Where radioactive nuclear waste is disposed?
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Answer:
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Some low-level waste can be stored at the plant until its stops being radioactive and is safe to be disposed of like normal trash. Otherwise, low-level waste is collected and transported safely to one of four disposal facilities in South Carolina, Washington, Utah or Texas.
About 95 % of all the radioactivity created, from all sources including nuclear weapons production, is contained in the irradiated fuel - or high-level radioactive waste - from commercial nuclear power reactors. Yet even “low-level” nuclear waste can contain lethally-radioactive and long-lived elements, such as Plutonium-239, Strontium-90 and many others. The storage - permanent and temporary - and transport of radioactive waste is perhaps the most controversial aspect of the nuclear power issue. No nation has yet solved the problem of what to do with this material, which must be shielded from the environment for millennia.
Splitting atoms to make electricity has created an enormous problem: waste containing 95 % of the toxic radioactivity produced during the Atomic Age. Nuclear weapons production, industrial activity, research and medicine combined, create only 5 % of this problem. Every nuclear power reactor annually generates 20-30 tons of high-level nuclear waste since the irradiated fuel itself is the waste when removed from the reactor core. Like fuel, the waste is a solid ceramic pellet, stacked inside a thin metal tube or ‘cladding.’ In addition to residual uranium, the waste is about 1 % plutonium that is formed inside the fuel rods by the reactor. The waste also contains about 5 % highly radioactive fission products like cesium, strontium and iodine, making it millions of times more radioactive than “fresh” uranium fuel. Unshielded, it delivers a lethal dose in seconds and will remain a hazard for at least 12,000 human generations. High-level waste is piling up at reactor sites, stored outside of containment in pools, and in large dry containers called casks. A growing security threat, storage has been repeatedly approved to enable continued reactor operation, and therefore continued nuclear waste production, making risks greater...
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