Disposal Problem

A growing and still unsolved problem of the atomic age is what to do with the fiercely radioactive wastes produced by nuclear reactors. Current practice is to evaporate the liquid wastes and store the residue underground in steel tanks. This solution is not good enough. The waste remains dangerous almost indefinitely, and if corrosion, an earthquake or an ill-advised archeologist should liberate the material during the next 1,000 years, the results might be unfortunate.

In Nucleonics, A. C. Herrington, R. G. Shaver and C. W. Sorenson of Oak Ridge list possible disposal methods that may work better.

1) DRY OIL WELLS. If deep enough and handy enough, they can take care of large quantities of wastes, which will migrate through the deep rocks too slowly to present any danger.

2) FUSING IN GLASS. The wastes might be dried, mixed with glass and melted into marbles. The marbles could be buried safely, since they would not lose their radioactive content to the ground water. But the system would probably prove too expensive.

3) BURIED CONCRETE. Liquid waste could be mixed with cement, cast into solid blocks and buried. Since about 5% of the radioactive material is leached out by ground water, some dry place such as Death Valley would be the best graveyard. Or else the hot concrete could be leached deliberately before burial.

4) BURIAL AT SEA. The most reassuring suggestion is to cast the radioactive concrete in the form of a streamlined "projectile" and dump it into deep water which is free of deep-running currents and has a thick layer of ooze on the bottom. Such a spot lies off the coast of Georgia, handy to the great Savannah River plant of the Atomic Energy Commission. Once dropped, the projectile would reach high velocity, penetrate deeply into the ooze, 15,000 ft. below the surface. There it would presumably stay out of circulation until the end of the world.

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