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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Anonymous 0 Comments

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.

Anonymous 0 Comments

The uranium splits into a wide variety of elements but elements created this way all have the wrong number of neutrons and so are all radioactive.

So you end up with a mixture of tons of different stuff that is all mixed together and is all deadly.

You can use it again but for what? It won’t create the heat that uranium does by itself so it is useless unless an amazing amount of money is spent to get it ready for something and for that much money, you could just buy solar panels or something.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Most spent fuel from nuclear power plants can actually be used again. Fuel is “spent” when it is poisoned by waste radioisotopes but something like 90% of the original energy remains and so reprocessing into MOX fuels can allow for spent fuel to be reused. Unfortunately this is almost never done, due to a combination of cost and the fact people fear anything nuclear and strongly oppose construction of fuel processing facilities (as well as waste storage facilities).

Anonymous 0 Comments

THey tried, the US was using ‘spent uranium’ munitions in the Kuwait and Iraq wars. It was supposed to be inert by the time it got processed into anti-tank rounds.

I made a hell of armor killer. You know how a lead weight is so much heavier than a same sized chunk of aluminum, well uranium is so much heavier than lead. I mean they call those atoms “heavy metals” for a reason.

It was also malable like gold, and when this compact spear of very heavy metal hit a tank it turned molten as it punched through and anyone side burned as they were shredded.

anyway more GIs got sick from mysterious ailments associated with uranium ammo and whatever waste was pitched into the burn pits.

Anonymous 0 Comments

This video might help you to better understand what “nuclear water” actually consists of, and why it’s so little understood by people who think it’s all oil drums full of glowing green sludge:

Anonymous 0 Comments

Because reusing the fuel costs more money than just digging up more uranium. Uranium is insanely cheap and plentiful.

Also some countries have laws against reusing fuel.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Imagine you have a packet of pop rocks (those that go tktktktktt in your mouth) and you pour it on your tongue.

Now some of those pops, and collide with others, causing them to pop too.

Those pops are pure energy, and we can harvest that.

When they’re all popped, there’s no energy left, thus, they can’t crackle any more.

Best way I could ELY5

Anonymous 0 Comments

Imagine you want some freshly pressed orange juice. At the beginning you can easily squeeze half an orange and a lot if juice will come out. But the more juice you squeeze out of the orange the harder it gets to get more juice.
At a certain point you would have to use to much force to squeeze out the remaining juice so you just dump the orange and get a new one.

So at certain point the work to get what you want far exceeds the resulting benefit. At that point it is waste

Anonymous 0 Comments

It is like recycling plastics, burning wood or oil, or many other processes. The energy that is created by a nuclear reaction is a one way trip. It takes much more work to recover the waste and make it useful again.

It becomes very difficult and not cost effective to reverse the process or use the left over waste for anything useful.

In fusion, two atoms combine to form a more stable combination. It releases energy during this bonding process. Example: superglue and glue accelerator. It gets hot but then the glue bonds together for a very durable connection. It is NOT easy to break this new bond. The same is true in nuclear fusion. It takes much more energy to break the waste apart and make it like new again.

Fission: The two atoms hit each other like a bullet hitting glass. Everything breaks into smaller pieces. Energy is released in the reaction. There is no efficient method to combine the atoms together again. It becomes too difficult to glue the proverbial glass back together again. The result is “waste”.

In either fission or fusion reactions, there is a common theme: the leftover items after the reaction are not useful for anything. The atoms that remain are still radioactive. They can’t be safely used for anything near humans. Because of all that scattering around of electrons, protons, and neutrons, it isn’t 100% always reliable how consistently radioactive the waste is. Maybe this blob is very radioactive. Maybe that other blob is a little more usable. It would be like sorting through the leftovers and trying to find something useful. That makes nuclear waste to be unreliable for using for other products (such as medical anti-cancer treatments, batteries, etc. ) The waste is quite literally too hazardous to sort through for anything useful and reliable.

That is why radioactive waste is buried deep in the ground away from everybody. The radioactive stuff came from the Earth, so back to the Earth it goes. And to be extra safe, it is placed in special locations where bad guys or even just curious hobbyists can’t reach it and hurt someone.

Anonymous 0 Comments

It takes energy to reverse entropy? It took a shit ton of galaxy shattering energy to make the material and we don’t really have that power. You can 100% use spent radioactive fuel. You could? Put it in tea. You could build walls with it. You just can’t really use it to effectively produce fission energy anymore.