And the only reason for that is that the spent fuel has an incredible amount of energy left in it.
The way we operate our nuclear reactors is like throwing a big fat log on a campfire, warming our hands over it until the bark gets a little charred, and then taking it off and throwing it away.
We use only about 2% of the energy available in nuclear fuel, and yet people are talking about throwing it into the sun?? What a waste!!
If you strip out the actual waste products from the spent fuel - instead of treating spent fuel as if it were all waste - the remaining actual waste only has a half-life of a few decades to a few hundred years.
If you use the right technology, nuclear reactors will CREATE MORE FUEL THAN THEY BURN, in some special cases nearly twice as much. In fact in a normal nuclear reactor, over a third of the energy produced comes from fuel that was newly-created inside the core.
In the uranium atom, we have been given the means to supply every last one of billions of humans on this planet, and any other planets, all the energy they need until the sun burns out, if only we are wise enough to use it.
“If you use the right technology, nuclear reactors will CREATE MORE FUEL THAN THEY BURN, in some special cases nearly twice as much.”
Hello, mvpel - yes, for those not in the know he is discussing “breeder reactors” which produce plutonium from uranium. I think these are a great idea. Now if only the government will get off its regulatory butt...
“In fact in a normal nuclear reactor, over a third of the energy produced comes from fuel that was newly-created inside the core.”
Please see my post #26; there I discuss reprocessing the spent fuel from a first ‘burn’ (for newbies that’s a figurative description, not literal) and sending the resulting plutonium rich fuel through for a second ‘burn’.
The original fuel pellets for water-cooled pressure reactors is 3% enriched uranium (U235). After this fuel has been fissioned to produce heat, the fuel has atomically altered into a plutonium rich material that can be reprocessed and used as an energy source. It is this reprocessing step that was outlawed by President Jimmy Carter and has effectively altered the course of nuclear energy in the U.S.A.