The Fate of Hazardous Materials in the Biosphere

Although nuclear power appears to be expanding as a major global energy source, the disposal of radioactive waste from the nuclear fuel cycle still poses formidable challenges to the full expansion of the nuclear enterprise. The perception that nuclear wastes represent unique and insoluble threats to humans is ill founded. The risk from these radioactive materials is comparable and many ways less severe than other more familiar hazardous materials that are ubiquitous in the biosphere. Radioactive materials decay and reduce in time unlike stable elements. Besides the reduction of radioactive materials through decay, the dilution and dispersion of all hazardous materials by natural forces and events provides the reduction required to make adequate and safe disposal of nuclear waste possible. The ultimate sink for essentially all of these hazardous wastes will prove to be the oceans with their great capacity of dilution and containment.