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The following are most of the different possible methods of treating and disposing of nuclear waste:
Radioactive waste is a type of hazardous waste that contains radioactive material. Radioactive waste is a result of many activities, including nuclear medicine, nuclear research, nuclear power generation, nuclear decommissioning, rare-earth mining, and nuclear weapons reprocessing. The storage and disposal of radioactive waste is regulated by government agencies in order to protect human health and the environment.
The Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository, as designated by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act amendments of 1987, is a proposed deep geological repository storage facility within Yucca Mountain for spent nuclear fuel and other high-level radioactive waste in the United States. The site is on federal land adjacent to the Nevada Test Site in Nye County, Nevada, about 80 mi (130 km) northwest of the Las Vegas Valley.
Dry cask storage is a method of storing high-level radioactive waste, such as spent nuclear fuel that has already been cooled in the spent fuel pool for at least one year and often as much as ten years. Casks are typically steel cylinders that are either welded or bolted closed. The fuel rods inside are surrounded by inert gas. Ideally, the steel cylinder provides leak-tight containment of the spent fuel. Each cylinder is surrounded by additional steel, concrete, or other material to provide radiation shielding to workers and members of the public.
Spent fuel pools (SFP) are storage pools for spent fuel from nuclear reactors. They are typically 40 or more feet (12 m) deep, with the bottom 14 feet equipped with storage racks designed to hold fuel assemblies removed from reactors. A reactor's local pool is specially designed for the reactor in which the fuel was used and is situated at the reactor site. Such pools are used for short-term cooling of the fuel rods. This allows short-lived isotopes to decay and thus reduces the ionizing radiation and decay heat emanating from the rods. The water cools the fuel and provides radiological protection from its radiation.
High-level waste (HLW) is a type of nuclear waste created by the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel. It exists in two main forms:
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 is a United States federal law which established a comprehensive national program for the safe, permanent disposal of highly radioactive wastes.
DUCRETE is a high density concrete alternative investigated for use in construction of casks for storage of radioactive waste. It is a composite material containing depleted uranium dioxide aggregate instead of conventional gravel, with a Portland cement binder.
A deep geological repository is a way of storing hazardous or radioactive waste within a stable geologic environment. It entails a combination of waste form, waste package, engineered seals and geology that is suited to provide a high level of long-term isolation and containment without future maintenance. This will prevent any radioactive dangers. A number of mercury, cyanide and arsenic waste repositories are operating worldwide including Canada and Germany and a number of radioactive waste storages are under construction with the Onkalo in Finland being the most advanced.
Spent nuclear fuel, occasionally called used nuclear fuel, is nuclear fuel that has been irradiated in a nuclear reactor. It is no longer useful in sustaining a nuclear reaction in an ordinary thermal reactor and, depending on its point along the nuclear fuel cycle, it will have different isotopic constituents than when it started.
Yankee Rowe Nuclear Power Station was a nuclear power plant in Rowe, Massachusetts, located on the Deerfield River in the town of Rowe in western Massachusetts. Its 180 MWe pressurized water reactor operated from 1961 to 1991. It produced electricity for New England consumers. The site is referred to as "Yankee-Rowe" or simply "Rowe", to avoid confusion with Vermont Yankee, another nuclear power station located in nearby Vernon, Vermont. The decommissioning of the site was completed in 2007.
Nuclear decommissioning is the process leading to the irreversible complete or partial closure of a nuclear facility, usually a nuclear reactor, with the ultimate aim at termination of the operating licence. The process usually runs according to a decommissioning plan, including the whole or partial dismantling and decontamination of the facility, ideally resulting in restoration of the environment up to greenfield status. The decommissioning plan is fulfilled when the approved end state of the facility has been reached.
Gorleben is a small municipality (Gemeinde) in the Gartow region of the Lüchow-Dannenberg district in the far north-east of Lower Saxony, Germany, a region also known as the Wendland.
La Crosse Boiling Water Reactor (LACBWR) was a boiling water reactor (BWR) nuclear power plant located near La Crosse, Wisconsin in the small village of Genoa, in Vernon County, Wisconsin, approximately 17 miles south of La Crosse along the Mississippi River. It was located directly adjacent to the coal-fired Genoa Station #3. The site is owned and was operated by Dairyland Power Cooperative (Dairyland). Although the reactor has been demolished and decommissioned, spent nuclear fuel is still stored at the location.
A nuclear flask is a shipping container that is used to transport active nuclear materials between nuclear power station and spent fuel reprocessing facilities.
The Humboldt Bay Power Plant, Unit 3 was a 63 MWe nuclear boiling water reactor, owned by Pacific Gas and Electric Company that operated from August 1963 to July 1976 just south of Eureka, California.
High-level radioactive waste management concerns how radioactive materials created during production of nuclear power and nuclear weapons are dealt with. Radioactive waste contains a mixture of short-lived and long-lived nuclides, as well as non-radioactive nuclides. There was reportedly some 47,000 tonnes of high-level nuclear waste stored in the United States in 2002.
Vaalputs is the only South African radioactive waste-disposal facility, called the Vaalputs Radioactive Waste Disposal Facility, operated by NECSA. The facility is located about 100 km south-east of Springbok, in the Northern Cape. It covers an area of approximately 10,000 hectare, measuring 16,5 km from east to west and 6,5 km from north to south at its narrowest point.
The Gesellschaft für Nuklear-Service mbH (GNS) carries out services in the field of radioactive waste disposal and decommissioning of nuclear facilities and operates through several subsidiaries interim storage depots for spent fuel and radioactive waste as in Gorleben and Ahaus. It was created in 1977 after the Gesellschaft für Nuklear-transporte mbH (GNT) was founded in 1974.
A Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future was appointed by President Obama to look into future options for existing and future nuclear waste, following the ending of work on the incomplete Yucca Mountain Repository. At present, there are 70 nuclear power plant sites where 65,000 tons of spent fuel is stored in the USA. Each year, more than 2,000 tons are added to this total. Nine states have "explicit moratoria on new nuclear power until a storage solution emerges". A deep geological repository seems to be the favored approach to storing nuclear waste.
The Czech Radioactive Waste Repository Authority was established on 1 June 1997 as a state organisation established by the Ministry of Industry and Trade. In 2001, SÚRAO assumed the status of a government agency. The Authority is headed by its managing director, Dr. Jiří Slovák. The governing body of SÚRAO consists of its Board which is made up of representatives from the government, radioactive waste producers and the general public. The managing director and members of the Board of SÚRAO are directly appointed by the Minister of Industry and Trade.
