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
Nuclear reactors run on *very* thin margins, money-wise, because of all the safety features they need and because they’re heinously expensive and slow to build. If you built a reactor to run on burned-down fuel you’d have all the expenses of a normal reactor but your electrical output and revenue would be sub-par.
Secondary reason – if you had some fuel bundles from Reactor A and some other ones from reactors C and G, their isotope contents are going to be different and that will make your reactor run weird. You could get hot spots, cold spots, spots that react faster or slower to control rod changes, spots that burn off xenon faster or slower. That might all be manageable, but it makes the system less safe. Compared to all those hassles, fresh fissile material isn’t all that expensive.
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