Public Draft - National Plan for Siting High-Level Radioactive Waste Repositories and Environmental Assessment

The National Plan for Siting High-Level Radioactive Waste Repositories describes the process the Department of Energy (DOE) is using to find sites suitable for disposal of high-level radioactive waste. Potential environmental impacts of implementing the Plan are included in an attached Environmental Assessment.<br/>The Plan is one element of the National Waste Terminal Storage (NWTS) Program being conducted by DOE to develop the necessary technology and to qualify sites to establish mined geologic repositories for these wastes.<br/>The Plan describes existing and planned activities for screening successively smaller portions of land within the United States to identify suitable candidate sites, and for subsequently selecting one or more of these sites, for permanent disposal of radioactive wastes.<br/>Environmental effects of the proposed action, including the anticipated range of field studies to characterize various land areas and reasonable alternative siting strategies, are assessed. The Environmental Assessment provides the basis for a finding of whether or not implementation of this plan will result in significant environmental impacts.