Also, due to the end of the cold war, lots of weapon rated nuclear materials has to be disposed or used in some way for civilian purpose. Both spent fuel and high level defense nuclear waste present a difficult disposal problem which the scientific communities as well as the public have to deal with in the future since some of the radioactive components of these wastes have extremely long half-lives and the intense levels of radiation and heat emitted from them during the first 50 years after removal from the reactor or defense equipment are very dangerous. Background This paper deals with different methods of disposing high-level nuclear waste. There are two main ways in which high level nuclear waste is disposed, they are underground repositories and under ocean repositories. Consideration of the ethical aspect of disposing high level nuclear waste underground or under the ocean will also be discussed since this issue plays a major role in how these wastes are perceived by the public, thus it effects how to dispose them.
Solutions There are many proposals for disposing high level nuclear wastes.
However the most favored solution for the disposal of these wastes is isolating radioactive waste from man and biosphere for a period of time such that any possible subsequent release of radio nuclides from the waste repository will not result in undue radiation exposure. The basic idea behind this is to use stable geological environments that have retained their integrity for millions of years to provide a suitable isolation capacity for the long time periods require. It can be abandoned after closure with no need for continuing surveillance or monitoring. One way of disposing high level nuclear waste materials which meets the above condition is the concept of disposing these wastes by burial in suitable geologic media beneath the deep ocean floor, which is called seabed disposal. Seabed disposal is different from sea dumping which does not involve isolation of low level radioactive waste within a geological strata.