My uninitiated mind would think that it would be the other way around.
I was watching a video about nuclear power. The guy being interviewed was wearing safety glasses and nitrile gloves while holding a uranium fuel pellet. Then the camera pans to a screen showing the robot handling spent fuel in the bottom of a 40-foot deep pool of heavy water. The pool is in a room behind a big red door with every “do not enter” warning imaginable. I would think the fuel would be less radioactive coming out than going in.
In: Chemistry
The other answers are essentially correct but missing a description of how nuclear fission works to provide power in nuclear reactors and how it forms a lot of other radioactive isotopes/atoms. Elements are defined by the number of protons in the atom but the same element can contain atoms with different amounts of neutrons and each of these different forms are called isotopes. The basic idea is that a nuclear reactor takes uranium and splits it into radioactive isotopes, extra neutrons, and a ton of energy. The extra neutrons keep the reactor going.
Splitting uranium atoms in a nuclear reactor, called fission, produces isotopes of smaller atoms than uranium. The uranium usually splits into particles of different sizes that are unstable – they undergo radioactive decay, which is different from fission. The split isn’t always the same so a whole range of radioactive elements are formed. The radioactive decay produces a lot of radiation and new isotopes that can decay further until eventually it reaches a stable isotope. With time the radioactivity of the spent fuel decreases but unfortunately some of the isotopes remain dangerous for many thousands of years.
The key to why the uranium fuel isn’t as radioactive is that there isn’t much decay going on until you put the fuel in a reactor and start a fission chain reaction..
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