Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Containment Standard a Hot Topic

I find it amusing in a morbid sort of way that political posturing overrides the simple fact that nuclear waste isn’t going to go away. Ten thousand years or a million makes no difference. The goals are to consolidate the material; make sound policies regarding security, safety, and health; and monitor the site for a very long time.

The tack that both proponents and opponents of a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain have taken is disturbing in that the focus has now been shifted from the reality to the abstract (see Physics Today, September 2004, page 29 ). No location on this planet is perfect in every way to house this legacy. We need to get used to that and start making real plans to deal with that material in the best way we know how. Technology will change drastically before the waste reaches radioactive equilibrium. How we handle it today will be so obsolete in 100 years—never mind 10 000—that we will wonder how we got away with it. Let’s get on the stick and get this project done.