They may also be readily formed on the surface of nuclear waste under long-term storage and have been found on the surface of spent nuclear fuel stored at the Hanford, Washington nuclear site. It has also been reported that studtite has since formed on the corium "lavas" that were created during the course of the Chernobyl nuclear plant accident. Thus, there is considerable evidence that uranyl peroxides such as studtite and metastudtite will be important alteration phases of nuclear waste, possibly at the expense of other minerals, such as uranyl oxides and silicates, which have been more thoroughly studied and are better understood. The formation of these minerals may impact the long-term performance of deep geological repository sites such as Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. Due to insufficient information about these minerals it is unknown if they will make radioactive wastes more or less stable, but the presence of studtite and metastudtite provides a pathway for mobilizing insoluble U(IV) from the corroding fuel surface into soluble uranyl species.