Although some countries, most notably the USA, treat used nuclear fuel as waste, most of the material in used fuel can be recycled. Approximately 97% – the vast majority (~94%) being uranium – of it could be used as fuel in certain types of reactor.
Spent nuclear fuel can be recycled to make new fuel and byproducts. More than 90% of its potential energy still remains in the fuel, even after five years of operation in a reactor. The United States does not currently recycle spent nuclear fuel but foreign countries, such as France, do.
Radioactive wastes are stored so as to avoid any chance of radiation exposure to people, or any pollution. The radioactivity of the wastes decays with time, providing a strong incentive to store high-level waste for about 50 years before disposal.
It contaminates the environment
If not sealed properly, radioactive contamination can easily spread throughout the environment and into various ecosystems. The air, land, and water can all become polluted and harm humans and other lifeforms.
Nuclear energy produces radioactive waste
A major environmental concern related to nuclear power is the creation of radioactive wastes such as uranium mill tailings, spent (used) reactor fuel, and other radioactive wastes. These materials can remain radioactive and dangerous to human health for thousands of years.
This separated plutonium and uranium can subsequently be mixed with fresh uranium and made into new fuel rods. Countries such as France, Japan, Germany, Belgium and Russia have all used plutonium recycling to generate electricity, whilst also reducing the radiological footprint of their waste.
Most of this waste is stored in tanks at 3 DOE sites. According to federal law, certain high-level mixed waste must be vitrified—a process in which the waste is immobilized in glass—and disposed of in a deep geologic repository.
Nuclear power plants produce no greenhouse gas emissions during operation, and over the course of its life-cycle, nuclear produces about the same amount of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions per unit of electricity as wind, and one-third of the emissions per unit of electricity when compared with solar.
Radioactive waste from atomic power plants has to be stored for several millennia before it will stop radiating. However, transmutation could neutralize it, making it non-hazardous to a great extent, at least in principle.
Nuclear waste is recyclable. Once reactor fuel (uranium or thorium) is used in a reactor, it can be treated and put into another reactor as fuel. Nuclear fuel used today almost all starts out as natural uranium, which has two isotopes in it, Uranium-238 and Uranium-235.
Energetically, it costs less to shoot your payload out of the Solar System (from a positive gravity assist with planets like Jupiter) than it does to shoot your payload into the Sun. And finally, even if we chose to do it, the cost to send our garbage into the Sun is prohibitively expensive at present.
Problem 1: It Is Very Expensive
With about 440 nuclear reactors around the world, it would cost around $44 billion per year to launch all of the world's spent fuel into space. These cost estimates do not account for launching the existing spent fuel that's already in temporary storage.
It is arranged in fuel assemblies: sets of sealed metal tubes that hold ceramic uranium pellets. The radioactive byproducts of nuclear reactions remain inside the fuel. No green goo anywhere.
Nuclear material is recoverable to make new fuels that will in turn generate their own electricity. Recycling offers two advantages: it reduces the volume of waste and the consumption of raw materials.
While uranium is not a completely unlimited resource, currently known uranium resources and reserves are sufficient to power decarbonized global energy systems in the 21st century and beyond. As the heaviest element found in nature, uranium's cosmogenic origin is in supernova explosions that occurred long ago.
Nuclear is a zero-emission clean energy source. It generates power through fission, which is the process of splitting uranium atoms to produce energy.
These important aspects of radiation emited from various radioactive materials can not be changed; they are inherrent to the nucleus that is decaying and can not be "treated away".
However, the time it will take for the radioactive material to decay will range from a few hours to hundreds of thousands of years. Some radioactive elements, such as plutonium, are highly radioactive and remain so for thousands of years.
Radioactive isotopes eventually decay, or disintegrate, to harmless materials. Some isotopes decay in hours or even minutes, but others decay very slowly. Strontium-90 and cesium-137 have half-lives of about 30 years (half the radioactivity will decay in 30 years). Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 24,000 years.
Nuclear power plants present unique hazards in terms of the potential consequences resulting from a severe accident. Nuclear reactors and their associated high level spent fuel stores are vulnerable to natural disasters, as Fukushima Daiichi showed, but they are also vulnerable in times of military conflict.
It produces zero carbon emissions and doesn't produce other noxious greenhouse gases through its operation. The lifecycle emissions of nuclear energy (emissions resulting from every stage of the production process) are also significantly lower than in fossil fuel-based generation.
There is around 40 trillion tons of uranium in Earth's crust, but most is distributed at low parts per million trace concentration over its 3×1019 ton mass. Estimates of the amount concentrated into ores affordable to extract for under $130 per kg can be less than a millionth of that total.
This waste is now being temporarily stored by ANSTO at Lucas Heights until a national facility is completed. Australia has accumulated almost 5,000 cubic metres of radioactive waste (around the volume of two Olympic size swimming pools). This does not include uranium mining wastes, which are disposed of at mine sites.
Regardless of the source, this hazardous waste contains highly poisonous chemicals like plutonium and uranium pellets. These extremely toxic materials remain highly radioactive for tens of thousands of years, posing a threat to agricultural land, fishing waters, freshwater sources, and humans.