Radioactive Waste

a dumb country

Nuclear waste is carefully stored and never spread around the environment unless there is a serious accident like at Chernobyl, or resulting from fallout from nuclear weapon use. At Chernobyl there were reports of vegetation being discolored, but this was due to quite exceptional levels of contamination which have never been remotely approached in the US or W Europe. I'm not aware of reports on atmospheric weapon tests, most of which were in the Soviet Union, so not reported on. More recently of course all nuclear tests have been underground. Most attention has been given to effects on humans, but clearly animals grazing on contaminated land will pick up some radiation. This happened after Chernobyl in countries as far away as the UK and meat from sheep in some areas was banned for quite a long time, though the actual levels were very low, not enough to make the sheep ill, but detectable. Low level discharges from Sellafield fuel processing plant into the Irish Sea have occurred, and the effects are monitored by analysing fish caught nearby, but I'm not aware of any resulting ban on fishing.

It is stored so securely because if you let it anywhere near your soil, water, or air, it will poison it and you cannot grow crops, fish/swim, or even breath without getting poison into your body and dying with excruciating pain. Think it through, you nimrod.

High level nuclear waste consists of fuel that has been used and discharged. It probably contains about 1 percent U-235, some highly active fission products, some plutonium, and the rest (the majority) U-238. The fission products are of no use, except possibly for medical or industrial purposes. The plutonium if separated out could be used to make mixed oxide fuel (MOX). The uranium with a small amount of U-235 could be put through an enrichment plant to increase the U-235 content. Low enriched uranium could also be used in heavy water reactors (CANDU). None of these things can be done however without a spent fuel processing plant which does not exist in the US (not for commercial fuel anyway)

Because it's very dangerous, and that's the smartast thing we've come up with to keep it away from human contact.

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 amount of plutonium in the nuclear waste depends on the type of waste and its origin. If by waste, it is meant the spent nuclear fuel discharged from reactor after irradiation, then the plutonium amount depends mainly on the nuclear fuel initial enrichment, the neutron irradiation flux, and the time of irradiation.

In usually operated nuclear power reactors of light water reactors, the discharged spent fuel contains roughly 1 kg plutonium per ton of fuel.

High level radioactive waste would have no potential for producing a nuclear explosion, so your question is puzzling. Perhaps you mean production of a dirty bomb, which terrorists might use to contaminate an area by spreading radioactive material around using a conventional explosive. That is obviously not justified unless you are a terrorist.

Plutonium can be extracted from spent uranium fuel and used in nuclear weapons, but I would not describe it as high level radioactive waste, plutonium is only mildly radioactive.

In fact I think at present in the US and in Russia, the stockpile of nuclear weapons is being reduced and some of the fissile material is going into civil nuclear reactor fuel.

No physical or chemical process can alter the radioactivity of the waste, so it will still be there whatever you do with it. If the volcano is active, when the next lava flow occurs the nuclear waste will be ejected with the volcanic matter, so it would be a very bad idea. The idea for long term waste disposal is to find somewhere very geologically stable where it will stay for thousands of years without any risk of returning to the earth's surface, just the opposite of the volcano's contents.

No

It can be any color and even colorless, such as water. Radiation doesnt effect the color or anything it has radiated.

Not by a long shot. The most radioactive isotopes will decay very rapidly and be safe in much less than 50 years (e.g. iodine-131 with a halflife of about 8 days will be gone in less than 2 months), but less radioactive isotopes will decay so slowly they can be around for hundreds of thousand of years (e.g. plutonium-239 with a halflife of 24400 years will be gone in under 200000 years) to longer than the age of the universe (e.g. uranium-238). Slightly oversimplified, the most dangerous isotopes in nuclear waste tend on average to disappear first with less dangerous isotopes persisting for longer periods.

The film in the badges changes colour when radiation hits it. By looking at the badges, the people wearing them can tell how much radiation they have been exposed to.

They have different strips of film for different types of radiation, so they are not only able to tell how much radiation someone has been exposed to, but also what type of radiation.

Its basically a safety measure to ensure that workers are not exposed to excessive levels of radiation emitted from the waste.

None of them do.

Nuclear plants

its a method use in nuclear waste management where the waste is concentrated and then isolated. this method also use for non nuclear waste management.

The kWh produced by nuclear energy is the cheapest. It is a clean energy that does not pollute the environment. It gives chance for people to work during its construction and operation. It is reliable source of energy.

Nuclear waste has three different types: alpha, beta and gamma. Alpha (helium nucleus) and beta (electron or positron) are subatomic particles, meaning they are pieces of atoms. Gamma is an energy wave. Gamma is the most dangerous type of radioactive waste, although all nuclear waste is potentially hazardous.

When a nuclear reaction happens, pieces of atoms fly off and release the energy that held them together, producing gamma radiation as well as the energy we convert into electricity at nuclear power plants.

Because nuclear waste is made up of "broken" atoms, it will require a nuclear reaction to get rid of them, essentially putting the atoms back together and reabsorbing the gamma radiation.

Unfortunately, chemicals alone are not strong enough to get rid of nuclear waste. Chemicals, or rather radioactive metals, combined with a powerful "reverse" nuclear reactor may work. Scientists have been working on a solution for a few years now. Check out this article: (See related Link)

It has a very long half-life. Disposal of radioactive waste is the biggest problem. Proper disposal is essential to ensure protection of the health and safety of the public and quality of the environment including air, soil, and water supplies.

Mecause melting does not destroy the radioactivity. Whatever burns would cause radioactive ash/smoke that would be carried away on the wind. the rest would just turn a patch of the lava radioactive.

Actually, they are biodegradeable, sort of. Radioactive materials do decay, or become weaker over time. Eventually they become inert, or non-radioactive. The problem is some radioactive isotopes take tens or even hundreds of thousands or millions of years to decay. The decay rate of a radioactive element is measured in half-lives. After one half-life, half of the radioctivity is gone. Take an element with a half-life of ten years. After ten years, there is half of the radioactivity present. After 20 years, one quarter, after 30 years, one eighth, and so forth. Eventually the level will fall to the point it poses no danger. Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,000 years. Uranium-235, used in nuclear reactors, has a half-life of 713,000,000 years.

There isn't any, for the most part. It is dangerous if you are positioned near nuclear or radioactive materials while being unprotected for a short to extended time is considered dangerous and could as well be dangerous. But to civilians on the outside, quite harmless. But when the plant goes through a meltdown, boom, it's dangerous.

1,000,000 years