IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jriskr/v12y2009i7-8p1009-1024.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

High-level radioactive waste management in the USA

Author

Listed:
  • Barry D. Solomon

Abstract

High-level radioactive waste (HLW) disposal policy in the USA since 1987 has focused on a site in volcanic tuffs 305 meters beneath Yucca Mountain, Nevada, with current plans calling for the repository to be opened in 2017 subject to approval by the Obama Administration. Yet the offsite radiation release standards of the US Environmental Protection Agency are still being finalized, and there is significant doubt over whether a repository at Yucca Mountain can be successfully licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Moreover, the proposed repository has a capacity cap insufficient to accept the total HLW stream from the civilian and military sectors, and focus on a single site is unnecessarily risky. Thus, the HLW problem in the USA remains far from being solved. After providing an overview of the nuclear waste regime of the USA, this paper reviews the technical, legal, and political status of the Yucca Mountain project. A large range of current issues and social values are discussed in this context, including the recently proposed Global Nuclear Energy Partnership that would revive spent fuel reprocessing and has important implications for national security and nuclear non-proliferation.

Suggested Citation

  • Barry D. Solomon, 2009. "High-level radioactive waste management in the USA," Journal of Risk Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(7-8), pages 1009-1024, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:jriskr:v:12:y:2009:i:7-8:p:1009-1024
    DOI: 10.1080/13669870903126093
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13669870903126093
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/13669870903126093?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jobert, Thomas & Karanfil, Fatih & Tykhonenko, Anna, 2013. "On the structure and form of the GDP–nuclear nexus: New perspectives and new findings," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 1553-1561.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:jriskr:v:12:y:2009:i:7-8:p:1009-1024. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RJRR20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.