Environmental impact of increased nuclear energy production

Perhaps the greatest public concern facing the world's expanding nuclear power industry is the environmental impact of the management of the radioactive wastes generated by the processing of spent rector fuels. Optimization of spent processing techniques, the efficient partitioning and possible use of certain waste nuclides, and the consideration of ultimate waste disposal techniques all require a detailed understanding of the isotopic composition of the spent fuel and typical waste products. The specific index for typical high level wastes from a 1000 MWe reference-design Light Water Reactor is presented as a function of decay time. The relative contribution of the fission product, actinide and cladding nuclides to the total hazard index is also presented