being characterized, to the recent decision by the Administration to terminate the program. It also looks ahead to the decision the NRC needs to make and the role of the Blue Ribbon Commission in addressing waste issues.

The authors have done a considerable service in putting together this history and analysis of the issues and past actions. Despite the fact that many of us have been following this issue for years, pieces of the story have gotten lost over time. For example, most of us know that the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 called for the characterization of 3 sites, but that the 1987 revisions to the Act narrowed the scope to just one site, Yucca Mountain. The lore that has built up over this decision is that the State of Nevada was not politically powerful at the time.

This may in fact be true, but the article indicates that decision was also based on the results of the first round of studies, which had identified the Yucca Mountain site as superior to the other two candidates. On this basis, they conclude that "a more tentative or contingent congressional choice of Yucca Mountain would almost certainly have survived an impartial technical review, so in our view the hasty adoption of what soon came to be known as the 'screw Nevada bill' was as unnecessary as it was politically provocative."

The authors conclude by expressing great concern over how "the reputation of the NRC as an independent, trustworthy overseer of the civil nuclear enterprise" may be affected by the way it acts on this matter and expressing the hope that they "reassert the NRC's dignity and independence by upholding their own Yucca Mountain licensing board."

I hope that the points made in this article will be well publicized as the debate proceeds.

***