Part 1 of 3 Parts 
     Once again, I return to the subject of the disposal of the radioactive waste generated by commercial nuclear fission power plants. There are a number of different proposals for permanent disposal of spent nuclear fuel. One of the main suggestions calls for the creation of the permanent geological repositories where thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel would be sent to underground bunkers and buried. Another suggestion points out that spent nuclear fuel could be “burned” in advanced reactors after being reprocessed. A third major alternative would be to drill deep boreholes at individual reactor sites to bury the spent fuel from that nuclear power plant deep underground. This would require that hundreds of narrow holes be drilled into the crust of the Earth.
    The concept of borehole disposal has been around for at least sixty years. There are a lot of companies and organizations who support this idea. One new company dedicated to deep borehole disposal is called Deep Isolation. It is startup based in Berkeley, California. The company was founded by physicist Richard Muller and his daughter, Elizabeth Muller. They plan to make use of the lateral drilling technology developed for fracking shale natural gas deposits. Deep Isolation claims that they have a practical solution to the permanent disposal of the over eighty two thousand metric tons of spent nuclear fuel from the one hundred operation nuclear power reactors in the U.S.
    In 1987, an amendment of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act chose an abandoned salt mine under Yucca Mountain in Nevada as the site of a huge geological nuclear repository by 1999. There was significant political opposition to the choice and after a serious battle, the forces opposing the repository managed to get the project cancelled in 2010. The soonest another site for a geological repository can be selected, licensed and prepared would be 2050. In the meantime, that eight two thousand metric tons of spent fuel resides in about eighty different places spread around thirty five states. It is stored either in nuclear fuel rod cooling pools or in steel and concrete casks.
     Deep Isolation has acquired over fourteen million dollars in venture capital with its promise to streamline the disposal of spent nuclear fuel. The basis idea is to drill boreholes at the existing storage sites and shove fuel assemblies deep into the ground. The holes would have a vertical section and then horizontal tunnels branching out from the vertical shafts.
     Hundreds of boreholes will be necessary to hold the existing national inventory of spent nuclear fuel. Deep Isolation estimates that each hole would cost at least two million dollars. Based on the removal of the need to continue to use temporary storage, transport fuel assemblies as much as two thousand miles and hire a big workforce for the construction of a huge repository, Deep Isolation says that their solution will be much cheaper that the use of a single geological repository. Although a single repository would benefit from economies of scale, Deep Isolation points out that its solution will be modular and the revenue from one borehole can be used to finance the next.
     In addition to the rosy financial picture painted by Deep Isolation for the borehole solution, they also present what they consider to be an excellent safety case for the boreholes. The boreholes would be drilled through the water table and beyond to a depth of between two thousand and six thousand feet. The horizontal portion of the tunnel would be in or under shale rock formations. These formations contain ductile clay minerals that would squeeze into cracks and seal them. This would prevent the flow of water around the nuclear waste. Tests of the water drawn from these depths indicates that the water in the shale formations is millions of years. Deep Isolation hopes to use this research to convince investors that isolation in shale formations would result in very little risk that the radioactive waste would ever contaminate nearby aquifers.
Please read Part 2 next