The International Atomic Energy Agency estimates that nuclear power generation facilities produce about 200,000 cubic meters of low and intermediate-level waste each year. Vital medical procedures, industrial processes and basic science research also produce significant quantities of waste. All of this waste must be shielded from the population for extended periods of time. Finding suitable locations for disposal facilities is beset by two main problems: community responses to siting proposals are generally antagonistic and, as a result, governments have tended to be reactive in their policy-making. Decision-making and Radioactive Waste Disposal explores these issues utilizing a linear narrative case study approach that critically examines key stakeholder interactions in order to explain how siting decisions for low level waste disposal are made. Five countries are featured: the US, Australia, Spain, South Korea and Switzerland. This book seeks to establish an understanding of the political, economic, environmental, legal and social dimensions of siting across those countries. This valuable resource fills a gap in the literature and provides recommendations for future disposal facility siting efforts. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of environmental law, justice, management, politics, energy and security policy as well as decision-makers in government and industry.

The safe management of radioactive wastes is of paramount importance in gaining both governmental and societal support for nuclear energy. The scope of this new textbook is to provide a comprehensive perspective on all types of radioactive wastes as to how they are created, classified, characterized, and disposed.Written to emphasize how geology and radionuclide chemistry impact waste management, this book is primarily designed for engineers who have little background in geology with low-level wastes, decommissioning wastes, high-level wastes and spent nuclear fuel.This textbook provides the most up-to-date information available on waste management in several countries. The content of this work includes transporting radioactive materials to disposal facilities. The textbook cites numerous case studies to illustrate past practices, current methodologies and to provide insights on how radioactive wastes may be managed in the future. An international perspective on waste management is also provided to help the readers better understand the diversity in approaches while highlighting what many countries have in common. Review questions for classroom use are provided at the end of each chapter.Related Link(s)

This report looks at the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (NWPA), Yucca Mountain, and the Obama Administration's de-funding of Yucca Mountain. Federal policy is based on the premise that nuclear waste can be disposed of safely, but proposed storage and disposal facilities have frequently been challenged on safety, health, and environmental grounds. Most of the current debate surrounding civilian radioactive waste focuses on highly radioactive spent fuel from nuclear power plants.

This book explores siting dilemmas - situations in which an "authority" (e.g., Congress, a consortium of utilities) deems it in the best interest of society to build a facility such as an incinerator, but opponents living near the proposed site thwart the plan. Facility developers typically attribute local opposition to selfishness or radically inaccurate views of the risks posed by the facility. We examine the validity of these conclusions by looking in depth at the psychological response that arises when residents are faced with the prospect of living near waste disposal facilities. The particular siting dilemma considered in this book is the problem of how to "dispose" of the high-level nuclear wastes accumulating at nuclear power plants in the United States. These wastes, in the form of "spent" fuel rods, will emit dangerous levels of radioactivity for thousands of years - anywhere between 10,000 and 100,000 years, depending on the margin of safety one adopts. The current proposal is to encase the spent fuel in corrosion-resistant canisters and then to bury these canisters deep underground in a geologic repository. The two of us became involved with the high-level waste issue in 1986 as part of an interdisciplinary research team hired by the State of Nevada. The charge of this team was to estimate the socioeconomic impacts that would accompany a repository if it were built at Yucca Mountain, approximately 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Nuclear Waste Management Facilities: Advances, Environmental Impacts, and Future Prospects examines best practices and recent trends in improving nuclear safety and reducing the negative environmental impacts of nuclear waste. With strong emphasis on regulatory requirements, this reference is essential for designing new integrated waste management practices, using lessons learned from historical and current practices. Divided into three key sections, Part One introduces the reader to the safety and environmental impacts of the nuclear industry. Part Two reviews recent technological and methodological approaches to enhancing safety, as well as reducing the carbon footprint of both individual processes and integrated facilities. Topics covered include waste processing, transmutation and decommissioning. Part Three consider potential management schemes for special waste from innovative sources, and wastes that contain emerging contaminants, including waste recycling opportunities. Nuclear Waste Management Facilities: Advances, Environmental Impacts, and Future Prospects is a crucial tool needed to implement the safest and most environmentally considerate best practices within nuclear waste management facilities. - Presents recent approaches used to assess and improve the safety and reduce the environmental impacts of nuclear waste management facilities - Offers technical guidance to support the development and defense of the environmental impact assessment (EIA) and Safety Cases to support the waste management facilities licensing throughout their lifecycles - Highlights the future perspectives for wastes produced from innovative reactors and wastes containing emerging contaminants, and recycling opportunities

This book reviews the efforts of New York state to site a low-level radioactive waste disposal facility. It evaluates the nature, sources, and quality of the data, analyses, and procedures used by the New York State Siting Commission in its decisionmaking process, which identified five potential sites for low-level waste disposal. Finally, the committee offers a chapter highlighting the lessons in siting low-level radioactive waste facilities that can be learned from New York State's experience.