ABSTRACT
By the year 2000, the US will have a projected 40,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel stored at some 70 sites and awaiting disposal. By 2035, after all existing nuclear plants have completed 40 years of operation, there will be approximately 85,000 metric tons (Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, 1991). The US Department of Energy (DOE) has been under intense pressure from congress and the nuclear industry to dispose of this accumulating volume of high-level waste since the passage of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1982 and its amendment in 1987, at which time Yucca Mountain, Nevada, was selected as the only candidate site for the nation’s first nuclear waste repository. The lack of a suitable solution to the waste problem is widely viewed as an obstacle to further developing nuclear power and a threat to the continued operation of existing reactors, besides being a safety hazard in its own right.
