Final answer:
Management of radioactive waste is complex due to long half-lives of fission products like strontium-90 and plutonium-239, demanding hundreds to thousands of years to reduce radioactivity. Temporary storage in the US involves water pools followed by dry containers, implying that timeframes much longer than those in the provided options are required.
Step-by-step explanation:
The management of radioactive waste from nuclear power plants is a serious issue, due to the long half-lives of the fission products they contain. For example, strontium-90, a common byproduct, has a half-life of 28.8 years and requires roughly 300 years to reach acceptable levels of radioactivity. Another significant byproduct is plutonium-239, which has a staggering half-life of 24,000 years, though it can be reprocessed and reused as fuel.
Since there is no permanent disposal facility for high-level nuclear waste in the United States, the waste is initially stored in water-cooled pools and then in dry containers. These practices are temporary solutions, and long-term storage strategies are still a subject of debate and research. The intricacies of radioactive waste management indicate that without regulatory approval from the responsible institution, which in this case is the RIC, storing radioactive waste for extended periods, such as more than 100 years, would not be compliant with standard procedures and regulations. Given the storage options described, it's clear that the time frames mentioned in the multiple-choice question do not fully encompass the actual duration needed for safe radioactive decay.