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In twentyth century, based on "making matters", economic activity has increased. Then living standard has increased and society has got wealthy especially in Europe, the United States and Japan. At the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm, Sweeden in 1972, environmental issues were recognized as a threat to the human. Nowadays, the concern is fixed in the world. In 21st century, we need to change the technological system to that including cares about "after making matters".

At present, nuclear power provides 35 % of electricity generation and supports civil life and economic actvity in Japan. The field of energy and environment will be more and more important. Japan has limited resources, while it is a big economic country. In order to secure the energy supply and simultaneously to preserve the environment, the nuclear power is one of a few practical energy sources. On the other hand, uses of hydrogen may rapidly increase, as fuel cells are popularized. Production of huge amount of hydrogen using fossil fuels is not efficient from the viewpoint of total energy. Moreover, it can bring unpreferable influence to the environment especially around the production area. We expect that the nuclear production of hydrogen will be one of the prospective ways to be able to meet the enormous demand.

However, in the use of nuclear energy, we can not aviod generating radioactive waste.* In the system of "making matters" in 20th century, perspective of at most a hundred year was considered to be enough to manage the wastes. It is not sustainable with regard to safety in radioactive wase disposal and disposal of chemical poison, and so on. For reliable design and construction and operation of repositries, it is needed to establish a way of environmental assessment for an extremely long term and to develop environmental materials. The studies in this kind of field are very important to exsistence of human beings in 21st century.

In our laboratory, we are engaged in a novel work of trying to answer the energy and environmental issues through the studies on the radioactive waste disposal.

*In the radioactive wastes, highly radioactive one is called high-level radioactive waste. It is mixed with melted glass at high temperature and formed into so-called glass waste forms. Then they will be disposed in deep underground formations. Even if 50 % of personal electricity consumption is covered by nuclear power for 80 years of one's life, the nuclear power generation produces glass waste forms of only the amount corresponding to three golf balls.