Discard Radio Attestation For Free

The radioactive elements (radionuclides) cannot be destroyed by any known chemical or mechanical process. Their ultimate destruction is through radio-decay to stable isotopes or by nuclear transmutation by bombardment with atomic particles.

Nuclear waste must be processed to make it safe for disposal. This includes its collection and sorting; reducing its volume and changing its chemical and physical composition, such as concentrating liquid waste; and finally, its conditioning so it is immobilized and packaged before storage and disposal.

Storage of used fuel is normally under water for at least five years and then often in dry storage. Deep geological disposal is widely agreed to be the best solution for final disposal of the most radioactive waste produced.

Solid wastes containing radioisotopes with half-lives of 120 days or less are collected in pails within laboratories and then transferred to a campus storage facility, known as the Decay-in-Storage (DIS) Facility.

Right now, all of the nuclear waste that a power plant generates in its entire lifetime is stored on-site in dry casks. A permanent disposal site for used nuclear fuel has been planned for Yucca Mountain, Nevada, since 1987, but political issues keep it from becoming a reality.

Since the federal government has not established a permanent repository for its radioactive nuclear waste, it's had to pay utility companies to store it themselves. Currently, nuclear waste is mostly stored in dry casks on the locations of current and former nuclear power plants around the country.

The radioactive waste should be stored for a minimum period of about 10 half lives when after decay only 0.1% of the initial activity remains. The waste is then monitored for the residual activity and if the dose limit is low it is disposed off as low activity solid or liquid waste.