Nuclear wastewater and water contaminated by nuclear substances are two different concepts with different meanings and coverage.
Nuclear wastewater: Nuclear wastewater refers to wastewater containing radioactive materials generated in the nuclear power industry. This wastewater generally comes from nuclear activities such as nuclear power plants, nuclear fuel processing plants, nuclear weapons manufacturing or nuclear experiments. Nuclear wastewater may contain radioactive isotopes, radioactive fission products and other nuclear contaminants. It must be processed and discharged by special processing and treatment facilities to ensure that it does not harm the environment and public safety.
Nuclear Contaminated Water: Nuclear contaminated water refers to bodies of watercontaminated by nuclear activities or nuclear accidents. This includes water contamination caused by nuclear leaks, nuclear accidents or nuclear tests. Nuclear contaminated water can consist of underground bodies of water, rivers, lakes or oceans containing radioactive materials. Water contaminated with nuclear substances can cause serious damage to the environment and ecosystems, and pose potential risks to human health.
Methods for treating water contaminated by nuclear substances
1. Physical Methods: Treat water contaminated with nuclear substances by distillation, membrane separation, ion exchange, and other methods. These methods can effectively remove radioactive materials from water, but may produce some secondary pollution.
2. Chemical methods: use chemical precipitation, chemical reductionique, complexation and other methods to remove radioactive substances in water. These methods are easy to use and inexpensive, but can produce harmful chemicals.
3. Biological method: using the biodegradation effect of microorganisms to decompose organic matter and some inorganic pollutants in water. This method is environmentally friendly and inexpensive, but its effect in removing radioactive materials is limited.
4. Comprehensive treatment method: Combine multiple treatment methods to achieve effective treatment of water contaminated with nuclear substances. For example, physical methods are first used to remove large pollutant particles in water, then chemical methods are used to remove soluble pollutants, and finally biological methods are used to further degrade organic matter.