7. Chris G. Whipple, "Can Nuclear Waste Be Stored Safely at Yucca Mountain?" Sci. Am., 274(6), 72-79 (Jun 96).
It appears highly unlikely that the US Department of Energy will be able to fulfill its pledge to accept nuclear waste from utilities in a permanent repository by 1998. In fact, the 84,000 tons of nuclear waste expected from the nation's nuclear reactors after 40 years of operation will exceed the 63,000 ton commercial nuclear waste capacity planned for Yucca Mountain, not to mention the problem of disposing of even larger quantities of defense wastes, made even greater by the dismantling of nuclear weapons. And, as this article -- the third in the "Confronting the Nuclear Legacy" series -- points out, there are presently no plans for a second nuclear repository in the works. The author "was chairman of the National Academy of Sciences' Board on Radioactive Waste Management and now heads the Environmental Protection Agency's advisory committee on the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, a nuclear waste repository in New Mexico."