Impacts of Radioactive Waste and Sustainable Approaches on Its Remediation

There are enormous areas around the globe contaminated with radioactive wastes that need remediation. Radioactive wastes are a class of chemical substances that are undesired by-products from various sources, where the nucleus of the atom is unstable. It encompasses any material that is either inherently radioactive or has been polluted by radioactivity, which is released through geologic and anthropogenic activities and enters the environment through effluents. Radioactive substances foster a severe impact on the environment which may lead to mutagenesis, and carcinogenesis and pose serious threats to living organisms, ecosystems, and natural resources. The basic sustainable approach is to neutralize the radioactive materials into less toxic metabolites. The advances in the field of biotechnology have opened a new window for researchers to aggrandize the sustainable remediation process. The recent updates in radioactive waste management have given rise to numerous sustainable waste management methods like geological disposal and fuel cycle. The term geological disposal pertains to the long-term disposal of solid radioactive substances in the formation of geologically stable underground establishments. The fuel cycle is a process that has advanced towards the enhancement of resource utilization, reprocessing of fuel, and recovery of radioactive elements. This article highlights the remediation of radioactive substances through geological disposal and fuel cycle toward sustainability and the impacts engendered by those substances.