Permanent Storage of Radioactive Waste

The last stage in the disposal of nuclear power station waste is long-term secure permanent storage of the solidified high, medium and low activity waste. Annually 5000 m- of radioactive waste is produced in the Federal Republic of Germany, of which only half comes from nuclear power stations. 

In the Federal Republic of Germany permanent storage of all types of radioactive waste in deep geological formations is striven for. The exclusion of radioactive waste from the biosphere is guaranteed by a system of natural and technical barriers and therewith impermissible environmental pollution is also excluded in the long term. 

Since reunification the Federal Republic of Germany has at its disposal the permanent storage site for weakly radioactive at Morsleben, an existing permanent storage site in salt-rock, whose permit expires on 30.06.2000, under the 

Permanent. storage sites for radioactive waste must be stable over geological periods. Under discussion in the FRG are  

---

The favored method for permanent storage of radioactive waste is deep geologic repositories. This option is the only option for unprocessed spent fuel assemblies and for most HLW. (An alternative, supplemental strategy discussed below is to remove some of the actinides in the HLW by chemical separations prior to geologic storage.)... 

Was this youT answer Nuclear fission reactors generate large amounts of radioactive wastes that require permanent, large-scale storage facilities. 

The safe disposal of the radioactive wastes from nuclear reactors is an important and controversial matter. A variety of proposals have been made, including the burial of radioactive waste in deep mines on either a recoverable or a permanent basis, burial at sea, and launching the waste into outer space. The first alternative is the only one that appears credible. The essential requirement is that the disposal site(s) be stable with respect to possible earthquakes or invasion by underground water. Spent nuclear fuel can be encased in blocks of borosilicate glass, packed in metal containers, and buried in stable rock formations. For a nuclide such as whose half-life is 24,000 years, a storage site that is stable over... 

As of 2002, about 43,000 metric tons of radioactive waste from nuclear power plants was stored in the United States, an amount expected to grow by 2000 metric tons per year. The storage facilities at the power plants are considered temporary and an effort to develop a permanent storage site for high-level radioactive waste has been under way since 1982. The location and development of such a site is fraught with technical, social, and political problems. 

The waste storage area in Room 109 is bounded by the permanent and mobile walls, ceiling and floor. The walls, doors, and ceiling provide significant shielding for the very high inventory of radioactive waste which will be stored in this room. They also provide a confinement boundary to control the migration of contamination. 

TRU are those containing isotopes, like 241Am and 243Am, that follow uranium in the periodic table and whose half-lives are >20 years. If their level of activity was more than 100 nanocuries of alpha-emitters per gram of waste material (up from 10 nanocuries/g in 1982), the waste could be disposed of by shallow burial. Otherwise, the waste had to be placed in retrievable storage for eventual transfer to a permanent repository. TRUs generally have low levels of radioactivity, generate very little heat, and can be handled by ordinary means without remote control (Eisenbud 1987 Murray 1994). 

The precedence of reprocessing spent fuel elements to dispose of the radioactive waste was abandoned in the middle of 1994. Since then direct permanent storage has been awarded equal legal precedence to a waste disposal option on the basis of reprocessing. It is expected that the electricity industry will make increasing use of this... 

In the United States, permanent storage sites for high-level radioactive wastes win prohahly he deep underp-ound in rock formations. Shown is the kind of nuclear waste facility desired for Yucca Mountain, which would he a three-square-mile complex of interconnected tunnels located in dense volcanic rock 30 meters (1000 feet) beneath the mountain. 

Vitrification is particularly useful for remediation of soils contaminated with radioactive heavy metals. The radioactive heavy metals are encapsulated in a highly inert, nonporous matrix, which can be stored permanently in underground secured radioactive waste storage facilities currently under development in some Asian countries. Vitrification can also be used for sediments and slndge pollnted by heavy metals. 

The total repository costs for radioactive waste in Yucca Mountain by construction phase and the cost of nuclear waste packaging fabrication for permanent storage have been documented (39) by the US DOE. 

Another problem with nuclear power plants is their radioactive waste production. The United States has debated where and how to permanently store nuclear wastes. In July 2002, an underground site was authorized at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, about 90 miles north of Las Vegas. The Yucca Mountain facility was closed in 2009. A permanent site for nuclear waste storage has not yet been decided upon. 

---