Nuclear waste is reusable. Why aren’t we doing it?

"I’ve done a lot of reporting on nuclear waste. " "This former salt mine contains over 100,000 barrels of radioactive trash. " I also went to the world’s first permanent storage for nuclear trash.

"But one day I stumbled upon a crazy fact that stopped me in my tracks. " There is still over 90 percent of the energy left in the nuclear fuel rods when we throw them out. "This is such a crazy number!

" Because we usually only use nuclear fuel for a couple of years. And then it just sits around and stays radioactive for tens of thousands of years. The kicker is that actually up to 96 percent of spent nuclear fuel is recyclable.

But surprisingly, only very few countries are reusing nuclear waste. I wanted to find out why. And best way to do that is a visit to the undisputed leader in nuclear recycling: France.

"So that’s where we’re headed. " We’re going to the one and only nuclear recycling plant in the country, operated by the company Orano. It’s located about five hours away from Paris at one of the very westernmost tips of France.

The country has the highest share of nuclear power in the world. About two thirds of its electricity comes from nuclear plants. And all of the country’s spent nuclear fuel gets transported here – to be recycled.

This is Sylvain Renouf, he’s been working at this site for nearly 20 years. "Two thirds of this is underground and we have 24,000 rooms in the plant. It’s a huge maze.

" "During the visit, you will have to wear this. If there was contamination then you will leave this in the facility and not your personal belongings. " "And we’re ready.

" First, we’re going to the place where all the used fuel arrives. "This is a transportation cask. The complete cask weighs 110 tons.

It’s very heavy because we need to protect from radioactivity. In this one we have some at the moment. " "Oh there is some in there?

" "Yeah, there is some in there. " "Oh my God! " "And we can stay next to that, you see.

" "Wow! " "You can feel the heat sometimes if you’re very close to it. Inside it’s around 200-300 degrees Celsius.

But as the cask is made with steel we’re fully protected against radiation. " "That’s crazy, I’ve never been this close to radioactive waste. " "We have one cask like this one per day.

And you see we have others ready to be unloaded. " "That’s the moment when we go into the nuclear area. I will just have to activate this.

. . " "So that’s the dosimeter.

" "That’s the dosimeter. If something happens, it will ring. " "So you can see inside.

" Step one is taking the fuel rods out of the transportation casks. "Nowadays, most of the fuels are coming from France. Today, more than 95 percent of the fuels are coming from the country.

But we also have foreign contracts with Netherlands, with Australia too. And we are also providing recycled fuel for Japan. The fuel rods are taken out in these completely sealed off chambers with remote controlled machinery.

The process is operated from the control room. Then, the rods are transported to the next area. Where we get to step two: The cooling.

"Oh my God, wow. " "We are very close to one of the storage pools. You can see that we have baskets down here.

" "There are so many! " "In the baskets we have nuclear fuels. We have four meters of water on top of the baskets to protect us.

" "It feels really strange though to be this close to this much nuclear waste. . .

for me. " "I understand. " "You’re used to it.

" "I’m used to it. " "I just feel a bit woozy. " The rods spend five to seven years in this pool until they have cooled down enough to be processed further.

"To me it’s crazy that a lot of countries just use it for four five years and then throw it away. It seems like such a waste. " "You can consider them as waste.

But we don’t consider them as waste. This is like a uranium and plutonium mine. It’s a strategic resource for the country, for the customers.

96 percent of what is in the pool can be recycled. So it’s a huge amount of energy. " To understand why most other countries consider them waste, we need to take a quick look into how nuclear reactors work.

Basically, nuclear power is created by splitting atoms – also called fission. One specific type of uranium loves splitting up. When a neutron hits it, it breaks apart and releases more neutrons.

These neutrons then hit other uranium atoms– which also split, causing a chain reaction. When the atoms split inside the reactor core, they create heat. That heat then boils water, which produces steam, which then drives a turbine.

This splitting creates byproducts called fission products. After about three to five years, they build up so much that they absorb neutrons, weakening and slowing down the chain reaction. And that’s when the fuel rod is declared "spent".

The problem is that according to pure physics, it’s very hard to get more electricity out of this type of nuclear fuel safely. There are a handful of other types of reactors where more of the energy can be used continually, but those are mostly experimental, very expensive and complicated to build and maintain. The majority of nuclear waste around the world is sitting around unused.

So what’s left is mostly uranium that doesn’t like to be split that much, fission products, and plutonium. This plutonium is one of the big reasons why there aren’t that many countries doing this. But we’ll come back to that later.

So that’s when the fuel lands here. The next step is the disassembly and separation. "Behind this door, we have the chemical process.

Everything is inside nuclear cells without windows. We only use sensors, but we also can send robots or drones inside to make measurements, to check that the equipment is ok. The chemical process consists in separating uranium, plutonium and fission products.

" First, you separate the metal cladding from the fuel pellets. Then you put them into nitric acid to dissolve them. After that, you put the solution together with a solvent that extracts the uranium and plutonium, leaving the fission products behind.

Then a chemical is added that changes the state of the plutonium, letting it separate from the uranium. The fission products, which make up about 4 percent of the waste, are not recyclable. We’ll get back to these later.

This uranium can be used in regular nuclear power plants instead of mined uranium. But this process also produces purified plutonium. And that is where it gets interesting.

One gram of Plutonium represents the energy equivalent of one metric ton of oil. And this is the not so peaceful part of nuclear technology – and the first reason why recycling isn’t as straightforward as it sounds. Because that plutonium is also what makes nuclear bombs so destructive.

Nuclear weapons are usually produced with dedicated military technology. But you can also use recycled plutonium from civilian reactors, like India in the 1970s. "They extracted plutonium from a CANDU reactor, Canadian-designed reactor using US-supplied nuclear fuel.

" This is Allison Macfarlane. She used to work for the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. "And this really terrified the US government.

And so that's when the US indefinitely deferred reprocessing. They wanted to set an example for the rest of the world because they now saw that reprocessing was a grave threat in terms of nuclear weapons proliferation. " So what does Orano do with the plutonium today?

"It’s a product that we have to take care of because it can be dangerous of course, but we have many many protections for that. " Orano ships the purified plutonium all the way across the country in secret, using specific trucks, and escorted by the French army. There, the company mixes it with uranium to make something called MOX fuel.

This fuel can then be used in regular nuclear reactors. This whole process means that the operators can use up to 30 percent less fresh uranium. "In the end, the energy is so important that in France, 10 percent of the electricity is generated thanks to the MOX fuel.

" But there is still one pesky little thing left even after recycling all of this: The fission products. Which brings us to the fourth and final step of the recycling a process. Vitrification.

That's when the fission products are trapped in glass. And they are stored where we are headed now. "It’s massive!

" "You can just walk right on top of them! ? " "Exactly.

So just below my feet the floor is two meters thick. Below my feet I have a pit with nine canisters on top of the other. So when I stand like this, I got eighteen canisters.

That’s the space you need for one nuclear power plant operating during one year. I got five rows, by twenty. That’s one year of waste for France.

" "If you did not recycle, how much more room would you need? " "Five times more than this. " So the vitrified waste needs less space.

The whole trapping in glass thing also makes it safer. "But it’s the same if you don’t recycle. The lifetime is the same.

" The canisters are stored here, year after year, for now. Until France completes its final storage site — which is supposed to start construction in the coming years. So sounds neat.

Yes. But the biggest hurdle here, as is often the case, is cost. The 24,000 rooms, the security needed, the transportation casks, bespoke technology, all of this costs a lot of money.

Just buying mined uranium, using it once and throwing it away is cheaper. The price of uranium is rising, but it’s still quite abundant. "There's plenty of uranium.

There's just no need to spend the money to recycle. And it's more difficult than it sounds. " The way I explained Orano’s recycling process was extremely simplified.

This is what it would look like if I’d shown you the entire video. And not many countries know how to do this at scale. Russia is the second biggest recycler, reprocessing about a tenth of what France does.

India also reprocesses its own waste and is planning on expanding its capacities. China has one demonstration plant and is currently building more. The UK used to recycle, but gave up a couple of years ago, also because it was too expensive.

Japan has been building a reprocessing plant for over thirty years, with massive delays and cost increases. But out of 32 countries that use nuclear power, that’s it. "France made the choice to recycle a long time ago, more than 60 years ago now.

But for France, it’s a very strategic way to keep sovereignty because we have. . .

a strong part of our electricity which is produced with nuclear electricity. So it’s logical to have our own plant. " This strategy is also why the entire recycling operation is state-owned.

So is the operator of all the nuclear power plants in the country. France just locked in that strategy through 2040. But right now, they are recycling much more than they can reuse.

Most of the recycled uranium is sitting around in another location and could be used if uranium becomes more expensive. Plus, recycling does reduce the amount of extremely radioactive waste, but it also creates another problem. "Those chemicals and all the other equipment and other materials that you use generate a lot of waste.

It's not, you can't just go in and pull out, you know, with tweezers. " And the once-recycled MOX fuel isn’t currently recycled again. So it also becomes waste after another couple of years.

"We check that there is no contamination on the hands and feet. " "Nice, not contaminated. " So this is France’s way of doing things.

But there are other ways of recycling being researched right now. Like pyroprocessing, as shown here by the Argonne National Laboratory. It uses molten salt and high temperatures to separate out recyclables and doesn’t produce pure plutonium, so it’s less risky.

But it’s all still in the lab. And like with everything nuclear, other methodes will probably still take a very long time to scale. "And because this is still in the experimental phase, we really have no idea how much it will cost.

" Meaning it doesn’t seem like the price problem will be cracked any time soon. So as with so many other things, right now, it’s cheaper to just use virgin materials. Recycling seems like the logical thing to do.

But with nuclear power, even that doesn’t solve the problem of having to store waste for hundreds of thousands of years. It might make sense for countries that are determined to build up this technology, no matter the cost. Like Russia, China, India – or of course France.

Another better, cheaper technology may come around. But it doesn’t seem super likely right now. The nuclear waste that’s piling up is a resource.

It just doesn’t make sense for everyone to tap it. "If you liked what you saw, please subscribe. We post videos every Friday.