 |
 |
||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
||||||
Frequently Asked Questions
New information from the EPA
- Background on Proposed Facility at Yucca Mountain (2pp, 315 Kb
- Agency Roles in the Approval, Monitoring, and Operation of a Potential Yucca Mountain Repository (1pp, 454 Kb)
DOE OCRWM Annual Reports to Congress
Yucca Mountain Site Characterization Project Chapter Two
Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM) Budgets and Financial Information
OCRWM Budget Distribution Comparison
- What is radiation? How do we control our exposure to radiation? What are spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste?
- Why is the DOE studying only Yucca Mountain?
- What makes Yucca Mountain a good place to store waste?
- Would a repository at Yucca Mountain protect public health and safety?
- Would volcano's effect repository safety?
- Would a repository at Yucca Mountain withstand earthquakes?
- Can radioactive waste from the repository contaminate the ground water in Las Vegas?
- Is the repository protected from sabotage?
- Can waste be transported safely to a repository?
- How will shipments of high-level radioactive waste be protected from sabotage?
- Is my property insured against potential damage resulting from transporting high-level radioactive waste?
- What direction, review, and oversight have been provided for the project?
- How can the DOE be certain that its calculations of events thousands of years in the future are accurate?
- Will taxpayers subsidize large utilities for the disposal of high-level radioactive waste?
- Does the DOE plan to monitor the repository after its closure?
- What alternative technologies might eliminate the need for a repository?
- What are some of the public policy issues associated with a repository the Secretary is considering?
- Why have the DOE's siting guidelines changed?
- Where are the wastes that would be placed in a repository?
- What steps of the repository development process would follow a recommendation by the Secretary?
- How can the DOE move forward with a site recommendation if there are a number of technical items yet to complete for the NRC?
What is High-Level Waste?
High-level radioactive wastes are the highly radioactive materials produced as a byproduct of the reactions that occur inside nuclear reactors. High-level wastes take one of two forms:
- Spent (used) reactor fuel when it is accepted for disposal
- Waste materials remaining after spent fuel is reprocessed
Spent nuclear fuel is used fuel from a reactor that is no longer efficient in creating electricity, because its fission process has slowed. However, it is still thermally hot, highly radioactive, and potentially harmful. Until a permanent disposal repository for spent nuclear fuel is built, licensees must safely store this fuel at their reactors.
Reprocessing extracts isotopes from spent fuel that can be used again as reactor fuel. Commercial reprocessing is currently not practiced in the United States, although it has been allowed in the past. However, significant quantities of high-level radioactive waste are produced by the defense reprocessing programs at Department of Energy (DOE) facilities, such as Hanford, Washington, and Savannah River, South Carolina, and by commercial reprocessing operations at West Valley, New York. These wastes, which are generally managed by DOE, are not regulated by NRC. However they must be included in any high-level radioactive waste disposal plans, along with all high-level waste from spent reactor fuel.
Because of their highly radioactive fission products, high-level waste and spent fuel must be handled and stored with care. Since the only way radioactive waste finally becomes harmless is through decay, which for high-level wastes can take hundreds of thousands of years, the wastes must be stored and finally disposed of in a way that provides adequate protection of the public for a very long time.
Related Information
Fact sheets
Esmeralda County ROP office recommends visiting the Yucca Mountain Project web site as well as the State of Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects web site where you will find a large collection of fact sheets and information related to the proposed Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository. We have included a few links to fact sheets for your convenience.
Why Yucca Mountain Brochure [pdf]
Why Yucca Mountain FAQ's [pdf]
Site Recommendation and Approval
Fact sheet produced's by Citizens Alert - If not Yucca then what?
