Waste Disposal - Nuclear Waste

Nuclear waste includes a wide range of materials with varying levels of radioactivity. There is currently no agreed-upon safe way to dispose of nuclear waste. None of the current options guarantees protection of the biosphere from radiation, which can linger for many thousands of years. Because of the scientific and political difficulties with geologic burial and other methods, aboveground "temporary" storage, despite its dangers, may remain the only option well into the twenty-first century.

Low-Level Radioactive Waste

Low-level waste includes items that have become contaminated with radioactive material or have become radioactive through exposure to neutron radiation. This waste typically consists of contaminated protective shoe covers and clothing, wiping rags, mops, filters, reactor FIGURE 4.12
Total appropriations to the Superfund program, fiscal years 1993 through 2002 water treatment residues, equipment and tools, luminous dials, medical tubes, swabs, injection needles, syringes, and laboratory animal carcasses and tissues. The radioactivity can range from just above background levels found in nature, to very highly radioactive as in the case of, for example, parts from inside the reactor vessel in a nuclear power plant.

Low-level waste is typically stored on-site by licensees, either until it has decayed away and can be disposed of as ordinary trash, or until amounts are large enough for shipment to a low-level waste disposal site in containers approved by the U.S. Department of Transportation. As shown in Figure 4.13 approximately 1.4 million cubic feet of commercial low-level waste was shipped to disposal facilities in 1998, the latest year for which data are available.

Most low-level radioactive waste decays in less than 50 years. Until the 1960s, the United States dumped low-level wastes into the ocean. The first commercial site to house such waste was opened in 1962, and by 1971 six sites were licensed for disposal. By 1979 only three commercial low-level waste sites were still operating—Hanford, Washington; Beatty, Nevada; and Barnwell, South Carolina. The volume of low-level waste increased during the initial years (1963–80) of commercially generated waste disposal; this, coupled with the threatened closing of the South Carolina site, prompted Congress to pass the Low Level Radioactive Waste Policy Act of 1980 (PL 96-573), calling for the establishment of a national system of FIGURE 4.13
Low-level radioactive waste disposal, 1985–98 such facilities. Since then, volume has decreased. The act made every state responsible for finding a low-level disposal site by 1986 for wastes generated within its borders. It also gave states the right to bar imports of low-level wastes if they were engaged in regional compacts for waste disposal. The disposal of high-level wastes, however, remains a federal responsibility.

COMPACTS.

The 1980 law encouraged states to organize themselves into compacts to develop new low-level waste facilities. As of 2004 ten compacts serving forty-three states had been approved by Congress. Compacts and unaffiliated states have confronted significant barriers to developing disposal sites, however, including: public health and environmental concerns, antinuclear sentiment, substantial financial requirements, political issues, and "not in my backyard" campaigns by some citizen activists.

No compact or state had successfully developed a new disposal facility for low-level wastes by early 2004. Certain conditions have led some states to remain uncommitted to disposal development and to consider other options. The reopening of the Barnwell, South Carolina, facility in 1995 eased some of the pressure on the states. The emergence in 1995 of new private-sector nuclear waste handlers—such as Envirocare of Utah, Inc.—has increased interest in the possibility of privately operated waste disposal facilities. Collectively, the Barnwell; Richland, Washington (operated by American Ecology Corporation); and Envirocare facilities provide disposal capacity for almost all types of low-level wastes.

The number of DOE shipments of low-level waste is projected to decrease throughout the remainder of the decade. (See Figure 4.14.) According to the DOE, shipments of low-level radioactive wastes accounted for less than 0.5 percent of all hazardous material shipments in 2001.

Spent Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste

The most dangerous radioactive waste is irradiated uranium from commercial nuclear power plants. Spent fuel, the used uranium fuel removed from a nuclear reactor, is far from being completely "spent." It contains highly penetrating and toxic radioactivity and requires isolation from living things for thousands of years. It still contains significant amounts of uranium, as well as plutonium created during the nuclear fission process. Spent fuel is a serious problem for nuclear power plants that will be decommissioned before a long-term, high-level waste disposal repository is available.

Unless a temporary site becomes available, decommissioned plants have the following options:

• The fuel can be left in place.
• On-site storage casks can be used. This is not an option for hot fuel (fuel that is less than five years out of the core).
• The spent fuel can be shipped abroad for reprocessing. France, which is heavily dependent on nuclear power, developed the technology to reprocess spent fuel, something not available in the United States. In 1993 the British government also opened a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant that reprocesses spent fuel from nuclear power generators around the world. Nuclear watch groups and some Americans fear that shipping spent fuel abroad will undermine efforts to halt the spread of nuclear arms because the process of transporting such materials increases the possibility for theft or accident.
• The unit can continue to operate.
• The fuel can be shipped to a monitored retrievable storage facility, if there is one available.

Figure 4.15 shows the major sites storing spent nuclear fuel as of December 2003. The Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory is the main storage site, accounting for 54 percent of the total stored.

The Vestiges of Nuclear Disarmament

Nuclear disarmament resulted in the dismantling of much of the U.S. nuclear arsenal and the resulting need to store tons of plutonium. The federal government has proceeded to take apart as many as 15,000 warheads with intentions of eventually storing them at one of two former nuclear weapons–making plants—Pantex, near Amarillo, Texas, and Savannah River, South Carolina. DOE officials predict that dismantling will continue through 2003. The government must then decontaminate buildings used at those facilities, dispose of millions of gallons of boiling FIGURE 4.14
Projected number of low-level and mixed low-level waste shipments, 1998–2010 radioactive water, and decontaminate hundreds of square miles of desert at the Nevada nuclear test site.

In 2000 the United States and Russia agreed that each country would dispose of 34 metric tons of surplus weapons-grade plutonium by 2019. The Clinton administration had intended to immobilize permanently most of the plutonium in glass or ceramic to prevent its potential use in nuclear weapons. The remainder of the plutonium was to be converted to a mixed-oxide fuel (MOX) for use in commercial nuclear power reactors. MOX fuel has been used in existing reactors in Europe, but never tried in the United States.

In April 2002 the Bush administration announced plans to convert all of the plutonium to MOX fuel. The DOE proposed construction of a MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility at the Savannah River site in South Carolina. This facility was to be operational by 2007. The governor of the state fought the plan in court and threatened to use the state police to stop waste shipments from entering South Carolina. He feared that the MOX Fuel Fabrication Facility would never be funded and that the waste would be permanently stored in South Carolina.

As of 2004 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has not granted final approval for construction of the facility. In addition the project is being fought in court by environmental groups including Georgians Against Nuclear Energy. Even if the project is approved, federal budget cuts are expected to delay the operational date to 2008. The utility FIGURE 4.15
Locations of spent nuclear fuel company Duke Power has announced that it plans to test MOX combustion at one of its power plants in 2005 and begin full-scale use of MOX fuel by 2010.