Managing radioactive waste

摘要

The nuclear age has meant both generation of electricity and improvements in medicine, but has also produced some difficult waste-management problems. Radioactive materials are now commonly used in electricity generation and medicine. But this technology has a legacy — waste. For a number of years, one of the biggest challenges for science and engineering has been to find a long-term solution to the problem posed by radioactive wastes, some of which are potentially hazardous for thousands of years.