If radioactive waste emits heat, why can’t we use it to produce energy?
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Nuclear waste can be hot enough for a little heating, but not hot enough to justify potentially having a leak getting into running water. We have the capability to do it safely, but not necessarily so for ten thousand years, which is how long the long-lived nuclides will last.
Waste is hot enough to melt through containment for at least a year, and usually stays in storage under a pool of cooling water for about a decade.
We can, and do for space missions, but we can’t do so on an industrial scale and no one’s going to trust the redneck next door with a nuclear backup generator.
That’s what nuclear power plants do, they’re basically oversized kettles. The radioactive material is used to boil water to insane degrees, the vast amounts of steam produced by this is passed through a turbine which is connected to a generator
You can also use nuclear power plants for heat as well as for electricity
It’s considered waste because most of our current reactor technology can’t use the heat efficiently enough to justify trying. Some newer techniques are changing this, though, as they refine waste into good fuel again
We do use it. In fact, there are block 4 reactors that are being designed to use waste fuel.
We also sometimes use it in RTGs to generate power for low power long term applications.
Pulling my comment forward as a direct answer- the short answer is yes it COULD be used – similar to home geothermal- to heat a water loop. Unlike a home geothermal water loop, you can’t extract heat from a home with this.
The more important question is SHOULD you. Cesium 137 is one of the main waste products and happens to be highly water soluble. When it’s in the soil, it makes it’s way into the ground water. So the more places you have this waste, the more places you have to secure from risk: environmental contamination, theft, fire, exposure to people, on and on. Also if it’s in any sort of vessel/container that’s not sealed – say one that’s got a water loop attached to it, that’s additional risk for leaking, weld failing, vessel becoming compromised…
Maybe you could weld it into a stainless steel cask and stick that in another vessel which you flow the water around, but that’s a lot of thermal mass to heat up… or you got to put a lot of “hot stuff” in there to make it worth it, and then hope the water stays flowing…
tl:dr – yes it’s possible, but the costs & risks outweigh the rewards
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