WASTE MANAGEMENT
Closing the Circle

Waste storage drums.

Sixty years after the Graphite Reactor went critical, ORNL today is helping to close the nuclear cycle by finding safe ways to isolate nuclear wastes. Perhaps the most significant work has related to repository siting for geologic disposal of spent fuel and high-level nuclear waste (HLW), part of an effort that resulted in Congressional approval of Yucca Mountain (Nevada) as the possible disposal site. The process began in 1955 with a National Academy of Sciences conference devoted to developing U.S. plans for permanent disposal of reactor waste. Among the 65 scientists attending were ORNL's Floyd Culler, Roy Morton, and Ed Struxness. The conferees recommended bedded salt as the best medium for HLW disposal, although other options existed.

In 1958 the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) asked ORNL to manage a repository program, largely because of its scientists' early leadership in waste management studies. In the 1960s, ORNL managed a major characterization and testing program in a Kansas salt mine. By 1970 it was announced that the nation's first demonstration repository would be sited there, but technical and political concerns reversed this position. ORNL continued to lead the AEC repository program through studies of multiple rock types and development of siting criteria. In 1976 the Office of Waste Isolation was opened in Oak Ridge before being transferred to Battelle Memorial Institute.

ORNL also has been a leader in managing low-level nuclear waste (LLW). The Laboratory served as associate leader of the Department of Energy's National Low-Level Waste Program in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Highly innovative in situ treatment technologies for reducing release of radionuclides from buried LLW have been widely accepted. Finally, disposal issues associated with mercury used at the Oak Ridge Y-12 Plant to produce enriched lithium for the hydrogen bomb program, which were largely addressed by ORNL scientists, helped motivate DOE to establish its remedial action program. From cleanup of old sites to construction of state-of-the-art new ones, responsible waste management has become a central part of the nuclear cycle.—Steve Stow

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