Radioactive waste
From Envirowiki
radioactive waste is a common byproduct from the nuclear fission industry, including nuclear power and nuclear medicine, which use highly radioactive heavy elements such as uranium. It can sometimes be re-used, or reprocessed.
raw depleted uranium is sometimes used in weapons, such as dirty bombs, or in the tips of bullets (such as the US have used in iraq and else where[reference needed].
some wastes have half-lives (the time it takes for x amount of material to become half as radioactive) of extremely long times, such as Uranium-234, which has a half-life of around a quarter of a million years.
[edit] 1 sources of waste
most radioactive waste comes from the use of Uranium-235 in nuclear fission reactors, used to generate power and medical isotopes.
the waste from fusion power is comparatively short-lived, with half-lives in the decades
