Aren’t waste disposal sites effectively non-renewable uses of natural space?
No.
Let’s be generous and use a soccer field, which is bigger than a NFL field, at 7,100 m3.
There is about 22,000 m3 of high level nuclear waste globally, according to the IAEA. That’s the really bad stuff. There’s 460,000 m3 of intermediate level (sludge, reactor cladding, etc), and 3,479,000 m3 of low level.
So yeah, considerably more than the space of a football field.
[source: https://nda.blog.gov.uk/2019/08/02/how-much-radioactive-wast...]
The MCG (an australian football field) is 25,000 square meters. The stadium holds approx 1,700,000 cubic metres.
"Football field" is a highly regional term.... lets not measure things in them?
Why don't we talk about the difference between high level nuclear waste(HLW), intermediate level waste(ILW), and low level waste (LLW)?
The volume breakdown for nuclear waste is roughly LLW 90% ILW 7% HLW 3%
"Radioactivity" contribution breakdown is like so. LLW 1% ILW 4% HLW 95%
[1] https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fu...
You mean 7,100 m2. 22,000 cubic meters would fit in there if you stacked it just over 3 meters high.