Radioactive Waste: The Size of the Problem

JUN 01, 1997

In 50 years of producing electrical power and weapons from nuclear fuel, the US has accumulated millions of cubic meters and tens of billions of curies of radioactive waste.

DOI: 10.1063/1.881763

John F. Ahearne

Exposure to radioactivity is not a new phenomenon: Jewelry workers painting luminous dials on watches in the 1920s were exposed to radium, a naturally occurring radioactive element, until its dangers were identified; in recent decades, homeowners have worried about radon, a naturally occurring radioactive gas that can adversely affect both their health and the resale value of their homes. Today, we must worry as well about the enormous quantities of anthropogenic radioactive materials that have accumulated as waste in this country and worldwide since the 1940s, largely because of the nuclear weapons programs and nuclear power plants. Some of the anthropogenic material is still valuable—for example, as fuel for nuclear reactors. Vast amounts of it, however, consist of waste. Radioactive waste, by definition, is unneeded material that contains unstable elements that decay by emitting alpha, beta or gamma emissions. This article describes the sources of this waste, the types of waste that are of concern and the amounts estimated to be present in the US.

References

1. Department of Energy, Integrated Data Base Report 1995: US Spent Nuclear Fuel and Radioactive Waste Inventories, Projections and Characteristics, DOE/RW‐0006, Revision 12, (1996).
2. Disposal of High‐Level Radioactive Wastes in Geologic Repositories, Code of Federal Regulations 60, section 60.2.
3. Department of Energy, Draft Waste Management Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) For Managing Treatment, Storage, and Disposal of Radioactive and Hazardous Waste, DOE/EIS‐0200‐D (1995).
4. Department of Energy, Integrated Data Base Report 1994: US Spent Nuclear Fuel and Radioactive Waste Inventories, Projections and Characteristics, DOE/RW‐0006, Revision 11, (1995).
5. Department of Energy, Office of Environmental Management, Closing the Circle on the Splitting of the Atom (1995).
6. See, for example, Pierre Saverot, J. Nucl. Mater. Management, April 1994, p. 18.
7. Code of Federal Regulations 10, section 61.55.
8. General Accounting Office, Radioactive Waste: Status of Commercial Low‐Level Waste Facilities, GAO/RCED‐95‐67 (1995), p. 12.
9. Code of Federal Regulations, section 61.4(b)(4) and (5).

More about the Authors

John F. Ahearne. Sigma Xi Center, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.