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Er, that's why you don't go around exposing people to high-level radioactive waste. You stick it in a cooling pool to let the really nasty isotopes decay, then
by pjscott 15y ago
Er, that's why you don't go around exposing people to high-level radioactive waste. You stick it in a cooling pool to let the really nasty isotopes decay, then store it with radiation shielding. If you want to get really fancy, and have enough excess neutrons, you can even get rid of worst of the waste by turning it into something else.
On the list of existential threats, mass radiation poisoning really doesn't rate very high in likelihood.
- brudgers 15y agoPU-239 has a half life of 24k years. Or to put it in perspective, if the Neanderthals had been using it, we would be running the risk of stumbling over cooling pools where significant quantities of nasty isotopes were still decaying - assuming anyone could build a cooling pool with a 24,000 year service life. The half lives of U235 and U233 are significantly longer (approx. an order of magnitude).
- pjscott 15y agoWait, what? Pu-239, U-235, and U-233 are not waste. They are fuel. Those are all fissile isotopes that we burn in conventional nuclear reactors. The isotopes you get rid of in cooling pools are the highly radioactive ones with short half-lives.