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The spent nuclear fuel from uranium-235 and plutonium-239 nuclear fission contains a wide variety of carcinogenic radionuclide isotopes such as strontium-90, iodine-131, and caesium-137. Such waste includes some of the most long-lived transuranic elements such as americium-241 and isotopes of plutonium. [10]
But cleaning up nuclear waste is difficult. It can't be burned or buried. Soon, a waste management plant will turn the waste into glass, which can be stored away for thousands of years. It's a ...
There have been proposals for reactors that consume nuclear waste and transmute it to other, less-harmful or shorter-lived, nuclear waste. In particular, the integral fast reactor was a proposed nuclear reactor with a nuclear fuel cycle that produced no transuranic waste and, in fact, could consume transuranic waste. It proceeded as far as ...
Together, they dumped a total of 85,100 TBq (85.1x10 15 Bq) of radioactive waste at over 100 ocean sites, as measured in initial radioactivity at the time of dump. For comparison: Global fallout of nuclear weapon tests – 2,566,087x10 15 Bq. [5] 1986 Chernobyl disaster total release – 12,060x10 15 Bq. [6]
Production of parts for nuclear weapons began in 1953. At the time, the precise nature of the work at Rocky Flats was a closely guarded secret. The plant produced fission cores for nuclear weapons, used to "ignite" fusion and fissionable fuel. [12] Fission cores resemble miniaturized versions of the Fat Man nuclear bomb detonated above Nagasaki ...
This waste is produced by nuclear power plants and weapons facilities, and is a serious human health and environmental issue. There are plans to permanently dispose of high-level waste in deep geological repositories, but none of these are operational. Corrosion of aging temporary containers has caused some waste to leak into the environment. [20]
In nuclear accidents, a measure of the type and amount of radioactivity released, such as from a reactor containment failure, is known as the source term. The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission defines this as "Types and amounts of radioactive or hazardous material released to the environment following an accident."
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 established a timetable and procedure for constructing a permanent, underground repository for high-level radioactive waste by the mid-1990s, and provided for some temporary storage of waste, including spent fuel from 104 civilian nuclear reactors that produce about 19.4% of electricity there. [38]