this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2024
345 points (85.4% liked)

Memes

45342 readers
1148 users here now

Rules:

  1. Be civil and nice.
  2. Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Kindness@lemmy.ml 1 points 6 months ago

nuclear waste is so incredibly dense

Yes and no. Most current fuels are Uranium or Plutonium. Both between 19 and 20 g/cm^3^. For reference, liquid water is approximately 1 g/cm^3^. Unspent fuel is a similar weight to gold.

"Spent" U~238~ is usually around 96% U~238~. If we consider the remainder a rounding error and assume all 60 tonnes is 60 million kg of U~238~. That will give us a very rough estimate of 3,000 m^3^.

Also worthy of noting are other wastes that comes from mining and refining.

There is much waste already. The "spent" waste is too radioactive to safely re-refine until later.