Nuclear wastewater is wastewater generated by a nuclear power plant during normal day-to-day activities, such as water used for purposes such as cleaning, dust removal, desalination, or for cooling critical parts of the plant.
These waters do not come into contact with the radioactive materials in the nuclear reactors, and those that meet the discharge standards can be discharged through the pipeline after strict treatment. Nuclear contaminated water, on the other hand, refers to the water environment contaminated by radioactive substances, such as nuclear leaks, nuclear accidents, nuclear explosions caused by the environment has a higher concentration of radioactive substances in the water.
The treatment process of nuclear wastewater usually includes physical, chemical and radioactive treatment. Physical treatment includes filtration, sedimentation, and centrifugation to remove suspended and solid wastes. Chemical treatment removes dissolved radioactive material by adding chemicals. Radiological treatment reduces the level of radioactivity primarily through nuclear reactions and radiolysis.
Sources of nuclear contamination
The main sources of nuclear contamination are, nuclear weapons experiments, use, leakage from nuclear power plants, loss of nuclear substances used in industry or medicine, nuclear weapons explosions, thermal radiation injuries, nuclear radiation injuries, and radioactivity retention.
Pollution is divided into two ways, one is the production of radioactive aerosols and other radioactive pollutants, the respiratory system and the human body surface to produce harm; the other is with the wind diffusion of pollution. But either way, the degree of contamination depends on the severity of the nuclear leak. Chernobyl accident, nuclear fuel in the explosion to form soot floating in the air, the hazard area is very extensive.
Nuclear explosions do not cause significant climate change, but they do retain radioactivity at the site of the accident and at some distance. After the damage to the nuclear power plant, the facility will release a certain amount of radioactive material, some of the "short-lived" radioactive material is relatively harmless, and some other long half-life radioactive material is much more dangerous. That is, the time it takes for half of the atoms of a radioactive material to decay.