Radioactive Waste

Depending on the isotopes in the waste and the amount eaten it may cause anything from instant death to radiation burns to cancer that takes decades to develop.

No. Short-lived isotopes will disappear by then; some long-lived isotopes may survive, but they will have a low level of radiation.

Currently, it's storing a lot of it in a really deep pit deep below the earth's surface with a sealed hole. That way, the dangerous material is kept very far away from anyone. We ARE currently thinking of new, safer and cleaner ways for the future.

There is no practical way of making fission by-products safe. However, by keeping them in thick lead containers, an opaque wall to radiation, the environment can be protected from their dangers. Other alternatives are being considered.

Well radioactive waste is made of deadly chemicals that involve uraniam.uraniam is a deadly chemical used for making nuclear bombs also some uranium's burn if in touch with any parts of your body if you drink radioactive waste you will instantly die of either burn your organs or toxic

chemicals can suffocate you from the inside.

A+ Nuclear energy

Yes, we could launch nuclear waste into the Sun. The problem with the concept is simple economics. It presently costs US$20 million to US$30 million to launch even a small payload of 1200 pounds (544 kg). NASA indicates an average cost of US$450 million to launch a Space Shuttle craft, with a payload capacity of 50,000 pounds (22,700 kg). So with spacecraft we are talking about payloads of thousands of pounds, but with nuclear waste we are talking about millions of tons! If you consider only the highest level radioactive waste (HLW), the amount of HLW produced worldwide each year is approximately 53,000,000 pounds (24,000,000 kg); that's nearly 1100 Space Shuttle payloads each year, 3 Space Shuttles launched nearly every single day! In addition to high level waste there is low level waste, intermediate level waste, transuranic waste, along with huge amounts of contaminated soil and water. There is not only the waste that we are now producing, but we have an accumulation of nuclear waste from the past 60 years. It is unlikely that we could ever come up with enough fuel to launch all of our nuclear waste into space with the technology we now have. Future developments in applied physics might make it possible to do this with at least part of our most problematic wastes.

The biggest problem with radioactive waste is how to safely and properly dispose of it. Finding suitable disposal facilities for radioactive waste is difficult. Depending on the type of waste disposed, the disposal facility may need to contain radiation for a very long time.

s the question

THAT I DO NOT KNOW

The problem is two fold here. The waste from nuclear sites is plentiful only because of foolish guidelines. For example water leaving a power plant can not have as much background radiation as it does when entering in some cases.

High level waste we all agree is an issue. Low level waste is not an ssue, but there is this grey area of medium level waste.

The simplest method would be to put this waste into barrels and bury it in New Mexico or other solid areas.

One interesting method that I was presented with by a passenger on a recent flight was this. We do not actually make radioactive material, we concentrate it. If we take three toms of dirt out of a half ounce of radioactive material, why not mix the material back into the stuff and fill the mine back up with it? No new amounts of radioactive material would be added to the area and the concentrations would be the same! How does one argue this?

No- but it looks good in the comics. Most radioactive waste does not glow in ANY color. Very high level radioactive may exhibit Cherenkov radiation effects, and glow blue or purple.

True.

If fusion can be made to work in manmade equipment, for power production, (and this is not certain), there should be much less radioactive waste than for fission reactors. The product of the fusion, helium, is harmless. The engineering details of such a plant have not been established, but the energy produced will presumably be extracted from materials surrounding the reaction chamber which absorb the neutrons produced, so these materials will become irradiated and radioactive. Whether the structure will remain for the life of the plant or perhaps neutron absorbing materials have to be replenished from time to time is unknown, but obviously there will be some radioactive waste to be dealt with.

All nuclear fuels contain radioactive elements.

None at all, no license has been granted and I don't think the NRC have even started considering it. In fact I believe it is no longer supported by the Federal Govt.

In my understanding, this is because a fusion reactor reacts deuterium to produce helium, which is not radioactive, whereas a fission uses uranium or plutonium, for example, which may react to form various radioactive isotopes.

A fusion reactor may contain small quantities of tritium, in which case a radioactive isotope of hydrogen may be produced, but given that the majority of reactions occurring involve solely the deuterium, there is less radioactive waste produced.

yes

Stay away from it.

The concern is that no matter where you put radioactive wastes, or how you contain them, they may leak out at some future time, and may dissolve in ground water and be carried away to a point where people will become exposed to them, which is a health risk since radiation is a cause of cancer. Most garbage is not as dangerous. Rotting organic matter is nasty and smelly, and can carry dangerous germs, but it is going to eventually be consumed by bacteria and other decay organisms, and it will effectively be recycled into the ecosphere. Plastic hangs around for a long time and does not recycle easily, but it isn't toxic, either. There are also various other forms of toxic waste, some of which are also very dangerous, but they can be chemically treated to make them non-toxic (or less toxic), whereas radioactive waste is going to remain radioactive for a long time, centuries at least, and in some cases much longer than that (different isotopes have different half lives).

Nuclear waste is a mixture of various substances but held within the fuel rods which are encased in zircaloy, and these are not soluble in water. In fact the spent fuel is stored under water to both keep it cool and prevent radiation to power plant staff. This is safe for the short to medium term, but for long term storage something more permanent is required. Over thousands of years the fuel cladding could deteriorate and allow radioactive substances to leak out, and there could be some contamination if water was to flow through the storage area. So the long term store needs to be underground but in a geological formation which is known not to have had water present in the past.

A final repository needs to be somewhere deep underground and in a very geologically stable area, where earthquakes are unlikely and flooding unknown. Preferably in an area without much population. The idea is that even if it is forgotten in the future, and the present level of technological knowledge is forgotten by mankind, whoever lives in that neighbourhood will not be harmed by radiation.

it spread all around the world, even in US and Canada, that is the reason we have the problem with Autism

The above is not quite true. The main fall-out spread in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus. However there were detections of low fall-out at a nuclear plant in Sweden, over 1,000 km away! The City located neat to the Chernobyl site, which I believe was called Pripyat or something similar was evacuated, and abandoned. People left many belongings as at the time they believed they were being evacuated only as a temporary measure.

Radiation levels have dropped considerably at the abandoned City now.

The United States were not affected in any way by the radiation spread.