Abstract Low-level radioactive waste is the inevitable outcome of many industrial, medical applications and nuclear power plants. This type of low-level waste is, however, also very hazardous, and its proper disposal is necessary as it may leak and contaminate soil and water, leading to both the environment and human health issues. The disposition and storage of the radioactive waste in its original form is very much critical and expensive, hence the pre-processing, including the proper procedure for the storage allocation is necessary for effective handling of this waste disposal. Most common approaches of preprocessing are “replace,” “reduce,” “reuse,” and “recycle.” The “reduce” approach is explored in this study using the novel microwave technology to handle the low-level radioactive waste. This approach has never been used before for this purpose. The applicability of the proposed method is validated using medical waste such as tissue papers, plastic carry bags, etc., and industrial waste such as Teflon tubing, concrete, glass, wood, etc., as test objects. These test objects (waste materials) are first categorized here based on their dielectric loss in order to explore the possibility of heating them using either the microwave or the conventional heating process. The heating process can effectively reduce total waste volume in a short span of time. The categorization of these materials is carried out by placing them into the prototype concealed environment to avoid any radioactive leakage. Finally, microwave technology is actually applied for the first time to monitor the online reduction in the volume of waste during the treatment processes.

中文翻译：

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使用微波技术的低放射性废物管理

摘要 低放射性废物是许多工业、医疗应用和核电站的必然产物。然而，这种低放废物也非常危险，必须妥善处理，因为它可能会泄漏并污染土壤和水，从而导致环境和人类健康问题。以原始形式处置和储存放射性废物非常关键且昂贵，因此预处理，包括适当的储存分配程序对于有效处理这种废物处置是必要的。最常见的预处理方法是“替换”、“减少”、“重用”和“回收”。本研究探索了使用新型微波技术处理低放射性废物的“减少”方法。这种方法以前从未用于此目的。使用纸巾、塑料手提袋等医疗废物和聚四氟乙烯管、混凝土、玻璃、木材等工业废物作为测试对象验证了所提出方法的适用性。这些测试对象（废料）首先根据它们的介电损耗进行分类，以探索使用微波或传统加热过程加热它们的可能性。加热过程可在短时间内有效减少总废物量。这些材料的分类是通过将它们放置在原型隐蔽环境中来进行的，以避免任何放射性泄漏。最后，