"Nuclear Chemistry - Nuclear and Chemical Waste."

Hermes, Matthew. Settle, Frank. "Nuclear Chemistry - Nuclear and Chemical Waste." Chemistry

and Decision Making.2009. Web. 12 Apr. 2012. <http://chemcases.com/nuclear/nc

11.html>.

Within the website called Chemcases.com, there is a section called Nuclear Waste and inside that link, the answers for many questions are there.  In the beginning, Mathew Hermes, Dr. Frank Settle and the Kennesaw State University talk about the containment site on the Colorado River in Utah.  The waste contains radioactive isotopes of uranium (U), thorium (Th), and radium (Ra), along with heavy metals such as chromium (Cr), lead (Pb), molybdenum (Mo), and vanadium (V). This is explained in more detail in figure 1.  Within figure 2, they describe the storage of spent fuel at the reactor and how it works.  This means that the fuel in either the open or closed cycle can generate radioactive waste.  Having the waste sit in the pool regulates if it’s going to stay in the pool forever or be moved to pull the plutonium out of the waste for nuclear weapons.  The Department of Energy (DOE) classified four types of nuclear waste; waste, contaminated environmental media, surplus facilities, and materials in inventory.  The first type called waste is defined as “solids or liquids that are radioactive, chemically hazardous, or both.”  There are different categories of waste too; high-level, transuranic, low-level, mixed low-level, 11e(2) byproduct material, hazardous, and ther waste.  All of these materials are measured in cubic meters and its radioactivity, curies.  From this website there are two sites being discussed for the placement of all these wastes, New Mexico and Nevada, but as of 2009 there isn’t an exact place.  This source may be outdated but the information can still help the thought process of what is actually in nuclear waste.  The different levels of waste are a huge plus from this source because many people may not know that.  Also the ways that the radioactive waste is measure and how it’s kept before storing it in either New Mexico or Nevada is important.  This answers some of the research question but there are other sources I have that can fill in those gaps.  This source has the chemical elements and the different types of waste that I need.  What this doesn’t have is Yucca Mountain’s rock and soil elements to compare and see if the nuclear waste is actually going to affect it.