why are nuclear waste products a problem?

Answer 1

Because they require very exacting conditions for their disposal. It's not like you can just throw them in a bag and toss them out. A lot of times, burning them just creates more toxic material.

Answer 2

The main fuel in nuclear power is Uranium. If bombarded by neutrons, its atoms will spontaneously fission into fission fragments. These fragments release high energy electromagnetic waves (gamma radiation), which can be very destructive to organic life, as well as producing up to 10 more neutrons for every fission. The neutrons release have a good chance of causing more reactions. Therefore, once a source of uranium is activated, it will radiate gamma rays until it is depleted.

Answer 3

Nuclear waste consists of long-lived radioactive isotopes that are the daughter products of the nuclear fission of U-235 and Pu-239. Some of the daughter products can absorb neutrons and slow down the nuclear reaction rate of the U-235/Pu-239 "fuel" so that it must be replaced before it is entirely used up.

It is possible to chemically separate the remaining un-fissioned U-235 and Pu-239 from the radioactive waste products to recover the unused fuel. Indeed, this is what "breeder reactors" that intentionally produce Pu-239 by neutron capture in U-238 are designed for. Pu-239, like U-235, is a fissile material that can be used for making nuclear weapons or used as fuel in a nuclear reactor.

Pu-239, in large enough quantity, generates enough heat through alpha particle emission to boil water without actually being a critical mass. Many space probes use this effect to heat the hot junctions of a thermopile to generate on-board electricity at distances far enough from the sun that solar cells do not provide significant energy.

Despite the usefulness of U-235 and Pu-239 to potentially solve the looming oil crisis, there is still the problem of what to do with the other radioactive isotopes created in any nuclear fission reactor. Many of these radioactive elements have limited or no scientific use and long half-lifes. If not transmuted to less radioactive elements, or radioactive elements with shorter half=lifes, they represent a long-term (centuries) storage problem.

At this time, it is cheaper to carefully store radioactive nuclear waste in a secure place, while we mine and refine more uranium to run existing and new reactors and to make more plutonium to use as reactor fuel. The volume and mass of waste from existing and planned nuclear reactors is not large, compared (for example) to the solid ash waste and green-house gases produced by coal-fired plants generating the same amount of power.

Nuclear "waste" is radioactive and therefore dangerous to humans and our environment. It is imperative that it be carefully contained, monitored, and protected. Back in the 1960s many people (including myself) did not want to see any more nuclear reactors being built because there was little evidence that the utilities building and operating these plants had any clue what to do with the waste, other than store it on site in large, water-cooled, holding ponds. That didn't seem like a very good idea at the time, and it still isn't a very good idea today.

The only entity wealthy enough and (hopefully) responsible enough to handle nuclear waste is the federal government. Hopefully we, the people, have learned enough in the last fifty years to now do the job right. We do need more fission-powered nuclear reactors today, not fifty years from now when all the easily pumped oil is gone and gasoline (when you can get it) costs $100 per pint. If the United States is to convert from a hydrocarbon-fueled economy to a hydrogen-fueled economy, we will have to use nuclear fission reactors to produce the hydrogen.

We can't count on having ANY nuclear fusion reactors "on line" and generating power for at least fifty more years. However, there is a safe, working, fusion reactor only ninety-three million miles away that pumps out about a kilowatt of power per square yard: the Sun. That may be our ultimate source of unlimited energy farther down the road, but today we need nuclear fission power to replace rapidly depleting fossil fuels.

So, the problem with nuclear waste is just this: how do we keep it safely away from the environment and the general population? One solution is to bury it deep underground in a sparsely populated state, like Nevada or Utah, and hope it doesn't leak out for a few thousand years. I think we should handle it like we do old airplanes: park it and watch it. We could build thousands of railroad cars to transport the nuclear waste to a storage site somewhere in the desert out West. Then we just park the railroad cars and keep an eye on them, inspecting them from time to time for leakage.

Answer 4

nuclear waste takes a long time to breakdown. Its takes millions of years for it to stop its radiation. Also it is hazardous to living tissue and breaks it down.

Answer 5

There is no problem with this as long as you take the waste and dump in all Utah cities it is a good thing.

Answer 6

nuclear stuff destroys atoms thereby wiping out a whole lot of crap including people and animals....so it distroys stuff (bomb) but the extrs stuff burns(waste) and it could kill alotg of people and wildlife throughh deterioration or poisoning

hope that helped