page_title: Radioactive waste
section_title: Geologic disposal
hierarchical_section_title: Radioactive waste / Management / Long term management / Geologic disposal
caption_attribution_description: English: damaged drum with radioactive waste inside WIPP, New Mexico, USA. The picture was taken on 2014-05-15 during investigations for the cause of radioactive contamination. Site is Panel 7, Room 7. The picture shows a drum, that has obviously been damaged from the inside due to a chemical reaction causing heat. The theory is, that organic cat litter was used in one batch of drums from the Los Alamos facility, where only anorganic cat litter is permitted due to different reactions to the chemicals inside the drums.
context_page_description: Radioactive waste is a type of hazardous waste that contains radioactive material. Radioactive waste is a by-product of various nuclear technology processes. Industries generating radioactive waste include nuclear medicine, nuclear research, nuclear power, manufacturing, construction, coal and rare-earth mining, and nuclear weapons reprocessing. Radioactive waste is regulated by government agencies in order to protect human health and the environment.
  In modern nuclear plants over 96% of spent fuel is recycled back into uranium-based and MOX fuel. Radioactivity of the remaining 4% fission products naturally decreases over time, so it has to be isolated and confined in appropriate disposal facilities for a sufficient period until it no longer poses a threat. The time radioactive waste must be stored for depends on the type of waste and radioactive isotopes. Current approaches to radioactive waste storage have been segregation and storage for short-lived waste, near-surface disposal for low and some intermediate-level waste, and burial in a deep geological repository or transmutation for the high-level waste.
context_section_description: The process of selecting appropriate deep final repositories for high level waste and spent fuel is now under way in several countries with the first expected to be commissioned some time after 2010. The basic concept is to locate a large, stable geologic formation and use mining technology to excavate a tunnel, or large-bore tunnel boring machines (similar to those used to drill the Channel Tunnel from England to France) to drill a shaft 500 metres (1,600 ft) to 1,000 metres (3,300 ft) below the surface where rooms or vaults can be excavated for disposal of high-level radioactive waste. The goal is to permanently isolate nuclear waste from the human environment. Many people remain uncomfortable with the immediate stewardship cessation of this disposal system, suggesting perpetual management and monitoring would be more prudent.
  Because some radioactive species have half-lives longer than one million years, even very low container leakage and radionuclide migration rates must be taken into account. Moreover, it may require more than one half-life until some nuclear materials lose enough radioactivity to cease being lethal to living things. A 1983 review of the Swedish radioactive waste disposal program by the National Academy of Sciences found that country's estimate of several hundred thousand years—perhaps up to one million years—being necessary for waste isolation "fully justified."
  Ocean floor disposal of radioactive waste has been suggested by the finding that deep waters in the North Atlantic Ocean do not present an exchange with shallow waters for about 140 years based on oxygen content data recorded over a period of 25 years. They include burial beneath a stable abyssal plain, burial in a subduction zone that would slowly carry the waste downward into the Earth's mantle, and burial beneath a remote natural or human-made island. While these approaches all have merit and would facilitate an international solution to the problem of disposal of radioactive waste, they would require an amendment of the Law of the Sea.
  Article 1 (Definitions), 7., of the 1996 Protocol to the Convention on the Prevention of Marine Pollution by Dumping of Wastes and Other Matter, (the London Dumping Convention) states:
  ""Sea" means all marine waters other than the internal waters of States, as well as the seabed and the subsoil thereof; it does not include sub-seabed repositories accessed only from land."
  The proposed land-based subductive waste disposal method disposes of nuclear waste in a subduction zone accessed from land and therefore is not prohibited by international agreement. This method has been described as the most viable means of disposing of radioactive waste, and as the state-of-the-art as of 2001 in nuclear waste disposal technology.
  Another approach termed Remix & Return would blend high-level waste with uranium mine and mill tailings down to the level of the original radioactivity of the uranium ore, then replace it in inactive uranium mines. This approach has the merits of providing jobs for miners who would double as disposal staff, and of facilitating a cradle-to-grave cycle for radioactive materials, but would be inappropriate for spent reactor fuel in the absence of reprocessing, due to the presence of highly toxic radioactive elements such as plutonium within it.
  Deep borehole disposal is the concept of disposing of high-level radioactive waste from nuclear reactors in extremely deep boreholes. Deep borehole disposal seeks to place the waste as much as 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) beneath the surface of the Earth and relies primarily on the immense natural geological barrier to confine the waste safely and permanently so that it should never pose a threat to the environment. The Earth's crust contains 120 trillion tons of thorium and 40 trillion tons of uranium (primarily at relatively trace concentrations of parts per million each adding up over the crust's 3 * 10¹⁹ ton mass), among other natural radioisotopes. Since the fraction of nuclides decaying per unit of time is inversely proportional to an isotope's half-life, 
caption: On Feb. 14, 2014, radioactive materials at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant leaked from a damaged storage drum due to the use of incorrect packing material. Analysis showed the lack of a "safety culture" at the plant since its successful operation for 15 years had bred complacency.[82]
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