Why is nuclear waste considered so dangereous?

Nuclear waste arises out of the use of nuclear power, so it will continue to be produced as long as nuclear power is used. ...

Two disadvantages of nuclear waste are: disposal of nuclear waste is very expensive and takes a long time, and nuclear waste is radioactive. The advantages are: nuclear power plants are usually built on a coast, so the risk of contaminating drinking water is low; nuclear waste does not emit carbon into the air. ...

It depends on the waste material. Methods appropriate for chemical hazards would not be so for nuclear waste. ...

i need this for science so someone answer this please.

It is produced by the product of a nuclear plant by the uranium turning waste/gunk radioactive and the gunk flowing through waste pipes and having a black tint -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Actually Uranium gets split into Barium and Krypton along with release of immense heat energy. These by products are highly radioactive. These would emit harmful gamma radiations. These are considered as nuclear waste. Some innovative techniques have to be found so as to recycle these without any harm. Definitely human brain would catch that soon. ...

The problem is that it has radioactive waste and that's dangerous, and it has to be buried so it doesn't affect the environment. ...

Nuclear wastes are sometimes said to be a problem too difficult to solve because the waste stays radioactive for so long. The only thing that gets rid of nuclear waste is time. ...

its expensive to dispose of the waste and the initial machinery is expensive to build. ...

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 set a timetable for both temporary and permanent storage of nuclear waste in the United States by the mid 1990s. There is no permanent storage facility, and there are no temporary storage facilities, so one might be tempted to say the act did not accomplish anything at all. Nevertheless, it did enable the nuclear industry to create waste without having a place or procedure to deal with it. ...

Radioactive waste is an inevitable consequence of nuclear fission reactors, but it is contained in the used fuel assemblies and these can be kept in a safe place so that the waste will not enter the environment ...

depends on the type of waste, that determines its halflife. some waste will be safe in just a few decades, other types will take millions of years. if they would reprocess reactor nuclear waste so that uranium, plutonium, and other transuranics were recycled as fuel instead of staying in the waste; the remaining waste could be stored in a repository for 100 to 200 years and be safe after that. ...

Acording to my opinion nuclear waste should be thrown in space(i.e.outside the earth),so that no damage will get to human biengs or plants or animals living on earth as it is very harmful for human as well as plants or animals. ...

We don't normally allow this to happen, the nuclear waste is tightly controlled. But after a disaster as at Chernobyl, the surrounding area is contaminated with radioactive fall out, so crops grown there or animals grazed there would also be affected. ...

Probably becaause the dangers of not handling the fuel, and waste products proplerly - or that the reaction might go out of control. Nuclear power is safe - so long as all safeguards and waste-handling procedures are adhered to. ...

The advantage of fusion over fission as a nuclear power source is that it does not produce fission products, so any nuclear waste problem is much less ...

The only reasons I can think of for such a want is money (which can be charged for taking the waste; in Russia they have enough space to do so safely) and recycling the waste (thus gaining more fissionable material for free, provided you can get it out of the waste). ...

It is considered a nuclear armed communist super power.

Nuclear power is the cheapest, safest, and most efficient way to generate power. there are breeder reactors that generate free power by creating fissile material from the normal nuclear waste. so, it does not generate waste ...

A long term repository for nuclear waste is required to be geologically stable, so that we can be sure it will not change over many thousands of years. A subduction zone might seem a good idea, getting rid of the waste into the earth's mantle for a very long time, but the movements are not predictable and are accompanied by earthquakes so perhaps not such a good idea. ...

So far nuclear energy should be called bane. The waste disposal problems and reactor accidents outweigh its lack of emissions. ...

Nuclear waste comes from various commercial and government operations involving use of radioactive materials. Some is from mining, refining, and enrichment operations. Some of these are chemical operations that use radioactive isotopes for some purpose. Some are medical operations, and one of the worst nuclear accidents in history happened as a result of radioactive medical materials not being disposed of properly. Some nuclear waste is from military operations. Some nuclear wast is from power plants, and this can be low level waste, such...

Nuclear fusion does not produce active fission products like fission does, so there would be less active waste. However the internals of the power reactor would get a large dose of neutrons produced from the fusion reaction and so become activated. This could be a problem for maintenance and eventual disposal. ...

The only nuclear energy we use in the home is through electricity, a proportion of which is produced by nuclear plants. So it amounts to how much electricity you waste, for example leaving lights on in unoccupied rooms, unnecessary heating or cooling, leaving your computer on 24/7, and so on. ...

First off, taking all nuclear waste products and putting it in a rocket and shooting it toward the sun so then it would burn up could cause problems with out atmosphere. The way the nuclear waste products are handled now is what has been studied and found to be the best possible disposal of the waste products without causing further damage to the people, surrounding areas, and the atmosphere. ...

Burning is a chemical reaction. Chemical reactions involve transfers of electrons. Radioactivity are nuclear reactions, so it only has to do with the change of protons and neutrons ...