Around 90% of the total waste volume is composed of tools and work clothing that is only lightly contaminated and contains only 1% of the total radioactivity. It loses most or all of its radioactivity within 300 years and is mostly stored on the power plants, where it doesn’t require special shielding such as concrete walls or protective clothing for the nuclear workers.

oughly 7% is intermediate-level waste, such as used filters and steel components from the reactors. This kind of waste has been exposed to alpha radiation or contains long-lived radionuclides in concentrations that require isolation beyond several hundred years. This kind of waste needs to be solidified in concrete or bitumen and is mostly buried in shallow repositories on the site.

So we can handle 97% of the nuclear waste quite well, but the real trouble starts with the remaining 3%. These 3% consists of the highly radioactive materials produced as a byproduct of the nuclear reactions that occur inside the reactors.

– In a ploy to appease the public, the German government shut down 11 of its 17 nuclear facilities and plans to close the remaining reactors in 2022.

On Earth Uranium is surprisingly plentiful for a heavy metal. In fact estimate place the Earth’s supply of Uranium at 30 times that of Silver.