Nuclear Waste facts

While investigating facts about Nuclear Waste Disposal and Nuclear Waste Management Organization, I found out little known, but curios details like:

About Nuclear Semiotics - the study of how to warn people 10,000+ years from now about nuclear waste, when all known languages may have disappeared

how nuclear waste is disposed?

Millions of sunflowers soak up nuclear radiation in Fukushima after scientists discover sunflowers can 'clean up' nuclear waste in soil!

What's nuclear waste?

In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across answering what nuclear waste definition. Here are 50 of the best facts about Nuclear Waste Storage and Nuclear Waste Management I managed to collect.

what nuclear waste looks like?

To solve the problem of communicating to humans 10,000 years from now about nuclear waste sites one solution proposed was to form an atomic priesthood like the catholic church to preserve information of locations and danger of nuclear waste using rituals and myths.
There is a concrete dome in the Marshall Islands containing tonnes of nuclear waste the US left there during Cold War testing and there is a large risk of it leaking due to rising sea levels. Nothing is being done about this.
Marie Curie's notebooks are classified as low-level nuclear waste and are kept in a lead box in Paris
A garbage dump fire has been burning under St. Louis since 2010, and is spreading towards a nuclear waste disposal site
We can't dispose of nuclear waste in volcanoes because they aren't hot enough to split uranium's atomic nuclei and make it's radioactivity inert
There is an inscription at the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository meant to last 10,000 years, warning future civilizations of the danger lurking below the mountain
Two MIT grads are designing a nuclear power plant that can use nuclear waste as a source of fuel, produce 75 times more energy per ton of fuel, and utilize 96% of supplied fuel, vs only 4% used with traditional designs. It will also be virtually accident proof and cheap to build.
There is a lake in Russia so contaminated with nuclear waste that standing on the bank for an hour will kill you.
The current existing nuclear waste can power the world for 72 years
The waste produced by coal power plants is more radioactive than that generated by nuclear power plants

nuclear waste facts — What does nuclear waste look like?

Why nuclear waste is bad?

You can easily fact check why nuclear waste is a problem by examining the linked well-known sources.

Genetically engineered "ray cats" with fur that changed colour in the presence of radiation were considered by scientists to warn future civilisations of nuclear waste

Is possible to make a battery that will last centuries using nuclear waste and artificial diamonds. - source

The Department of Energy will warn future humans 10,000 years from now about the presence of buried nuclear waste in New Mexico with 32 25-foot granite pillars. The pillars will be engraved with pictograms and warnings in many languages, along with buried magnets and radar reflectors. - source

The United States had plans to store all of their nuclear waste inside Yucca Mountain, located in Nevada. The plan was shelved in 2011 and there is no current long term plan in place.

Southern California Edison plans to bury 3.6 million pounds of lethal radioactive waste at the closed San Onofre nuclear power plant, about 100 feet from the ocean and just a few feet above the water table. - source

When is nuclear waste safe?

About Guy Tyler, who made hundreds of audio recordings of Native American languages. They provide an archive of languages in danger of being lost to erasure of native culture, as well as helped protect the sacred site at Ward Valley from becoming a nuclear waste dump [link to audio in comments].

How nuclear waste is stored?

The most radioactive place on earth isn't Chernobyl or Fukushima, but a lake in the southern Urals that was once home the the Soviet's nuclear waste storage area. You could receive a lethal dose of radiation in 30 minutes just standing on the shore of the lake.

Nuclear Semiotics investigates methods to inform earthlings of the far future to avoid nuclear waste sites; ideas include color-changing cats, an atomic priesthood, and a Rosetta Stone-type message

A top secret US Cold War project "Iceworm" to build nuclear missile sites under the Greenland ice sheet. Abandoned due to ice instability it was assumed the chemical and radioactive waste would remain under the ice forever. It's now predicted this waste will re-enter the environment in 2100.

The Italian Mafia is involved in nuclear waste trafficking: they have bought nuclear power plant waste and dumped it in Somalia

The Mayak nuclear facility: A nuclear reprocessing plant in Russia that has exposed 450,000 to radiation and was caught dumping untreated nuclear waste in the river from 2001-2004.

When is nuclear waste disposed of?

The Soviets dumped 17,000 containers of nuclear waste, 14 nuclear reactors, and more in the Kara Sea. Including one submarine that may re-achieve criticality and explode.

Lake Karachay, in Russia, is so polluted with nuclear waste that just standing on the shore would give you a lethal dose of radiation in an hour.

"Nuclear waste still contains 95% of its energy. Developing technology could use the current nuclear waste to power the entire planet for 72 years."

The Dept. of Energy worked with linguists, archaeologists, anthropologists, materials scientists, science fiction writers, and futurists to come up with a warning system to prevent humans in the year 12000 AD from opening a vast underground nuclear waste disposal site.

There is a city in Russia so contaminated with nuclear waste, that people check their food with a Geiger counter before purchase.

How nuclear waste effects environment?

The Manhattan Project beginning in the 1940s resulted in radioactive material being released into Columbia River. The nuclear reactors have leaked waste that is now traveling by groundwater to the river.

While nuclear waste could be a source of rhodium, it is still difficult and expensive to remove from the nuclear rods.

Sandia National Laboratories hired a team of experts to design a landscape that was so nightmarish, that it would prevent humans from interfering with nuclear waste disposal sites for the next 10,000 years.

Palladium can also be recovered as a nuclear waste product from spent fuel rods.

The nuclear waste repository located in the Yucca Mountain, a terminal storage facility for spent nuclear reactor and radioactive waste, is in tuff and ignimbrite.

Nuclear energy itself is not dangerous but the way in which it is generated gives off harmful waste products.

It's harder to hurl garbage (or nuclear waste) into the Sun than it is to fire it out of the solar system altogether.

There is a bacterium that is so resistant to radiation it can live in a nuclear reactor. This bacterium is also used to clean up nuclear waste via digestion.

The waste from the Seveso disaster was placed into waste drums suitable for nuclear waste.

Cats genetically engineered to change color when exposed to radiation, "ray cats", were proposed as a possible method of protecting future humans from nuclear waste sites.

At a US nuclear test site in middle of the Pacific, radioactive waste was buried and covered with a concrete dome. Cleanup was so poor that the dome fails American standards for landfills for household trash and radiation inside the dome is dwarfed by the radiation in the sediments outside it.

This is our collection of basic interesting facts about Nuclear Waste. The fact lists are intended for research in school, for college students or just to feed your brain with new realities. Possible use cases are in quizzes, differences, riddles, homework facts legend, cover facts, and many more. Whatever your case, learn the truth of the matter why is Nuclear Waste so important!