Radioactive Waste
Radioactive waste is the "garbage" left as a result of the use of nuclear materials by human societies. Such waste can be categorized as low-level, intermediate-level, or high-level waste. The term transuranic waste is also used to describe materials consisting of elements heavier than uranium in the periodic table.
The term low-level radioactive waste usually refers to materials that contain a small amount of radioactivity dispersed in a large volume of material. Such materials are produced in a great variety of industrial, medical, and research procedures. A common practice is to store these materials in sealed containers until their level of radioactivity is very low and then to dispose of them by shallow burial or in other traditional solid waste disposal systems.
The assumption is that the level of radiation released by these wastes is too low to cause any harmful environmental effects. That assumption has been challenged by some scientists who believe that enough is not yet known about the long-term effects of radiation. They suggest that safer methods of disposal for such wastes need to be developed.
Intermediate-level wastes, as the name suggests, contain a higher level of radioactivity than low-level wastes, but a lower level than high-level wastes. These materials cannot be discharged directly into the environment. An important source of such wastes is the re-processing of nuclear fuels. At one time, large quantities of intermediate-level wastes were dumped into the deepest parts of the Atlantic Ocean. That practice has been discontinued and intermediate-level wastes are now being stored on land until a permanent disposal system is developed.
High-level radioactive wastes consist of materials that contain a large amount of radioactivity that will remain at dangerous levels for hundreds or even thousands of years. These materials pose the most difficult disposal problem of all since they must be completely isolated and stored for very long periods of time. The primary sources of high-level wastes are nuclear power plants and research and development of nuclear weapons.
A number of methods for the storage of high-level wastes have been suggested. Among these are burial in large chunks of concrete, encapsulation in glass or ceramic, projection of them inside rockets into outer space, and burial in the Antarctic ice sheet. Various countries around the world have developed a variety of methods for storing their high-level wastes. In Canada, such wastes have been stored in water-filled pools for more than 25 years. France, with one of the world's largest nuclear power establishments, has developed no permanent storage system but plans to build a large underground vault for its wastes by the early twenty-first century.
In the United States, Congress passed the Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1982, outlining a complete program for the construction of a high-level waste repository in the early twenty-first century. In 1987, Yucca Mountain, Nevada, was selected as the location for that site. Current plans call for a huge vault 1,000 ft (305 m) underground as the site for long-term, high-level waste storage at this location.
Nuclear Fission; Nuclear Regulatory Commission (Nrc); Ocean Dumping; Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (Ocrwm); Radioactive Decay; Radioactive Waste Management
Resources
Books
Bartlett, D. L., and J. B. Steele. Forevermore: Nuclear Waste in America. New York: W. W. Norton, 1985.
Carter, L. J. Nuclear Imperatives and Public Trust: Dealing With Radioactive Waste. Baltimore: Resources for the Future, 1987.
League of Women Voters. The Nuclear Waste Primer. Washington, DC: League of Women Voters, 1985.
Managing the Nation's Nuclear Waste. Washington, DC: Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, March 1990.
Resnikoff, M. Deadly Defense: Military Radioactive Landfills. New York: Radioactive Waste Campaign, 1988.
Periodicals
Hunt, C. B. "Disposal of Radioactive Wastes." Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (April 1984): 44–46.
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