Comparative Assessment of Status and Opportunities for Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage and Radioactive Waste Disposal in North America

Aside from the target storage regions being underground, geologic carbon sequestration (GCS) and radioactive waste disposal (RWD) share little in common in North America. The large volume of carbon dioxide (CO₂) needed to be sequestered along with its relatively benign health effects present a sharp contrast to the limited volumes and hazardous nature of high-level radioactive waste (RW). There is well documented capacity in North America for 100 years or more of sequestration of CO₂ from coal-fired power plants. Aside from economics, the challenges of GCS include lack of fully established legal and regulatory framework for ownership of injected CO₂, the need for an expanded pipeline infrastructure, and public acceptance of the technology. As for RW, the USA had proposed the unsaturated tuffs of Yucca Mountain, Nevada, as the region’s first high-level RWD site before removing it from consideration in early 2009. The Canadian RW programme is currently evolving with options that range from geologic disposal to both decentralized and centralized permanent storage in surface facilities. Both the USA and Canada have established legal and regulatory frameworks for RWD. The most challenging technical issue for RWD is the need to predict repository performance on extremely long timescales (10⁴–10⁶ years). While attitudes toward nuclear power are rapidly changing as fossil fuel costs soar and changes in climate occur, public perception remains the most serious challenge to opening RW repositories. Because of the many significant differences between RWD and GCS, there is little that can be shared between them from regulatory, legal, transportation or economic perspectives. As for public perception, there is currently an opportunity to engage the public on the benefits and risks of both GCS and RWD as they learn more about the urgent energy–climate crisis created by greenhouse gas emissions from current fossil fuel combustion practices.