ANS - American Nuclear Society
11/22/2022 | News release | Distributed by Public on 11/22/2022 07:08
Nuclear waste disposal—What choice do we really have?
Taking waste into outer space would require quite large vehicles, like the Saturn 5 rocket shown here carrying the Apollo 14 crew to the moon. A huge fireball forms underneath the rocket . . . hmm, would that be wise? (Source: NASA)
Nuclear waste disposal presents a frustrating problem far beyond its actual danger. No one has ever been harmed by nuclear waste, and no one is likely to ever be harmed-particularly by commercial nuclear waste.
But we do have to find a final resting place for nuclear waste as it decays away back to the levels of the ore from which it came.
There are several types of nuclear waste: low-level waste (LLW), intermediate-level waste (ILW), transuranic waste (TRU; referring only to bomb waste without a lot of cesium-137 or strontium-90), high-level waste (HLW; also only bomb waste), and spent nuclear fuel (SNF; from commercial power plants only). In the United States, TRU waste, HLW, and SNF require deep geologic disposal by law.
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