Radioactive waste storage in the arid zone

Abstract

By the turn of the century, nuclear power may generate more than one‐half of the electric energy, and about one‐third of the total energy consumed in the United States [Thompson, 1971; Chapman et al., 1972]. By 2020, the total quantity of high‐level radioactive wastes (HLW) generated as a byproduct of nuclear fuel reprocessing for such power generation may total about 900,000 m3 as liquid or 70,000 m3 as solid [Gera and Jacobs, 1972]; the radioactivity of long‐lived nuclides in the HLW will total about 8.7×1010 Ci [Gera and Jacobs, 1972]. (High‐level wastes are defined as wastes containing at least 1 Ci of radioactivity per liter of liquid, or 70 Ci/kg of solid [American Institute of Chemical Engineering, ANSI Standard N5.8‐1967]. Wastes from chemical processing of irradiated nuclear fuels typically contain several hundred to several thousand curies per gallon [Fox, 1969].)