Going Underground: Safe Disposal of Used Nuclear Fuel

Nuclear reactor fuel after it comes out of a reactor is intensely radioactive and dangerous.  It is literally too hot to handle for 4 to 5 years after it comes out and is stored under water, and then too radioactive to be stored without massive shielding.  How to ultimately dispose of this material has been the focus of both technical and political controversy.  The deep underground repository planned for Yucca Mountain in Nevada has been abandoned after twenty five years of R&D, leaving a new site to be found and characterized before used fuel can be put away.  The problem is mainly political, rather than technical and in this presentation I will discuss the technical and political issue that got the US into its current situation.  Other countries (Switzerland, Finland, and France for example) have no problems like ours.  A new high level commission has been working on what to do and their report is due out at the end of this month, though its main points are already available and I will review how the spent fuel issue can be managed.

Speaker: Burton Richter, Director Emeritus, SLAC National Accelerator Labaratory