I was a Lab Technician in a research lab in about 1958.

We put radioactive contaminated waste in 5 gallon steel buckets which were
then cast in the middle of 55 gallon drums of concrete. There are lots of
economical ways to handle those packages and external monitoring was easy.
It was such a good way to handle the problem that it would not surprise me
to find they still use it!

Big packages like spent fuel assemblies still have economic worth. I would
think they would be stored for future asset recovery.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Alexandre Souza" <taito@TERRA.COM.BR>
To: <PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU>
Sent: Sunday, July 21, 2002 3:31 PM
Subject: Re: [OT]: Nuclear Waste Storage


> M. Adam Davis wrote:
>
> > They already do similar activities.
>
>     Nice words you wrote, Adam....
>
> > IIRC, the last thing I heard they did was make the material into a
> > slurry and add it to concrete.  Huge concrete blocks.
>
>     Yep, but too costly to mantain safe
>
> > As an aside, lead doesn't stop radiation - it absorbs it and becomes
> > radioactive itself.  You can't 'stop' radiation in the same way that you
> > can't make energy or matter disappear.  It has to be changed or
absorbed.
>
>     THIS is something I've never heard of!!! So what happens with the
> lead isolation of reactors and radioactive transport containers? It has
> to be changed from time to time? What happens when the lead is "full",
> e.g.: Cannot absorve more radiation? This is a very interesting subject,
> I'd like to know more, just for the sake of curiosity...
>
> > Placing it in a rock cavern in a mountian is fairly safe (compared to
> > many alternatives) from natual disasters (earthquakes, tornadoes,
> > floods, etc) while the mountain material will help keep the radiation
> > from leaving the area.
>
>     Inside a volcano? ;o)
>
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