The U.S. Government is seeking a site for a monitored retrievable storage facility (MRS). Employing proven technologies used in this country and abroad, the MRS will be an integral part of the Federal system for safe and permanent disposal of the nation's high-level radioactive wastes. The MRS will accept shipments of spent fuel from commerical nuclear power plants, temporarily store the spent fuel above ground, and stage shipments of it to a geologic repository for permanent disposal.

Siting any nuclear waste facility is problematic in today's climate of distrust toward nuclear agencies and fear of nuclear waste. This study compares and contrasts the siting and public participation processes as two citizen task forces dealt with their difficult responsibilities. Though one dealt with a high level waste (Monitored Retrievable Storage - MRS) proposal in Tennessee in 1985-6 and the other with a proposed low level waste facility in Illinois (1988 and still ongoing), the needs of citizen decision makers were very similar.

The Monitored Retrievable Storage Review Commission herewith submits its<br/>final report as required by the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 1987,<br/>Public Law 100-203, as amended by Public Law 100-507.<br/>The Congress created the Commission to provide a report on the need for a<br/>Federal monitored retrievable storage facility (MRS) as part of the Nation&#39;s<br/>nuclear waste management system. In essence, Congress asked the Commission to<br/>review the U.S.

In an international perspective, Sweden has come a long way in the development of safe and accepted systems for the management and disposal of radioactive waste. <br/><br/>A complete system for sea transport of spent nuclear fuel from the twelve Swedish nuclear reactors has been in operation since 1982. The spent nuclear fuel will be stored in CLAB for a period of about 40 years up until final disposal. The facility has been in operation since 1985. A final repository for low- and intermediate-level short-lived waste, SFR, has been in operation since April 1988.

For those parts of the waste system that have already been taken into operation - transportation and handling systems, central interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel (CLAB) and final repository for reactor waste (SFR)- the research and development stage has already largely been passed. The programme presented here therefore pertains primarily to the treatment and final disposal of spent fuel and the decommissioning of nuclear power plants.

The problem of isolating radioactive wastes from the biosphere presents specialists in the fields of earth sciences with some of the most complicated problems they have ever encountered. This is especially true for high level waste (HLW) which must be isolated in the underground and away from the biosphere for thousands of years.

The position of the Department of Energy (DOE) on the facility for monitored retrievable storage (MRS) can be summarized as follows: · ·<br/>• The DOE supports: the development of an MRS facility as an integral part of the waste-management system because an MRS facility would allow the DOE to better meet its strategic objectives of timely disposal, timely and adequate waste acceptance, schedule confidence, and system flexibility.

Utilities and ranking of the preclosure attributes of the proposed high-level radioactive waste repository are examined, in order to provide insights into the propriety of using this approach for this type of decision and an assessment of the adequacy of the analysis itself. The postclosure utilities obtained in the previous study were greater than 80% for all five sites considered, but showed a greater spread than those in the MUA. The preclosure multiattribute utilities also show a wider spread than in the MUA.

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, as signed by the President on January 7, 1983, authorized, among other<br/>things, a Federal Interim Storage (FIS) program for spent nuclear fuel from domestic civilian power reactors.