How does nuclear waste hurt the enviroment?
Nuclear waste is carefully controlled, the spent fuel which is the most active is always kept in a safe place. In the US so far this has always been on the power station sites, in the UK and France it has been sent to a central plant for dismantling and chemical treatment. These plants, Sellafield and La Hague, are occasionally the subject of scare stories about release of activity. Certainly there has been some truth in these stories, but they are greatly exaggerated in terms of the effects they have had. Discharge of low level arisings from chemical processing are to the sea and the first thing to be affected would be fish especially shell fish. Specimens are regularly collected and analysed, and I am not aware of any serious causes for concern, though groups such as Greenpeace will always dispute this.
