As defined by United States of America’s regulations, transuranic (TRU) waste is without regard to source or form, waste that is contaminated with alpha-emitting transuranium radionuclides with half-lives greater than 20 years, and concentrations greater than 100 nCi/g but not including high level waste. In the US it arises mainly from weapons production, and con­sists of clothing, tools, rags, residues, debris and other such items contami­nated with small amounts of radioactive elements mostly plutonium. These elements have an atomic number greater than uranium thus are transuranic (beyond uranium). Because of the long half-lives of these elements, this waste is not disposed of as either low level or intermediate level waste. It does not have the very high radioactivity of high level waste or its high heat generation. The US currently permanently disposes of transuranic waste of military origin at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.

A typical example of waste volumes produced in the power generation industry is shown for the Low Enriched Uranium Once Through (LEU-OT) and Mixed-Oxide Once Through (MOX-OT) fuel processing cycles (Tables 15.1 and 15.2). In the tables, it is shown that the majority of waste in the nuclear power generation industry originates from the uranium mining and milling operations.

The majority of radioactive organic waste is produced in the enrichment and reprocessing operations. All values in the tables are reported in cubic meters per Gigawatt electricity-year (m3/GWe-yr).