Safe, Effective Hazardous Waste Management Total waste management. The environmental policies and practices at nuclear power plants are unique in having successfully prevented significant harmful impacts to the environment since the start of the commercial nuclear industry more than 40 years ago. As a result, the nuclear energy industry is the only industry established since the industrial revolution that has managed and accounted for virtually all of its by-product material. By reducing, eliminating, or managing their waste, nuclear facilities have prevented or lessened adverse impacts on water, land, habitat, species and air from releases or emissions in the production of electricity. Throughout the nuclear fuel cycle, the small volumes of waste byproducts actually created are carefully contained, packaged and safely stored. As a result of improved process efficiencies, the average volume of waste generated at nuclear power plants has decreased significantly in the past two decades. Relatively small volume of high-level waste. The high-level waste actually produced, in the form of used fuel rods, on average totals less than 20 tons per nuclear plant annually. Uranium is a very dense material, heavy but low in volume. The trillions of kilowatt-hours of nuclear electricity generated over more than 40 years have produced about 40,000 tons of used fuel rods. These rods, if stacked together, would fill a football field to a depth of a little more than four yards. To put this in perspective, all of U.S. industry produces 300,000 tons of hazardous waste annually. Used fuel safely stored on-site. From the start of the commercial nuclear era with the Atomic Energy Act in 1954, it has been national policy that the federal government should retain control of, and be responsible for, the ultimate disposal of used nuclear material. This policy was reaffirmed in the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 and its 1987 amendments. Implementation of these policies has been delayed, and used fuel remains stored at plant sites under strict containment requirements, with no adverse environmental impacts. Despite the delays in the federal program, scientific investigation of a permanent disposal site is well advanced. The scientific and technical issues are well understood, and there is no reason the United States cannot develop the necessary infrastructure for transportation, storage and disposal of used nuclear fuel. Life-cycle analysis reveals nuclear energy's environmental benefits. To place waste byproducts and emissions from all forms of power generation into perspective requires "life-cycle" analysis. This form of analysis provides a complete picture of a source's total impact on the environment-on land, air, water, wildlife. Because of nuclear energy's success in preventing adverse environmental impacts, especially in the management of used fuel, life-cycle analyses demonstrate that nuclear energy is one of the "greenest" forms of electricity available. A sound, scientific process such as life-cycle analysis, if employed uniformly, would prevent misleading environmental claims and promote consumer confidence in electricity choices as the market moves toward competition.