nuclear waste disposal?

Question

i was just researching this,and i found out that the U.S. government was thinking of different ways to dispose of nuclear waste.one of them was that they could launch it into space.another was that they could just simply put it into metal barrels with heating elements,and put them in antartica,and wait for them to melt through to the rocksheets many miles down. also,yet another one was to bury the in salt,and wait for the salt to crystalise and soon plasticise ove the barrels...does anybody else think this is unethical and WRONG.because no matter where we put them,somebody in some other future time WILL find them,no matter how hard we hide them.so,is it just me,or do other people care about disposal of nuclear waste???

Answer 1

As Michael R pointed out, nuclear waste disposal has come quite a ways since the speculation of decades past.
Current third generation reactors and the soon to be here fourth generation will be able to recycle, incinerate, and GREATLY reduce the amounts of nuclear waste to a point that they can be stored in a facility like Yucca Mt. for generations to come.

Answer 2

The government actually already has a radioactive waste disposal site that utilizes the concept of disposal in salt, it is called the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. I was able to take a tour of the facility, and the concept is actually quite fascinating. The salt will naturally grow around the drums to completely envelope them and, because it is salt, there are no worries about water transporting contamination away from the site. Additionally, when the site is finally closed, the government plans on putting several different types of markers to warn future generations of what is buried there. Of course, I find it hard to believe that anyone will want to dig a half mile down it the middle of the desert, but hey, you never know.

I, for one, cannot understand how radioactive waste disposal would be considered unethical. Whether you agree with nuclear power or not, fact is that we already have a lot of this waste that has been generated. What would be unethical is just to continue ignoring the issue thus greatly increasing the risk of exposure from the waste that is currently stored in facilities that were not designed for long term storage or disposal.

Answer 3

We need to switch to geothermal power - not nuclear.

Nuclear power creates waste, is less land and water efficient (and water efficiency is a big concern for most of the world now), is more expensive as a means of generating electricity, is vulnerable to terrorist or enemy attack. As for the safety of nuclear waste over tens of thousands of years, the truth is that noone knows the odds against an earthquake or subsidence or human interfernce in the long term releasing these toxic and radioactive materials back into the environment. Further nuclear isotopes usable for fission reactions are limited and if the world increases it's consumption rate of them then they'll last less than a century.

Geothermal power can on the other hand supply the entire world with power for at least the next few thousand years and is cheaper than nuclear per unit of electricity generated, it also doesn't require large scale mining operations so less power is wasted on that and less chance of polluting the surrounding area through that.

Answer 4

In the early days of the nuclear industry, the government had all sorts of "concepts" for waste disposal. The ones in your question and many others were quickly abandoned for the obvious reason that they were bad ideas. Sea disposal of solidified waste was tried for a short while and then stopped. Low level waste (defined as everything other than spent fuel) is currently reduced in volume, solidified in a stable matrix, and then buried in specially designed facilities where the possibility of leaching into groundwater is about equal to me hitting a home run at Yankee Stadium. The three burial sites in the country are located in clay beds with the nearest water over 1000 ft down through that clay.

High level waste (spent fuel) can have its radioactivity reduced greatly if we would return to recycling. That would return the unused uranium and plutonium in the fuel to facilities that make fresh fuel to go back into a reactor for further destruction as the elements produce additional power. The recycle of uranium and plutonium reduces the radioactivity of the remaining elements essentially to background after 500 years instead of the shouted 250,000 years. A number of the byproducts of fission can also be recovered and used in industry instead of having isotope production reactors produce new inventory. In this category we find radioactive cobalt and cesium (used to take x-rays of welds and to sterilize equipment).

As with other areas, recycling reduces rubbish.

Answer 5

Well first off, we need to reprocess it like France does.
That could reduce the amount of waste by many orders of magnitude by REUSING it. Then take what is left, encase it in ALOT of concrete and bury it in the desert.

The arguements to this are:

Reprocessing it will create the materials used to make nuclear weapons--who cares we already have so many.
And something about the waste locations blah blah blah.

More radiation is released from burning coal that is created from the nuclear power industry--and we can contain all of the stuff created from nuclear power.

Answer 6

I'm genuinely surprised that so many people have forgotten about the Yucca Mountain starage facility for nuclear waste thats been ready to receive that material since the 90s. All of the lawsuits and local citizens protests are what's kept it from actually being put to use.

Answer 7

Cosmo-just a note.

Actually open pit uranium mines have caused quite a bit of health problems for the Navajo Indians in Arizona where a lot of the mining was done.
Their livestock drank from the uranium poisoned lake water and had deformed calves and the people that drank the water had deformed children and other health problems.
Please see the article below for more information.
I know West Texas has a nuclear waste site and they have hieroglyphic signs around the facility in case future generations stumble upon the place and they will hopefully know to stay away.

Answer 8

There are natural Uranium deposits that, in the past, turned themselves into natural nuclear reactors. These geological formations are so stable that they have not leaked significant amount of toxins over periods of hundreds of millions of years.

If nature can do that well by accident, we can do better through engineering.

The best way may be to bury nuclear waste in geological subduction zones, where the waste will be pulled down into the Earth's mantle and mixed in with the liquid interior of the Earth.

Answer 9

That is just another case of putting the cart in front of the horse.

Someone invented/developed all this nuclear s*** but no one gave thought to disposal.

The short answer is there is no safe way to dispose of nuclear waste. The stuff lasts for ever.