Eli5 why can’t radioactive waste be used again? Why is it waste?

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Eli5 why can’t radioactive waste be used again? Why is it waste?

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Fundamentally, it’s the same reason that you can’t throw ashes into a fire pit and reburn them and why you can’t just eat your own shit.

To extract energy from anything you need to change it. The energy making part is removed and used up. There isn’t anything on the world which can be used for energy infinitely, that breaks the fundamental laws of physics.

Specifically, plenty of other people have given answers about *how* radioactive waste is used up, but at it’s basic level the answer is “entropy”.

This is the true ELI-5 explanation as I did explain this concept to my give year old which lead to him constantly (and correctly) complaining about entropy whenever stuff broke.

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