Journal of Sustainable Urban & Regional Development Studies (JSURDS)

Abstract Since the last decades of the 20th century, The concurrent development of industrialization and the socio-political transition towards cleaner and renewable energy sources has made the researchers and scholars who have been applying nuclear and radioactive energy (in electricity generation and also in industries, medicine or agriculture) increase the use of radioactive materials in these fields as well. Their consequent production and release into the environment have become nowadays to be such an integral part of our life that the safe management of this radioactive waste becomes a problem of high socio-political priority. This writing reviews first of all the differences of various types of nuclear waste and their level of classifications. After this, it goes through the countermeasure taken, the storage, the disposal and the physical and social barriers which must be applied for the safety of all radioactive waste, emphasizing that there must be certain procedures before the disposal so that this waste can be safely buried underground without bothering people until the end of its hazardous period. According to the review, the disposal of low-level and intermediate-level radioactive waste is already realized in some countries and have been storing up of this waste in near-surface facilities, whereas the disposal of high-level radioactive waste is only realized in repository temporarily for research on its ultimate disposal in many countries which have already built nuclear facilities. Protection of the environment from the pollution becomes a serious topic and the campaign of its conservation becomes to be progressed largely in the world; hopefully, this paper contributes for the reader to get better understanding on this issue and should urge more experts to devote their efforts in this field.
Key words: radioactive, environment, nuclear, waste