In addition to summarizing the most recent developments (to September 2021), this Congressional Research Service report on the topic of civilian nuclear waste disposal provides a policy background, status of nuclear waste litigation, congressional action including recent legislation, and current policy and regulation for both spent nuclear fuel and low-level radioactive waste.

Understanding DOE’s Critical Decision Process: Progress Toward a Consolidated Interim Storage Facility for Commercial Spent Nuclear Fuel

The critical decision (CD) process is used by the Department of Energy (DOE) to manage the Department’s large-scale, long-term projects, also known as capital projects. CD-0 was recently approved for DOE’s Consolidated Interim Storage Facility project. Learn more about this milestone.

Our Common Future, Chairman's Foreword 

"A global agenda for change" - this was what the World Commission on Environment and Development was asked to formulate. It was an urgent call by the General Assembly of the United Nations: 

This document is intended to provide supplemental information to assist applicants developing a Community Benefits Plan (CBP) for the Regional Direct Air Capture Hubs. As shown in the graphic to the right, Community Benefits Plans are based on a set of four core interdependent policy priorities: engaging communities and labor; investing in America's workforce; advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility; and implementing Justice40.

In the absence of a federal geologic repository or consolidated, interim storage in the United States, commercial spent fuel will remain stranded at some 75 sites across the country. Currently, these include 18 “orphaned sites” where spent fuel has been left at decommissioned reactor sites.

State decisions regarding a repository for high-level radioactive waste have an extraordinary intergenerational significance. The academic legal discussion has increasingly strengthened the status of future generations in constitutional law. In its recent decision on the German Climate Protection Act, the Federal Constitutional Court equally emphasised that state actors have an obligation to protect future generations. Fundamental rights of future generations thus have an anticipated effect in the present.

After decades of preparation, the final disposal of spent nuclear fuel has reached the construction stage in Finland, and the neighboring Sweden is likely to soon follow in the footsteps. These Nordic countries rely on a similar technical concept based on passive safety, advocated as a means of minimizing the burden to future generations. The scholarly literature on the ethics of nuclear waste management has thus far paid little attention to the views of the broader publics on the associated ethical challenges.

With the termination of the Yucca Mountain project, which was proposed to be our nation’s first repository for the disposal of military and civilian spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste, the future of nuclear waste management and disposal in this country became increasingly uncertain. Interim storage has been advocated by many as a temporary solution while a permanent solution is studied for potentially several more decades to come.