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What do they mean by "long-lived waste"? Things that are highly radioactive stop being radioactive very quickly. Things that are lowly radioactive stay radioac
by danielweber 14y ago
What do they mean by "long-lived waste"?
Things that are highly radioactive stop being radioactive very quickly. Things that are lowly radioactive stay radioactive for a long time, but at low levels so you don't worry much about them. There's a middle "unsweet spot" of things that are radioactive enough to worry about but not radioactive enough that they quickly burn out.
So where does thorium fit in that taxonomy?
- pkrein 14y agowell -- it's complicated. i started building a javascript library (nuclear.js : https://github.com/reinpk/nuclear.js https://github.com/reinpk/nuclear.js) to calculate the decay chains... the problem is that short lived isotopes, which are dangerous, can decay into long-lived isotopes, but basically the decay chains are complicated. i'll do a post about that soon :)
- uvdiv 14y agoWhat do they mean by "long-lived waste"? Actinides of half-life 100-100,000 years or so. These have a compounding disadvantage in that they are alpha-emitters, hence disproportionately radiotoxic (e.g. by ingestion) compared to gamma- and beta- emitters like common fission products. Orders of magnitude disproportionate. The theoretical advantage is huge: (this graph is from a French nuclear research lab which appears to be temporarily offline) http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-m6Jl1KpnH3E/TiwB5Ppo85I/AAAAAAAAADE/wJvHAVmTN28/s1600/img18.gif http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-m6Jl1KpnH3E/TiwB5Ppo85I/AAAAAAAAAD...