Current law defines
high-level radioactive waste as resulting from processing irradiated nuclear fuel that is highly radioactive.
Low-activity radioactive waste is primarily liquid, but suspended solids and radioactive cesium dissolved in the liquids are designated as
high-level radioactive waste and must be removed if the waste is treated as low-activity waste.
According to the strategy for the geological disposal of
high-level radioactive waste, the construction of URL (Underground Research Laboratory) for the
high-level radioactive waste is required during the 13th Five-Year Plan in China, and the URL is a necessary verification facility for the construction of
high-level radioactive waste geological disposal.
Without a central facility to send the
high-level radioactive waste to, energy generators have been storing it on site in steel canisters, in concrete-lined pools of water or in dry casks.
"There were town meeting votes taken all over the state in 1986 that were opposed to the siting of a
high-level radioactive waste dump here," Cushing said.
According to the paper, the council's report came in response to a request by the Atomic Energy Commission to look into the current efforts to select a final repository for
high-level radioactive waste.
High-level radioactive waste is the spent or used uranium fuel from the plant, and there currently is no long-term method for its disposal.
Nuclear physicist from the Oxford Research Group think-tank, Dr Frank Barnaby, said a September 11-style terrorist attack would cause 210,000 deaths for every one of Sellafield's 14 tanks used to store
high-level radioactive waste.
In the face of sustained resistance from the state and citizens groups, the federal government has slowed in its effort to build a long-term geological repository for commercial spent fuel and
high-level radioactive waste. Opposition to the Yucca Mountain project is based on a long history of Nevada being a nuclear weapons testing grounds, resentment at becoming a repository for toxic waste generated elsewhere in the country, and concerns that the site is not geologically stable enough to guarantee that the radioactivity will remain confined over the required 10,000-year span.
A private consortium of seven electric utilities known as Private Fuel Storage wants to dump what amounts to 80 percent of the current
high-level radioactive waste inventory from the country's 103 commercial nuclear reactors onto Ms.
The Department of Energy's (DOE) Hanford Site in Washington State houses DOE's largest and most complex nuclear cleanup project--treating and preparing for disposal 55 million gallons of
high-level radioactive waste. In 2000, DOE awarded an 11-year, $4.3 billion contract to design, construct, and test treatment facilities at Hanford.
Enhanced penalties would apply if the vessel carried
high-level radioactive waste or spent nuclear fuel.