Talk:Radioactive waste

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Radioactive waste article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: 1, 2: 150 days

Environment High‑importance

	Environment portal This environment-related article is part of the WikiProject Environment to improve Wikipedia's coverage of the environment. The aim is to write neutral and well-referenced articles on environment-related topics, as well as to ensure that environment articles are properly categorized. Read Wikipedia:Contributing FAQ and leave any messages at the project talk page.EnvironmentWikipedia:WikiProject EnvironmentTemplate:WikiProject EnvironmentEnvironment articles
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Glass Mid‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Glass, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of glass on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.GlassWikipedia:WikiProject Physics/Taskforces/GlassTemplate:WikiProject Glassglass articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the importance scale.

Physics Low‑importance

	Physics portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Physics, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Physics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PhysicsWikipedia:WikiProject PhysicsTemplate:WikiProject Physicsphysics articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Engineering Low‑importance

	Engineering portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Engineering, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of engineering on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.EngineeringWikipedia:WikiProject EngineeringTemplate:WikiProject EngineeringEngineering articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Archives

1, 2

This page has archives. Sections older than 150 days may be automatically archived by when more than 5 sections are present.

Cost of Storing Radioactive Waste Through Staff

If we take some of the models of storing radioactive waste at 10,000, 100,000 or 1 million years.

I was just wondering if there was a security personnel and there wage were say from the year 2000 as a baseline say a salary $10,000 per year.

What would the salary be of that person doing that job in 10,000, 100,000 or 1 million years time be?

I believe it would take more than one person to maintain such a facility to hold radioactive waste.

This is just a simple question on economics.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Supertoaster2 (talk • contribs) 16:47, 16 June 2009

Is this a useful comparison?

It’s not comparing like for like. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/943611894 Kaihsu (talk) 19:40, 4 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. I removed the sentence. (sorry it looks like a revert to your edit) --Ita140188 (talk) 05:48, 5 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

No problem; much appreciated. Please check recent edits by the same user. Thanks. Kaihsu (talk) 06:24, 5 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Kaihsu: @Ita140188: Sorry but the whole section is biased in this way. The preceding statement is not comparing "like for like" either as it speaks of unreprocessed waste rather than HLW output: "A 1000-megawatt nuclear power plant produces about 27 tonnes of spent nuclear fuel (unreprocessed) every year". Also in terms of actual radioactivity released to the environment the coal ash is much more harmful than any HLW. I suggest that we now discuss this based on reliable sources here and try to rewrite the whole section in a balanced way. Cloud200 (talk) 11:41, 5 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Is 27 tonnes supposed to be a lot or a little? The reason coal ash is so bad, is that people are bad at keeping it contained and safe. how much coal ash does a 1000MWe coal plant produce in a year? (And how radioactive is it?) It is not all that much work to keep 27 tonnes safe compared to the coal ash. Gah4 (talk) 13:14, 5 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The EPA says that the US produced 160 million tons of coal ash in 2014. That is from about 86 coal plants producing about 107GWe, so to compare to a 1GWe plant divide by 107, for about 1.5 million tons of ash for a 1GWe coal plant per year. In comparison, 27 tonnes sounds small. Gah4 (talk) 13:28, 5 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

27 tons is absolutely tiny amount as compared to other sources of energy, and then 96% is recycled back into fuel. The remaining 4% fission products need to be stored. These photos from Zwilag storage in Switzerland show almost all nuclear waste from all Swiss nuclear power plants of their lifetime. Cloud200 (talk) 21:17, 5 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with all points, and I am personally a strong supporter of nuclear power. However, this context is needed in the lead when including this fact. For example, at least cite the total activity or toxicity of coal ash compared to nuclear waste. Otherwise citing it does not make sense for an average reader. Because of all the context needed, I think this information would be easier to include further down in the article instead of the lead. --Ita140188 (talk) 04:20, 6 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect coal ash is dangerous even without radioactivity, but it does have radioactive Potassium-40. It is a little hard to explain, but it is easier to keep 27 tons of radioactive waste safe than 1.5 million tons of coal ash. Gah4 (talk) 11:18, 6 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Cumulative chart

The radioactive waste needs a graphic chart that shows the yearly cumulative growth of radioactive waste from the time of the first reactor in 1942 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Pile-1. In what year could we run out of room? VS odds of the chance of an accident. "90,000 metric tons is the total mass of highly radioactive nuclear waste in the US, including spent fuel and other material" Mitch Jacoby also https://www.gao.gov/key_issues/disposal_of_highlevel_nuclear_waste/issue_summary. March 30, 2020 ---Mark v1.0 (talk) 23:35, 2 September 2020 (UTC) read by 2015 the existing will be filled... anyways another link "Updated EIA survey provides data on spent nuclear fuel in the United States. ( 2013) " https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=24052[reply]

Coming back four years later, we still do not have a graph showing the continual growth of accumulating radioactive materials. I found one online but its probably wrong to use it as I don't own it. I am going to have to learn to use Excel graphing and make one.--Mark v1.0 (talk) 07:18, 28 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Transportation of nuclear waste?

Should there be a section on this topic, or is there a dedicated article somewhere else that I've missed? --Danimations (talk) 02:33, 20 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Citation 70 does not corroborate claim

In Subsection Vitrification we read

"After filling a cylinder, a seal is welded onto the cylinder head. The cylinder is then washed. After being inspected for external contamination, the steel cylinder is stored, usually in an underground repository. In this form, the waste products are expected to be immobilized for thousands of years.[70]"

The term "thousands of years" is not in the article. The only section that I can find in the article that talks about a time frame is Section 3.4.4.1 first paragraph, last sentence: "The glass matrix in which the highly radioactive wastes are incorporated, the method of encapsulation and the geological formation chosen to isolate the radioactivity from the biosphere, are carefully selected to ensure long term safety."

The framing of the sentence in the Wikipedia article is misleading in two ways a) the article does not mention a number and so "thousands of years" is not corroborated by the citation b) the time frame may be too short as tens of thousands/hundred of thousands/millions of years may be needed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Robert.piro (talk • contribs) 21:50, 25 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

so you agree we should use nuclear transmutation instead? Hobbitschuster (talk) 01:29, 26 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Immediate threat

There is no title/header for an immediate threat of radioactive waste release, so I placed "Top Priority" near the top of the article. It really should not be there, but at this time I don't know where to place it.--Mark v1.0 (talk) 06:20, 28 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Laser transmutation

An editor asked in their edit summary where the neutrons come from in Gerard Mourou's laser transmutation concept. The idea is to use powerful laser pulses to accelerate deuterons (deuterium nuclei) into a tritium-rich target, causing fusion reactions which spit out high-energy neutrons. A more conventional method would be accelerating protons into a target (such as mercury) that undergoes (p, n) reactions to emit neutrons, like at the Spallation Neutron Source. There's a further discussion of other possible types of laser-driven neutron sources on pages 118-119 of the paper (23-24 of the pdf) 82.12.148.203 (talk) 06:46, 24 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]