Nuclear Waste: A Failure to Dispose Safely and Responsibly

This is a national crisis, building steadily over 75 years, with poorly managed and stored radioactive waste from nuclear weapons production and commercial energy from nuclear power plants cluttering our communities, highways and ports without a clear plan to resolve it. Nuclear energy supplies 18% of U.S. electricity, declining because of the surge in renewable energy, and that means 2,000 metric tons (MT) of waste are generated each year. More than 95,000 MT of spent fuel are being stored at sites in 39 states. There are 54 nuclear power plants with 94 active commercial reactors, plus 35 university and government facilities. That excludes other waste stored temporarily in uranium mining and processing storage sites. 

Now, the Trump Administration has decided to push full-bore ahead with construction of federally-subsidized large and small reactors in big numbers without due attention to testing-for-readiness, financial prudence, regulatory caution, and safety protection of the public. There is no expressed interest in hastening the safe treatment of nuclear waste.

Phony Fixes

There are several temporary storage facilities in operation but the effort to find, build, manage and maintain a permanent repository has failed. In the Project 2025 script the Trump Administration is using, turning the waste problem over to the private sector is their choice but this has already been tried and failed. 

Former NRC Chair Greg Jaczko wrote: “Because disposing of radioactive material seemed too difficult for the private sector, the federal government stepped in to take responsibility.” Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act (1982) with a mandate to build two permanent repositories (east and west) in accordance with EPA mandates for environmental protection. Later the eastern unit was dropped, and the western option was Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Jazcko explains the decision to drop Yucca Mountain in 2010 on two grounds: political motives, not scientific argument, propelled the case, and resistance by the Nevada political ecosystem led by a powerful Senator and the First Nations of the Southwest. The stringent geological parameters for a sealed repository were not met (especially porosity). The US government has already collected $44 billion in taxes to support a permanent repository, but we’re no closer to success than at the passage of the 1982 waste law.

What now? Two former NRC Chairs are blunt about it:

Jazcko: “ There is only one logical answer: we must stop generating nuclear waste, and that means we must stop using nuclear power.”

Allison Macfarlane: “ It is irresponsible to go forward and build new reactors if you haven’t solved the waste problem.”

But we live in the present, and the government is applying more brawn than brains to the risk of accumulated waste exposure to workers, mothers and children virtually everywhere. For example, the Hanford Reservation in Washington state is the nation’s largest and most toxic waste storage site run by the DOE, and their cleanup of nuclear waste from World War Two has failed to deliver. They are planning to ship 2,000 gallons of liquid waste through the central rail station in Spokane, Washington and then on to other Northwest states, ending in Texas. The Spokane Mayor’s and state officials’ objections have been ignored, even after the Washington state legislature approved a multi-billion-dollar fund for cleanup of the Hanford site expected to be completed mid-century. The problems of unsafe interstate commerce and possible derailment raised by First Nation and urban communities have been ignored. The Hanford “plan” is to double-dip the taxpayer through federal and state windows while reducing the federal budget allocated for required federal action. More shipments are expected.

Another horrendous case involved the government’s failure to permanently contain nuclear waste from the Manhattan Project during WW 2 in St. Louis , Missouri. Wastes from uranium enrichment leaked into rivers, the airport, and illegally dumped landfills, with the government responding at glacial speed with non-committal inspections, denial of serious health risks, and failure to act on cleanup of a Superfund landfill site both the NRC and EPA classified as an emergency. St. Louis County has detailed a full spectrum of highly elevated child and adult cancers and auto-immune disorders. The starting date for the landfill cleanup has apparently been delayed, and after 75 years the community is still waiting for action and emergency health interventions the victims of radiation exposure have every right to receive. 

This is no way to run a country.

White House Deregulates the Regulators and Exposes the Public to Health Risk and Harm

The Trump White House, ever restless, is pursuing its wish-list of energy dominance by shoving the NRC to the curb so that rapid appraisal, approval, building and operation of large reactors and a flotilla of small modular reactors (SMRs) can be deployed within the current term or shortly thereafter. The White House will make most critical decisions regarding approval and financing of the so-called “second renaissance” of nuclear power.

Beyond reveries of speculative finance, the sober reality is that unbuilt SMRs are designed to produce MORE radioactive waste than standard large reactors, See the study by Krall et al cited below. Notable findings include: (i) water-, molten-salt, and sodium-cooled designs increase the volume of waste in need of management and disposal by factors of 2 to 30; (ii) neutron leakage is an enhanced problem in SMRs, one that designs have not addressed. “Therefore, most SMR designs entail a significant disadvantage for nuclear waste disposal activities,” they conclude. 

Additionally, the White House is pushing to make the allowable radiation exposure for industry workers five times more permissible, higher than any other nation deploying nuclear power. Recent epidemiological studies show that higher exposure is especially damaging to pregnant women and young girls, doubling cancer rates for long exposure compared to reference populations. That would be unconscionable.

Fighting Back: Our Resistance to the “Slow Death” Perpetrator, Public and Private

We can learn from the recent withdrawal of the HOLTEC-ELEA bid to build an “interim” nuclear waste storge facility at great public expense in New Mexico (see “Victory in New Mexico,” in this newsletter), based on a pretense that Yucca Mountain might be resuscitated to take over eventually. (Judy Pasternak’s splendid account of the true oppression of New Mexico’s indigenous people is a great read – see below!). A marvelous coalition of nuclear experts, corralled by Beyond Nuclear, including First Nations and progressive community activists, won a ten-year struggle to deny the inadequate proposal and retain hope for a permanent solution that can be in everybody’s interests. This teaches us the power of nonviolent action conducted closer to home (states, counties, towns, cities), where we live and grow and raise children who should never suffer from society’s misbegotten dreams. 

Sources

Jaczko, G. 2019 Confessions of a Rogue Nuclear Regulator. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Kite, A. 2023. Records reveal 75 years of government downplaying, ignoring risks of radioactive waste. Missouri Independent July 12.

Krall L., Macfarlane A., and Ewing R. 2022. Nuclear Waste from Small Nuclear Reactors. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Vol 119, No 23, 1-12.

Niiler, E. 2025. A Nuclear-Power Revival Brings Back an Old Problem: What to Do with the Waste. Wall Street Journal March 5.

Pasternak J. 2010. Yellow Dirt. New York: Free Press.