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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 appeared 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.
Q: Why do you think chemical contaminants pose a greater public health risk than radioactive wastes?
A: 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, has 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 actually has an adverse effect on the environment and public health. It leads to the misallocation of resources, diverting funding — including taxpayer dollars — away from worrisome contaminants whose environmental and public health consequences are already occurring.
Q: How can we improve our procedures for storing spent fuel as more nuclear power plants come into operation around the world?
A: The nuclear industry is becoming increasingly proactive about waste management. Some companies, for example, now incorporate spent fuel storage capacity directly into their power plant designs, formulating plans that cover the entire operating period. Research on waste streams from advanced reactors — and even fusion reactors — is also growing. This approach of thinking about wastes before any are produced — what I call “design from the wastes up” — is critical for long-term sustainability.
Although further technical advances are surely needed, communication remains another area with significant room for improvement. Transparent monitoring programs and effective communications have been shown to build public confidence and provide assurance. Additionally, I believe we should place a greater focus on the inherent properties of radionuclides, including their risk pathways and mobility. Long-lived radionuclides are weakly radioactive and emit little or no penetrating radiation; their health risks are associated with ingestion or inhalation, analogous to chemical carcinogens. Most radionuclides, including plutonium, have low solubility and a high affinity for soil particles, limiting their mobility in the environment.
Current research on spent fuel storage has been devoted mainly to the integrity of the metal canisters used to contain spent fuel. Attention should also be directed toward developing predictive understanding of radionuclide transport and about geochemical barriers to the spread of radioactivity in the unlikely event of a containment breach. These approaches would exploit the natural immobility of radionuclides to afford additional layers of protection — in keeping with the nuclear industry’s recent embrace of passive safety features.
Q: How can the United States move toward the permanent disposal of nuclear wastes, and what can we learn from the European and Canadian examples?
A: Many people tend to dwell on political and social issues, while the underlying science is frequently left out of the conversation. Fundamental questions — regarding the true dangers of radioactive materials and the feasibility of safe geological disposal — often go unanswered, leaving nuclear waste a vague, almost mythological threat, rather than a technical and engineering problem.
In fact, many people in geoscience believe that the failure of Yucca Mountain — the proposed geological repository for high-level radioactive wastes in the U.S. — stemmed from the fact that the site was chosen for political rather than scientific reasons. In 1987, Congress amended the Nuclear Waste Policy Act to confine site characterization to a single location, abandoning the original plan to screen multiple candidates. This top-down decision, widely dubbed the "Screw Nevada Bill," generated vehement local opposition. In addition, Yucca Mountain is the only proposed repository in the world situated above the groundwater table and within a zone of fractured igneous rock, where radionuclides are relatively mobile. Demonstrating its long-term safety is, consequently, much more difficult than for other proposed repositories.
Europe's approach to waste disposal offers a stark contrast. Switzerland, for example, identified a preferred site after a transparent, scientific evaluation of multiple candidates based on technical criteria, earning community acceptance as a result. Sweden and Finland built trust through decades of patient consultations with the public. And in Canada, more than 10 communities voluntarily expressed interest in hosting a repository before one favored site was ultimately selected.
Another underappreciated difference relates to how public concerns are handled. In the U.S., worries about radiation and radioactive waste have often been brushed aside by experts. In Europe, communication professionals and experts are trained to address every concern sincerely, offering understandable, science-based explanations. Discussing those concerns, moreover, can provide valuable opportunities to identify knowledge gaps and improve safety.
I believe that selecting a geologically sound site and communicating the science clearly — in terms that anyone can grasp — are the essential first steps toward achieving the permanent and safe disposal of nuclear waste.
