Donald trump s new secretary of energy former texas governor rick perry is keen to see waste move to west texas. Department of energy in january 02017 started efforts to move nuclear waste to temporary storage sites in new mexico and west texas that could store the waste until a more long term solution is devised. Interim storage facilities are generally used for ilw and hlw including used nuclear fuel from reactors.
Specially designed interim surface or sub surface storage waste facilities are currently used in many countries to ensure the safe storage of hazardous radioactive waste pending the availability of a long term disposal option. The inevitable waste produced is severely radioactive for 1 000 years when it will still generate over 1 000 curies per metric ton of initial heavy metal cu mtihm which is essentially a measure of how much waste radiation is created by a standard amount of uranium fuel. The almost endless storage time for nuclear wastes is one of the most discouraging aspects of nuclear power.
The site is located on federal land adjacent to the nevada test site in nye county nevada about 80 mi 130 km. The yucca mountain nuclear waste repository as designated by the nuclear waste policy act amendments of 1987 is a proposed deep geological repository storage facility within yucca mountain for spent nuclear fuel and other high level radioactive waste in the united states. It takes a long time because there are a number of studies that are both technical and social in nature said ben belfadhel with the nuclear waste management organization.
The ignace area is one of only two sites left but the site selection process for a new nuclear waste site is still expected to take another four years. The waste isolation pilot plant a department of energy project on long term solutions for nuclear waste storage is now trying to design a warning that can last thousands of years. French artist bruno grasser second laureate of a prize launched in 2016 by andra on memory came up with a way to transmit information on nuclear waste storage sites using etching an art.
The great lakes region could still be a long term disposal site for canada s radioactive waste and in this case it s most radioactive waste used fuel from its nuclear reactors. The actinides in nuclear waste can be burned in breeder reactors and indeed some have calculated that america has enough nuclear waste to run her for 1000 years without mining any more uranium. Why try and store nuclear waste when in fact it is only radioactive for so long because it is unused energy.
A 1993 report from sandia national laboratories recommended that any such message should. Nuclear semiotics is an interdisciplinary field of research first done by the human interference task force in 1981. Long time nuclear waste warning messages are intended to deter human intrusion at nuclear waste repositories in the far future within or above the order of magnitude of 10 000 years.
