Value Collector
Have courage, and be kind.
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- 13 January 2014
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No, the spent rods are definitely NOT harmless, they are far more radio active than new rods, and need to be stored in cooling ponds for many years as they continue to generate heat and throw off large amounts of radiation.
At the moment almost every nuclear plant in the USA is just stock piling these spent rods on site, once they are cool enough they remove them from the cooling ponds and seal them in dry storage casks and pile them up.
If the USA ever begins reprocessing these spent rods like the French, Japanese and Chinese do, There will be huge quantities of cheap new fuel rods hitting the market.
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When Atoms of uranium are split in the process of nuclear fission, they transform from into new lighter elements that are much less stable and that throw off far more radiation as they decay into stable elements.
for example Uranium has a half life of thousands of years, so it emits relatively small amounts of radiation over thousands of years, however the spent fuel rods include new lighter elements with half lifespan's ranging from minutes, to decades, to centuries that throw of huge amounts of radiation over their much shorter lives.
think of it kinda of like the difference between a candle releasing the energy from 1 litre of wax over the space of 24 hours vs a 1L bottle of petrol smashing and burning up in 2 minutes, both release similar amounts of energy, but one releases it much faster, so they both are dangerous in different ways and over different time frames, but working around the candle is much safer than the broken bottle of petrol burning up.