Radioactive waste storage in the arid zone

By the turn of the century, nuclear power may generate more than one-half of the electric energy, and about one-third of the total energy consumed in the United States [Thompson, 1971; Chapman et al., 1972]. By 2020, the total quantity of high-level radioactive wastes (HLW) generated as a byproduct of nuclear fuel reprocessing for such power generation may total about 900,000 m³ as liquid or 70,000 m³ as solid [Gera and Jacobs, 1972]; the radioactivity of long-lived nuclides in the HLW will total about 8.7×10¹⁰ Ci [Gera and Jacobs, 1972]. (High-level wastes are defined as wastes containing at least 1 Ci of radioactivity per liter of liquid, or 70 Ci/kg of solid [American Institute of Chemical Engineering, ANSI Standard N5.8-1967]. Wastes from chemical processing of irradiated nuclear fuels typically contain several hundred to several thousand curies per gallon [Fox, 1969].)