Nuclear Waste Disposal

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Those who build nuclear power plants without worrying about the waste wager the habitability of the planet ( Spaemann ).

For more than fifty years, waste piles from nuclear power plants formed waste mountain that were dangerous to the world. According to the World Nuclear Association, twelve thousand tons of highly radioactive waste are created each year. By the end of 2010, about three hundred thousand tons of highly radioactive waste existed worldwide. In Europe, there are 280 m^3 more waste in interim storage than the year before. This was has, there are three broad categories; weak, medium and strong. The strongest in produced when we burn fuel, for example when we sir it the Uranium nuclei, which rehouses neutrons that in turn spirit other uranium atomic nuclei. From this chain reaction, we are shown a number of new substances that are radioactive. In particular, medium and high level radioactive waste pose major challenges when it comes to disposal. Due to the long half-life of many radioactive substances, safe storage must be guaranteed as the half-life of plutonium is twenty-four thousand years. For this reason, millions of people ask daily, how do nuclear plants in Europe dispose of nuclear waste?

Radioactive waste could be legally dumped in the sea until this procedure was banned for solids in 1994 by the International Maritime Organization ( IMO) . In the last fifty years, all nuclear waste producing countries have sunk more than one-hundred thousand tons of radioactive waste in the sea. The British buried the largest share eighty percent, followed by Switzerland , which has sunk low and intermediate level radioactive waste and radioactive waste until 1982. A few years ago were found atomic kegs on the sea. They were rusted and the worst is, they were empty. Thus, the nuclear waste added to the food chain and could now be in our food. The direct discharge of radioactive effluents in sea water , however, is still legal and is practiced : Daily four hundred cubic meters of radioactive waste are conducted in the English Channel as well as in the Irish Sea .

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