Rokkasho has been seen as a facility that will allow Tokyo to reduce radioactive wastes from its nuclear power plants by reprocessing spent nuclear fuel.
And then there are some really nasty forms of industrial waste, such as spent nuclear fuel, for which no universally accepted disposal methods have thus far been developed.
The answer to this mess is to renegotiate the contracts so that spent nuclear fuel already at Sellafield is stored for a fixed time agreed between the parties.
If the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle is managed effectively, spent nuclear fuel is stored in sites that pose negligible risks to the environment or the public.
In 2006, the administration created the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, an international program among nuclear nations that, among other things, seeks to develop ways to reprocess spent nuclear fuel.
Under NWPA, DOE is required to permanently dispose of spent nuclear fuel (as well as defense HLW) in a deep underground repository, and to take physical control of the waste beginning in 1998.
New rules imposed by the NRC require plant operators to install or improve venting systems to limit core damage in a serious accident and set up sophisticated equipment to monitor water levels in pools of spent nuclear fuel.
Last week a Federal court shot down the long-exercised argument that the Department of Energy (DOE) uses in defense of lawsuits leveled against it for not taking control and disposing of spent nuclear fuel from commercial reactors ( Court rejects DOE).
Since the March 11 earthquake that ravaged northern Japan, workers at Fukushima Daiichi have been struggling to cool down three overheated reactors and keep pools of spent but still potent nuclear fuel from spreading further radioactive contamination across northern Japan.
Japan has a nuclear cooperation agreement with the U.S. dating back to the 1980s that allows Tokyo to reprocess the spent fuel from its nuclear reactors.
The House and Senate passed bills (HR1270, S104) in 1997 requiring the Energy Department to build a temporary storage site for spent fuel from commercial nuclear reactors.
The company mines uranium, makes nuclear fuel, designs and builds reactors and reprocesses spent fuel.
Creating international nuclear fuel banks and shared management of enrichment, reprocessing and spent fuel storage facilities would make nonproliferation sense as well as supporting civil nuclear power in energy-thirsty Asia.
The system cooling water which contained spent - but still highly radioactive - nuclear fuel rods failed and it took engineers some 30 hours to repair the damage.
The objective here is to satisfy concerns and to earn the trust of those communities that would host future nuclear power power plants or their spent fuel.
The U.S. has supported a Russian proposal to provide Iran with nuclear fuel for civilian reactors as long as the spent fuel is then sent back to Russia.
This unique feature enables LFTRs to consume their fuel so thoroughly that they can even use the spent fuel from other reactors, cleaning up our legacy of nuclear waste while producing a minuscule amount of waste themselves.
By then, they estimate, nuclear plants will have generated another 40, 000 metric tons of spent fuel.
FORBES: U.S. To Bury Almost All Existing Used Nuclear Fuel; Recycling Deferred At Least 20 Years
At present, 120 nuclear waste storage facilities exist in 39 states that hold 70, 000 tons of spent fuel, which is growing at 2, 000 metric tons a year.
Even if the U.S. decided to close all of its nuclear reactors tomorrow, there would still be the problem what to do with the spent fuel pools, he said.
South Korean negotiators had been seeking a new nuclear-cooperation agreement with the U.S. that would allow it to begin enriching uranium and reprocessing spent reactor fuel, arguing these technologies are crucial for Seoul to expand and secure its civilian nuclear-power program.
In the past month, Fukushima nuclear plant has experienced two power outages that shut down some of its cooling systems for spent fuel ponds.
Reactors that exploit nuclear fission (in which energy is generated by splitting uranium atoms) have produced thousands of tonnes of spent fuel and other radioactive by-products.
The Obama Administration has abandoned development of a nuclear waste storage facility proposed for Yucca Mountain, Nevada in favor of emerging technologies for recycling and stabilizing spent fuel.
FORBES: U.S. nuclear fuel rods to sit in pools -- like those that failed in Japan -- until 2050
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