Nuclear Waste : Safer Than You Think.

          One of the most concerning issues pertaining to nuclear energy generation is the waste management strategies. In other words, this matter can be simplified in one single question “What do we do with the all nuclear wastes?”. The general understanding of these wastes are that they are radioactive, and this raises concerns of their effects towards the surrounding environment should they be exposed through improper waste disposal or leakage from their containments. Thus, much research and effort has been done to find a viable solution to this problem, which then leads to the fact that nuclear power being the only large scale energy producing technology which takes full responsibility for all of its wastes and even fully costs them into the product.

            However, the truth is that the amount of waste produced by nuclear power generation is much smaller when compared to other power generation types. In comparison, a 1000MW nuclear power plant produces 27 tonnes of nuclear waste per year where as a typical 1000MW coal plant produces 7 million tonnes of waste. In addition, out of the 27 tonnes of nuclear waste produced (which are actually used nuclear fuels) , 97% of it is recycled, which then leaves only 700kg of hazardous high-level radioactive waste to be disposed.

           The reason for such a relatively small amount of waste produced by nuclear power plants is due to the amount of fuel it consumes. A coal power plant requires up to 3 million tonnes of coal per year where as a nuclear power plant only requires 25 tonnes of Uranium per year, and this is because the energy conversion value for coal fuel averages at 24MJ/kg whereas a Uranium fuel has a value of 500000MJ/kg.

           To make matters worse, the ash that is released to the atmosphere during the operation of coal power plants are found to be radioactive, and it poses great health concerns when inhaled into the body from the contaminated air. A U.S. NCRP report made in the 1993 displayed a more concerning fact, that the radioactive emission of a coal power plant is actually greater than a nuclear power plant, in which it found that a 1000MW coal power plant emits 490 person-rem/year of radioactive exposure where as an equally powered nuclear plant only emits up to 136 person-rem/year.

          Unlike other industrial wastes, the degree of hazard imposed by these radioactive nuclear wastes actually decreases over time due to the nature of its half-life, and in countries which utilize nuclear power, the produced radioactive waste from these plants only make up 1% of the total industrial toxic wastes (for which the 99% remains hazardous indefinitely).

References:
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf04.html
http://www.world-nuclear.org/education/whyu.htm
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/1997/fs163-97/FS-163-97.html
http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html