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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It’s simple and safe to keep spent fuel in a nice stable, secure cooling pond, especially whilst the short-lived, highly-energetic (and heat generating) fission products decay.
You don’t want to pile up spent fuel ‘in a massive dump’ as there is still scope to create a criticality with the remaining fissile material, causing a massive radiation release and possible explosion or meltdown.
Some radioactive isotopes have been separated from spent fuel to generate power or heat. The most common are strontium 90 used in Soviet radio thermal generators to generate electricity for remote radio beacons or lighthouses; polonium 210 which warmed the Soviet Lunokhod lunar rovers in the 1970s; and plutonium 238 used to power America’s deep space probes to the outer planets. However, in each of these cases, cost and efficiency weren’t really important.
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