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by Blackthorn 1912 days ago
> The entirety of the nuclear waste produced by US nuclear grid electric power generation fits in a volume the footprint of a football field and 10 yards high

No, this is just spent fuel. There's a lot more to nuclear waste than spent fuel.

2 comments

Correct, the bulk of nuclear waste is from nuclear weapons development and manufacture. In power generation the containment vessel and cooling water also get irradiated. But that's not persistent waste, and doesn't require long term storage.
How dangerous is low level waste? Based on what I’ve read, it doesn’t seem super radioactive in itself, but it sounds like some of it may have a lot of “problematic” material like dust.