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Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board
The U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board was established in the 1987 Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act (NWPAA) (P.L. 100-203) to "...evaluate the technical and scientific validity of activities elated to managing and disposing of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive wasteundertaken by the Secretary f Energy including # site characterization activities; and # activities relating to the packaging or transportation of high-level radioactive waste or spent nuclear fuel." According to the Legislative History of the NWPAA, the purpose of the Board is to provide independent expert advice to Congress and the Secretary of Energy on technical and scientific issues and to review the technical and scientific validity of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) implementation of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (NWPA) (P.L. 97-425, as amended). In accordance with this mandate, the Board conducts ongoing technical and scientific peer review of DOE activities related to the management ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1987 Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 is a United States federal law which established a comprehensive national program for the safe, permanent disposal of highly radioactive wastes. * The US Congress amended the act in 1987 to designate Yucca Mountain, Nevada, as the sole repository. * The act allowed Nevada to override this designation, which it did in April 2002. * Congress overrode Nevada's veto in July 2002. * Nevada appealed, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia sided with Nevada in 2004. * At least one other jurisdiction (Aiken County, South Carolina in 2011) filed suit to force Yucca Mountain to accept the nuclear waste from the rest of the US. Historical overview During the first 40 years that nuclear waste was being created in the United States, no legislation was enacted to manage its disposal. Nuclear waste, some of which remains radioactive with a half-life of more than one million years, was kept in various types of temporary storage. O ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Radioactive Waste
Radioactive waste is a type of hazardous waste that contains radioactive material. Radioactive waste is a result of many activities, including nuclear medicine, nuclear research, nuclear power generation, rare-earth mining, and nuclear weapons reprocessing. The storage and disposal of radioactive waste is regulated by government agencies in order to protect human health and the environment. Radioactive waste is broadly classified into low-level waste (LLW), such as paper, rags, tools, clothing, which contain small amounts of mostly short-lived radioactivity, intermediate-level waste (ILW), which contains higher amounts of radioactivity and requires some shielding, and high-level waste (HLW), which is highly radioactive and hot due to decay heat, so requires cooling and shielding. In nuclear reprocessing plants about 96% of spent nuclear fuel is recycled back into uranium-based and mixed-oxide (MOX) fuels. The residual 4% is minor actinides and fission products the latter of w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spent Nuclear Fuel
Spent nuclear fuel, occasionally called used nuclear fuel, is nuclear fuel that has been irradiated in a nuclear reactor (usually at a nuclear power plant). It is no longer useful in sustaining a nuclear reaction in an ordinary thermal reactor and depending on its point along the nuclear fuel cycle, it may have considerably different isotopic constituents. The term "fuel" is slightly confusing, as it implies a combustion of some type, which does not occur in a nuclear power plant. Nevertheless, this term is generally accepted. Nature of spent fuel Nanomaterial properties In the oxide fuel, intense temperature gradients exist that cause fission products to migrate. The zirconium tends to move to the centre of the fuel pellet where the temperature is highest, while the lower-boiling fission products move to the edge of the pellet. The pellet is likely to contain many small bubble-like pores that form during use; the fission product xenon migrates to these voids. Some of this xeno ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nuclear Waste Policy Act
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 is a United States federal law which established a comprehensive national program for the safe, permanent disposal of highly radioactive wastes. * The US Congress amended the act in 1987 to designate Yucca Mountain, Nevada, as the sole repository. * The act allowed Nevada to override this designation, which it did in April 2002. * Congress overrode Nevada's veto in July 2002. * Nevada appealed, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia sided with Nevada in 2004. * At least one other jurisdiction (Aiken County, South Carolina in 2011) filed suit to force Yucca Mountain to accept the nuclear waste from the rest of the US. Historical overview During the first 40 years that nuclear waste was being created in the United States, no legislation was enacted to manage its disposal. Nuclear waste, some of which remains radioactive with a half-life of more than one million years, was kept in various types of temporary storage. O ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
High-level Radioactive Waste
High-level waste (HLW) is a type of nuclear waste created by the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel. It exists in two main forms: * First and second cycle raffinate and other waste streams created by nuclear reprocessing. * Waste formed by vitrification of liquid high-level waste. Liquid high-level waste is typically held temporarily in underground tanks pending vitrification. Most of the high-level waste created by the Manhattan Project and the weapons programs of the cold war exists in this form because funding for further processing was typically not part of the original weapons programs. Both spent nuclear fuel and vitrified waste are considered as suitable forms for long term disposal, after a period of temporary storage in the case of spent nuclear fuel. HLW contains many of the fission products and transuranic elements generated in the reactor core and is the type of nuclear waste with the highest activity. HLW accounts for over 95% of the total radioactivity produce ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Academy Of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the National Academy of Medicine (NAM). As a national academy, new members of the organization are elected annually by current members, based on their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. Election to the National Academy is one of the highest honors in the scientific field. Members of the National Academy of Sciences serve '' pro bono'' as "advisers to the nation" on science, engineering, and medicine. The group holds a congressional charter under Title 36 of the United States Code. Founded in 1863 as a result of an Act of Congress that was approved by Abraham Lincoln, the NAS is charged with "providing independent, objective advice to the nation on matters related to science and technology. ... to provide scien ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arlington County, Virginia
Arlington County is a County (United States), county in the Virginia, Commonwealth of Virginia. The county is situated in Northern Virginia on the southwestern bank of the Potomac River directly across from the Washington, D.C., District of Columbia, of which it was District of Columbia retrocession, once a part. The county is coextensive with the United States Census Bureau, U.S. Census Bureau's census-designated place of Arlington. Arlington County is considered to be the second-largest "principal city" of the Washington metropolitan area, although Arlington County does not have the legal designation of Independent city (Virginia), independent city or incorporated town under Law of Virginia, Virginia state law. In 2020, the county's population was estimated at 238,643, making Arlington the List of cities and counties in Virginia, sixth-largest county in Virginia by population; if it were incorporated as a city, Arlington would be the third most populous city in the state. Wit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yucca Mountain
Yucca Mountain is a mountain in Nevada, near its border with California, approximately northwest of Las Vegas. Located in the Great Basin, Yucca Mountain is east of the Amargosa Desert, south of the Nevada Test and Training Range and in the Nevada National Security Site. It is the site of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, which is currently identified by Congressional law as the nation's spent nuclear waste storage facility. However, while licensure of the site through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is ongoing, political maneuvering led to the site being de-funded in 2010. Geology The formation that makes up Yucca Mountain was created by several large eruptions from a caldera volcano and is composed of alternating layers of ignimbrite (welded tuff), non-welded tuff, and semi-welded tuff. The volcanic units have been tilted along fault lines, thus forming the current ridge line called Yucca Mountain. In addition to these faults, Yucca Mountain is criss-cro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yucca Mountain Repository
The Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository, as designated by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act amendments of 1987, is a proposed deep geological repository storage facility within Yucca Mountain for spent nuclear fuel and other high-level radioactive waste in the United States. The site is on federal land adjacent to the Nevada Test Site in Nye County, Nevada, about northwest of the Las Vegas Valley. The project was approved in 2002 by the 107th United States Congress, but the 112th Congress ended federal funding for the site via amendment to the Department of Defense and Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, passed on April 14, 2011, during the Obama Administration. The project has encountered many difficulties and was highly contested by the public, the Western Shoshone peoples, and many politicians. The project also faces strong state and regional opposition. The Government Accountability Office stated that the closure was for political, not technical or safety reasons. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Low-level Radioactive Waste Policy Of The United States
Radioactive waste is generated from the nuclear weapons program, commercial nuclear power, medical applications, and corporate and university-based research programs. Some of the materials LLW consists of are: "gloves and other protective clothing, glass and plastic laboratory supplies, machine parts and tools, and disposable medical items that have come in contact with radioactive materials". Waste is generally categorized as high level waste (HLW) and low-level waste (LLW). LLW contains materials such as irradiated tools, lab clothing, ion exchanger resins, animal carcasses, and trash from defense, commercial nuclear power, medical, and research activities. These materials usually have radioactivity that have short half lives—from ranges of multiple days to several hundred years. In 1990, 1.1 million cubic feet of LLW was produced. Currently, U.S. reactors generate about 40,000 cubic meters of low-level radioactive waste per year, including contaminated components and materials ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nuclear Energy Policy Of The United States
The nuclear energy policy of the United States began in 1954 and continued with the ongoing building of nuclear power plants, the enactment of numerous pieces of legislation such as the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974, and the implementation of countless policies which have guided the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy in the regulation and growth of nuclear energy companies. This includes, but is not limited to, regulations of nuclear facilities, waste storage, decommissioning of weapons-grade materials, uranium mining, and funding for nuclear companies, along with an increase in power plant building. Both legislation and bureaucratic regulations of nuclear energy in the United States have been shaped by scientific research, private industries' wishes, and public opinion, which has shifted over time and as a result of different nuclear disasters. In the United States, there have been numerous legislative actions and policies implemented on a f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Title 10 Of The Code Of Federal Regulations
Title 10 of the Code of Federal Regulations is one of 50 titles composing the United States Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) and contains the principal set of rules and regulations issued by federal agencies regarding nuclear energy. It is available in digital and printed form and can be referenced online using thElectronic Code of Federal Regulations(e-CFR). Structure The table of contents, as reflected in the e-CFR updated June 19, 2014, is as follows: Parts 0 to 199 are the requirements (and reserved for the requirements) prescribed by the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and binding on all persons and organizations who receive a license from NRC to use nuclear materials or operate nuclear facilities. Licensing is required for the design, manufacture, construction, operation and decommissioning of nuclear reactor A nuclear reactor is a device used to initiate and control a fission nuclear chain reaction or nuclear fusion reactions. Nuclear reactors are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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