Nuclear Waste Disposal

Report Outline
Management of Radioactive Wastes
Search for Waste Disposal Solution
Future of Plutonium Reprocessing

Management of Radioactive Wastes

Concern Over Nuclear Waste Accumulation

The nuclear industry is beset by a host of unsolved problems—preventing accidents, protecting plants from terrorist attacks, making nuclear energy economically feasible, preventing the secret diversion of nuclear material into weapons. One of the most unsettling problems concerns the handling of radioactive wastes from the federal government's weapons program and from commercial nuclear reactors. Although such wastes have been accumulating for more than 30 years, there still is no plan for their permanent disposal.

Both critics and defenders of nuclear power agree that the problem must be solved. President-elect Jimmy Carter, himself a nuclear engineer, told a United Nations conference on nuclear energy on May 13 that it was time for the United States “to cut through the indecision and debate about the long-term storage of radioactive wastes and start doing something about it.” As a first step, Carter said, the United States “could begin by preparing all high-level wastes currently produced from our military programs for permanent disposal.”

Nuclear power advocates generally contend that the technology necessary for the safe management of nuclear wastes already exists. H. A. Bethe, a Nobel prize-winning physicist wrote early this year: “It seems to me virtually certain that a suitable permanent storage site will be found.” Dixy Lee Ray, former chairman of the old Atomic Energy Commission and the newly elected governor of Washington, said in a recent interview: “Technologies do exist for handling the waste, for being able to take care of the waste, for being able to store the waste … safely and completely for as long as it needs to be done.” According to Ray, “The United States has not decided which of several technologies it will use, because we don't have to start doing anything with the waste from nuclear power plants until nearly the middle of the 1980s.” That means, she went on to say, “We have got at least five years still to conduct research and maybe improve the techniques that are available today.”