This book recounts the issues raised and the viewpoints aired at a recent symposium on repository licensing. It summarizes the problems surrounding the setting of an Environmental Protection Agency standard for the release of radionuclides and the regulatory problems inherent in meeting such a standard. Symposium participants came from a variety of federal agencies and advisory groups, state governments, public interest groups, engineering firms, national laboratories, and foreign and international organizations. The book illustrates the strong feeling in the radioactive waste disposal community that changes must be made if the United States is to fulfill its promise of safe management of current and future nuclear waste.

Hazardous waste has been defined as waste that is either in a solid, liquid, or gas form, which contributes significantly to serious irreversible or incapacitating reversible illnesses and poses a potential hazard to human health or the environment, depending on its quantity, concentration, and physical, chemical, or infectious characteristics. Hazardous waste risk assessment is a quantitative means of assessing the potential adverse effects of exposure on human health.Management of hazardous waste is a very important process for saving the environment and human life. Traditional and innovative techniques for the treatment and solidification of hazardous waste make for interesting research and study. Proper storage of hazardous waste ensures proper segregation of waste, separation of incompatible wastes, easy access to wastes, reasonable protection against vandalism, and adequate secondary containment. Hazardous wastes are generally stored in different modified containers, including drums and tanks. Prevention or minimization of hazardous waste and improving control methods are introduced as risk management options.Many countries, including developing countries, have taken steps in the right direction to minimize and manage hazardous waste, not only by cleaning up contaminated sites, but also by controlling and reducing the generation of hazardous wastes.

Disposal of radioactive waste from nuclear weapons production and power generation has caused public outcry and political consternation. Nuclear Wastes presents a critical review of some waste management and disposal alternatives to the current national policy of direct disposal of light water reactor spent fuel. The book offers clearcut conclusions for what the nation should do today and what solutions should be explored for tomorrow. The committee examines the currently used "once-through" fuel cycle versus different alternatives of separations and transmutation technology systems, by which hazardous radionuclides are converted to nuclides that are either stable or radioactive with short half-lives. The volume provides detailed findings and conclusions about the status and feasibility of plutonium extraction and more advanced separations technologies, as well as three principal transmutation concepts for commercial reactor spent fuel. The book discusses nuclear proliferation; the U.S. nuclear regulatory structure; issues of health, safety and transportation; the proposed sale of electrical energy as a means of paying for the transmutation system; and other key issues.

The Department of Energy's Environmental Management Program (DOEEM) is one of the largest environmental clean up efforts in world history. The EM division charged with developing or finding technologies to accomplish this massive task, its Office of Science and Technology (OST), has been reviewed extensively, including six reports from committees of the National Research Council's (NRC's) Board on Radioactive Waste Management (BRWM) that have been released since December 1998. These committees examined different components of OST's technology development program, including its decision-making and peer review processes and its efforts to develop technologies in the areas of decontamination and decommissioning, waste forms for mixed waste, tank waste, and subsurface contamination. Gerald Boyd, head of OST, asked the Board on Radioactive Waste Management (BRWM) to summarize the major findings and recommendations of the six reports and synthesize any common issues into a number of overarching recommendations.

Radioactive waste poses one of the most divisive environmental problems of the 1990s. This book explores key issues facing local government, including the implications of current proposals to develop a deep disposal facility for low level and intermediate level radioactive waste.