ABSTRACT
The United States high-level nuclear waste (HLNW) management program has had a fractious and troubled history from the beginning. The 1982 Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) attempted to address some of these long-standing problems by establishing a set of democratic principles and ethical rules to be used in selecting a repository site, allocating its costs and benefits, and defining the relationship between the Department of Energy and candidate states. By attempting to balance the country's need for a permanent HLNW repository with ethical principles designed to ensure a fair siting process, NWPA went a long way toward reassuring residents of the host state that the site finally chosen would be the best in that region of the country. The political consensus NWPA attracted in its final form provided powerful evidence for the legitimacy of the policies it espoused. Thus, NWPA appeared to be a good-faith attempt to put together a siting process that could gain wide acceptance.
