Oak Ridge Waste Management Programs: Geologic Isolation and Actinide Partitioning

There are two waste management R&D programs of national significance that are being administered for ERDA by the Union Carbide Corporation — Nuclear Division (UCC/ND). The National Waste Terminal Storage (NWTS) program is concerned with the development of geologic repositories for commercial nuclear fuel cycle wastes, and is organized as the Office of Waste Isolation within UCC/ND. The second program has the aim of establishing the technical feasibility and incentives for removing actinide elements from wastes ("partitioning") to reduce the long-term risk of terminal storage. The latter program is at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and is only now getting under way. This paper summarizes the scope and objectives of these two programs and describes the principal elements and schedule for each.