You may have heard that nuclear power is environmentally safe because it doesn't emit toxic gas. However nuclear waste is extremely dangerous because:

1. Nuclear waste remains radioactive for a very long time. It takes many years for nuclear waste to decompose. In fact, this decomposition process can take as long as hundreds of thousands of years. Therefore, it is no short-term commitment to manage such waste, and this must be considered.

2. There is currently no easy way to dispose of nuclear waste. Currently, humanity?s primary way of dealing with nuclear waste is simply to store it somewhere, and then we are supposed to ?figure out what to do with it later.? Globally, there are very few permanent repositories for the long-term safe storage of nuclear waste. Right now, all that we can do is to effectively manage it until we can create effective long-term storage and disposal solutions.

3.  Nuclear waste can contaminate water and ecosystems. Radioactive contamination can easily spread throughout the environment and into various ecosystems. The air, land, and water can all become contaminated and harm humans and other creatures. In particular, radioactive pollution in water bodies can quickly reach potable water sources.

4. Nuclear waste can cause harmful human health impacts. Radioactive substances are now known to be mutagenic and carcinogenic, and can lead to different types of cancer and other genetic health conditions.

5. Nuclear waste cleanup is very costly and dangerous. Because of the inherent hazardous nature of nuclear waste, it is very expensive to clean up, and can negatively impact the health of those who are involved in the cleanup.

6. Dangerous accidents can occur while transporting nuclear waste. If an accident occurs while transporting nuclear waste to a storage facility, the resulting environmental contamination can be devastating to the surrounding ecosystems and life, as well as for any humans in close proximity to the source of the accident.

7. Nuclear waste reprocessing leads to pollution and is vulnerable to attacks. While nuclear waste is reprocessed in some locations as a ?waste solution,? such processing is very polluting and is one of the largest sources of human-generated radioactivity on the planet. Some of the radioactivity generated by the La Hague nuclear reprocessing facility in France has been found in the Arctic Circle.