The safety incentives for separating and eliminating various elements from high-level radioactive waste prior to final geologic isolation have been examined. The study required evaluation of numerous parameters concerning the transport of radioactivity from the geologic isolation repository to humans. Available data were used whenever possible, but many of the study parameters had to be estimated. The values used were either consistent with current knowledge or were selected to maximize the calculated potential radiation doses. Thus, incentives for removing various elements from the waste were greatly increased. Also, incentives were greatly overestimated by neglecting all short-term risks and by assuming that elements removed from the waste could be eliminated from the earth without risk. Despite these conservative assumptions, the study found that for reasonable isolation conditions, the potential incremental radiation doses would be of the same order as or less than doses from natural sources. Although not a comprehensive evaluation or partitioning incentives, the study does show that incentives for removal of any elements, including the transurardcs, from high-level waste do not exist for the situations investigated. The methods developed for this study can be applied to evaluate any combination of waste type and geologic medium at sites that are candidates for the isolation of nuclear waste materials.