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
others have provided some good answers, there is one thing I’m not seeing here though. An assembled fuel rod is very heavy, and contains LOTS of fuel. The pellets that come out of the pulverization and refinement process on the other hand are very small.
Think of radiation level being a multiple of certain things: the total mass of material, and the makeup of the material (another’s comment about fission products applies here). A tiny pellet that weighs a couple grams isn’t big enough. You could at least handle it for a moment without worry. I wouldn’t be taking any souvenirs though.
When removing fuel rods from the bundle, each one is very large and also flooded with fission products. You wouldn’t be able to break it into pieces safely, so it goes in a tank for 80 years.
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