RADIOACTIVE WASTE Definition & Meaning

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radioactive waste

noun

the radioactive by-products from the operation of a nuclear reactor or from the reprocessing of depleted nuclear fuel.

radioactive waste

noun

Also called: nuclear waste.��any waste material containing radionuclides

radioactive waste

Radioactive materials that may be left after a commercial or laboratory process has been carried out. Some is “low-level” waste, such as objects that have touched the radioactive tracers used in certain medical tests. Other waste may be “high-level,” such as the material left in a nuclear reactor after the fuel has been consumed.

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There has been public debate over the safest means of storing the waste, which can remain dangerously radioactive for up to hundreds of thousands of years. Present practice calls for encasing the waste in metal, concrete, and ceramic containers and burying the containers deep underground in geologically stable locations.

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51�Թ� History and Origins

Origin of radioactive waste¹

First recorded in 1945–50

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Example Sentences

Examples have not been reviewed.

Scientists from the government advisory group recently said the issue of how radioactive waste from SMRs that are in the design stage "appears, with some exceptions... to have been largely ignored or at least downplayed".

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Further research has since uncovered that this part of the ocean had also served as a dumping ground for military munitions and radioactive waste.

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Concerns over safety, cost, and what to do with radioactive waste had sapped enthusiasm for a technology once seen as a revolutionary source of abundant cheap energy.

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Critics have also expressed concern about radioactive waste nuclear reactors leave behind for future generations.

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However, critics say nuclear power is not risk-free and produces long-lasting radioactive waste.

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radioactive tracer radioactivity

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