The following are most of the different possible methods of treating and disposing of

nuclear waste Radioactive waste is a type of hazardous waste that contains radioactive material. Radioactive waste is a result of many activities, including nuclear medicine, nuclear research, nuclear power generation, rare-earth mining, and nuclear weapons r ...

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Deep geological repository A deep geological repository is a way of storing hazardous or radioactive waste within a stable geologic environment (typically 200–1000 m deep). It entails a combination of waste form, waste package, engineered seals and geology that is suited ...

Dry cask storage Dry cask storage is a method of storing high-level radioactive waste, such as spent nuclear fuel that has already been cooled in the spent fuel pool for at least one year and often as much as ten years. Casks are typically steel cylinders that ar ...

Ducrete DUCRETE (Depleted Uranium Concrete) is a high density concrete alternative investigated for use in construction of casks for storage of radioactive waste. It is a composite material containing depleted uranium dioxide aggregate instead of conventi ...

Ocean floor disposal Ocean floor disposal is a method of sequestering radioactive waste in ocean floor sediment where it is unlikely to be disturbed either geologically or by human activity. Several methods of depositing material in the ocean floor have been proposed ...

Saltcrete Saltcrete is a mixture of cement with salts and brine, usually originating from liquid waste treatment plants. Its role is to immobilize hazardous waste and in some cases lower-level radioactive waste in the form of solid material. It is a form o ...

Spent fuel pool Spent fuel pools (SFP) are storage pools (or "ponds" in the United Kingdom) for spent fuel from nuclear reactors. They are typically 40 or more feet (12 m) deep, with the bottom 14 feet (4.3 m) equipped with storage racks designed to hold f ...

Spent nuclear fuel shipping cask A nuclear flask is a shipping container that is used to transport active nuclear materials between nuclear power station and spent fuel reprocessing facilities. Each shipping container is designed to maintain its integrity under normal transport ...

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Synroc Synroc, a portmanteau of "synthetic rock", is a means of safely storing radioactive waste. It was pioneered in 1978 by a team led by Professor Ted Ringwood at the Australian National University, with further research undertaken in collaboration with ...

Waste Isolation Pilot Plant The Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, or WIPP, is the world's third deep geological repository (after Germany's Repository for radioactive waste Morsleben and the Schacht Asse II salt mine) licensed to store transuranic radioactive waste for 10,000 ...

Deep borehole disposal Deep borehole disposal (DBD) is the concept of disposing high-level radioactive waste from nuclear reactors in extremely deep boreholes instead of in more traditional deep geological repositories that are excavated like mines. Deep borehole dispo ...

Vitrification Vitrification (from Latin ''vitreum'', "glass" via French ''vitrifier'') is the full or partial transformation of a substance into a glass, that is to say, a non-crystalline amorphous solid. Glasses differ from liquids structurally and glasses po ...

Geomelting GeoMelt is a process by which dangerous, contaminated material (such as radioactive waste and heavy metals) is mixed with clean soil, a blend of industrial minerals, and/or glass frit and melted to create an extremely hard and leach-resistant glass ...

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Nuclear transmutation Nuclear transmutation is the conversion of one chemical element or an isotope into another chemical element. Nuclear transmutation occurs in any process where the number of protons or neutrons in the nucleus of an atom is changed. A transmutatio ...

Nuclear reprocessing Nuclear reprocessing is the chemical separation of fission products and actinides from spent nuclear fuel. Originally, reprocessing was used solely to extract plutonium for producing nuclear weapons. With commercialization of nuclear power, the ...

PUREX PUREX (plutonium uranium reduction extraction) is a chemical method used to purify fuel for nuclear reactors or nuclear weapons. PUREX is the ''de facto'' standard aqueous nuclear reprocessing method for the recovery of uranium and plutonium fr ...

See also