What is nuclear waste? And treatment plants, why are they "treating" it?

Answer 1

Nuclear waste is broad category of radioactive waste. I think what you are referring to is high level waste, such as spent fissile fuel.

Treatment plants basically just prepare the waste for burial by putting it into a form that can be transported, and that is water insoluble (usually by a process called vitrification), so that it "hopefully" won't leach into groundwater.

Nuclear waste is uniquely dangerous because many highly radioactive elements found in high level waste are readily incorporated into living tissue, where it can do enormous damage if ingested or inhaled. It only takes microgram quantities (a speck of dust) of plutonium, cesium 137, iodine 125, or Strontium 90 to guarantee cancer, and submilligram quantities to guarantee a horrible death by radiation poisoning (remember the Russian dude killed in the UK about 2 months ago by Polonium).

Not to scare you, but there is already enough nuclear waste sitting in dry storage casks at nuclear power plants to kill every last human being on the planet thousands of times over. It's something to consider when Pres. Bush suggests that we start adding even more nuclear plants in this country.

By the way, control rods normally don't become radioactive during use, and they aren't lining the tunnels of the proposed storage facilites (Yucca Mountain, WIPP) with lead -they're just far underground.

Answer 2

nuclear waste is radioactive stuff left over that cant be used again. EX.control rods
idk what treating means but i know that they are building tunnals make of lead to store stuff tho.