system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
If nuclear waste will still be radioactive for thousands of years, why is it not usable?
gpt
Radioactivity, by itself, is not that useful for generating power. What is useful for generating power is the induced splitting of _lots_ of atoms at the same time, not the slow trickle of energy release you get from radioactive decay alone. To put it another way: nuclear reactors don't work because their fuel is radioactive, they work because their fuel is splittable by neutrons. Those are not the same thing (all fuel splittable by neutrons is radioactive, but not all radioactive atoms are splittable by neutrons).