Natural uranium is 0.7% U-235 and the rest is U-238. For nuclear reactor you need enriched uranium with higher percentage of U-235. But what to do with U-238 if it’s useless as reactor fuel, as a nuclear weapon, and still radioactive to use it as regular material.
In: Physics
Uranium enrichment plants end up with tons and tons of U-238, most of which is stored as big cylinders of gas. [Here’s a photo of tanks of depleted uranium storage](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/d9ceed1/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1282×1031+0+0/resize/1760×1416!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Flegacy%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2017%2F06%2Faerial_paducah_yard.jpg) at a closed US enrichment plant. For a sense of scale, [here’s how big those tanks are](https://nap.nationalacademies.org/openbook/0309087228/xhtml/images/p200072a6g61001.jpg).
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