Velund
25 Jan 2020
News / Nuclear Power in Poland? Yes, please! Absolutely nobody disagrees! [73]
Depends of reactor type. In any case, a lot of uranium still there, but cannot be used further safely after some point, set by reactor designers.
Most active - short lived ones who give huge activity and strong heating first months after unloading. It is why such rods stored in a pools with water near reactor for cooling. After short lived nuclides decay and heating decrease to a level that can be managed by transport containers, rods can be transported to a long storage near reprocessing factory, for years. After activity is decreased further due to decay, rods will be disassembled and remaining uranium and some other valuable elements (including some transmutated ones) extracted. The rest will be treated as active waste, dried and fused into glass blocks to be buried for millennias.
To what degree ?
Depends of reactor type. In any case, a lot of uranium still there, but cannot be used further safely after some point, set by reactor designers.
"Most" is the key word here
Most active - short lived ones who give huge activity and strong heating first months after unloading. It is why such rods stored in a pools with water near reactor for cooling. After short lived nuclides decay and heating decrease to a level that can be managed by transport containers, rods can be transported to a long storage near reprocessing factory, for years. After activity is decreased further due to decay, rods will be disassembled and remaining uranium and some other valuable elements (including some transmutated ones) extracted. The rest will be treated as active waste, dried and fused into glass blocks to be buried for millennias.