We Solved Nuclear Waste Decades Ago
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- Опубликовано: 22 май 2024
- Nuclear waste is not glowing barrels or green goo. And nuclear waste storage is not at the bottom of some river. This is the reality of a situation we actually solved decades ago.
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*Thanks for watching!* Proud of this one - I hope it’s educational and entertaining enough to share.
Texting and driving is safer than you think
I loved this episode. Will you do an episode on the worlds first and maybe only Natural nuclear reactor and go more in depth on how it actually worked? Seems right up your alley. Keep doing what your doing, your great!
Thank you for making this video and I'm going to share it but you know what would help a lot? Subtitles in different languages, I don't know how much costs to hire people who makes subtitles on videos but I would love if you could do it for some videos like this one. It's hard to share something like this with some of my Spanish speaking circles. If possible I want to volunteer to do the Spanish subtitles if that helps (it can always be peer reviewed). Seriously, I want to do it for a video as Important as this.
Fission is the pathway.
Fusion is the destination.
❤️☢️❤️
Sources list? Asking for a research essay :)
Nuclear waste is safer than political waste. You can't just dig a six foot hole for politicians as the environmental damage is too high.
God I wish we could just fire politicians into the sun.
Well if we got our power from exercise bikes maybe we could solve the obesity chrisis
@@livingcorpse5664 I would be dangerous with a Star Trek Transporter
@@Eclispestar I think you may be onto something here...
Better to let voters vote directly on policy, instead of letting corrupt politicians do it.
Yeah, when I was on the USS Eisenhower back in 1982 (a nuclear aircraft carrier) we had a device in the engine room that could detect very tiny amounts of radioactive particles in the air. The only times I ever saw the detector needle rise much above zero was pulling into Naples, Italy -- and it did that almost every time we pulled in...as soon as we'd get out to sea the needle would drop back. I was told that there was a temperature inversion layer over Naples and what we were reading was Carbon 14 isotopes from coal-burning powerplants.
Or southern Italy is just radioactive.
@@thesimpleanswer2264 explains a lot tbqh
What kind of planes did you see while serving?
Or some other isotope. Whatever was in what became the coal is still there unless it's already decayed.
that's crazzzyyyy, whoa
One of the weird things you learn looking into this matter is that the part of the process of handling nuclear waste that is _most damaging_ to the environment is... The production of all that concrete.
Most of which is completely unnecessary and only done to stroke Sue from the PTA’s paranoia.
Good point
And concrete tastes bland
@@demetriajones3231it's nice and crunchy though
@@demetriajones3231fr, wood is better
its bizarre that we even need deep isolation. it's not a solution to issue of waste,as you said, it's solved, its a solution to public perception.
If you consider that the average IQ is 100, then that would mean that 50% of the country’s population has an IQ of 100 or less. This means that there are literally millions of people who are basically Forest Gump, and they do not have the ability to rationalize this information. The likelihood that these people even see this video is almost 0.
What else do you suppose we do to it? You can't just make something not exist anymore so we have to dispose of it somewhere
It's not a solution...
Um, it's a solution to giant, unsightly barrels of toxic waste. What would you do with them? They look ugly. Municipal authorities plant trees to beautify their cities, so it's quite intuitive that they would insist on burying nuclear waste for the same reason, i.e. to de-uglify their cities. Not only does the visual element have an effect on human psychology, but it also influences property values. That's why homeowner's associations have rules about the external appearance of the houses in their purview. If it's visible from the outside, then your neighbors have an interest in it. And not just a financial one. Would it be appropriate to install a 10-foot-tall mountain of shit in your front yard? Let's say you put an impermeable barrier underneath it, so it didn't raise any concerns of groundwater contamination. Would your neighbors not be justified in complaining that they simply don't like walking outside to the sight and smell of a 10-foot-tall mound of human excrement? That example is obviously extreme in degree, but it illustrates a principle that still applies even in lower degrees. What if it was just a 10-foot-tall, highly visible stack of empty barrels with large biohazard symbols printed on them?
My point is that anywhere humans are living, the aesthetic dimension is going to be an important one. It may seem silly and even frivolous from a utilitarian perspective, but humans aren't machines solely concerned with maximizing the efficient extraction of resources for the production of basic necessities. Aesthetic concerns are just as important as (if not more important than) everything else, provided we have as much as we need to survive. If the burial of nuclear waste was costing so much that people were dying or getting sick as a result, it would be fair to describe the burial of nuclear waste as a frivolous concern, at least until such time as it can be buried without such grave consequences. But burying it costs us relatively little in comparison to the aesthetic value that is gained by removing it from our view. The same calculation as for normal trash, only in this case we can't risk the potential consequences of mixing it up with normal trash where people can easily get at it and sell it on the black market for use in a dirty bomb or something. Hence, deep long-term storage.
It's to protect against retrieval by unauthorized persons, since these facilities are easily guarded/secured when compared to a warehouse or fenced area.
If you don't know what a "dirty bomb" is, you probably should.
I really appreciate that a method of impact testing is literally just "hit it with a train".
That's not for no reason. The engineers likely wanted to test it for worst case scenarios. In this case, it would be if the truck stalled while crossing the tracks.
Looking at videos of the stress tests of the conventional side of nuclear is rather fun - other fun stuff they've done is "put cask in pool of diesel fuel and set it on fire", "drop cask from great height and make sure it lands on a corner", "put figther jet on rocket sled and slam it into wall".
If you look at the cask testing a bit of extra fun is that in some of those extreme case tests they use the same cask (those suckers are stong enough to withstand multiple extreme scenarios, and that is the old casks - the new ones are ever tougher).
I guess that one test was more of a public demonstration of their safety than an actual test.
The American way
@@MitchJohnson0110 no, that’d be shoot it with a 50 cal after stuffing it full of tannerite. Get it right.
The more I learn about nuclear power the more pissed off I become that we haven't used it to its fullest potential
Give it 10 years we will be getting rid of more nuclear power plants for solar wich the production of the cells is worst then nuclear. We could get lucky and people get smart and build more nuclear plants and use the waste to build batteries. Look up nuclear diamond batteries.
cuz fossil fuels and 'renewable energies' are more profitable.
Yep, fake greenies keep pointing out solutions that aren't really solutions, and are terribly expensive. And then somehow, some friend of their's makes a buttload off government spending, for our good.
Clean energy gives politicians money (lobbying) and politicians give out huge contracts to build new clean energy. The cycle continues until everyone is rich; well except the tax payer but you voted for it so...
Oil and coal have their own history of lobbying but those are dirty stories for another time. Ergo they do the same thing.
there are obvious reasons for that; the whole Green movement done by people like Greta Thunberg who know nothing about stuff, and lobbyists who just want quick money
The Yucca Mountain repository is exactly why the plants I've worked at, focus so much on what they call "social license" because the public's opinion has the same power to kill a nuclear project, as any stamp/license from any nuclear regulatory body.
They strive so hard to maintain a good image in the mind of the local community, the worst thing that's happened at either plant was when they went to test the emergency notification system once, they forgot to add "this is just a test" to the message, and NO ONE was even remotely worried. In fact: I think the company just got roasted on social media for a few weeks.
(To be fair, there is an evacuation plan in place for if something were to go wrong, so the fact authorities weren't rolling out busses and pulling people from beds, kinda tipped everyone off that it was a false alarm.)
Not everyone is doing that:
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - The largest corruption case in Ohio history culminated last week with guilty verdicts for ex-House Speaker Larry Householder and lobbyist Matt Borges, the former head of the Republican Party. But the state's attorney general said it's “only the beginning of accountability” for the now-tainted $1 billion bribery bailout of two aging nuclear power plants. These are the people responsible for the operation of many nuclear power plants.
OR
Regulators are monitoring the cleanup at the 52 year old Xcel Energy Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant after it leaked 400,000 gallons of radioactive water. The leak was first discovered in November 2022, 5 months ago, when radioactive Tritium was found in a well.
The incident at Xcel Energy's plant, came to light on Thursday, 4 months after it was first detected in a groundwater monitoring well. The reactor continued to operate while plant personnel tried to locate the leak. State officials said they delayed because they wanted to gather more information before going public.
Officials said the water contains tritium that is thousands of times above EPA limits but is of no risk to the greater public.
"We knew there was a presence of tritium in one monitoring well, and Xcel identified the source of the leak as an underground transfer pipe," Minnesota Pollution Control Agency spokesman Michael Rafferty said, per the AP.
You mean like this plant that leaked 400,000 gallons of reactor coolant into the soil just a few hundred yards from the river and then hid it from the public?
Regulators are monitoring the cleanup at the 52 year old Xcel Energy Monticello Nuclear Generating Plant after it leaked 400,000 gallons of radioactive water. The leak was first discovered in November 2022, 5 months ago, when radioactive Tritium was found in a well.
The incident at Xcel Energy's plant, came to light on Thursday, 4 months after it was first detected in a groundwater monitoring well. The reactor continued to operate while plant personnel tried to locate the leak. State officials said they delayed because they wanted to gather more information before going public.
Officials said the water contains tritium that is thousands of times above EPA limits but is of no risk to the greater public.
"We knew there was a presence of tritium in one monitoring well, and Xcel identified the source of the leak as an underground transfer pipe," Minnesota Pollution Control Agency spokesman Michael Rafferty said, per the AP.
Yucca was deemed not suitable for reasons of potentially leaking into the water table. Whether it was politically motivated is a good question. Geo-schematics of Yucca Mountain showed it was not suitable for 10K years of long term storage. Go figure…
@@johnjaksich431k The 1983 Nuclear Waste policy act specifically stated that no less than 2 nuclear waste disposal sites would be established so that no one part of the U.S. would get all the waste. And that the disposal would be in the scientifically best location and that is a salt formation. Yucca mountain is an extinct volcano and not a salt formation. In 2014, the amount of spent nuclear waste stored at the 100+ reactor sites in the U.S. exceeded the design capacity of Yucca Mountain so if it was ever opened, it cannot hold all the U.S. commercial waste now generated. The U.S. high level radioactive waste generated from the production of weapons grade Pu239 far exceeds that from commercial power plants. Hanford Wa. Has 53 million gallons of high-level radioactive waste in rusting underground tanks. Savannah River Site has 43 million gallons of high-level radioactive waste. That does not take into account high level radioactive waste stored at other DOE sites. Yucca Mountain was chosen for purely political reasons and it was abandoned for purely political reasons. Trump killed the project completely. We already have a nuclear waste problem that must someday be addressed but it is NOT solved by any means.
I think it would be really cool if you cite your sources in the description so its easier to navigate for my more academically-inclined friends
Oh that IS weird
@@nicreven what do you mean
it's weird that there aren't any sources in the description@@userNULL
@@nicreven he shows them on screen in the videos, just not in the description
@@userNULLI hate how everyone in this thread is correct
I'm German, and one of the things that I'm actually unhappy with my country is how we've handled nuclear power. In the last century there was a massive anti nuclear energy movement, which led to the downsizing and closing of nuclear power plants. Green party members have been slapping each other's backs for decades over this, but sadly the rising energy requirements massively overtook the rise in renewable energy. What did that mean?
Coal plants. I shit you not, hundreds of thousands of people fought for years to exchange clean, nuclear power for horrible dirty coal power. I don't have enough hands to face palm as hard as I want.
Big Uranium needs to step up their game.
Belgium has a few nuclear reactors. The green party has been fighting tooth and nail to get them closed for about thirty years or so, even proposing wood pellet plants and gas plants as "clean" alternatives (yes, they honestly thought burning wood imported from Africa on diesel ships was environmentally friendly because you can regrow trees). The truly sad part is that they needed a war in Ukraine and the ensuing public fears over our energy sources to convince them to maybe let one extra reactor remain open for another ten years or so.
Somehow, our green party is on a twenty-five year cycle where they eventually manage to get into a government and promptly proceed to royally screw everything over, to be never heard of again for the next fifteen years until public memory has largely forgotten about their downright idiotic and dangerous escapades and they start polling better numbers again.
Yup, its been revealed that the whole Anti-Nuklear Energie movement was funded by Coal barons, its insane.
The Coal problem is real but there is also alot of inproper management of Nuclear waste. The whole point of this Video was talking about "properly managed" however the two problematic factors still are Human error leading to improper Management aswell as the fact that many generations have to take care of Nuclear waste. Asse 2 was once considered to be properly managed. Also the examples of Fossils impacting the enviroment were also arguambly improper management. Kinda biased argumentation in this Video. Also there is a huge list of errors in Nuclear Plants were they almost failed. Because finally the plant is supposed to generate income, that's the point where they might fuck up. Also german nuclear power plants all just worked due to massive government subventions (similiar to coal btw) if he had compared the Nuclear Energy with other means of Energy production like waterplants or sun plants or such it would be something i would be interested.
Also drilling holes deep down and putting nuclear waste there is a great idea, considering the amount of ground water polluted by oil and gas drilling...
Yup, man sollte meinen unsere großen Ingenieure können das handhaben. Aber nein, böse Atomkraft xd
Yeah Merkel turned out to be Putin's lapdog lol
😂😂🤣🤣🤣
"Fossil fuel IS the invisible scurge that people imagine nuclear waste to be"
Perfectly stated!
Fossil fuel may be the scourge but nuclear fuel is the devil 🔥
I think it has to do with the world economy involving us 💵 that is really its worth in oil they would need to transfer its value to something else, like digital currency, but probably a physical thing.
B A S E D
But but but my green energy advocates told me it's evil and bad. We need to use extremely wasteful "renewable" energy that barely breaks even when you actually consider the waste generated from mining the needed rare earth minerals
Or go German and shut down nuclear power for its green alternative. Coal....
It partly do to the government
I was a maintenance electrician for a company that had a patent on a specific aluminum alloy used to line the casks for storing nuclear waste. Their main customer was Chernobyl. The alloy contained the waste for a longer portion of its halflife requiring fewer times to replace the cask.This was in the early 2000's, I'm sure they've made improvements.
Most of the years I was growing up my home town had a coal-fired power plant. I think that it was putting out 40x the radiation of a fission plant. Of course, it was just a fraction of the background radiation.
I think what freaks people out is all the precautions. Fossil fuels are worse but we just throw them up into the air so "How bad can they be right?". But nuclear waste needs these concrete tombs and all these security precautions, so even if they're way safer, it freaks people out and makes them think "What if something goes wrong tho?". The only way to fix this is educating people.
I think there is also an aspect of 'Agency' in it. People find things that they can personally do something to avoid, less scary, even if it's statistically more dangerous. It's why driving is less scary than flying. Because _you_ are behind the wheel so you can just *not crash* right?
The scientists: "You invested trillions to make doubly sure this stuff is safe"
The people: "Yes but now that it's so safe I'm scared of it failing"
@@benjaminmiller3620 I don't get ehat point ur making btw. Are you saying people can't avoid nuclear waste affecting themselves and thats why they are so scared of it?
If thats the point how are they not scared to death of coal and oil burning plants. Not like people can avoid breathing? And air is everywhere while nuclear waste is not? I suppose Beijing citizens could move to rural canada to avoid air pollution though, but air mixes well and travels far. As far as the antarctic youd still be affected by air pollution.
It's a dangerous handwave to say its natural for people to fear things they can't avoid more.
There is things people can't singlehandedly avoid aplenty but lack of publicity and misinformation has kept those out of the public mind.
It doesn't help that people think that yellow cake itself is extremely dangerous and causes deaths regularly.
Your completely wrong, Fossil fuels are not the worst in any means, it is the Nucleare Power that is the worst thing that could happen to the ambient, atmosphere and all living things living on this earth, by now over 70 years of its existence the Nuclear Power has destroyed and contaminated all the ecosystem, the ground from soil to mountains, all the waters from seas, rivers, lakes to ground waters, all the atmosphere from troposphe to thermosphere, all the vegetation from trees to grass, all crops from grain to fruits, all animals from insects to humans..and this radioactive contamination will last decades from now on.
Retired nuclear engineer here. You should get your production reviewed by an actual nuke before publishing it. Several serious mistakes. The round vertical dry casks stored at nuclear plants contain no waste. Only spent fuel rods. These are extremely valuable when the politics change. Only about 3-5% of the U-235 is burned before neutron-toxic fission products build up enough to require the rods' removal.
If these rods are recycled and made into fuel for the mixed liquid fluoride salt reactor, perfected in about 1966, then essentially all the uranium and bred plutonium is burned. Only a tiny amount of actual high level waste is left and the liquid fuel reactor can deal with that problem too.
Most of the HLW in a light water reactor is produced by multiple bombardments of fission products with neutrons. That's because the fuel stays in the reactor up to 6 years.
In the liquid salts reactor, the coolant/fuel is continuously processed. the fission products are removed before appreciable additional neutron bombardment and new fuel is added. This type of reactor does not have a refueling interval because of continuous recycling. The plant will be shut down for periodic maintenance on motors, pumps, valves, etc., but nothing to do with the fuel side.
Low level waste mostly isn't. Radiation workers are told to toss everything that touched something into the LLW barrel. It got so expensive to dispose of this non-waste that TMI-1 hired my company to design and build a separator. This machine streamed stuff from the drums one piece at a time under a large area plastic scintillator. If the item was radioactive, an air jet blew it off the side into a bucket. Clean stuff went off the end of the belt as clean garbage. I typical barrel would yield about a 5 gallon bucket half full of LLW.
The correct method of dealing with LLW is incineration and that's what was done for decades. A HEPA filter trapped any flue particulates and a radiation monitor made sure the filter got it all. I don't recall exactly when this practice was stopped but it was a political and not a radiological one.
For medium level waste, mostly contaminated pipe and tools, the radioactive material is first removed with a strong acid dip and rinse. It comes out clean and is no longer radwast.
I was asked to visit a building outside the fence at Oak Ridge to quote on a radiation monitoring system. Inside the building was a huge stainless steel tank about the size of a home swimming pool full of conc nitric acid. They had a contract to decontaminate the miles of pipe and other stuff that came from the diffusion plant. They'd been at it for about 5 years. Again, they dipped the piece of metal in the acid, then a rinse and the material was ordinary scrap metal. I never asked what they did with the sludge but they probably incinerated it.
For HLW, fission and activation products, there is a salt reactor called a burner reactor. The neutron spectrum is adjusted, not for the most efficient fission, but to give the spectrum that would fission or transmute the isotopes up, down or stable. Transmuting up is that it transmutes the isotope to one with a much higher specific activity and a correspondingly short half-life. Transmuting down is transmuting the waste isotope to one with a low specific activity and correspondingly long half-life. It remains radioactive for a long time but the activity is so low as not to matter in most cases. Still others are transmuted into a stable (non-radioactive) isotope.
The tiny amount of radioactive residue that remains is a good candidate for deep well burial. That company you talked to snookered you. Dropping the stuff down a well is fine but there is no need to drill any new holes. There are thousands of spent oil and gas wells, some as much as a mile deep, available for the job. Drop the stuff in, cover it with a few hundred feet of concrete to keep ground water out, cap it back off, this time welding on the cap and properly label it and be done with it.
Regarding other sources of nuclear waste, you really should mention the Kingston coal plant disaster in east TN, not far from Oak Ridge and the Watts Bar nuclear plant. On December 22, 2008, a flyash settling pond dike broke and emptied the pond into the Clinch river. Millions of gallons of the stuff, loaded with radioactive materials, heavy metals (mercury and lead) arsenic and other poisons poured into the river. It turned the river white for miles. Even now I can drive over there with my survey meter and detect high radioactivity in the sludge still on the river bank.
Wouldn't spent oil and gas wells fill up over time?
If used immediately after becoming vacant, sure, but I'd assume a hole, regardless of how deep, if not very wide will collapse inward and fill up with mud, stone, and water relatively quickly (presumably weeks or months, depending on the climate and geological activity of the area).
@@DarkVeghetta I'm not sure exactly what spent wells look like, but there are tons of caves, deep mines, and boreholes all around the world that science communicators on YT love making videos about. So I don't think there's reason to assume that any hole in the ground will collapse quickly.
Thanks for sharing, that was a lot of interesting information. I just want to mention that I think the main point of the deep well burial segment was that it could be an effective and inexpensive solution that also had the approval of the public. I think he was trying to contrast it against the Yucca Mountain Repository, above-ground dry casks, and in general the transportation of nuclear waste, because those techniques garner public criticism. The selling point was not, "this is THE safe way to do it," but rather, "this solution is effective, can be done on-site, and the public is more accepting of it."
I had suggested that the fly-ash problem with coal fired plants could be solved by loading it into the empty coal cars going back to the mine source, and dumped back into the ground where it came from - only to mines that are not subject to ground water leaching.
Tldr
My dad is a petroleum engineer in the natural gas industry. I remember when Deepwater Horizon happened, every night when I would say good night, he had a livestream of the leak pulled up. He flat-out refused to see the Deepwater Horizon movie-hit too close to home for him, I guess. And then my uncle was a paralegal on the case against BP. Fascinating and horrifying stuff.
Hydro power failures have killed thousands and I bet few even know the biggest one while nuclear failures that kill no one are notorious. And just consider how radon is doing significant real harm and simply being ignored.
I don't know why but the "big uranium" gag had me dying every time, especially 1:36 and 2:46. Thank you.
At the same time, he was getting information from a private company not using the overly safe containers that he described earlier in the video.
I'm not implying that he was getting money, but I am very skeptical of private startups that have not yet implemented their technology. Kyle would have better served us with detailing the current state of government disposal.
“Nuclear Waste is SO BAD! It pollutes everything!”
“What about the poisoning of the atmosphere with carbon emissions?”
“Eh, that’s different.”
To be fair the phrasing the issue as 'poisoning' isn't quite the right way to say it.
The main problem with emissions isn't toxicity but harmless CO2 causing global climate change.
@@cyberneticbutterfly8506 Pretty much yeah
@@dylanbuchanan6511 bruh co2 is not toxic you udder buffoon.
the climate has never been static in the history of the planet
taxing peasants more will fix nothing
learn some science dude
@@Hawtload *denies climate change* “learn some science dude” The stupidity in this comment is baffling.
Something isn't talked about much is that Chernobyl had other reactors that didn't melt down. They kept the power plant operational, generating electricity until the reactors were deactivated in the 90s and early 2000s.
they abandoned the reactors for decades as The ussr didn't have any procedures in place to turn it off in case of an emergency like the reactor going critical, or things to prevent melt down.
Same with Three Mile Island.
Chernobyl was also just a terribly designed reactor that would never have passed QA in the west.
you realize that argument makes it even WORSE RIGHT??? ONE SINGLE REACTOR DID THAT MUCH CATASTROPHIC DAMAGE TO THAT MASSIVE OF AN AREA..... and the fking idiots kept running... yeah that's REALLY something to be proud of ROFL
@@wedmunds I think you're touching on a fundamental concern that remains for some with regards to nuclear power - what happens if the onus of such an enormous responsibility isn't in competent hands? what happens if a neighbor state collapses, turns belligerent, invades, and sees an opportunity to create leverage by targeting a nuclear plant?
I think the reason the masses are afraid of nuclear waste is because of what people have seen with nuclear weapons and meltdowns and think it's also the same with anything that's a byproduct of nuclear energy. I don't know the full history of fossil fuel discovery (yet) but my theory is it was accepted by people when it was first introduced because it solved a problem (or rather acted as a fuel to solve a problem or make something easier/faster) while the first introduction of nuclear to the masses was destruction.
People having to pass a reasoning test to be allowed the *PRIVILEGE* to vote would be enormously helpful.
From whative heard it has a lot to do with the anti war movement and their iniability to do much vs nuclear weapons and thus gone for the energy part of it with the whipped up public support
I agree. People bring up things like Chernobyl and Fukushima as the main reasons, but ask anyone ignorant of the subject to explain what a “meltdown” is and I guarantee the first thing they’ll describe is a nuclear explosion.
Yeah, power plants are physically impossible to produce enough fission quickly to explode. It's like comparing an open flame to a grenade. What does happen however is that it literally melts out of its containment and if steam isn't relieved properly (as seen with Chernobyl), it becomes one big ol dirty bomb
I live next to one of Finland's biggest nuclear plants, and tbh it's kinda chill here most of the time. The only issue is that we sometimes get weird marine life near the exhaust ports, since their wastewater is naturally warmer than our seas tend to be in the winter. Means that species that couldn't usually live at these latitudes keep turning up with cargo ship ballast waters and chilling there.
Really? Like what kind of fish? Are we talking 3 eyed Simpson fish, or like weird salmon?
@@ultramarinescaptain3840, no he meant the fish that naturally don't live in Finland.
The fish that can't handle the cold I mean
@@mirohanhinen2517 ah
Ahh. Fish that can't handle the cold going "Yo, vacation!".
30 years ago as a sophomore in physics we did a study and found higher radio activity in the fly ash pile outside a coal plant than outside a nuclear powerplant.
Lesson, don't eat coal ash.
Scrubbers remove 99.9% of the coal emission particulates thereby leaving the naturally occurring radioactive material in the ash. EVERY nuclear power plant is allowed (limits) and does release liquid radioactive material to the river and gaseous out the stack.
@@clarkkent9080 its not liquid radioactive material, its legit just cooling water that is very slightly irradiated (but is still far from being dangerous)
@@clayel1 irradiated liquid is not radioactive material???? That is a new one on me.
Every nuclear plants has radioactive leaks and it is cleaned up to below release limits and dumped into the river. So that is not bad but you are worried about the natural, extremely small amount of radioactive rock in coal ash? I hope you never played in the dirt when you were young or eat food grown in soil
@@clarkkent9080 its not radioactive material bc it isnt coming from the source, its like less than low-level contaminant
also, theres way more radioactivity released from coal plants because they burn through a hell of lot more coal than a nuclear plant does with uranium, and the concentration of uranium and other radioisotopes within coal is high enough to make their emissions higher than a nuclear plant
@@clayel1 I have no idea what "not radioactive material bc it isnt coming from the source" means. Anything that gives off radiation is radioactive and all nuclear power plants release radioactive gases and radioactive liquids, all within release limits.
Apparently you missed the part were all U.S. coal plants have scrubbers that remove 99.9% of all particulates meaning it stays in the coal ash.
My step father was a trucker with every certification you could imagine. I remember him coming home one night with a flatbed full of those transportation containers. I was surprised they were allowed to stay outside of some facility or another and on truck overnight. He did inform me that they were practically indestructible and far to heavy to steal to boot. Also that they emitted no radiation at all as they were perfectly stable. I haven't feared nuclear power since.
I once held an ion chamber exposure meter up to one of the casks and I got a reading of 5 mR/hr. IOW, just a little more than normal background.
lookup the Long Island Incident in new york, look up the people who was ORGANIZING THE COVER UP's testimony in the whole long island thing, "it would have wiped out the east coast from new york to georgia, but we didn't want to get in trouble and we certainly didn't want to loose all the money" like yeah sure other people are TOTALLY gonna do the right thing... because that happens ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL the time from giant companies, right??????
literally ALL they had to do was hire a crane to take it down the reactor, that wasn't 40 years old broken and rusting and BARELY at the lifting limit maxxed out, but they said NAHHHHHHH TOO MUCH MONEY WE JUST WANNA GET IT DONE SCREW IT! knowing FULL WELL there was a VERY HIGH CHANCE that crane WOULD fail... while dismantling the reactor... causing a mega disaster like chernobyl, til a whistleblower came out
@@zeening The company I owned, Radiation Measurement Systems, spent over 2 years redesigning and calibrating Shoreham's radiation monitoring system so I have first hand knowledge of the plant. A few facts. LILCO (Long Island Lighting Company) is a tiny utility that almost went bankrupt with Shoreham. When they quit paying our invoices, I had my not-married project manager make a date with a lady in accounts payable. He found out that they were almost bankrupt and that they'd been instructed not to pay the small contractors so they could pay large ones. The next day, my pardner and I went into the city, asked around about who was the nastiest, most aggressive lawyer around. Found out that it was a guy named Sturgakos, greek.
We met with him and my pardner tore in half a $10,000 check. and gave him half. We told him that he could have the other half if he got us paid within a week. The next day, he took out a Mechanic's lien against the whole plant and got an article to that effect printed in the WSJ. The next day their Executive Director of Finance called me and asked what it would take to make me happy. I replied that a wire transfer of into our corporate account within 24 hours would make me glow with satisfaction. Later that day, the bank President, a good friend, called and asked me if what I was doing was legal, that they'd received a wire transfer of over $1mil into our account. I explained our business and he was satisfied.
Stergakos lifted the lien, he got a good check and all was well. We decided that we didn't need to do business with a company teetering on the edge of bankruptcy so we canceled the contract. All was well.
Your quoted text shows that you know so little about the utility business and nuclear power that you haven't a clue and the quote is made up". Even if a Fukushima-level event happened, it would have crapped up a few thousand acres at most. But that kind of catastrophic event could not happen at Shoreham.. It was a small single unit affair. Their standby diesel generators were located on a man-made hill about 100 ft above sea level. The whole plant is above sea level, though I can't recall how much.
From your writing style, I wonder if you finished even the 6th grade. It's "were ORGANIZING" and not "was ORGANIZING". It's Long Island and not long island. It's "lose the money" and not "loose the money". The reactor vessel weighs 350 tons and required 4 of Mantiwoc's largest cranes to set the vessel. A single crane could not have "taken down" (actually the reactor is installed from the topside" the reactor.
Another reason was that LILCO had received its 5% power license for testing and tuning. The reactor had been running for several months when the Governor pulled the political stunt of having the plant forced down. Given the current NYC power rates, I'm sure the people would LOVE to have that cheap power available now.
If you can read at that level, you should learn what is being done with old plants. The majority are being re-licensed for another 40 years after annealing the reactor vessel to remove neutron induced stress. Some utilities decide that the cost of annealing and or the small electrical capacity makes it not make financial sense and so they're decommissioning.
You couldn't possibly know this but a reactor vessel is fabricated from 18" thick hot rolled steel clad in stainless. Stainless doesn't rust and if it somehow did, some surface rust would have absolutely no effect on 18" thick steel.
When the reactor vessel was finally removed, it had long since been de-fueled, leaving only the mildly radioactive vessel to be lifted. Chernobyl indeed.
These facts will make no difference to you, a barely educated anti-nuke-kook. I'm writing so that others who read your garbage can know the facts.
John
@@neon-john that's a banana's worth of radiation
@@neon-john dude got so salty he either deleted his message
Runit island is an example of improper nuclear waste disposal. All the solutions presented in this videos are examples of what could be done, but not everyone follows best practices because it costs money to get it right.
I love how the thumbnail uses the Uranium waste from Satisfactory, because that can actually be completely destroyed, so it's not a big issue either.
Wait, it can? Or are you talking about turning it into plutonium fuel rods and chucking them in the AWESOME sink?
Makes me wonder how much impact The Simpsons has had on people’s perception of nuclear power plant safety… 🤔
Simpson’s, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and almost every cop show that had an episode where the team had to stop a terrorist cell from poisoning a water supply or something with nuclear waste (i.e. every cop show in the past twenty years at least).
Media portrayal is very powerful. Even if you do a simple word association game, the first thing that comes out of people’s mouths is usually something perceived as dangerous or negative. Something like “bomb” or “radiation” or the like.
@@johnstuart1338 Don't forget 50s Sci-Fi and of course Zombie Movies such as Return of the Living Dead
@@johnstuart1338 Dont forget Fukashima. That one happened in real time for the younger generation rather than just reading in history books.
@@ColoradoStreaming In fukushima and 3mile island ... the outcome of a disaster was 1 death and 0 deaths respectively. Coal kills people every day.
And don't forget Peter Parker. That guy mutated into some spider-sort parody of a of human being, because of radioactivity.
Never underestimate the power of large numbers of highly ignorant people to stand in the way of the best solution because they have unfounded notions about it.
pfff
Perfectly said
My next t shirt
Especially when they are lead by double whammy pied piper of the fossil fuel lobby, and media and entertainment outlets trying to sell headlines and movies. They should definitely be teaching more nuclear science in schools to demystify what actually happens behind the "spooky domes" and the real affects of radiation from contamination decay. Meanwhile after 200 years of using renewables, and literal mountains of panels and turbine blades awaiting disposal later (the batteries required to make renewables viable can actually be recycled).
That's sums it up perfectly
Of course. All by design.
As a Factorio gamer, I can confirm that going Nuclear reduces the amount of natives trying to kill me than burning coal
6:29 I would agree with you. As long as you don't eat any berries from Prypiat you won't have any health problems, but if you live in a place like Bejing you don't just need to wear a mask to not contaminate your lungs, but also will likely need to put up with horrible smell of all those fumes
When I worked in a power plant, most of our "nuclear waste" was used contaminated clothing like rad suits or scrubs that get crated up, shipped out for decontamination, and recycled.
Heh, "recycled". Toss it in the fuel pile for a coal power plant; the slight increase in atmospheric radiation will never be noticed alongside the radioisotopes naturally released by burning coal.
@@deusexaethera No recycled means it was decontaminated and sent back to us to be used again.
@@R3troZone he knows he's just pointing out how much radiation is in coal plants already and that they would not notice a difference if you throw in the irradiated materials into a coal power plant
I'm a marine engineer. Here's a little tidbit of knowledge: when we bunker fuel (diesel), we get a sheet of paper with the analysis of it. This covers contaminants, CCAI (calculated carbon aromatic index), flashpoint, yada yada.
But here's what not many people know. These fuels are full of iron, copper, nickel and much more (which is just called "ash").
When we burn fossil fuels, we are literally blasting these micro-contaminents into the atmosphere, which you then breath. It is a well studied phenomena that people living close to large ports are affected greatly by these things I have mentioned, and even more! Fatigue, pneumonia and coughs with either blood or black phlegm.
Nuclear, when done safely (as anything should be) is so non-lethal in comparison it's funny.
"when done safely" ... I worked in the nuclear industry in the UK .... the cleanup cost is costing billions, of course waste is an issue, it's ridiculous to suggest otherwise!
@@davidb6403 Everything is an issue. But untill our entire necessary energy supply can come from renewable energy. Nuclear is the answer.
@@davidb6403 yeah? Where did you work?
@@davidb6403 what cleanup also?
@@davidb6403 - When you say that "waste is an issue" for nuclear, you're really *missing the point....* When it comes to burning fossil fuels, like gasoline and diesel in our land vehicles, or the "bunker fuel" in ships that the OP mentioned, nobody asks the question "what are we gonna do with the waste?!" It's simply spewed directly into the atmosphere, the air that we all have to breathe 🤦♂🤦♂ So with nuclear, *the fact that we're EVEN ASKING THE QUESTION* is actually a huge *positive* for nuclear. It means that nuclear has a compact and fully contained waste stream.
To me, this comes down to a handful of issues:
1. Lack of science literacy amongst the general population.
2. Lack of energy infrastructure (nuclear or renewable) to mitigate the environmental cost of mining, refining, and disposing of nuclear fuel.
3. Lack of political/economic will to expand nuclear energy due to the order-of-magnitude higher cost in building/fueling/maintaining nuclear energy facilities versus “traditional” fossil fuel plants (regardless of how much more efficient and clean they are).
4. The perceived risk of an accident at any point along the processes described above.
Humans, for better (evolutionarily) or worse (environmentally) are, will be and, have always been keenly interested in their own personal and immediate benefit above all else. The only way to truly get our attention, as a species/society, is to convince us that something (real or manufactured) threatens our personal survival. Not next year, or in decades, or our children in the future, but you and me…right now.
It is sad, but it is accurate.
it makes me really angry how misinformed the general population is on nuclear energy.
There’s a whole chapter on this in the book called “fake catastrophes and invisible threats of doom”
Written by one of the founding members of Greenpeace who left when he realized he was the only actual scientist on the board.
Why do we let these science haters bully us into killing people?
I get why, but it's always funny to me when people are like "I'm the last principled person here! Welp, I'm out," because now there's _no_ principled people here.
That guy's name is Patrick Moore and he also claims it's safe to drink weed killer...
@@venum17 depends on the kind of weed killer. I dont like this kind of thinking. You see, horse tranquilizer saves countless lives, too...
@@venum17 oh shit is he the "I could do it right now." "we have some. Will you?" "No, I'm not an idiot." "So it's not safe?" "It's perfectly safe" guy?
I'm happy that the Oklo natural nuclear pile got a mention here in the specific sense of how far the waste products (didn't) get. It's one of my favorite bits of nuclear trivia, and a great indicator of the comparative safety.
Heh, the Oklo rector was successfully mined for uranium for decades.
Which is how they even figured out that it was a natural nuclear pile in the past. 😀
@@The1313Vixen That surprised me when I first read about it, I didn't think the necessary compounds and arrangement would have arisen naturally. Of course it probably didn't add much to Earth's radioactivity overall due to long term primordial heating from K-40, U-238, Th-232, etc.
Doesn't matter, can never have a rational argument with irrational fear and intolerance.
@@coopergates9680 Actually you're right, the necessary compounds don't exist... *today*
Researchers realised that billions of years ago the concentration of U-235 in natural ore would have been higher as it hadn't yet decayed away. Researchers only realised something was up when the uranium coming out of the mine was found to be depleted of U-235 from the "reactor" using it up.
My dad actually works at WIPP (Waste Isolation Pilot Plant), Which just so happens to be the one of the US's main storages for nuclear waste. He manages the shipments of the waste and properly sorts them to where they need to go.
The deep isolation, bore hole storage, finally now makes a lot of sense. Seems the way to do it.
One problem I have with deep disposal is that what people want to dispose of, is unused uranium. When the plant I work for removes spent fuel rods from the reactor, the uranium isn't all spent. In fact, most of the uranium still exists and can be reprocessed. Japan and France reprocess spent fuel rods, and so should we.
Absolutly right. The public lacks a large amount of information as to what "nuclear waste" actually is. As in literally the composition of that waste and the half-life of the different waste products as well as the reprocessing potential as well as the use in other reactor designs.
There's just too much misonformation out there.
The biggest problem with this video is he doesn't mention breeder reactors or France's Messmer Plan.
Thanks for saving me time, I thought that fuel reprocessing WAS the solution he was going to talk about and that you just need long term storage for the small amounts of material that cannot currently be reprocessed. Plus ways of concentrating low level waste like PPE into more manageable forms.
Its cheaper to mine up new ore then it is to recycle unspent fuel.
@@Von_Bernkastel this is true for most things. furthermore, recycling is usually no better for the environment. It's a greenwashed capitalist lie.
I was already all in on nuclear power, but this really just hit the nail on the head for me. I couldn't be more agreeing
In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king. The dishonest acts of the IAEA and the NRC is where you can get the truths this video offers none of. I support nuclear energy but not lies nor misinformation. Vitrification has all but bankrupted the industry for now the investment has yet to pay off. Transportation of those materials will kill people all along the way. The NRCs own paperwork shows hundreds die from exposure each time it's moved. That would be the public with zero protect from a nuclear train moving through the community. We need agencies we can trust and reporters willing to expose truth. Without the truth nuclear power will remain pandoras box. Check into Hanford nuclear power waste storage that's a wild ride right there.
Well, let's rush your approval to the White House. I am sure they'll want to know YOUR IGNORANT POSITION on the matter after watching one RUclips video. Idiot.
@@jose.montojah the what?
same
also go look up Sam O'Nella's video about the superior nuclear fuel and how its way less likely to cause blowouts or other problems than other kinds of fuel.
The main problem is we have mostly old generation power plants, modern understanding of nuclear fuel is so much more effective and safe.
I think something that is overlooked is one item you hit on - the actual quantity of waste, and that it's not truckloads and truckloads of material. We are led to believe that there are massive truckloads of waste from each and every plant, and the truckloads appear to be the Low and Medium Level waste that will solve itself - not what they have told or tried to convince us of.
I believe that there’s only about 80000 tons, but most is low level radioactive, only a few hundred tons with a 50000 year half life 👌
Your content is a tremendously helpful resource for those of us that are simply trying to learn about nuclear topics. It’s hard to learn these days without running into bad-faith grifters.
I remember doing a research paper on this back in high school. Was surprised at how sophisticated the technology already was and how pretty much all needed solutions have already been found. Really goes to show how divorced from reality most people's perceptions of nuclear power are.
The Simpsons has an awful lot to answer for.
Or how all in the people against utilizing nuclear are. They have lied and propagandized people into a false, unreasonable fear of nuclear.
Does anyone actually believe nuclear waste is glowing green barrels from a cartoon? Has anyone even seen a picture of anything like that to support the theory? I don't think most people are that divorced from reality. This video just opens on the false premise that we base our understanding of engineering on comic book imagery.
@@BlueZirnitra Most "people" are easily manipulable MORONS, of course they'll believe whatever TV tells them to.
Source: living in Mexico, I see this shit EVERY DAY.
Fear-mongering from a well-orchestrated smear campaign by Big Oil ironically working with environmentalists scared the stupid public who don't even know where honey comes from (It's bee barf). Mass-produced nuke plants with standardized parts would be super-cheap and ultra-efficient. We have enough uranium stockpiled right now to produce all the electricity we'll need for the next 2,000 years.
But, to switch to electric cars, we still need to lower the price by 50%, produce batteries which don't use such toxic metals (hopefully a form of iron phosphate battery will work out well, that would be the absolute best battery imaginable. Iron phosphate is cheap, non-toxic, we can make all of it ourselves, and it's actually a plant fertilizer!).
And the final big problem is electrical infrastructure. We need to replace ALL of it. It's most all very old and inefficient, and it can't handle the load of tens of millions of people plugging in their cars after work.
this is perfect. ive had civil arguments with people i know and the only argument they can ever raise about nuclear power is "what about a meltdown" or "but the waste" so this is the last piece of the puzzle i needed to help educate them. thanks man!
You forgot about the mining process of uranium.
@@kofi3124 as compared to the proscess for cobalt and the other toxic substances needed for solar and wind? No i havent in the slightest. But i choose the safest of all the dangerous processes since none are 100% clean and safe. Next flawed point please.
@@deathclawdaddy exept that if the world relied on nuclear energy we would have to mine and process a ridiculous amout of uranium - which alone is worse than the production/construction of reusable solar panels, windmills and most importantly water- and geothermal power plants.
While nuclear energy might be an effective mid-term power source, it should still "only" be a transitioning step from fussile fuels to renewables.
Next flawed counterpoint please.
@@kofi3124 I think you might be in the wrong comment section my friend. We are takling about clean energry (nuclear) vrs toxic/dangerous/innifeicent power (fossil fuel, wind, solar ect.) There is no such thing as 100% clean safe power regarding gathering, but the emmisions and environmental danger of mining uranium (which is quite abundant allready and can be synthisized and reclaimed in labs) gives no more danger than the crews building a new shopping mall in your city. Theres a reason thereare so many laws and inspections of such mines. Not to be rude but i would advise you do some reasearch before making pointless looping arguments with flavorless cliche arguments. All due respect i would only advise replying if you mean for an inteligent argument. I dontwaste time responding to trollsand children.
@@deathclawdaddy sadly, you didn't understand my previous reply in the slightest. I was refering to the emissions caused in the mining and processing procedure of radioactive fuels which is already way worse than extracting coal, oil and gas from the ground. Now add the rather resource-intensive construction of millions of long-term storage devices for radioactive waste to the list and suddenly nuclear energy isn't much greener than the conventional burning of fossil fuels.
Ok, I will admit that it has a lot more future potential as efficiency, safety and storage capacity of nuclear power plants increase but long-term we're better off with renewables anyway - you just indiscriminately calling them toxic won't change that.
My favorite video from you thus far. It was awesomely structured and presented. I loved how you handled its comedic moments; distributed properly and very well delivered. Also, everything made sense. Bravo!
Wow are you really that excited about lies about nuclear waste and everything made sense to you? You should really really careful about being part of the misinformation that is hurt a lot of people
Grew up watching you and Kurzgesagt and I am 200% Nuclear power.
Late to the party, but fun story:
My grandfather was a civil engineer specializing in groundwater. He worked for the majority of his career at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington. His job was basically to say, "We are supposed to store our waste on site because nothing else exists, where's the safest place to put it? In some ludicrously impressive engineering solving complicated sets of partial differential equations, he basically calculated that, even if you removed the concrete and casks and everything, if you just put Uranium out in the Hanford reach, diluted enough to keep it subcritical, it would do... nothing. I think he calculated that it would go at most a few cm. The reason is that the location he was looking at for storing the waste was on a huge basalt flow, and it's just... continuous, igneous rock. There's just nowhere for anything to go, even if you try dissolving it in water or whatever, because it's just... solid rock.
Also, he was sometimes accused of being a shill, just because he said the waste storage solutions were safe and nobody could believe that. Beside the fact that he published his conclusions in a paper for all (who have the math chops to follow his work) to see, he liked to respond that "My drinking water is the first to come out of the Columbia River after Hanford." He never bothered moving upstream.
No no, I want my waste _IN THE ATMOSPHERE, where it costs more energy than the initial "net" released_ to reharvest it.
Funny, that reminds me of the current situation in Sweden. They're basically digging a huge underground complex at the Forsmark nuclear power plant, which is supposed to store all the waste produced practically forever. Yet in the eyes of the green party this is apparently not good enough, even though there's not a situation (besides maybe an asteroid impact) that could possibly spill the waste out of this complex. It's probably the most over-engineered solution to nuclear waste ever made, and still not good enough to some.
@@onionman8160 Isn't that what your "neighbors" in Finland are also doing at Okiluoto with the "Cave". With the same setup?
Did he calculate for 10.000 years upwards? Did he calculate continental drift too? Would be interesting to know what he actually calculated because there is no such thing as solid rock and there never was, especially over a period of 10.000+ years.
@@ketamu5946 With currently known reactor tech you don't need to account for that much time, more like 200 years. Even then, if HLW is thoroughly processed and diluted in ceramic(mostly comprised of U-238) it's less radioactive than naturally occurring radioactive minerals. The rest is LLW and MLW that can be stored on site with little to no issues.
People don't want to dispose of Nuclear waste in a non-retrievable way because it still contains U-238 and other isotopes that can be used as fuel in fast breeder reactors. If closure of the Nuclear fuel cycle through FBRs was done already, this kind of eternal disposal would be more sought after. Even if the stuff was more radioactive, because it would be radioactive for less time.
With proper geology, they could even not shield the stuff. The natural reactor somewhere in Africa shows that the isotopes don't travel far from the disposal site. They won't pick geologically unstable sites for waste disposal either.
I always remember the video series on nuclear powered submarines by Destin from "Smarter Every Day". The funniest thing to hear there was that he, equipped with a small geiger counter, would always be exposed to more radiation on the surface than even near the nuclear reactor in the submarine.
Compare and contrast: where I live people are still bringing up the increased radiation from Tschernobyl. And completely miss that the natural thermal springs release two orders of magnitude more radiation, even the granite bedrock is more radioactive than the fallout. Talk about perspective...
My favorite part of Destin's on that sub was the Oxygen being made with a Candle...kinda.
For those worried about a Chernobyl type disaster: nuclear power plants are so much more safe now that a similar disaster is virtually impossible.
See how this comment ages in a few weeks when the Russians pull back from Zaporizhzhia.
You're right, Fukushima was worse.
@@huskydawg44 lol ask me how I know you're over 50 years old, go on do it. You're comment is false btw.
@@BSasafrasK I'm younger than 50, even though that should not matter. So why would I ask you how you know what's not true? You still won't believe me, since you clearly know it all already. A larger quantity of nuclear material was compromised at Fukushima. Just because there wasn't a catastrophic explosion at Fukushima... oh wait there were several nuclear explosions at Fukushima, including the fuel pools, and they leaked straight into the ocean. There were 6 reactors at Fukushima, and all had issues.. So by these measures, I believe Fukushima was worse than Chernobyl. It was just more glossed over by the media.
@@huskydawg44Fukushima was almost and quantifiably harmless
Great video. While I still think power plants are scary, the main thing I remember (and try to bring across to other people) is that ultimately, the choice between nuclear and fossil is a choice between evitable and inevitable disaster. A choice between maybe being poisoned if things go horribly wrong, versus DEFINITELY being poisoned when everything is going according to plan.
Seems like a false dichotomy, which makes me distrust anyone who frames the situation as a choice between just those two as disingenuous.
My grandfather worked in Westinghouse’s Nuclear division and was directly responsible for half a dozen plants in his career and no one would listen to him about the safety and security of how waste was treated. I wish he had you and RUclips in the 80s, Kyle.
The world would be a better place if content like this existed in the 80s!
My father worked at Waltz Mill 1970 and then the Pensacola plant of Westinghouse, he retired in 1984 from Pittsburgh, Gateway. I wonder if they knew each other.
@@silentwatch2260 what were their names
This is one of the things that drives me crazy about the "green" movement- they reject the only practical solution currently available and insist that we abandon our infrastructure for things that are not possible in the short term.
*irrational screaming*
... Radiation is -technically- green energy anyway
I don't know anyone that really rejects it though, almost everyone who is pro green/clean energy, accepts and preaches that nuclear energy is the best transitional option we have, and maybe even be in some ways permanently integrated into the future of energy.
@@brekkoh i think they meant the stupid people that think solar/wind is the better option for the in enviroment than nuclear power that can power a whole city without a emmiting a lot of carbon emssion
Because it's not about green energy
It's merely a vehicle to force a different agenda. No political movement will ever actually solve their core issue since it'd lose them voters. Instead they'll make weak nods towards the issue
I am pro-nuclear power.
*Summary*
- *Intro (**0:00** - **0:52**):* Debunks the misconception of nuclear waste as glowing green goo, asserting it's safely managed and stored.
- *Public Perception of Nuclear Waste (**0:55** - **2:01**):* Discusses public fears about nuclear waste, emphasizing misconceptions and the actual safety of nuclear waste management.
- *Definition and Origins of Nuclear Waste (**2:01** - **2:59**):* Explains what nuclear waste is and its sources, including nuclear power production and medicine.
- *Waste Management and Environmental Impact (**2:59** - **5:05**):* Argues that properly managed nuclear waste has no known environmental or health effects, contrasting this with the harmful effects of fossil fuel waste.
- *Comparison with Fossil Fuel Waste (**5:05** - **7:14**):* Highlights the significant environmental impact of fossil fuel waste compared to nuclear waste.
- *Types of Nuclear Waste and Management (**7:16** - **10:01**):* Details the types of nuclear waste (low, intermediate, high level) and their management, emphasizing the minimal volume of high-level waste.
- *Transportation and Safety of Nuclear Waste (**10:01** - **11:40**):* Describes the indestructible nature of nuclear waste transport casks and their safety record.
- *Deep Geological Disposal Solution (**11:59** - **15:03**):* Advocates for deep geological disposal of high-level nuclear waste as an efficient, safe solution.
- *Deep Isolation Technique (**15:03** - **17:04**):* Discusses deep isolation's borehole technology for nuclear waste disposal, offering a promising, convenient alternative to large repositories.
- *Closing Remarks and Call for Public Acceptance (**17:04** - **18:08**):* Emphasizes the importance of public acceptance for advancing nuclear waste solutions and nuclear power as a clean energy source.
Funnily enough, I learned about nuclear power playing minecraft. There was a mod for the game called BigReactors. The mod dev did a lot of research into real nuclear power. so when 13 year old me noticed that the waste my reactor produced wasn't harmful, i googled if it's the same in real life. been for nuclear ever since :)
sigma male move
Same here but with Factorio.
There's a mechanic in the game where pollution agitates the natives and causes them to attack you. At the beginning, I had no choice but to run things with surface coal. However, the scale of the coal burning was small enough (just some small scale forges and stuff) that it's a mitigated concern. The problem happened when I was scaling up my power needs. I could pour research into weapons and defensive structures but that sorta eats away at my economy. On top of that, the scaled up pollution just provoked more and more attacks as it spreads over a larger area. Also, constantly rebuilding broken structures eats up resources AND my time. I could tell immediately that it was a losing proposition.
I tried pouring resources into renewable energy but I kept running into issues. I was running a solar farm. Solar takes up a lot of space. It generates a decent amount of energy for free but I was having trouble finding the space for it. It was solvable though. I just cleared some more land and wired up the transmission lines a little longer. The next big problem I faced was the fact that Solar shuts off at night. I started building battery storage. It smoothed out the power curve but I ran into the same problem of space again. Just when I built enough solar panels and batteries to keep up with my current production needs...I find myself hamstrung because I couldn't scale up production and advance without building even more. It was fine during the day but I would run out of power and shut down halfway through the night. I ended up building a bunch of coal fired power plants and set them to only activate during the night. It was a reasonable stopgap solution...but I'm polluting again! Also, at this point, I've burned through a lot of the easy to get surface coal. Getting more coal required moving to more distant regions and building infrastructure to ship them back to the coal plant. Trains that could be shipping raw materials like iron and copper were shipping coal instead.
Then I had enough and went into nuclear research. It was pretty expensive but I had enough resources. I'll just deal with whatever Nuclear problems. The plant itself was hella expensive. I think it was more expensive than my coal plants combined. But, oh man, when it was up and running, I looked at my power chart and went: "Wait...HOW many gigawatts!??!?"
The Nuclear Plant generated so much power that not only did I tear down all the coal plants, I also shrunk down some of the solar and battery farm for space. Any coal transport infrastructure was repurposed for raw material transport. Any leftover coal was then used for starting up frontier bases that don't have power generation yet.
@@azkon7975 Ah, a fellow youtube essay comment author. 1) loved the story 2) this game sounds really cool
@@azkon7975 Wow I enjoyed the read, that game sounds fun for swole, wrinkled brains but it's too much for me xD
Same here but IndustrialCraft (2 Exp on 1.7.10) instead. Highly unrealistic but still enjoyed every second of it
I remember being shown that clip amongst others of the waste transportation devices during my radiation and contamination training
I was really hoping you'd show that clip of them throwing a goddamn train at it
And you're not exaggerating, they're as close to indestructible as you can get, its honestly amazingly impressive
If you ever wanna hide from a nuclear explosion, just get in the nuclear waste casks. Makes perfect sense
@@FirstLast-cc6cv you're not wrong one of those with enough food and water for a month and one person each container is literally all you'd need to live through a bombing.
Can they survive a missile strike? If I were at war with another nation and was trying to cause as much damage as possible, either directly or through indirect proxy’s, they’d be possible targets.
Under normal conditions, nuclear power is safe and efficient but I cannot shake the feeling that sooner or later, someone will purposely target radioactive material with the intention of irradiating the area. Were that to happen, it’d be disastrous and it likely wouldn’t be a one off incident.
@@ConnorGadson if I interpreted the video correctly they store it in an inert form where its turned into ceramics and glass, so chances are hitting that wouldn't really *radiate* the area it'd just leave the particles scattered, which is still a problem but I'd imagine a less severe problem
@@FirstLast-cc6cv if it were inert, it wouldn’t need to be stored in special containers in the first place.
Imagine being a genius who invented a clean and efficient power source with little to no problems only for movies and media to make it look bad and the public to prefer huge fossil fuel plants that literally destroy the air quality.
I’m so glad I found your channel I’ve always had a fascination/obsession with nuclear power and radiation in general. Just knowing something you can’t see with your own eyes can cause such destruction is mind blowing.
as a Health Physics Tech working i decommissioning job atm, i love how accurate all of your statements are. The amount of times i explain these kinds of things to people and they just don’t seem to care is insane. People can just get so set in there own ways.
their*
@@Goreuncle he's a physicist professor, yet you're here complaining about one spelling mistake.
Thats life, people never want to change their minds.
is that realistically being done as explained, though? I look at "Asse II" in Germany and wonder.
@@Goreuncle this is a RUclips comment section not an science paper
I spent 12 years in the Navy, our surf and sub nukes (nuclear propulsion officers) always had a bragging point that went like this: who do you think is more at risk of getting radiation related cancer, people working in the nuclear engine room, or f-18 pilots? The answer is f-18 pilots because they'll often be capped with their wrists exposed to the sun for 8 hours.
Its crazy how dangerous nuclear power can be, but how safe it becomes in the right hands.
More drivel. For a start cockpit Windows have gold in them for UV reflection.
Even more telling than that, right now we are receiving more ionizing radiation from the sun than some nerd banging his head on a turbine generator talking about his favorite anime girl while standing 5 and dimes.
@@longviewpotato OK so the sun is a given and we've adapted to live over 100yr regularly with it. Further still low amounts of dosages of the sun can prolong your life, especially in dogs. How is that in any way comparible with raw nuclear waste in barrels under the sea and Sellafield sat there hoping lightening doesn't hit the pools or half of England need moved out within 24hr? The problem isn't that the reactor is radiating anyone, the problem is the byproduct of it, how we don't have a clue how to get rid of it and the fact any accidents are hugely damaging for all life bar one type of bacteria. I will say it again.. the emergency process for ALL nuclear power stations is "run away as fast as you can and never come back" I've got no doubt in my mind that one day there will be a proper nuclear reactor explosion and you will fund out exactly why it was never a "clean energy" I mean look at what chern caused and that was only a blown lid. You weren't allowed to drink milk or any of that here over 2000 mile away, I'll repeat that 2000 MILES AWAY.
@@bigduphusaj162
Dude what the fuck are you talking about, you isolate waste. This has been known in the 70+ year history of nuclear power. Nuclear reactors cannot explode please educate yourself.
We live in fear of nuclear power because of the most irresponsible government ever. In the right hands nuclear makes sense, in the wrong hands it's a disaster.
The real reason nuclear isn't highly used is because of the fact that countries have nuclear weapons and can seriously disrupt an environment by bombing a nuclear plant. They experiment with nuclear as a weapon without issue, but terrified of what would happen if their nuclear presence was above ground rather than in missile silos.
Thank you for this informative video Kyle! There's so much misinformation and lack of knowledge of the actual details on this topic that it makes so many of the ethical takes (sometimes even those written by professional philosophers sadly) on this issue nearly redundant.
Thank you for the informative video there's so much misinformation would you like to see some real information I'll email you a picture of my daughter's last days after being poisoned by the groundwater that was contaminated with nuclear waste that it leached into the groundwater table don't you have any kind of conscience I like to know exactly what your interest is what your connection is to the industry I'm going to find out too
This guys ability to spew half truths is legendary. Nuclear power is reliable and potentially the future. Completely dismissing concerns about as "you're just dumb for being worried" is nasty work.
I work in nuclear fuel manufacturing and I love seeing videos showing how safe it actually is. Also all the trash and the gloves we wear in the hot area are burned in a incinerator, then the ash is processed and the little bit of uranium that’s in it, is put back into the cycle and use to make more fuel, there is almost no waste
So why do we have domes full of nuclear waste? Or underground salt mines with barrel of nuclear waste
@@anubis7630 by no waste I’m talking about there is no waste in the process of manufacturing the fuel.
@@anubis7630 when the washing machine is small, we can only take so so size washes at a time... when you got a bundle, it will take a few years to pull through 🤣🤣🤣
with more push for it, you see more processing plants spring up to fix the issue.
don't really matter, it's some people in Brussels that decide what will happen around Europe. The people of Europe gave their right to decide over themself away to some tards in Belgium that exterminated their own people n culture 🤣🤣
@@anubis7630 Because they didn't always have current day solutions for the waste?
@@anubis7630 There was a handy chart right in this video that showed how different forms of waste can be broken down at different rates. The long term stuff that takes decades or longer to become inert goes in those casks, while the smaller stuff like the gloves, etc takes less than 100 days to deal with.
Or we could reprocess the high level waste back into useable fuel. When I’ve worked outages at my local NPP, I remember learning in training on the basics of nuclear power, that ~98% of that “waste” is actually uranium that could still be fissioned. The reason it’s not is because daughter products from the reaction begin to inhibit sustaining the fission reaction within the fuel bundle. We don’t really need a “million year solution” for our high level waste, because we’d probably dig it back up after 100.
breeder reactors
Burying the waste almost seems like a crime.
?
Back in the 1970s I think, it was feared that the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel would potentially result in nuclear weapon proliferation so it was banned (in the US) and the ban has remained in place ever since. That's why spent nuclear fuel has to be stored and ultimately buried, if a site is ever finished, as nobody would be allowed to separate the useful from the useless (which would have to be buried/stored safely but a vastly smaller amount of material) to produce new fuel rods.
@@4k8t And yet we have developed reactors to utilize nuclear waste and have operated them in the country.
I feel like this is one of the most important youtube videos ever made
I love that people are like "screw fossil fuels" okay let's use nuclear power "no, I was told that's bad"
In high school, I did an essay on nuclear power and went into class and presented it, my conclusion was that nuclear power was better than we think it is and that we should really work towards nuclear energy since it's cleaner and much more efficient, ofc my class thought I was crazy, but I stud by it and I still do
Stand firm my friend
I'm literally researching nuclear energy right now for a high school presentation
Hopefully the next Fukushima/Chernobyl will change your mind.
@@pedrokantor3997
How are big accidents like Chernobyl and Fukushima any different than something like the oil spill in the gulf of Mexico or just last October when almost 25,000 gallons of oil were spilled off the coast of California. At least Nuclear accidents are far less likely to happen and have far less environmental impact than oil spills which have been happening fairly consistently over the past 50 or so years
@@westleymorris3483 That is true, that we can concur on.
Kyle: makes a compelling series of videos on the dangers of nuclear energy
Also Kyle: makes probably THE most compelling argument for the safety and efficiency of nuclear power
Thanks for showing us both sides of the coin man. Appreciate all this great info
Which other video are you referring to?
@@mixup2216 I think he’s referring to how the media portrays nuclear power as this boogeyman destroying society and making our fish have 3 eyes
@@mixup2216 I was more referring to his Half life histories series. Just the stuff about the demon core and castle bravo and all of the dark things that go along with nuclear energy.
@@codymccormick7317 Sorry but none of the two examples you mentioned have anything to do with nuclear energy. They are a part of nuclear weapons research and development. They are about as related as artificial fertilizer and c4.
@@mikaeljensen4399 yeah my bad, I was referring to the energy potential of a nuclear weapon not the dangers of nuclear energy as a power source. Bad wording on my part
i love the extra detail of the thumbnail with the blue outline for the real example. it's not gonna be glowing, but if it somehow still did, the glow would be blue.
You trying to tell me the Fallout universe had it right? We should be using nuclear for everything already? Wowzers.
Yeah, I read about that incident. They found a can of cobalt iirc and started playing with it because it glowed. Then brought it home so the kids could play with it. That entire area became a hotspot for a while.
But, that was from a piece of medical equipment abandoned in a closed clinic. It was a fine powder that went *everywhere.* Not exactly apples to apples with nuclear waste from a power plant.
Kyle actually covered that in one of his Half-life History episodes I think… after the clinic closed, I believe one of the owners came back to retrieve the stuff and was denied entrance by the local government, even after he warned them what could happen if they didn’t deal with the stuff.
Caesium-137 actually, as a chloride salt, but the most common one is indeed Cobalt-60. Funny enough, it can actually be a byproduct of spent fuel reprocessing from certain electroproductor nuclear Reactors. Useful as a radiotherapy agent. To treat cancer. Iodine 131 is also a radiotherapy agent. The rule of thumb about cancer is literally :if something can cause it it can treat it.
it was actually cesium 137
"They weigh as much as the world's heaviest door", gee thanks, that's the most useful unit of measure I have never used!
Almost as accurate as imperial system
@@DaelothM curious,what's more accurate than the "metric" system?
@@motrhead69 They're all accurate, if you use them accurately.
I think it is something in the range of 3 elephants
@@motrhead69 They are exactly the same in accuracy - as in 1893 a foot was officially defined as .30480061 meters. And currently a meter is defined as the distance travelled by light in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second. The metric system is merely easier to use as conversions between units are based on multiples of ten and volume is more easily related to distance by the fact that 1 ml = 1 cm^3. So as long as you have an equally accurately made ruler or scale in whatever system, you can make equally accurate measurements.
I remember playing a minecraft map called deep water horizon, where you had to do certain tasks in a certain amount of time to avoid it exploding (I did not succeed). This video reminded me of just how little the decision makers of the world actually care about their people.
Yo shout out to Kyle for educating me so much. Just restarted the half life histories videos you made and now learning about how nuclear energy works and how the waste is dealt with is really cool. You are doing great work man!! Thank you and keep it up!!!🙌🏾🙌🏾💪🏾☢️☢️☢️
I learned that nuclear energy is safer than the movies depict not too long ago, but I'm glad I found this video to learn more about that. Thank you, Kyle.
i learned that last year heh
Fukushima is still leaking radiation into the Pacific.
Nuclear energy has 2 massive flaws Meltdowns and human error.
Learned that in the '80s. In fact, nuclear energy is safer than solar and wind as well.
@@outofcompliance1639 lol you folks are physically incapable of saying nuclear good without also saying renewables bad
@@superguy7044 And how often has there been a meltdown or enough of a major risk caused by human error?
It continues to be depressing to me that nuclear power hasn't been more widely accepted in the United States. New gen technology is so much better than what most of the current plants are.
oh trust me it is widely accepted, the dominant market of the companies from fossil fuels create so much revenue though, that they can divide markets. Also making it seem that no one wants it.
Not only that, but the waste of the old plants can be processed and run through some of the modern reactors, resulting in less waste than exists now.
people don't understand how nuclear power works. They think if there is a meltdown, it will explode like Chernobyl did
Fukushima??
Three mile island??
Just saying
@@johnaltz7143 yep, old gen technology. And nobody was killed from either event.
0:30 "much like commercials depicting people wearing jackets and jeans sitting in their own home
Me, sitting in my own home, sitting with a jacket and jeans on: uhhh... wait a minute, am I wearing...?
Thank you for this! You have definitely helped me see nuclear energy in a more positive way. It makes me wonder why on earth we are still using coal!
Wow one video and you see nuclear energy and the more positive way give me a break I got a bridge to sell you is being a family member of a child that developed tumors from the groundwater that was poisoned by nuclear waste I take offense at your comment you'll call me shows why the nuclear industry is fun in these videos to change people like you into supporters who are definitely not educated
Because oil and coal companies love money and throw money at propaganda and false news to demonize nuclear energy. They even do sneaky things like toss passing minor investments at Wind/Solar to say "we're doing our part to help the environment" while using said investment to slam nuclear energy more because nuclear can legitimately put them out of business whereas wind/solar can't be scaled high enough to do the same
I think it’s mainly just because of public perception of nuclear energy is bad
Awesome video!
I lived in parts of South Korea where people would protest nuclear reactors (even though there were none in the vicinity) for years. Just standing outside with banners and protesting, especially after Chernobyl became popular on Netflix.
Just for funsies, I went to visit one of the bigger reactors here a few years back and it was an incredible experience. Not only is the safety absolutely stellar and they've worked out all of the little issues decades ago, but they literally are able to produce these types of reactors in 2-3 year time at any location, except that...nobody in Korea wants them anymore.
They also had one of these fun impact videos to show, except that instead of a train it was fighter jet filmed to collide with one of the nuclear facility domes to demonstrate the safety...crazy stuff
Following the Fukushima disaster, there's been an unfortunate push against the use of reactors and a dramatic increase in coal energy use which turned this place very similar to Beijing.
Just yesterday the pollution outside was so bad I could taste it in my mouth even though I was wearing a mask. I have to buy HEPA filters every 3 months for the in-house use and even then they turn pitch black after 90 days.
This is the future without nuclear power
Oh and yes...definitely time to relocate. The pollution levels were never that bad here and it's only been getting worse every year because of the anti-nuclear rhetoric
You will love his climate change and world hunger was solved decades ago video
Not sure where YOU ARE but Pollution did not come OVERNITE.. it has been building up.. more-n-more every year till it overflowed National Boundaries and got Intetnational Attention as the UNEP was born in June 1972.. yes 50 years back.
But, at the behest of THE POLLUTERS Fossil, Biomass, Nuclear etc.. and their VERY VRRY DEEP POCKETS.. they have only "allowed" Endless Discussions but NO CONCRETE ACTION ....even though at the 1992 UN Rio Conference Nation (170+ today) agreed to Principle #16 that established THAT POLLUTERS MUST PAY (PMP) FOR DAMAGES & SOCIETAL COSTS BUT NOT A DOLLAR HAS BEEN RAISED OR LEVIED.. AS ALL LEADERS & OFFICIALS JUST PUPPET THE POLLUTERS ORDERS.. STAY QUIET.. and thereby it "lays buried" deep in the numerous UN Agreements, Conferences, Meeting Notes etc.. etc.. WHO IS TO BLAME..???
YOU & ME.. as we keep VOTING THESE POLLUTERS PUPPETS IN OVER-N-OVER -N-OVER AGAIN ...
You CANNOT ESCAPES from Pollution... in ANY CORNER OF THE EARTH THAT MANKIND ONLY HAS DESTROYED... WITH LOTS-N-LOTS OF WORDS BUT ZERO ACTION.. and that Includes Nuclear Plants too..
FYI.. I was a Consultant to KEPCO on some of the Wolsung Units in 1995... and am quite familiar with this technology.. with 20,000MW of Nuclear Plants.. "under my belt"... PWR, BWR, CANDU, HTGR etc.. etc... even a 150MW Nuclear Ice Breaker Study about 40 years back..
FYI.. my neighbor in India, where I reside at present, just moved his wife and ~10 year old son to Canada because of his ASTHMATIC condition.. yes.. due to POLLUTION ...
LOST AN UNCLE WHO WAS A MINING ENGINEER.. etc.. etc..
STOP FOOLING AROUND OR GETTING IMPRESSED WITH NUCLEAR & ITS DEADLY NUCLEAR WASTE, OR FOSSIL/BIOMASS etc THAT ALL POLLUTE..
MANKIND JUST GIFTED ITSELF THE ABILITY TO USE ONLY SOLAR ENERGY (NO COMPROMISES HERE PLEASE) TO MEET ALL OF ITS ENERGY NEEDS WITH ZERO POLLUTION.
IT IS POLLUTION FREE, ABUNDANT (173,000TW.. or 173,000TWh/HOUR), SUSTAINABLE (BEEN HERE SINCE THE BIRTH OF THE EARTH.. MUCH MUCH BEFORE MANKIND "SHOWED UP" & WILL STILL BE THERE LONG AFTER MAN DISAPPEARS FROM EARTH), SAFE (No Nuclear or Other Accidents here) .. and FREE TOO..
Just use PV Panels to Convert Sunlight to Pollution Free Electricity by using AgriVoltaics (AV) on just 1 Million km2 of the EXISTING 15 Million km2 of Global Farmland with a 150TW System generating 180,000TWh/yr to MEET ALL OF MANKINDS ENERGY NEEDS (130,000TWh/yr today) by 2050...
Impose a Global, Unform, Fair and Just PMP Levy of $0.28/KWh on the 130Trillion KWhe/yr of Energy used Globally.. TODAY.. or $36.5 Trillion/yr.. to OFFSET AN EQUAL SOCIETAL COST OF POLLUTION
• 9 MILLION PREMATURE DEATHS ANNUALLY .. $1 MILLION/VICTIM.. $ 9 Trillion/yr
• 275 MILLION DALY OF SUFFERING .. $100,000/DALY... $27.5 Yrillion Annually.
The above PMP Levy can FINANCE & USHER IN A ZERO POLLUTION EARTH WITHIN A DOZEN YEARS ... FROM THE $400 TRILLION LEVIED/COLLECTED AROUND THE WORLD.... PAID BY THE POLLUTERS ONLY.... !!!
ITS EASY.. IF YOU TRY..!!!
>but they literally are able to produce these types of reactors in 2-3 year time at any location, except that...nobody in Korea wants them anymore
At least there's some international demand for those.
Anton! What's up my guy! I saw your profile pic and was like huh? I wonder if anyone else noticed lol anyways love your content I try to follow along the best I can, you make space and science fun and digestible for someone like myself. Thanks!
Honestly, I completely agree. Nuclear power is far cleaner and safer option than fossil fuels.
I like how the image of “hazardous” waste he used isn’t even from the Simpsons.
It’s from Satisfactory. That’s how pervasive these myths are.
To be fair, Ficsit is the kind of dystopian future company that would dump radioactive waste as green goo in poorly sealed barrels because it's cheaper and they're planet cracking anyway.
Satisfactory’s depiction of nuclear waste is especially bad. Each reactor somehow produces tons of it a minute, and standing near it kills you in seconds without a hazmat suit. Even uraninite ore somehow kills you! It’s ridiculous.
Was looking for this
Bad doggo!
to be fair I doubt FICSIT cares about properly storing waste
You're smart and I like you. Thanks for making approachable content about complex things.
Trying to tarnish fossil fuels is probably more dangerous than anything in this video
Unfortunately improper management of waste in the past has tainted the public consciousness. Sites like Hanford, WA were incredibly mismanaged in the early days, so people think this is still how we do things. This borehole project could have been done at likely every site for less than we have already spent on the now defunct Yucca Mountain project.
Hanford actually haunts me because I'm something of a product of the disaster.
My grandfather was part of the cleanup crew there and afterwards he and grandma moved back to texas. They tried to have a second child then and my grandmother had like three or four miscarriages before managing to have my father. Grandpa and my uncle were very tall men, physically fit, strong, some astigmatism but that was the worst of it.
My father was born small, he was also born with a malfunctioning valve in his heart, had spinal scoliosis so bad he had to have a metal rod implanted in his body to straighten him out.he also very bad vision.
My dad had me and I too was born tiny, doctors didn't expect me to survive the night. I have the same deformed valve in my heart my father has but fortunately i didn't AS BAD a case of scoliosis. My eyes are also incredibly wonky to where when i go to get new glasses doctors are always very baffled about how my eyes could be as they are.
Both my father and I are short compared to how tall my uncle is and my grandfather was.
Yet even so, i don't think nuclear power is a bad thing. I think it's one of the best options for power production our species has.
@@glenngriffon8032 My condolences!
It is amazing, that despite those horrible and terrifying handicaps you do not resolve to blind hatred, but have understanding and follow (as good as possible) the truth.
Your ego is not bound to the knowledge you carry! And if it would be proven, that nuclear is actually as bad and all this is a facade, it is important, even if someone is heavily pro nuclear, to do a 180 for that mentioned reason and instead of shutting everything down searching for a solution for those problems.
We are all people and all we need to do is to be critical about things but also put our trust in knowledge and not to be afraid to change opinions and views!
@@glenngriffon8032 Wow. Yeah it's impossible to prove or disprove but at least some of those things must be related to exposure. Seems your brain came out ok though if you can still be pro-nuclear in spite of all that!
Even at it's worst, the little bit of leaking from a mismanaged nuclear waste site is not killing 10 million a year from air pollution like fossil fuels do.
Hanford is still being mismanaged. People are still dying because of it.
I got lucky that this was taught at my middle school almost 25 years ago. One of the science teachers had majored on the subject and the school let him teach a week long course about nuclear energy and waste. By the time I got there it was a required course for all 8th graders to take and I've been an advocate for nuclear power ever since. Over the decades this brief education has helped me assuage the fears of many people in my own life about nuclear power; so thank you for sharing this on such a big forum and always keep up the good fight Kyle!
Why are you ignoring how expensive nuclear power is? It costs five times as much as some renewables
Nuclear is not more expensive. Nuclear was cheaper than coal, but then way too much safety regulation was put on it. But hey, enjoy the coming rolling blackouts and shortages. Many countries are abandoning nuclear power. Germany is closing its last nuclear power reactors by then of 2022.
And with the lack of natural gas, they are SOL. Oh well.
@@Creeperking-bw7wi That may be true, however you also need to take into account that many other renewables have seen vastly more innovation and investment since the 1980's than nuclear has. Given the various scares and misunderstanding, nuclear power innovation and investment has essentially been at a snail's pace since the 70's. Additionally no renewable is as universal as nuclear. Hydro, solar, wind and geothermal, are all great and no doubt better, but each's availability, cost and effectiveness vary vastly by where you're at. Nuclear on the other hand has essentially no such limitations. If some of the modern reactor designs are brought up to scale, I can pretty much guarantee that the costs would plummet...especially compared against fossil fuels.
Ultimately nuclear isn't the singular answer, but a part of the greater whole...a part that is all but being ignored because of misunderstandings and outdated information. Misunderstandings that include the subject matter of this video that Kyle is trying to clear up.
@@Creeperking-bw7wi
Because something that works is better than something that doesn't, even if it is more expensive.
@@freman007 And why so renewables not work? They are producing more electricity than nuclear so which one isn't working?
Hey Kyle, have you ever thought about running for a public office to enact change politically on nuclear energy?
This is the tobacco vs marijuana debate all over. Just because something is dangerous and got through the gate doesn't mean we should let something a little less dangerous through the gate.
You know, the absurd thing is that a lot of the high level nuclear waste can just be recycled by other types of reactors. Over here in Canada, due to the lack of technology to use the early US nuclear designs, CANDU reactors worked differently, and actually were capable of using US nuclear waste as its fuel. Even more modern designs can further use the waste from the CANDU reactors to the point that comparatively very little long lasting waste will be left.
More than worrying about waste, it's such a shame that we're using it as an excuse to avoid making new nuclear power plants in general when it's a proven and effective solution to so much of our energy problems.
unfortunately far too many nuclear power regulations smell of ash and gas
I think you are talking about reprocessing fuel. I think it is not used in the US to make Russia feel like the cold war is over. Russia probably is not reciprocating.
@@ValleyDragon France has been reprocessing its own and other countries' "spent" fuel for decades.
@@Hunpecked They even had FBRs to get some extra fuel from U-238 from the fuel.
@@Hunpecked Russia even reprocesses some of France's fuel (we had a small 'green' outrage about that fact in bullshit media)
It's a phenomenon similar to air travel. People were so scared of suffering an accident, that more than enough regulations have been passed to throw air travel all the way into being much safer than the "good old reliable" car.
this is a good analogy, yes! People were so scared of having a flight because of the constant failure on the plane itself, and now the government imposes much stricter regulations to make any flight as safe as possible
@@sunder739 and unfortunately, the opposite also applies in energy: bunker oil is like the good old reliable car, much more dangerous in the long run, but less spectacularly dangerous up front.
I guess it depends on how you define danger. The odds of surviving a car accident are pretty good to the point of almost a guarantee, over 99%. The odds of surviving an aircraft accident are 42% at best in a controlled crash(rare) and anything other than that dips to about 27%. Or course your odds of being in a fatal car accident are much higher than a fatal aircraft accident. Usually about 32-33 thousand people a year die in car crashes compared to about 300 a year in commercial air flights. Pick your poison I guess. Fear isn't always rational.
@@MrBottlecapBill yep, and that's exactly the thing, the human mind tends to downplay dangers that are not spectacular or have individually small consequences. Bruce Schneier has written some pretty good essays on that matter.
except that an air plane can't, due to greed and mismanagement like in Long Island, accidentally OOOPPPPS WIPED OUT HALF THE COUNTRY BECAUSE SOMEONE PRESSED THE WRONG BUTTON! yes exaggeration at the end there, no not in the first part look up the people who was ORGANIZING THE COVER UP's testimony in the whole long island thing, "it would have wiped out the east coast from new york to georgia, but we didn't want to get in trouble and we certainly didn't want to loose all the money" like yeah sure other people are TOTALLY gonna do the right thing... because that happens ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL the time from giant companies, right??????
I spent the last 4 years doing nuclear projects. Primarily as a “Dry Cask Storage Technician” where I was on a team that moved spent nuclear fuel from the Spent Fuel Pool into Dry Cask Storage. I also worked as a “Waste Specialist” and most recently as a Oversight Specialist, where I was responsible for observing and reporting on GTCC waste activities. GTCC is “Greater than Class C Waste”.
Nuclear energy is horribly misrepresented and the public really does need to understand the truth about it. It’s a great form of energy.
I actually worked at the nuclear plant you mentioned “on the beach” for two years.
The problem is that before the salutations we dumped 100 of tones at sea
Imagine how much more efficient we would be if Chernobyl didn’t happen.
"yeah, cause it's not like a combination of human error and poor construction methods caused the worst nuclear disaster in history!"
@@Charles-7 surely we can save money on these isotopic rods yes yes
@@hellequin.303 if you mean control rods, then no those kinds of rods are needed cause without them, every reactor would like explode.
You know what Charlie your right, your clearly wiser than the engineers of chernobyl. Probably more responsible aswell. All the best.
@@hellequin.303 you don't know the difference between sarcastic and literal senses do you?
This. All of this. I worked in radioactive waste for several years, and it was a real eye-opener to just how safe the nuclear industry is.
I don't think the host would want a lambo. Sports cars are small, Spartan, and uncomfortable. Kyle is a giant.
This is honestly so fascinating! I wish this was talked about more and people were better educated on these things. I never realized the sheer number of precautions that actually go into making this waste as safe as possible! I think that if more people learned about all the things you teach on here they would be more open to nuclear energy. Ultimately it's not as dangerous as people think it is. The lessons we've learned on nuclear tech are lessons learned through pain and blood but those lessons have lead to many procedures and processes that help protect against a repeat event.
You want to have a better education look at my daughter's gravestone we live Downstream from the processing plant that got contaminated groundwater if you want a better education to quote you I think if people learned about all the things you teach give me a break
If those are Coal Plants just in the US, I can’t imagine the volume of contamination in China where most international production goes. Very interesting. Never knew about deep isolation.
He said in the video that on bad days in Beijing, the air quality is worse than at ground zero immediately following 9-11
Chinas actual pollution is much higher than the propaganda number China provides. I can only imagine how many people have died from their heavily polluted air...
Having lived in Nanjing, China for a few years, the air quality ranged from hazy to shutting down schools and telling people to stay home because you couldn't see 4 meters away.
Fun times.
and yet china has over half the number of reactors of USA and they are constantly building new ones (nuclear power generation has almost doubled between 2016-2019 there). The country with one of the biggest pollution problems is switching to nuclear.
@@loran6692 Good for them, since they're a totalitarian country very similar to Nazi Germany, they can simply arrest and execute any environmental protesters.
I like Kyle and he seems to have the best information of anybody, but he left out something important. Many of nuclear power's problems are in part because we are using reactor designs that are decades old. The reason we have so much nuclear waste is largely because current reactors can only use a limited percentage of the energy in the fuel rods. There are now advanced reactor designs that are simpler, safer, and could use spent fuel rods, which are high level waste, as their fuel source. This means unclear fuel would be used twice, and the material remaining would be much less radioactive and therefore much safer to handle.
Higher burnup is fantastic but a once through fuel cycle by its very nature carries with it waste, not so much the reactor designs. Reprocessing waste would drastically reduce it. Advanced designs, particularly fast reactors, can technically reduce the total lifetime of the radioactive waste. However, it still leaves fission products and things that are quite dangerous. Regardless of your reactor design, fuel is always extremely radioactive.
There's also an issue that he's thinking like a scientist, which is great, but not realizing the majority of the US is severely brain damaged from years of lead poisoning. They do not care about facts.
Now remember, the waste isn't that bad.
@@IAmCoopa the fuel may always be radioactive, but being able to re-burn HLW and get perhaps MLW out in fission products would be amazing. Even then, many of those could have use cases for these products, and in theory we could in the future make a reactor - or several reactors - that could react high grade nuclear fuels into lead. Even if we can't in practice, the storage of waste works well enough as is and could be constantly developed in the future.
It's a circular logic problem: we think nuclear is unsafe so we stick to the way to use it we know best, thus halting the progress of the technology and keeping it as it is, so the public opinion stays the same as well.
Agreed, discarded or abandoned medical equipment is the #1 source of super spreader events.
The biggest problem with nuclear energy seems to be human error which sadly cant get patched.
Kyle: “I’m no scientist…”
Also Kyle: does research, scrutinizes sources, evaluates validity and accuracy of data, strives for objectivity, presents facts with minimal opinion, adheres to scientific methods of inquiry, is independently funded by largely unbiased sources
Kyle is more scientist than some actual, literal scientists
By any definition, he is a scientist. There isn't actually a job description. Scientists are just people who follow a methodology (not necessarily those who claim the title and certainly not those who buy fake degrees for the purpose).
congrats on the worst comment ever
@@Wtahc congratulating yourself is kinda weird
you described good journalism. For it being science, the goal would be to aquire and produce new knowledge.
Yes. And he also avoids simple, basic questions like: if nuclear is so good, how comes the world still runs on old 2nd generation reactors? If nuclear is so good, why even France stopped research on 4th generation plants? And also: yes, nuclear waste is not as bad as CO2 - but the planets has ways of reabsorbing CO2. Nuclear waste? Not so much...
He's a nuclear fanboy. A smart, well educated one, but still a fanboy oblivious of the greater picture (nuclear power is insanely uneconomical and a waste of precious resources we should invest on renewables)
I honestly love the caveman brain solution to waste and it's sheer effectiveness. Dig big hole, throw thing in hole, cover up hole.
I personally don't like it. There is no reason not to reprocess the waste to extract the remaining fissile material out of it, of which there actually is a lot. 95% of a used fuel rod is good uranium still. Throwing that away is like taking one bite out of a steak and throwing the rest in the trash.
There is already a site and facilities for permanent nuclear waste storage in Finland, and they will start loading it in the near future if that has not already started. This is already a solved problem.