Nonetheless, our optimism has been tempered because the Energy Department still has a pending license application before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build a permanent dump for the nationÕs high-level nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.
___ The federal government and the nuclear industry figure it will take decades to create the kind of technology that would reduce the volume and radio-toxicity of high-level nuclear waste so that it can be recycled to obtain more energy and improve waste disposal, according to Steve Kraft, senior director of used fuel management at the Nuclear Energy Institute.
The study will examine rail and truck corridors that could be used to haul high-level nuclear waste and spent nuclear fuel to Yucca Mountain, which is the site legally designated to hold the nation's high-level radioactive waste.
This is a significant step forward in solving the nation's problem of disposing of spent nuclear fuel and high-level nuclear waste," Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said in a statement, noting that the waste is currently sitting at 121 temporary locations in 39 states.
Issuing operating licences on a franchise basis would also allow the UAE to avoid potential issues over the long-term management of high-level nuclear waste - spent nuclear rods, which have radioactive half-lives of thousands of years - and of low-level radioactive waste.
Other subjects covered include cyclic behavior and microstructure developed in zircaloy-4 between 300 and 873k, analysis of damage evolution in FCC metals irradiated with high energy neutrons under well-defined boundary conditions, and ceramics, glass- ceramics, and glasses for immobilization of high-level nuclear wastes.
The plant would turn the UK's 60,000 tonnes of high-level nuclear waste into reactor fuel that will provide 60 per cent of this country's electricity until 2060, it is claimed.
