Isn’t nuclear waste hot and releasing neutrons or electrons or whatever? Why can’t we just throw nuclear waste in a chamber surrounded by water to heat it up and generate power?
In: Engineering
When you turn off a nuclear reactor, 1 second after the reaction stops the fuel drops to about 7% of the heat it was while in the reactor. After 5 hours, it’s down to 1% of that heat, and slowly drops over time.
<1% of the heat of a fully-running nuclear reactor is hot enough to boil water, so you need to keep the fuel in cool water for several years to avoid it being a problem. But it’s not hot enough to generate much power.
For a truly ELI5 analogy, it’s the difference between a wildfire and a match. Yes, you can still burn yourself on a match. But it’s nothing like the wildfire.
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