Nuclear Waste is Not Such a Waste. =)

Hello again and welcome to our dearly blog promoting nuclear energy.

First of all, we would like to thank all the readers who have been following our progress through this entire course. Without you all, the information will not be spread out. Hence, we are very grateful that you all have responded at least one of our posts. Thank you. So, from the previous comments that we have read, many of you asked about the nuclear waste and we know, this is one of the most concern matter for any people who wants to really now and try to accept the technology of nuclear energy.

If we can recycle our garbage and turn it into something usable why we shouldn't do the same with nuclear waste. To simply put it, nuclear waste recycling is separating the parts that we want (in this case uranium and plutonium) from nuclear waste or called spent fuel. By recycling, we can extract the uranium and  plutonium that still has a lot of energy that we can harvest from. We you take out this two elements from the waste, the waste itself will be more stable and this mean it will be easier to handle and it can be stored safetly.

As been mentioned before, the product of fission process has produced wastes that we do not needed anymore but the waste is too dangerous because of the radioactivity which all nuclear wastes must be kept safe under proper supervision and we cannot just throw away the wastes anywhere. These wastes must be managed in ways which safeguard human health and minimize their impact on the environment.

But one of the most interesting fact about nuclear energy is that, nuclear energy is the only energy industry which takes full responsibility for all its wastes, and costs this into the product. Which means, other energy industries (you all know what we mean) do not take a really responsibility about their wastes. That is why we can call nuclear energy is the greenest of all because nuclear energy really concern about the wastes compare to any other energy industries existed.

So, there are several general radioactivity wastes from nuclear reaction. It can be divided into three groups, which are:

1. Low-level Waste - Occur because of the nuclear fuel cycle and not dangerous to handle but must be disposed of more carefully than normal garbage.
2. Intermediate-level Waste - contains higher amounts of radioactivity and may require special shielding but It may be solidified in concrete or bitumen for disposal.
3. High-level Waste - It contains the highly-radioactive fission products and some heavy elements with long-lived radioactivity.

But among of all there wastes, the most interested type of waste that most nuclear engineer would like to seriously control is the High-level Waste.

As more and more nuclear plants will be build in the world, the build up of waste from these reactors will also increase in time. You need to remember that average life span of a  nuclear fuel inside a reactor is around 20-30 years. In time you will need to take out the used fuel and put it new one inside the reactor. So if we recycle this nuclear waste, there will be less waste that need to be put away and more fuel will be available to be used in reactors.

"France, in contrast, now reprocesses well over 1000 metric tons of spent fuel every year without incident at the La Hague chemical complex, at the head of Normandy’s wind-blasted Cotentin peninsula. La Hague receives all the spent fuel rods from France’s 59 reactors. The sprawling facility, operated by the state-controlled nuclear giant Areva, has racked up a good, if not unblemished, environmental record. " taken from http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/nuclear-wasteland

 A picture showing the storage tank for nuclear fuel cell