Nuclear Waste Management

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When nuclear fuel is first loaded into a
reactor, 238U and 235U are present. When in the reactor, the 235U is gradually
depleted and gives rise to fission products, generally, cesium (137Cs) and
strontium (90Sr). These waste materials are very unstable and have to undergo
radioactive disintegration before they can be transformed into stable isotopes.
Each radioactive isotope in this waste material decays at its characteristic
rate. A half-life can be less than a second or can be thousands of years long.
The isotopes also emit characteristic radiation: it can be electromagnetic (X-
ray or gamma radiation) or it can consist of particles (alpha, beta, or neutron
radiation).
Exposure to large doses of ionizing radiation causes characteristic
patterns of injury. Doses are measured in rads (1 rad is equal to an amount of
radiation that releases 100 ergs of energy per gram of matter). Doses of more
than 4000 rads severely damage the human vascular system, causing cerebral ...

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