The spent fuel rod issue is all about environmental impact and avoiding dealing with long-term issues. Spent fuel rods still have high concentrations of usable uranium, but also high concentrations of dangerous radioactive biproducts. Some countries, such as France, reprocess spent fuel rods. They recycle the usable uranium, and encase the rest. No one wants the waste. In the US, we don't want to process the general wash waste nor the spent rods; because, maybe someday someone will find a better way to process them. In the US and apparently in Japan, spent fuel rods are simply held on-site in "temporary" holding pools permanently. These temporary holding pools are particularly dangerous; because, many nuclear reactors were build on the assumption that there would only ever be a small heat load from the temporary pool. The nuclear industry and our nuke-blind government do not want to address this issue since it would greatly add expense and remind the public how dangerous and intractable these issues are. The short answer is yes, we could be getting energy from the spent fuel rods rather than just spending energy keeping them from killing us.
I think it is time we started asking our own governments where exactly the spent fuel pools are stored, next to the reactors or off site? Put them and the industry on the spot...
Thank you Appears to be a large amount of energy that the spent rods have after their purpose is done. Basically it is store them until a safer solution. Is this something like hundreds or thousands of years for spent fuel to breakdown ? It is hard to imagine this waste has to be passed off into the distant future for others to continue to store and handle safely at least until there is a better use for them.