Spent nuclear fuel rods – why can’t we just melt them down/reforge them?

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As the title says; why can’t we just melt down the old fuel rods?

What would happen if we did melt them down?

Couldn’t we mix/contaminate them with another element to dilute the radioactive effects?

Most reactors work by heating water and turning turbines, why can’t we turn the spent fuel pools into a slow running reactors rather then using energy to keep them cool?

In: Physics

7 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

The best option is to just take spent rods and consolidate the nuclear material back into a usable rod, but a lot a people don’t want to. For fear of this technology falling into terrorist hands. So now the US is up a creek with out a paddle as the spent rod pools are over capacity, and Obama put the kabash on the Yucca Mountain site.

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