Radioactive Waste Disposal, High Level 1980
Highly radioactive wastes are dangerous and deadly wherever they are, whether stored at reactor sites (indoors in pools or outdoors in dry casks); transported on the roads, rails, or waterways; or dumped on Native American lands out West. Highly radioactive wastes include solid irradiated nuclear fuel assemblies (called spent or used by the industry that creates them) and liquid high-level radioactive wastes resulting from the reprocessing (extraction of fissile plutonium and uranium) of solid irradiated fuel rods. The vast majority of highly radioactive wastes generated in the U.S. come from commercial nuclear power reactors. Irradiated nuclear fuel rods discharged from commercial nuclear power plants are highly radioactive, a million times more so than when they were first loaded into a reactor core as fresh fuel. If unshielded, irradiated nuclear fuel just removed from a reactor core could deliver a lethal dose of radiation to a person standing three feet away in just seconds. Even after decades of radioactive decay, a few minutes unshielded exposure could deliver a lethal dose. Certain radioactive elements (such as plutonium-239) in spent fuel will remain hazardous to humans and other living beings for hundreds of thousands of years. Other radioisotopes will remain hazardous for millions of years. Thus, these wastes must be shielded for centuries and isolated from the living environment for hundreds of millenia. For more on the problems of this waste disposal, go to the Radioactive Waste Project site of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service at http://www.nirs.org/radwaste/hlw/hlw.htm . This clip is from the 1980 Disney film, The Atom: A Closer Look, available at the Internet Archives,.
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2009-08-13T09:50:25.000Z
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Elton Britt - Uranium Fever
Uranium Fever: Elton Britt [1955]
Well, I don't know, but I've been told
Uranium ore's worth more than gold
Sold my Cad', I bought me a Jeep
I've got that bug and I can't sleep
Uranium fever has done and got me down
Uranium fever is spreadin' all around
With a Geiger counter in my hand
I'm a-goin' out to stake me some government land
Uranium fever has done and got me down
Well I had talk with the AEC*
And they brought out some maps that looked good to me
And one showed me a spot that he said he knowed
So I straddled my Jeep and headed down the road
I reckon I drove about 100 miles
Down a bumpy road out through the wilds
When all of sudden I bounced to a stop
At the foot of a mountain, didn't have no top
Uranium fever has done and got me down
Uranium fever is spreadin' all around
With a Geiger counter in my hand
I'm a-goin' out to stake me some government land
Uranium fever has done and got me down
Well I took my Geiger and I started to climb
Right up to the top where I thought I'd find
A hunk of rock that would make it click
Just like I'd read about Vernon Pick
On the second day, I made the top
And I'm tellin' you, Steve, I was ready to stop
The only clickin' that I heard that day
Was the bones in my back that had gone astray
Uranium fever has done and got me down
Uranium fever is spreadin' all around
With a Geiger counter in my hand
I'm a-goin' out to stake me some government land
Uranium fever has done and got me down
Well, you pack up your things
You head out again
Into some unknown spot where nobody's been
You reach the spot where your fortune lies
You find it's been staked by 17 other guys
Well, I ain't kiddin', I ain't gonna quit
That bug's done caught me and I've been bit
So with a Geiger counter and a pick in my hand
I'll keep right on stakin' that government land
Uranium fever has done and got me down
Uranium fever is spreadin' all around
With a Geiger counter in my hand
I'm a-goin' out to stake me some government land
Uranium fever has done and got me down
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2011-09-07T16:57:06.000Z
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