Nuclear Wasteby Ida Ayu Mas Amelia Kusumaningtyas | 21-05-2017 01:24 |
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Nuclear waste is the material that nuclear fuel becomes after it is used in a reactor. Even though the appearance of nuclear waste looks the same as nuclear fuel, the contents aren't quite the same. Nuclear waste, or used fuel, is dangerously radioactive, and remains so for a thousand of years. It is so toxic that when it first come out of the reactor whilst standing close to it unshielded, you would die within a few days because of acute radiation sickness caused by receiving lethal radioactive dose within a few seconds. Used fuel is never unshielded, since water is an excellent shield, nuclear waste is kept underwater for a few years until the radiation decays to levels that can b shielded by concrete in large storage casks. Option for final disposal includes deep geologic storage and recycling. Since 90% of nuclear wastes contain uranium, it also means that there is still 90% of useable fuel. Nuclear waste can be chemically processed and placed in advanced fast reactors to close the fuel cycle. A closed fuel cycle means much less nuclear waste and much more energy extracted from the raw one. Although this is so, advanced fast reactors have not been deployed on any major scale yet. The longest living nuclides in nuclear waste are the ones that can be used as fuel: plutonium and the minor actinides. If these materials are burnt in fuel through recycling, nuclear waste would only remain radioactive for a few hundred years, as opposed to a few hundred thousand. This significantly reduces concerns with long-term storage. Resource : https://whatisnuclear.com/articles/waste.html
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