Forevermore: Nuclear Waste in America
Copyright 1985 by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele,
Book Review by Sharon and Ace Hoffman, November 2025
The scariest thing about reading Forevermore by Barlett and Steele, two intrepid Philadelphia Inquirer reporters, four decades after it was published in 1985 is that the nuclear industry and its government supporters still haven’t learned the lessons this outstanding book laid out so clearly so long ago: "No one knows how much [nuclear waste] there is. No one knows all the places where it is. And no one – despite all claims to the contrary – knows what to do with it. Not the government that encourages its production, not the industries that churn it out, not the scientists who created the processes that breed it." (pg. 20)
Forevermore focuses on the history of nuclear waste (mis-)management that led to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 (NWPA). The book explores the political maneuvering that produced the NWPA -- and then explains that it was obvious from the beginning that the NWPA would be impossible to implement because no community wants to be a nuclear waste site. The authors also make it clear that attempts at nuclear waste policy have always been based on lies: Lies that suggest it is possible to store nuclear waste safely and especially, lies that suggest it is already being done.
For example, in the 1980s, government and industry “experts” knew that solidification (aka "vitrification") of liquid waste had not been made to work, but at the same time, solidification was described publicly as if it could be implemented on an industrial scale: "All seemed to believe that if they said it often enough their dreams of reprocessing and solidification would come true" (pg. 85).
Vitrification is still being presented as a solution as if they know it works: The official opening of a vitrification plant at Hanford, Washington was announced with great fanfare on October 15, 2025, the very day that the $30 Billion dollar project -- over 20 years in the making -- was required to begin operation.
Clearly, vitrification is STILL experimental -- and in any case, it might work for a while and be useful for some short-lived low-level radioactive waste, but it's of very limited use compared to the amount of nuclear waste for which vitrification offers no solution at all. (The term "low-level" is used at least three different ways in the nuclear industry: To refer to radioactive isotopes that emit "low energy" beta particles, to refer to radioactive isotopes with short half-lives, or to refer to radioactive isotopes with any length half-life, as long as the waste is highly diluted.)
Forevermore points out many discrepancies between reality and the public statements made by government officials, politicians, and industry representatives, and repeatedly draws attention to the fact that nuclear policy ignores history: "If there is a lesson to be learned from… America's throwaway nuclear society, it is that even the short-term behavior of radioactive waste is unpredictable. The long-term threat of waste that will remain hazardous over thousands of years is thus incalculable" (pg.72). You'd think by now, forty more years on, that lesson would be obvious: We can't do the impossible: We can't travel faster than the speed of light, we don't have light sabers, we can't stop planes falling out of the sky, and we can't safely store nuclear waste (or safely handle it).
Forevermore makes it obvious that nuclear waste legislation relies on technologies and agreements that don’t exist: "... radioactive waste in 1985 is held in "temporary" facilities, just as it was in 1945, just as it will be in 2005. Science, government, and industry have yet to devise the safe and permanent storage system they have promised for thirty years... " (pg. 20). This lack of any viable solution was true in 1985 when Forevermore was published, it was true in 1987 when the NWPA was amended to only consider Yucca Mountain, it was true in 2012 when the Blue Ribbon Commission (BRC) published its report promoting "consent based siting" as an alternative to Yucca Mountain, and it was true in 2024 when the authors' congressman, Mike Levin (D-CA) proposed the Nuclear Waste Administration Act of 2024.
Of all the lessons Forevermore offers current readers, the book's clarity about repetition of past failures may be the most important because "modern" nuclear waste policy borrows heavily from its predecessors. For example, Congressman Levin’s proposed bill and the BRC Report both assume that some community will agree to "interim storage" and that a geologic repository in a stable formation will be built… someday… somewhere… somehow. Similarly, the promise of "safe" storage of nuclear waste is inherent in the promotion of Small Modular [Atomic] Reactors (SMARs, aka SMRs), and in the efforts to extend the licenses of decrepit and aging reactors such as Diablo Canyon in California, and also in the efforts to reopen reactors that have been closed for years, in places such as Palisades in Michigan, Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, and Indian Point in New York. With subsidies of billions of dollars that would be better spent on solar and wind.
Only after we’ve stopped creating evermore new nuclear waste will the world be able to consider policies that recognize that we don’t have a "safe" solution – just theories about what might work for a few decades, or if we're lucky maybe a few centuries, under the concept of "rolling stewardship" (an idea proposed by Dr. Gordon Edwards of the Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibility).
Forevermore’s authors knew the world hadn't found a solution in 1985: "Virtually every medium so far chosen to contain radioactive waste - whether high level or low level -- has failed..." (pg. 115). In 2025 we are no closer, but we have a lot more waste to deal with and a lot more things have been tried that didn't work.
Forevermore stands the test of time (unlike all previous attempted nuclear waste policies). The book's lessons are all the more frightening because they have been ignored, and the waste has continued to accumulate: "In 1950, the curie level of this garbage was counted in the hundreds" (pg. 20). "At the end of 1984, waste kept in interim collection centers stood at 14.7 billion curies -- enough to kill everyone in the United States" (pg. 21). In November 2017 the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board listed the Total Radioactivity of Commercial Spent Nuclear Fuel as 23 billion Ci, which they expected to more than double by 2048.
The question is: How long will all this waste be a problem for human life on earth?
The answer is: Forevermore.
Sharon and Ace Hoffman, Carlsbad, California USA
Contact information for the author of this newsletter:
Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, California USA
Author, The Code Killers:
An Expose of the Nuclear Industry
Free download:
acehoffman.org
Blog:
acehoffman.blogspot.com
YouTube:
youtube.com/user/AceHoffman
Email: ace [at]
acehoffman.org
Founder & Owner,
The Animated Software Company
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