Behind locked doors and armed security at the Indian Point nuclear plant, technicians in hard hats and safety glasses watch over a pair of turquoise pools that have become an interim grave for radioactive waste.
Conditioning of radium sources is required before long-term interim storage to avoid the release of radioactive material and to limit radiation exposure.
Indeed, low-level and intermediate-level radioactive waste is currently stored in interim storage facilities or deposited in geological repositories.
An industry-owned organization, ZWILAG, built and operates a central interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste, and for conditioning low-level radioactive waste and for incinerating wastes.
Its goal is the Clearance (declassification to non-radioactive materials) of all reactor components, after a sufficient period of interim decay, according to the recommendations recently issued by IAEA.
The systematic and progressive reduction of hazards as applied to the management of radioactive wastes involves treatment or conditioning of the wastes into passively safe forms, interim storage and, where waste routes exist, disposal.
The recently developed Cavern Extended Storage (CES) repository design for radioactive waste combines some of the advantages of the flexibility provided by long-term interim storage with the safety of deep geological disposal.
A signature feature will be 12 acres of interim storage pools that will be lined with dense plastic and sit atop nearly impermeable clay, to hold the slightly radioactive byproducts until they can be carted away.
Where medium-to-long-term interim storage of wastes is required pending an eventual disposal route, then there is a significant benefit from placing the radioactive materials and wastes into a passively safe form under passively safe conditions.
For the purpose of interim storage and transportation, a dual purpose metal cask that can load 21 spent fuel assemblies is being developed by Korea Radioactive Waste Management Corporation (KRMC) in Korea.
