WNWR 2019 — 5. WASTE MANAGEMENT CONCEPTS
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5 WASTE MANAGEMENT CONCEPTS 5.1 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND The management of nuclear waste over the past seven and a half decades requires a brief historical introduction. Nuclear technology is a child of war 129 and the ensuing conflict between the Western and Eastern power blocs.130 Only the “Atoms for Peace” program announced by US President Dwight Eisenhower on the occasion of the UN General Assembly on December 8, 1953 opened the way for the use of nuclear energy for energy production.131 But the two programs remained from the outset as “Siamese twins”, the then-chairman of the US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), Gordon Dean, stated in 1950.132 Under the post-war conditions prevailing at the time, the nuclear waste produced primarily in the large military production facilities was transferred to the environment at nearly zero costs.133 The standard disposal practices at the time included direct discharge of cooling water from military reactors into the Columbia River,134 the burial and seepage of solid and liquid low-, medium- and even diluted high-level waste on the premises of military laboratories,135 the dumping of solid waste in the sea,136 as in the case of Farallon Island west of San Francisco,137 or the discharge of liquid waste from the Sellafield reprocessing plant into the Irish Sea.138 From the 1950s onwards, corrections were made to this practice and the first orderly program ideas for nuclear waste disposal were defined. The risks of diluting nuclear waste in water were addressed more openly. The containment of radioactive substances was assumed to be mandatory by the turn of the century in view of the expected strong worldwide growth in nuclear waste: “Even ignoring the problems of inadequate mixing and reconcentration by marine life, it is clear that dispersal alone cannot be the long-term answer to the waste storage problem. Even the oceans are not big enough to hold the activity which conceivably may be produced. One is forced to turn, then, to some form of containment.” 139 The search for containment techniques and disposal options was intensified. Initial proposals were made for 129 Rhodes, R. 1986, The Making of the atomic bomb, Simon & Schuster New York 130 Stöver, B. 2017, Der kalte Krieg, Geschichte eines radikalen Zeitalters, 1947-1991 (The Cold War: History of a
Radical Age), C.-H. Beck. 131 Krige, J. 2010, Techno-Utopian Dreams, Techno-Political Realities: The Education of Desire for the Peaceful Atom,
in Gordin, Michael D., Tilley, Helen, Prakash, Gyan (Edts.), Utopia/Dystopia, Conditions of Historical Possibility, Princeton University Press, pp. 151-175. http://www.geosociety.org/documents/gsa/memorials/v16/Goodman-C.pdf 132 Dean, G. 1950, Problems of Atomic Energy Commission, Nucleonics, 6(5), May 1950, pp. 5-10. 133 Western, F. 1948, Problems of Radioactive Waste Disposal, Nucleonics, August 1948, pp. 43-49. 134 Honstead, J. F., Foster, R. F., Bierschenk, W. H. 1959, Movement of Radioactive Effluents in Natural Waters at
Hanford in International Atomic Energy Agency, Disposal of Radioactive Wastes, Vol. 2, Conference Proceedings, Monaco, 16-21 November 1959 135 Pearce, D. W., Linderoth, C. E., Nelson, J.L., Ames, L.L. 1959, A Review of Radioactive Waste Disposal to the Ground
at Hanford, pp. 347-363, in International Atomic Energy Agency, Disposal of Radioactive Wastes, Vol. 2, Conference Proceedings, Monaco, 16-21 November 1959 136 Scott, K.G. 1950, Radioactive Waste Disposal – How Will It Affect Man’s Economy? Nucleonics, 6:1, January 1950, pp. 18-25. 137 Jones, D.G. et al. 2001, Measurement of Seafloor Radioactivity at the Farallon Islands Radioactive Waste Dump Site,
California, Open-File Report 01-62, USGS, BGS, EPA, NOOA, viewed 31 July 2019, https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2001/of01-062/ 138 Fair, D. R. R., McLean, A. S. 1956 Décharge de déchets radioactifs dans la mer d’Irlande, Troisième partie:
Evacuation expérimentale d’effluents radioactifs (Discharge of radioactive waste in the Irish Sea, Part III: Experimental disposal of radioactive waste), Actes de la Conférence internationale sur l’utilisation de l’énergie atomique à des fins pacifiques, Geneva 8-10 August 1955, Volume IX. 139 Rodger, W. A. 1954, Radioactive Wastes – Treatment, Use, Disposal, Chemical Engineering Progress, 50(5), pp. 263-266.
