Nuclear Waste

More than 20 years after the U.S. Congress in 1987 designated Yucca Mountain in western Nevada as the sole geological repository for used, or spent, American nuclear reactor fuel and high-level nuclear waste, the repository still hasn't opened. Ongoing media coverage of nuclear waste issues generally, and the Yucca Mountain proposal specifically, builds on a long history of controversy and a host of complex technical arguments. While billions of dollars have been spent in constructing the underground site at Yucca Mountain, Nevadans have charged that it would endanger the state's health and safety along with imperiling people in states through which the waste would be shipped by rail or highway. And in late 2007, Senate majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada succeeded in having the Department of Energy's (DOE) Yucca Mountain budget cut by $108 million, leading to layoffs among the site's 2,400 workers.

In the meantime, more than 54,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel has been generated by U.S. nuclear reactors, according to the federal U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). And more than 90 million gallons of high-level waste from the country's nuclear weapons program also await disposal. All of this waste contains highly radioactive elements, such as plutonium, cesium, and neptunium. With no permanent destination available, the waste is being temporarily stored at the country's 104 operating nuclear reactors, at designated off-site facilities, and at DOE nuclear weapons sites. While government and nuclear industry officials say the temporary storage poses no problems, nuclear power opponents argue that the lack of permanent waste disposal is a major reason that this source of electricity should be abandoned. Moreover, with the capacity of Yucca Mountain legislatively set at 70,000 metric tons, the site is likely to be filled shortly after its opening, now projected at 2018—although opponents say it will never open.

The lack of a high-level nuclear waste repository in the United States, which operates the largest number of nuclear power plants in the world, is mirrored by the other 29 nations operating a total of 335 reactors. Even France, which generates 78% of its electricity with 59 reactors, is still studying the environmental consequences of disposing of high-level waste in underground clay deposits at its Bure laboratory in northwestern France. While French legislation called for a permanent disposal site to be opened in 2006, that year the decision was delayed another 10 years. And Finland, constructing what is considered by some to be the most sophisticated underground repository, won't open the facility until 2020, at the earliest. The waste from the cores of nuclear reactors is just one of the radioactive by-products from the various ways humans use energy from the nuclei of atoms.