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If used nuclear fuel waste was stored in a football field, the 80,000 metric tons produced in the last century by the U.S.alone would fill the stadium up to 8 yards high. Of that waste, 96 percent of it is radioactive uranium. Which means scientists have a hefty task ahead of themselves — figuring out a safe and effective way to dispose of the materials.

Thanks to a three-year $785,000 research grant from the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Engineering University Program, Cal State East Bay Professor Ruth Tinnacher and her environmental geochemistry students are playing a role in finding a solution. Or at least a portion of it.

Currently, radioactive waste — a byproduct of nuclear power generation — is stored in containers at temporary storage sites or at one of the 80 plants nationwide where it is produced. However, time is running out, since the containers currently in use were only designed to last up to approximately 60 years.

“We don’t know how much longer we can get away with using what we have, but we also don’t have a good sense of what the fuel looks like inside, whether we’ll have to take it out, if we do that, where we’re going to do that,” Tinnacher said. “There are still a lot of questions to answer, and a huge body of research being done right now and we [at Cal State East Bay] are just focused on one small part.”

Undergraduate Nicolas Hall, who is one of the students working with Tinnacher in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, said he was excited to hear about her research because it would give him a chance to practice what he's learning in the classroom and a field he’s passionate about — environmental science.

“It is science that is directed toward solving a real-world issue,” Hall said. “I feel that it is not too common to see the science being done in labs actually applied to real-world situations and questions, and storage of radioactive contaminants is a huge question.”

A HISTORY OF HURDLES

According to the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the U.S. commercial power industry has generated more waste than any other c