Radioactive waste has long been the Achilles’ heel of nuclear power. As concerns over global warming and instability in the Middle East drive most countries to seek alternatives to fossil fuel, nuclear power has emerged as an appealing source of clean and sustainable energy. Although operational hazards still account for a large part of the public anxiety over nuclear energy, the increasing reliability and efficiency of nuclear power plants has shifted the focus to their radioactive byproducts. Each year, activists voice concern over the adverse impact on the environment and the possibility of deriving weapons-grade plutonium from spent fuel.

In June 2000, Germany announced its plan to phase out its 19 nuclear power plants over the next 20 years, making it the largest industrial state to abandon nuclear energy. With nuclear power accounting for a third of the country’s electricity, Germany’s decision to abandon nuclear power at the cost of becoming even more reliant on emissions-producing fossil fuel and imported energy reflects the widespread fear of nuclear power and the waste it generates.

While the amount of waste produced by nuclear power plants is very small compared to that of conventional power plants using fossil fuel, it also requires much more elaborate and potentially dangerous treatment. High-level waste—the most radioactive byproducts of nuclear power plants—takes thousands of years to lose its radioactivity. With over 400 nuclear reactors now providing 16 percent of the world’s electricity and more than 30 new reactors in construction, nuclear waste is accumulating rapidly. Many interim storage facilities are nearing capacity, forcing some countries to increase their waste exports at high cost and risk disaster during transport. Even countries like Germany that have decided to move away from nuclear energy must deal with the waste that will have accumulated by the time reforms are implemented.

The first question in nuclear waste disposal is reprocessing, which can recover a significant quantity of usable material for nuclear reactors and reduce the amount of high-level waste that must be stored to about three percent of the original spent fuel. France is by far the most nuclear-reliant country in the world, with 78 percent of its electricity coming from nuclear power, its La Hague plant reprocesses not only French fuel, but fuel from countries such as Germany, Japan, and the Netherlands. Reprocessing spent fuel, however, also yields plutonium that may be used in building nuclear weapons.

Along with questions about the cost-effectiveness of reprocessing—it is currently cheaper to purchase uranium than to recycle old material—the possibility of reprocessed fuel contributing to nuclear proliferation has deterred many countries, including the United States, from reprocessing spent fuel or supporting the implementation of regulatory policies in other countries. In September 2002, for example, Iran announced that it would reprocess its spent fuel instead of sending it to Russia as planned, adding to the international community’s wariness about Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Most experts agree that the best way to deal with nuclear waste, whether reprocessed or not, is to bury it in deep geological repositories with a combination of natural and artificial barriers for safely containing the radioactive material. One complication is the desirability of allowing future generations to retrieve the stored nuclear waste and dispose of it more efficiently, though scientists believe this goal can be reconciled with safe burial. All countries currently keep their nuclear waste in a variety of interim storage facilities, but several countries are finally moving toward a permanent solution.

In February 2002, US President George Bush approved a plan to build an underground disposal site in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain by 2010. The selection of the site, which is quite isolated and whose seismic properties are very stable, involved one of the most detailed scientific studies ever performed, lasting years and costing more than US$6 billion to complete. The US government, like other governments pursuing similar goals, now faces strong opposition from nearby residents who lack the scientists’ confidence in the safety of the facility.

Some have proposed more ambitious, multinational repositories for nuclear waste. A major research program that began in the 1990s by Pangea Resources identified a region in the Australian outback as the best site for a geological repository for nuclear waste. Although in 2001 the Russian Duma passed legislation allowing the import of spent nuclear fuel for reprocessing and storage in its facilities, the Pangea proposal went well beyond Russian profit motives in seeking to bury the nuclear waste permanently.

Not surprisingly, the plan has met intense opposition from Australians, who fear that the country will become an international dump for radioactive waste. A similar plan was proposed for the Asian-Pacific region, where Japan, China, and South Korea are grappling with the problem of what to do with their burgeoning nuclear waste. In all cases, public opposition has stymied any implementation, despite the promise of layers of safety measures and economic benefits such as jobs.

It is more commonly assumed that each country should be responsible for disposing of its own nuclear waste, despite the advantages and appeal of an international repository. Given the anxiety even within countries over the transportation of radioactive material, transferring large amounts of spent fuel from the 31 countries that produce nuclear waste to a single site presents too many difficulties. International cooperation, however, should not be ruled out. Standard plans for high-level waste repositories, adaptable to the specific economic, political, and geological conditions of each country, should be developed for general use.

The Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management, which went into force in June 2001 under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency, represented a milestone in this area. The Convention is the first international instrument to directly address the management and storage of radioactive waste. It formally established standards for the safe disposal of nuclear waste products and, because most nuclear repository projects have failed due to opposition driven by the fear of nuclear energy sources, the agreement also required that governments educate their respective publics about nuclear waste safety.

Until technologies such as fuel cells become viable options for mass production, nuclear power will remain the most sustainable source of energy for many countries that lack a rich source of fossil fuel. But until a permanent, secure strategy for dealing with nuclear waste is devised internationally, nuclear power’s integration into the energy industry will be incomplete and fraught with environmental hazards. Governments should not content themselves with the current, ad hoc solutions to the problem of nuclear waste management. Achilles perished because of his heel; the world should try to avoid a similar fate.