NUCLEAR WASTE

The Uranium Information Centre Newsletter, September-October 1995, available from GPO Box 1649N, Melbourne 3001, Australia, reports about nuclear fuel rod disposal. In Sweden, used nuclear fuel rods are "waste'' and are put in underground storage. In France, the rods are raw material and go to a reprocessing facility that makes new fuel rods. In America, they go nowhere. The federal government assumed responsibility for them in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982. In 1994, the Department of Energy announced that a waste repository was at least 16 years from completion, although over half of the $10 billion dollars paid into the waste fund by consumers has been spent - to finance the federal deficit.

In another development, Nuclear Energy Insight, October 1995 available from the Nuclear Energy Institute, Suite 400, 1776 I Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20006-3708, reports that an effort is now being made to use bacteria to clean the walls of concrete structures contaminated with nuclear waste. Since only the top few millimeters is usually contaminated, sulfuric acid excreted by the bacteria can dissolve away the contaminated layer and avoid storage of the entire structure as nuclear waste.