How counting neutrons explains nuclear waste

Where did the data for this table come from? Checking Pb-208 (a memorable double-magic nucleus), it should really not be shown as undergoing alpha decay when none of the major ENDF tables show that. There is an unsourced remark on Wikipedia that this might happen, but given the half-life, I do not think scientists have ever measured a single such decay... so probably not best to include it. And if one spot check shows a mistake, how many more are there? It's a big table and ENDF data files are not pretty things....

The photo of the lifetime waste burden is good. But of course obfuscates the waste trail before the fuel arrived at the reactor. I don&#x27;t want to come off as nit-picky: its an amazing lesson how how LOW the post-energy waste burden is, done right and I wish we could learn to agree about this as a huge upside of Nuclear, compared to the mountains of fly ash, and related waste from coal, and the CO&#x2F;CO2 burden.<p>But, we do need to pay heed to the waste cycle going in. Its not zero by a long chalk. It includes heinously bad stuff at all stages from yellowcake up. If the cycle still has Uranium Hexaflouride in it, this is why we have PTFE.

&gt; There are advanced reactor designs that don’t rely on the fission of U-235, but rather use the far more abundant isotope U-238. Some of these reactors can burn “spent” fuel, or “depleted” uranium left over from the enrichment process—extracting something like 60 times as much energy from uranium as traditional nuclear reactors.<p>Does anyone have links for such reactors?

Thought exercise:<p>What would the consequences be of detonating an improvised truck bomb, comparable in size to the Oklahoma City Bombing [0], in the middle of the spent fuel casks at the Connecticut Yankee plant?<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Oklahoma_City_bombing" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Oklahoma_City_bombing</a>