Produces shortest half-life Nuclear Waste
Produces shortest half-life Nuclear Waste
(OP)
Does anyone know which plant type produces waste materials with the shortest half life?
I've heard that some produce waste with a half-life of hundreds of thousands of years which is OTT IMHO.
I've heard that some produce waste with a half-life of hundreds of thousands of years which is OTT IMHO.





RE: Produces shortest half-life Nuclear Waste
RE: Produces shortest half-life Nuclear Waste
All currently running nuclear plants use the same process - nuclear fission - to generate electricity. The majority of these plants use uranium, although there are a few which use plutonium. The process involves "splitting" the uranium/plutonium atom by striking it with a neutron. The split atom then creates new atoms, some of which are radioactive, some of which aren't. The radioactive ones are called isotopes.
There are charts in various nuclear texts, and probably also on the Internet, which give the probability of a uranium atom splitting into certain isotopes, and the resultant half-lives. Some are very short lived, others very long. Although the probability of certain isotopes changes with plutonium being used, the actual types of isotopes remains the same. There’s a fairly good article on Wikipedia. For this type of question, it is a much better source.
Patricia Lougheed
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RE: Produces shortest half-life Nuclear Waste
make them into large glass clumps of radioactivity and stick em in the ground in casks
RE: Produces shortest half-life Nuclear Waste
Ideally, reprocessing and vitrification would solve a lot of the questions and problems we are currently running into. Reprocessing would remove most of the usable uranium and plutonium still left in the used fuel every plant has sitting in their spent fuel pool (and there is a lot of reusable fuel left in each fuel rod). Vitrification would drastically reduce the dangers from waste products and would be safer to store in the long term. Also, anybody who tried to get some vitrified waste wouldn't be able to do very much with it. The problem is that both processes are very expensive and reprocessing would take congress reversing the ban enacted under Carter, which is why the U.S. has fallen behind the rest of the world in this aspect. By reprocessing and vitrifying the waste, we could get rid of all the spent fuel currently sitting in storage and reduce the volume that needs to be stored drastically. No one will put up the money it takes, though, with all of the uncertainty now. Maybe after the first few companies start building new plants, somebody will get the nerve.
RE: Produces shortest half-life Nuclear Waste
if they legalized Yucca and ultra regulated keeping Waste above ground it would change real quick
RE: Produces shortest half-life Nuclear Waste
RE: Produces shortest half-life Nuclear Waste
Nevertheless, we have run rather far from the original post... and into the realm of speculation rather than an actual work situation needing to be solved. I request that if anyone has any further comments about vitrification that a post be made in forum730: Where is Engineering Going In The Next 5 Years.
Thanks
Patricia Lougheed
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RE: Produces shortest half-life Nuclear Waste
So my question really is what sort of reactors give us the least problem in nuclear waste?
Regards
zoomi