Eli5 why can’t radioactive waste be used again? Why is it waste?
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In addition to the answers about difficulty of refinement many other are mentioning its important to note that most of the radioactive waste a plant produces isn’t acctualy spent fissile material.
Most waste is things like contaminated protective clothing and other disposable items that are likely to be irradiated. It’s essentially just garbage that can’t be disposed of normally due to it being contaminated so they have to seal it up until the radiation drops to a low enough level.
So while you could recover and refine spent fuel rods however expensive that may be, repurposing a bunch of garbage thats emitting low level radiation is an entirely differnt story.
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