Nuclear Waste: Do We Know What to Do With It?

May 17 -- Individually, they're no larger than your pinkie.

But the energy-packed pellets that are the radioactive remains of nuclear power generation pose an enormous problem for nuclear energy plants that weren't originally designed to store them.

So far the 103 operating nuclear reactors in the United States have generated an estimated 45,000 tons of waste that is expected to remain radioactive for more than 200,000 years.

And right now, the waste, which emits radioactive particles that can eat away at human tissue and organs, is being stored in tanks or concrete and steel bunkers at sites that were only meant to contain the waste for perhaps decades, not centuries.

"Spent fuel is now stored in pools and dry casks," says Rodney Ewing, a professor in nuclear engineering at the University of Michigan. "Today it's safe. But it's certainly not a long-term solution."

Shoot It into Space or Bury It?

Some argue the lack of a permanent, safe storage site for nuclear waste is reason enough to oppose proposals in President Bush's energy plan, unveiled today, to speed licensing of new nuclear power plants and extend the operating licenses of existing plants. As Allison Macfarlane, a geologist and senior researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology says, "Until we can figure out what to do with the waste, we shouldn't make any more of it."

But those who tout the economic and environmental benefits of nuclear energy argue a safe, permanent storage site has already been found and only politics has prevented its opening. Others point to changing methods of nuclear power generation that could ultimately reduce waste production (see sidebar below).

Some have proposed rocketing nuclear waste into space where it could linger and eventually decay beyond Earth's orbit. But that idea has since been dismissed as prohibitively expensive and dangerous (imagine a Challenger-like disaster on a craft containing nuclear waste).

Others are working on ways to convert nuclear waste into less-harmful materials using a process called transmutation. But that technology, which would attempt to accelerate particles into the atoms of radioactive material, remains unfeasible.