Nuclear waste also known as radioactive waste refers to radioactive and extremely toxic by-products of nuclear fuel processing plants, and nuclear medicine and nuclear weapons industries. Nuclear wastes remain radioactive for thousands of years and have to be buried deep on land or at sea in thick concrete or metal (lead and stainless steel) containers.

The production of nuclear weapons has polluted vast amounts of soil and water at hundreds of nuclear weapons facilities all over the world. Many of the substances released, including plutonium, uranium, strontium, caesium, benzene, polychlorinated biphenyls, mercury and cyanide, are carcinogenic and/or mutagenic and remain hazardous for thousands, some for hundreds of thousands, of years.

In the US alone, more than US$ 44 billion has been spent on the production of nuclear weapons as of 1996. 'Clean up' is projected to cost more than US$300 billion through the year 2070, and even then the contaminated sites will require monitoring and stewardship into the far future. Plutonium takes around 250,000 years to become lead.

Everything on Earth is exposed to radiation. However, exposure to radiation at levels greater than natural background radiation can be hazardous. Exposure to certain high levels of radiation, such as that from high-level radioactive waste, can even cause death. Radiation exposure can also cause cancer, birth defects, and other abnormalities, depending on the time of exposure, amount of radiation, and the decay mechanism.

The burial of radioactive materials is presently being touted as the 'solution' to radioactive waste 'disposal'. The burial of these materials must not be confused with their safe containment and isolation from the environment. Currently there is no solution to the problem of radioactive waste, there are no technologies that can clean up radiation, which is why the entire nuclear project must be stopped.

Sources

http://www.pollutionissues.com/Pl-Re/Radioactive-Waste.html

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/peace/abolish-nuclear-weapons/the-damage/

http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/nuclear-waste.html