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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The amount of mass converted to energy within a nuclear power plant is actually very small, but courtesy of E=MC^2 even that small amount of conversion translates to a lot of energy. That’s in part what makes nuclear power so appealing is that you need very little material to produce a lot of energy.
So a fuel rod doesn’t evaporate or get burned the way that gasoline or coal does for example . Even then gasoline and coal still produce waste primarily in the form of CO2.
Nuclear waste are the byproducts of reactions, fuels like Uranium that have decayed or been spent and now contain contaminants, lighter radioactive elements produced in the reactions. Fuel rods typically last around 5 years then they are depleted and are no longer suitable for power generation. But the remaining material is still very radioactive and has to be disposed of safely.
Some nuclear material can be recycled and re-used, but it still results in radioactive waste.
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