What is nuclear waste and how do we dispose of it?
Nearly everything we do creates some sort of waste. Nuclear power is no exception to this, it’s just that it’s waste is a bit more dangerous than that McDonald’s food wrapper you had yesterday. Nuclear waste is the amount of radioactive material that is left over after being produced at a nuclear reactor. It consists of the spent fuel and the fuel rods as well as anything else that may have been contaminated by the fission process.
Radioactive waste can divided into three categories depending on what was contaminated and by how much it was damaged.
- Low Level Waste: Items not necessarily used nuclear reactors but more so the items used in a hospital for nuclear medicine purposes, such as clothes or containers. Most nuclear waste is of this variety.
- Mid Level Waste: This refers to the fuel rods used in nuclear processes to control and contain the nuclear reactions.
- High Level Waste: This is the most dangerous form of radioactive waste and is the fuel that has been used up in nuclear reactors. This is the waste that people are most worried about as it is highly reactive and many times still has residual energy even after being produced.
How do we Dispose of Nuclear Waste?
A Nuclear Fuel Rod
Of course it depends on the type of waste produced. Low level waste is not very threatening due to it’s short half life. This means that most of it’s radioactivity is gone after a few hours or days. Once it’s totally safe to manage this type of waste is incinerated or disposed otherwise. It’s safe to do so by then.
Anything above low level waste is stored at specific containment areas. These areas consist of large concrete bunkers sheltered from the outside world. Some of these facilities are placed underground in large shelters that don’t allow the radioactivity to effect the surrounding ground water and soil.
Very high risk radioactive waste such as it’s fuel is put into cooling ponds initially because of it’s very high energy. They cool the fuel until it’s safe to handle an even at that point those fuel rods and pellets are still generating electricity for years. This cooling process can take up to a decade. Once they are taken out of the water they are much safer to handle and after a few hundred years they have lost almost all of their radioactivity.
