Nearly all of the spent fuel created since the dawn of the nuclear age is still sitting in interim storage pools, tanks and dumps close to the reactor site (generally a separate area within the reactor complex.) There is around 160,000 tonnes of spent fuel in interim storage around the world, and every year the nuclear powers add another 14,000 tonnes to the stockpile.

When nuclear fuel is removed from reactors, generally after 3-5 years, it is too hot - both radioactively and thermally - to do anything with. It is placed underwater in specially designed pools and generally left there while the short-lived isotopes decay away and the fuel cools.

The governments and corporations who created this problem always imagined that within a few years, or decades at most, a solution to the waste problem would be found. The solution has generally revolved around persuading a community somewhere to accept an underground nuclear waste dump in their backyard.

This has never been achieved anywhere in the world, leading to an ominous buildup within interim storage pools.

Nuclear power utilities then began storing the fuel in dry-stores: essentially large carparks where the waste cannisters can sit and be monitored for leakage. Now these storage areas are over-full in many places, leading to a crisis in which many reactors will need to be shut down if no solution is found. The solution which most people are crying out for - the cessation of production of the waste - still eludes government policy makers in many parts of the world.

Thus the concerted drive to find a final solution: the burial of nuclear waste in underground dumps such as that proposed by Pangea.