About time

Nuclear Waste Disposal

So I’ve been wondering this for a while, and I’m going to throw it up on the internet for an answer. Sometimes just typing out my thoughts will give me the answers I seek. We’ll see.

I’ll start by saying that I know that I don’t know what I’m talking about. That’s why I have questions. I’m not saying these ideas show how smart I am, I’m saying that I’m stupid, and I need someone to explain why my ideas are also stupid.

I’ve always known about the spent-fuel rods that come from reactors, but never really thought about the problem until the Fukushima disaster. You’ve got these extremely hot and very radioactive rods (heh, rods) that need to constantly have cool water rushing over them or they will heat up and melt down through the bottom of the plant just like the fuel still in the reactor.

So here you have these things that are generating a ton of heat all on their own. Certainly more than burning coal, right? Can’t we use those as fuel still? They wouldn’t be useful for nuclear fission anymore, but you put them in a coal burning plant or something and you’ve got all the heat you need to super-heat that water and turn some turbines. I understand that these fuel rods will be a lot more dangerous to handle than coal, but if we can keep them under control in pools of cool water then we can keep them under control anywhere.

OK, so lets assume that science has considered that possibility ages ago, and for one reason or another it’s just not feasible to use them as fuel on a large scale. You’ve still got the problem of keeping these fuel rods cool. Wouldn’t it be possible to create a kind of self-sustaining cooling module? Would it possible to establish some kind of equilibrium where as long as the rods are generating heat, they also power their own cooling?

Another approach: you’ve got solar cells that generate power when photons from sunlight run into them and push electrons around. Can’t we use a similar method that will generate current from the radiation coming off of the fuel rods? Even when they’re cool, they still pump out a bunch of radiation, right? They might not generate enough energy via this method to even power their own cooling system, but it would certainly off-set the power needed. And then at least they would be doing something besides sitting around for decades.

One more thought: Lets skip the whole idea of generating power off of them at all. They currently keep them cool in big pools of water that they constantly cycle cold water into. The problem at Fukushima is that power went out and water stopped pouring into the pools, then all the water in there boiled off. Why are we wasting energy to pump all that water in and out of the pool? Lets put them in a facility next to a river or a waterfall. You’ve got an endless amount of cold water constantly filling into the pools, and gravity pulling it back out.

How about it internet. Are these things more useful than we think? Or at least easier to contain than we think?