Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site

Evaluate environmental issues associated with nuclear wastes. Research the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste disposal plan, the Hanford nuclear site, or a local nuclear facility. Prepare a poster or multi-media presentation on yonr findings. 

Introduction actinide solubilities in reference waters. In this section, the environmental chemistry of the actinides is examined in more detail by considering three different geochemical environments. Compositions of groundwater from these environments are described in Tables 5 and 6. These include (i) low-ionic-strength reducing waters from crystalline rocks at nuclear waste research sites in Sweden (ii) oxic water from the J-13 well at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, the site of a proposed repository for high-level nuclear waste in tuffaceous rocks and (iii) reference brines associated with the WIPP, a repository for TRU in... 

A second problem associated with nuclear power is waste disposal. Although the amormt of nuclear fuel used in electricity generation is small compared to other fuels, the products of the reaction are radioactive and have very long half-lives (thousands of years or more). What do we do with this waste Currently, in the United States, nuclear waste is stored on site at the nuclear power plants. A permanent disposal site was being developed in Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The site had originally been scheduled to be operational in 2010, and that date was later delayed to 2017. However, the Obama administration determined that the Yucca Mountain site was untenable, and in the spring of 2010, the license application to develop this... 

Yucca Mountain, if it becomes the site for the isolation of SNF, will be laced with tunnels, waste in storage casks and monitoring equipment. A waiting period is planned while better isolation alteniadvcs are sought. IfYucca Mountain is not used, it is to be refilled with the tuff material removed earlier. In the United States the SNF that would be isolated in Yucca Mountain would be waste that has not been reprocessed it would be material that has come out of nuclear reactors and has been cooled at the plant site. 

December. U.S. Congress approves Yucca Mountain, Nevada, as the only repositoiy site for high-level nuclear waste. 

Without confronting the complexity of studying and evaluating the TSPAs, one can gain some perspective on the scale of the hazards by considering the protective standards that have been proposed for nuclear waste repositories, in particular for the proposed US. site at Yucca Mountain (Bodansky, 1996). There have been three major proposals in recent years ... 

For nuclear waste disposal, in a site such as Yucca Mountain, if the maximally exposed individual receives the proposed annual limit of 0.15 mSv, present estimates (based on the linearity hypothesis) suggest a 0.00 1 % risk of an eventual fatal cancer. The maximum dose is reached only if the wastes are dissolved in a small volume of water, and therefore only a limited number of people would receive this dose. If this number were as high as 1000, the implied toll for Yucca Mountain neighbors would be one cancer fatality per century per repository site.19 This toll would not start for many centuries, when the waste canisters begin to fail, and it not unreasonable to expect that cancer prevention and treatment will be much improved by then. Ignoring this prospect, and assuming many repositories and some doses above the prescribed limit, it still appears that the expected toll would be well under a thousand deaths per century. 

More than 6 billion has been spent on high-level waste disposal. Spent fuel can be deadly for tens of thousands of years. In order to isolate it from the environment, nuclear waste is to be buried deep underground. Nevada s Yucca Mountain has been under consideration for decades and many in the nuclear industry believe that the Clinton administration blocked action on this site to gain support in this area. 

The state of Nevada is home to a number of nuclear weapons test sites as well as Yucca Mountain, a potential national long-term storage facility for nuclear wastes. This web address will bring you to the State of Nevada, Office of the Governor, Agency for Nuclear Projects, Nuclear Waste Project Office. 

Yucca Mountain in Nevada is a promising site for a permanent repository for nuclear wastes. Exploratory tunnels have already been drilled, and extensive tests are underway. 

Nuclear waste. The nuclear waste disposal scheme remains to be finalized. The Yucca Mountain project in Nevada has made good advances recently, and when licensed it can provide a destination for the spent fuel accumulating at the plant sites. The development of a closed fuel cycle that involves the extraction and use of the fissile contents from the irradiated fuel would reduce the long-lived radioactivity associated with the waste to be sent to the repository. 

Choosing the waste repository sites is an especially sensitive issue. Many states have resisted the plan, but Congress has the power to override a state s disapproval. In fact, Congress amended the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1987 to make Yucca Mountain in Nevada the primary potential site. Studies are now being carried out to evaluate the feasibility of this site as a safety repository for nuclear waste. 

Wilson M. L., Swift P. N., McNeish J. A., and Sevougian S. D. (2002) Total-system performance assessment for the Yucca Mountain Site. In Scientific Basis for Nuclear Waste Manage. XXV (eds. B. P. McGrail and G. A. Cragnolino). Materials Research Society, vol. 713, pp. 53-164. 

Winograd, I. J., and Szabo, B. J., 1988, Water-table decline in the south-central Great Basin during the Quaternary period—implications for toxic waste disposal, in Geologic and Hydro-logic Investigations of a Potential Nuclear Waste Disposal Site at Yucca Mountain, U.S. Geol. Surv. Bulletin 1790, pp. 147-152. 

Research has focused on Yucca Mountain, Nevada, at the western edge of the National Test Site, for its suitability as a nuclear waste repository for SNF and some defense waste. Many political leaders of Nevada strongly oppose this plan, and they seriously question that nuclear waste can be safely kept out of the human environment for 10,000 years, as is required under the federal Nuclear Waste Policy Act. 

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. 

Yucca Mountain, Nevada, is being considered as the site for deep geological disposal of U.S. high-level nuclear wastes. Any release of uranium (or other radionuclides) from the waste to... 

Spent fuel will be stored on a permanent basis once a national repository is approved. The planned nuclear waste facility at Yucca Mountain is still involved in ongoing environmental impact studies. The opening of a national long-term storage site is over 12 years behind schedule because of opposition. 

Before Yucca Mountain can become the nuclear waste repository for the nation, a license must be issued by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Evaluation of the site for safe storage of high-level nuclear wastes for at least 10 000 years requires abroad spectrum of scientific disciplines. Mathematical models are developed to calculate the amount and type of radioactive materials that could be released into the environment due to different processes and events. 

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