Is it true that there's a way to recycle a lot of the waste with a different type of convertor or plant? I'm not a nuclear scientist, obviously. Someone said once there was a way, but I can't remember what the reason was that we don't use it here.
Thorium Salt Reactor was researched to handle this but something about it's viability or something was brought up after it became viral on YouTube. We won't mine Thorium because of it's EPA restrictions but if we did we could also mine our Lithium Deposits because it's all part of our rare earth makeup. I'm a dumbass former Grunt who welds now so take all of this with a grain of salt knowing I have no formal education on the matter 🤷♂️🤣
Oh, rare earth stuff. Yes, we'd better leave that to the Chinese, who are known for their earth-friendly processes!
I had it mixed up, I thought there was something that was done in other countries already, but they wouldn't allow here for some reason. Thanks for explaining!
Commercial reactor spent fuel could be reprocessed to extract the Plutonium from it. Spent fuel rods typically contain more fissile material than natural Uranium.
It was a Carter era decision to stop all efforts towards Plutonium reprocessing in the US. There is no longer any commercial infrastructure for reprocessing in the US.
As a side note, it is a federal requirement that a spent fuel repository allow for retrieval of the spent fuel.
Is it true that there's a way to recycle a lot of the waste with a different type of convertor or plant? I'm not a nuclear scientist, obviously. Someone said once there was a way, but I can't remember what the reason was that we don't use it here.
Thorium Salt Reactor was researched to handle this but something about it's viability or something was brought up after it became viral on YouTube. We won't mine Thorium because of it's EPA restrictions but if we did we could also mine our Lithium Deposits because it's all part of our rare earth makeup. I'm a dumbass former Grunt who welds now so take all of this with a grain of salt knowing I have no formal education on the matter 🤷♂️🤣
Oh, rare earth stuff. Yes, we'd better leave that to the Chinese, who are known for their earth-friendly processes!
I had it mixed up, I thought there was something that was done in other countries already, but they wouldn't allow here for some reason. Thanks for explaining!
Commercial reactor spent fuel could be reprocessed to extract the Plutonium from it. Spent fuel rods typically contain more fissile material than natural Uranium. It was a Carter era decision to stop all efforts towards Plutonium reprocessing in the US. There is no longer any commercial infrastructure for reprocessing in the US.
As a side note, it is a federal requirement that a spent fuel repository allow for retrieval of the spent fuel.