Waste siting gridlock in the United States and Canada has led to experimentation with voluntary and hybrid or "mixed mode" siting. We review nuclear and hazardous waste voluntary siting (VS) results for selected cases in the U.S. and Canada. Findings indicate that VS is not a panacea. but that current siting efforts are inadequate tests of its potential. We suggest trials of improved VS protocols and more effort on hybrid approaches in which the developer chooses the site but is required to reach agreement on conditions with local stakeholders.
There are no nuclear power plants in Utah. Despite that, Utah is targeted to be the site of the largest facility ever licensed for storage of spent nuclear fuel rods (high-level nuclear waste) from nuclear power plants. This proposed site would store up to 40,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel. The storage of this amount of waste in one location is equivalent to all the commercial spent nuclear fuel rods in the United States. The Federal government has responsibility for permanently storing this high-level nuclear waste, but after 18 years, it has missed the deadline.
The West Cumbria Managing Radioactive Waste Safely (MRWS) Partnership was set up to consider the issues that would be involved in taking part in a search to see if there is anywhere in the Allerdale and/or Copeland areas suitable for a repository for higher activity radioactive waste.<br/>Over the last three years we have looked at reports and literature, heard from experts in the field, commissioned independent research and invited reviews by independent experts.
This report is part of the research project International Socio-Technical Challenges for Implementing Geological Disposal: InSOTEC (see www.insotec.eu), funded by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme.<br/>This report is a contribution to Work Package 1 of the project, which aims to identify the most significant socio-technical challenges related to geological disposal of radioactive waste. To achieve this objective, a comparative analysis of 14 national programmes will be performed.
Answers to questions raised by other contracting parties under the Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management were prepared by the Slovenian Nuclear Safety Administration, the Kr_ko NPP, the Agency for Radwaste Management and the Ministry of Infrastructure and Spatial Planning.
Long-term radioactive waste management (RWM) involves large and long-term research and development programmes in essentially all countries with civil nuclear programmes. Such programmes develop through different phases from basic research to more focussed applied research and development (R&D) and finally to the design and siting of proposed solutions. Internationally basic principles for the conduct of these programmes, basic safety principles and guidance on how to comply with them have largely been agreed upon.
The 1976 Parliamentary election in Sweden resulted in a coalition government which imposed extremely stringent requirements for the waste produced by Swedish nuclear power plants. The industry responded with a crash study, the Nuclear Fuel Safety (KBS) project, with experts drawn from hundreds of universities and related scientific institutions. A year later, the industry presented “a complete scheme for absolutely safe storage of nuclear waste” in engineered facilities located at about 500 m depth in the Swedish granite bedrock (KBS-I).
This study presents a synthesis of information and interpretations relevant to surficial processes at the Yucca Mountain Site. The report is part of the technical basis which will be used to evaluate the suitability of Yucca Mountain, Nevada, as a site for a mined geologic repository for the permanent disposal of high-level radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel. It provides a description of the surface characteristics, preclosure hydrology, and erosion at the Yucca Mountain Site. This report will provide the technical basis to evaluate three technical guidelines from the U.S.
In 2010, there were no events that posed a serious radiological threat to the population in Slovenia. There were also no particularities in relation to the services of radiation practices and operators of radiation facilities.
The Krško NPP operated without shutdowns and production was interrupted only for the annual outage. In 2010, the power plant produced 5.7 TWh in total and achieved 89.9% availability. The nuclear power plant had no major problems during the September floods, when the Sava river otherwise seriously threatened settlements in Posavje.
This report focuses on public meetings as a vehicle for public participation in nuclear waste management. The nature of public meetings is reviewed and the functions served by meetings highlighted. The range of participants and their concerns are addressed, including a review of the participants from past nuclear waste management meetings. A sound understanding of the expected participants allows DOE to tailor elements of the meeting, such as notification, format, and agenda to accommodate the attendees.
The director of the Task Force on Civilian Radioactive Waste Management of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, United States Department of Energy, asked the National Academy of Public Administration, to convene a group of approximately one dozen individuals to attend a twoday "state-of-the-art" workshop on the issue of how institutions establish, maintain, or recover trust and confidence among significant members of their task environments.
Salt deposits are considered to be most attractive for this purpose because of their wide distribution and great abundance; they are easily mined, have good thermal properties, and are free of circulating groundwater.
This report is published as a product of the National Waste Terminal Storage (NWTS) program. The objective of this program is the development of terminal waste storage facilities in deep, stable geologic formations for high-level nuclear wastes, including spent fuel elements from commercial power reactors and transuranic nuclear waste for which the federal government is responsible. Pertinent environmental and geological information for the Gulf Interior Region (GIR) is summarized, including physical, biological, and cultural characteristics of the. region.
The generation of knowledge regarding public risk perception general, and perception of risks associated with nuclear power and radioactive waste management in particular, requires the development and use of appropriate survey methodologies. One of the fundamental limitations of many studies of public risk perception is the assumption on the part of the investigators of similarity between themselves and their respondents. In such studies respondents are required to deal with problems of interest to and structured by the investigators.
Pacific Northwest Laboratory (PNL) has completed a performance evaluation of the proposed monitored retrievable storage (MRS) facility. This study was undertaken as part of the Department of Energy MRS Program at PNL.
DOE requested $100 million over the next 3 years to develop an MRS facility by 1998. DOE can begin accepting delivery of utilities’ waste by 1998 only by having an MRS facility then. To accomplish this, however, the Nuclear Waste Negotiator must complete a siting agreement and obtain congressional approval of the agreement, including the removal of statutory links to repository development, by the end of 1992. The negotiator does not believe this is possible.<br/><br/>Whether DOE is legally obligated to store or dispose of waste in 1998 is unclear.
The thick and regionally extensive sequence of shales and associated clastic sedimentary rocks of Late Devonian and Early Mississippian age has been considered among the “nonsalt geologies” for deep subsurface containment of high-level radioactive wastes.
Reaching negotiated agreement with a state or Indian tribe and preparing of 1he environmental assessment (EA) required by Section 404 of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, as amended (NWPAA), are the first steps in a process intended to result in the acceptance of radioactive waste at a monitored retrievable storage (MRS) facility starting in 1998. This paper examines requirements for the EA, the first environmental document to be prepared for siting an MRS facility, and discusses the process used to develop that document.
Thorough long-term studies have shown that the Finnish bedrock is suitable for the permanent isolation of spent nuclear fuel from organic nature. Legislation requires that besides safety, an assessment be made of any other environmental impacts of the final disposal facility. Environmental impact assessment (EIA) in respect of the final disposal facility for spent nuclear fuel got under way in 1997 when Posiva Oy, which is responsible for the project, began work on an EIA programme.
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (the Act) established a process for the selection of sites for the disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste in geologic repositories. The first steps in this process were the identification of potentially acceptable sites and the development of general guidelines for siting repositories. In February 1983, the DOE identified nine sites in six States as potentially acceptable for the first repository. The Richton Dome site in Perry County, Mississippi, was identified as one of those sites.
