The new HBO Chernobyl series has me pondering about this. For instance, after the unfortunate indicident of the reactor core exploding, radioactive graphite was seen exposed. Consequently, radioactive particles were emitted at an extremely dangerous level.
So, how to energy companies initially obtain the radioactive material? Where do they transport the material from? How do they safely transport the material?
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Reactor fuel, uranium, is mostly safe before it’s put into the reactor. You can actually hold a chunk of uranium in your hand and be just fine, as long as you don’t lick it, ingest it, or inhale any dust from it. It’s mined from the ground, enriched a little bit depending on the type of reactor, and then formed into pellets. These pellets get assembled into fuel rods, the rods get grouped into bundles, and the bundles go in the reactor. It’s the fission process that they undergo once inside the reactor that makes new isotopes that are far more dangerous than the original unused fuel.
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