Hazardous & Radioactive Waste - Lecture Notes

Hazardous Waste Management

  • Creation of new chemical compounds has increased tremendously

    • although many are beneficial some are hazardous to our health

    • increase in illegal dumping in sewer system

  • A. Potentially Hazardous Products

    • 1. Plastics: organic chlorine

    • 2. Pesticides: organic chlorine and phosphate

    • 3. Medicines: solvents, heavy metals

    • 4. Paints: heavy metals, pigments, solvents

    • 5. Oil and gasoline

    • 6. Metals: heavy metals, fluorides, cyanides

    • 7. Leather: heavy metal and solvents

    • 8. Textile: heavy metals, dyes, solvents

  • B. Areas of Concern: soil, surface water, groundwater

    • old abandoned hazardous landfills and other sites for disposal of chemical waste have caused serious problems and are difficult to connect

      • love canal

  • C. Responsible Management

    • 1976 passed RCRA (Resource Conservation Recovery Act)

      • cradle to grave control of hazardous waste

    • how hazardous waste is defined:

      • 1. materials that are highly toxic to living things

      • 2. wastes that explode or ignite when exposed to air

      • 3. wastes that are co—

      • 4. wastes that are unstable

    • 1980: superfunds established

      • revolting fund to clean up several hundred of the worse abandoned hazardous chemical-waste disposal sites around the country

  • D. Environmental Impacts at Superfund Sites

    • groundwater, drinking water, soil, surface water, air, vegetation, animals, human health

Hazardous Waste Reduction/Disposal

  • A. Secure Landfills: confine waste, control leachate that drains from waste, collect and treat leachate, and detect possible leaks

    • use of clay and imp— material —

    • no such thins as a secure landfill —> they all leak to some extent

  • B. Land Application

    • apply waste materials to surface soil horizon

      • works for certain biodegradable wastes

  • C. Surface Impoundment

    • excavated and natural topographic depression, used to hold hazardous liquid waste, often lined but prone to seeping

  • D. Deep-Well Injections

    • injecting waste into a permeable rock layer below aquifers and can impenetrate rock layer such as shale

      • can cause earthquakes

      • geology must be well defined and mapped

  • E. Incineration of Hazardous Waste

    • waste treatment instead of disposal

      • high temperatures, still needs to be further treated or filled

Radioactive Waste

  • Low level waste can be safer/buried near surface at burial sites

    • must be monitored

  • High level waste from nuclear power plants and weapons production facilities remain hazardous for thousands of years

    • storage and monitored in stable bedrock, permanent disposal needed

      • Yucca Mountain Nevada