Radioactive Waste

Nuclear waste is not normally allowed to enter the ecosystem for many obvious reasons. The correct containment of high level waste is still debated because of this issue. The material will remain radioactive longer than any civilization has ever existed and the concern that the material remains safely away from the ecosystem is very real and hard to quantify. If high level waste does reach the ecosystem, the affect is overall very negative. Animals can become ill or die. Tumors and cancers can...

Radioactive substances have half-lives. This is because the isotope constantly is changing from the radioactive isotope to a daughter element. For example, eventually, when uranium's radioactivity is gone, it becomes lead. After one half life of a radioactive substance, only 50% of that substance is still radioactive. Therefore, after one half-life, a piece of uranium is 50% lead and therefore %50 less radioactive. After another half-life, it has 25% of the original radioactivity, and 75% of the original uranium has become lead. This...

Nuclear waste would harm people and animals rather than the environment as such. I have not seen evidence on the effect of radiation on vegetation. Nuclear waste must be well contained and shielded to avoid damaging people, and so long as everyone concerned is careful and responsible, this won't happen. If it leaked into rivers or was spread over farmland it would be ingested by grazing animals and fish and hence would enter the human food chain, and if it became high...

Nuclear waste take's thousands of years to decay whilst still being radioactive. ...

No, you will get sick and die from leukemia, or other cancer by the radioactive waste lying around. ...

Recycling is just a partial problem solver we have to do follow some norms to stop this waste Recycling can help curb the problem of waste taking up physical space, but in many cases, the fuel burned by collection trucks and recycling plants along with the waste from the recycling process can be more damaging to the environment than simply creating new products. Aluminum is a noteable exception to this. But recycling still has about 50% share in cleaning the environment along with...

There are no nuclear power plants in Colorado. The only source of waste might be from a small teaching or medical isotope reactor, I have no information on this. ...

Radioactivity is a term that refers to the emissions from atomic nuclei due to changes in those nuclei. Those changes will occur as a result of instability of isotopes of certain elements. These atoms have a nuclear structure that is inherently unstable for whatever reason. And any unstable nucleus will eventually decay in a manner characteristic of that particular atom (radioisotope). We term the activity associated with the natural changes due to nuclear instability radioactive decay. As you can guess, different things might...

It is dangerous to bury or incinerate radioactive. Bury: It could seep into underground water/ groundwater and soil. Incinerate: It is not easy to burn wastes like this because it is either liquid or can cause a big explosion. ...

Because a lot of it is highly radioactive and very dangerous to living beings. The issue is that it will remain dangerous for a very long time. So long that most countries will probably no longer exist and it will still be deadly. The idea that we may be leaving something that will kill for thousands of years laying around for generations yet unknown to care for is somewhat scary. ...

Our state has been arguing that point for years, it is remote and deep enough that yes I believe storing waste there is way safer than any other alternative, however people argue that transporting the waste here poses high risks and there is the potential for groundwater contamination and volcanic or earthquake incidents. The fact is how will we ever know what will happen to the waste during its decomposition process, it takes hundreds to thousands of years and no one can...

No.

Well, a few years ago I was a caretaker in a house across from a railroad switching-yard in Illinois. We'd occasionally see a kind of low railcar, like a roof on a flatbed, with a pill-box in the middle - painted all black w/a few safety yellow pipes & markings on it. I asked a friend, who worked for the rail line what it could be & was told 'rad-waste'. The transportation of nuclear waste is not a disposal method but...

Sewage from all points of source in a house will be collected in a single ground level collection pit within the house premises which will be connected to the public sewer by pipes laid underground to convey the sewage. A silt trap with a silt bucket will also be installed in the system to remove the silt carried by sewage and accumulated in the pit before the sewage flow into the house service connection pipes to prevent clogging of pipes. ...

Human operators have to stay behind thick shielding, so robots are useful in being able to go close to the material, but they are remotely controlled by humans. ...

The high level waste, which is the dangerous part, is contained in the spent fuel, so it has the same volume as the fuel rods, unless they are processed. The actual amount is manageable, it is the high activity that is the problem for disposal. ...

You don't, once it is created it exists forever (or close to forever depending on the amount of radioactive material involved). There is a process called the "half life', some isotopes degrade rapidly, others last for thousand of years. All you can do is isolate it, entomb it, and hope that it remains undistrubed for the next zillion years, just like the pharohs thought when they were entombed. The nuclear wastes cannot enter any underground river or water supply, since it would...

nuclear

It is a very wasteful, and environmentally harmful practice to generate electricity using hydrocarbon fuel resources. We have much safer and cleaner alternatives like: hydro thermal (using steam generated by the heat at the core of the earth) wind solar (photovoltaic cells), and other methods of harnessing the power of the sun the energy of the waves in the ocean (a technology that is currently being developed) nuclear fusion (there is another method much safer, and less harmful than the use of uranium or plutonium, the use...

Yes, and your grave will be easy to locate with a giger counter 100,000 years from now. There are different grades of nuclear waste with some being not too bad and some being real nasty. ...

Solutions for Nuclear Waste A lot of things are currently done with nuclear "waste". First it should be understood that the majority of what people consider waste is actually "spent nuclear fuel". This is fuel that comes out of a reactor after it has been used for electricity production. What most people don't know is that although the fuel isn't fit for further use in a reactor, it contains a great deal of uranium and other isotopes with a very high energy...

Spent fuel from a reactor is stored under water in a concrete and steel pool to cool and shield it for at least ten years after it is removed from the reactor. After this time, it has decayed sufficiently and heat production is low enough such that it can be removed from the water and decay in the air. It is still shielded to prevent exposing people near it and it is kept under lock and key at the power plant...

i really do not know i am just guessijn

Uranium becomes lead

No, it doesn't. Wrong, it does. There are 2 types of nuclear radiation: prompt & decay. Prompt nuclear radiation occurs for a period of time while the reaction that generates it is happening. Examples are the flash of neutrons, light, x-rays, etc. when a nuclear bomb explodes as well as the sustained neutron flux as a nuclear reactor is in operation. When the reaction stops, prompt nuclear radiation goes away. Decay nuclear radiation occurs as radioactive isotopes decay to different isotopes. As the decay...