National critical technologies report.

  • United States. Office of Science and Technology Policy.
Date:
1995
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: National critical technologies report. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    57/226 (page 31)
    level wastes, transuranic wastes, low-level wastes, and mixed wastes. Radioactive contaminants pose a threat to public health and safety at many sites across the country, and adequate technologies to enable treatment of all types of nuclear waste are not currently available. As a result, the development of technologies to characterize, retrieve, pretreat, stabilize, and store nuclear wastes is critical. In general, the strategy for “treatment” of radioactive waste first requires identification of what contaminants are present. Pretreatment technologies are then used to minimize the volumes of more dangerous wastes (longer half-lives, more highly radioactive), usually by separating nuclear wastes into smaller volumes of more concentrated high-level wastes and larger volumes of low-level wastes. Each of these types of waste will then be stabilized as appropriate, possibly by vitrification for high-level wastes, and by immobilization in cement or grout for low-level wastes. The stabilized waste will be stored in appropriate repositories: geologic repositories for spent fuels, high- level and transuranic wastes; and approved “disposal” facilities (usually burial sites) for low-level wastes. Although some vitrification plants have been built and are currently at various stages of being brought on-line, more reliable and more cost-effective technologies are still needed for most stages of this process. The efforts to stabilize and store radioactive wastes are expected to continue for many years. Most estimates indicate that substantial nuclear waste treatment activities can be expected to continue into the second or third decade of the next century. For example, DOE has a stated goal of having its continuing operations in compliance by the year 2019, and of having its surplus or inactive sites either posing, or proceeding safely and smoothly towards posing, no unacceptable risk to public health and safety, or to the environment. Thus impacts (primarily costs) to the U.S. economy will continue well into the foreseeable future. The worst problems result from past U.S. government nuclear weapons programs, and these costs must be met by the government. Approximately 381,000 cubic meters of high-level waste, which contain about 1.1 billion curies of radionuclides, are stored at just four DOE sites: Savannah River, Idaho National Engineering Laboratory, Hanford Site, and West Valley Demonstration Project. Improving technologies to be as cost-effective as possible will be a continuing necessity. Nuclear materials storage / disposal technologies contribute directly to improved environmental quality. They also contribute to the health of the U.S. population by reducing the risks of exposure to radioactive substances. It is likely that a significant number of jobs will be created by the need to treat nuclear wastes; however, given the nuclear weapons complex drawdown, net job creation will be small. For example, Rocky Flats, which has an estimated 14.2 tons of plutonium to remediate, currently employs about 7,300 people. Although this is roughly the same number as were employed at Rocky Flats during peak production in 1989, many of these people are now employed monitoring, studying, and planning clean-up efforts.