Nuclear waste is reusable. Why aren’t we doing it?

Do you know what they do with nuclear waste in your country?

Ayo bruv the current paradigm of human consumption is so inefficient

As a former nuclear engineer and chemist, and proponent of nuclear as critical component of our transition from fossil fuels, this is a great video. One thing not mentioned was molten salt reactors (MSRs) that can burn down the existing stockpile of spent nuclear fuel (SNF). In doing so, they also produce two orders of magnitude less radioactive waste. And that waste is toxic for only a few hundred years vs. tens of thousands of years for the existing fleet of lightwater reactors. It's estimated that SNF could power MSRs for nearly 100 years without the need to mine additional virgin material. MSR designs are also inherently/"walk away" safe, meaning that in the event of loss of power, the reactor shuts itself down with no escape of radioactivity. This is a significant departure from lightwater/pressurized water reactors. Rather than operating at high pressures, but relatively low temperatures, MSRs use a molten salt that's both fuel and coolant, enabling them to operate at much higher temperatures (good for process heat applications across a wide spectrum of manufacturing sectors), at or near atmospheric pressure. Lastly, nuclear reactors should be used for four primary purposes: 1. Grid stabilization. 2. Desalination. 3. Green hydrogen production. 4. Process heat generation. Small modular reactors (SMRs), microreactors and the like can be collocated on the sites of decommissioned thermal power plants, such as coal and natural gas. There they can leverage the vast majority of the installed infrastructure, while providing continued employment for the local workforce. They can also be collocated where intensive energy demand is high and/or where the process heat requirement is great. Think aluminum smelters, iron, steel and concrete manufacturing, data centers, etc. Solar, wind, hydro (including pumped), geothermal and wave/tidal energy should comprise the backbone of all power generation; stabilized by nuclear and augmented by energy storage (lithium ion batteries, flow batteries, heat storage, etc.).

Kudos to the french guy for all the effort he has put into speaking in english! Not complaining, his english is great, it's just that there is much resistance in general for the french to speak english

Wild guess: Money

The waste I'm concerned about isn't the dry cask storage reactor waste. It's the Cold War era leftover waste from building nuclear weapons that was improver stored or disposed of. Some of it has just been dumped into lakes and into the ocean in steel drums. Some of it is just capped with concrete on an island in the Pacific Ocean, with waves slowly eroding the concrete away.

Its not bad that we aren't immediately recycling it, becasue it is always available for future recycling. And it's easier to recycle once it has cooled down for a while.

Nuclear + renewables would have been the key for sustainable, climate friendly energy supply until nuclear fusion is ready. More industry nations should have done it like France, of course also including nuclear fuel recycling to minimize the amount of waste that accumulates. That said, of course while France does very well with nuclear, they're a little bit behind in terms of renewables. The share of energy from coal, gas and oil could have been already replaced with renewables by now.

Thanks, very informative. It is very complex, here in the UK we abandoned recycling at Sellafield, this video helps me understand why.

Love your videos DW!! Keep em coming. So much appreciation for your work to help us understand important and interesting things with accurate information. It's so important these days.

Great video!

This was very interesting. Thanks!

Help me understand something mentioned in this video. Water boils at 100C. That French fella said that the spent fuel in that concrete canister was 200C to 300C. Why can't the spent fuel, if it is generating that kind of heat WITHOUT fission, be used to just boil water and turn it into steam to operate the turbines to generate electricity? Still radioactive and dangerous, yes, but NO fission and more than enough heat to turn water into steam. Help me understand why THAT isn't being done.

Thank you for this information!

five to seven years in this pool until cooled down enough .... that's just amazing. Cooling longer than they were in 'production' use

Thanks for this report, DW; very interesting! Chapeau to the French for recycling their nuclear power waste. Sadly, I'm not surprised at the attitude of the US against recycling!

Very cool, did not know such thing existed. Sad that in the end we still have the problem of nuclear waste. Thank you.

Cost. Without watching the video I'm saying it's because it's cheaper to use new fuel instead of reuse the old one. Let's see if I was right. p.s. Yeah, it was mostly that. The extra waste from the chemicals needed for the recycling and the danger of having to deal with the plutonium was interesting aspect though.

Very nice documentary, thank you DW for educating the world, 1 video at the time. Hope you always successful all the way to the future.

I could never understand why nuclear waste exist. If the problem is that it has so much energy left that it's radioactive at a dangerous level surely if possible to transform taught power into electricity or heat by using a different method like a PV cell tuned to the wave length of that radiation or using to heat something with a lower boiling point than water