Feb 13
Yuping Huang's Comps Presentation
Yuping Huang’s Comps Presentation
Monday, February 13th
8:30 am in Olin 141
Nuclear waste: too hot to touch
By the end of the year 2020, the world is projected to possess 457,000 metric tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste, most likely without any working disposal site. Highly radioactive waste can pose significant health risks and remain hazardous for up to several million years. Therefore, the topic of nuclear waste management and disposal deserves careful studies. In this talk, I will present the physics of different aspects related to nuclear waste. What processes generate and determine the properties of nuclear waste? How does radiation cause harm to living tissues? These principles determine the requirements for the practices of nuclear waste management and disposal. Finally, I will discuss the Yucca mountain nuclear waste repository as an example of permanent nuclear waste disposal method and focus on how uncertainties are propagated in its million-year timescale performance projection.