I am honored at the mention. Thank you very much. Some of your recommendations are in practice in Los Angeles, California. They utilize, I believe, steam sterilization.
I’m uncertain of the length of time for sterilization, but at least one facility cooks the waste under 50 PSI and 300 degree steam.
Radioactive waste contaminated by COVID is a separate beast entirely. My guess is that it’s transported to some radwaste facilities and buried. It’s just a guess though. General rad waste goes to similar facilities where I work, but I am uncertain how it gets handled after adding the moniker biohazard.
Have a great day and thank you for your article.
Great!
In developing climes like where I hail from, the story is very different
Sadly, medical waste is disposed same way and using the same approach as domestic wastes.
Not a bad approach though
I believe Life Cycle Assessment might be useful here...
A life cycle assessment would indeed be useful, and I feel it has been done. The problem is time. When dealing with particles whose half-life range from seconds to millions of years, the only real solutions are either incineration or storage.
Currently, the most effective way to "dispose" of spent fuel in nuclear power plants is to store them, indefinitely, in specialized casks that remain on-site at the facility. The technology is impressive. One spent fuel bundle puts out enough radiation to kill someone in seconds. These casks house several dozen spent fuel cells, and the cask will put out radiation that's slightly above background radiation levels.
For conventional radioactive waste, I know Belgium has been incinerating theirs for a couple of decades. Their process is pretty sound.
Ultimately, the problem of half-life still remains a significant factor of difficulty in dealing with radioactive waste. Theoretical solutions that attempt to solve that problem involves utilizing fast reactor systems or fast laser pulses. The fast laser pulse concept is pretty far out there as it proposes to reduce the half-life of atoms from "a million years to 30 minutes".
Won't it mutate and explode over time?
That was actually the in my region as a developing nation, Nuclear was just not what we needed the most despite the epileptic power supply.
I feel incineration for powering turbines might be better than using Nuclear reactors.
Notwithstanding, your points are very valid. Perhaps, great technology and technical is necessary for this as you sighted
The casks won’t explode. After the reactor consumes the usable uranium fuel, the used fuel cells get stored in a cooling pool for not less than five years. Those cells qualifying for dry cask storage are arranged with 32 other bundles for the lowest flux distribution and power output. Cells qualifying for dry storage need to be below a thermal output and in the pool for at least 5 years.
They get transported to a separate area where they remain until there is another long term facility available for their receipt.
Over time dose rates will lower. The casks are air cooled.
Oh! So informative!!!
Great!!!