Moderators don't prevent meltdowns, they increase the neutron cross section, the likelihood that a neutron will interact with a target nucleus, and allow for more reactions to occur. The control rods are the main tool used to adjust the neutron flux to be self sustaining, known as critical, and not super-critical aka meltdown.
@Tanner Stein Super-critical is the state of a reactor whenever it is increasing power level. A reactor is not going to melt down just because it is super-critical. For a meltdown to occur, either the super-critical condition must be sustained until the heat generate is so great that the cooling system can not remove the excess heat, or the cooling system itself fails.
@Bill Leach, you're absolutely right. I used an oversimplification to help point out the big flaw in this video: that moderators "prevent meltdowns" by decreasing the likelihood of nuclear reactions. A moderator, or neutron moderator, is any medium, typically heavy or light water, that reduces the energy of fast neutrons, converting them to thermal neutrons, or slow neutrons, capable of sustaining a nuclear chain reaction involving uranium-235 or a similar fissile nuclide.
@@@93naners Thanks. I see where you are coming from now. Yes, indeed in the case for the typical pressurized water reactor a meltdown would not even be possible without there having been sufficient water to produce power in the first place. Upon loss of water, the fuel melts not because of fission but rather because of what is called decay heat from the short half-life fission products that decay. The negative coefficient of reactivity (that is waters effect on K-effective) does indeed reduce the probability of a meltdown but only if some circulating water remains. Also, the other common moderator is carbon or graphite which provides for NO cooling so obviously would not 'prevent a meltdown.' I don't think carbon moderator has a negative reactivity coefficient with respect to temperature either.
Downvoted for wrong information. Moderator slows down neutrons to make fission EASIER, not to "prevent explosion". This allows the reactor to run on less-enriched fuel.
In order to occur, the neutron released in a fission reaction has to be captured by other heavy nuclei. If the neutron is traveling too fast, then it has less of a chance to be absorbed.
Sorry Gotlyfe, but this isn't the sort of statement you can find "sources" for. I'm a nuclear engineering student and I can tell you that the role of the moderator is what Silanael said. The neutrons will collide with the nucleus of a hydrogen atom, and this inelastic collision reduces the kinetic energy of the neutron by about half. This has to happen a couple of times for the neutron to be "thermalized." What that means is this: When neutrons are produced in a fission reaction, they fly away at incredibly high speeds. The absorption cross section of U-235, the fuel, INCREASES as the speed of the neutrons hitting said U235 DECREASES. Why exactly this happens is a bit of a quantum conundrum so I'll leave it at that. But yeah basically, if Uranium 235 needs slow neutrons to fission again, and a fission itself produces fast neutrons, you need collisions with Hydrogen nuclei (protons) to slow it down. Let me know if you want to know more about how moderators can control the nuclear reactions :)
Well to be perfectly honest, in my humblest opinion, of course without offending anyone who would otherwise think differently from my own point of view, but also by looking into this matter in a different perspective and without being condemning or condescending to those opposed to one's view's, as well as considering each and everyone's unique and valid opinion, I honestly believe that I completely forgot what I was about to say.
@@craigcorson3036 its a reddit thread.... by the way OP shut up bro. Stop being such a liberal and being scared to offend people bro, offeding people is fun. I do it all the time.
I was so happy to see this finally covered by a source that a lot of people see and then horrified at the incorrect information given. There is a BIG difference between a nuclear explosion from a bomb and a nuclear reactor melt down...
Thorium reactors will burn our nuclear waste as a starting cycle. The waste can also be continually fed into a thorium reactor to completely use up the fuel. A traditional reactor only uses 10-15% of the solid fuel before the rods are damaged beyond safe use do to Xeon gases produced durning the reaction. We need to be pushing for thorium in the USA. China is well on its way to building a full size reactor.
I plugged thorium reactors in my comment above. But for the life of me, I can't understand why the U.S. isn't working on thorium as a safe means of producing huge amounts of clean (CO2-free) energy?
@@goofybri8949 Because per unit, it is still significantly more expensive than nearly anything else. Maybe R&D would get that down to usefully low costs, but why bother when we already have clean and cheap options we've already put the R&D into?
think about it, the public are scared of nuclear. thered be a lot of pushback against any government that tried to implement this. also the current president is trump who doesnt understand climate change and who isnt looking for renewable energies right now, especially expensive ones
There's too much nuclear scare still, we need to educate the masses on how far we've come since Fukushima and Chernobyl, those plants were built in the 1970s. It's been almost half a century.
There most certainly is. It's awesome to know that she came up with her own reactor long, long before human figured out how to create and sustain fission.
In Molten Salt Ractor's the radioactive wastes bind to the salt coolent/fuel in a similar way as presented in this video. This would indicate that this type of reactor would be quite safe
2:00 error. The neutron absorption cross section is proportional to 1/v. The moderator is used to slow neutrons to increase the probability of absorption.
OR, we could use Thorium reactors which are safer, more efficient and will be cheaper once we sufficiently commit to them. But you know, sunken costs and special interests...
1:50 We slow down neutrons not because fast neutrons cause uncontrollable reaction but because if we dont slow them down there would be no chain reaction. Yes fast reactors is a thing but they talked about thermal reactors in this video.
To control the rate of a nuclear reaction, you use control rods made of materials that absorbs neutrons e.g. cadmium to slow the rate of the reactions. A moderator increases the probability that an atom of U235 will absorb a neutron so that it has the chance of undergoing fission.
Moderators don't slow down neutrons to prevent an uncontrolled chain reaction. The control rods due that by absorbing them. The moderator material slows down the neutrons so as to increase their cross-section and thus increase the likelihood that a neutron will hit a neighbouring atom and cause a fission without just bouncing off. One must keep in mind that 95% of an atom is actually empty space.
2 billion years ago, when I was born, I documented what I saw and put it into a time casual so future scientists knew what it was like. That's why they can now talk with such confidence about the past.
Nope. The problem is that we use water as the coolant. We need to keep that under enormous pressure to do its job. Fortunately there is a MUCH BETTER technology - molten salt, which, at last, is getting the recognition it deserves. There are many proposed designs, which usually start with Thorium, and they turn the Thorium into fissile Uranium. This is the way to go.
Good example of how there are endless elements in nuclear waste that we discard that can be used as fuel, medicine, and energy. The ancients used it(although we deny that) and such elements were on earth millions of years before we even could understand what they were or how they worked.
There are Nuclear reactors that work with natural uranium. So no need to enrich. Canada has many of those alongside India, China and Argentina. Also the moderator slows down the neutrons so that the chain reaction occurs. You see U235 will “react” with thermal neutron (aka low energy neutrons) but the neutrons born from fission are fast neutrons (aka high energy neutrons) and U235 will not produce fision with most of them. What the moderator does is slow down the neutrons, it makes them lose energy. What controls the reaction in Nuclear power plants is the control rods and also boron. If you “lose” the moderator there won’t be an explosion, the reaction would stop. The problem is most moderators are also coolants. So the reaction stops but you still need to cool the core because of decay heat
@seeker Boron carbide doesn’t go radioactively or explosively unstable by absorbing too many neutrons, so it’ll eventually absorb so many neutrons that no more can come in. Because of its high neutron absorption abilities, it’d be an excellent shield/container for elements spitting off wild neutrons.
I really like Maren! I mean, it appears she forces her face expressions a little bit, but I feel it somehow makes it easier to understand what she's saying. Both the words (not a native english speaker here) and the meaning of it all.
we should gm a bacteria that loves consuming nuclear waste, so when ever we use up a reactor, the waste can be dumped in a pool of gm bacteria specifically to consume nuclear waste, if that's possible then that would be great, we should also gm a bacteria that can consume plastic waste in the ocean too.
For plastic: sure, that's already in development since a few years back. But bacteria/living organisms can only break down and assemble molecules, they can't just speed up decaying of radioactive atoms. If bacteria eat nuclear waste then the bacteria's probably gonna die, and if not they're gonna be the ones that radiate as they just contain the radioactive atoms
that bacteria would need a different DNA structure that isn't carbon based or silicon based, that bacteria itself could then become so big that it could kill people like a giant slime ball.....then killing it would then release the radioactive atoms.
Then you would have radioactive bacteria containing all that waste. Nuclear decay is neither sped up nor slowed down by any known chemical or physical process, other than bombardment with subatomic particles. However, for a fantasy based science (biochemistry and physics) lesson told as a humorous story, get Isaac Asimov's book "Only a Trillion," a collection of his own science fact based essays. At the very end of the book (to separate them from the REAL science essays), there are two parodies of the format of scientific journal papers about a fictitious fantasy compound called thiotimoline (it dissolves in water BEFORE the water is added), and a longish short story, written in the nuclear test era of the 1950s, about a very unusual goose, in "Pate de Foie Gras." There are two answers to the problem posed at the end of the story, one relatively easy since the 1990s, and a less obvious one that would have been feasible in the 1950s.
Natural does not mean harmless. And by the way, our "unnatural" nuclear reactors are also fine if we consider that they have been closed for 3 × 10^4 years (or even better for 2×10^9 years as this natural nuclear reactor). After this time the waste problem also diminishes.
I was reading in Cosmos that in Chernobyl whenever radioactive waste had spilled fungi grow en mass. They absorb radiation and use it as energy to grow. If we could harness this fungi we could use it to store radiation and possibly even reharvest what they absorb to make self charging batteries. Self charging batteries would basically absorb the energy given off by the radiation rather than trying to power a system directly. It could be done by using a layer of the radioactive fungi next to a silicone layer, next to a lithium battery or lead acid battery, encased in lead.
I very much doubt Ruthenium makes Caesium (137) "less radioactive". It probably binds up the caesium to make it less mobile? The only way I'm aware of to make something less radioactive is to transmute it with neutrons. Like in a fast reactor. Makes it more radioactive but with a shorter half life, so it goes away faster.
More radioactive could still be good. Radiotrophic fungi and bacteria could then use that radiation the way plants use sunlight to produce biofuel. Combine such a facility with bioreactors that feed it nutrients irradiated. It probably won't pay for itself in fuel, but would effectively get rid of all of it eliminating the need for nuclear storage which in turn can make nuclear more attractive.
Gotta love the color and vibe of this video; it’s like it’s the 1950s all over again and we can just figure out how to solve our problems. And the best part is, I believe they are right!
This is a very interesting video. Just when we think that we did it first (nuclear reactor), and nature shows us that she did it first! I never would thought of something like this happening naturally. It just makes me marvel even more at nature.
Radio active waste can also be processed in certain kinds of molten salt Thorium reactors, which also create energy and are much safer than the current Uranium reactors. Maybe we should go with that. See e. g. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor
When at school i wanted to study nuclear energy, but after some time i was worried about the waste, if there is a possibility to solve that this could solve the enegry without CO2 emissions.
Once Thorium reactors become viable the waste problem will be at least somewhat manageable. 500 years to become safe is a lot easier for us to deal with than the unfathomably long time Uranium waste takes.
Something that I have often wondered is why we can't enrich the nuclear waste and then react it again for additional energy. Has anyone come up with that one?
Define "operating safely". How do we knoe it didn't affect any species in the region's habitat? Have you considered we might be too sensasionalistic when it comes to modern nuclear waste and its dangers?
A building the size of a high school gym can store all of the nuclear waste produced by a nuclear power plant over its 60-80 year lifetime. A square mile of Nevada desert along US 50 could store all of the nuclear waste the USA would produce over the next several centuries. I believe, BTW, that a commercial use will eventually be found for what we call nuclear waste today.
love the photo of Mary Kathleen I have seen it before it was full of water the old loader is at the bottom and a truck also the mine closed back in the mid 1980s
If Uranium Enrichment is simply increasing the percentage of radioactive material (U-235), then the opposite should also be true, we should be able to mix the radioactive by-product with carbon (such as in graphite control rods) to dilute the radioactive material?
@seeker should do an episode on the way of using nuclear waste to melt salt i think it was to generate power. since the waste use thousands of years to decay its a very long lasting power source
Well, you won't find natural Throrium reactors because Thorium is not fissionable by itself. But Thorium is a much better nuclear fuel than Uranium for many reasons.
This and another video (that made a kinda ark reactor), got me wondering: Generators usually heat water to push electrons through a circuit... how else could some next gen solution provide electricity.
Downvote. Get the science right! You do not understand the function of the "moderator"! The "moderator" slows the speed of the neutrons released from the reaction, which makes them MORE LIKELY to be captured by another U-235 atom. So the "moderator" makes the reaction MORE VIOLENT! Without the moderator, the reaction would stop, as most of the fast neutrons would zip out of the area and escape. The "critical mass" without a moderator would be impractically large (even an infinite extent of natural uranium with 2% U-235 would not react at all!) The regulation mechanism was the water boiling away when things got too hot, slowing the reaction.
I said "downvoted" because that's what I did. This is supposed to be educational. It is important that details be gotten correct. (In fact, the word "moderator" I would not use because of the confusion it implies. Unfortunately, the nuclear community picked the lingo, which is misleading. The best thing the educators can do is not be also be misled.)
Um... Has anyone tried mixing a small amount of uranium 235 with a larger amount of uranium 238 just to see what the reaction would be when you destabilized the 235? It would seem like the 235 can be used as a primer and destabilize the 238. I'm not a scientist, but I am curious why that wouldn't work.
What does that even mean. LOL. Such childishly simplistic analysis. If anything the US has every incentive to NOT rely on petroleum in the future so that it can continue conducting its "foreign policy" without bowing down to the Saudis.
"LOL. Such childishly simplistic analysis." Oh they are right though. "so that it can continue conducting its "foreign policy" without bowing down to the Saudis." Now that is funny- they are just pawns and have been ever since the day of bp.
New video concept: Where is the United States in terms of developing a working full scale MSTR (Molten Salt Thorium Reactors)? The U.K. already has a working prototype in operation. So why the hell aren't we persuing this wonderful technology which produces < 1% of the radiation of conventional nuclear power plants?
I love the video. I hope you will fix one important imperfection: the function of the moderator. @Tanner Stein is correct. Your description of the function of a moderator is wrong. This detracts from a video that is otherwise WONDERFUL! With a little research you can find out what a moderator does.
I don't understand why this is even a consideration. Wouldnt the land usage of nuclear waste plus the water used to contain be incredibly miniscule in terms of total garbage land usage? What's wrong with just putting the waste in a box and keeping it in a pool, it wouldn't even take a noticable amount of space.
@INERT No, more like minding your own business and letting other people be the way they are and not wasting everyone else's time just because you do not care about yours.
@@mangeshchalan8786 Oh I am so sorry it was just me using my brother's messed up computer but just in case you actually did forget English why wouldn't you try getting your lessons together. I mean you do seem to be in great need of basics.
@@muskanchoudhary5445 I need a great teacher perfectly proficient at it to teach me......... 😙 I'm not dumb enough to believe that your brother is a boy named muskan
@@mangeshchalan8786 Haha nice one smarty pants but let me clear things a bit for you Me My account My brother's computer My comment And.. your simply so very much (un)necessary comment.. Does that seem to you like something that could be possible?
@@ipissed Think before commenting on the topic on which you don't have knowledge. Just go through below article www.forbes.com/sites/energysource/2012/02/16/the-thing-about-thorium-why-the-better-nuclear-fuel-may-not-get-a-chance/amp/ You can find number of benefits of Thorium on Google. Don't show your stupidity in public.
@@vitr0n You know that girl that it took you all year for you to finally drum up the nerve to finally talk to her and ask her to sign your yearbook? I fucked her nerd.
Moderators don't prevent meltdowns, they increase the neutron cross section, the likelihood that a neutron will interact with a target nucleus, and allow for more reactions to occur. The control rods are the main tool used to adjust the neutron flux to be self sustaining, known as critical, and not super-critical aka meltdown.
@Tanner Stein
Super-critical is the state of a reactor whenever it is increasing power level. A reactor is not going to melt down just because it is super-critical. For a meltdown to occur, either the super-critical condition must be sustained until the heat generate is so great that the cooling system can not remove the excess heat, or the cooling system itself fails.
@Bill Leach, you're absolutely right. I used an oversimplification to help point out the big flaw in this video: that moderators "prevent meltdowns" by decreasing the likelihood of nuclear reactions.
A moderator, or neutron moderator, is any medium, typically heavy or light water, that reduces the energy of fast neutrons, converting them to thermal neutrons, or slow neutrons, capable of sustaining a nuclear chain reaction involving uranium-235 or a similar fissile nuclide.
@@@93naners
Thanks. I see where you are coming from now. Yes, indeed in the case for the typical pressurized water reactor a meltdown would not even be possible without there having been sufficient water to produce power in the first place. Upon loss of water, the fuel melts not because of fission but rather because of what is called decay heat from the short half-life fission products that decay. The negative coefficient of reactivity (that is waters effect on K-effective) does indeed reduce the probability of a meltdown but only if some circulating water remains.
Also, the other common moderator is carbon or graphite which provides for NO cooling so obviously would not 'prevent a meltdown.' I don't think carbon moderator has a negative reactivity coefficient with respect to temperature either.
Downvoted for wrong information. Moderator slows down neutrons to make fission EASIER, not to "prevent explosion". This allows the reactor to run on less-enriched fuel.
Can you post sources for this correction please?
In order to occur, the neutron released in a fission reaction has to be captured by other heavy nuclei. If the neutron is traveling too fast, then it has less of a chance to be absorbed.
Sorry Gotlyfe, but this isn't the sort of statement you can find "sources" for. I'm a nuclear engineering student and I can tell you that the role of the moderator is what Silanael said. The neutrons will collide with the nucleus of a hydrogen atom, and this inelastic collision reduces the kinetic energy of the neutron by about half. This has to happen a couple of times for the neutron to be "thermalized." What that means is this:
When neutrons are produced in a fission reaction, they fly away at incredibly high speeds. The absorption cross section of U-235, the fuel, INCREASES as the speed of the neutrons hitting said U235 DECREASES. Why exactly this happens is a bit of a quantum conundrum so I'll leave it at that.
But yeah basically, if Uranium 235 needs slow neutrons to fission again, and a fission itself produces fast neutrons, you need collisions with Hydrogen nuclei (protons) to slow it down. Let me know if you want to know more about how moderators can control the nuclear reactions :)
Semantics shemantics ugh
@1:47 Listen carefully
Saw this coming millions of years ago with my 20/20 _fission_ .... 👀
Phwoar, that was a good'n!
You may have 20/20 vision now, but one day you will have your half-life crisis and your vision will begin to decay.
0_o Then why didn't you speak up? The defission to remain silent all those years is baffling.
boo :p
Ha
Your comment has gone super critical
Well to be perfectly honest, in my humblest opinion, of course without offending anyone who would otherwise think differently from my own point of view, but also by looking into this matter in a different perspective and without being condemning or condescending to those opposed to one's view's, as well as considering each and everyone's unique and valid opinion, I honestly believe that I completely forgot what I was about to say.
Nobody cares anyway.
@@craigcorson3036 r/woooosh
Shut your bitch ass up .. everyone post the same comment u did .. your not clever just some dumb ass who copies
J Rudy
No idea what that means. Use your words.
@@craigcorson3036 its a reddit thread.... by the way OP shut up bro. Stop being such a liberal and being scared to offend people bro, offeding people is fun. I do it all the time.
I was so happy to see this finally covered by a source that a lot of people see and then horrified at the incorrect information given. There is a BIG difference between a nuclear explosion from a bomb and a nuclear reactor melt down...
too bad seeker is choke full of misinformation themselves
Thorium reactors will burn our nuclear waste as a starting cycle. The waste can also be continually fed into a thorium reactor to completely use up the fuel.
A traditional reactor only uses 10-15% of the solid fuel before the rods are damaged beyond safe use do to Xeon gases produced durning the reaction.
We need to be pushing for thorium in the USA. China is well on its way to building a full size reactor.
I plugged thorium reactors in my comment above. But for the life of me, I can't understand why the U.S. isn't working on thorium as a safe means of producing huge amounts of clean (CO2-free) energy?
@@goofybri8949
Because per unit, it is still significantly more expensive than nearly anything else. Maybe R&D would get that down to usefully low costs, but why bother when we already have clean and cheap options we've already put the R&D into?
think about it, the public are scared of nuclear. thered be a lot of pushback against any government that tried to implement this. also the current president is trump who doesnt understand climate change and who isnt looking for renewable energies right now, especially expensive ones
Evil Robin
In which case they would hopefully pick the cheap options. That's not nuclear.
There's too much nuclear scare still, we need to educate the masses on how far we've come since Fukushima and Chernobyl, those plants were built in the 1970s. It's been almost half a century.
There is a lot more to learn from our Mother Nature
There most certainly is. It's awesome to know that she came up with her own reactor long, long before human figured out how to create and sustain fission.
More to learn from our Father God ☝
Damn hippie
In Molten Salt Ractor's the radioactive wastes bind to the salt coolent/fuel in a similar way as presented in this video. This would indicate that this type of reactor would be quite safe
I like the presentation on this. Very low energy and relaxed. A lot easier to binge
ah haha I see what you did there
2:00 error. The neutron absorption cross section is proportional to 1/v. The moderator is used to slow neutrons to increase the probability of absorption.
Around 4% / Not silver - Boron mainly in addition to Hafnium or Gadolinium
Gone fission for tuna, the chicken of the sea
But it doesn't look like chicken
Jessica Simpson.
fiction,,,I mean fission!
what makes pork and beef of the sea? I reckon sword fishes and sharks
I see what U (235) did there
OR, we could use Thorium reactors which are safer, more efficient and will be cheaper once we sufficiently commit to them. But you know, sunken costs and special interests...
1:50 We slow down neutrons not because fast neutrons cause uncontrollable reaction but because if we dont slow them down there would be no chain reaction. Yes fast reactors is a thing but they talked about thermal reactors in this video.
To control the rate of a nuclear reaction, you use control rods made of materials that absorbs neutrons e.g. cadmium to slow the rate of the reactions. A moderator increases the probability that an atom of U235 will absorb a neutron so that it has the chance of undergoing fission.
Moderators don't slow down neutrons to prevent an uncontrolled chain reaction. The control rods due that by absorbing them. The moderator material slows down the neutrons so as to increase their cross-section and thus increase the likelihood that a neutron will hit a neighbouring atom and cause a fission without just bouncing off. One must keep in mind that 95% of an atom is actually empty space.
The thought of a natural reactor is so fascinating! That would be cool to see active in real life.
there are actually afew nuclear reactors in nature
Can I use that to kill superman?
Nice one 😂
YOU PASSED THE LINE, jjjjjjjjjjjjj
DC already killed Henry Cavill
Tell me, do yo bleed?
2 billion years ago, when I was born, I documented what I saw and put it into a time casual so future scientists knew what it was like. That's why they can now talk with such confidence about the past.
Nope. The problem is that we use water as the coolant.
We need to keep that under enormous pressure to do its job.
Fortunately there is a MUCH BETTER technology - molten salt, which, at last, is getting the recognition it deserves. There are many proposed designs, which usually start with Thorium, and they turn the Thorium into fissile Uranium.
This is the way to go.
Good example of how there are endless elements in nuclear waste that we discard that can be used as fuel, medicine, and energy. The ancients used it(although we deny that) and such elements were on earth millions of years before we even could understand what they were or how they worked.
There are Nuclear reactors that work with natural uranium. So no need to enrich. Canada has many of those alongside India, China and Argentina.
Also the moderator slows down the neutrons so that the chain reaction occurs. You see U235 will “react” with thermal neutron (aka low energy neutrons) but the neutrons born from fission are fast neutrons (aka high energy neutrons) and U235 will not produce fision with most of them.
What the moderator does is slow down the neutrons, it makes them lose energy.
What controls the reaction in Nuclear power plants is the control rods and also boron.
If you “lose” the moderator there won’t be an explosion, the reaction would stop. The problem is most moderators are also coolants. So the reaction stops but you still need to cool the core because of decay heat
@seeker Boron carbide doesn’t go radioactively or explosively unstable by absorbing too many neutrons, so it’ll eventually absorb so many neutrons that no more can come in. Because of its high neutron absorption abilities, it’d be an excellent shield/container for elements spitting off wild neutrons.
I really like Maren! I mean, it appears she forces her face expressions a little bit, but I feel it somehow makes it easier to understand what she's saying. Both the words (not a native english speaker here) and the meaning of it all.
we should gm a bacteria that loves consuming nuclear waste, so when ever we use up a reactor, the waste can be dumped in a pool of gm bacteria specifically to consume nuclear waste, if that's possible then that would be great, we should also gm a bacteria that can consume plastic waste in the ocean too.
For plastic: sure, that's already in development since a few years back.
But bacteria/living organisms can only break down and assemble molecules, they can't just speed up decaying of radioactive atoms. If bacteria eat nuclear waste then the bacteria's probably gonna die, and if not they're gonna be the ones that radiate as they just contain the radioactive atoms
that bacteria would need a different DNA structure that isn't carbon based or silicon based, that bacteria itself could then become so big that it could kill people like a giant slime ball.....then killing it would then release the radioactive atoms.
learn a little about what u r talking about first
Do you think that when a substance is eaten, it just goes away? No. It just becomes a part of whatever ate it, or it is excreted.
Then you would have radioactive bacteria containing all that waste. Nuclear decay is neither sped up nor slowed down by any known chemical or physical process, other than bombardment with subatomic particles.
However, for a fantasy based science (biochemistry and physics) lesson told as a humorous story, get Isaac Asimov's book "Only a Trillion," a collection of his own science fact based essays. At the very end of the book (to separate them from the REAL science essays), there are two parodies of the format of scientific journal papers about a fictitious fantasy compound called thiotimoline (it dissolves in water BEFORE the water is added), and a longish short story, written in the nuclear test era of the 1950s, about a very unusual goose, in "Pate de Foie Gras." There are two answers to the problem posed at the end of the story, one relatively easy since the 1990s, and a less obvious one that would have been feasible in the 1950s.
Huh, it's natural. Interesting. :D
Natural does not mean harmless. And by the way, our "unnatural" nuclear reactors are also fine if we consider that they have been closed for 3 × 10^4 years (or even better for 2×10^9 years as this natural nuclear reactor). After this time the waste problem also diminishes.
I love nature.
Its NOT Silver! Mainly Boron and Cadmium.
I was reading in Cosmos that in Chernobyl whenever radioactive waste had spilled fungi grow en mass. They absorb radiation and use it as energy to grow. If we could harness this fungi we could use it to store radiation and possibly even reharvest what they absorb to make self charging batteries. Self charging batteries would basically absorb the energy given off by the radiation rather than trying to power a system directly. It could be done by using a layer of the radioactive fungi next to a silicone layer, next to a lithium battery or lead acid battery, encased in lead.
I very much doubt Ruthenium makes Caesium (137) "less radioactive". It probably binds up the caesium to make it less mobile? The only way I'm aware of to make something less radioactive is to transmute it with neutrons. Like in a fast reactor. Makes it more radioactive but with a shorter half life, so it goes away faster.
3:53,,,
More radioactive could still be good. Radiotrophic fungi and bacteria could then use that radiation the way plants use sunlight to produce biofuel. Combine such a facility with bioreactors that feed it nutrients irradiated. It probably won't pay for itself in fuel, but would effectively get rid of all of it eliminating the need for nuclear storage which in turn can make nuclear more attractive.
Cs-137 is a beta emitter, that's electrons. Pretty easy to make a radioisotope generator with that.
This is very important.
VERY
Gotta love the color and vibe of this video; it’s like it’s the 1950s all over again and we can just figure out how to solve our problems. And the best part is, I believe they are right!
2:00 the water which absorbs neutrons is dozed with boric or cadmium. Water alone doesn’t absorb any neutrons, ad least not enough to have an impact.
You scientists found something that can kill flying aliens on tights and capes?
This is a very interesting video. Just when we think that we did it first (nuclear reactor), and nature shows us that she did it first! I never would thought of something like this happening naturally. It just makes me marvel even more at nature.
I will sell Earth to aliens in exchange for a bag of peanuts.
What did the librarian say to the boy
Read more
can we hit 500 subs with no videos ha
Also subscribe
😂
Omg I hate you. wp
Lol
Some hope finally
The only thing I'm capable of remembering is that somewhere there's an element giving out nuclear hugs.
Radio active waste can also be processed in certain kinds of molten salt Thorium reactors, which also create energy and are much safer than the current Uranium reactors.
Maybe we should go with that.
See e. g. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor
I know what I’m writing my chemistry research paper on now. Thanks!
When at school i wanted to study nuclear energy, but after some time i was worried about the waste, if there is a possibility to solve that this could solve the enegry without CO2 emissions.
Origin of a superhero millions of years ago, Captain Caveman?
Nuclear reactor operated safely for millions of years? : Ancient Aliens.
I will watch Maren read the phone book..........
Once Thorium reactors become viable the waste problem will be at least somewhat manageable. 500 years to become safe is a lot easier for us to deal with than the unfathomably long time Uranium waste takes.
Thank you for this..
Something that I have often wondered is why we can't enrich the nuclear waste and then react it again for additional energy. Has anyone come up with that one?
The whole Earth is a giant radioisotope thermal generator. Radioactive decay is what powers vulcanism and is why the Earth's interior is still liquid.
Interesting that nature provides the clues to dealing with our nuclear waste naturally....
Elon Musk buys it. Becomes Tony Stark. Duh
This is an excellent channel 👍🏻
Define "operating safely". How do we knoe it didn't affect any species in the region's habitat?
Have you considered we might be too sensasionalistic when it comes to modern nuclear waste and its dangers?
Benito Llan Matos they still pose a threat, but coal has still killed more that nuclear power ever will
I know, my point was precisely in favor, not against nuclear.
A building the size of a high school gym can store all of the nuclear waste produced by a nuclear power plant over its 60-80 year lifetime. A square mile of Nevada desert along US 50 could store all of the nuclear waste the USA would produce over the next several centuries. I believe, BTW, that a commercial use will eventually be found for what we call nuclear waste today.
The triangle in the soundtrack is making me paranoid that I've left my Hauptwerk software open.
love the photo of Mary Kathleen I have seen it before it was full of water the old loader is at the bottom and a truck also the mine closed back in the mid 1980s
If Uranium Enrichment is simply increasing the percentage of radioactive material (U-235), then the opposite should also be true, we should be able to mix the radioactive by-product with carbon (such as in graphite control rods) to dilute the radioactive material?
One word. THORIUM
@seeker should do an episode on the way of using nuclear waste to melt salt i think it was to generate power. since the waste use thousands of years to decay its a very long lasting power source
Chances are, many viewers don't even know where Gabon is. lol
Does anyone else feel like they’re living in a cyberpunk world?
Well, you won't find natural Throrium reactors because Thorium is not fissionable by itself. But Thorium is a much better nuclear fuel than Uranium for many reasons.
This and another video (that made a kinda ark reactor), got me wondering: Generators usually heat water to push electrons through a circuit... how else could some next gen solution provide electricity.
Yay scientist will probably make a new nuclear bomb again
Downvote. Get the science right!
You do not understand the function of the "moderator"! The "moderator" slows the speed of the neutrons released from the reaction, which makes them MORE LIKELY to be captured by another U-235 atom. So the "moderator" makes the reaction MORE VIOLENT! Without the moderator, the reaction would stop, as most of the fast neutrons would zip out of the area and escape. The "critical mass" without a moderator would be impractically large (even an infinite extent of natural uranium with 2% U-235 would not react at all!) The regulation mechanism was the water boiling away when things got too hot, slowing the reaction.
Brian Park did you have to say downvoted? You could have just corrected them.
I said "downvoted" because that's what I did. This is supposed to be educational. It is important that details be gotten correct. (In fact, the word "moderator" I would not use because of the confusion it implies. Unfortunately, the nuclear community picked the lingo, which is misleading. The best thing the educators can do is not be also be misled.)
All this complex shit just happened by accident???? Exactly in the right way for the earth to support life
The starting is so quick that i have to rewind the video
So this means we can restore the area around Chernobyl back to it's former glory and fix Fukushima to return it's residents back!
And Gabon is in Switzerland, everybody knows that. 🤣
... but probably not because it's so rare and would still have to be regulated to use it efficiently
New Tron? I don't know if we're ready for another reboot.
BTW, I don't appreciate you calling us movie-goers "absorbing material." Reboot carefully, Disney, or your movie will be "absorbing" empty seats.
Um... Has anyone tried mixing a small amount of uranium 235 with a larger amount of uranium 238 just to see what the reaction would be when you destabilized the 235? It would seem like the 235 can be used as a primer and destabilize the 238. I'm not a scientist, but I am curious why that wouldn't work.
How can we be so sure this wasnt man made THAT long ago.
Nature: Pffft primitive humans, we invented sustained fusion billions of years ago while they are still stuck at ITER......
I fucking love you, Maren!!
our governments know how to solve the energy crisis..... but won't..... because petrodoller
What does that even mean. LOL. Such childishly simplistic analysis. If anything the US has every incentive to NOT rely on petroleum in the future so that it can continue conducting its "foreign policy" without bowing down to the Saudis.
"LOL. Such childishly simplistic analysis." Oh they are right though.
"so that it can continue conducting its "foreign policy" without bowing down to the Saudis." Now that is funny- they are just pawns and have been ever since the day of bp.
@@psd993 You say this like Americans look more than 4 years into the future
I heard of this place once. I mused it was a remnant of Bedrock Light and Power.
Seriously, I want to know more. Into the links I go.
BL&P - Hah!!
Who's space crafts video is awesome and I like your space science video very much
New video concept: Where is the United States in terms of developing a working full scale MSTR (Molten Salt Thorium Reactors)? The U.K. already has a working prototype in operation. So why the hell aren't we persuing this wonderful technology which produces < 1% of the radiation of conventional nuclear power plants?
I read about this years ago and thought it was a bullshit story....
Truth really is stranger than fiction.
I love the video. I hope you will fix one important imperfection: the function of the moderator. @Tanner Stein is correct. Your description of the function of a moderator is wrong. This detracts from a video that is otherwise WONDERFUL! With a little research you can find out what a moderator does.
Nuclear waste isn’t that big of a deal now that we are using thorium instead of uranium
I would love to know the theoretical wattage of this reactor :>
Don't know if you still care but SciShow did a video about the natural reactor: ruclips.net/video/yS53AA_WaUk/видео.html
Ah actually, slowing down the neutrons intensifies the nuclear reaction.And it's done by immersing the radioactive material in HEAVY water.
You should have clarified/specified that the mining at Oklo of the natural occurring U35 was done by the Superpowers and not Gabon.
She is far to happy
Thorium molten salt reactors are capable of consuming nuclear waste
We're already on the sit on it and wait plan.
I love these repost videos.
I don't understand why this is even a consideration. Wouldnt the land usage of nuclear waste plus the water used to contain be incredibly miniscule in terms of total garbage land usage? What's wrong with just putting the waste in a box and keeping it in a pool, it wouldn't even take a noticable amount of space.
This is literally so wonderful. We need to learn a lot of things
@INERT No, more like minding your own business and letting other people be the way they are and not wasting everyone else's time just because you do not care about yours.
@@muskanchoudhary5445 after reading this I forgot English
@@mangeshchalan8786 Oh I am so sorry it was just me using my brother's messed up computer but just in case you actually did forget English why wouldn't you try getting your lessons together. I mean you do seem to be in great need of basics.
@@muskanchoudhary5445 I need a great teacher perfectly proficient at it to teach me......... 😙
I'm not dumb enough to believe that your brother is a boy named muskan
@@mangeshchalan8786 Haha nice one smarty pants but let me clear things a bit for you
Me
My account
My brother's computer
My comment
And.. your simply so very much (un)necessary comment..
Does that seem to you like something that could be possible?
this natural reactor is referenced in the game Quantum Break
Make Video on Thorium base reactor or thorium fission technique.
Shut up about Thorium. It is too expensive and there aren't a bunch of nuclear power plants randomly blowing up everywhere. Thorium idiots.
@@ipissed Think before commenting on the topic on which you don't have knowledge. Just go through below article www.forbes.com/sites/energysource/2012/02/16/the-thing-about-thorium-why-the-better-nuclear-fuel-may-not-get-a-chance/amp/
You can find number of benefits of Thorium on Google. Don't show your stupidity in public.
@@vitr0n You know that girl that it took you all year for you to finally drum up the nerve to finally talk to her and ask her to sign your yearbook? I fucked her nerd.
@@ipissed go and complete your homework.You are too childish to discuss this deep topic.
“All that for a drop of blood.......”
Atomic Hug? Warm and Fuzzy?
MY GOD she's annoying!
Is there a way to just use that waste for more energy?
Which is more powerful Fusion or Fission ?
You looks good without spectacle.
Why all the camping about how strange this is? Hell, there's this fusion reactor right outside my window right now.
Great vid! Anybody else out there Team Thorium?