The United States can find a way to dispose of its nuclear waste, even if the current program is at an impasse, according to the blue-ribbon commission established by President Obama after he ended the government’s planning for making Yucca Mountain in Nevada the nation’s nuclear waste repository.

In a draft report issued Friday, the commission members wrote that “we know what we have to do, we know we have to do it, and we even know how to do it.”

Essentially, the commission recommended that an independent panel choose a new site, based on sound science, and win the consent of the local community before proceeding.

And the process will have to be run by somebody else, the report says. The Energy Department, which has managed the program for decades, has damaged the public’s confidence in the competence of the federal government, it suggests, and the new program should be based on science, not politics, with local consent for the chosen site.



The commission, which has been working for about 16 months and held two dozen public meetings, is led by Lee H. Hamilton, the former Indiana congressman who was vice chairman of the 9/11 commission, and Brent Scowcroft, a retired Air Force general who served two presidents as national security adviser.

The commission is now taking public comment on the report and is supposed to deliver a final version to the Energy Department (yes, that Energy Department) by the end of January.

The commission was not told to pick a site, but to give advice on how to do so. It said that the choice should be “consent-based,” because that increased the probability of success. Yucca Mountain, a volcanic structure about 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, was chosen by a consensus of Senate leaders who did not want the waste to go to their own states.

Finland and Sweden have had success choosing sites with local consent, although neither has a government structure like the United States, where an intermediate layer of government — the states — are sure to raise objections.

The commission said a congressionally chartered corporation should take the lead in choosing the site because it would be “best suited to provide the stability, focus and credibility needed to get the waste program back on track.’’

The report also called for establishment of a centralized location for storing waste in dry casks, so that “stranded” wastes in places where the reactor had been shut down and even closed down could be centralized.

The Energy Department, perhaps through gritted teeth, said in a statement that Steven Chu, the Energy Secretary, “appreciates the hard work done by the members of the Blue Ribbon Commission, and thanks them for a very thoughtful report.” The department has spent about $10 billion on Yucca.

One early reaction came from Arjun Makhijani, a physicist and nuclear dissenter who has extensively studied the French waste program. Dr. Makhijani pointed out that while the commission called for replacing the Energy Department, it also said that work should begin promptly on how to build a central storage plant and move fuel to it, and that that work should be done by the Energy Department.

He also faulted the report’s recommendation on the storage of spent nuclear fuel in reactor spent fuel pools. Dr. Makhijani and others think some of the fuel should be moved to dry casks, to reduce the risk of damage in a terrorist attack or accident. In 2004, the National Academy of Sciences said that doing so would reduce the risk from terrorists.

But regulators and the industry say the pools are safe. In light of the Fukushima disaster in Japan, the blue-ribbon commission said, the National Academy should do another study.