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With the end of the Cold War, the United States has been working to close and clean up obsolete weapons plants and dispose of nuclear weapons materials. This has created a need to dispose of highly radioactive material associated with weapons production. This material is called high-level radioactive waste.

Until the late 1970s, the United States acquired materials for nuclear weapons by reprocessing spent nuclear fuel from government-owned nuclear reactors. Reprocessing is a method of chemically treating spent fuel to separate out uranium and plutonium. The byproduct of reprocessing is a highly radioactive sludge-like residue.

The Department of Energy will not ship high-level waste to a repository until it is solidified and sealed in stainless steel canisters. All high-level nuclear waste is currently stored at government-owned or licensed facilities.