question: When people talk about nuclear waste, what are they really talking about? Whats in those scary barrels buried deep in a bunker if it isn't "glowing green goo?"
comment: There are different classes of nuclear waste. Low level radioactive (rad) waste is broken down into different classifications. It can be anything from gloves and paper suits worn in containment or resin beds or filters. It’s disposed in special facilities based on its classification. High level waste includes spent fuel. Nuclear fuel is uranium pellets (sort of the size of an eraser on top of a pencil) that are assembled into rods and then the rods make up a bundle. Once the fuel is removed from the core, it goes into spent fuel pools, which are literally just pools of water. The spent fuel will hang out there for a while, just chilling (literally and figuratively). Eventually, the rods will be moved into longer-term storage. This was originally supposed to be Yucca Mountain (in the US at least). That facility was paid for by operating nuclear plants, but was never opened. Instead, nuclear plants usually move their spent fuel into dry cask storage. This is a big coke can looking thing that just holds the fuel. The fuel is, remember, still in rods. So you just plop it in the giant coke can and seal it up. They hang around outside the nuclear plant. Not in a deep bunker, just like chilling outside. Although it sounds like there’s just nuclear waste everywhere, it’s important to keep in mind that it’s not a sludge (if you’re talking about fuel). It’s a stable solid rod. And the amount of rods we’re talking here is not a lot. In fact, it’s really not an issue at all for plants to continue to store spent fuel on site, it’s just kind of a paperwork pain. At this time, there’s no way to recycle spent fuel in the US (I don’t think).
passages: Solid waste can be disposed of simply by placing it where it will not be disturbed for a few years. There are three low-level waste disposal sites in the United States in South Carolina, Utah, and Washington. Solid waste from the CVCS is combined with solid radwaste that comes from handling materials before it is buried off-site.
   Section::::Nuclear waste.
  
  Light and intermediate level waste, which represents 99% of the volume of waste, is treated on site in the WAB (Water and Waste Treatment Building). Category A waste with half lives of less than 30 years is transported to Belgoprocess in Dessel for surface disposal.
   The nuclear industry also produces a large volume of low-level radioactive waste in the form of contaminated items like clothing, hand tools, water purifier resins, and (upon decommissioning) the materials of which the reactor itself is built. Low-level waste can be stored on-site until radiation levels are low enough to be disposed as ordinary waste, or it can be sent to a low-level waste disposal site.
  
  Section::::Life cycle of nuclear fuel.:Nuclear waste.:Waste relative to other types.
   LLW should not be confused with high-level waste (HLW) or spent nuclear fuel (SNF). C Class low level waste has a limit of 100 nano-Curies per gram of alpha-emitting transuranic nuclides with a half life greater than 5 years; any more than 100 nCi, and it must be classified as transuranic waste (TRU). These require different disposal pathways. TRU wastes from the U.S. nuclear weapons complex is currently disposed at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, New Mexico, though other sites also are being considered for on-site disposal of particularly difficult to manage TRU wastes.
  
  Section::::See also.
   Classes of wastes are detailed in 10 C.F.R. § 61.55 Waste Classification enforced by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, reproduced in the table below. These are not all the isotopes disposed of at these facilities, just the ones that are of most concern for the long-term monitoring of the sites. Waste is divided into three classes, A through C, where A is the least radioactive and C is the most radioactive. Class A LLW is able to be deposited near the surface, whereas Classes B and C LLW have to be buried progressively deeper.
   Intermediate-level waste (ILW) contains higher amounts of radioactivity and in general require shielding, but not cooling. Intermediate-level wastes includes resins, chemical sludge and metal nuclear fuel cladding, as well as contaminated materials from reactor decommissioning. It may be solidified in concrete or bitumen for disposal. As a general rule, short-lived waste (mainly non-fuel materials from reactors) is buried in shallow repositories, while long-lived waste (from fuel and fuel reprocessing) is deposited in geological repository. U.S. regulations do not define this category of waste; the term is used in Europe and elsewhere.
  
  Section::::Classification.:High-level waste.
   Section::::Nuclear waste.
  
  Low and intermediate level waste, which represents 99% of the volume of waste, is treated on site. Category A waste with half lives of less than 30 years is transported to Belgoprocess in Dessel for surface disposal.
   In nature, sixteen repositories were discovered at the Oklo mine in Gabon where natural nuclear fission reactions took place 1.7 billion years ago. The fission products in these natural formations were found to have moved less than 10 ft (3 m) over this period, though the lack of movement may be due more to retention in the uraninite structure than to insolubility and sorption from moving ground water; uraninite crystals are better preserved here than those in spent fuel rods because of a less complete nuclear reaction, so that reaction products would be less accessible to groundwater attack.
   Beginning in 2005 Unit 2 was loaded with BLEU (Blended Low Enriched Uranium) recovered by the DOE from weapons programs. This fuel contains quantities of U-236 and other contaminants because it was made from reprocessed fuel from weapons program reactors and therefore has slightly different characteristics when used in a reactor as compared to fresh uranium fuel. By making use of this fuel which would otherwise have been disposed of as waste the TVA is saving millions of dollars in fuel costs and accumulating a database of recycled uranium reactions in LWR use.
  
  Section::::Unit 3.
   HLW contains many of the fission products and transuranic elements generated in the reactor core and is the type of nuclear waste with the highest activity. HLW accounts for over 95% of the total radioactivity produced in the nuclear power process. In other words, while most nuclear waste is low-level and intermediate-level waste, such as protective clothing and equipment that have been contaminated with radiation, the majority of the "radioactivity" produced from the nuclear power generation process comes from high-level waste.
   AECL's original plans for long-term waste disposal was a three-stage process; in the first stage the fuel would be stored in the existing spent fuel pools located at the reactor sites for a period of six to ten years. After that time the overall decay rates have decreased to the point where it can be safely moved. For the second stage, the fuel would be placed in an underground facility for a period of about 300 years. By that time the most active gamma ray emitters have burned off and the fuel becomes much safer to handle. The final stage would see the fuel moved to surface sites, but over time this was abandoned and the entire time was to be spent underground.
   Liquid high-level waste is typically held temporarily in underground tanks pending vitrification. Most of the high-level waste created by the Manhattan project and the weapons programs of the cold war exists in this form because funding for further processing was typically not part of the original weapons programs. Both spent nuclear fuel and vitrified waste are considered as suitable forms for long term disposal, after a period of temporary storage in the case of spent nuclear fuel.
   The definition of low-level waste is set by the nuclear regulators of individual countries, though the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) provides recommendations. Some countries, such as France, specify categories for long-lived low- and intermediate-level waste. U.S. regulations do not define the category of intermediate-level waste.
  
  Section::::Disposal.
   Radioactive waste in Canada can be grouped into three broad categories: nuclear fuel waste, low-level radioactive waste, and uranium mill tailings. The most recent inventory of these wastes is provided in the LLRWMO 2004 report. At the end of 2003, the total amount of nuclear fuel waste was 6,800 m.
   The powder is then compressed in a process known as Hot Isostatic Pressing (HIP), where it is compressed within a bellows-like stainless steel container at temperatures of .
  
  The result is a cylinder of hard, dense, black synthetic rock.
  
  Section::::Comparisons.
  
  If stored in a liquid form, nuclear waste can enter the environment and the waterways, and cause widespread damage. As a solid, these risks are greatly minimised.
   In 2000, the K-Reactor building was converted to the K Area Materials Storage Facility. The Savannah River Site was selected as the location of three new plutonium facilities for: a MOX fuel fabrication; pit disassembly and conversion; and plutonium immobilization. WSRC earned the DOE's top safety performance honor of Star Status.
  
  Thousands of shipments of transuranic waste were contained and sent by truck and by rail to the DOE's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) Project in New Mexico, with the first shipments beginning in 2001. DWPF completed production of four million pounds of environmentally acceptable classified waste.
   In 1978, the governments of Canada and Ontario agreed to fund the "Nuclear Fuel Waste Management Program" (NFWMP) to consider the deep geological repository as a solution to the growing inventory of spent fuel. At the time, it was estimated the fleet of CANDU reactors would produce 3.6 million fuel bundles by the end of life of existing reactors. Organized by the Atomic Energy Control Board (AECB), AECL was tasked with developing the required technology, while Ontario Hydro would pay for the actual storage and be responsible for transport of the waste to and from a production site. An updated agreement was signed in 1981, with the explicit instructions that no nuclear material would ever be placed in the experimental site.
   Section::::Overview on Radioactive Waste.
  
  In Korea, radioactive waste is categorized as one of two types: low-and intermediate-level waste(LILW) or high-level waste based on radioactive concentration and degree of heat generation. LILW is categorized as having less than 4,000 Bq/g of alpha particle emitting nuclides of half lives more than 20 years; additionally the bodies heat generation must be below 2 kW/m.
   In 2007, the "Peripheral Operable Unit" (Peripheral OU) land area of Rocky Flats was transferred from DOE to FWS for use and preservation as the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge. During the environmental investigation and sampling, it had been determined that levels of residual contamination were so low, no remediation was required; the Refuge land was already in a state suitable for any use. In 2017, a statutorily-required review confirmed the Refuge was suitable for any use, prior to its formal opening. In contrast, the DOE-retained "Central Operable Unit" of Rocky Flats remains under DOE control, and is subject to ongoing monitoring and sampling and groundwater treatment.
   Since 1974 Ontario Power Generation has stored low and intermediate-level (L&ILW) produced in its nuclear reactors at the Bruce, Pickering, and Darlington sites centrally on the Bruce nuclear site in its Western Waste Management Facility (WWMF). The current project proposal from OPG would store about 200,000 cubic meters of L&ILW from the continued operation of these three OPG-owned nuclear sites, approximately 90% of which will be low-level waste.
   Spent fuel rods from conventional nuclear reactors are put into storage and considered to be nuclear waste, by the nuclear industry and the general public. Nuclear waste from light water reactors retains more than 95% of its original energy because such reactors cannot burn fertile U238, while fast reactors can. The current U.S. inventory of spent fuel is equivalent to nine trillion barrels of oil - four times more than the known reserves.
  
  Section::::Non-proliferation.
   Disposal of these wastes in engineered facilities, or repositories, located deep underground in suitable geologic formations is seen as the reference solution. The [[International Panel on Fissile Materials]] has said:
   Section::::Uranium in Ground and Surface Water in Canada.
   As an alternative to TRUEX, an extraction process using a malondiamide has been devised. The DIAMEX ("DIAM"ide"EX"traction) process has the advantage of avoiding the formation of organic waste which contains elements other than carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen. Such an organic waste can be burned without the formation of acidic gases which could contribute to acid rain. The DIAMEX process is being worked on in Europe by the French CEA. The process is sufficiently mature that an industrial plant could be constructed with the existing knowledge of the process. In common with PUREX this process operates by a solvation mechanism.
   On May 13, 2019, enriched uranium was detected inside the Zahn's Corner Middle School, in Piketon, Ohio, just from the plant. The U.S. Department of Energy air monitor adjacent to the middle school also detected neptunium 237 -- a byproduct of nuclear reactors and plutonium production. It was determined by leaders to close the school for the rest of the school year. Area businesses, homes, ground and groundwater were also undergoing further testing. This event has resulted in a Class Action Lawsuit filed on behalf of area residents by a group of attorneys led by toxic tort specialist Stuart Smith.
  