No it doesn't. That would be 'combustion'. Burning is a loose term.

The IEAA says so -> https://www.iaea.org/publications/10959/high-burnup-fuel-imp...

Nuclear physics says so -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-burning_process

The term gets used in rocketry, and not all rockets use combustion (doing a burn with a cold gas thruster)

Hey, might as well get into CD's -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_disc_authoring

Why is it that the entire industry uses the term just fine, but not you? Because you're wrong.

Power production via uranium (or other related heavy element) fission is simply unlike any other process. It's basically a proximity effect, as if you place the fuel rods close enough to one another with water in between them, you initiate the process. The U-235 fuel is continually decaying, releasing neutrons. In the context of enriched fuel rods in the proper orientation in a watery environment, this means other U-235 nuclei will absorb such neutrons, becoming unstable and splitting into two smaller nuclei, known as fission fragments - of a remarkably wide variety, many of them unstable and generating further nuclear reactions. Along with the fragments, several fast neutrons and a significant amount of energy are released. The water in the reactor acts as a moderator, slowing down the fast neutrons released in the fission process. Slower neutrons are more likely to cause subsequent fissions in other uranium-235 nuclei, sustaining the chain reaction.

Now, the fission fragments are highly radioactive and unstable isotopes of lighter elements. These fragments undergo beta and gamma decay, emitting high-energy particles and photons, transforming into stable isotopes over time. Furthermore, some neutrons, instead of inducing fission in uranium-235, are absorbed by uranium-238 nuclei, typically actinides, like plutonium and neptunium.

So this ridiculously toxic brew of rather random radioactive heavy elements is what we call a 'spent fuel rod'. If you were to pack a few kilos of high explosive around one of these 'spent' fuel rods and detonate it in a city center, it would probably cost at least a billion dollars to clean up, if that.

It sounds kind of ridiculous when you can build 1 GW of reliable 24/7 wind/solar/storage power generation for the same cost as a 1 GW nuclear power plant, and then you never have to buy fuel or deal with the waste stream ever, doesn't it?

The amount of spent fuel produced by US nuclear electric grid generation fits in a volume the footprint of a football field and less than 10 yards high: https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/5-fast-facts-about-spent-... We could easily do what Finland and other countries are already doing: bury nuclear waste in bedrock.

Using spent nuclear fuel as a terror weapon would be vastly less deadly than more conventional means. Think about the immense effort of planning and manpower to steal nuclear waste, weaponize it, and then deliver that weapon to a population center. Now think about all that planning and manpower going towards a more conventional attack, like flying a plane into a building or detonating a normal explosive bomb.

Nuclear waste can be deadly, but it's a slow killer. We regularly test our water supply for uranium not out of any fear of a dirty bomb, but because naturally occurring uranium is common enough that it's a problem: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC359425/

In short, fears over nuclear waste are incredibly contrived.

"The amount of spent fuel produced by US nuclear electric grid generation fits in a volume the footprint of a football field and less than 10 yards high"

... and if properly distributed, is enough to kill every human being on the planet.

Which proves the ridiculousness of such comparisons, i.e. enough bullets were produced in World War Two to wipe out the global human population too.

> 'burn' is simply used to imply that using uranium is no different than using wood/oil/coal/gas as a fuel, but that's completely unscientific

Stars "burn" their fuel. This usage is deeply precedented in astrophysics.