As we all know, half of the Earth's heat is generated by furious activity spent attempting to impress the opposite sex. The other half is generated by radioactive decay.

Being that the latter is far more easily harnessed than the former, I propose killing two birds with one stone by using decay heat from spent nuclear fuel rods to heat domestic swimming pools.

Not only will your pool be comfortably heated (year round, no less) for centuries to come, but the nation's stockpile of radiative waste - rather than being stored in a single large facility subject to terrorist attack, accident or natural disaster - will be safely distributed far and wide In fully sealed and appropriately shielded casks.

As pool heaters in the US are estimated to consume some 8 trillion BTU annually, using radionuclide decay heat would have direct economic benefits through the elimination of fuel consumption for pool heating and in the elimination of storage costs for spent nuclear fuel, now estimated at $96 billion for the proposed facility at Yucca Mountain.
-- nuclear hobo, Jul 19 2014

[Aq Bi]'s take on it. Public_20spent_20fuel_20pool
[2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 19 2014]

Sorta recently halfbaked. [link]
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Jul 19 2014


Care to put some numbers on it ? As in (a) what is the desired wattage, (b) what is the mass of material required to yield that wattage, (c) which isotopes are used as the energy source, and what are their half-lives, and (d) how long will the source produce useable amounts of heat ?
-- 8th of 7, Jul 19 2014


Nature baked this already, it's called a hot spring.
-- Spacecoyote, Jul 19 2014



random, halfbakery