Obama giving go ahead for Georgia nuke

[Lissa]

I actually wasn't thinking of plutonium... More the short half life (>5 years & < 30 years), high alpha emitting isotopes (e.g. Cesium137, Stontium90), most sites let the spent fuel chill for some number of years to ensure the most dangerous isotopes have become spent. The most active stuff has half-life in the < 10 days.

Ummmm...most fission fragments are Beta emitters, Gamma emitters, or Neutron emitters. There are very few Alpha emitters below Lead (Pb). Cesium and Strontium both emit high energy betas, but, so long as they don't get internalized, are relatively harmless external to the body.

And the reason for the cooling off period is two fold, to allow the short lived isotopes to decay away while getting read of excess residule heat (nuclear waste makes a great space heater... :whistling:).

And as to most active, it doesn't even exist before the "waste" is removed from the reactor as it takes several weeks for the fuel removal/addition to take place. Typically the reactor is shutdown for a 3 month period (usually when electricty is least needed for three months) and for the first month and half, the fuel is cooling in the reactor itself, this means that any waste with a 7 day or lower half life is gone by the time the waste is removed.