If radioactive waste emits heat, why can’t we use it to produce energy?
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Not all radioactive waste emits heat. Most “nuclear waste” is “low-level”, meaning it was things like protective clothing, hand tools, or other things that might have some radioactive material clinging to them. It’s garbage that is contaminated, but usually not highly radioactive.
“High-level” nuclear waste does generate heat. It’s stuff like spent fuel or parts of the core. We could use them to generate power, but we often don’t. Much of the world, particularly the US, kind of stopped nuclear reactor development in the 1980’s. Older reactor designs didn’t really have a way to get further use out of “spent” fuel. Such designs do exist today, but since we’re not really building new nuclear plants, we’ve really got no good way to fully use the resource.
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