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Nuclear Waste

Disposing of nuclear waste is inexpensive relative to the cost of nuclear power, but it is an issue that needs to be resolved.

Composition and Danger

Most nuclear waste, by volume, is low-level waste, such as contaminated clothing. By radioactivity, most is high-level waste: spent fuel, fission products, and the transuranic elements that result from neutron bombardment of uranium.

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Source: 1.

Low- and intermediate- level waste, possibly after being stored on-site for a time to allow the most radioactive products to decay, is disposed of at a low-level waste disposal site, of which there are eight in the United States 2. High-level waste is stored in spent fuel pools, typically for five years, and then dry casks onsite while the most radioactive products decay 2. The United States lacks a permanent solution to high-level waste, such as the geologic disposal that was proposed at Yucca Mountain.

The most dangerous components of high level waste decay within decades, but the material remains dangerously radioactive for tens of thousands of years, necessitating a long-term disposal solution.

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Source: 3.

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Source: 4. Isotopes with longer half-lives tend to release less radiation per unit mass and are less dangerous over a given time. Numbers in parentheses are the mass from fissioning a ton of uranium, and in brackets are half-lives in years.

Disposal Options

The nuclear industry needs to develop long-term solutions for waste management. There are several inexpensive options available relative to the cost of electricity.

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Sources: deep borehole disposal from Brady et al. 5, sub-seabed disposal from porter 6, reprocessing from Recktenwald and Deinert 7, and other options from the National Research Council 8 and the NEA and OECD 9. While more expensive, partioning and transmutation is the only option that (partially) destroys radioactive isotopes, rather than sequestering them, though residual waste would still need to be managed by another method 8. For most of the world, sub-seabed disposal would require revisions to international law 10. Reprocessing would save money on the fuel cycle by reducing the need for uranium mining, but is unlikely to be economically sound at today's uranium prices 11. Some other options, such as geological injection of liquified waste, or launching waste into the Sun, are probably infeasible 8.

Problem:
Nuclear Waste
Solution:
Deep Borehole Disposal

References

  1. World Nuclear Assocation. "What is nuclear waste, and what do we do with it?". Accessed October 17, 2021. ↩

  2. United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission. "Backgrounder on Radioactive Waste". June 2019. ↩ ↩2

  3. Nuclear Waste Management Organization. "Radiation Risk and Safety". Accessed October 17, 2021. ↩

  4. Radioactivity. "Spent fuel composition". European Union. Accessed October 17, 2021. ↩

  5. Brady, P., Arnold, B., Altman, S., Vaughn, P. "Deep Borehole Disposal of Nuclear Waste: Final Report". Sandia National Laboratories, Report SAND2012-7789. September 2012. ↩

  6. Porter, C. "Coming to an Ocean Far From You: Sub-Seabed Repositories". 15th International High-Level Radioactive Waste Management Conference, Charleston, SC, April 12-16, 2015. April 2015. ↩

  7. Recktenwald, G., Deinert, M. "Cost probability analysis of reprocessing spent nuclear fuel in the US". Energy Economics 34(6), pp. 1873-1881. August 2012. ↩

  8. National Research Council. Disposition of High-Level Waste and Spent Nuclear Fuel. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. 2001. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  9. Nuclear Energy Agency, Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. "Low-Level Radioactive Waste Depositories: An Analysis of Costs". 1999. ↩

  10. Bala, A. "Sub-Seabed Burial of Nuclear Waste: If the Disposal Method Could Succeed Technically, Could It Also Succeed Legally". Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review 41(2), Article 6. April 2014. ↩

  11. Bunn, M., Holdren, J., Fetter, S., Van der Zwaan, D. "The Economics of Reprocessing v. Direct Disposal of Spent Nuclear Fuel". Nuclear Technology 150(3), pp. 209-230. June 2005. ↩