My knowledge about school level physics is admittedly not that fleshed out, but we were told that it is possible to convert mass to energy. My google-fu has sadly left me for my question here 🙁
So why can’t we just take e.g. nuclear waste and convert it to energy? After that so is my understanding it wouldn’t simply exist as matter anymore and wouldn’t require to store dangerous trash if you can convert it all to energy.
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If fire burns wood, why do we have ash?
Because the reactions involved don’t produce *enough* energy to break apart some of the fuel. If you get a hot enough fire, wood will vaporize, but wood itself doesn’t burn that hot. Similarly (and also theoretically), with enough energy, you could rip apart the atoms and subatomic particles that make up nuclear waste in order to completely convert them to energy, but we just don’t have the energy capabilities to do that, nor do we really want to. When we use nuclear fuel in fission reactors we want a slow consistent reaction, like embers sitting in a fireplace. If you get a big fission reaction, that is called a nuclear bomb.
Also, a lot of nuclear waste isn’t actually fuel from reactors, but things like gloves, containers, and machinery that has processed or interacted with the fuel in some regard, becoming radioactive itself. Consider these things like the bricks in the fire place. They get stained with soot and smoke, but do not themselves burn.
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