Nuclear Waste Solution Seen in Desert Salt Beds
Nuclear Waste Solution Seen in Desert Salt Beds
News article on the history, status, and future use of the WIPP facility in New Mexico as a disposal site for spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste.
News article on the history, status, and future use of the WIPP facility in New Mexico as a disposal site for spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste.
Approximately 54,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel are stored at operating nuclear power
plants and several decommissioned power plants throughout the country. Spent fuel
storage at these sites was never intended to be permanent. The current Federal plan is to
place the fuel in a repository for permanent disposal in Nevada at Yucca Mountain.
Recently, appropriations committees in Congress suggested building one or more Federal
sites for consolidated interim storage of spent fuel. Several reasons were identified. The
Yucca Mountain—that barren rise in the desert ninety miles from Las Vegas—is the nation‘s only site identified for the potential location of the first ge ological repository for commercially-generated HLNW and SNF. Many assume
that Yucca Mountain has geologic and climatic qualities that make it uniquely
suitable to isolate the thousands of metric tons of the world‘s most lethal, long lived waste currently accumulating at 104 operating nuclear power plants across the United States.
Unfortunately, Yucca Mountain is an exceptionally bad site,
U.S. efforts to site and construct a deep geologic repository for used fuel and high level radioactive waste (HLW) proceeded in fits and starts over a three decade period from the late 1950s until 1982, when the U.S. Congress enacted the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA). This legislation codified a national approach for developing a deep geologic repository. Amendment of the NWPA in 1987 resulted in a number of dramatic changes in direction for the U.S. program, most notably the selection of Yucca Mountain as the only site of the three remaining candidates for continued investigation.
The effective termination of the Yucca Mountain program by the U.S. Administration in 2009 has left the U.S. program for management of used fuel and high level radioactive waste (HLW) in a state of uncertainty.
Nuclear waste disposal in the USA is a difficult policy issue infused with
science, technology, and politics. This issue provides an example of the co-production
of scientific knowledge and politics through public policy. The proponents of a
repository site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, argue that their decision to go ahead
with the site is based on ‘sound science’, but the science they use to uphold their
decision is influenced by politics. In turn, the politics of site selection has been altered
Beginning with the role of "stakeholders" - those whose interests are, knowingly or unknowingly, affected - in the siting of noxious facilities, this paper seeks to develop principles for acceptable and democratically arrived at polices related to problems associated with advances in and products of science and technology. Although widely regarded as a necessary condition for success, the principles underpinning stakeholder involvement, such as representativeness, are often violated in practice.
U.S. efforts to site and construct a deep geologic repository for used fuel and high level radioactive waste (HLW) proceeded sporadically over a three-decade period from the late 1950s until 1982, when the U.S. Congress enacted the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) codifying a national approach for developing a deep geologic repository. Amendment of the NWPA in 1987 resulted in a number of dramatic changes in direction for the U.S. program, most notably the selection of Yucca Mountain as the only site of the three remaining candidates for continued investigation.
The United States (U.S.) of America ratified the Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel<br/>Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management (Joint Convention) on<br/>April 9, 2003. The Joint Convention establishes an international peer review process among<br/>Contracting Parties and provides incentives for nations to take appropriate steps to bring their nuclear activities into compliance with general safety standards and practices.
Congress designated Yucca Mountain, NV, as the nation’s sole candidate site for a permanent high-level nuclear waste repository in 1987, following years of controversy over the site-selection process. Over the strenuous objections of the State of Nevada, the Department of Energy (DOE) submitted a license application for the proposed Yucca Mountain repository in June 2008 to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
Questions and Answers - USA - Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management
Fifty-four objectives were identified to guide the screening of the Nevada Research and Development Area of the Nevada Test Site for relatively favorable locations for the disposal of nuclear waste in a mined geologic repository. The objectives were organized as a hierarchy composed of 4 upper-level, 12 middle-level, and 38 lower-level objectives. The four upper-level objectives account for broad national goals to contain and isolate nuclear waste in an environmentally sound and economically acceptable manner.
The Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel<br/>Management and on the Safety of Radioactive<br/>Waste Management was adopted on 29 September<br/>1997 in the Vienna Diplomatic Conference. Finland<br/>signed the Convention on 2 October 1997 and deposited<br/>the tools of acceptance on 10 February<br/>2000. The Convention entered into force on 18 June<br/>2001.<br/>The fulfilment of the obligations of the<br/>Convention and the developments after the second<br/>Review Meeting are assessed in this report.
A.1 This is the United Arab Emirates (UAE) first national report on compliance with the obligations of the Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management (the Joint Convention). The UAE deposited its instrument of accession to the Joint Convention on 31 July 2009 and under Article (40) the Joint Convention entered into force for the UAE 90 days later on 29 October 2009. A.2 The report describes the basic policy and legal framework being established by the UAE for spent fuel management and radioactive waste management.
Deep geologic repositories are being widely studied as the most favored method of disposal of nuclear waste. Scientists search for repository sites in salt, basalt, tuff and granite that are geologically and hydrologically suitable. The systematic evaluation of the safety and reliability of deep geologic disposal centers around the concept of interacting multiple barriers. The simplest element to describe of the geologic barrier is the physical isolation of the waste in a remote region at some depth within the rock unit.
The first worldwide review of geological problems in radioactive waste isolation was published by the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) in 1991 (Witherspoon, 1991). This review was a compilation of reports that had been submitted to a workshop held in conjunction with the 28th International Geological Congress that took place July 9Ð19, 1989, in Washington, D.C.
Repository performance assessment is analysis that identifies events and processes that might affect a repository system for isolation of radioactive waste, examines their effects on barriers to waste migration, and estimates the probabilities of their occurrence and their consequences. In 1983 Battelle Memorial Institute's Office of Nuclear Waste Isolation (ONWI) prepared two plans — one for performance assessment for a waste repository in salt and one for verification and validation of performance assessment technology. At the request of the U.S.
Department of Interior Comments on Environmental Assessments for Nuclear Waste Repositories at the Deaf Smith and Swisher County Sites, Texas
This white paper offers some suggestions about how to improve the process in the United States for developing facilities for geologic disposal of used nuclear reactor fuel and high-level radioactive waste. These suggestions look toward the future, and build on what I believe are the lessons that should be learned from the troubled Yucca Mountain repository project.
The purpose of this document is to provide a summary of the environmental impact statement for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) project. The Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the WIPP was published by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in April 1979. This document was reviewed and commented on by members of the general public, private organizations, and governmental agencies. The Final Environmental Impact Statement was subsequently published in October, 1980.
The creation of high-activity, long-lived radioactive waste is an inevitable consequence of generating electricity in nuclear power plants. It also is an inevitable consequence of engaging in a set of activities associated with national defense, ranging from propelling nuclear submarines to producing the fissionable materials needed to construct nuclear weapons. Early in the nuclear era, the very-longterm management and the ultimate disposition of those wastes was not a high priority.
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.