Finding a home for nuclear waste

Our nation’s nuclear-waste policy is at a stalemate [“A radioactive debate,” editorial, June 13]. Despite a 1982 law requiring storage of commercial and defense nuclear waste in a geologic repository, political delays and old-fashioned gamesmanship have set our policy back further than where we were more than 30 years ago.

The Post endorses many of the recommendations from a recent blue-ribbon panel, such as the creation of an independent agency to manage the used-fuel program and a consent-based approach to finding a new repository location. Most of these recommendations should move forward.

It falls on Congress and the Obama administration to adopt these policies so we can move the 72,000 tons of waste from reactor sites. Given the nearly $1 billion that nuclear utilities and their consumers pay each year for the used-fuel program, not to mention the endless delays it has encountered, the government owes it to us to resolve this issue now.

David Wright, Washington

The writer is president of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners.