Recycling Nuclear waste..?

Question

My question has to do with the recycling of nuclear rods after they has been spent in a reactor.

Really I got two questions.

1) How much energy can we hope to achieve by using recycled nuclear waste?

2) After the nuclear waste is spent how is it still deadly to humans? What is the left after nuclear waste is recycled? Can it be simply tossed out or does it have to be stored?

Thanks for your answers.

Note* I also realize recycling spent fuel can yeild plutonium which can be used for bombs. I know that we don't recycle nuclear waste here in America but other coutries like France do.

Answer 1

1.To reprocess nuclear was you have to use energy before you can yeild any out of it. But you still end up with getting a net gain of electricity otherwise it would be a usless process.

2.It is still deadly to humans because it is still radioactive, too much exposure to the radioactive materials give you cancers or radiation sickness and you die. Low level waste i think can just be thrown out, but that is like isotopes that hospitals use. Other waste has to be stored in really stable locations which rarely have earthquakes and are away from any underground water sources. But it has to be stored for millions of years so that kinda makes it hard to do. I also think that when you reprocess the nuclear waste the spent rods are less dangerous.

Answer 2

The US stop working on breeder reactors and fuel rod reprocessing due to a soviet disinformation program.

Also due to the fact we have a lot of unmined uranium ore.

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/artic...

Now with the global warming disinformation program going on we now need the nuclear power.

PS. Have you ever wondered why the blame for global warming is put on the US China and India.

but there is another major industrial country that is never linked to global warming. RUSSIA

What better way to wreak what is left of the US industrial base but a global warming scam.

You will notice that the same radical liberal type people IN THE ABOVE SITE are the ones pushing global warming.

The soviets when they could not win by military means have always fallen back on what they called "active measures" also known by them as "war by other means"

After Ronald Reagan showed them that they could never beat us militarily or scientifically.  The only way to beat us was to wreak us as a nation by braking our scientific and industrial base

Answer 3

I can't really add much to this discussion as the main issues have been covered, but I can tell you why we don't do it.  It is still much cheaper to mine uranium and process that as opposed to reprocessing spent fuel.  At our current consumption rate (which will go down if we don't build anymore plants) the cost of reprocessing fuel will be competetive to mining by around 2050.

Answer 4

Breeder Reactors actually make  more nuclear fuel while producing power. When the fuel is "spent", it still has a lot of good uranium for fuel in it, so the rods are recycled and the good fuel removed. The "Waste" is then not good for fuel or bombs. It is just radioactive material and must be stored in a safe place and shielded, away from people. We have been storing waste for many years. Most engineers think granite caves or salt mine caves is a good place to store it.

Answer 5

1.  Uranium control rods have so much unfissionable U-238 in them that by the time they are taken out of service, the  U-238 has been transformed into both reactor grade and bomb grade plutonium which is not being recovered in the US over fears of nuclear proliferation, despite the obvious energy potential of that byproduct.

2. Fortunately the most deadly fission byproducts are the ones that decay the quickest and they need to be stored safely on the order of tens and hundreds of years.

NOTE: The way radioactivity  and half-lives work, if they are radioactive for "millions of years" then they are not, by definition, that dangerous in typical quantities and concentrations.