NUCLEAR WASTE

The Columbia Generating Station nuclear reactor (formerly WPPSS Nuclear Project 2) produces large quantities of high-level radioactive waste, with no disposal site. Over three million pounds of high-level radioactive waste has been generated by the CGS nuclear plant since it began operation in 1984. All of it is stored on site at Hanford, and it is roughly equal in combined radioactivity to the remaining US Department of Energy defense waste generated by Cold War nuclear weapons manufacturing there. Despite years of study, no repository for this high-level radioactive waste, which must be kept out of the environment for hundreds of thousands of years, has been established by the federal government.

Risks of geologic disposal of weapons plutonium (While not directly addressed to waste from power reactors, it discusses pertinent issues.)
   The Waste Isolation Pilot Project's mission now extends far beyond its original role as a demonstration project. As the sole US site for the disposal of actinide wastes (referring to the class of heavy, radioactive elements including uranium and plutonium), it is now slated as the permanent disposal site for the 34 metric tons of excess weapons plutonium covered by the now defunct US-Russia plutonium disposal agreement. This is a major shift from WIPP’s original design basis, and has introduced new socio-technical challenges to the safe, secure, and effective operation of the repository—and, therefore, to the plutonium stockpile reduction mission to which it is now intimately tied.
   A body of work on “normal accident theory” has developed in order to explain why the design of complex safety systems can in fact make accidents more likely: “We load our complex systems with safety devices in the form of buffers, redundancies, circuit breakers, alarms, bells, and whistles…In complex and tightly coupled systems, however, these redundant safety devices are not independent: The alarm rattles the bell; the bell shatters the whistle; the whistle explodes; and suddenly the whole system collapses.”
   In fact, these dynamics have already been observed at WIPP. In 2014, one of the waste drums emplaced in the repository exploded, releasing radioactive material that made its way to the surface. It was later determined that this accident was caused by the addition of new materials to the repository meant to enhance safety (DOE 2014). An earlier safety review process led to a directive that, when packaging certain liquid wastes for disposal at WIPP, absorbent materials should be added to the drums to absorb that liquid. The subsequent mixing of plutonium-contaminated nitrate salts with a wheat-based kitty litter later resulted in a predictable (although, at the time, unpredicted) chemical reaction between the two, causing the drum in which they were packaged to burst. When considering the behavior of magnesium oxide in the complex geochemical environment of a repository pierced by a borehole and infiltrated by groundwater, this should be taken as a cautionary tale.
By Cameron Tracy, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January 13, 2025

British nuclear waste plant leaking 2,100 liters of contaminated water a day At that rate, it would take just over three years to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool.  A glimpse of our future? The Telegraph (UK), October 22, 2024

SOS - The San Onofre Syndrome: Nuclear Power's Legacy (movie) Filmed over 12 years, SOS dramatically chronicles how Southern California residents came together to force the shutdown of an aging nuclear power plant only to be confronted by an alarming reality: tons of nuclear waste left near a popular beach, only 100 feet from the rising sea, that — with radioactivity lasting millions of years — menaces present and future generations. Interview with Mary Beth Brangan, producer and co-director of SOS about the making of the film and its message. June 2024

Nuclear waste from small modular nuclear reactors  The low-, intermediate-, and high-level waste stream of SMNRs will produce more voluminous and chemically/physically reactive waste than light water reactors, which will impact options for the management and disposal of this waste. The intrinsically higher neutron leakage associated with SMNRs suggests that most designs are inferior to LWRs with respect to the generation, management, and final disposal of key radionuclides in nuclear waste. By Lindsay Krall, Allison Macfarlane, and Rodney Ewing, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (US), May 31, 2022

Stanford-led research finds small modular reactors will exacerbate challenges of highly radioactive nuclear waste Small modular nuclear reactors, long touted as the future of nuclear energy, will actually generate more radioactive waste than conventional nuclear power reactors, according to research from Stanford and the University of British Columbia. Stanford News, May 30, 2022 [Summary]
Complete text here

A Critical Analysis of the Nuclear Waste Consequences for Small Modular Nuclear Reactors Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (nuclear reactors with electric capacities less than 300 MW) have received support on the pretense that their development will reduce the mass and radiotoxicity of commercially generated nuclear waste. By analyzing the published design specifications for water-, sodium-, and molten salt-cooled SMNRs, I here characterize their notional, high-level waste streams in terms of decay heat, radiochemistry, and fissile isotope concentration, each of which have implications for geologic repository design and long-term safety. Volumes of low- and intermediate-level decommissioning waste, in the form of reactor components, coolants, and moderators, have also been estimated.
*  The results show that SMNRs will not reduce the size of a geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel, nor the associated future dose rates.
*  Rather, SMNRs are poised to discharge spent fuel with relatively high concentrations of fissile material, which may pose re-criticality risks in a geologic repository.
*  Furthermore, SMNRs entail increased volumes of decommissioning waste, as compared to a standard 1100 MW, water-cooled reactor.
Hour-long video presentation By Dr. Lindsay Krall, Stanford University, June 4, 2020

Radioactive waste from Three Mile Island sits in unlined trenches at Hanford Hanford facilities with massive amounts of radiation could cause large scale catastrophic releases in an earthquake. By Gerald Pollet, Heart of America Northwest, April 23, 2020

The Staggering Timescales of Nuclear Waste Disposal Prospects for long-term storage. By Christine Ro, Forbes, November 26, 2019

The worst accidental release of nuclear waste in US history In 1979, just 14 weeks after the Three Mile Island reactor accident, 90 million gallons of liquid nuclear waste, and 1100 tons of radioactive solid waste, broke through a dam at the Church Rock uranium mine and mill facility in New Mexico. Beyond Nuclear International, July 16, 2018

The Downside of High Burnup Fuel The storage risks of high-burnup nuclear waste. By Robert Alvarez, Nuclear Intelligence Weekly, July 15, 2016

Former US Department of Energy Official Warns of Radioactive Waste Hazard at Nuclear Plant on the Columbia River Robert Alvarez, a former policy advisor to the U.S. Secretary of Energy during the Clinton Administration, released a report entitled
The Hazards of High-Level Radioactive Waste in the Pacific Northwest: A Review of Spent Nuclear Fuel Management at the Columbia Generating Station (PDF). November 19, 2014

Dry Cask Storage Two main reasons hindering moving older spent fuel from pools to dry casks are the high cost and the low availability of casks. It costs about $1 million for each cask and another half million to load each one with fuel. The concrete pad for casks to sit on costs another $1 million. A rough estimated cost to move all of the fuel in the United States that has cooled in pools for at least five years could be 7 $billion. In addition to high cost, the low production rate of the casks is another limiting factor. It has to improve in order to catch up with the increasing need for temporary spent fuel storage. There are other issues of dry casks, such as additional chance of human error and radiation risks. The extra step of moving spent fuels from pools to casks, compared to sitting in the pools until long term disposal, poses higher odds to accidents caused by human mishandling; furthermore, it imposes additional radiation doses to workers who transfer the spent fuels from the water. Stanford University class coursework submittal by Hoi Ng, March 19, 2014

Radioactive Waste No safe, permanent solution has yet been found anywhere in the world - and may never be found - for the nuclear waste problem. In the U.S., the only identified and flawed high-level radioactive waste deep repository site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada has been canceled. Beyond Nuclear advocates for an end to the production of nuclear waste and for securing the existing reactor waste in hardened on-site storage. By Beyond Nuclear

Radioactive Waste Project Articles from the Nuclear Information and Resource Service

Nuclear waste storage is a multi-generational challenge Alliance for Nuclear Accountability

Yucca Mountain, Nevada: Proposed high-level radioactive waste dump Fact sheets and overview. Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS). Includes:
   The role of geology at the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository (2014)
   Why Reviving Yucca Mountain as a Nuclear Waste Repository Will Not Work (2015)
   Yucca Mountain–a Brief History (2015)

Small Modular Nuclear Reactors: No Solution for the Cost, Safety, and Waste Problems of Nuclear Power By Arjun Makhijani and Michele Boyd, Physicians for Social Responsibility and Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, September 2010 (PDF)

Principles for Safeguarding Nuclear Waste at Reactors The principles are based on the urgent threats posed by the current storage of commercial irradiated fuel. Signed by a wide range of organizations nationally. March 2010

If not Yucca Mountain, then what? An alternative plan for managing highly radioactive waste in the United States. By Lisa Ledwidge, Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, 2001