ANS webinar tackles nuclear waste

Moderated by ANS past president Eric Loewen, (2011–12), this presentation was built to be an accessible and informative Nuclear Waste 101 offering, as part of the Society’s broader effort to develop a program specifically tailored to educate K-12 teachers.

The details: Perfetti’s talk had a broad scope, chiefly attending to defining nuclear waste, clarifying the amount the United States has produced, and explaining the impacts of different methods of disposal.

While taking the audience through these points, Perfetti also advocated for nuclear power as the solution to the country’s need for cheap, clean energy, reminding the audience of the orders of magnitude between nuclear’s small amount of waste and the waste generated by fossil fuel.

Disposal: Much of the webinar focused on waste disposal, with Perfetti briefly recapping the history and specifics of the Yucca Mountain project. He explained the multilayered protection that would be built to contain nuclear waste in deep geologic repositories, as well as the geological and geographic factors that make Yucca Mountain particularly well-suited to storing waste.

Acknowledging that the project is unlikely to ever be completed, Perfetti explored other methods of disposal. Fuel reprocessing was discussed at length as perhaps the most viable option to deal with waste, especially if used in conjunction with a deep geologic repository. Perfetti explained that fuel processing has the benefits of giving us more fuel and reducing the total volume of waste while also producing useful medical isotopes.

Ocean and space disposal, while significantly less feasible options for waste, were also explored.

Go deeper: Watch the full, in-depth discussion on the basics of nuclear waste on ANS’s website