Reactor waste remains hot as waste so why do we not pile it in a massive dump and cirulate water through it to raise steam or at least preheat water for heat generation?
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Thanks everyone for an informative and interesting discussion.
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In: 337
Most of the answers here are about reprocessing fuel. To answer your actual question:
The efficiency of extracting energy from heat is a function of the difference in temperature at the inlet and outlet of your system. In almost all cases, the outlet temperature is “the air” or “the water”, depending on what your last cooling loop is using.
Nuclear waste in a pool is simply not that hot, they are typically around 50 C. So if the other end is, say, 20 C, you’re getting 30 C of working temperature. With those limits, a Carnot engine is less than 10% efficient.
At that sort of efficiency, the cost of the equipment needed to turn it into power is greater than the lifetime income from the electricity you’d generate. So you’d be running at negative dollars. Power companies do not like that.
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