C&EN talks with Carolyn Pearce, nuclear waste storage scientist

For 7 decades, 177 tanks of radioactive waste have lain stagnant under a now-decommissioned nuclear production complex in Hanford, Washington. The site was the home of the first full-scale plutonium production reactor, established in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project. Of the 200 million–plus L of radioactive waste in the leak-prone tanks, only 10% falls into the high-level category: waste with relatively high concentrations of the most radioactive material, such as fission products. The remaining 90% is classified as low-activity waste: salt solutions with lower concentrations of radionuclide contaminants that pose less risk to human health and the environment. But all that waste still needs to be processed and stored safely . Carolyn Pearce's team is putting a plan in motion to deal with much of that material. The approach laid out by Pearce, director of the Interfacial Dynamics in Radioactive Environments and Materials (IDREAM)