How is radioactive waste broken down?
Radioactive waste is like all other radioactive materials, it decays spontaneously from radioactive parent material to non-radioactive daughter material. Different materials decay at different rates and by slightly different means (there are basically three processes). We measure the rate at which a radioactive isotope decays in terms of its half-life. The half-life of a radioactive isotope is the time it takes for half of the initially present radioactive atoms to decay to daughter atoms. Most of the material in spent fuel rods has relatively short half-lives (geologically speaking) and after a few (still somewhat controversial, and different for different isotopes) half-lives the material is considered “safe”. The current design parameter for the Yucca Mountain repository is 10,000 years although some (e.g., the National Academy of Sciences) think that 100,000 years to 1 million years might be better. 27. How far does the repository have to be from civilians? As far as I know there i
