This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: For decades, one of the major complaints about nuclear power in the United States has been the argument that, after all this time, we still have not come up with a dependable strategy for sequestering high-level radioactive waste, including spent fuel from plant operation. This issue is of such importance that Haruko Wainwright has put it at the center of her research agenda as an Atlantic Richfield Career Development Professor in Energy Studies at MIT and an associate professor in the departments of Nuclear Science and Engineering and Civil and Environmental Engineering.
In an essay called "The best-managed industrial waste in history," which was published in the Aug. 27 issue of the journal Nature, Wainwright made a bold statement, maintaining that an expansion of the nuclear power sector in the United States will benefit the environment, despite the fact that a solution to the permanent disposal of nuclear wastes has yet to be demonstrated in this country. In this interview, Wainwright describes risks associated with different forms of waste, ways to improve waste-handling procedures and what lessons other countries can teach the U.S. in this realm. I've always appreciated the fact that the dangers of radiation were recognized relatively early in the 20th century, prior to the widespread use of nuclear technologies.
By the time an industry emerged, radiation protection standards were reasonably well established, including waste management. While nuclear power plants inevitably produce highly radioactive spent fuel, it is both solid and compact, making it relatively easy to contain and isolate from the environment. It took time to develop a disposal solution because people were pursuing a perfect one.
Now, several countries are demonstrating that effective isolation over geological timescales is feasible. Finland, in fact, is about to open the world's first deep geological repository for spent fuel. Chemical contaminants present a different story.
For many substances, like hexavalent chromium and PFAS ("forever chemicals"), the risks were identified long after they'd been released, having spread widely through the environment, food chains and human bodies. PFAS, for example, have been used in industry and consumer products since the 1940s, yet the first federal drinking water standards were not adopted until 2024. Chemical hazardous wastes—including substances that degrade very slowly or not at all—are disposed of in the shallow subsurface without the requirement of long-term predictive assessments.
This is not to suggest that radioactive wastes are without risk. However, public perception is often disproportionately focused on—often hypothetical—nuclear hazards, while underestimating the dangers posed by chemical wastes. This misalignment has an adverse effect on the environment and public health.
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