Solutions for Waste Management

To safely and securely dispose of highlevel and long-lived radioactive waste, this material needs to be stored for a period of time that is very long compared to our everyday experience. Underground disposal facilities need to be designed and constructed in suitable geological conditions that can be confidently demonstrated to contain and isolate the hazardous waste from our environment for hundreds of thousands of years. Over this period of time, during which the safety of an underground waste repository system must be assured, the waste's radioactivity will decay to a level that cannot pose a danger to people or the environment. The archaeological record can help in visualizing such a long period of time. Climates change, oceans rise and vanish, and species evolve in the course of a one hundred millennia. Rocks bear witness to all of these changes. Geologists in their search for safe repositories for the long-term disposal of high level radioactive waste have identified rock formations that have proven stable for millions of years. These geological formations are expected to remain stable for millions of years and can serve as host formations for waste repositories.