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
Sure, we could. However, there is a tiny problem. One of the radioactive byproducts is Plutonium. Melting spent fuel rods has to be done in a way that doesn’t facilitate the separation of this Plutonium and using it to make nuclear weapons. That’s increasingly difficult to convince the whole world you are doing. So, most of the time reprocessing isn’t done.
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