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The great advantage of nuclear power lies in the vast amount of energy that can be extracted from a mere handful of the element uranium, which is found in great concentrations underground. The waste from nuclear power retains the same tiny volume and can be safely returned to the Earth for underground storage.
Because so much energy leaves only a small amount of manageable waste, uranium has been called nature's gift to clean economic development. In contrast, fossil fuel waste is too large and unmanageable to be contained and must be dispersed into the environment.
Under present policies, fossil fuels and nuclear energy operate under different rules. For fossil fuel waste, governments - under public pressure for 'cheap energy' - have allowed the environment to be used as a free dumpsite. Meanwhile, in most countries the price charged for nuclear power includes an allocation set aside for the cost of storing and disposing of its waste permanently and safely.
The Manageability of Nuclear Waste
Modern civilization produces huge quantities of industrial waste requiring careful treatment and disposal. Among these, nuclear waste is comparatively tiny in amount and highly manageable. In contrast, chemical wastes are thousands of times greater in volume, can remain permanently toxic and represent a disposal problem far more difficult
Due to effective shielding and containment, waste from civil nuclear power has never caused harm to any person or to the environment. For nuclear waste that is highly radioactive, well-designed long-term storage is needed while its radioactivity decays to natural levels.
Far form being an 'unsolvable' problem, waste disposal is a comparative asset of nuclear energy - because there is so little. The spent fuel produced yearly from all the world's reactors would fit inside a two-storey structure built on a basketball court.
Geological Storage - A Natural Solution Backed By Science
Are there stable geological locations that could safely isolate nuclear waste from the biosphere? If you doubt this, remember that trillions and trillions of litres of natural gas have remained underground - in the same place - for many millions of years. In comparison, the quantity of nuclear waste requiring permanent storage is minuscule. And far from being a volatile gas or liquid, it is a solid and stable ceramic.
Nature had provided a good example of nuclear waste 'storage'. About two billion years ago, in what is now Gabon in Africa, a rich natural uranium deposit produced a spontaneous series of large nuclear reactions. Since then, despite thousands of centuries of tropical rain and subsurface water, the long-lived 'waste' from those 'reactors' has migrated less than 10 metres.
Radiation scientists, geologists and engineers have produced detailed plans for safe underground storage of nuclear waste. A stable geological formation constitutes a highly reliable barrier. Extra layers of protection come from 'multiple engineered barriers', including the ceramic fuel itself and robust containers built for high-longevity. Geological repositories are designed to ensure that harmful radiation would not reach the surface even with severe earthquakes or the passage of time. Waste can be retrieved if new technologies offer ways to reuse the material or hasten radioactive decay.
Further InformationWaste Management in the Nuclear Fuel CycleRadioactive WastesRadioactive Wastes - Myths and RealitiesInternational Nuclear Waste Disposal Concepts