During the past 45 years, one of the most challenging scientific, engineering, socio-economic, and political tasks and obligations of our time has been to site and develop technical, politically acceptable, solutions to the safe disposition of long-lived radioactive materials (LLRMs). However, at the end of the year 2002, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) site in the United States of America (USA) hosts the world's only operating LLRM-disposal system, which (1) is based on the LLRM-disposal principles recommended by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in 1957, i.e., deep geological disposal in a 'stable' salt vault/repository, (2) complies with the nation's 'Environmental Radiation Protection Standards for the Management and Disposal of Spent Nuclear Fuel, High-Level and Transuranic Radioactive Wastes', and (3) may receive 175,584 cubic meters (m3) of transuranic radioactive waste (TRUW)a. Pending the scheduled opening of repositories for once-used nuclear fuel (OUNF) in the USA, Sweden, and Finland in the years 2010, 2015, and 2017, respectively, LLRM-disposal solutions remain the missing link in all national LLRM-disposition programs. Furthermore, for a variety of reasons, many nations with nuclear programs have chosen a 'spectator' stance in terms of enhancing the global nuclear safety culture and the nuclear renaissance, and have either 'slow-tracked' or deferred their LLRM-disposal programs to allow time for an informed national consensus to evolve based on LLRM-disposition experiences and solutions gained elsewhere.
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