The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 is a United States federal law which established a comprehensive national program for the safe, permanent disposal of highly radioactive wastes .
145-773: The Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository , as designated by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act amendments of 1987, is a proposed deep geological repository storage facility within Yucca Mountain for spent nuclear fuel and other high-level radioactive waste in the United States. The site is on federal land adjacent to the Nevada Test Site in Nye County, Nevada , about 80 mi (130 km) northwest of
290-647: A geologic repository . The recommendation to use a geologic repository dates to 1957, when the National Academy of Sciences recommended that the best way to protect the environment and public health and safety is to dispose of the waste in rock deep underground. The DOE began studying Yucca Mountain in 1978 to determine whether it would be suitable for the nation's first long-term geologic repository for over 70,000 metric tons (69,000 long tons; 77,000 short tons) (150 million pounds) of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste as of 2015 stored at 121 sites around
435-399: A CT head or chest scan results in around 1,110 mrem. Annually, in the United States, an individual's dose from background radiation is about 350 mrem, though some places get more than twice that. On February 12, 2002, Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham deemed this site suitable as the nation's nuclear repository. The governor of Nevada had 90 days to object and did so, but Congress overrode
580-581: A bill in the U.S. House of Representatives for the site, but the Appropriation Committee killed an amendment by Representative Mike Simpson to add $ 74 million in Yucca Mountain funding to a DOE appropriations bill. On May 20, 2020, Under Secretary of Energy Mark W. Menezes testified in front of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that President Trump strongly opposes proceeding with
725-527: A currently uneconomic prospect. A summary of the amounts of radioactive waste and management approaches for most developed countries are presented and reviewed periodically as part of a joint convention of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). A quantity of radioactive waste typically consists of a number of radionuclides , which are unstable isotopes of elements that undergo decay and thereby emit ionizing radiation , which
870-517: A developing organism such as a fetus is irradiated, it is possible a birth defect may be induced, but it is unlikely this defect will be in a gamete or a gamete-forming cell . The incidence of radiation-induced mutations in humans is small, as in most mammals, because of natural cellular-repair mechanisms, many just now coming to light. These mechanisms range from DNA, mRNA and protein repair, to internal lysosomic digestion of defective proteins, and even induced cell suicide—apoptosis Depending on
1015-595: A federal court ruled that the Department of Energy must stop collecting fees for nuclear waste disposal until provisions are made to collect nuclear waste. In December 1987, Congress amended the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to designate Yucca Mountain , Nevada, as the only site to be characterized as a permanent repository for all of the nation's nuclear waste. The plan was added to the fiscal 1988 budget reconciliation bill signed on December 22, 1987. Working under
1160-691: A federally licensed geologic disposal facility, having served in that role as the scientific advisor to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, New Mexico ." Sandia began acting as the lead laboratory on October 1, 2006. Because of questions raised by the State of Nevada and congressional members about the quality of the science behind the Yucca Mountain Project, the DOE announced on March 31, 2006,
1305-725: A few thousand years. The most troublesome transuranic elements in spent fuel are Np-237 (half-life two million years) and Pu-239 (half-life 24,000 years). Most existing nuclear waste came from production of nuclear weapons . About 77 million gallons of military nuclear waste in liquid form was stored in steel tanks, mostly in South Carolina , Washington , and Idaho . In the private sector, 82 nuclear plants operating in 1982 used uranium fuel to produce electricity. Highly radioactive spent fuel rods were stored in pools of water at reactor sites, but many utilities were running out of storage space. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 created
1450-498: A general rule, short-lived waste (mainly non-fuel materials from reactors) is buried in shallow repositories, while long-lived waste (from fuel and fuel reprocessing) is deposited in geological repository. Regulations in the United States do not define this category of waste; the term is used in Europe and elsewhere. ILW makes up 6% of all radioactive waste volume in the UK. High-level waste (HLW)
1595-492: A half-life that can stretch to as long as 24,000 years. The amount of HLW worldwide is increasing by about 12,000 tonnes per year. A 1000- megawatt nuclear power plant produces about 27 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel (unreprocessed) every year. For comparison, the amount of ash produced by coal power plants in the United States is estimated at 130,000,000 t per year and fly ash is estimated to release 100 times more radiation than an equivalent nuclear power plant. In 2010, it
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#17328839184331740-481: A high level of expertise and credibility as they move the project forward ... This award gives DOE access to academic and research institutions to help DOE meet their mission and legal obligation to license, construct, and open Yucca Mountain as the nation's repository for spent nuclear fuel." There was significant public and political opposition to the project in Nevada. An attempt was made to push ahead with it and override
1885-518: A limit of 15 millirem per year to a reasonably maximally exposed individual, who would be among the most highly exposed members of the public. The groundwater protection standard is consistent with the EPA Safe Drinking Water Act standards, which the Agency applies in many situations as a pollution prevention measure. The disposal standards were to apply for 10,000 years after the facility
2030-505: A limit of 350 millirem per year for that period. In October 2007, the DOE issued a draft of the Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement showing that for the first 10,000 years, mean public dose would be 0.24 mrem/year and that thereafter the median public dose would be 0.98 mrem/year, both of which are substantially below the proposed EPA limit. For comparison, a hip X-ray results in a dose around 83 mrem and
2175-588: A modeled lifetime of 12,000 to over 100,000 years and it is assumed they will fail in about two million years. A 1983 review of the Swedish radioactive waste disposal program by the National Academy of Sciences found that country's estimate of about one million years being necessary for waste isolation "fully justified." The Nuclear Waste Policy Act did not require anything approaching this standard for permanent deep-geologic disposal of high-level radioactive waste in
2320-516: A new independent organization with direct access to the Nuclear Waste Fund , which is not subject to political and financial control as the Cabinet -level DOE is. But the site met with strong opposition in Nevada, including from then-Senate leader Harry Reid . Under President Donald Trump , the DOE ceased deep borehole and other non-Yucca Mountain waste disposition research activities. For FY 18,
2465-463: A new strategy toward nuclear waste disposal." On March 5, 2009, Energy Secretary Steven Chu told a Senate hearing the Yucca Mountain site is no longer viewed as an option for storing reactor waste. In Obama's 2011 budget proposal released February 1, all funding for nuclear waste disposal was zeroed out for the next ten years and it proposed to dissolve the Office of Civilian Waste Management required by
2610-449: A permanent radioactive waste repository has yet been discovered that has been stable for so long a period. Because some radioactive species have half-lives longer than one million years, even very low container leakage and radionuclide migration rates must be taken into account. Moreover, it may require more than one half-life until some nuclear waste loses enough radioactivity so that it is no longer lethal to humans. Waste containers have
2755-570: A permanent waste repository went into operation. Costs of temporary storage would be paid by fees collected from electric utilities using the storage. The Act required the Secretary of Energy to report to Congress by June 1, 1985, on the need for and feasibility of a monitored retrievable storage facility (MRS) and specified that the report was to include five different combinations of proposed sites and facility designs, involving at least three different locations. Environmental assessments were required for
2900-400: A position to greatly affect the future of the project. Reid said he would continue to work to block completion of the project, and is quoted as having said, "Yucca Mountain is dead. It'll never happen." In the 2008 Omnibus Spending Bill, the Yucca Mountain Project's budget was reduced to $ 390 million. The project was able to reallocate resources and delay transportation expenditures to complete
3045-503: A potential disaster. The EPA established its Yucca Mountain standards in June 2001. The storage standard set a dose limit of 15 millirem per year for the public outside the Yucca Mountain site. The disposal standards consisted of three components: an individual dose standard, a standard evaluating the impacts of human intrusion into the repository, and a groundwater protection standard. The individual-protection and human intrusion standards set
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#17328839184333190-438: A range of applications, such as oil well logging. Substances containing natural radioactivity are known as NORM (naturally occurring radioactive material). After human processing that exposes or concentrates this natural radioactivity (such as mining bringing coal to the surface or burning it to produce concentrated ash), it becomes technologically enhanced naturally occurring radioactive material (TENORM). Much of this waste
3335-504: A reactor. At that point, the fuel has to be replaced in the reactor with fresh fuel, even though there is still a substantial quantity of uranium-235 and plutonium present. In the United States, this used fuel is usually "stored", while in other countries such as Russia, the United Kingdom, France, Japan, and India, the fuel is reprocessed to remove the fission products, and the fuel can then be re-used. The fission products removed from
3480-415: A repository. Generators and owners of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste were required to pay the costs of disposal of such radioactive materials. The waste program, which was expected to cost billions of dollars, would be funded through a fee paid by electric utilities on nuclear-generated electricity. An Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management was established in the DOE to implement
3625-405: A result of the processing or consumption of coal, oil, and gas, and some minerals, as discussed below. Waste from the front end of the nuclear fuel cycle is usually alpha-emitting waste from the extraction of uranium. It often contains radium and its decay products. Uranium dioxide (UO 2 ) concentrate from mining is a thousand or so times as radioactive as the granite used in buildings. It
3770-411: A safe location. The Act required DOE to consult closely throughout the site selection process with states or Indian tribes that might be affected by the location of a waste facility, and allowed a state (governor or legislature) or Indian tribe to veto a federal decision to place within its borders a waste repository or temporary storage facility holding 300 tons or more of spent fuel, but provided that
3915-701: A second repository. A full environmental impact statement was required for any site recommended to the President. Locations considered to be leading contenders for a permanent repository were basalt formations at the government's Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington, volcanic tuff formations at its Nevada nuclear test site, and several salt formations in Utah, Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Salt and granite formations in other states from Maine to Georgia had also been surveyed, but not evaluated in great detail. The President
4060-426: A similar way, the alpha emitting actinides and radium are considered very harmful as they tend to have long biological half-lives and their radiation has a high relative biological effectiveness , making it far more damaging to tissues per amount of energy deposited. Because of such differences, the rules determining biological injury differ widely according to the radioisotope, time of exposure, and sometimes also
4205-446: A stable state but rather to radioactive decay products within a decay chain before ultimately reaching a stable state. Exposure to radioactive waste may cause health impacts due to ionizing radiation exposure. In humans, a dose of 1 sievert carries a 5.5% risk of developing cancer, and regulatory agencies assume the risk is linearly proportional to dose even for low doses. Ionizing radiation can cause deletions in chromosomes. If
4350-501: A storage area, and the enrichment methods required have high capital costs. Pu-239 decays to U-235 which is suitable for weapons and which has a very long half-life (roughly 10 years). Thus plutonium may decay and leave uranium-235. However, modern reactors are only moderately enriched with U-235 relative to U-238, so the U-238 continues to serve as a denaturation agent for any U-235 produced by plutonium decay. One solution to this problem
4495-467: A storage pad where spent radioactive fuel canisters would be cooled before being sealed in a maze of tunnels. The discovery required several structures to be moved several hundred feet further to the east, and drew criticism from Robert R. Loux, then head of the Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects , who argues that Yucca administrators should have known about the fault line's location years prior, and called
Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository - Misplaced Pages Continue
4640-711: A timetable and procedure for establishing a permanent, underground repository for high-level radioactive waste by the mid-1990s, and provided for some temporary federal storage of waste, including spent fuel from civilian nuclear reactors . State governments were authorized to veto a national government decision to place a waste repository within their borders, and the veto would stand unless both houses of Congress voted to override it. The Act also called for developing plans by 1985 to build monitored retrievable storage (MRS) facilities, where wastes could be kept for 50 to 100 years or more and then be removed for permanent disposal or for reprocessing. Congress assigned responsibility to
4785-713: A waste facility within their borders. The Nuclear Waste Fund previously received $ 750 million in fee revenues each year and had an unspent balance of $ 44.5 billion as of the end of FY2017. However (according to the Draft Report by the Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future ), actions by both Congress and the Executive Branch have made the money in the fund effectively inaccessible to serving its original purpose. The commission made several recommendations on how this situation may be corrected. In late 2013,
4930-505: Is alpha particle -emitting matter from the decay chains of uranium and thorium. The main source of radiation in the human body is potassium -40 ( K ), typically 17 milligrams in the body at a time and 0.4 milligrams/day intake. Most rocks, especially granite , have a low level of radioactivity due to the potassium-40, thorium and uranium contained. Usually ranging from 1 millisievert (mSv) to 13 mSv annually depending on location, average radiation exposure from natural radioisotopes
5075-434: Is reactor-grade plutonium . In addition to plutonium-239 , which is highly suitable for building nuclear weapons, it contains large amounts of undesirable contaminants: plutonium-240 , plutonium-241 , and plutonium-238 . These isotopes are extremely difficult to separate, and more cost-effective ways of obtaining fissile material exist (e.g., uranium enrichment or dedicated plutonium production reactors). High-level waste
5220-482: Is 2.0 mSv per person a year worldwide. This makes up the majority of typical total dosage (with mean annual exposure from other sources amounting to 0.6 mSv from medical tests averaged over the whole populace, 0.4 mSv from cosmic rays , 0.005 mSv from the legacy of past atmospheric nuclear testing, 0.005 mSv occupational exposure, 0.002 mSv from the Chernobyl disaster , and 0.0002 mSv from
5365-496: Is a fertile material that can undergo a neutron capture reaction and two beta minus decays, resulting in the production of fissile U-233 . The SNF of a cycle with thorium will contain U-233. Its radioactive decay will strongly influence the long-term activity curve of the SNF for around a million years. A comparison of the activity associated to U-233 for three different SNF types can be seen in
5510-406: Is a fissile material used in nuclear bombs, plus some material with much higher specific activities, such as Pu-238 or Po. In the past the neutron trigger for an atomic bomb tended to be beryllium and a high activity alpha emitter such as polonium ; an alternative to polonium is Pu-238 . For reasons of national security, details of the design of modern nuclear bombs are normally not released to
5655-424: Is a gamma emitter (increasing external-exposure to workers) and is an alpha emitter which can cause the generation of heat . The plutonium could be separated from the americium by several different processes; these would include pyrochemical processes and aqueous/organic solvent extraction . A truncated PUREX type extraction process would be one possible method of making the separation. Naturally occurring uranium
5800-663: Is a result of many activities, including nuclear medicine , nuclear research , nuclear power generation, nuclear decommissioning , rare-earth mining, and nuclear weapons reprocessing. The storage and disposal of radioactive waste is regulated by government agencies in order to protect human health and the environment. Radioactive waste is broadly classified into 3 categories: low-level waste (LLW), such as paper, rags, tools, clothing, which contain small amounts of mostly short-lived radioactivity; intermediate-level waste (ILW), which contains higher amounts of radioactivity and requires some shielding; and high-level waste (HLW), which
5945-418: Is any hydraulic pressure from groundwater infiltration into disturbed underground geologic structures. Historical attempts to seal smaller bore holes created during exploration for oil, gas, and water are notorious for their high failure rates, often in periods less than 50 years. Radioactive waste Radioactive waste is a type of hazardous waste that contains radioactive material . Radioactive waste
Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository - Misplaced Pages Continue
6090-489: Is closed. Dose assessments were to continue beyond 10,000 years and be placed in DOE's Environmental Impact Statement , but were not subject to a compliance standard. The 10,000-year period for compliance assessment is consistent with EPA's generally applicable standards developed under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act . It also reflects international guidance regarding the level of confidence that can be placed in numerical projections over very long periods of time. Shortly after
6235-611: Is full of highly radioactive fission products , most of which are relatively short-lived. This is a concern since if the waste is stored, perhaps in deep geological storage, over many years the fission products decay, decreasing the radioactivity of the waste and making the plutonium easier to access. The undesirable contaminant Pu-240 decays faster than the Pu-239, and thus the quality of the bomb material increases with time (although its quantity decreases during that time as well). Thus, some have argued, as time passes, these deep storage areas have
6380-516: Is generated from hospitals and industry, as well as the nuclear fuel cycle . Low-level wastes include paper, rags, tools, clothing, filters, and other materials which contain small amounts of mostly short-lived radioactivity. Materials that originate from any region of an Active Area are commonly designated as LLW as a precautionary measure even if there is only a remote possibility of being contaminated with radioactive materials. Such LLW typically exhibits no higher radioactivity than one would expect from
6525-477: Is harmful to humans and the environment. Different isotopes emit different types and levels of radiation, which last for different periods of time. The radioactivity of all radioactive waste weakens with time. All radionuclides contained in the waste have a half-life —the time it takes for half of the atoms to decay into another nuclide . Eventually, all radioactive waste decays into non-radioactive elements (i.e., stable nuclides ). Since radioactive decay follows
6670-560: Is highly radioactive and hot due to decay heat, thus requiring cooling and shielding. In nuclear reprocessing plants, about 96% of spent nuclear fuel is recycled back into uranium-based and mixed-oxide (MOX) fuels . The residual 4% is minor actinides and fission products , the latter of which are a mixture of stable and quickly decaying (most likely already having decayed in the spent fuel pool ) elements, medium lived fission products such as strontium-90 and caesium-137 and finally seven long-lived fission products with half lives in
6815-429: Is important to distinguish the processing of uranium to make fuel from the reprocessing of used fuel. Used fuel contains the highly radioactive products of fission (see high-level waste below). Many of these are neutron absorbers, called neutron poisons in this context. These eventually build up to a level where they absorb so many neutrons that the chain reaction stops, even with the control rods completely removed from
6960-591: Is not fissile because it contains 99.3% of U-238 and only 0.7% of U-235. Due to historic activities typically related to the radium industry, uranium mining, and military programs, numerous sites contain or are contaminated with radioactivity. In the United States alone, the Department of Energy (DOE) states there are "millions of gallons of radioactive waste" as well as "thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel and material" and also "huge quantities of contaminated soil and water." Despite copious quantities of waste, in 2007,
7105-429: Is not subject to budget rules and allows Congress to ignore the nuclear waste issue since payments therefrom do not have any impact on yearly spending for other programs. The purpose of the Yucca Mountain project is to comply with the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 and develop a national site for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste storage. The management and operating contractor as of April 1, 2009 for
7250-423: Is produced by nuclear reactors and the reprocessing of nuclear fuel. The exact definition of HLW differs internationally. After a nuclear fuel rod serves one fuel cycle and is removed from the core, it is considered HLW. Spent fuel rods contain mostly uranium with fission products and transuranic elements generated in the reactor core . Spent fuel is highly radioactive and often hot. HLW accounts for over 95% of
7395-423: Is protection at the level of the most stringent radiation regulations in the U.S. today. From 10,000 to one million years, EPA established a dose limit of 100 millirem per year. EPA's rule requires DOE to show that Yucca Mountain can safely contain wastes, considering the effects of earthquakes, volcanic activity , climate change , and container corrosion , over one million years. The current analysis indicates that
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#17328839184337540-520: Is refined from yellowcake (U 3 O 8 ), then converted to uranium hexafluoride gas (UF 6 ). As a gas, it undergoes enrichment to increase the U-235 content from 0.7% to about 4.4% (LEU). It is then turned into a hard ceramic oxide (UO 2 ) for assembly as reactor fuel elements. The main by-product of enrichment is depleted uranium (DU), principally the U-238 isotope, with a U-235 content of ~0.3%. It
7685-432: Is stored, either as UF 6 or as U 3 O 8 . Some is used in applications where its extremely high density makes it valuable such as anti-tank shells , and on at least one occasion even a sailboat keel . It is also used with plutonium for making mixed oxide fuel (MOX) and to dilute, or downblend , highly enriched uranium from weapons stockpiles which is now being redirected to become reactor fuel. The back-end of
7830-404: Is the by-product of reprocessing spent fuel to produce fissile material for nuclear weapons. In 1982, Congress established a national policy to solve the problem of nuclear waste disposal. This policy is a federal law called the Nuclear Waste Policy Act , which made the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) responsible for finding a site, building, and operating an underground disposal facility called
7975-426: Is to recycle the plutonium and use it as a fuel e.g. in fast reactors . In pyrometallurgical fast reactors , the separated plutonium and uranium are contaminated by actinides and cannot be used for nuclear weapons. Waste from nuclear weapons decommissioning is unlikely to contain much beta or gamma activity other than tritium and americium . It is more likely to contain alpha-emitting actinides such as Pu-239 which
8120-568: Is very difficult to satisfy these requirements for the simple reason that we have had no practical experience with such a long term project. Moreover permanently guarded storage requires a society with unprecedented stability." Thus, Alfvén identified two fundamental prerequisites for effective management of high-level radioactive waste: (1) stable geological formations, and (2) stable human institutions over hundreds of thousands of years. However, no known human civilization has ever endured for so long. Moreover, no geologic formation of adequate size for
8265-437: Is widely opposed in Nevada and is a hotly debated national topic. A two-thirds majority of Nevadans believe it is unfair for their state to have to store nuclear waste when there are no nuclear power plants in Nevada. Many Nevadans' opposition stemmed from the so-called "Screw Nevada Bill," the 1987 legislation halting study of Hanford and Texas as potential sites for the waste before conclusions could be made. The county containing
8410-723: The Las Vegas Valley . The project was approved in 2002 by the 107th United States Congress , but the 112th Congress ended federal funding for the site via amendment to the Department of Defense and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act , passed on April 14, 2011, during the Obama administration . The project has encountered many difficulties and was highly contested by the public, the Western Shoshone peoples, and many politicians. The project also faces strong state and regional opposition. The Government Accountability Office stated that
8555-469: The PUREX -process disposes of them as waste together with the fission products. The waste is subsequently converted into a glass-like ceramic for storage in a deep geological repository . The time radioactive waste must be stored depends on the type of waste and radioactive isotopes it contains. Short-term approaches to radioactive waste storage have been segregation and storage on the surface or near-surface of
8700-463: The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to site, construct, operate, and close a repository for the disposal of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was directed to set public health and safety standards for releases of radioactive materials from a repository, and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) was required to promulgate regulations governing construction, operation, and closure of
8845-406: The 10,000-year regulatory compliance period. Rises in the water table caused by seismic activity would be, at most, a few tens of meters and would not reach the repository. The fractured and faulted volcanic tuff that Yucca Mountain comprises reflects the occurrence of many earthquake-faulting and strong ground motion events during the last several million years, and the hydrological characteristics of
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#17328839184338990-474: The 1982 Act, DOE had narrowed down the search for the first nuclear-waste repository to three Western states: Nevada, Washington, and Texas. The amendment repealed provisions in the 1982 law calling for a second repository in the eastern United States. No one from Nevada participated on the House–Senate conference committee on reconciliation. The amendment explicitly named Yucca Mountain as the only site that DOE
9135-522: The Act. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act required the Secretary of Energy to issue guidelines for selection of sites for construction of two permanent, underground nuclear waste repositories. DOE was to study five potential sites, and then recommend three to the President by January 1, 1985. Five additional sites were to be studied and three of them recommended to the president by July 1, 1989, as possible locations for
9280-666: The DOE has successfully completed cleanup, or at least closure, of several sites. Radioactive medical waste tends to contain beta particle and gamma ray emitters. It can be divided into two main classes. In diagnostic nuclear medicine a number of short-lived gamma emitters such as technetium-99m are used. Many of these can be disposed of by leaving it to decay for a short time before disposal as normal waste. Other isotopes used in medicine, with half-lives in parentheses, include: Industrial source waste can contain alpha, beta , neutron or gamma emitters. Gamma emitters are used in radiography while neutron emitting sources are used in
9425-555: The DOE proposed March 31, 2017, as the date to open the facility and begin accepting waste based on full funding. On September 8, 2006, Bush nominated Ward (Edward) Sproat, a nuclear industry executive formerly of PECO energy in Pennsylvania, to lead the Yucca Mountain Project. Following the 2006 midterm congressional elections, Harry Reid , a longtime opponent of the repository, became the Senate Majority Leader , putting him in
9570-524: The DOE requested $ 120 million and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) $ 30 million from Congress to continue licensing activities for the Yucca Mountain Repository. For fiscal year 2019, the DOE again requested $ 120 million while the NRC increased its request to $ 47.7 million. Congress provided no funding for the remainder of fiscal year 2018. In May 2019, Representative John Shimkus reintroduced
9715-569: The DOE stated a goal of cleaning all presently contaminated sites successfully by 2025. The Fernald , Ohio site for example had "31 million pounds of uranium product", "2.5 billion pounds of waste", "2.75 million cubic yards of contaminated soil and debris", and a "223 acre portion of the underlying Great Miami Aquifer had uranium levels above drinking standards." The United States has at least 108 sites designated as areas that are contaminated and unusable, sometimes many thousands of acres. The DOE wishes to clean or mitigate many or all by 2025, using
9860-417: The DOE to take the next step in establishing a safe repository in which to store nuclear waste. The DOE was to begin accepting spent fuel at the Yucca Mountain Repository by January 31, 1998, but did not do so because of a series of delays due to legal challenges, concerns over how to transport nuclear waste to the facility, and political pressure resulting in underfunding of the construction. On July 18, 2006,
10005-617: The DOE's Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM) released a report confirming the technical soundness of infiltration modeling work performed by U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) employees. In March 2006, the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works Majority Staff issued a 25-page white paper , "Yucca Mountain: The Most Studied Real Estate on the Planet." The conclusions were: On January 18, 2006, DOE OCRWM announced that it would designate Sandia National Laboratories as its lead laboratory to integrate repository science work for
10150-581: The EPA first established these standards in 2001, the nuclear industry, several environmental and public interest groups, and the State of Nevada challenged the standards in court. In July 2004, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found in favor of the EPA on all counts except one: the 10,000 year regulatory time frame. The court ruled that EPA's 10,000-year compliance period for isolation of radioactive waste
10295-638: The License Application for submission on June 3, 2008. During his 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised to abandon the project. After his election, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told Obama he did not have the ability to do so. On April 23, 2009, Lindsey Graham and eight other U.S. senators introduced legislation to provide "rebates" from a $ 30 billion federally managed fund into which nuclear power plants had been paying, so as to refund all collected funds if Congress canceled
10440-542: The MOX fuel results in a lower activity in region 3 of the figure at the bottom right, whereas for RGPu and WGPu the curve is maintained higher due to the presence of U-233 that has not fully decayed. Nuclear reprocessing can remove the actinides from the spent fuel so they can be used or destroyed (see Long-lived fission product § Actinides ). Since uranium and plutonium are nuclear weapons materials, there are proliferation concerns. Ordinarily (in spent nuclear fuel), plutonium
10585-469: The NWPA. In late February 2010, multiple lawsuits were proposed and/or being filed in various federal courts across the country to contest the legality of Chu's direction to DOE to withdraw the license application. These lawsuits were evidently foreseen as eventually being necessary to enforce the NWPA because Section 119 of the NWPA provides for federal court interventions if the President, Secretary of Energy, or
10730-471: The Nuclear Regulatory Commission fail to uphold the NWPA. Hannes Alfvén , Nobel laureate in physics, described the as-yet-unresolved dilemma of permanent radioactive waste disposal : "The problem is how to keep radioactive waste in storage until it decays after hundreds of thousands of years. The [geologic] deposit must be absolutely reliable as the quantities of poison are tremendous. It
10875-446: The Nuclear Waste Policy Act and directed DOE to study only Yucca Mountain, which is adjacent to the former nuclear test site. The Act provided that if during site characterization Yucca Mountain was found unsuitable, studies would stop immediately. This option expired when Reagan actually recommended the site. On July 23, 2002, President George W. Bush signed House Joint Resolution 87 ( Pub. L. 107–200 (text) (PDF) ), allowing
11020-493: The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1987 and, after review, President George W. Bush submitted the recommendation to Congress for its approval. Nevada exercised its state veto in April 2002, but the veto was overridden by both houses of Congress by mid-July 2002. In 2004, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld a challenge by Nevada, ruling that EPA's 10,000-year compliance period for isolation of radioactive waste
11165-408: The Pu-239; due to the relatively long half-life of these Pu isotopes, these wastes from radioactive decay of bomb core material would be very small, and in any case, far less dangerous (even in terms of simple radioactivity) than the Pu-239 itself. The beta decay of Pu-241 forms Am-241 ; the in-growth of americium is likely to be a greater problem than the decay of Pu-239 and Pu-240 as the americium
11310-1087: The Radioactive Waste Safety Standards (RADWASS), also plays a significant role. The proportion of various types of waste generated in the UK: Uranium tailings are waste by-product materials left over from the rough processing of uranium-bearing ore . They are not significantly radioactive. Mill tailings are sometimes referred to as 11(e)2 wastes , from the section of the US Atomic Energy Act of 1946 that defines them. Uranium mill tailings typically also contain chemically hazardous heavy metal such as lead and arsenic . Vast mounds of uranium mill tailings are left at many old mining sites, especially in Colorado , New Mexico , and Utah . Although mill tailings are not very radioactive, they have long half-lives. Mill tailings often contain radium, thorium and trace amounts of uranium. Low-level waste (LLW)
11455-472: The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) reviewed options other than Yucca Mountain for a high-level waste repository . The Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future , established by the Secretary of Energy , released its final report in January 2012. It detailed an urgent need to find a site suitable for constructing a consolidated geological repository, stating that any future facility should be developed by
11600-406: The U.S. Federal Register a final rule in 2009. The rule limits radiation doses from Yucca Mountain for up to 1,000,000 years after it closes. Within that regulatory time frame, the EPA has two dose standards that would apply based on the number of years from the time the facility is closed. For the first 10,000 years, the EPA would retain the 2001 final rule's dose limit of 15 millirem per year. This
11745-505: The United States. U.S. Department of Energy guidelines for selecting locations for permanent deep-geologic high-level radioactive waste repositories required containment of waste within waste packages for only 300 years. A site would be disqualified from further consideration only if groundwater travel time from the "disturbed zone" of the underground facility to the "accessible environment" (atmosphere, land surface, surface water, oceans or lithosphere extending no more than 10 kilometers from
11890-443: The Yucca Mountain Project. "We believe that establishing Sandia as our lead laboratory is an important step in our new path forward. The independent, expert review that the scientists at Sandia will perform will help ensure that the technical and scientific basis for the Yucca Mountain repository is without question," OCRWM's Acting Director Paul Golan said. "Sandia has unique experience in managing scientific investigations in support of
12035-469: The Yucca Mountain Repository. In May 2021, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said that Yucca Mountain would not be part of the Biden administration's plans for nuclear-waste disposal. She anticipated announcing the department's next steps "in the coming months". Spent nuclear fuel is the radioactive by-product of electricity generation at commercial nuclear power plants, and high-level radioactive waste
12180-639: The ash content of 'dirty' coals. The more active ash minerals become concentrated in the fly ash precisely because they do not burn well. The radioactivity of fly ash is about the same as black shale and is less than phosphate rocks, but is more of a concern because a small amount of the fly ash ends up in the atmosphere where it can be inhaled. According to U.S. National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP) reports, population exposure from 1000-MWe power plants amounts to 490 person-rem/year for coal power plants, 100 times as great as nuclear power plants (4.8 person-rem/year). The exposure from
12325-448: The back end of the fuel cycle is especially relevant when designing a complete waste management plan for SNF. When looking at long-term radioactive decay, the actinides in the SNF have a significant influence due to their characteristically long half-lives. Depending on what a nuclear reactor is fueled with, the actinide composition in the SNF will be different. An example of this effect is the use of nuclear fuels with thorium . Th-232
12470-475: The capacity of the repository to 63,000 metric tons (62,000 long tons; 69,000 short tons) of initial heavy metal in commercial spent fuel. The 104 U.S. commercial reactors then operating were expected to produce this quantity of spent fuel by 2014, assuming that the spent fuel rods are not reprocessed. Currently, the US has no civil reprocessing plant. By 2008, Yucca Mountain was one of the most studied pieces of geology in
12615-589: The closure was for political, not technical or safety reasons. This leaves the United States government (which disposes of its transuranic waste from nuclear weapons production 2,150 feet (660 m) below the surface at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico) and American nuclear power plants without any designated long-term storage for their high-level radioactive waste (spent fuel) stored on-site in steel and concrete casks ( dry cask storage ) at 76 reactor sites in 34 states. Under President Barack Obama ,
12760-452: The complete nuclear fuel cycle from mining to waste disposal is 136 person-rem/year; the corresponding value for coal use from mining to waste disposal is "probably unknown". Residues from the oil and gas industry often contain radium and its decay products. The sulfate scale from an oil well can be radium rich, while the water, oil, and gas from a well often contain radon . The radon decays to form solid radioisotopes which form coatings on
12905-578: The construction of a MRS facility at the Clinch River Breeder Reactor Site in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Following considerable public pressure and threat of veto by the Governor of Tennessee, the 1987 amendments to the NWPA "annulled and revoked" MRS plans for all of the proposed sites. There are carefully selected geological locations that build places specifically for disposing nuclear waste in
13050-512: The country as being unauthorized by the NWPA. The costly nuclear accident in 2014 at the New Mexico Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in which a nuclear waste container exploded has caused doubt that it could serve as an alternative for Yucca Mountain. In January 2019, Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak vowed that "not one ounce" of nuclear waste would be allowed at Yucca Mountain, and a May funding bill did not include funding for
13195-425: The decay mode and the pharmacokinetics of an element (how the body processes it and how quickly), the threat due to exposure to a given activity of a radioisotope will differ. For instance, iodine-131 is a short-lived beta and gamma emitter, but because it concentrates in the thyroid gland, it is more able to cause injury than caesium -137 which, being water soluble , is rapidly excreted through urine. In
13340-604: The earth. Burial in a deep geological repository is a favored solution for long-term storage of high-level waste, while re-use and transmutation are favored solutions for reducing the HLW inventory. Boundaries to recycling of spent nuclear fuel are regulatory and economic as well as the issue of radioactive contamination if chemical separation processes cannot achieve a very high purity. Furthermore, elements may be present in both useful and troublesome isotopes, which would require costly and energy intensive isotope separation for their use –
13485-499: The end of fiscal year 2010 due to zero funding in the 2011 budget for the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management. Sandia National Laboratories was responsible for post-closure analysis and ensuring compliance with the NWPA. The main tunnel of the Exploratory Studies Facility is U-shaped, 5 mi (8.0 km) long and 25 ft (7.6 m) wide. There are also several cathedral-like alcoves that branch from
13630-411: The figure on the top right. The burnt fuels are thorium with reactor-grade plutonium (RGPu), thorium with weapons-grade plutonium (WGPu), and Mixed oxide fuel (MOX, no thorium). For RGPu and WGPu, the initial amount of U-233 and its decay for around a million years can be seen. This has an effect on the total activity curve of the three fuel types. The initial absence of U-233 and its daughter products in
13775-567: The fuel are a concentrated form of high-level waste as are the chemicals used in the process. While most countries reprocess the fuel carrying out single plutonium cycles, India is planning multiple plutonium recycling schemes and Russia pursues closed cycle. The use of different fuels in nuclear reactors results in different spent nuclear fuel (SNF) composition, with varying activity curves. The most abundant material being U-238 with other uranium isotopes, other actinides, fission products and activation products. Long-lived radioactive waste from
13920-416: The half-life rule, the rate of decay is inversely proportional to the duration of decay. In other words, the radiation from a long-lived isotope like iodine-129 will be much less intense than that of a short-lived isotope like iodine-131 . The two tables show some of the major radioisotopes, their half-lives, and their radiation yield as a proportion of the yield of fission of uranium-235. The energy and
14065-846: The human environment. Current policy relinquishes control over radioactive materials to geohydrologic processes at repository closure. Existing models of these processes are empirically underdetermined, meaning there is not much evidence they are accurate. DOE guidelines contain no requirements for permanent offsite or onsite monitoring after closure. This may seem imprudent, considering repositories will contain millions of dollars worth of spent reactor fuel that might be reprocessed and used again either in reactors generating electricity, in weapons applications, or possibly in terrorist activities. Technology for permanently sealing large-bore-hole walls against water infiltration or fracture does not currently exist. Previous experiences sealing mine tunnels and shafts have not been entirely successful, especially where there
14210-411: The hundreds of thousands to millions of years. The minor actinides meanwhile are heavy elements other than uranium and plutonium which are created by neutron capture . Their half lives range from years to millions of years and as alpha emitters they are particularly radiotoxic. While there are proposed – and to a much lesser extent current – uses of all those elements, commercial scale reprocessing using
14355-412: The inside of pipework. In an oil processing plant, the area of the plant where propane is processed is often one of the more contaminated areas of the plant as radon has a similar boiling point to propane. Radioactive elements are an industrial problem in some oil wells where workers operating in direct contact with the crude oil and brine can be exposed to doses having negative health effects. Due to
14500-406: The law. Nuclear waste from defense activities was exempted from most provisions of the Act, which required that if military waste were put into a civilian repository, the government would pay its pro rata share of the cost of development, construction, and operation of the repository. The Act authorized impact assistance payments to states or Indian tribes to offset any costs resulting from location of
14645-468: The law. The fee ended May 16, 2014. Lacking an operating repository, the federal government initially paid utility companies somewhere between $ 300 and $ 500 million per year in compensation for failing to comply with the contract it signed to take the spent nuclear fuel by 1998. For the ten years after 2015, it is estimated to cost taxpayers $ 24 billion in payments from the Judgment Fund. The Judgment Fund
14790-478: The long-term custody problem. Pyroelectric refining, as perfected at EBR-II , separates essentially all actinides from fission products. U.S. DOE Research on pyroelectric refining and fast neutron reactors was stopped in 1994. Current repository closure plans require backfilling of waste disposal rooms, tunnels, and shafts with rubble from initial excavation and sealing openings at the surface, but do not require complete or perpetual isolation of radioactive waste from
14935-499: The main tunnel. Most of the scientific experiments were conducted in these alcoves. The emplacement drifts (smaller-diameter tunnels branching off the main tunnel) where waste would have been stored were not constructed since they required authorization from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The repository has a statutory limit of 77,000 metric tons (85,000 short tons). To store that much waste would have required 40 miles (64 km) of tunnels. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act further limits
15080-649: The movement of the structures "just-in-time engineering." Nuclear Waste Policy Act During the first 40 years that nuclear waste was being created in the United States , no legislation was enacted to manage its disposal. Nuclear waste, some of which remains radioactive with a half-life of more than one million years, was kept in various types of temporary storage. Of particular concern during nuclear waste disposal are two long-lived fission products, Tc-99 (half-life 220,000 years) and I-129 (half-life 17 million years), which dominate spent fuel radioactivity after
15225-646: The nation. An estimated 10,000 metric tons (9,800 long tons; 11,000 short tons) of the waste would be from U.S. military nuclear programs. On December 19, 1984, the DOE selected ten locations in six states for consideration as potential repository sites, based on data collected for nearly ten years. The ten sites were studied and results of these preliminary studies were reported in 1985. Based on these reports, President Ronald Reagan approved three sites for intensive scientific study called site characterization. The three sites were Hanford, Washington ; Deaf Smith County, Texas ; and Yucca Mountain. In 1987, Congress amended
15370-433: The national government to take ownership of all nuclear waste or spent fuel at the reactor site, transport it to the repository, and thereafter be responsible for its containment. The Act authorized DOE to provide up to 1,900 metric tons of temporary storage capacity for spent fuel from civilian nuclear reactors. It required that spent fuel in temporary storage facilities be moved to permanent storage within three years after
15515-565: The nature of the chemical compound which contains the radioisotope. No fission products have a half-life in the range of 100 a–210 ka ... ... nor beyond 15.7 Ma Radioactive waste comes from a number of sources. In countries with nuclear power plants, nuclear armament, or nuclear fuel treatment plants, the majority of waste originates from the nuclear fuel cycle and nuclear weapons reprocessing. Other sources include medical and industrial wastes, as well as naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM) that can be concentrated as
15660-886: The north of Scotland is the Dounreay site which is prepared to withstand a 4m tsunami. [1] Some high-activity LLW requires shielding during handling and transport but most LLW is suitable for shallow land burial. To reduce its volume, it is often compacted or incinerated before disposal. Low-level waste is divided into four classes: class A , class B , class C , and Greater Than Class C ( GTCC ). Intermediate-level waste (ILW) contains higher amounts of radioactivity compared to low-level waste. It generally requires shielding, but not cooling. Intermediate-level wastes includes resins , chemical sludge and metal nuclear fuel cladding, as well as contaminated materials from reactor decommissioning. It may be solidified in concrete or bitumen or mixed with silica sand and vitrified for disposal. As
15805-573: The nuclear fuel cycle). TENORM is not regulated as restrictively as nuclear reactor waste, though there are no significant differences in the radiological risks of these materials. Coal contains a small amount of radioactive uranium, barium, thorium, and potassium, but, in the case of pure coal, this is significantly less than the average concentration of those elements in the Earth's crust . The surrounding strata, if shale or mudstone, often contain slightly more than average and this may also be reflected in
15950-491: The nuclear fuel cycle, mostly spent fuel rods , contains fission products that emit beta and gamma radiation, and actinides that emit alpha particles , such as uranium-234 (half-life 245 thousand years), neptunium-237 (2.144 million years), plutonium-238 (87.7 years) and americium-241 (432 years), and even sometimes some neutron emitters such as californium (half-life of 898 years for californium-251). These isotopes are formed in nuclear reactors . It
16095-513: The objection. If the governor's objection had stood, the project would have been abandoned and a new site chosen. In August 2004, the repository became an election issue when U.S. Senator John Kerry said he would abandon the plans if elected. In March 2005, the U.S. Energy and Interior departments revealed that several U.S. Geological Survey hydrologists had exchanged emails discussing possible falsification of quality assurance documents on water infiltration research. On February 17, 2006,
16240-440: The open literature. Some designs might contain a radioisotope thermoelectric generator using Pu-238 to provide a long-lasting source of electrical power for the electronics in the device. It is likely that the fissile material of an old nuclear bomb, which is due for refitting, will contain decay products of the plutonium isotopes used in it. These are likely to include U-236 from Pu-240 impurities plus some U-235 from decay of
16385-564: The opposition. But for large projects that would take decades to complete, there is every chance that sustained local opposition will prevail, and this happened with the Yucca Mountain project. Successful nuclear waste storage siting efforts in Scandinavia have involved local communities in the decision-making process and given them a veto at each stage, but this did not happen with Yucca Mountain. Local communities at potential storage and repository sites "should have early and continued involvement in
16530-402: The potential to become "plutonium mines", from which material for nuclear weapons can be acquired with relatively little difficulty. Critics of the latter idea have pointed out the difficulty of recovering useful material from sealed deep storage areas makes other methods preferable. Specifically, high radioactivity and heat (80 °C in surrounding rock) greatly increase the difficulty of mining
16675-406: The predicted containment failure of the waste containers, these cracks may provide a route for movement of radioactive waste that dissolves in the water flowing downward from the desert surface. Officials state that the waste containers will be stored in such a way as to minimize or even nearly eliminate this possibility. The area around Yucca Mountain received much more rain in the geologic past and
16820-456: The process, including funding that would allow them to retain technical experts". On March 5, 2009, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu reiterated in a Senate hearing that the Yucca Mountain site was no longer considered an option for storing reactor waste. On March 3, 2010, the DOE filed a motion with the NRC to withdraw its license application, but multiple lawsuits to stop this action have been filed by states, counties, and individuals across
16965-465: The production of nuclear weapons and from research activities in temporary storage. The facility's cost is being paid for by a combination of a tax on each kilowatt hour of nuclear power and by taxpayers for disposal of weapons and naval nuclear waste. Based on the 2001 cost estimate, about 73% is funded by consumers of nuclear-powered electricity and 27% by taxpayers. The Total System Life Cycle Cost Director Sproat presented to Congress on July 15, 2008,
17110-432: The project is USA Repository Services (USA-RS), a wholly owned subsidiary of URS Corporation (now part of AECOM) with supporting principal subcontractors Shaw Corporation (now part of McDermott International Inc.) and Areva Federal Services LLC (now Orano federal services business). After the layoff of 800 employees on March 31, 2009, about 100 employees remained on the project until all technical staff were laid off by
17255-533: The project. In November 2013, in response to a lawsuit filed by the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners and the Nuclear Energy Institute , the U.S. court of appeals ruled that nuclear utilities may stop paying into the nuclear waste recovery fund until either the DOE follows the Nuclear Waste Policy Act, which designates Yucca Mountain as the repository, or Congress changes
17400-498: The proposed facility, Nye County, supports the repository's development, as do six adjoining counties. A 2015 survey of Nevadans found 55% agreeing that the state should be open to discussion of what benefits could be received. One point of concern has been the standard of radiation emission in 10,000 to 1,000,000 years. On August 9, 2005, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed
17545-566: The radiation. It lies along the transition between the Mojave and the Great Basin Deserts . The volcanic tuff at Yucca Mountain is appreciably fractured and movement of water through an aquifer below the waste repository is primarily through fractures. While the fractures are usually confined to individual layers of tuff, the faults extend from the planned storage area all the way to the water table 600 to 1,500 ft (180 to 460 m) below
17690-477: The recently developed method of geomelting , however the task can be difficult and it acknowledges that some may never be completely remediated. In just one of these 108 larger designations, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), there were for example at least "167 known contaminant release sites" in one of the three subdivisions of the 37,000-acre (150 km ) site. Some of the U.S. sites were smaller in nature, however, cleanup issues were simpler to address, and
17835-588: The relatively high concentration of these elements in the brine, its disposal is also a technological challenge. Since the 1980s, in the United States, the brine is however exempt from the dangerous waste regulations and can be disposed of regardless of radioactive or toxic substances content. Due to natural occurrence of radioactive elements such as thorium and radium in rare-earth ore , mining operations also result in production of waste and mineral deposits that are slightly radioactive. Classification of radioactive waste varies by country. The IAEA, which publishes
17980-409: The repository will cause less than 1 mrem/year public dose for 1,000,000 years. The formation that makes up Yucca Mountain was created by several large eruptions from a caldera volcano and is composed of alternating layers of ignimbrite (welded tuff), non-welded tuff, and semi-welded tuff. The tuff surrounding the burial sites is expected to protect human health as it provides a natural barrier to
18125-492: The rock would not be changed significantly by seismic events that may occur in the next 10,000 years. The engineered barrier system components will reportedly provide substantial protection of the waste from seepage water, even under severe seismic loading . In September 2007, it was discovered that the Bow Ridge fault line ran underneath the facility, hundreds of feet east of where it was originally thought to be located, beneath
18270-452: The same material disposed of in a non-active area, such as a normal office block. Example LLW includes wiping rags, mops, medical tubes, laboratory animal carcasses, and more. LLW makes up 94% of all radioactive waste volume in the UK. Most of it is disposed of in Cumbria , first in landfill style trenches, and now using grouted metal containers that are stacked in concrete vaults. A new site in
18415-453: The selection of Oak Ridge Associated Universities / Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (a not-for-profit consortium that includes 96 doctoral degree-granting institutions and 11 associate member universities) to provide expert reviews of scientific and technical work on the Yucca Mountain Project. DOE stated that the project "will be based on sound science. By bringing in Oak Ridge for review of technical work, DOE will seek to present
18560-579: The site. In May 2019, the Reno Gazette-Journal published a long-form essay cataloging opposition to the Yucca Mountain project. According to a tribal elder, the Western Shoshone view Yucca Mountain as sacred and believe a nuclear storage facility "will poison everything. It's people's life, our Mother Earth's life, all the living things here, all the creatures; whatever's crawling around, it's their life too." The tribes say they lack funds to discredit federal safety claims, but will be directly affected by
18705-486: The sites. It barred construction of a MRS facility in a state under consideration for a permanent waste repository. The DOE in 1985 recommended an integral MRS facility. Of the eleven sites identified within the preferred geographic region, the DOE selected three sites in Tennessee for further study. In March 1987, after more than a year of legal action in the federal courts, the DOE submitted its final proposal to Congress for
18850-476: The size of the Yucca Mountain repository to a capacity of 135,000 metric tons (149,000 short tons), or 300 million pounds. The tunnel boring machine (TBM) that excavated the main tunnel cost $ 13 million and was 400 ft (120 m) long when in operation. It now sits at its exit point at the South Portal (south entrance) of the facility. The short side tunnel alcoves were excavated using explosives. The DOE
18995-472: The standards to extend out to 1 million years. A license application was submitted in the summer of 2008 and is presently under review by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The Obama Administration rejected use of the site in the 2010 United States federal budget , which eliminated all funding except that needed to answer inquiries from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, "while the Administration devises
19140-539: The surface, so the standard applied to natural geologic pathways was more stringent than the standard applied to artificial pathways of radionuclide travel created during construction of the facility. Enrico Fermi described an alternative solution: Consume all actinides in fast neutron reactors, leaving only fission products requiring special custody for less than 300 years. This requires continuous fuel reprocessing. PUREX separates plutonium and uranium, but leaves other actinides with fission products, thereby not addressing
19285-456: The surface. Future water transport from the surface to waste containers is likely to be dominated by fractures. There is evidence that surface water has been transported down through the 700 ft (210 m) of overburden to the exploratory tunnel at Yucca Mountain in less than 50 years. The aquifer of Yucca Mountain drains to Amargosa Valley , home to over 1400 people and a number of endangered species. Some site opponents assert that, after
19430-637: The total radioactivity produced in the process of nuclear electricity generation but it contributes to less than 1% of volume of all radioactive waste produced in the UK. Overall, the 60-year-long nuclear program in the UK up until 2019 produced 2150 m of HLW. The radioactive waste from spent fuel rods consists primarily of cesium-137 and strontium-90, but it may also include plutonium, which can be considered transuranic waste. The half-lives of these radioactive elements can differ quite extremely. Some elements, such as cesium-137 and strontium-90 have half-lives of approximately 30 years. Meanwhile, plutonium has
19575-403: The type of the ionizing radiation emitted by a radioactive substance are also important factors in determining its threat to humans. The chemical properties of the radioactive element will determine how mobile the substance is and how likely it is to spread into the environment and contaminate humans. This is further complicated by the fact that many radioisotopes do not decay immediately to
19720-459: The underground facility) was expected to be less than 1,000 years along any pathway of radionuclide travel. Sites with groundwater travel time greater than 1,000 years from the original location to the human environment were considered potentially acceptable, even if the waste would be highly radioactive for 200,000 years or more. Moreover, the term "disturbed zone" was defined in the regulations to exclude shafts drilled into geologic structures from
19865-406: The veto could be overruled by a vote of both houses of Congress. The Act established a Nuclear Waste Fund composed of fees levied against electric utilities to pay for the costs of constructing and operating a permanent repository, and set the fee at one mill per kilowatt-hour of nuclear electricity generated. Utilities were charged a one-time fee for storage of spent fuel created before enactment of
20010-411: The water table was consequently much higher than it is today, though well below the level of the repository. The DOE has stated that seismic and tectonic effects on the natural systems at Yucca Mountain will not significantly affect repository performance . Yucca Mountain lies in a region of ongoing tectonic deformation, but the deformation rates are too slow to significantly affect the mountain during
20155-518: The world; between geologic studies and materials science, the United States had invested $ 9 billion in the project. This site studied by the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology (NBMG) differs substantially from other potential repositories because of its natural analogues of nuclear material, which are being studied. The DOE estimates that it has over 100 million gallons of highly radioactive waste and 2,500 metric tons (2,800 short tons) of spent fuel from
20300-418: Was $ 90 billion. This cost could not be compared to previous estimates since it included a repository capacity about twice as large as previously estimated over a much longer period of time (100 years vs. 30 years). Additionally, the cost of the project continued to escalate because of insufficient funding to most efficiently move forward and complete the project. By 2007, the DOE announced it was seeking to double
20445-403: Was not consistent with National Academy of Sciences (NAS) recommendations and was too short. The NAS report had recommended standards be set for the time of peak risk, which might approach a period of one million years. By limiting the compliance time to 10,000 years, EPA did not respect a statutory requirement that it develop standards consistent with NAS recommendations. The EPA published in
20590-409: Was not consistent with National Academy of Sciences (NAS) recommendations and was too short. The NAS report had recommended standards be set for the time of peak risk, which might approach a period of one million years. By limiting the compliance time to 10,000 years, EPA did not respect a statutory requirement that it develop standards consistent with NAS recommendations. The EPA subsequently revised
20735-420: Was required to review site recommendations and submit to Congress by March 31, 1987, his recommendation of one site for the first repository, and by March 31, 1990, his recommendation for a second repository. The amount of high-level waste or spent fuel that could be placed in the first repository was limited to the equivalent of 70,000 metric tons of heavy metal until a second repository was built. The Act required
20880-509: Was scheduled to begin accepting spent fuel at the Yucca Mountain repository by January 31, 1998 (26 years ago) ( 1998-01-31 ) . By 2010, years after this deadline, the future status of the repository at Yucca Mountain was still unknown due to ongoing litigation, and opposition by Senator Reid. Because of construction delays, a number of nuclear power plants in the United States have resorted to dry cask storage of waste on-site indefinitely in steel and concrete casks. The project
21025-407: Was to consider for a permanent repository for the nation's radioactive waste. Years of study and procedural steps remained. The amendment also authorized a monitored retrievable storage facility, but not until the permanent repository was licensed. Early in 2002, the Secretary of Energy recommended approval of Yucca Mountain for development of a repository based on the multiple factors as required in
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