TY - BOOK
T1 - One hundred centuries of solitude
T2 - Redirecting America’s high-level nuclear waste policies
AU - Flynn, James
AU - Chalmers, James
AU - Easterling, Doug
AU - Kasperson, Roger
AU - Kunreuther, Howard
AU - Mertz, C. K.
AU - Mushkatel, Alvin
AU - David Pijawka, K.
AU - Slovic, Paul
AU - Dotto, Lydia
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 1995 by Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved.
PY - 2019/1/1
Y1 - 2019/1/1
N2 - Time is both the ally of high-level nuclear waste (HLNW) managers and the enemy. It is the ally because the radioactivity in elements and isotopes decreases with age, making the waste progressively less dangerous to human health and safety and the environment. This rate of radioactive decline varies, in some cases diminishing by half (the half life) in seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, or years. In other cases the decay process takes centuries or hundreds of thousands of years before the wastes are safe for human contact. The problem as now conceptualized for HLNW managers is simple to state if not easy to achieve. The HLNW needs to be secured in some fashion until it decays, by virtue of its physical nature, to safe levels. Another possible future solution, not currently available, might be to change the ~~ructure of HLNW through high-technology processing and thus decompose the waste into units with different and less lengthy radioactivity. Learning whether this processing is a future option will require patience and generous amounts of time for research.
AB - Time is both the ally of high-level nuclear waste (HLNW) managers and the enemy. It is the ally because the radioactivity in elements and isotopes decreases with age, making the waste progressively less dangerous to human health and safety and the environment. This rate of radioactive decline varies, in some cases diminishing by half (the half life) in seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, or years. In other cases the decay process takes centuries or hundreds of thousands of years before the wastes are safe for human contact. The problem as now conceptualized for HLNW managers is simple to state if not easy to achieve. The HLNW needs to be secured in some fashion until it decays, by virtue of its physical nature, to safe levels. Another possible future solution, not currently available, might be to change the ~~ructure of HLNW through high-technology processing and thus decompose the waste into units with different and less lengthy radioactivity. Learning whether this processing is a future option will require patience and generous amounts of time for research.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85077573098&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85077573098&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.4324/9780429300653
DO - 10.4324/9780429300653
M3 - Book
AN - SCOPUS:85077573098
SN - 9780367281908
BT - One hundred centuries of solitude
PB - Taylor and Francis
ER -