5 ms·

yes nuclear waste is just nuclear fuel that's very slightly used, and inconvenient to reprocess it's still ~97% viable

vasama 5y ago
Molten salt fuel cycles where waste products may be separated from the liquid fuel through more conventional chemical separation methods seem like a simpler solution. It's too bad about the negative public view on nuclear. I think next gen fission power research deserves greater funding.
- wbl 5y ago
  Except for the corrosive hot flourine salts. Pyroprocessing and the IFR were demonstrated and work.
cinntaile 5y ago
It's cheaper to dig up and refine uranium ore instead so the economics don't make sense.
- adament 5y ago
  Does this remain true if the waste producers were forced to factor in the “true” storage cost of the waste?
  - Retric 5y ago
    Very much so, spent fuel contains almost as much uranium and in the same U235:U238 ratio as natural uranium it doesn’t need any special handling on it’s own. The issue is everything else in the fuel. After chemical separating the uranium you still have all the other nasty bits that make nuclear waste such an issue to deal with. Plus all the contaminated machinery you used to do the repressing.
godelski 5y ago
Most waste is actually from other things, not fuel. Anything your nuclear material comes into contact with is treated as waste. But obviously due to this there's drastically different levels of radioactivity in waste (but everyone acts like it's all fuel waste)
- JohnHaugeland 5y ago
  true, and fair point but in the reduced context of fuel rod waste i stand by what i said previously
Retric 5y ago
Not the way it’s normally described, U238 is relatively worthless outside of being used in bullets etc. What we currently care about is the 235 which is actually burned up by the reactor down to close to the ratio in natural fuel. Reprocessing for current designs would result in most of the fuel being discarded as depleted uranium the same way the normal enrichment process works. The actual way around this is to directly use natural uranium without enrichment via CANDU or similar design. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor No need for enrichment or reprocessing.

Molten salt fuel cycles where waste products may be separated from the liquid fuel through more conventional chemical separation methods seem like a simpler solution. It's too bad about the negative public view on nuclear. I think next gen fission power research deserves greater funding.

wbl 5y ago
Except for the corrosive hot flourine salts. Pyroprocessing and the IFR were demonstrated and work.

cinntaile 5y ago

It's cheaper to dig up and refine uranium ore instead so the economics don't make sense.

adament 5y ago
Does this remain true if the waste producers were forced to factor in the “true” storage cost of the waste?
- Retric 5y ago
  Very much so, spent fuel contains almost as much uranium and in the same U235:U238 ratio as natural uranium it doesn’t need any special handling on it’s own. The issue is everything else in the fuel. After chemical separating the uranium you still have all the other nasty bits that make nuclear waste such an issue to deal with. Plus all the contaminated machinery you used to do the repressing.

godelski 5y ago

Most waste is actually from other things, not fuel. Anything your nuclear material comes into contact with is treated as waste. But obviously due to this there's drastically different levels of radioactivity in waste (but everyone acts like it's all fuel waste)

JohnHaugeland 5y ago
true, and fair point but in the reduced context of fuel rod waste i stand by what i said previously

Retric 5y ago

Not the way it’s normally described, U238 is relatively worthless outside of being used in bullets etc. What we currently care about is the 235 which is actually burned up by the reactor down to close to the ratio in natural fuel. Reprocessing for current designs would result in most of the fuel being discarded as depleted uranium the same way the normal enrichment process works. The actual way around this is to directly use natural uranium without enrichment via CANDU or similar design. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor No need for enrichment or reprocessing.