Energy Department teams up with Bill Gates to move mini-nuclear plants to market

Re:Energy Department teams up with Bill Gates to move mini-n... by TheSpiceIsLife on Saturday August 25, 2018 @11:38PM (#17844103)

I've never understood this. If the waste product is radioactive for millions of years then doesn't that mean it's not very radioactive?

Wikipedia has this to say:

Since radioactive decay follows the half-life rule, the rate of decay is inversely proportional to the duration of decay. In other words, the radiation from a long-lived isotope like iodine-129 will be much less intense than that of a short-lived isotope like iodine-131.¹

So my understanding is radioactive products are dangerous because body takes up the elements and they're either chemically toxic, dangerous because of radioactive decay, or both.

So isn't this solved by vitrifying the waste and burying it? Glasses tend to be extremely chemically inert.

I'm not convinced the spectre of nuclear waste warrants the paranoia it receives.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste#Physics

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Re:Energy Department teams up with Bill Gates to move mini-n... by pfdietz on Sunday August 26, 2018 @08:30AM (#17845648)

Material will eventually be decaying in the environment at the same rate it is produced, in steady state. This is independent of the halflife.

What a long halflife does is increase the time until that steady state is reached. If we operate a nuclear economy for a million years then a hell of a lot of that long lived isotope will have accumulated.

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