High-Level Waste Disposal

Nuclear energy is a paradox. It is both a high-tech industry and extraction based, with the strengths and weaknesses of both. It is one of the most debated, analyzed, and policy-driven issues in the 21st century, but it is also one of the most vaguely defined. It is considered by some to be the cleanest energy source in the world and by others to be the dirtiest. It is both a weapon that can potentially destroy mankind and a source of potentially perpetual industry.

For the first part of its history, the threat of nuclear war and, later, nonproliferation overshadowed nuclear waste disposal. Since some radioactive wastes have half-lives of one million years or longer, most waste was placed in above-ground storage in the hope that a disposal solution would be found within the next 100 years. Some of the first high-level nuclear waste was 60 years old as of 2010, and many nuclear power plants, like many older manufacturing facilities around the world, are reaching the end of their operating lives. Some countries are dealing with leftover radioactive waste from decommissioned cold war–era nuclear missiles. While nuclear technology has advanced, nuclear waste disposal still remains a waiting game of keeping it as far from humans as possible until it is not toxic. When many countries built nuclear reactors, they expected that their nuclear fuel would be reprocessed and stored in a foreign country. As the world becomes increasingly crowded, it becomes more difficult to find places to handle and [Page 343]store potentially harmful waste. In the 21st century, several new ways of disposing of high-level nuclear waste are being developed, and many countries have begun to reprocess or recycle nuclear waste. The biggest challenge is not only technical but also political and societal because of competing beliefs, goals, and impacts. Nuclear waste and the subsequent issues of storage are as diverse as the policy debates on the issue. To fully comprehend the implications of the latter, one must first have a basic understanding of the former. Nuclear waste can be delineated into three categories: extraction waste, low-level waste, and high-level waste.