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High-level waste is the highly radioactive waste material resulting from the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, including liquid waste produced directly in reprocessing and any solid material derived from such liquid waste that contains fission products in sufficient concentrations; and other highly radioactive material that is determined, consistent with existing law, to require permanent ...
The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 established a timetable and procedure for constructing a permanent, underground repository for high-level radioactive waste by the mid-1990s, and provided for some temporary storage of waste, including spent fuel from 104 civilian nuclear reactors that produce about 19.4% of electricity there. [38]
An infographic about the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. Spent nuclear fuel is the radioactive by-product of electricity generation at commercial nuclear power plants, and high-level radioactive waste is the by-product of reprocessing spent fuel to produce fissile material for nuclear weapons. [19]
High-level waste will be processed and vitrified later in a separate process. [3] The Hanford Site is currently storing 56 million gallons of radioactive waste in aging underground tanks, legacy waste from plutonium production efforts during World War II and the Cold War. The majority of the waste in the tanks is low-activity waste liquids. [4]
Deep borehole disposal (DBD) is the concept of disposing high-level radioactive waste from nuclear reactors in extremely deep boreholes instead of in more traditional deep geological repositories that are excavated like mines. Deep borehole disposal seeks to place the waste as much as five kilometres (3 mi) beneath the surface of the Earth and ...
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The US currently defines five types of radioactive waste, as shown below. High-level Waste: This type of radioactive waste is generated from nuclear reactors or reprocessing spent nuclear fuel. [15] Transuranic Waste: This type of radioactive waste is man-made and has an atomic number of 92 or higher. [15]