Does any country have a successfully operating high-level nuclear waste disposal site like the one the US tried to build in Yucca Mountain?

Answer 1

I don't think any country has got that far yet, though many have talked about it. We should distinguish between storage and disposal. Storage has to be provided as more and more spent fuel accumulates. In some countries it is being chemically treated and made into vitrified blocks, in the US almost entirely still held complete on the power plant sites. Disposal means placing in a repository where it will stay permanently without the need for further treatment. Sweden seems advanced in planning for this. In the UK it has been argued about for decades but no decision come to. In the US it appears to have been put on the back burner.
The following passage is taken from www.world-nuclear.orgwhich is worth looking at.

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Deep Geological Disposal

At the present time, there are no disposal facilities (as opposed to storage facilities) in operation in which used fuel, not destined for reprocessing, and the waste from reprocessing can be placed. Although technical issues related to disposal have been addressed, there is currently no pressing technical need to establish such facilities, as the total volume of such wastes is relatively small. Further, the longer it is stored the easier it is to handle, due to the progressive diminution of radioactivity.

There is also an increasing reluctance to dispose of used fuel because it represents a significant energy resource which could be reprocessed at a later date to allow recycling of the uranium and plutonium.

Many countries are developing plans for disposal of HLW in geological repositories buried in stable rock formations hundreds of metres beneath the surface.

The process of selecting appropriate sits for deep geological repositories is now under way in several countries with the first expected to be commissioned some time after 2010. Finland and Sweden are well advanced with plans and site selection for direct disposal of used fuel, since their p arliaments decided to proceed on the basis that it was safe, using existing technology. The USA has opted for a final repository in Nevada . There have also been proposals for international HLW repositories in optimum geology.