Nuclear Waste Disposal: The Technical Challenges

JUN 01, 1997

Public safety and billions of taxpayer dollars are at stake in the efforts to solve formidable technical problems associated with the disposal of spent nuclear fuel and defense waste.

DOI: 10.1063/1.881764

Kevin D. Crowley

In this sixth decade of the nuclear age, the US and many other nations face daunting technical challenges to the disposal of nuclear waste. There are many contributing factors, not the least of which are the sheer volumes of waste and the great number of chemical and physical forms in which it exists at defense and civilian sites both here and abroad. (See figure 1, for example, and see also John Ahearne’s article on page 24.)

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More about the Authors

Kevin D. Crowley. National Research Council, Washington, DC.