UNLV nuclear physicist says burying nuclear waste a misuse of materials

Tuesday, June 2, 1998 | 9:47 a.m.

The suitability of Yucca Mountain as the world's first repository for high-level nuclear waste is not the only issue disputed by scientists.

They can't agree on whether the waste even should be buried.

Nuclear physicist Anthony Hechanova said many scientists call underground storage "ludicrous." It's a waste of materials that could be reused, he said.

Congress set a national nuclear policy when it approved burying nuclear waste in a central repository and targeted Yucca Mountain as the sole site. However, the Department of Energy recently announced that it intended to keep nuclear wastes retrievable from a repository for up to 300 years, which would mean that the waste might not be permanently buried.

Hechanova, who works at the Harry Reid Center for Environmental Research at UNLV, said that although the DOE announcement signaled a positive change in policy, he doesn't believe it will change Congress' decision to bury the waste at Yucca Mountain.

More than 90 percent of irradiated fuel from commercial reactors is uranium that could be extracted and reused for generating nuclear power. Many isotopes that make up radioactive waste -- including those used in hospitals and for food irradiation -- could be separated and reused, Hechanova said.

"A high-level radioactive waste repository may only need to be engineered for 300 years, if transmutation and reuse were instituted," he said.

"It shouldn't be buried. It's too valuable."

The United States is the only country that has selected a specific repository site -- Yucca Mountain -- and that has been conducting studies to determine a site's suitability for storing high-level nuclear waste.

The Environmental Protection Agency recently licensed the $2 billion Waste Isolation Pilot Plant outside Carlsbad, N.M. It differs from what Yucca Mountain would be in that it will store only mid-level transuranic waste. That includes nonliquid disposable items such as clothes, rags, debris and tools that have been contaminated by plutonium.

High-level radioactive waste -- spent fuel rods from power plants and nuclear waste from U.S. weapons facilities -- would be destined for Yucca Mountain.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission Chairwoman Shirley Ann Jackson has visited five countries to examine how they handle nuclear waste. The NRC is the agency that will issue the license for Yucca Mountain if it is found suitable as a repository.

Sweden is investigating land-based burial for its highest-level wastes, but for the last 10 years it has put low-level and intermediate-level radioactive wastes 150 feet beneath the sea off the country's coast. A tunnel carries the waste from land.

Canada is looking into deep geological burial of nuclear waste, but no specific site has been chosen.

France chemically separates the plutonium from the uranium in the spent fuel so that both can be recovered and reburned to produce electricity. Reprocessing reduces the volume of the deadliest material at least 20 times.

Scientists, however, disagree on the value of reprocessing. One drawback is that it exposes workers to more frequent risks from radiation, according to biologist Mary Olson of the Nuclear Information Resource Service in Washington, D.C.

Instead of burying the waste, Olson favors keeping the nuclear canisters in dry-cask storage above-ground near a power plant's reactors until a better disposal solution is found.