Physicists have been looking for a way to reduce the amount of nuclear waste produced by power plants for a long time, but they couldn't manage any breakthroughs because the technology they have used has not been advanced enough. Now, recent innovations make it possible to consider the idea of closed-circuit reactors, which would produce far less radioactive waste to be buried than existing reactors.

The withdrawal of Nevada's Yucca Mountain as a potential nuclear waste repository has reopened the debate over how and where to dispose of spent nuclear fuel and high-level nuclear waste.

Scientists have developed a new polymer that reduces the amount of radioactive waste produced during routine operation of nuclear reactors. 

Nuclear power could solve our energy problems but it has rather nasty by-products: radioactive waste. Not only the disposal of the old core rods but also reactor operation results in a large amount of low-level waste, especially contaminated cooling water. Scientists have now developed a new method to reduce the amount of this radioactive waste considerably. They use small beads consisting of a special polymer which “fishes” the radioactivity out of the water.

Nuclear power plants are some of the most polluting structures in the world, and not necessarily as far as the actual amount of material they put out goes. Everyone remembers the Three Mile Island accident, and the Chernobyl reactor meltdown, in the Ukraine, to name just the most important mishaps that occurred since the technology entered... (read more)

A new recycling plant will soon recover uranium from the ashes of radioactive garbage to be recycled back into nuclear fuel using an efficient, environmentally friendly technology inspired by decaffeinated coffee. The technique's future may even hold the key to recycling the most dangerous forms of radioactive waste.

Using bacteria and inositol phosphate, a chemical analogue of a cheap waste material from plants, researchers have recovered uranium from the polluted waters from uranium mines. The same technology can also be used to clean up nuclear waste.

Sandia scientists are helping train Iraqi scientists and technicians to clean up radioactively contaminated sites and safely dispose of the radioactive wastes as part of the Iraqi Nuclear Facility Dismantlement and Disposal Program.

As more nations pursue nuclear power, the United States and Russia, along with other countries and the International Atomic Energy Agency, should redouble efforts to ensure a reliable supply of nuclear fuel so that countries seeking nuclear energy have less incentive to build their own facilities to enrich uranium and reprocess spent nuclear fuel, says a new report by the US National Academy of Sciences and Russian Academy of Sciences.

Physicists have designed a new system that, when fully developed, would use fusion to eliminate most of the transuranic waste produced by nuclear power plants, making nuclear power a more viable alternative to carbon-based energy sources.