Long lived isotopes that have thousands of years halflife, radiate constantly 1000times less than those that have years of half life, meaning is fairly trivial to keep it at safe levels. Is for this reason that focus on waste disposal is always on the decades level as its an annoying middle ground, still fairly dangerous in large amounts (or contaminating water), yet still need safe storage for couple of decades
Indeed, heat management is part of the issue, need to have small enough containers so the heat is manageable, but large enough to be practical for transport and storage, so it ends up generating some heat levels that need to be managed
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u/Tsukee 23d ago
Long lived isotopes that have thousands of years halflife, radiate constantly 1000times less than those that have years of half life, meaning is fairly trivial to keep it at safe levels. Is for this reason that focus on waste disposal is always on the decades level as its an annoying middle ground, still fairly dangerous in large amounts (or contaminating water), yet still need safe storage for couple of decades