We shouldn't make it unrecoverable. A hundred years from now it's quite possible we'll have invented methods of either destroying the waste (eg, in a Thorium fuel cycle reactor) or actually find value in some of the waste components... like coal tar used to be dumped into the Thames but later became an important industrial starting point, especially pharmaceuticals and other organic chemicals.
you are soo right, how come noone is talking about finding that solution. no matter how, digging a hole and thrwowing it in is the dumbest thing to do. there is no such thing as waste, its all chemistry and physics. mankind should rather work on solutions than creating fear over something they dont want to understand.
@@k-mar9587 "There is no such thing as waste" - what a stupid stupid comment. When it is being treated as waste, stored as waste and to be abandoned as waste - IT'S WASTE.
The public reaction to careful disposal is really dumb. Shutting down disposal sites and letting everything sit indefinitely out in the open instead. Great work. Really saving the planet there.
Or we could invest in other less dangerous sources of energy. Solar perhaps? Algae. Nuclear is not every efficient and very toxic to humans and the environment alike.
Bahamuttiamat What do you think? What power source is safer? Nueclear is world safest and cleanest power source what we ever had... Nuclear scared public is really big danger for our future and enviroment. Solar is one of the worst idea to main power source because it is realy unstable, have a short lifetime (25-30 years vs nuclear 60 years) and extremly inefficient. For our future is best opinion about 50-75% nuclear (fission future fusion) and another 50% renweables like wind, water and solar that power generation mix works in countries like France, Slovakia, Ontario provence and in near future wants achive same Czech republic and China.
The best idea for dealing with spent nuclear rods, which are highly radioactive is to bury them for thousands of years, and yet you think it's the cleanest? lol. Fukashima, Chernobyl has words for you.
Bahamuttiamat Not i don't think i know. I know accidents like Chernobyl, Fukushima and Three Miles Island really well only one cause deaths, Chernobyl from up to 500 operational reactors today! After every accident increased safety and statistics says clearly, nuclear is safest power what we ever develop with mining porocessing and accidents only 90 is mortality rate per trilion kilowatt hours compaere to second safest wind with 150 and coal 170 000.
I have been contracted out to one of these disposal facilities to handle their ventilation control for the past few years. It's a neat process and they at least take safety pretty serious.
Why is it even waste? Surely if it's still chucking out radiation in the form of excess electrons, then it's still usable as fuel? Sure, it's not as efficient, but it's still doing the same job we need it for. Couldn't we just use it to power reactors that have a lower power yield?
www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/feb/02/nuclear-reactors-consume-radioactive-waste There are ways of using it, but the reactors are still underdevelopment and there's some concern about the possibility of nuclear proliferation, since they're types of breeder reactors. Good news is that they can use thorium as fuel as well, which is a lot more plentiful than uranium.
Look up Thorium LFTR reactor! it’s the best possible way to dispose of waste, because it uses the other 98% of the potential energy in used fuel rods. And by far safer then today’s reactors. It’s a shame that nuclear went a total different direction (typical heavy water) in the 70s, for nuclear bomb purposes.
Just google the word "throium" Thorium based molten salt reactors (MSRs) eat nuclear waste and can't explode or melt down. Check out Kirk Sorensen's talks that describe these marvelous designs vs. the nuclear power we know about today. Super amazing.
Has BBC Earth Lab considered doing videos on other types of extreme waste from power generation? Such as the radioactive waste left behind after burning coal. The toxic waste left after mining for rare earth elements such as those required for neodymium magnets & solar panels. there are very few ways of generating power that do not have consequences. Perhaps a video that explains all of these consequences so people will come to understand that what they think is Green electricity is not necessarily the case.
That's what's known as a "Whataboutery" argument - pointing the finger at something else to distract or disguise to the issue at hand. The focus here is NUCLEAR WASTE, which needs its own permanent safe solution without pointing the finger at other types of power generation.
Finland should make a business out of burying other counties' nuclear waste, since the ground in Finland is optimal for that. There could even be a slogan: "Finland, the nuclear waste land".
It's not just Finland, Sweden has a huge waste disposal facility, where it keeps nuclear waste from half of Europe, including UK, Finland was just first to come up with such solution.
I find it odd that this video didn’t talk about 4th Gen breeder reactors that will be able to use waste from previous generation reactors as fuel. With that in mind it seems irresponsible to scuttle possible fuel away in concrete filled bunkers.
Assuming the waste can't be salvaged for other uses (radiotherapies, lower yield fuels, ammunition/armour - depleted Uranium, etc), deep burial seems most feasible. But the mantle idea : would not the heat of the earth help destroy the waste material? One suggestion i heard 'send it to space and fly it into the sun' which probably would destroy it
boffinboy100 One reason is in the video an other is today we have in development fourth generation reactors that can use today waste and make it less dangerous for much shorter period of time.
And tomorows nuclear fuel will produce more waste which we cant dispose. The problem are the fission products and you wont get rid of them by burning the heavy elements.
Normally I like these videos, but for the most part they just fuel the fear that we will be generating endless waste. The reality is the amount of "waste" is currently tiny, and after it is removed from the cooling ponds, it is not particularly radioactive anymore. There is some long lived plutonium however (half life ~24k years) and that is what gets people freaked out (and why he said 1/4 M years, because after 10 half-lives it is roughly gone. However, that plutonium AND the remaining uranium is a FUEL. It can't be used in the inefficient reactors we have today, but new technology is being developed to use it commercially. Look up MSR and Gen IV reactors. Perhaps you can do an update to this video after you learn about these items. Nuclear energy is by far humanities best solution to energy generation and abundance.
In addition, new high temperature reactors can make ammonia, which means fertilizer, and that means food. They can desalinate seawater for drinking (and crops), as well as generate liquid fuels (look up "navy nuclear jet fuel"). In addition to that they can also make electricity that is continuous (not dependent on varying sun and wind, etc), cheap and abundant.
Progress has been made/is being made in theoretical and experimental developments, some of which may address a lot of the existing nuclear waste challenges - but not all of them. The key issue is, that the costs of moving from experimental nuclear power plants to commercially viable - are astronomical. At the moment NO ONE wants to invest in those new nuclear power plants or the technologies necessary to reuse nuclear waste. In the meantime we just continue irresponsibly, to create more toxic nuclear waste, with no safe permanent solution for it.
Haven’t done any research about this subject, but i was wondering, couldn’t we just release the radioactive material into the nature around us? But just in small quantities at a time, not enough to kill all life in the sea or poison a whole city. I was wondering that because i read somewhere sometime ago that there are around 64 Parts Per Million Uranium-235 in the US soil or air on average and that’s harmless. I think it’s that high because of the nuclear bomb testings in Florida, but if we release small amounts in the whole world then that might be a solution.
We already make capsules that can survive the explosion of arocket carrying it. Here in the US we had space shuttle disasters showing that. Couldn't we design a multilayer container that fits at the end of a rocket that would remain intact in case of a failed launch. Then the capsule could be recovered if necessary. Even if we put something like a huge skull and crossbones over an area or pit here on Earth I can imagine curious people in the future saying "What's this?" and attempting to investigate the contents.
There is currently no container deemed secure enough which could contain nuclear waste, which could be risked being fired off in a rocket, due to the risk of rocket failure.
Disappointed you didn't talk about using it for power generation. I know, it's not quite ready yet, but thorium and traveling wave reactors seem to be on the verge of functionality, dozens of companies are working on them and a lot of money is being invested. If I understand correctly, it's likely possible to use spent fuel in these types of reactors.
Re-utilize the waste for use in radio-isotope thermoelectric generators. The long half-lifes of the discarded material would make RTGs the most efficient batteries we can make. And there is sufficient material for a single RTG compound (city block sized) to continue providing power for years/decades beyond the shutdown of a Nuclear power plant.
Sweden (more precisely SKB (Svensk Kärnbränslehantering Aktiebolag)) is constructing its final storage facility, it has however not been approved yet by all authorities.
fireaza TH-cam Molten Salt reactors,they process nuclear waste then turn it to power.It's estimated that as much nuclear waste as we have in the U.S. we could power the entire country for around 300 to 400 years off of just waste.
Line-X spray can resolve nuclear radioactive wastes barrel. Of course nuclear radioactive wastes can extract plutonium bomb 94. Meanwhile it can also extract atomic battery and Radioisotope thermoelectric generator polonium 210 from nuclear radioactive wastes.
Our company has development an entirely new way to handle radioactive waste -nothing like what you are describing here and nothing like any research we have been able to find. In fact, we can clean up the existing stored wastes and deep water dumps too. Japan could use us about now, but there's no way to get to the person in charge because no one seems to know who is running the operation. REALLY weird! Our main problem with getting to market is the number of businesses, supporting businesses, and political corruption involved that will cease to exist. LOTS of people are protecting nuclear waste storage. It seems EVERY ONE has their hand and wallet in the income from waste storage. I'm not sure you have heard of SynRoc, but we have made this new technology obsolete too. Any words of wisdom from your viewers or you would be appreciated. The truth is..."no one wants to have a nuclear waste site anywhere close to their homes". We can make that happen and COMPLETELY resolve the UK problems.
My vote is for deep sea subduction zone disposal. Make the casks out o extremely dense materials, osmium lead or bismuth, and make them strong enough to survive getting swallowed up by the Earth relatively intact. If they're made dense enough, the casks should migrate downward toward the mantle rather than be pushed upward by volcanic activity.
And how could you be absolutely sure those casks would not migrate back upwards through volcanic activity. The short answer is you can't. This is such an inexact science it borders on the ridiculous as a solution.
for one, if something has a half life of half a million years, that means, by definition, is not highly radioactive second, lava is hot *because* of radioactivity in Earth's core
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@2:07 Why is this expressed as an area? Are the containers 10cm in height or 1m? Is it the actual waste or including the size of the containers? Or is it the area of the facilities used to store said fuel? The number doesn't have any meaning in that context except to scare people.
Liquid fuel fast-neutron molten salt reactor can consume high level nuclear waste. Waste from these molten salt reactor is not long lived, repository should be built only to last 200-400 years.
a few things you did not mention current technology of reactors burns maybe 1% of their fuel. after just a few years in the reactor fuel gets contaminated with fission products and there is a concern fuel cladding might not be able to hold it in any more. that's why such fuel is being removed. Does it mean it can no longer be used? No. It just needs a different type of reactor. Breeder reactors can take such spent fuel and keep on using it to make electricity or heat - greatly reducing the volume of waste and it's longevity. remove transuranic materials from this fuel and its radioactivity would be down to natural levels after 300 or so years - and these transuranic materials - you can use them to keep making electricity for you, instead of burying them, until they are all gone. Such reactors are currently being developed. There's a whole list of companies who are making major progress in making them happen - my bet you can expect China to start building such a reactor in several years tops. So it might very well be that Finnish deep geological repository solution is already obsolete - before they even start using it. Btw what you've said about storing fuel in water pools is inaccurate. Underwater storage is necessary only for the first several years. After that, for another 20 or so years it's enough if you store it in a casket that has enough air ventilation to take away the heat. After that, you can just bury it underground without any cooling solution at all. The nuclear dream of providing a near-infinite amount of cheap and clean energy is now more alive than it ever was. It just needs better technologies than those used back in the 1960-ies.
The most radioactive isotopes that constitute nuclear waste are the fission products, which themselves cannot function as fissile fuel. Unfortunately this video never explained what radioactivity actually was, and therefore their explanation is rather misleading. Radioactivity is the amount of particles emitted per second of time. If takes more time for a amount of material to decay then this material will have lower amounts of radioactivity, because per second there are less particles emitted. Isotopes such Uranium 235 and Plutonium 239 actually exhibit low radioactivity as it takes considerably more time (7 billion years and 250,000 years respectively) for these isotopes to decay. Compared to isotopes such as Krypton 89, which the primary resultant of Uranium 235 reactions has very high radioactivity exhibited by its very short decay rate at 3.5 minutes.
If water is needed in keeping it cool then it means it's hot and stays hot. Doesn't that mean it still produces energy? Why not harness that heat energy to produce more electricity?
TheBakerUK I think that's only a tempts fix to our problem cos we would eventually run out of space to store it and also to dig all those holes and fill them in would be quite costly. I think we should focus on making more efficient solar panels as well as massive improvements on batteries.
There's an underground facility at Hanford which is leaking large amounts (50-300 gallons per year) of nuclear waste, and they've spent years deciding on how to deal with it.
Fish nuclear energy is really messy and if we can't clean up after it we are going to wreck the planet so I think we should leave nuclear power alone until we know how to recycle the nuclear waste.
I was actually going to recommend shooting the waste into space, then Greg mentioned the potentional for a break apart. I wouldn't like that. One mintue I'm eating with my family, then I see granny pissing through her nostrils.
I wonder if the nuclear rods could be used for something rather than discarding them... if they are combusted will radiation then just drift through the sky? What research has been put into seeing if it’s possible to erase levels of radiation somehow?
If fuel catches fire, it will spread particles into the atmosphere. It'll also melt (see china syndrome.... which is thoroughly debunked, but just to illustrate, yes, people have thought about these things)
Yes, Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactors (LFTR) are claimed to take existing reactor waste in along with their Thorium fuel. The resultant spent fuel from such a reactor is of considerable lower volume and requires far less time in storage to decay to safe levels. Keeping something secure for 500 years is much easier than for 50,000. . This sort of reactor is also unsuitable for creating fissile material for nuclear weapons.
Wind and nuclear power plants have nearly equivalent total grams-of-CO2/kWh carbon debt, which includes construction plus operational lifetime carbon use. However, for an equal electricity MW output, wind costs 4x more than nuclear to build and & wind is only available (depends on location) about 50% of the time (UK often dips to 30%) whereas nuclear power plants average about 90% availability. Nuclear power will be the primary tool used to address CO2 emmissions in the near term. If/when we have economical large-scale battery storage to buffer intermittent renewable sources, then I will happily support scaling back nuclear where it makes sense to do so. But we can't afford (existentially or econimically) afford to abandon nuclear power yet.
Another shameless lie and pathetic attempt to claim that the cost of wind generation is more than nuclear power generation. Wind farms are ALWAYS cheaper and quicker to build than nuclear power plants.....but the other key cost which is virtually NEVER factored in, is the cost of long term storage and security of a nuclear power stations nuclear waste, which will outlive the nuclear power station that generated it!!!!
Great stuff as always Gregg and co. Could you make a follow up on the issues with reusing the waste? judging from the other comments many of us lack the knowledge to know why we can't recycle the waste by re-enriching or use the 'new' radioactive material in another generator - after all the radioactivity making us bury it is still a form of energy that should be exploitable
Underground bunkers have already been a failure in several aspects (Transportation methods, Leaching, ect). The over all costs involved with this has also proven to be much higher than expected, and when researchers checked on previously designed, deep underground bunkers with stored Nuclear Waste they found material leached through the containers designed to specifically hold Nuclear waste. Ironically, the investigation found Microbial growth. Not only was it found, researchers were astonished to find that was breaking down the Nuclear waste (Which was never thought to exist). With this being said, I don't know why this would not be on the top of the list for researching into ways of eliminating these types of waste. I wish I had kept the article or where I had read it. Oddly enough, I never heard about it again for some reason. I was taking my Environmental course at the time and used the article in research paper that was for alternative methods of reducing/disposal of Nuclear and other Hazardous wastes. The professor had kept a copy as he was very interested. There was some other really good papers from others as well. I think some researched extreme incineration process, and another was something pertaining to stripping the molecules down through either a mechanical or biological process which the end product was either no longer deemed Hazardous, or able to be reduced to a much small volume, but I don't recall. Point is, there most certainly is other ways of dealing with this stuff. I'm guessing cost over profit is the over all factor..... If only the truth was made public.
Simple solution to nuclear waste, just don't make it! It will out live every society that produces it, it may possibly out live all humanity and yet we make it. I am by far from an environmentalist but this has always seemed a bit stupid to make things we don't know how to dispose of.
Actually contrary to this video the majority of radioactive materials will decay within a decade. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_radioactive_isotopes_by_half-life#100_seconds This video made the unfortunate mistake of combining all radioactive isotopes into a single material and then gave the decay rate of Plutonium as the decay rate for all of these isotopes. That is completely inaccurate. Granted these isotopes do not make up the majority of high level waste by volume, but then again Uranium 238 (makes up 96.5% by volume)present very little danger given its very low radioactivity and alpha particle decay.
Nuclear is the safest per TW, being 0.04. Next best is Hydro at 1.4 although 0.1 when you start excluding Banqiao - but no one would ever do that for Chernobyl right? Solar is 0.44. Coal is of course the worst at 100+ depending on metric. There is no "just" we need to have something that we can run on demand alongside the less stable power sources.
If only we had space elevators. We could send it up the elevators and give it a nudge towards the sun or let the earth's electro magnetic sphere deal with it. The amount of radiation from the sun bombarding earth is far more than spend fuel rods.
Could it be possible to just put it under Chernobyl? At least till we perfect space elevators..? to get the waste past our magnetic shielding, &... headed for the sun??
How do we dispose of nuclear waste? step 1, stop making it. its pretty clear that nuclear energy not only isnt clean energy, its polution stays around for.... what did the video say? 250,000 years? We are already struggling with disposal of the waste that has already been generated without dealing with an every growing supply of it. Nix nuclear energy and concentrate on energy production that is actually clean. Otherwise the problem of disposing nuclear waste will never end. It will just grow and grow as we keep producing it.
+OUTFXD Yes nuclear waste is an issue, but the claims made by this video illustrate in a very misleading form. First of all 250,000 years is the decay rate for a very specific isotope- Plutonium 239. Now I have an idea as to why the author chose this particular isotope, but the way in which this video portrayed high level waste to be primarily this substance is incredibly misleading. 1. Plutonium 239 is a fissile isotope, which means that you can fission this material and you will no longer have this waste stream. When you fission Plutonium 239 it primarily becomes Xenon 134 and Zirconium 103. Xenon 134 is a stable isotope and Zirconium 103 has a half life of 1.2 seconds. 2. This video characterizes nuclear waste lasting 250,000 years as spent waste, but this is completely inaccurate. In order to be spent waste you have to be the product of fission, which is not where we get Plutonium 239. Pu-239 is the result of a series of decays when Uranium 238 absorbs a neutron during a fuel cycle. Uranium 238 + 1 neutron = Uranium 239, which decays rapidly into Neptunium 239 and then decays into plutonium 239. Never does Plutonium 239 exist from the result of being spent as a result from fission, so to describe the formation of this isotope as such is completely inaccurate. 3. This video describes nuclear waste as lasting 250,000 years, which is incredibly misleading, because Plutonium 239 does not make up even close to the majority of high level waste. In actuality High Level Waste is comprised of about 1% Plutonium 239 by volume. By comparison Uranium 238 makes up about 96.5% of high level waste by volume, which makes sense give that Uranium 238 is a fertile fuel (not fissile) and makes up at least 95% of the fuel in nuclear reactors per NRC proliferation regulation. Now it is very likely that the authors of this video purposefully did not recognize these points, because such discussion would actually require them to teach their viewers about radioactivity, and they wouldn't be able to make such an erroneous claim that supported their narrative. Uranium 238 has a half life of 4.6 billion years, which means that it will likely be around for 47 billion years or longer than the projected remaining lifespan of the sun. On the other hand this isotope is naturally occurring, so if it lasts for ever and is in such high quantities how is it that humanity is still alive today? In reality radioactive materials are much more complicated than just decay rate, and ironically the longer the decay rate the lower a material's radioactivity actually is. This is because radioactivity is the amount of particles emitted per second of time. Therefore, if an isotope has a low decay rate say 704,000 years like Americium 243 this means that less particles are emitted per second than an isotope like Iodine 131 whose total decay rate is about 81 days. The more particles that are emitted the greater amount of radiation exposure, so contrary to the message of this video there is not necessarily a tremendous amount of radiation when exposed to Plutonium 239- it depends on how much material is actually there. Furthermore there are other characteristics that change the risk of radioactive waste. Lets look at two isotopes with similar decay rates Platinum 175 and Carbon 15 each with decay rates of about 2.5 seconds. Based solely on the information provided in this video each of these isotopes should be equally risky. However in actuality Carbon 15 poses a greater risk, because Carbon 15 exhibits beta decay, whereas Platinum 175 has alpha decay. Human skin actually blocks alpha particles, but beta particles can pas through human skin and potentially cause harm to organs. This is why you can literally pick up Uranium 238 with your bare hands with no inherent danger. Its honestly quite mind boggling that in a video about radioactive materials radioactivity, decay particles, bioaccumulation, radiation dose and chemical characteristics were never discussed.
Wow! Thats um... above my I.Q. grade. Thank you for taking the time to put your answer together! I actually understood some of it and even learned a couple things ! I mostly get by simply trying to apply common sense to things ( Common sense seems to be getting rarer and rarer). When it comes to the Heavy lifting type.... thinking.... I say leave Siencing to the Siencers! Thank you again!
+OUTFXD "Nix nuclear energy and concentrate on energy production that is actually clean." Such as what? None of our energy sources are actually clean that's 100% marketing. Wind turbines are heavily reliant on petrochemical production for the manufacturing of carbon fiber and fiberglass blades. Geothermal can release sulfur dioxide, which causes respiratory damage. Biomass can typically be CO2 neutral or even CO2 positive. Biofuels can emit similar levels of GHGs as biomass and can often increases rates of deforestation. Hydroelectric typically requires significant destruction to environments during construction. Solar has a whole slew of problems during manufacturing because it requires synthetic semi-conductors and creates wastes such as silicon tetrachloride, dichlorosilane, trichlorosilane, nitrogen trifluoride, gallium arsenic, cadmium, tellurium, and hydrochloric acid. Additionally this video completely forgets about an entire other side of nuclear waste management. Deep geological depositories are not the only option. In fact the only waste management strategies actually used today were never discussed in this entire video. The first strategy in use is reprocessing, which is the system by which isotopes are separated from nuclear waste. Conventional methods such as PUREX and UREX are used to remove plutonium and uranium from fuel streams, and in the commercial section Uranium 235, Uranium 238, Plutonium 239, Plutonium 241, and Plutonium 242 are recovered for reuse as nuclear fuel into reactors again. As I explained in my earlier comment Plutonium is never spent in the reactor and is actually fuel, and the same can be said for Uranium. While most people see hundreds of thousands of tons of waste, 97.5% of this material can actually be reused in a reactor. Currently the nations of UK, France, Spain, Sweden, Germany, Russia, China, South Korea and Japan actually use reprocessing. Its very odd that a channel based in the UK never included the actively utilized waste management strategy…. Now to be fair reprocessing comes with high risk, because after all this process was first used to create nuclear weapons. While studies have shown that commercial nuclear reactors have not increased nuclear weapons proliferation in the last 50 years, it is possible to use this method for weapons production. Additionally conventional methods of reprocessing are very very expensive. However in 2005 South Korea and Argonne National Laboratory in the USA developed a new type of reprocessing called Pyroprocessing, which has the potential to be much cheaper for various reasons including the removal of water from the process. The second currently used "strategy" is the use of fast reactors. Fast reactors are a type of reactor defined by the high energy of fissile fuel and the lack of moderation. Certain fissile isotopes have a greater probability to fission if they are put into an environment that reduces moderation. Plutonium 239 for example has about a 30% probability to fission in a normal reactor (what is called thermal spectrum), but in a fast reactor (fast spectrum) the probability grows to about 70%. As I stated before this is not new technology. In fact one of the first reactors ever used on earth to produce electricity was a fast reactor called EBR-1 in 1951. Now the reason why I put the word strategy in quotations is because fast reactors are not really used as an option for waste management as much as they are a strategy from fuel management. In Russia per non-proliferation agreements with the USA to reduce their stockpile of nuclear fuel for weapons Plutonium 239 is actually used in fast reactors to reduce their stockpiles. However, Fast Breeder Reactors are a type of fast reactors specifically designed to take the "waste" from Uranium 238 absorption and use it as fuel in a nuclear reactor. Breeding is a nuclear technique in which fertile fuel isotopes like Uranium 238 are used in an environment that encourages the absorption of neutrons and thus the creation of fissile fuel isotopes such as Plutonium 239. This Plutonium 239 fuel is then used and undergoes fission. EBR-1 was actually a liquid metal fast breeder reactor, and since the 1950s 8 different nations have participated in over 30 fast breeder and fast reactor projects. Id also like to bring your attention to another option that currently exists in all nuclear reactors, but is not emphasized commercially yet. There is another process called nuclear burning that is very similar to nuclear breeding. Instead of turning fertile fuel isotopes in fissile fuel isotopes, nuclear burning is the process by which isotopes absorb neutrons and become different isotopes with much lower decay rates. For example, earlier I said that Americium 243's total decay rate was 704,000 years, which is an incredibly long time to wait for the material to decay (not that its actually that dangerous, but people have been lead to believe that the longer the half life the more dangerous the isotope- a completely inaccurate belief). Lets so for whatever reason we still want to get rid of isotopes that last a considerable amount of time. Well you can either wait 704,000 years or you can force this isotope to absorb a neutron. Am 243 + 1 neutron = Am 244. Americium 244's total decay rate is about 105 hours or about 4 1/2 days. Today there is a tremendous amount of research into developing actinide burner reactors, whose purpose is to take radioactive isotopes with very long decay rates from nuclear waste streams and transmute them (absorb a neutron) into isotopes with significantly lower decay rates. Last November a Canadian company called Terrestrial Energy actually received the first design permits to construct a nuclear reactor called an IMSR, which integrates nuclear burning in the reactor core. Terrestrial Energy plans to begin operation with this reactor in 2025.
We shouldn't make it unrecoverable. A hundred years from now it's quite possible we'll have invented methods of either destroying the waste (eg, in a Thorium fuel cycle reactor) or actually find value in some of the waste components... like coal tar used to be dumped into the Thames but later became an important industrial starting point, especially pharmaceuticals and other organic chemicals.
you are soo right, how come noone is talking about finding that solution. no matter how, digging a hole and thrwowing it in is the dumbest thing to do. there is no such thing as waste, its all chemistry and physics. mankind should rather work on solutions than creating fear over something they dont want to understand.
Sad that ppl like you dont understand the problem...
@@k-mar9587 "There is no such thing as waste" - what a stupid stupid comment. When it is being treated as waste, stored as waste and to be abandoned as waste - IT'S WASTE.
The public reaction to careful disposal is really dumb. Shutting down disposal sites and letting everything sit indefinitely out in the open instead. Great work. Really saving the planet there.
Is it? People will produce less garbage if all their trash just lays around in their garden.
Or we could invest in other less dangerous sources of energy. Solar perhaps? Algae. Nuclear is not every efficient and very toxic to humans and the environment alike.
Bahamuttiamat What do you think? What power source is safer? Nueclear is world safest and cleanest power source what we ever had... Nuclear scared public is really big danger for our future and enviroment. Solar is one of the worst idea to main power source because it is realy unstable, have a short lifetime (25-30 years vs nuclear 60 years) and extremly inefficient. For our future is best opinion about 50-75% nuclear (fission future fusion) and another 50% renweables like wind, water and solar that power generation mix works in countries like France, Slovakia, Ontario provence and in near future wants achive same Czech republic and China.
The best idea for dealing with spent nuclear rods, which are highly radioactive is to bury them for thousands of years, and yet you think it's the cleanest? lol. Fukashima, Chernobyl has words for you.
Bahamuttiamat Not i don't think i know. I know accidents like Chernobyl, Fukushima and Three Miles Island really well only one cause deaths, Chernobyl from up to 500 operational reactors today! After every accident increased safety and statistics says clearly, nuclear is safest power what we ever develop with mining porocessing and accidents only 90 is mortality rate per trilion kilowatt hours compaere to second safest wind with 150 and coal 170 000.
I have been contracted out to one of these disposal facilities to handle their ventilation control for the past few years. It's a neat process and they at least take safety pretty serious.
Why is it even waste? Surely if it's still chucking out radiation in the form of excess electrons, then it's still usable as fuel? Sure, it's not as efficient, but it's still doing the same job we need it for. Couldn't we just use it to power reactors that have a lower power yield?
It’s not fissile and I’m pretty sure it decays by alpha decay.
www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/feb/02/nuclear-reactors-consume-radioactive-waste There are ways of using it, but the reactors are still underdevelopment and there's some concern about the possibility of nuclear proliferation, since they're types of breeder reactors. Good news is that they can use thorium as fuel as well, which is a lot more plentiful than uranium.
Deltaru Molten Salt Reactors take nuclear waste and process it into nuclear power.Look up Gen 4 reactors.
Look up Thorium LFTR reactor! it’s the best possible way to dispose of waste, because it uses the other 98% of the potential energy in used fuel rods. And by far safer then today’s reactors. It’s a shame that nuclear went a total different direction (typical heavy water) in the 70s, for nuclear bomb purposes.
Just google the word "throium" Thorium based molten salt reactors (MSRs) eat nuclear waste and can't explode or melt down. Check out Kirk Sorensen's talks that describe these marvelous designs vs. the nuclear power we know about today. Super amazing.
Has BBC Earth Lab considered doing videos on other types of extreme waste from power generation?
Such as the radioactive waste left behind after burning coal.
The toxic waste left after mining for rare earth elements such as those required for neodymium magnets & solar panels.
there are very few ways of generating power that do not have consequences. Perhaps a video that explains all of these consequences so people will come to understand that what they think is Green electricity is not necessarily the case.
That's what's known as a "Whataboutery" argument - pointing the finger at something else to distract or disguise to the issue at hand. The focus here is NUCLEAR WASTE, which needs its own permanent safe solution without pointing the finger at other types of power generation.
Finland should make a business out of burying other counties' nuclear waste, since the ground in Finland is optimal for that. There could even be a slogan: "Finland, the nuclear waste land".
Maybe continue in developing the nuclear reprocessing technology? Not stopping it because politics...
not politics, luddites
Politics is what is pandering to the luddites.
It's not just Finland, Sweden has a huge waste disposal facility, where it keeps nuclear waste from half of Europe, including UK, Finland was just first to come up with such solution.
I find it odd that this video didn’t talk about 4th Gen breeder reactors that will be able to use waste from previous generation reactors as fuel. With that in mind it seems irresponsible to scuttle possible fuel away in concrete filled bunkers.
How about harnessing the energy that it makes?
Well finding an underground bunker with tons of nuclear waste is like “the mummy” movie of the future 🤣
Team Thorium!!!!
Go molten salt reactors!
Josue Garcia get real lol
another victim of the nuclear energy propaganda
Assuming the waste can't be salvaged for other uses (radiotherapies, lower yield fuels, ammunition/armour - depleted Uranium, etc), deep burial seems most feasible. But the mantle idea : would not the heat of the earth help destroy the waste material? One suggestion i heard 'send it to space and fly it into the sun' which probably would destroy it
boffinboy100 One reason is in the video an other is today we have in development fourth generation reactors that can use today waste and make it less dangerous for much shorter period of time.
Flying things into the sun takes a huge amount of energy. (Even if this were a good idea, which it isn't.)
Today's waste is tomorrow's fuel.
And tomorows nuclear fuel will produce more waste which we cant dispose. The problem are the fission products and you wont get rid of them by burning the heavy elements.
Normally I like these videos, but for the most part they just fuel the fear that we will be generating endless waste. The reality is the amount of "waste" is currently tiny, and after it is removed from the cooling ponds, it is not particularly radioactive anymore. There is some long lived plutonium however (half life ~24k years) and that is what gets people freaked out (and why he said 1/4 M years, because after 10 half-lives it is roughly gone. However, that plutonium AND the remaining uranium is a FUEL. It can't be used in the inefficient reactors we have today, but new technology is being developed to use it commercially. Look up MSR and Gen IV reactors. Perhaps you can do an update to this video after you learn about these items. Nuclear energy is by far humanities best solution to energy generation and abundance.
In addition, new high temperature reactors can make ammonia, which means fertilizer, and that means food. They can desalinate seawater for drinking (and crops), as well as generate liquid fuels (look up "navy nuclear jet fuel"). In addition to that they can also make electricity that is continuous (not dependent on varying sun and wind, etc), cheap and abundant.
I thought we were making progress in learning how to use that nuclear waste for energy...
ButtFeet Look up Molten Salt reactors on TH-cam.
It doesn't seem like progress when the last development was 50 years ago.
Progress has been made/is being made in theoretical and experimental developments, some of which may address a lot of the existing nuclear waste challenges - but not all of them. The key issue is, that the costs of moving from experimental nuclear power plants to commercially viable - are astronomical. At the moment NO ONE wants to invest in those new nuclear power plants or the technologies necessary to reuse nuclear waste. In the meantime we just continue irresponsibly, to create more toxic nuclear waste, with no safe permanent solution for it.
We have in finland olkiluoto's "cave" where we put them for long term storage and fill it with concrete
Hi Greg! Greetings from Austria! Have a nice weekend.
I enjoyed your video as usual. :)
👋 thanks @blocki!
Haven’t done any research about this subject, but i was wondering, couldn’t we just release the radioactive material into the nature around us? But just in small quantities at a time, not enough to kill all life in the sea or poison a whole city. I was wondering that because i read somewhere sometime ago that there are around 64 Parts Per Million Uranium-235 in the US soil or air on average and that’s harmless. I think it’s that high because of the nuclear bomb testings in Florida, but if we release small amounts in the whole world then that might be a solution.
Problem here is the having not done any research. Do you some research and you'll understand why your suggestion is preposterous.
How about the Thorium plant?
We already make capsules that can survive the explosion of arocket carrying it. Here in the US we had space shuttle disasters showing that. Couldn't we design a multilayer container that fits at the end of a rocket that would remain intact in case of a failed launch. Then the capsule could be recovered if necessary.
Even if we put something like a huge skull and crossbones over an area or pit here on Earth I can imagine curious people in the future saying "What's this?" and attempting to investigate the contents.
There is currently no container deemed secure enough which could contain nuclear waste, which could be risked being fired off in a rocket, due to the risk of rocket failure.
Disappointed you didn't talk about using it for power generation.
I know, it's not quite ready yet, but thorium and traveling wave reactors seem to be on the verge of functionality, dozens of companies are working on them and a lot of money is being invested. If I understand correctly, it's likely possible to use spent fuel in these types of reactors.
Re-utilize the waste for use in radio-isotope thermoelectric generators. The long half-lifes of the discarded material would make RTGs the most efficient batteries we can make. And there is sufficient material for a single RTG compound (city block sized) to continue providing power for years/decades beyond the shutdown of a Nuclear power plant.
Recycling should be our first option no matter what the cost is.
Create a teleportation mechanism and throw it in the nearest blackhole
It came from nature. So give it back to nature. End of story.
This 👍
Sweden (more precisely SKB (Svensk Kärnbränslehantering Aktiebolag)) is constructing its final storage facility, it has however not been approved yet by all authorities.
Thanks, BBC.
Yeah Finland! You rock
We should invest in some of some of those bins from from Subnautica! Just toss the spent radioactive rods into them and they're gone!
fireaza TH-cam Molten Salt reactors,they process nuclear waste then turn it to power.It's estimated that as much nuclear waste as we have in the U.S. we could power the entire country for around 300 to 400 years off of just waste.
Line-X spray can resolve nuclear radioactive wastes barrel. Of course nuclear radioactive wastes can extract plutonium bomb 94. Meanwhile it can also extract atomic battery and Radioisotope thermoelectric generator polonium 210 from nuclear radioactive wastes.
Of what is the radio active waste made of ?
What if we put radio active waste in deserts under the sunlight ?
Our company has development an entirely new way to handle radioactive waste -nothing like what you are describing here and nothing like any research we have been able to find. In fact, we can clean up the existing stored wastes and deep water dumps too. Japan could use us about now, but there's no way to get to the person in charge because no one seems to know who is running the operation. REALLY weird! Our main problem with getting to market is the number of businesses, supporting businesses, and political corruption involved that will cease to exist. LOTS of people are protecting nuclear waste storage. It seems EVERY ONE has their hand and wallet in the income from waste storage. I'm not sure you have heard of SynRoc, but we have made this new technology obsolete too. Any words of wisdom from your viewers or you would be appreciated. The truth is..."no one wants to have a nuclear waste site anywhere close to their homes". We can make that happen and COMPLETELY resolve the UK problems.
My vote is for deep sea subduction zone disposal. Make the casks out o extremely dense materials, osmium lead or bismuth, and make them strong enough to survive getting swallowed up by the Earth relatively intact. If they're made dense enough, the casks should migrate downward toward the mantle rather than be pushed upward by volcanic activity.
And how could you be absolutely sure those casks would not migrate back upwards through volcanic activity. The short answer is you can't. This is such an inexact science it borders on the ridiculous as a solution.
It's not radioactivity that heats the water.
Why isn't it simply dumped into a live volcano?
for one, if something has a half life of half a million years, that means, by definition, is not highly radioactive
second, lava is hot *because* of radioactivity in Earth's core
@2:07 Why is this expressed as an area? Are the containers 10cm in height or 1m? Is it the actual waste or including the size of the containers? Or is it the area of the facilities used to store said fuel?
The number doesn't have any meaning in that context except to scare people.
Area of the facilities used to store said fuel, volume would certainly be better
Another possibility is to finish and build IFR reactors en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_fast_reactor. These type of reactors can recycle nuclear waste.
Liquid fuel fast-neutron molten salt reactor can consume high level nuclear waste. Waste from these molten salt reactor is not long lived, repository should be built only to last 200-400 years.
Keep it accessible in a controlled environment. It will be safer that way and useful in the future.
Am sure if the researchers worked hard they might find way to convert the waste to some thing less active and danger. Convert waste must work on
a few things you did not mention
current technology of reactors burns maybe 1% of their fuel. after just a few years in the reactor fuel gets contaminated with fission products and there is a concern fuel cladding might not be able to hold it in any more. that's why such fuel is being removed.
Does it mean it can no longer be used? No. It just needs a different type of reactor.
Breeder reactors can take such spent fuel and keep on using it to make electricity or heat - greatly reducing the volume of waste and it's longevity. remove transuranic materials from this fuel and its radioactivity would be down to natural levels after 300 or so years - and these transuranic materials - you can use them to keep making electricity for you, instead of burying them, until they are all gone.
Such reactors are currently being developed. There's a whole list of companies who are making major progress in making them happen - my bet you can expect China to start building such a reactor in several years tops.
So it might very well be that Finnish deep geological repository solution is already obsolete - before they even start using it.
Btw what you've said about storing fuel in water pools is inaccurate. Underwater storage is necessary only for the first several years.
After that, for another 20 or so years it's enough if you store it in a casket that has enough air ventilation to take away the heat.
After that, you can just bury it underground without any cooling solution at all.
The nuclear dream of providing a near-infinite amount of cheap and clean energy is now more alive than it ever was. It just needs better technologies than those used back in the 1960-ies.
If waste still radiates, why is it not used for energy still? This does not make any sense at all.
If I were asked to choose between stored nuclear waste vs stored human feces, I'd opt the latter
Why can't someone invent a cheep affordable solar powered interlocking roof tile that can be replaced easily? Get on it guys.
What about the test reactors that breaksdown the fuel to shorter lived ones?
They don't get so much funding because everyone is scared of Nuclear. (Granted they get a lot of money, it goes slow).
Though they have shown greate potential eaven though its at small scale
Why not concentrate the radioactive part of the waste back into fuel?
The most radioactive isotopes that constitute nuclear waste are the fission products, which themselves cannot function as fissile fuel. Unfortunately this video never explained what radioactivity actually was, and therefore their explanation is rather misleading. Radioactivity is the amount of particles emitted per second of time. If takes more time for a amount of material to decay then this material will have lower amounts of radioactivity, because per second there are less particles emitted. Isotopes such Uranium 235 and Plutonium 239 actually exhibit low radioactivity as it takes considerably more time (7 billion years and 250,000 years respectively) for these isotopes to decay. Compared to isotopes such as Krypton 89, which the primary resultant of Uranium 235 reactions has very high radioactivity exhibited by its very short decay rate at 3.5 minutes.
Even a weak emitter can be used as a power source, even if just through natural decay.
Zach Crawford Its not cost effective for commercial nuclear reactors to pursue that source of generation
Chernobyl is building a recycling plant. we don't need to bury all of the waste, just to make it more safe and reusable.
If water is needed in keeping it cool then it means it's hot and stays hot. Doesn't that mean it still produces energy? Why not harness that heat energy to produce more electricity?
My five-year-old suggests we send all nuclear waste into a black hole so it disappears.
The radioactivity ___________ up in a nuclear reactor stays around
Antartica? 1km under the ice, no one will live there for a long time
we as a species dont deal with our coal nor any fossile fuels waste... why would we start now?
FINLAND! ~Patrick Star
I know its alot to mention in this video but can you weight in on the difernces between Uranium and Theorium power plants?
If it is so highly radioactive, why can't we use it to generate more power?
For the US rocky mountain depository
Never mind what happens to nuclear waste.. What happens to the money from BBC TV licences?
If it puts out so much heat. Why not reuse that heat to power a steampowered powerplant?
good idea! at least its heat is used
The underground bunkers seem like a solid idea to me, i'm surprised the public are still so weary of Nuclear power
TheBakerUK I think that's only a tempts fix to our problem cos we would eventually run out of space to store it and also to dig all those holes and fill them in would be quite costly. I think we should focus on making more efficient solar panels as well as massive improvements on batteries.
There's an underground facility at Hanford which is leaking large amounts (50-300 gallons per year) of nuclear waste, and they've spent years deciding on how to deal with it.
Aaron Wilson Yeah I do totally agree with trying to develop renewable energy further and making it more sustainable!
Fish nuclear energy is really messy and if we can't clean up after it we are going to wreck the planet so I think we should leave nuclear power alone until we know how to recycle the nuclear waste.
Got any sources for that?
It gets collected and stored in the Canadian Shield
I was actually going to recommend shooting the waste into space, then Greg mentioned the potentional for a break apart. I wouldn't like that. One mintue I'm eating with my family, then I see granny pissing through her nostrils.
Let's use the waste it in cars, nuclear-powered cars.
that's a terrible idea
cars can already be nuclear powered if you have an electric car and charge it with the power from a nuclear power station
It's always been politics that has prevented us in making any real progress in this area. It's quite sad really. Finland has the right idea.
It's simple. We hire the Batman.
I wonder if the nuclear rods could be used for something rather than discarding them... if they are combusted will radiation then just drift through the sky? What research has been put into seeing if it’s possible to erase levels of radiation somehow?
If fuel catches fire, it will spread particles into the atmosphere. It'll also melt (see china syndrome.... which is thoroughly debunked, but just to illustrate, yes, people have thought about these things)
Yes, Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactors (LFTR) are claimed to take existing reactor waste in along with their Thorium fuel. The resultant spent fuel from such a reactor is of considerable lower volume and requires far less time in storage to decay to safe levels. Keeping something secure for 500 years is much easier than for 50,000.
.
This sort of reactor is also unsuitable for creating fissile material for nuclear weapons.
I assumed it ended up in fast food.
Love BBC
No one is doing waste reactors yet?
Nuclear reactors in space.
Wind and nuclear power plants have nearly equivalent total grams-of-CO2/kWh carbon debt, which includes construction plus operational lifetime carbon use. However, for an equal electricity MW output, wind costs 4x more than nuclear to build and & wind is only available (depends on location) about 50% of the time (UK often dips to 30%) whereas nuclear power plants average about 90% availability.
Nuclear power will be the primary tool used to address CO2 emmissions in the near term. If/when we have economical large-scale battery storage to buffer intermittent renewable sources, then I will happily support scaling back nuclear where it makes sense to do so. But we can't afford (existentially or econimically) afford to abandon nuclear power yet.
Another shameless lie and pathetic attempt to claim that the cost of wind generation is more than nuclear power generation. Wind farms are ALWAYS cheaper and quicker to build than nuclear power plants.....but the other key cost which is virtually NEVER factored in, is the cost of long term storage and security of a nuclear power stations nuclear waste, which will outlive the nuclear power station that generated it!!!!
Why can't we make energy from Volcanos 🌋 ?
Are we not enough ‘advanced’ ?
That isn't stable idiot. What if they go to erupt.
Great stuff as always Gregg and co.
Could you make a follow up on the issues with reusing the waste? judging from the other comments many of us lack the knowledge to know why we can't recycle the waste by re-enriching or use the 'new' radioactive material in another generator - after all the radioactivity making us bury it is still a form of energy that should be exploitable
"what goes down tends to come up"?
see volcano co2 cycle
Underground bunkers have already been a failure in several aspects (Transportation methods, Leaching, ect). The over all costs involved with this has also proven to be much higher than expected, and when researchers checked on previously designed, deep underground bunkers with stored Nuclear Waste they found material leached through the containers designed to specifically hold Nuclear waste. Ironically, the investigation found Microbial growth. Not only was it found, researchers were astonished to find that was breaking down the Nuclear waste (Which was never thought to exist). With this being said, I don't know why this would not be on the top of the list for researching into ways of eliminating these types of waste. I wish I had kept the article or where I had read it. Oddly enough, I never heard about it again for some reason. I was taking my Environmental course at the time and used the article in research paper that was for alternative methods of reducing/disposal of Nuclear and other Hazardous wastes. The professor had kept a copy as he was very interested. There was some other really good papers from others as well. I think some researched extreme incineration process, and another was something pertaining to stripping the molecules down through either a mechanical or biological process which the end product was either no longer deemed Hazardous, or able to be reduced to a much small volume, but I don't recall. Point is, there most certainly is other ways of dealing with this stuff. I'm guessing cost over profit is the over all factor..... If only the truth was made public.
Simple solution to nuclear waste, just don't make it!
It will out live every society that produces it, it may possibly out live all humanity and yet we make it.
I am by far from an environmentalist but this has always seemed a bit stupid to make things we don't know how to dispose of.
Actually contrary to this video the majority of radioactive materials will decay within a decade.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_radioactive_isotopes_by_half-life#100_seconds
This video made the unfortunate mistake of combining all radioactive isotopes into a single material and then gave the decay rate of Plutonium as the decay rate for all of these isotopes. That is completely inaccurate. Granted these isotopes do not make up the majority of high level waste by volume, but then again Uranium 238 (makes up 96.5% by volume)present very little danger given its very low radioactivity and alpha particle decay.
The more dangerous ones last the least amount of time too.
Well .. it turns to farts!?!?!?!
Why can't we throw this waste in volcanos 🌋 ? And why necular waste is radioactive ?
plz answer me
Because throwing things in volcanoes makes the stuff explode
Or we could just use renewable energy. I'm a big fan of nuclear energy but green sources are a much safer alternative.
Nuclear is the safest per TW, being 0.04. Next best is Hydro at 1.4 although 0.1 when you start excluding Banqiao - but no one would ever do that for Chernobyl right? Solar is 0.44. Coal is of course the worst at 100+ depending on metric. There is no "just" we need to have something that we can run on demand alongside the less stable power sources.
with wind solar hydro and battery/storage tech, the move away from nuclear is the only way forward
Batteries are pretty poor and require manufacturing and disposal too, much more than nuclear would waste. Nuclear goes well with the renewables.
If only we had space elevators. We could send it up the elevators and give it a nudge towards the sun or let the earth's electro magnetic sphere deal with it. The amount of radiation from the sun bombarding earth is far more than spend fuel rods.
pfft space elevators are the pleb version of an orbital ring ;)
But yeah orbital ring with a cannon pointed at the sun on it could be useful
Disposal in Chernobyl
What happened to Coventry city football club?
turned into nuclear facility....
Launch it in space 👏👌😂
Cheek it!
By studying..........Sun....
I'm still quite attached to the subduction zone solution
TORILLE PERKELE!
Could it be possible to just put it under Chernobyl? At least till we perfect space elevators..? to get the waste past our magnetic shielding, &... headed for the sun??
I vote load it in missiles and lob it at canada
Suomi mainittu, torilla tavataan.
.
Is the BBC still even trustworthy these days ?
.
How do we dispose of nuclear waste? step 1, stop making it. its pretty clear that nuclear energy not only isnt clean energy, its polution stays around for.... what did the video say? 250,000 years? We are already struggling with disposal of the waste that has already been generated without dealing with an every growing supply of it. Nix nuclear energy and concentrate on energy production that is actually clean. Otherwise the problem of disposing nuclear waste will never end. It will just grow and grow as we keep producing it.
+OUTFXD Yes nuclear waste is an issue, but the claims made by this video illustrate in a very misleading form. First of all 250,000 years is the decay rate for a very specific isotope- Plutonium 239. Now I have an idea as to why the author chose this particular isotope, but the way in which this video portrayed high level waste to be primarily this substance is incredibly misleading.
1. Plutonium 239 is a fissile isotope, which means that you can fission this material and you will no longer have this waste stream. When you fission Plutonium 239 it primarily becomes Xenon 134 and Zirconium 103. Xenon 134 is a stable isotope and Zirconium 103 has a half life of 1.2 seconds.
2. This video characterizes nuclear waste lasting 250,000 years as spent waste, but this is completely inaccurate. In order to be spent waste you have to be the product of fission, which is not where we get Plutonium 239. Pu-239 is the result of a series of decays when Uranium 238 absorbs a neutron during a fuel cycle. Uranium 238 + 1 neutron = Uranium 239, which decays rapidly into Neptunium 239 and then decays into plutonium 239. Never does Plutonium 239 exist from the result of being spent as a result from fission, so to describe the formation of this isotope as such is completely inaccurate.
3. This video describes nuclear waste as lasting 250,000 years, which is incredibly misleading, because Plutonium 239 does not make up even close to the majority of high level waste. In actuality High Level Waste is comprised of about 1% Plutonium 239 by volume. By comparison Uranium 238 makes up about 96.5% of high level waste by volume, which makes sense give that Uranium 238 is a fertile fuel (not fissile) and makes up at least 95% of the fuel in nuclear reactors per NRC proliferation regulation.
Now it is very likely that the authors of this video purposefully did not recognize these points, because such discussion would actually require them to teach their viewers about radioactivity, and they wouldn't be able to make such an erroneous claim that supported their narrative. Uranium 238 has a half life of 4.6 billion years, which means that it will likely be around for 47 billion years or longer than the projected remaining lifespan of the sun. On the other hand this isotope is naturally occurring, so if it lasts for ever and is in such high quantities how is it that humanity is still alive today?
In reality radioactive materials are much more complicated than just decay rate, and ironically the longer the decay rate the lower a material's radioactivity actually is. This is because radioactivity is the amount of particles emitted per second of time. Therefore, if an isotope has a low decay rate say 704,000 years like Americium 243 this means that less particles are emitted per second than an isotope like Iodine 131 whose total decay rate is about 81 days. The more particles that are emitted the greater amount of radiation exposure, so contrary to the message of this video there is not necessarily a tremendous amount of radiation when exposed to Plutonium 239- it depends on how much material is actually there.
Furthermore there are other characteristics that change the risk of radioactive waste. Lets look at two isotopes with similar decay rates Platinum 175 and Carbon 15 each with decay rates of about 2.5 seconds. Based solely on the information provided in this video each of these isotopes should be equally risky. However in actuality Carbon 15 poses a greater risk, because Carbon 15 exhibits beta decay, whereas Platinum 175 has alpha decay. Human skin actually blocks alpha particles, but beta particles can pas through human skin and potentially cause harm to organs. This is why you can literally pick up Uranium 238 with your bare hands with no inherent danger. Its honestly quite mind boggling that in a video about radioactive materials radioactivity, decay particles, bioaccumulation, radiation dose and chemical characteristics were never discussed.
Wow! Thats um... above my I.Q. grade. Thank you for taking the time to put your answer together! I actually understood some of it and even learned a couple things ! I mostly get by simply trying to apply common sense to things ( Common sense seems to be getting rarer and rarer). When it comes to the Heavy lifting type.... thinking.... I say leave Siencing to the Siencers! Thank you again!
+OUTFXD "Nix nuclear energy and concentrate on energy production that is actually clean." Such as what? None of our energy sources are actually clean that's 100% marketing. Wind turbines are heavily reliant on petrochemical production for the manufacturing of carbon fiber and fiberglass blades. Geothermal can release sulfur dioxide, which causes respiratory damage. Biomass can typically be CO2 neutral or even CO2 positive. Biofuels can emit similar levels of GHGs as biomass and can often increases rates of deforestation. Hydroelectric typically requires significant destruction to environments during construction. Solar has a whole slew of problems during manufacturing because it requires synthetic semi-conductors and creates wastes such as silicon tetrachloride, dichlorosilane, trichlorosilane, nitrogen trifluoride, gallium arsenic, cadmium, tellurium, and hydrochloric acid.
Additionally this video completely forgets about an entire other side of nuclear waste management. Deep geological depositories are not the only option. In fact the only waste management strategies actually used today were never discussed in this entire video. The first strategy in use is reprocessing, which is the system by which isotopes are separated from nuclear waste. Conventional methods such as PUREX and UREX are used to remove plutonium and uranium from fuel streams, and in the commercial section Uranium 235, Uranium 238, Plutonium 239, Plutonium 241, and Plutonium 242 are recovered for reuse as nuclear fuel into reactors again. As I explained in my earlier comment Plutonium is never spent in the reactor and is actually fuel, and the same can be said for Uranium. While most people see hundreds of thousands of tons of waste, 97.5% of this material can actually be reused in a reactor. Currently the nations of UK, France, Spain, Sweden, Germany, Russia, China, South Korea and Japan actually use reprocessing. Its very odd that a channel based in the UK never included the actively utilized waste management strategy….
Now to be fair reprocessing comes with high risk, because after all this process was first used to create nuclear weapons. While studies have shown that commercial nuclear reactors have not increased nuclear weapons proliferation in the last 50 years, it is possible to use this method for weapons production. Additionally conventional methods of reprocessing are very very expensive. However in 2005 South Korea and Argonne National Laboratory in the USA developed a new type of reprocessing called Pyroprocessing, which has the potential to be much cheaper for various reasons including the removal of water from the process.
The second currently used "strategy" is the use of fast reactors. Fast reactors are a type of reactor defined by the high energy of fissile fuel and the lack of moderation. Certain fissile isotopes have a greater probability to fission if they are put into an environment that reduces moderation. Plutonium 239 for example has about a 30% probability to fission in a normal reactor (what is called thermal spectrum), but in a fast reactor (fast spectrum) the probability grows to about 70%. As I stated before this is not new technology. In fact one of the first reactors ever used on earth to produce electricity was a fast reactor called EBR-1 in 1951.
Now the reason why I put the word strategy in quotations is because fast reactors are not really used as an option for waste management as much as they are a strategy from fuel management. In Russia per non-proliferation agreements with the USA to reduce their stockpile of nuclear fuel for weapons Plutonium 239 is actually used in fast reactors to reduce their stockpiles. However, Fast Breeder Reactors are a type of fast reactors specifically designed to take the "waste" from Uranium 238 absorption and use it as fuel in a nuclear reactor. Breeding is a nuclear technique in which fertile fuel isotopes like Uranium 238 are used in an environment that encourages the absorption of neutrons and thus the creation of fissile fuel isotopes such as Plutonium 239. This Plutonium 239 fuel is then used and undergoes fission. EBR-1 was actually a liquid metal fast breeder reactor, and since the 1950s 8 different nations have participated in over 30 fast breeder and fast reactor projects.
Id also like to bring your attention to another option that currently exists in all nuclear reactors, but is not emphasized commercially yet. There is another process called nuclear burning that is very similar to nuclear breeding. Instead of turning fertile fuel isotopes in fissile fuel isotopes, nuclear burning is the process by which isotopes absorb neutrons and become different isotopes with much lower decay rates. For example, earlier I said that Americium 243's total decay rate was 704,000 years, which is an incredibly long time to wait for the material to decay (not that its actually that dangerous, but people have been lead to believe that the longer the half life the more dangerous the isotope- a completely inaccurate belief). Lets so for whatever reason we still want to get rid of isotopes that last a considerable amount of time. Well you can either wait 704,000 years or you can force this isotope to absorb a neutron. Am 243 + 1 neutron = Am 244. Americium 244's total decay rate is about 105 hours or about 4 1/2 days.
Today there is a tremendous amount of research into developing actinide burner reactors, whose purpose is to take radioactive isotopes with very long decay rates from nuclear waste streams and transmute them (absorb a neutron) into isotopes with significantly lower decay rates. Last November a Canadian company called Terrestrial Energy actually received the first design permits to construct a nuclear reactor called an IMSR, which integrates nuclear burning in the reactor core. Terrestrial Energy plans to begin operation with this reactor in 2025.
Recycle..........
The url of the video spells "Guy"
Femenists are enraged!
Rambling on silly ideas that youve decided that wont work. Thought this was educational not for views to make $$$$$
Shoot it into space! Lol
Australia - send it to Australia.
As china made artificial sun ........muclear fusion....method.........
I dont know about china's artificial sun............any details