Originally Posted by
Rogar Demonblud
Depending on the model, 6-12 months. After that, the fuel rods are removed and shipped to a specialized plant for recycling where the inert material is removed and the radioactive material is formed into new fuel rods to be placed in another reactor. The inert material (not really inert, just really low on radioactivity) amounts to roughly equivalent to a two liter soda bottle, which gets a lead coating and is stored in a specialized vault until the half-life of certain isotopes of trace elements run down until it is truly inert (can be a couple centuries to several thousand years, depending on exactly what is present). Inert in this case meaning about as radioactive as the rest of the planet, which I'll remind the class is drawing heavy gammas from both the sun and the core.