halcyoncmdr , 5 hours ago

Most nuclear waste issues are vastly over-exaggerated. Most of the nuclear waste is not long term waste. It’s not things like spent fuel rods, it’s things like safety equipment and gear. Those aren’t highly contaminated, and much of it can almost be thrown away in regular landfills. The middle range of materials are almost always kept on site through the entire life of the nuclear plant. Through the lifetime of the plant that material will naturally decay away and by the time the plant is decommissioned only a fraction will be left to handle storage for a while longer from the most recent years.

Nuclear waste can be divided into four different types:

1. Very low-level waste: Waste suitable for near-surface landfills, requiring lower containment and isolation.
2. Low-level waste: Waste needing robust containment for up to a few hundred years, suitable for disposal in engineered near-surface facilities.
3. Intermediate-level waste: Waste that requires a greater degree of containment and isolation than that provided by near-surface disposal.
4. High-level waste: Waste is disposed of in deep, stable geological formations, typically several hundred meters below the surface.

Despite safety concerns, high-level radioactive waste constitutes less than 0.25% of total radioactive waste reported to the IAEA.
These numbers are worldwide for the last 4 years:

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