Why doesnt the USA recycle and reuse its nuclear waste like some other countries are already doing? Their solution is to instead just store it all in underground warehouses. the preferred fuel for nuclear reactors is U235 which is very rare in nature with most uranium being U238. So with the correct uranium isotope hard to find they could recycle the waste and reuse it again the power reactors. It would make nuclear energy safer and less expensive and it solves the question of what to do with nuclear waste. Is there a down side to it or something I'm missing?
>WHY DOESNT AMERICA RECYCLE NUCLEAR WASTE?? We do. We invented depleted uranium shells.
Luis Allen
Its not just you guys. We dont either but we have only a hand full of small reactors mostly for medical isotopes. But yeah China doesnt. Russia doesnt. France does though
Isaiah Powell
First off radioactive waste is a marketing term for spent fuel. It's funny because ash from a coal plant is significantly more radioactive than spent fuel. As for recycling it? Until something changes spent fuel isn't that useful and if it ever becomes useful we have it in storage basically.
Jacob Nguyen
Uranium is not a waste produced by nuclear power
Jacob Turner
Yeah but a nuclear reactor can be also powered by plutonium which is in the "waste" so instead of storing spent fuel just recycle it and reuse it thus over time there us much less waste
Parker Morris
because not all "nuclear waste" is nuclear materials much of it is irradiated equipment such as hazmat suits and tools which are radioactive and need to be handled correctly.
Ryder James
>Depleted uranium was originally stored as an unusable waste product (uranium hexafluoride) in the hope that improved enrichment processes could extract additional quantities of the fissionable U-235 isotope. It's like I'm talking to 60 IQ niggers
