The management of nuclear waste, which contains materials that remain hazardous for up to millions of years, is one of the most vexing, contentious, and costly environmental issues of our time. The scene is also littered with institutional and regulatory failures and absurdities. In the United States today, nuclear wastes are classified, not so much according to the threat they pose to human health or the environment, but according to the process which produced the waste.
Some wastes have health criteria which govern their disposal.
Other wastes do not. Some wastes are designated as suitable for shallow-land burial. Other wastes of comparable danger are designated for disposal in a deep underground repository. There are no adequate programs to address whole categories of other wastes of comparable danger, notably soil contaminated with plutonium and other long-lived radioactive elements, which may, by default, be left lying around endangering public health and the environment for thousands of years. This welter of problems, along with concern for future generations and environmental degradation in general, has given rise to vigorous public opposition to nuclear waste disposal sites wherever they have been proposed in recent years.