Can We Recycle Nuclear Waste

The united states still refuses to recycle its high level nuclear waste and has more than 70000 tons of nuclear waste stored at various nuclear plants around the country.

Nuclear family job definition nuclear bomb documentary. The starting materials of this process can be seen in fig. Americas ban on spent fuel recycling which was established in 1977 is still in place and keeps the country from being a true leader in sustainable energy independence. Nuclear reprocessing is the chemical separation of fission products and unused uranium from spent nuclear fuel.

Recycling is the recovery and reprocessing of waste materials so that it may be used in new products. Originally reprocessing was used solely to extract plutonium for producing nuclear weaponswith commercialization of nuclear power the reprocessed plutonium was recycled back into mox nuclear fuel for thermal reactors. Nuclear waste is a two pronged problem burns said.

The reprocessed uranium also known as the spent fuel material. Since the main component of nuclear waste is uranium 238 which can be transmuted to plutonium especially with advanced breeder reactors we can get more energy out of the waste than in a once through cycle see factoid 2 to see how much. Nuclear waste is the leftover material from nuclear energy generation which contains high levels of radionuclides.