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How Nuclear Waste is Stored

© Kenneth Friedman

When it comes to storing nuclear waste, you can sum up attitudes in one word: NIMBY. Not in my back yard. NIMBY presents quite a dilemma because on the one hand people like the benefits (medical and energy in particular) that come from using radioactive materials; on the other hand, they want somebody somewhere else to be responsible for storing wastes.

Maybe it's not so much that people don't want the waste stored as it is they don't trust any of the storage methods. What the heck. If the government can't adequately oversee the contractors at its Hanford, Wa.; Savannah River, Ga; Fernauld, Ohio; and other research facilities, how can anyone be trusted to store nuclear waste properly? It is unlikely there will ever be consensus about storage and the disagreements among and between experts and the public will go on for at least the half-life of radioactive material.

Contaminated radioactive materials decay at a fixed rate known as half-life, "the amount of time required for one half of a given amount of radio nuclide to decay." For curium-242, the half-life is 163 days, which is nothing compared to the half-life of uranium-238--a mere 4,468,000,000 years. Don't wait up.

What happens to spent fuel from a decommissioned nuclear submarine, for example? This radioactive waste and the section of the sub containing the reactor are stored in a section of the sub's hull at a government-run site (Hanford, Wa.), lined up in a trench with other decommissioned reactors, and buried. The site is monitored to assess whether any site maintenance is required to ensure that no radioactivity escapes.

At another government site (Oak Ridge, Tenn.) where nuclear material is handled, wastewater containing uranium isotopes (a form of chemical) was stored in large rectangular ponds until the uranium could be separated with an electromagnetic process. Then the ponds were drained, capped with asphalt and turned into a parking lot.

Near St. Louis, Mo., a Weldon Spring Site Remedial Action Project involved dismantling chemical plant buildings and removing contaminated soils so it could be buried. This 42-acre site, scheduled for completion in 2002, is supposed to hold 1.4 million cubic yards of radioactively contaminated materials.

At Estes Gulch, near Rifle Colo., "approximately 3.6 million cubic yards of vanadium and uranium mill tailings and contaminated materials from uranium mining and milling operations" and "more than 100 vicinity properties" are buried in a 62-acre site with a "1- to 2-foot thick erosion barrier of cobbles and boulders, a 3- to 7-foot thick frost protection layer of silt, a 1- to 2-foot thick clay radon barrier over the tailings, and a high-density polyethylene plastic liner beneath the tailings."