Radioactive Waste Essay

The use and management of radioactive materials is not a topic that is generally discussed in abundance to everyday citizens. Many people do not know what radioactive waste is or even the effect that it can have on the human body. Radioactive waste is a type of waste that has some type of radioactive material inside of it. The managing of this radioactive waste is extremely important because it can cause damage to living tissue. Without a place to properly dispose of or contain, the radioactive waste can contaminate our water, food, air, or even our land. If this happened it would be detrimental to all human’s health, causing many different problems throughout the world not only with the health of the population, but problems with the environment as well. Therefore it is vital that we have somewhere to put these radioactive wastes.

There are many different types of radioactive waste, but the two major types are “low-level waste” and “high-level waste” (“Radioactive Waste Management”). There are a few different ways that we can store these wastes depending on what level they are. The low-level waste mainly comes from medical facilities or some type of industry (“Radioactive Waste Management”). In order to dispose of the low level wastes, they are usually placed in a radioactive waste material storage bin and stored at the hospital or site that they were produced at (“Radioactive Waste Production”). There are only a few sites that will actually take the low level wastes and store them in the United States. However, they will only take specific types of this low level waste and will only allow the wastes from certain permitted states (“Radioactive Waste Production”). The low-level wastes can also be disposed of by being placed ...

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...of “setting some dose limits for the workers and civilians, monitoring and labeling radioactive materials, setting up signs around radioactive areas to alert others of what is going on, reporting any loss of the radioactive wastes, and setting up punishments for anybody who does not abide by these rules” (“Radioactive Waste Production”).

As you can see, the road of managing radioactive wastes is more complicated to what it first lets on to be. There are many different classifications of the wastes and many different ways that the waste can be disposed of and stored depending on the classification of it. The NRC picks up a big responsibility in seeing to that all the radioactive wastes are dealt with properly. Without these rules it is very likely that these potentially hazardous materials become a major problem to the health of the population and the environment.