fukushima nuclear disaster

@helenS The water being released is hardly 'radioactive waste' - it's water with an extremely low level (almost equivalent to background radiation we are all exposed to all of the time) of radiation. Totally different to used fuel and control rods etc.

@helenS Yes, monitoring is important. Some radioisotopes have extremely long half lives. And their daughter products can be more lethal too.

In the fifties our nuclear reprocessing plant dumped canisters in the Irish Sea. These corroded and the isotopes sealed into the food chain. Eventually into Irish people.

The management of nuclear waste is veiled in secrecy.

@SW-User As is all things nuclear. Especially technical info about nuke subs and ships and the nuke missiles that often carry.

@zonavar68 Every accidental emission from my local nuclear power station has been ‘harmless’ according to press releases.

Also internal spillages have just been swept up. Best not to know, or work there.

@SW-User People that work at nuclear power plants have a highly risky job.

@zonavar68 Agree. The civil engineers included.

@helenS the government dumped it's toxic waste on my mother's grave a while back but a team of experts say it won't do her any harm. Idk.

@helenS I don't know that much about it, but I thought it's fine because there's so little of it? Like it's not a problem, but obvoisly we shouldn't store it in the sea... Am I wrong to think this? I mean isn't there a lot more waste from say thermo power plants?

@SW-User Briefly, the main "waste" whichs come from conventional power plants consists of (a) gaseous carbon dioxide (a combustion product), leading to a temperature increase in the lower atmosphere [so-called "global heating"] as well as acidification of oceanic water (destroying coral reefs, amongst other things) and (b) a dissipation of heat from cooling water which increases the temperature of rivers, resulting in a decrease of oxygen content.
Regarding [i]nuclear[/i] waste, our oceans have been abused as junkyards for many years, since the beginning of the so-called "atomic age". [i]Hundreds of thousands of tons[/i] of highly radioactive waste have been dumped into the oceans, mainly the deep sea; since 1993 (!), ocean disposal has been banned by international treaties. The barrels which contained the nuclear waste are rotten because sea water is corrosive so the toxic radionuclides have been released into the ocean water. Free radionuclides have been detected near the oceanic junkyards, the Arctic, the North Atlantic, and the Pacific ocean. Radionuclides are incorporated by micro-organisms and are accumulated through the food chain. The nuclides will remain highly radioactive for millions of years – they will not go away, they will accumulate and accumulate in biomatter. 😕