You would never put ten gallons of gas into your car, use up one gallon, and then discard the rest. But something similar happens in the nuclear energy industry.
By the time uranium fuel rods are "spent" (used up in terms of how much they can power nuclear plants) and taken to a nuclear waste site, they still have 90-95% of their energy potential in them. There's a way to use it rather than waste it, and the US president has ordered pursuit of this goal.
Oklo is one of the few companies approved to do exactly that. Nearly 100,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel is stored at nuclear waste sites around the U.S. If all of it was recycled, they say, it could "power the entire U.S. for more than 100 years at current national consumption levels." That's a whole lot of energy.
A project is underway in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which will include a new recycling plant with a new "advanced reactor." The city and state are excited about it:
