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Radioactive Waste
Radioactive waste is waste that contains radioactive materials. This can be caused by nuclear fission, nuclear medicine, radiography, and other sources. There are very strict rules about the storage and disposal of radioactive waste.
334 Questions
What does the nuclear waste policy act of 1982 accomplish?
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.
What explains Which explains why radioactive waste is so difficult to get rid of?
Radioactive waste is highly toxic. It does decay over time, eventually becoming radiologically inert, but the time high level waste takes to decay to the radioactive toxicity of uranium ore, which is not exactly safe, is 6,000,000 years. It is hard for people to imagine a period of time this long. It is about twenty times as long as Homo sapiens has existed, and about 100,000 times the age of Pericutin, our youngest volcano. So no one knows where to put the waste to be safe from unforeseeable natural change.
Its toxicity does not require any direct exposure, the radiations can go through sealed containers. Furthermore, different types of radiation require different types of shielding.
It poses security problems because it can be used to create weapons.
The political realities are such that few people are willing to live near a place where the waste is put, so in the United States there is no comprehensive plant to deal with high level waste. The result of this is that the high level waste is stored on the banks of rivers and lakes and on the seashore, because that is where the nuclear plants are.
How can radioactive waste be disposed of safely?
The typical process of removing radioactive waste is isolating the waste until it is no longer harmful to the environment. However this time period differs vastly from hours to millions of years.
How does radioactive waste affect the water?
In areas far from uranium mines, the dominate source of uranium water pollution is coal fired power plants.
Near uranium mines such pollution is likely to come from rainwater percolating through tailings piles, then entering a river.
How far down should nuclear waste be stored?
In the US it is stored on the power plant sites because no central repository has been authorised so far. In some countries like the UK and France, it is brought together on one site - Sellafield in the UK. But there is still no final long term store available.
There are different was to store the waste, at the plants where it was produced. Initial storage is usually in what is called a spent fuel pool, which is literally a large pool of water. This is done because the fuel is very hot and radioactive for a period while the isotopes with short half lives decay a bit. The period is usually more than five years.
After the time at the spent fuel pool, it may be removed to what are called dry casks. These are made of thick concrete and allow the materials to decay longer without a need for a constant supply of water.
Research is still being done in how to deal with nuclear waste.
The longer the half-life of radioactive waste, the more consideration will have to be given to the design and construction of the container in which it is stored. This as well as where the container itself is stored. If we look at spent fuel from nuclear reactors, this highly radioactive and extremely long-lived radioactive waste will have to have a most substantial container. The storage container will have to last for many hundreds of years. Low level radioactive waste can be put up in less substantial containers and simply buried in an approved manner at an approved facility.
Should nuclear waste be stored near plate boundaries?
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.
Where does the US send nuclear waste?
For now nuclear waste is stored on site where the waste was generated. In a few years US will begin to store nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain, Nevada but no official date has been set.
How does nuclear waste affect the environment?
Nuclear power plants do require huge amounts of water to cool their reactors. If this hot water is dump into rivers or oceans, thermal pollution may result. The heat can have a harmful effect on aquatic life. To protect the environment, the water must be cooled before it is released. Unfortunately, there is no way of stopping a radioactive nucleus from emitting radiation.
How do you deal with nuclear waste?
High level waste which is the fission products from using fuel in a nuclear reactor, is contained in the spent fuel which is discharged into a water filled tank eventually. There it is kept for some time, probably several years, before being handled. The waste is retained in the fuel by the zircaloy cladding of the fuel rods, so it doesn't leak out, unless there is any deterioration in this cladding. In the US the fuel rods have simply been kept on the power station site. In some plants the tanks provided have been filled up and shielded flasks have had to be provided to hold some of the oldest and least active spent fuel. There is no further handling route at present, as I understand it the intended repository at Yucca Mountain Nevada is on hold.
In the UK and France in contrast fuel has been transported from the power plants to central treatment plants (Sellafield in the UK) where it has been chemically treated to recover useful material, the fission products are then stored and some have been treated to make vitrified material. However there is no long term repository yet, so this is being stored on the treatment sites.
Can radiation go through copper?
That's a trick question - kind of like "how long is a piece of string?"
In fact, the answer depends on 2 factors: the strength of the radiation source, and the "density" of the matter (in this case, copper) that the radiation is going through. Sort of like "can a flashlight shine through a black cloth?" - it obviously depends on how opaque the cloth is, and if you're using a cheap flashlight or an airport landing lamp.
We think of "density" as the relative weight of a material of a given size piece of it. As such, copper is not as dense as lead (the usual material used to insulate against radiation). But it's a lot more dense than air. However, 5 pounds of air will stop radiation as effectively as 5 pounds of lead, believe it or not.
It's just a lot easier to construct containers and barriers out of lead than out of air (and they're a lot thinner, too).
How could nuclear waste be disposed of?
No, it is just stored, actually contained in the spent fuel rods unless these are processed to separate out any useful material like plutonium. Most of the fuel rods discharged from US reactors are stored on the power plant sites in water filled tanks, but eventually some national repository will have to be built to retain this material safely for centuries to come.
What department Conducts research on the storage and disposal of high level radioactive waste.?
Energy
System of discharge of waste water from a house to public sewer?
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.
Can nuclear waste from power plants be used for any other purpose other than weapons?
If you are referring to the spent fuel assemblies from nuclear power power plants then you have it turned around. Spent fuel assemblies have significant amounts of plutonium which are quite suitable for reprocessing into new fuel. The French have practiced this with their nuclear program for 30 years or so with such success that they reprocess fuel for other countries. The highly radioactive fission products are encased in glass and buried in deep mines. The US had originally intended this for their fuel cycle but the program was cancelled in the 1970's in favor of long term storage (as in Yucca Mountain).
As it turns out in the nuclear world, there are several nuclides of Plutonium just as there are several nuclides of Uranium and, as in the case of Uranium, most Plutonium nuclides aren't suitable for bombs. Spent fuel has a mixture of the Plutonium nuclides that are as hard to enrich as Uranium is and are thus an unsuitable source for weapons grade Plutonium.
Why is radioactivity important?
Radioactivity is important for a number of reasons. It is the basis of both nuclear power and nuclear weapons. It allows for such things as medical X-ray examinations. Radioactive decay in the interior of the planet Earth is the source of the heat which causes the mantle to be liquid, and thereby causes continental drift, and earthquakes and volcanoes. None of those would exist without radioactivity. The study of radioactivity has provided scientists with many vital clues about the structure of atoms, and the behavior of subatomic particles.
Why is there a procedure for disposing radioactive substances?
That's because they are DANGEROUS, so the idea is to minimize the danger as much as possible.
Why is it unsafe to bury or incinerate radioactive waste?
Burying it could be safe, provided it is deep in a stable geologic area and somewhere that will not get flooded.
Incineration would just scatter the radioactivity to the winds, you can't destroy radioactivity by chemical methods.
None. It can be easily and safely done for nuclear waste.
The whole system for safe economic disposal is illustrated and discussed there.
Also check the US patent offices for existing patents under the author's name.
Five example of potential energy?
-hanging apple
-the energy that is stored in our cells of our body
-when we stretch a rubber band
-the water at the middle at the tap
-a football at the table
1. Apple on a table
2. Spring of a watch
3. You sitting on a Chair
4. a ball floating on a water column
5 Apple hanging on a tree
A rock next to a ledge.
A wound up spring.
A turned off faucet.
An unpopped balloon.
unexploded dynomite
What is the purpose for nuclear waste?
Nuclear waste is an unfortunate by-product of the process of nuclear fission for the purpose of energy production. The spent fuel rods are "safely" stored and sequestered, but will remain dangerous for thousands of years.
As far as I know, there is no "purpose" for nuclear waste, other than to convince people that they do not want a power plant in their backyard. The theoretically possible process of nuclear fusion (which is how the sun works) would produce less radioactive material and waste.
