At the end of 1987, the Nuclear Waste Policy Act was amended to designate Yucca Mountain, located in the remote Nevada desert, as the sole US national repository for spent fuel and HLW from nuclear power and military defence programs.
How Is Nuclear Waste Stored? … New nuclear technology, such as small modular reactors and accident tolerant fuels, will reduce time that these assemblies spend in the cooling pool. After the fuel has cooled in the pool, operators remove them and place them in a concrete-and-steel container called a dry cask.
Currently, the United States does not reprocess spent nuclear fuel, nor does it have a disposal facility for high-level radioactive waste. Most high-level radioactive waste is stored at the facility in which it was produced.
Radioactive waste comes from a number of sources. In countries with nuclear power plants, nuclear armament, or nuclear fuel treatment plants, the majority of waste originates from the nuclear fuel cycle and nuclear weapons reprocessing.
Canada's used nuclear fuel is currently safely managed in facilities licensed for interim storage. These facilities are located at nuclear reactor sites in Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick, and at Atomic Energy of Canada Limited's sites in Manitoba and Chalk River Laboratories in Ontario.
Site selection. The government has declared part of the land at Napandee near Kimba in South Australia as the site for the National Radioactive Waste Management Facility (NRWMF).
Low-level waste is typically stored on-site by licensees, either until it has decayed away and can be disposed of as ordinary trash, or until amounts are large enough for shipment to a low-level waste disposal site in containers approved by the Department of Transportation.
Between 70% and 75% of the UK's high-activity radioactive waste, which would be designated for the GDF, is stored at the Sellafield facility in west Cumbria. The sources of the waste include power generation, military, medical and civil uses.
Radioactive (or nuclear) waste is a byproduct from nuclear reactors, fuel processing plants, hospitals and research facilities. Radioactive waste is also generated while decommissioning and dismantling nuclear reactors and other nuclear facilities.