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
The spend fuel rods will be highly radioactive for millennia but will only generate heat so you need do cool them in spent fuel pool for 10 to 20 years.
The heat output is not that high so non have used it to produce power likely because the cost of the stuff you need is to expensive and would complicate thing and and increase the risk of a accident so it is not done.
The fuel rods can be reused where you remove the radioactive elements that is produced for storage and extract the uranium for new fuel rods. That is called [Nuclear_reprocessing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing). Part of the problem with it is that is how you extract plutonium for nuclear weapons so nuclear reprocessing contribute to nuclear proliferation ie the spread of nuclear weapons and what is needed for them. So today there is only plants in countries with nuclear weapons and fuel from other countries are reprocessed in som of them.
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