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?

Question

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

Answer 1

The heat output in my plant’s spent fuel pool which has 6 cores of spent fuel would only produce 2-3 MW of electric power at most with a near perfect thermal electric conversion cycle.

There isn’t enough heat to justify it from the radioactive waste. You would need to spent a ridiculous money on a second power plant that has a vessel 6 times the size of the reactor that already was 400% over budget to build all to produce something that will never pay itself back.

So, yes there is heat there, but no it’s not enough to be meaningful.