Radioactive Waste

Introduction

Radioactive waste, also called nuclear waste, is any unwanted material that contains a significant number of radioactive atoms. Such material is produced in large quantities by the facilities where nuclear power and nuclear weapons are made. Critics of nuclear power contend that nuclear waste cannot be reliably isolated from the environment for the many tens of thousands of years that must pass until its radioactivity declines to safe levels. They also argue that nuclear waste is dangerously attractive to terrorists and military opponents, who may seek to breach waste facilities and spread the material in inhabited areas using dirty bombs (chemical bombs packed with nuclear waste), hijacked aircraft, or other methods. Because of the long-lived nature of many radioactive materials, in large enough quantities they can render landscapes uninhabitable for decades or longer, causing long-term economic loss in addition to lingering effects such as higher mutation and cancer rates in plants and animals (including people).

Supporters of nuclear power say that radioactive waste can be processed to make it less dangerous and that it can be safely isolated from the environment by burying it in deep, dry rock formations.

Historical Background and Scientific Foundations

Radioactive atoms are atoms that, due to the structure of their nuclei, can break apart at any moment. When they do, they eject fast-moving subatomic particles and high-energy electromagnetic waves called gamma rays, closely akin to light rays. These particles and rays can harm living tissue. If they are intense, they can kill directly, while if they are weak, they can damage DNA and so increase the risk of cancer. Although the breakdown of any single atom of a radioactive substance cannot be predicted, each type (nuclide) of radioactive atom has an average lifespan. When large numbers of atoms are present, as is the case in radioactive waste, the behavior of that mass of atoms is predictable. For example, after a certain time, almost exactly half of the atoms will have changed into other nuclides. This time is termed the half-life of the nuclide. The half-lives of various nuclides vary from a fraction of a second to billions of years. The half-life of plutonium, a substance found in waste from nuclear reactors, is about 24,000 years. After about 10 half-lives, only one one-thousandth of any quantity of a radioactive nuclide will remain, so after 240,000 years any given amount of plutonium will only be about one one-thousandth as dangerous as it was originally. This period is often cited as the amount of time that nuclear waste containing plutonium must be isolated from the environment.

Nuclear waste did not begin to be generated in large quantities until after World War II (1939–1945), when several nations began building thousands of nuclear weapons along with scores of nuclear power plants to generate electricity. Because national survival was thought to depend on building atomic bombs, radioactive waste was treated as unimportant. As a result, poorly contained wastes were created by weapons programs. In 1954, a chemical explosion at a Soviet (now Russian) waste-storage site at Kyshtym in the southern Ural Mountains contaminated about 5,800 square mi (15,000 square km) and forced the evacuation of over 10,000 people. The Soviet Union denied that the event had occurred until 1989, and reports of hundreds of deaths from the accident are still denied by the Russian government.

In the United States, from the 1940s to the 1970s, much of its military nuclear waste was created, stored in underground tanks, or dumped into the environment at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation along the banks of the

WORDS TO KNOW

GAMMA RAYS: Streams of high-energy electromagnetic radiation given off by an atomic nucleus undergoing radioactive decay.

HALF LIFE: The amount of time it takes for half an initial amount to disintegrate.

NUCLIDE: A type of atom having a specific number of protons and neutrons in its nucleus.

RADIOACTIVITY: The property possessed by some elements of spontaneously emitting energy in the form of particles or waves by disintegration of their atomic nuclei.

Columbia River in Washington. Scores of millions of gallons of highly radioactive waste were pumped into leaky tanks or poured into open ditches: An amount of radioactivity was released each day into the Columbia River that would now be considered a major nuclear accident. Radioactive nuclides are still moving through groundwater under the Hanford site, gradually entering the river. A number of these nuclides can concentrate in human tissues and cause cancer. The government did not release this information until the 1980s, when information about the waste leaks was obtained by journalists and environmentalists under the Freedom of Information Act.

Nuclear waste from power plants has been better contained. The primary form of waste from nuclear reactors is spent fuel, that is, metal rods containing pellets of radioactive metal whose mixture of nuclides is no longer suitable for generating power. These spent fuel rods, after removal from the reactor core, are first immersed in boric acid in steel-lined concrete pools. Later, when they are cooler (because some of its shorter-lived nuclides have decayed into other nuclides), they are moved into heavy steel canisters and stored near the nuclear power plant. Such facilities are not intended to contain the waste permanently. The nuclear industry and government agencies envision two possible futures for such waste: (1) It may be reprocessed to extract its plutonium, which can then be burned as a nuclear fuel. This plan must overcome the obstacle that reprocessing produces larger volumes of high-level radioactive waste than it begins with, though they contain less plutonium. (2) It may be buried in deep, dry-rock formations, where it will hopefully remain until its radioactivity has declined to safe lev

Impacts and Issues

As of 2008, radioactive waste was not yet being stored in any deep-rock permanent facilities anywhere in the world, although it seemed likely that a Finnish facility would begin accepting waste in 2020. In the United States, plans for deep disposal of nuclear waste from

IN CONTEXT: COUSTEAU’S CRUSADE AGAINST RADIOACTIVE WASTE

Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910–1997) was one of the most famous ocean explorers of the twentieth century. He authored more than fifty books and encyclopedias about the oceans, produced numerous films and television shows featuring his adventures at sea, and founded a society for the protection of the oceans. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States and was awarded the United Nations International Environmental Prize in 1977.

Cousteau’s voyages on his ship Calypso enchanted the public and exposed people to the beauty and fragility of many different, and often inaccessible, environments. He was able to demonstrate the threats that pollution and overexploitation posed through his dramatic images and descriptive prose. His writing, in which scientific concepts are explained in a compelling manner similar to storytelling, is a major part of his legacy, as it increased the public’s awareness of the great beauty and diversity found in environments throughout the world.

Cousteau’s success in film and writing made him a major spokesperson in the environmental movement of the late twentieth century.

Cousteau chose several environmental problems on which he focused his attention and the attention of the public. This often resulted in important changes to government policy. In 1960, Cousteau became concerned about the environmental effects of dumping radioactive waste in the Mediterranean Sea by the European Atomic Energy Community. He launched a publicity campaign pressuring governments to stop the practice. Eventually, dumping radioactive waste into the Mediterranean was banned.

more than 100 reactors around the country remain stalled. The Yucca Mountain facility was originally meant to begin receiving waste in 1998, but as of 2008, government officials said it would be at least 2017, probably later, before this could occur. The state government of Nevada strenuously opposes storage of radioactive waste at the site, and scientific concerns about the site’s geological integrity have been raised. Meanwhile, by early 2008, owners of U.S. nuclear power plants had filed 60 lawsuits against the federal government to recover costs due to delays in opening Yucca Mountain (temporary waste-storage sites are expensive for plant owners.) Government payments to industry are forecast to run from $7 billion to $35 billion or more.

See Also Nuclear Power

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

McFarlane, Allison, and Rodney C. Ewing, eds.Uncertainty Underground: Yucca Mountain and the Nation’s High-Level Nuclear Waste. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006.

Periodicals

Kanter, James. “Radioactive Nimby: No One Wants Nuclear Waste.” New York Times (November 7, 2007).

Wald, Matthew L. “Agency Is Seen as Unfazed on Atom Waste.” New York Times (June 12, 2004).

Wald, Matthew L. “As Nuclear Waste Languishes,Expense to U.S. Rises.” New York Times (February 17,2008).

Web Sites

National Academy of Sciences. “Health Effects of Exposure to Low-Level Ionizing Radiation: BEIR V.” http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309039959 (accessed April 16, 2008).

Sierra Club. “Nuclear Waste.” http://www.sierraclub.org/nuclearwaste/nucw.asp (accessed April 16, 2008).

U.S. Department of Energy. “Yucca Mountain Repository.” http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/ym_repository/index.shtml#skiptop (accessed April 16, 2008).

Larry Gilman