The materials science of radioactive waste forms and containment materials has long been a subject of interest to the Materials Research Society. One of the earliest (and continuing) MRS symposia, the Scientific Basis for Nuclear Waste Management, has been held 18 times since 1978. This symposium rotates abroad every third year: Berlin in 1982, Stockholm in 1985, Berlin in 1988, Strasbourg in 1991, and Kyoto this past October. Nearly 170 papers were presented at the Kyoto meeting.

Materials science issues for nuclear waste disposal are unique in their scale and consequences. The wastes include an extremely wide variety of materials: spent nuclear fuel from commercial and research reactors; high-level liquid waste produced at West Valley, New York, during the reprocessing of commercial spent nuclear fuel; high-level waste (HLW) generated by the nuclear weapons program; nearly pure plutonium from the dismantling of nuclear weapons; highly enriched uranium from weapons; low-level, medium-level, and mixed waste from laboratories and medical facilities; and, finally, mill tailings from uranium mines and the residues from chemical processing, such as the radium-bearing filtrate presently in storage at Fernald, Ohio, and Niagara Falls, New York. Some material can be simply stabilized and monitored in situ, as is done for most uranium mill tailings and residues, but other materials require retrieval, processing, immobilization, and permanent disposal. The volumes of material that will require handling, immobilization, and disposal are enormous. In the United States, much of the weapons program waste is stored in tanks at Hanford, Washington and Savannah River, South Carolina.