Nuclear wasteNuclear waste: The cost to Americans is in the billions
Since the Manhattan Project officially began in 1942, the United States has faced ever-increasing stores of nuclear waste. Stanford’s Rodney Ewing says that the U.S. failure to implement a permanent solution for nuclear waste storage and disposal is costing Americans billions of dollars a year.
With the Trump-Kim Summit fresh in our minds, Americans are ready to confront nuclear challenges that have been on hold for decades. What many may not realize is that one of the biggest challenges is on the home front. Since the Manhattan Project officially began in 1942, the United States has faced ever-increasing stores of nuclear waste.FSI’s Nicole Feldman spoke with Rodney C. Ewing, co-director of Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation(CISAC), a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies(FSI), and a Professor in the School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences about how the U.S. failure to implement a permanent solution for nuclear waste storage and disposal is costing Americans billions of dollars a year.
Nicole Feldman: Where does our nuclear waste come from, and what is being done with it?
Rodney C. Ewing:Broadly speaking, there are two types of nuclear waste.
The first is spent fuel from nuclear reactors used to generate electricity. Those reactors have left us with about 80,000 metric tonnes of used spent fuel, and we don’t have a way forward for the disposal of this waste. It’s stored at more than 75 sites in 35 states around the country, so many of us have some in our state, including California.
The second category is the waste generated by our nuclear weapons complex. That defense waste has accumulated since the earliest days of the Manhattan Project. The highly-radioactive waste from chemical processing is mainly stored in very large metal tanks. They are located at the Savannah River site in South Carolina, the Hanford site in Washington State, at Idaho National Laboratory in Idaho, and Nuclear Fuel Services site at West Valley in New York State.
Feldman: What’s wrong with what’s happening now?
Ewing: This waste is problematic because the volume is large, many hundreds of thousands of cubic meters. The tanks in Hanford and Savannah River are way beyond their design lifetimes, so they’re corroding and some have leaked. The radioactive fluid is being released to the environment. The rates are not high, but I think it’s discouraging that we continue to release radioactivity to the environment because after more than 40 years of effort we still have not developed a successful plan for going forward.
