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[Rotten]

Uranium and other nuclear fuels are rarer than oil is. However, people seem to forget that hey, it's still giving off huge amounts of energy. Why is it only good for fuel for such a short amount of time? Why not process the spent fuel into new fuel until it isn't dangerously radioactive anymore?

Because spent fuel is just that, spent. It is no longer fit for nuclear fission, but still emmits gamma radiation. Thus, the danger they pose. While it could be possible to garner energy from just that, you would be spending more energy in the collection then what you get out of it. We can't make spent fuel new, we can only wait untill it reaches enough half-lives to decay back into the background radiation. The entire universe is slowly decaying, and eventualy there won't be any nuclear fuel left. Anywhere.

They've developed fusion reactors that can use spent nuclear waste to create more energy than traditional nuclear fusion, but it's going to take at least 20 years to get them into the market (testing, perfecting, fearmongering, etc).

What? That's not true. Fusion and Fission use two very different fuels to produce energy. Fission uses heavy, unstable isotopes of Uranium because they're the easiest to split. Fusion uses the absolute lightest isotopes of elements like Hydrogen for fusion because the lightest ones are easiest to fuse. Spent nuclear fuel is not in any way, shape or form suitable for net energy producing fusion power. Also, would this nuclear waste turn back into nuclear fuel? Which you then split for more energy? Since that's a violation of conservation of energy.

I'm not an idiot. The problem with using nuclear waste as fuel is that it is generally unusable, as it is to stable. What this reactor does is use the fusion of hydrogen to produce huge amounts of neutrons, which bombard the outer shell of nuclear waste and excite a nuclear reaction. This waste then decays into non-fissile safe byproducts after its lifetime is over. It was in Scientific American's 12 things that will change the world article, so I *think* it's legit.

[LeoLeonardoIII]

There are Breeder reactors, which do something different. I think you have to use the original fuel up in a breeder reactor in order to get the full use out of the fuel, but I'm not sure. Anyone?

Also there's this new idea for a reactor that will be a "slow burn" kind of thing. It's a big shielded pit full of radioactive waste (right now you're thinking of peering down into a metallic cylinder half-full of glowing green goop, aren't you?) and it slowly does something to the fuel over the course of several decades. And then the remainder is too low-level radioactivity to use with current technology, but still dangerous for humans. But I guess we'd eventually find a way to wring energy out of that stuff too.

Is that what you were thinking about?