Canned nuclear waste cooks its container

Estimates of radiation damage to materials have been too low.

Philip Ball

Storing high-level nuclear waste without any leakage over thousands of years may be harder than experts have thought, research published in Nature today shows.

Ian Farnan of Cambridge University, UK, and his co-workers have found that the radiation emitted from such waste could transform one candidate storage material into less durable glass after just 1,400 years — much more quickly than thoughtp.