PLENTIFUL ENERGY

will be benign, close to the standards at all times, and the detailed model
assumptions become irrelevant. To be exact, actinide contents should be made less
by a factor of a thousand or so—only a 0.1 % loss in the recovery process would be
acceptable if this statement is to be completely true. But with this, the EPA
standards and the NRC dose limit can be met on a priori basis, regardless of the
regulatory time period. It doesn‘t matter whether it‘s defined as ten thousand years
or longer.
Figure 11-5. An example of long-term dose calculations to one million years
(Source: Reference 12)
Another important point is that if Tc-99 were disposed of in a more durable
waste form, release to the environment would be even further reduced. And this is
precisely the case for the metal-waste form from electrorefining. In electrorefining,
Tc-99 remains in the anode basket and along with other noble metal fission
products is incorporated into the stable metallic, principally steel, waste, a form
much more leach-resistant than a water-soluble oxide.
11-6 Highly Radioactive Medium-Term Fission Products: Cesium and
Strontium
In the first few decades, and most after just a year or so, the highly radioactive
short-lived fission products decay away to stable forms. The two thirty-year halflife
fission products, Sr-90 and Cs-137, then contribute most of the radioactivity
and most of the decay heat as well. There have been proposals in recent years to
remove cesium and strontium from the waste stream and store them, to allow them
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