§10204 Subseabed Disposal

Summary

Creates an Office of Subseabed Disposal Research inside the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. The office must have a Director who is a Senior Executive Service member, chosen by the Director of the Office of Science and paid as the law provides. The Director must run research, development, and demonstration work on subseabed disposal of high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel, under the Secretary’s general supervision and directly answerable to the Director of the Office of Science. The first Director must be named within 30 days of December 22, 1987. The Secretary may fund the Subseabed Consortium and others to help. Within 60 days of December 22, 1987, the Secretary must set up a university-based Subseabed Consortium with top oceanography universities, national labs, and other groups to study whether subseabed disposal is practical. The Consortium must make a research plan and budget to, by 1995, show how to find and study possible sites; create conceptual designs for a disposal system with cost and institutional estimates; and evaluate effects on people and the ocean. The Consortium must report to Congress in 1990 and again in 1995 on progress toward the objectives of paragraph (2).