Cat Litter Caused an Actual Nuclear Incident
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- Опубликовано: 2 окт 2024
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Back in 2014, using the wrong type of cat litter led to a serious nuclear incident. This was at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, New Mexico, a site used for the permanent storage of nuclear waste deep underground. Cat litter is used for packing barrels of nuclear waste to help absorb some liquids and nitrate salts, but it turns out that using the wrong type, organic instead of inorganic, can have some serious consequences. Find out more, right here!
LINKS:
Vincent Ialenti Article: www.tandfonlin...
LA Times - Nuclear accident in New Mexico ranks among the costliest in U.S. history: www.latimes.co...
BBC Article: www.bbc.co.uk/...
WIPP Wiki: en.wikipedia.o...
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Dude. My cat creates nuclear materials. Hard breathing and actually doesn’t decay over time, but gets stronger..
Cleaning the litter box at my house, Makes that HBO series on Chernobyl look like kitty porn.
Cats are dangerous creatures.
A similar, but non nuclear, incident occurred at my former workplace in the early 1990's. Our procedure for disposing of hazardous chemical waste from the research labs involved placing the waste in a 1/2 gallon fluorinated polyethylene jug and then placing 30 such jugs (three tiers of 10) in a 30 gallon "fiber pack" (cardboard drum) lined with a polyethylene bag and the tiers separated by corrugated cardboard disks. The bottom of the pack and each tier also got a scoop of absorbent clay granules (yes, kitty litter). When the drum was full, a lid was clamped on and the pack trucked to a feeding pit for the on-site incinerator (a modified rotary kiln, such as used for cement production). At some point, a decision was made to switch from clay based absorbent to an organic absorbent (dried and ground corn cobs iirc), I think to reduce solid waste that had to be landfilled. The inevitable happened, a bottle leaked a mix of concentrated nitric and sulfuric acids, the cellulose based absorbent caught fire and everything in the holding pit went up. This wasn't as bad as it sounds, since the pit fed directly into the incinerator, with the packs being shoved along in batches by a hydraulic ram. The operators just stopped adding packs to the pit for a few hours, while the flaming waste was shoved into the incinerator, emptying the pit. The only change made after the incident was that concentrated acid was not allowed into the waste packs, it had to be diluted first.
Curious why they needed fluorinated PE as opposed to plain PE? Since you were incinerating the wasts did that mean an incresed emission of hydrogen fluoride and/or PFAS?
@@soundspark A lot of our waste was hydrocarbon in nature, which caused untreated polyethylene jugs to soften and split. The treated jugs did not contain much fluorine. They were made via a brief exposure of regular PE jugs to dilute fluorine gas, so just an atom thick surface layer of fluorine, maybe a part per billion of the jugs, which were less than a percent of the waste stream. The incinerator was known locally as the "six nines" as it destroyed > 99.9999% of the test waste (carbon tetrachloride, which is almost impossible to burn and was actually used in fire extinguishers once upon a time) during its annual testing for state certification. Any acid gases (HCl, HF) were removed in the scrubber stack between the incinerator and the chimney. Not sure if any PFAS was formed under normal operating conditions, interesting question.
What a catastrophe!
Sorry.
Exploding Kittens IRL
Typical problem. Who orders and applies this filler? Yes, some workers who have no idea of chemistry, "organic" means "natural" for them and so on. So when they swapped the product (mb old one was not available? 15 years changes it easy) no rings and light turned on in heads. Oops, kaboom. Omnissia does not forgive silly humans who diverts from sacred rituals!
Makes sense they use cat litter for nuclear waste… I’ve often thought the god awful smelling stuff that comes out of my one cat’s butt is akin to nuclear waste… 😂
Change your cats food. I had to try about 4 different kinds before I found something that would stop mine from producing corium.
What an underrated channel. You got a new subscriber
Thank you so much!
At first I thought it was going to be about a cat that had just received radioactive therapy and their litter had set off radiation alarms.
Great video, knowledge is power.
Based on what you shared, I think it was an accident.
Well i never , Maybe homer Simpson works there ? 🚀 🛰🛰🌙🌞🌞🌞
It's really "Heinlein's Razor" but Hanlon has been said enough that's it's a phrase now.
How long until new bags of kitty litter will be required to have appropriate warnings on the label? (i.e. "WARNING! Not for nuclear waste") 🤔 And I wonder what the color changing litter does when exposed to radioactivity? THAT is NOT a healthy color! 😅
Also, I kept thinking of Nibbler from Futurama... what kind of litter did Leela use? ☢
Chris, if you become more dynamic visually, you'll fall through my screen!
At least you seem to be yelling less often.
There is that Briton who has the disaster scale and bingo…
It's not like pencil lead isn't a critical reactor component.
Thanks Chris for a fun video. Hope they sort it all out. Seems like safety protocols were not implemented rigorously enough.
I want a tee shirt like this.
His tee shirt! 😅
🐈⬛🙀