Managing the Nuclear Legacies

Abstract

The USA has accumulated a great deal of nuclear and chemical wastes as a result of the production of nuclear weapons and nuclear power. An unambiguous path to managing these legacy wastes, which continue to increase, has been blocked by science and engineering uncertainties, nuclear proliferation concerns, high costs, and compounded by the absence of a comprehensive national government policy framework and a clear public consensus about the issues. The public hears inconsistent and often contradictory messages from advocacy groups and the media, as well as from senior government elected officials and staff who have the responsibility to manage the wastes. In order to understand public preferences and perceptions about new nuclear missions at existing major DOE sites and public preferences for alternative electric energy fuel sources, CRESP surveyed US residents, disproportionately near six major DOE sites, in 2005, 2008, 2009, and 2010. In 2011, after the Fukushima events, another survey was conducted to determine the impacts of the Japanese events on the preferences and perceptions observed in the four earlier surveys.