The United States currently has no place to dispose of the high-level radioactive waste resulting from the production of the nuclear weapons and the operation of nuclear electronic power plants. The only option under formal consideration at this time is to place the waste in an underground geologic repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. However, there is strong public debate about whether such a repository could protect humans from the radioactive waste that will be dangerous for many thousands of years. This book shows the extent to which our scientific knowledge can guide the federal government in developing a standard to protect the health of the public from wastes in such a repository at Yucca Mountain. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is required to use the recommendations presented in this book as it develops its standard.

The United States currently has no place to dispose of the high-level radioactive waste resulting from the production of the nuclear weapons and the operation of nuclear electronic power plants. The only option under formal consideration at this time is to place the waste in an underground geologic repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. However, there is strong public debate about whether such a repository could protect humans from the radioactive waste that will be dangerous for many thousands of years. This book shows the extent to which our scientific knowledge can guide the federal government in developing a standard to protect the health of the public from wastes in such a repository at Yucca Mountain. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is required to use the recommendations presented in this book as it develops its standard.

The National Academy of Sciences' Committee on Technical Bases for Yucca Mountain Standards recommended that standards for the disposal of high-level radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain should 1. set a limit on the risk of individuals, 2. use the critical group approach, as defined by the international Commission on Radiological Protection; 3. define the critical group using present knowledge and cautious, reasonable assumptions; 4. use a time period for conducting compliance assessment that includes the period of greatest risk; and 5. use a stylized calculation to assess whether the repository's performance would be substantially degraded as a consequence of a postulated intrusion.

Experts from science, industry, and government discuss the unresolved scientific and technical issues surrounding the Yucca Mountain site as a geologic repository for high-level nuclear waste.