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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We generally can’t just convert mass to energy willy-nilly. There are only very specific ways we can do that, and nuclear waste is *waste* largely because we can’t do that with it (or do anything else useful with it).
Basically, in order for nuclear reactors to work, they have to be fueled by nuclear material that will undergo [fission](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fission) when struck by a neutron and will release more neutrons in the process, creating a chain reaction that can be controlled to release useable energy. A neutron hits the nucleus of those atoms and the nucleus breaks into two smaller nuclei, which releases *A LOT* of energy as well as a couple more neutrons that can go and hit more nuclei, sustaining the chain reaction. A small percentage of the original mass is converted to energy and the rest of the mass is left over as waste, in the same way that ash and some gasses are left over after you burn a log.
Only some specific types of atoms will undergo fission when struck by a neutron *and* spit out some more neutrons to keep the process going. Nuclear waste is stuff that doesn’t have those kinds of atoms in it any more and isn’t useful for some other reason.
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