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Proposed High-Level Nuclear Waste Repository: Yucca Mountain Site Characterization Progress

Description: This report discusses current findings on the site's geology, hydrology, geochemistry, and tectonic history; reviews the site characterization process that DOE is pursuing; discusses the problems inherent in assessing risk and projecting site suitability; and reviews concerns regarding attempts to model the repository's behavior into the distant millennia.
Date: May 27, 1999
Creator: Mielke, James E
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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Waste Trade and the Basel Convention: Background and Update

Description: The United States played a major role in developing the 1989 United Nations-sponsored Basel Convention on the Control of the Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, a key purpose of which is to protect countries from receiving unwanted shipments of wastes. The Convention entered into force in 1992, and by mid-1998, 121 countries (but not the United States) had ratified it. In 1991, the Bush Administration transmitted the Convention to the Senate for advice and consent to … more
Date: December 30, 1998
Creator: Tiemann, Mary
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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Solid Waste Issues in the 105th Congress

Description: The 105th Congress adjourned without passing any legislation affecting solid waste management. Changes to the Leaking Underground Storage Tank (LUST) cleanup program and bills to exempt from hazardous waste management requirements certain wastes generated by remediation of old waste sites had been considered possible until late in the second session. The House passed changes to the LUST program (H.R. 688) on April 23, 1997. A comparable Senate bill (S. 555) was ordered reported, amended, Septem… more
Date: December 23, 1998
Creator: McCarthy, James E.
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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Superfund Reauthorization Issues in the 105th Congress

Description: For the third Congress in a row, there was a major effort to reauthorize Superfund. Chairmen of the three committees of jurisdiction introduced comprehensive reauthorization bills -- S. 8, H.R. 2727, and H.R. 3000; hearings were held on all three, S. 8 was ordered reported, and H.R. 2727 was approved by subcommittee. None of these bills was enacted.
Date: November 23, 1998
Creator: Reisch, Mark
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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Civilian Nuclear Spent Fuel Temporary Storage Options

Description: The Department of Energy (DOE) is studying a site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, for a permanent underground repository for highly radioactive spent fuel from nuclear reactors, but delays have pushed back the facility’s opening date to 2010 at the earliest. In the meantime, spent fuel is accumulating at U.S. nuclear plant sites at the rate of about 2,000 metric tons per year. Major options for managing those growing quantities of nuclear spent fuel include continued storage at reactors, constructio… more
Date: March 27, 1998
Creator: Holt, Mark
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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Nuclear Weapons: Disposal Options for Surplus Weapons-Usable Plutonium

Description: With the end of the Cold War, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties (START), and other agreements, the United States and Russia have dramatically reduced their arsenals of nuclear weapons. As a result, each side has accumulated large stockpiles of plutonium, one of the principal materials used in nuclear warheads. The United States recently declared a holding of approximately 50 metric tons of weapons-usable plutonium excess to military needs. Even greater levels are believed to exist in Russia. more
Date: May 22, 1997
Creator: Johnson, Craig M. & Davis, Zachary S.
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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Superfund Fact Book

Description: The Superfund program is the principal federal effort for cleaning up inactive hazardous waste sites and protecting public health and the environment from releases of hazardous substances. The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA) established the program, and the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 (SARA) amended it. This report is a compendium of data and other pertinent information about CERCIA and the Superfund program, follow… more
Date: March 3, 1997
Creator: Reisch, Mark & Bearden, David M.
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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Superfund Reauthorization Issues in the 105th Congress

Description: Reauthorizing the Superfund hazardous waste cleanup law is a top environmental priority in the 105th Congress, according to congressional leaders and the subcommittees with jurisdiction. The program has been accused of being slow, ineffective, and too expensive. Many feel its liability system is unfair. And the taxes that feed the Superfund trust fund expired on December 31, 1995.
Date: January 27, 1997
Creator: Reisch, Mark
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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Superfund Cleanup Standards Reconsidered

Description: The reauthorization of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA), commonly known as Superfund, has focused on two major areas of reform: liability, and cleanup standards/remedy selection.
Date: October 25, 1995
Creator: Gray, Lisa
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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Brownfields Program: Cleaning Up Urban Industrial Sites

Description: The Brownfields Economic Redevelopment Initiative is a pilot project to return idle or underused industrial and commercial facilities back to productive use, in situations where redevelopment is complicated by potential environmental contamination. The program is flexible, allowing cities to use a variety of approaches in utilizing grants of up to $200,000 to develop abandoned and underused sites, neighborhoods, and small regional areas. States and Indian tribes are eligible as well as local go… more
Date: April 3, 1995
Creator: Reisch, Mark
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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High-Level Nuclear Waste Disposal - A Fact Sheet

Description: The Federal government's high-level waste disposal program is designed to build a permanent repository for highly radioactive waste from nuclear power plants and defense facilities. The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (NWPA) created an office in the Department of Energy (DOE) to develop this repository, to be paid for by a fee on nuclear-generated electricity.
Date: November 4, 1993
Creator: Holt, Mark
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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Treatment Technologies at Superfund Sites

Description: The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation. and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA), commonly known as Superfund, authorizes the Federal Government, through the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), to clean up hazardous waste sites. There are currently about 1,200 sites on Superfund's National Priorities List, with remedial costs expected to be around $40 billion.
Date: June 27, 1991
Creator: Wozniak, Alborz A. & Reisch, Mark
Partner: UNT Libraries Government Documents Department
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