Comment by leonidasrup
11 hours ago
Steel is not vitrified, only high level nuclear waste - spend nuclear fuel with highly radioactive fission products.
Steel is taken apart and measured, non-activated steel can be melted down and recycled. Activated steel has to go into storage, either low level nuclear or medium level nuclear waste.
The biggest concern for steel is cobalt. During manufacturing steel with very low cobalt content is usually used for nuclear applications, but there is still small amount of cobalt.
In reactor, under neutron radiation, stable cobalt-59 changes to cobalt-60, strong gamma ray emitter with a half-life of 5 years. So neutron activated steel has to storage for at least few decades.
When done not properly, this is a health hazard.
" Circa 1983, construction was finished of 1700 apartments in Taiwan which were built with steel contaminated with cobalt-60. About 10,000 people occupied these buildings during a 9–20 year period. On average, these people unknowingly received a radiation dose of 0.4 Sv. Some studies have found that this large group did not suffer a higher incidence of cancer mortality, as the linear no-threshold model would predict, but suffered a lower cancer mortality than the general Taiwan public. These observations support the radiation hormesis model, however other studies have found health impacts that confound the results. "
They have to be stored but storage isn't particularly difficult. Just don't built them into a structure where to close to people.
They are similar to many other landfills.
" The four low-level waste facilities in the U.S. are Barnwell, South Carolina; Richland, Washington; Clive, Utah; and as of June 2013, Andrews County, Texas. "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-level_waste