U.S. Department of Energy pushes forward with plans to reclassify some of its nuclear waste from Cold War weapons research.
The Trump administration announced on Wednesday that it is moving forward with plans to reclassify toxic nuclear waste from Cold War weapons research, downgrading some of it from the highest level, in order to cut costs and quicken the disposal process.
Currently, DOE treats most of its radioactive waste as"high-level" because of how it was made rather than classifying it by its characteristics, such as radioactivity. HLW must be buried deep underground when it is disposed of. Professor Neil Hyatt, an expert in nuclear materials chemistry and waste management at the U.K.'s University of Sheffield, told"DOE is proposing to manage waste on the basis of risk rather than how it was produced, which is quite reasonable—and desirable. We would want resources to be focused on dealing with the waste of highest risk," Hyatt said.
For the new interpretation of HLW to succeed, Hyatt said, those communities will need to be engaged by authorities in a transparent way. After DOE's announcement, the Natural Resources Defense Council , an environmental campaign group, hit out at the imminent reclassification of some HLW.
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