The Problem Of Atomic Waste (Part II)

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Like space disposal, another alternative—ocean disposal— presents known hazards, because a great deal of low-level radioactive waste—encapsulated in steel drums—has already been dumped in the oceans close to our shores. The result? Many of the containers are now leaking ... and the degree to which radioactivity will be concentrated in oceanic food chains (thereby threatening humanity) is not yet known.

A suggestion that we bury the wastes in deep trenches dug in the ocean floor is also plagued with uncertainty. The science fiction notion that these materials be placed beneath the seas (where the great tectonic plates of earth collide) so that the deadly materials will be drawn into our planet's molten core seems an unlikely solution. You see, the ocean floor's rate of subduction (drawing in) is only an inch or so a year, and the likely fate of containers deposited in these geologically active areas is completely unknown.

Actually, the most sensible plan seems to be to solidify the wastes, and then inter them in impermeable geological formations such as deep salt beds. Early in the 1970's, the Atomic Energy Commission actually announced that salt beds were the solution and selected a salt mine near Lyons, Kansas as its first repository.

Again, the AEC demonstrated the broad-gauge incompetence for which it and its successor, the NRC, are world famous. The experts managed to pick a mine that was as full of holes as a Swiss cheese (the result of early drilling for oil and gas). After the Kansas Geological Survey pointed out this little oversight to them, the AEC was forced to abandon its plans for a "national repository".

Since then, the NRC has looked at other sites ... notably, salt beds in the Finger Lakes region of New York and near Carlsbad, New Mexico, but it has met stiff public resistance. People sense that our knowledge of geology makes it difficult to guarantee the integrity of burial sites for the requisite hundreds of thousands of years ... and they are rightly nervous about the possibility of accidents that may occur in the process of transport and burial. After all, New Yorkers have the spectacle of the Nuclear Fuel Services' failed plant as a constant reminder of the capabilities of the nuclear establishment.

So ... does all this mean that the nuclear waste problem is insoluble? Our guess is that it can be solved, but only with great difficulty. Burial of solidified wastes in appropriate geological formations may well be the answer, but much more research is required before we know for sure.

In the meantime, something must be done to tighten up the much-too-cavalier treatment of low-level wastes, which—even in the late 1960's—the National Academy of Science declared was "barely tolerable ... on the present scale of operations" and "would become intolerable with much increase in the use of nuclear power".

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