• Question: What are the advantages and disadvantages of using uranium fuel?

    Asked by dizzyg12 to Dilwar on 13 Nov 2013.
    • Photo: Dilwar Hussain

      Dilwar Hussain answered on 13 Nov 2013:

      Hi,

      The advantages of using uranium are:
      – It produces a lot of energy, for example, did you know that 1 uranium pellet (which is about the size of an adult fingernail) can provide the same amount of energy as 548 litres of fuel. That’s a lot! And there are 18 million fuel pellets in a typical reactor.
      – The uranium fuel lasts long and doesn’t corrode too much at high temperatures

      The disadvantages are:
      – It produces nuclear waste which is extremely radioactive, toxic, hot and dangerous. But 98% of the fuel can be recycled and used again and 2% is waste
      once the uranium fuel is used up in the reactor, it also produces other elements too and these are stored in a large swimming pool (but without a plug at the bottom) to allow it to cool and its’ radioactivity to decay.

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