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Thousands of canisters of highly radioactive waste from the world's most nuclear-energized nation lie, silent and deadly, beneath this jutting tip of Normandy.
The spent fuel, vitrified into blocks of black glass that will remain dangerous for thousands of years, is in ``interim storage.'' Like nearly all the world's nuclear waste, it is still waiting for the long-term disposal solution that has eluded scientists and governments in the six decades since the atomic era began.
Workers at this waste treatment and storage site on France's Cherbourg peninsula, run by industry giant Areva, don't see a problem.
Greenpeace questions state-run Areva's safety figures, and accuses the government of playing down accidents and soil and water contamination. A group called Meres en Colere, or Angry Mothers, was formed in the region after a 1997 study showed higher than usual local rates of child leukemia.
The splitting of uranium atoms in a nuclear reactor creates the exceptional heat that drives turbines to provide electricity.
The process also creates (1) radioactive isotopes such as cesium-137 and strontium-90 that take about 30 years to lose half their radioactivity. Higher-level leftovers includes plutonium-239, with a half-life of 24,000 years.
For now, the best scientific solution for getting rid of the most lethal waste is to shove it deep underground. Among other ideas once floated for disposing of nuclear waste have been shooting it into space (deemed too risky because of the volatile rocket fuel) or injecting it in the ocean floor (stalled because testing its feasibility is too costly), or shipping all the world's waste to a collective nuclear dump.
Nuclear scientists' dream is a wasteless reactor, and some sketches for the next crop of reactors, the Generation IV, include those that recycle 100 percent of their refuse. Both nuclear fans and foes agree, however, that it will take a few more human generations for that dream to come true. AP
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