orion11349:

The United States government has decided that all nuclear waste should be stored at the Yucca Mountain storage facility. They'll bury it under the mountain until it is no longer radioactive. The time it takes for materials to become non-radioactive varies. The half-lives of common radioactive materials are as follows:

Beryllium 2,700,000 years
Calcium 100,000 years
Cesium-137 half life - 30 years
Cesium-135 2,000,000 years
Rubidium 47,000,000,000 years
Palladium 7,000,000 years
iodine-129 17,200,000 years
plutonium-239 half life - 24,390 years
strontium-89 53 days
strontium-90 28 years
tin-126 100,000 years
uranium-235 713,000,000 years
uranium-238 4,510,000,000 years

Half-life is the time it takes for half of the substance to decay. For example, if you have a substance with a half-life of 1 day, half of it would be gone in 24 hours. 24 hours later half of the remaining substance would have decayed and so on.

Also, I'm fairly certain that fusion reactors do not produce waste in vast quantities, and it is not of the same kind as fission reactors.

Keep in mind, though, that I'm no expert. :wink:

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