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.

Nuclear energy experts consider commercial power from fission to be a strong contender to help mitigate the increasing effects of climate change, in part due to its low-to-no carbon emissions. Nevertheless, nuclear energy's history, including meltdowns such as Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, and dumping in sacred Indigenous land such as Yucca Mountain, raises important concerns in public deliberation over nuclear power.

The purpose of this research was to collect, analyze, and summarize all of the nuclear power-related surveys conducted in the United States through June, 1981, that we could obtain. The surveys collected were national, statewide, and areawide in scope. Slightly over 100 surveys were collected for an earlier, similar effort carried out in 1977. About 130 new surveys were added to the earlier survey data. Thus, about 230 surveys were screened for inclusion in this report.

In October 2009, the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board (Board or NWTRB) published Survey of National Programs for Managing High-Level Radioactive Waste and Spent Nuclear Fuel.  For each of the 13 national programs studied, the report catalogued 15 institutional arrangements that had been set in place and 15 technical approaches that had been taken to design repository systems for the long-term management of high-activity radioactive waste.