New research: experts embrace new US strategy on nuclear waste
The re-awakening of a United States strategy to bury nuclear waste deep underground has won the support of experts, reports the Energy Quarterly published by Cambridge Journals.
Prachi Patel's article, 'United States launches new direction to manage nuclear waste', in the March 2013 edition of Energy Quarterly (EQ) in MRS Bulletin recounts the obstacles on the road to successful nuclear waste storage so far and explores what happens next.
Since the first nuclear power plant opened in the US in 1958, plus the waste from the country's nuclear weapons programs, the problem of what to do with the accumulating nuclear waste has never been successfully addressed. The result is that 70,000 metric tons of spent fuel now sits marooned at power plants, contained either in swimming pool-like structures or in metal or concrete casks.
This waste contains nearly 40 billion Curies of radioactivity, hundreds of times the amount released from the Chernobyl accident, and an amount expected to double by 2040. Storage of this type is safe only up to 100 years and poses a continual threat of leakage.
Prachi Patel's article states the international scientific community agrees with the US approach of storing nuclear waste hundreds of meters below ground.
However, what sounds like a straightforward process is fraught with complexity. The "host rock" can change over time and the researchers' most vital current task is to estimate how well a repository will isolate radioactive waste for hundreds of thousands of years. Exposure to water and air are the two big dangers. Countless materials and geological studies will now be required as well as highly complex computer modeling.
Rod Ewing, Professor in the Department of Earth & Environmental Sciences at the University of Michigan, served as Feature Editor, and says that science is ready with solutions but questions whether political obstacles and public mistrust can be overcome.
