Internationally, there are two ways to deal with highly radioactive nuclear waste, one is to directly treat the spent fuel as nuclear waste, which is processed and loaded in large canisters and buried directly under the deep earth, like the United States, Russia, Canada, Australia and other vast countries are currently doing this. Another is to put metal canisters containing nuclear waste into the seabed below 4,000 meters in selected areas of the sea.
Nuclear waste generally refers to no longer needed and radioactive waste from nuclear fuel production, processing and nuclear reactors. It also refers to the spent fuel used in nuclear reactors, after reprocessing to recover usable nuclear materials such as plutonium-239, the remaining uranium-238 and other no longer needed and radioactive waste.
From a technical point of view, nuclear waste is mainly categorized into three types: high-level, medium-level and low-level. Highly radioactive nuclear waste mainly includes spent nuclear fuel and its disposal after power generation. Medium and low-level radioactive nuclear waste generally includes contaminated equipment of nuclear power plants, testing equipment, hydration systems during operation, exchange resins, wastewater waste liquids and gloves and other labor protection products. Medium and low-level radioactive nuclear waste is less hazardous; high-level radioactive nuclear waste contains a variety of highly radioactive elements that are extremely harmful to the human body, for example, only 10 milligrams of plutonium can kill a person, so the disposal methods for various kinds of nuclear waste are not the same.
China's disposal of low and medium-level radioactive nuclear waste is handled according to national standards and the requirements of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Whether it's solid or liquid nuclear waste, it is solidified and then put in 200-liter stainless steel drums and placed in a shallow ground-level repository.
Burying nuclear waste in a permanent repository is now internationally recognized as the safest way to dispose of nuclear waste. However, in the western society, due to the strong opposition from environmentalists, it is not easy for the government to find an unopposed permanent repository for nuclear waste, so it prefers to temporarily store the nuclear waste in the medium and low level radioactive nuclear waste repository, and at the same time look forward to the emergence of a safer and more acceptable disposal technology and program before final disposal. So far, Finland is the only country in the world that has identified a site for the construction of a disposal site for highly radioactive nuclear waste. In order to ensure that nuclear waste is handled safely, countries are subject to international oversight when it is released.