People in glass houses

摘要

High level waste arises from the reprocessing of irradiated nuclear fuel. At least 97% of irradiated fuel is recovered as reusable uranium and plutonium, with the remaining 3% being high level liquid waste. Converting the liquid waste into a solid form by trapping the liquid in glass blocks -vitrification - is considered internationally as the optimum method of storing high level waste. In addition, vitrification reduces the volume of the liquid to one third of its original volume.