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 don’t know how to take any old scoop of mass and convert it into energy. We do know how to do very particular processes.
For instance, fissioning an atom of U-235 produces a couple of smaller atoms, plus a couple of loose neutrons, all traveling at high speed. If you add up the bits produced, their mass is very slightly less than the original atom.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fission
A lot of the fission products are unstable; in time they’ll decay, releasing sub-atomic particles, and again there’s a loss of mass. In some cases, this production of energy has been used to power small devices, but it’s not cost-effective for general use.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_battery
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