Bury Plutonium? Scientists Recommend Radioactive Element's Disposal--But Where?

  |  By David Biello Posted: 05/10/2012 8:49 am Updated: 05/10/2012 8:49 am

The vast majority of the radioactive plutonium on the planet is man-made—roughly 500 metric tons, or enough to make 100,000 nuclear weapons by the calculations of the International Panel on Fissile Materials.

Much of it is the legacy of the nuclear arms race between the U.S. and Russia in the latter decades of the 20th century but, more and more, it is also the legacy of nuclear power.

Now a team of scientists—physicists Frank von Hippel and Richard Garwin along with environmental scientists Rodney Ewing and Allison Macfarlane—suggest thatburying plutonium is the only reasonable solution to this problematic stockpile in a comment to be published in Nature on May 10. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.)