Nuclear Physicist Reacts - Kurzgesagt Why Don't We Shoot Nuclear Waste Into Space?
Nuclear Physicist Reacts - Kurzgesagt Why Don't We Shoot Nuclear Waste Into Space?
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In this video, I react to Kurzgesagt Why Don't We Shoot Nuclear Waste Into Space? Video from the perspective of a nuclear physicist. I go through the Kurzgesagt Why Don't We Shoot Nuclear Waste Into Space? Video and look through what is accurate information on Kurzgesagt Why Don't We Shoot Nuclear Waste Into Space? Video as a nuclear Physics and react to it.
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You asked and I delivered! ☢️👩🏽🔬 This video was fun to watch even though there were several misconceptions displayed. It was a good way explaining the not so good idea of shooting nuclear waste into space. Let’s hope people are more prone to support permanent geological repository facilities ☢️👩🏽🔬 Let me know what you think!
@Elina Charatsidou I think you have misconceptions about everything that revolves around nuclear. It's very plain to see you have a predetermined bias for the use of nuclear materials. Burying it has never been a good answer and exaclty why it hasn't been a global answer to nuclear waste of any level. Sending it to space now is a viable option with rocket capsules that have been built to protect the astronauts riding inside them. What makes you think that nuclear waste wouldn't be protected in that capsule? With the returning boosters that we have now this is a much more viable option and is only going to get better and safer. Anyone that believes we should bury it all has never researched how radioactivity travels through an aquifer and thus makes it to the surface. Let's not forget the WIPP explosion just because the wrong kitty litter was used.
The only people unwilling to handle nuclear "waste" are people who think "nuclear is bad" to such an extent that Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging (NMRI) was renamed MRI without the nucleus part because people are literally scared of anything the is central to an atom.
@punk Monkey It's very plain to see you have a predetermined bias against anything nuclear. Sending waste into space is the dumbest idea you ever came up with.
The problem is that it is only Finland and Sweden actually building a long term storage right now? Even after 65+ years of nuclear power plants. The sweeping of the waste under the carpets seems like an apt analogy.
@@paulmobleyscience Do you understand the difference between a bias and a conclusion based on evidence? And what makes you think that a small capsule designed to house a few astronauts will also be able to completely contain several tens of tons of radioactive waste? And what "WIPP explosion". It is clear to me that "you have misconceptions about everything that revolves around nuclear."
I believe the "green goo" color of cartoon radioactivity comes from the green glow of radium paint, which combined radium-226 with copper-doped zinc sulfide to create a green phosphor effect. This paint was used in such things as clock dials and industrial equipment from 1908 to the 1960's or early 1970's. Since this was the most direct exposure that most people had with radioactivity, that green glow became associated with radioactivity in general.
Don't forget about uranium glass. It's green and glows under UV.
@@Gerov9 I have a whole cupboard of those dishes, because my dad thought it was interesting. He even installed UV lights in the cupboard
@@Gerov9 Uranium glass has very low radioactivity compared to radium.
@@danadurnfordkevinblanchdebunk Aye, however uranium glass’ green shade and glow also contributed to the popularity of “nuclear green” in the zeitgeist
@7piecebucket Also Uranium glass had a green glow under UV light. Many of those clock dial painters received tongue cancer after licking the brush to keep it with a usable tip.
A bit of context for the poor bird/duck/ cute animal handling the spent fuel without the shielding. It's a time honored tradition in Kurzgesagt videos for the birds to die a horrible and gruesome deaths. If you are Patreon supporter of high enough level you can even get your own personal bird designed just to die spectacularly onscreen :)
Ahaha this is hilarious and adorable ! Thanks for the context ☢️👩🏽🔬
Are you okay with 2 replies? I mean im not comparing if you have lots of replies im just asking sooo?
Thats a birb
I must get a bird killed 🐦 🦜 🦚 🪶 🦢
@@arleneramos2186 huh？
Okay. I do LOVE the idea of highly radioactive meteor showers lighting up the nightsky. Not in actual reality but it would make for some sick scenery in a dystopian novel/film.
I was thinking sci-fi with this video as well. Imagine a future civilisation visiting the moon and it's just full of radioactive junk
Apply some mutant evolution too.
@@Roozyj If it had an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere introduced the title would write itself based on Cerenkov radiation; "Blue Moon"
Keyword being sick lol
Oh me a idea for a game some experiment gone wrong causes radioactive material to go flying in to the atmosphere and only few humans survive you the protagonist wake up after a 1000 years of cryogenic sleep trying to figure out what happened and how to rebuild humanity to it's former glory butt beware some machines still lurk around waiting (note: sorry if the story doesn't make sense I kinda just made it up along the way)
I like the “cartoony” stuff, it makes the video interesting and not boring, instead of going through a long document of how launching wast in space is bad he makes it fun, interesting and short
It's the point of the channel
but she kinda criticism on the cartoon idea like the green goo.
@@Duijnkiller shes boring id fight her old ass
The German Federal Ministry for Environment said a week ago they won't find a place for a nuclear waste repository until 2046, possibly even as late as 2068. They say they need that more time to evaluate all the geological data they've gathered. (Originally it was planned to determine a site until 2031.) It's really infuriating because IIRC this is already the third time they've started the whole process from zero, and they won't get a different result in this iteration either; Germany's geology isn't going to change over a few decades. It's clear that all this delay is politically motivated, no politician wants to tell the voters in his home district that the repository will be built there and the Green party especially needs the "unsolved nuclear waste problem" topic for campaigning, so they aren't interested at all to get this resolved quickly.
The US government is doing essentially the same thing. It's always been a political problem, never a technological one. Burying it is the least attractive of the many options we have at our disposal in any event.
@Klopfer Pay no attention to the account Dana Durnford and Kevin Blanch debunked because his name is Craig Douglas and he sells antique Civil Defense monitors and has been his niche at trade and gun shows....since he's the only one selling this junk at those type of shows. You can find this information at Paratus Business News A Real Road Warrior. He has a bias and would like you to visit his website he has in his description on his other channel AKA ForbiddTV. It's not about politics which is all every pronuclear person ever says. They also said MSRs were political and that isn't true because it was due to the Tellurium embrittlement of the Hasteloy-n issue, not political. Germany made the right choice and it may take a bit longer to understand why, but it is the right choice to move away from nuclear power as all countries are doing down to 9% globally now down from 13% a few years ago.
Yeah you would love to have anyone that tells the truth ignored: From Michelle Matthews Wakeup channel: "I was with Paul Mobley for a few years, and in them years, Paul Mobley on his comments to me slipped up a few times and was answering his own comments where the trolls should of answered but every slip up he managed convince me it was all in my head. I lost all trust in him and also the net. And where there were trolls there also was Paul. Don't trust him don't like him but I can see the power they have for I nearly took my life through it all in fact I still feel he as some kind of grip on my stuff. He made so many mistakes and he would look me in the eye creepy he is. Wish he gets it all back ten fold x"
@Punk Monkey Show where the US Government Accountability Office hasn't said on their website; The DOE is responsible for disposing of this high-level waste in a permanent geologic repository, but has yet to build such a facility because policymakers have been at an impasse over what to do with this spent fuel since 2010. Meanwhile, the federal government has paid billions of dollars in damages to utilities for failing to dispose of this waste and may potentially have to pay tens of billions of dollars more in coming decades."
@@danadurnfordkevinblanchdebunk Yes thank you for showing that once again. Why don't you tell them the truth Craig Douglas that I show on my channel in the troll Playlist? You harassed her along with your Metabunk friends that trolled her so hard and told her every lie possible to try to make her mad at me and make me stop debating you. They will know the truth if they would just look.
3:10 You missed a chance to say "The cost of sending something into space would be ASTRONOMICAL"... Another great reaction to a great video. Now I'm kinda intrigued as to what nuclear waste actually looks like.
Hehe thanks for the comment ☢️👩🏽🔬 I’ll try to include some pics in future relevant videos so you guys can take a look ☢️👩🏽🔬
@@YourFriendlyNuclearPhysicist yes I would love to see actual nuclear waste
@@YourFriendlyNuclearPhysicist I think I've heard that when stored mixed with glass, it can glow blue due to cherenkov radiation
@@lorriecarrel9962 I don't think you can see nuclear waste ☠
@@-_deploy_- You could hook a camera up to a robot and send it in, that's what they did when they sent a robot into Fukushima to photograph the melted fuel.
From the US Government Accountability Office: "The nation has over 85,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel from commercial nuclear power plants. DOE is responsible for disposing of this high-level waste in a permanent geologic repository, but has yet to build such a facility because policymakers have been at an impasse over what to do with this spent fuel since 2010. As a result, the amount of spent nuclear fuel stored at nuclear power plants across the country continues to grow by about 2,000 metric tons a year. Meanwhile, the federal government has paid billions of dollars in damages to utilities for failing to dispose of this waste and may potentially have to pay tens of billions of dollars more in coming decades." Nuclear waste has never been a technological challenge, only a political one.
Sounds right.
Which said political issues are just propaganda being deliberately made by some people that are mad about how their precious coal and gas will no longer make them so much money
@@swordzanderson5352 I think it's an intentional move by Greenies to get people to demonize nuclear energy so they can lead us to the destructive renewables pathway.
@@ForbiddTV Which are supported or could even have been started by the same old coal and gas huggers sitting in their rocking chair drinking their wine while we choke to death
@@swordzanderson5352 Renewables without nuclear as the Greenies are forcing upon us will guarantee a grim future of exorbitant electricity rates, energy rationing and massive rolling blackouts.
We all now Kurzgesagt uses the lime glowing goo to express radioactive elements not only to make it noticeable, but to laugh a bit about the things told about radioactive goos and stuff
That's just how it often gets represented and the cartoon style in general makes it more appealing for, younger people as well wich is a good thing ^^
2:17 I'm convinced that a good chunk of anti nuclear power people actually think nuclear waste looks like that
I don't think "what it looks like" matters to anti nuclear people. The physical appearance is honestly pointless to even discuss for this topic.
@@bigquazz3955 If you think all nuclear waste is all glowing green sludge instead of mostly slightly radioactive suits and such will impact your opinion on nuclear
@@robuxyyyyyyyyyy4708 "if it's dangerous, it's dangerous no matter what it looks like" will impact opinions more
@@noimnotakpoppfpsheacy2526 If people see the actual nuclear baths, and people just casually standing around and not dying, that's different than imagining cartoons with glowing green sludge that is mutating fish and blowing up cities. I believe it genuinely impacts people's feelings, with feelings being the main driver of anti-nuclear sentiment, not actual facts and statistics. People think Hiroshima and Chernobyl, that anything nuclear is going to kill us all. People think uranium is deadly even before refinement. The anti-nuclear lobbies rely on feelings, not facts.
Every single German I know is vehemently anti nuclear (my company is based in Germany and I have spent time there). Kurzgesagt also happens to be based in Germany. I love their work, but they do seem to be a bit biased when it comes to topics related to nuclear energy.
I think at 17:30 when he talks about the "willingness to deal with it" he's talking about the common people. At least that's how I understood it. Of course the people in the industry want to find a way to solve the waste issue! But, the lay person hears "nuclear" and gets nervous. A generalization, but a good one. Like that town that stopped a solar power farm because they thought that solar power causes cancer...
This is what I wanted to say. The general fearmongering and people protesting and holding up signs and the mistaken ideas that other forms of energy production are "safer" than Nuclear all comes down to people being unwilling to contemplate handling nuclear waste in the long term. Experts and well read laymen tend to understand that while it does carry risks, they are controllable, but most general people think it's this huge boogeyman.
@Octo can you blame them tho, negative nuclear effects do pretty much guarantee a gruesome and painful death and it is part of being human (asian to be super specific) to look at the worst of the situation and rarely at the good even if it's the .1%
@@ClorxxKage But the issue is that it's all about PR management from other sources creating that specific fear and minimizing the other very real and much, much more pressing dangers from things like landfills, coal plants, etc. My mother grew up in an area saturated with the evidence of a very old coal plant, and there's an entire generation of men who worked in and around that plant who are totally missing from the population now- they all died from resulting health complications far too young. The people who live in these areas suffer still today. Nobody ever protested that coal plant- they knew the risks, of course, but there wasn't some big oil company feeding people anti-coal propaganda and encouraging them to get up and arms about it. It's less "blaming" people for their fears and more asking them to be critical of what they're actually scared of, why they're scared of that, and this is the most important bit- getting them to realize that they're being manipulated into feeling that way by people who do not have their best interests at heart.
It's not even common people, it's politicians and their "not in my backyard" politics.
@@ClorxxKage Yes. I absolutely can blame them. Fossil fuels are killing significantly more people. It's like if you had the choice between torturing one child or if you don't a thousand get murdered a quick and painless death. I frankly don't care how bad the torture looks if it means saving a thousand others you are a monster for not picking that option.
I love how she basically summarized one of their points before they even got to it.🤣🤣🤣
I was literally saying just make a separate video on it lol
Lol I like your immediate reaction what about rockets exploding and waste just raining back down. And when he finally points that out you just do a hand gesture at the camera like told ya. That one point is a nail in the coffin that makes the whole idea a non start.
Yeah like she was so quick to try and get a jab at them for saying something wrong even though that wasn’t the case 😅
@@fjz.julian It sounds like you two actually disagree.
Dispersing the waste over big enough area would leave it so low in radioactivity youd find more radiation in Argentinas black beach.
@@StrazdasLT surely...
I always thought the gooey waste was a reference to The Elephant's Foot which looks like it was (at least at one time) fairly viscous. But that's just an assumption backed up by zero evidence, I'd love to hear a theory backed by actual evidence!
Just found your channel BTW. Enjoying your content - very informative and great presentations!
Kurzgesagt is a great channel in my opinion. I don't think you have to worry about the obviously comical graphics misleading anyone. Anyone smart or thoughtful enough to be interested enough in the concepts and content presented in the video should be smart and thoughtful enough to realise that radioactive waste is not really green glowy goo. And when they talk about unwillingness to handle the waste, I believe they're referring to countries where there is public and/or political resistance to embarking on a nuclear power programme or expanding a limited existing one. Because of broadly and vaguely stated concerns about how to "handle" the waste. A lot of the worries may be misinformed fear-mongering, but that's what you have to deal with when it comes to public sentiment and politics.
Bill Gates approves this comment
@@why_so_serious Yes, as he should, being a brilliant guy. That was your point, wasn't it?
@@lightyagami1752 please get vaccinated. Thank you!
@@why_so_serious I already am. You're welcome!
@@lightyagami1752 nice 👍
I think there are a few infographic issues you didn't cover. 1. Lots if vertical rocket transfers. There are a few where the fact that things are in orbit of acknowledged, but most of them must show a rocket going "up" to its target instead of a Hohmann transfer. 2. Some of those rocket failures are landing failures by SpaceX. 11 failures isn't necessarily 11 failures to reach orbit. 3. If this is were every seriously considered, the one thing they would definitely make sure is that a launch failure will not destroy the containment vessel. It would likely be designed to be able to reenter and land intact, burying itself at the crash site instead of splashing all over the place or spreading radioactive dust everywhere.
Another great reaction video! I found your explanation of how spent fuel is removed and stored particularly interesting. Seems to be something that doesn’t see much explanation or demonstration in general.
i'm really enjoying your videos, topics and opinions! thank you for the content
This is fun, you answer a lot of questions i get while watching these kinda videos.
I'm a fan of reprocessing and reusing as much spent fuel as possible. I've also seen some interesting reports on technology being developed to encase certain nuclear waste in diamond and other hard materials to turn them into radioactive batteries. Not all active waste is bad. If we are pursuing fusion power, the accumulations of deuterium and tritium dioxide in the water used to shield the uranium has its own future uses.
Yeah that was a cash grab startup with the diamonds.
@@nnnik3595 there are a few nuclear batteries on the market which are successful. They just don't have a high enough power output for anything much larger than a calculator.
@@warrensteel9954 the startup promised a bit more than that though
@@nnnik3595 Startups overpromise and underdeliver, it is the nature of startups
@@diablo.the.cheater Most do yeah. But they delivered basically nothing and promised to revolutionize the world. So yeah I guess the average cash grab tech startup.
Great Video! Im working to be a nuclear physicist, starting uni next year! Hope to be in your shoes one day.
Best of luck ☢️👩🏽🔬
congratulations Doctor Elina for your work in that field and your activity in explaining people the reality of nuclear power
This video was so great! Keep going! 🤩
Youre seem very nice and friendly in your videos. I really like them! They're of course very interesting too, with deep insides.
Please rephrase that, it is too sis.
I'd like your take on the possibilities of the "new" reactors using molten salt and continous processing vs the water moderated pressure vessels with fueling cycles. Seems like a potential to "burn" stockpiles of old waste and provide valuable medical and research isotopes at the same time. Better than shooting them into space for sure, and potentially financially profitable too?
yes, I understand there are processes that either reduce the volume of high level waste generated, or can "burn" existing high level waste . I'd also like to know more about this from a nuclear physicists perspective!
Thorium pebble bed reactors were mooted years ago as a good alternative... Trouble was, they didn't produce the products that military needed so oddly they never got built. Funny that? Haha
Great reaction! I reacted to this a week ago and also thought it was a silly idea - maybe we’ll all get more serious about permanent repositories for dry cask storage?
T. Folse Nuclear I'm glad you made that a question at the end because it's absolutely in question. To believe that an area will stay the same anywhere on this planet with plate tectonics and a history we can't always use Carbon -13....I mean Carbon-14 dating....Carbon 13 is always getting in the way of dating things. I seen last time you made money from nuclear materials in her comment section and I asked you a question that you never answered. What do you know about organically bound tritium?
You could easily consider dry cask storage to be a permanent solution even without burial. The two billion year old nuclear fission waste site of Oklo Gabon proves this absolutley.
The Oklo "natural" reactor does not have the same chain as what's in our reactors because it's concentration in nature is much different than our fuel. That's why most actinides are not found in any measurable quantities in nature and only found from the concentrated fuel in our reactors. U238 neutron captures the very small amounts of U235 and thus is unlike our reactors.
@Punk Monkey Of course no one was taking to you, but the fission reactor at Oklo Gabon has many of the same radioactive byproducts that you continually scream about. One could live right next to a field of dry storage casks and never have any issue with radiation poisoning.
@@danadurnfordkevinblanchdebunk Really? People could live next to dry casks? Ok, well what about when the waste outlasts the concrete, metal, negative pressure gas and the 2 different seals? What then genius? Oh they will have to transfer it into another dry casks for the next generation to deal with. Yes great plan, just kick it down the road. Craig Douglas.....you are by here under citizens arrest for your decade long illegal activity on KZhead. I'll be coming soon to see that your handcuffed properly
I loved the little mistake edit cuts you used to do at the end of the videos they were so cute! Bring em back
I've often thought this was one of the more poorly thought-out ideas. There's just too much to go wrong.... And what was ignored was the possibility that people might deliberately sabotage things for political or military reasons. Terrorists or enemy agents could be a huge problem for this method of disposal.
Considering it’s not a huge concern for normal space missions, I don’t think it was a main problem that either videos would see worth delveing into. Security for rockets are top-tier and terrorist groups would find it a huge waste of money to target one. It’s easier to shoot up a city and would give the same level of impact if they did. If another country sabotaged a rocket, that would be a war crime. It’s illegal to target a civilian object in outer space. And would sabotaging a nuclear waste rocket be worth the UN on your back? National intelligence agencies probably could figure out if something fishy was going on. But bypassing them would cost even more to do.
@@kyayi1230 "Shagaru is supposed to look like a false angel because again, black aura makes something evil, do to the color black symbolizing negativity." As if people in power are afraid of committing war crimes. Not to mention the UN is a useless organisation, they would hardly have any impact.
One of the really great way spent rods are being used is here in Canada with our CANDU reactors we can take the spent rods of other countries and use that as fuel for even longer producing tons of power.
If the climate alarmists don't close them all down in favour of retarded 'wind and solar will power the world' projects.
Haha I love your reaction to the cute bird thingy, for a future video could you discuss the Windscale fire of 1957 and the Wigner release. Congrats on 15K by the way!
"You need a bigger carpet." :) Thanks for your input on all this.
Hi, Ms. Elina, I want to ask you this question: How hard it is to recycle or reuse the spent nuclear rods or fuel? Since they are still radioactive even after the fuel has been spent, is there a way to harness the energy, maybe put them in a smaller boiler to create steam?
They do that but it’s expensive
@@cinnamon4ada7 I see, but why it is expensive? Too dangerous? Low yield?
@@benjamintan2733 low yeild, once it's been spent it's way less reactive so it's way harder to get a chain reaction going and even if we do it dies out pretty fast. So not much energy but still a ton of security measures.
Essentially fission works by splitting unstable nuceli into two stable nucli to release energy. These stable nuceli are what make up the nuclear waste we are worried about. Problem is, it's still very radioactive but the nuceli are way to stable now to make ideal nuclear fuel. That's a very basic explanation I'm not an expert
Hi Elina, I'd like to request a video explaining future fission reactor technology like liquid core and gas core (by that I mean the nuclear fuel itself is in liquid/vapor/gaseous form, not referring to the coolant) and why it's apparently extremely challenging to build. Everybody thinks fusion is the future, but I think fission still has some cards up its sleeves worth exploring. Thanks!
I’m so glad we have you around to address what really matters, carpeting!” 16:04
I really hope that we keep it around, because as a material it's highly unique and there's a nonzero chance that we can figure out a way to make it useful and actually make nuclear even MORE appealing in the future by creating useful byproducts rather than seeing it only as a negative. So far it is highly hazardous, but maybe some day it'll be it's own separate form of power, or something we can turn inert and then reclaim.
Kurgasack has a great way of imagining and visualizing new topics for videos
Kurgasack lol 😂 nice try mate. Kurzgesagt is how ya spell if ya wanna know.
@@Trigorastronomology kurzgesagt
@@byMNedits oh shit whoops that letter t slipped it. Lol
@@byMNedits thank you bro
Kurzegasgas
Yeah, I luaghed loudly before I watched their video, because I thought the idea was so unimaginably stupid, haha! :D You don't have to be an expert or very smart to understand that (given that it could be done safely) it would be an absolutely massive waste of energy and resources! Also, the only two possibilities I even considered before watching the video were either to send the waste into Jupiter or out of of our solar system. I guess we could use the moon's gravity and then perhaps one of the rockey planets' gravity and then one of the gas gigants' gravity, but what a waste! (pun intended) ... to get rid of a problem that is not even that big of a problem in the first place!
I feel like the "problem" is somewhat of self-fulfilling prophecy: It shouldn't be a problem, but it is a problem because politicians thought it would be a problem
The green gooey nuclear waste is what randomly gives superpowers to whoever comes into contact with it
the cartoony approach like the goo from the containers is a reference to games. (kurzgesagt caters to an audience that is familiar with that trope. and said audience also knows its unrealistic) the unsave handling is a reference to the simpsons unsave handling methodology. your critique would be fair if these bits werent a joke but a serious documentation. but yeah they are mostly entertaining animations with educational content attached to it :) hope it clears up why they do some things the way they do haha oh and the last point for unwillingness of people they meant the general populous who doesnt know much about nuclear energy that is still affected by the scares of 1984, 1986 and 2014 disasters. the avarage folk still thinks nuclear energy is worse than coal
Imagine hitting a random alien civilization with nuclear waste and starting an interstellar war, or imagine getting hit by another civilizations junk...
Getting hit at relativistic speed by some piece of junk some alien spacecraft ejected long ago would be as devastating as being hit by a low-ish yield nuclear bomb. As that famous quote from Mass Effect goes "Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son of a b**** in space"
@@killman369547 a sand particle would do a planet in at that speed...
you do realize that if this would ever happen we would just aim it into a star and let the constant thermonuclear explosions of the star surface deal with i t?
Does anybody remember the Futurama episode of the giant trashball on return orbit to collision with earth? Season 1 Episode 8. This sounds familiar.
With gusto
Your voice made this.. review(?) much more enjoyable, your voice is easy to listen to, also love the reaction to the giant pile of nuclear waste under a very small rug 😂
So that episode of Futurama where the trash that was launched into space in the 20th century came back to earth in the year 3000 was accurate? Cool.
Love your videos !
Thank you!!☢️👩🏽🔬
I gotta subscribe to this Kurzgesagt channel. They seem to be very informed about far out shit.
They apparently put at least a thousand hours of reasrch into each project working with scientists before a video is released. They don't claim to be scientists themselves.
@@AhmedIshaqmv They don't have to be scientists to understand words. I don't much like that channel either but if they spend that amount of time on a video, you can be rest assured it's more than anyone else will out into one single video.
They do a ton of research into all subjects they do videos about. And the best part if they get something wrong they go back and amend it! The amount of people in the world that are willing to stop and say sorry we made a mistake are far to few.
@@RageQvist They even made a video called "We lied to you, and we will do it again" That goes a bit more into detail on the matter. And as always, it was a very good video as well, even if a bit different.
@@TheAzynder I was thinking about that video when i wrote my comment. 😁👍
The MOX or mixed oxide facility was a good idea, they were blending depleted uranium rods with weapons grade plutonium to recycle it for fuel. They were going to do this in South Carolina, but it never opened.
Jimmy Carter stopped the US from reprocessing its nuclear waste. Other countries are doing it.
Hi Dr Charatsidou - is spent reactor fuel economically valuable as a source of radioisotopes? Cs-137 is a fission fragment used for industrial and medical purposes.
What % of the current and growing waste pile could be used for that (if at all anything)? 0.000000001% ?
Yep, the disposal of coal and the emissions from burning coal is a really big issue. Nuclear power, from what I as someone looking in from the outside, seems like a good solution at our current junction. Though I would also like to plug other alternative energy sources, such as Geothermal power generation. I'm actually working on a project about Locating Geothermal Resources using remote sensing (Satellites, Drones, etc.) right now as part of my GIS Bachelor's thesis, so the topic of different energy production methods is pretty interesting to me. As a specialist in the Nuclear side of things, how would you compare Geothermal Energy Production with Nuclear Energy production in terms of viability? Thanks for the video, it's always interesting to see the industry specialists looking at educational content and providing a little more context to the topics. Because, a lot of the time, the educational creators can only go into so much depth if they want to keep the videos to a certain length and they might make errors as a consequence of not actually being involved in the industry.
Well, energy production should be a mixture, so that you aren't 100% reliant on something that could have problems if the fuel supply has issues. Geothermal gets energy from the source, you don't have to mine it and ship it. It probably shouldn't be our main energy source though, and it isn't feasible for many places, but it definitely has its place for smaller scale implementation in countries with readily accessible geothermal vents. I wonder what would happen if we used so much energy from the core heat of the Earth that it cooled enough to contract the crust? If that's actually something that could happen? 🤷🏻
One thing that everybody seems to forget - or not even notably recognize - is that spent nuclear fuel, after cooling in a pool for a few years, can be recycled into more nuclear fuel, effectively closing the cycle. France does it; why doesn't everybody else?
Mainly-cost.
@@YourFriendlyNuclearPhysicist Ah, I see. According to the top part of Google, reprocessing one kg of spent nuclear fuel costs $585, while mining one kg of uranium costs $130 - at least in the US - and one kg of thorium costs $30.
I love the GTA death sound/screen at 16:00. Great video, that part made me laugh.
2:10 Green, gooey, glowy waste comes from the Radium Girls era, when Radium phosphide paints were mixed and used. These HIGHLY RADIOACTIVE paints were vividly green, glowed, gooey, and in the 1910s-20s were often poorly stored. Imagine a house paint can half used with the lid hammered back into place, with paint dripped down the side, but glowy green XD (many factory workers were often allowed to take some home, with some painting their teeth/skin and going to dim lit clubs to be seen. A majority of these factory workers died horrible, and painful deaths, paving the way for safer industry practices used in later decades) How can you be an expert if you didn't know that minor trivia?
Idk if you know the job of a nuclear physicist but it isn't knowing trivia hahaha
Just because a builder knows how to build a building doesn't mean that the builder knows the history of buildings A painter knows how to paint but that doesn't automatically make them knowledgeable about lead and it's side effects Also Just remember that green wasn't the only kind of radioactive paint Their were plant of other colors (though the colors were still namley green and orange) were used
@BakeMeSumCake Let me guess, she isn't an expert because she doesn't demonise nuclear power??
they werent highly radioactive. Only moderately so. Youd need to collect thousands of items that used those paints to have any effect on humans. Btw its still questionable how many of those worker deaths are actually related to the paint. They had to been drinking it for some of the claims to be true.
So you basically are criticising an "in a nutshell" channel for being, well, in a nutshell.
Enjoying how this explains the lore of Wall:E more than I expected
if we were to shoot spent nuclear fuel into space, it definitely makes alot of sense to use an entirely new (outside of theoretical) type of rocket engine that uses nuclear fission for thrust. so yeah a rocket where the thrust in the 2nd/final stage is from rapidly expanding gas heated up by basically a demon core (or close to becoming one).
Yeah, does sound very... Elaborate... Compared to the approach here in Finland: "let's just dig a really deep hole".
Would you offer any alternative better suggestions ?
@@YourFriendlyNuclearPhysicist Yeah, reprocessing it like is done in many countries, or use in Fast Breeder reactors when we finally can do so. In the meantime, no one in world history has ever been harmed by stored 'nuclear waste'.
@@danadurnfordkevinblanchdebunk That is incorrect because many of the tank farmers in Hanford have been injured by nuclear waste.
@Punk Monkey Not incorrect at all, no one at Hanford has been injured by stored 'nuclear waste'.
Don't forget they fill those holes afterwards with a kitty litter ;)
Elina! Great video. What we need urgently is nuclear fusion plants. Or Solar power plants. It would be available today if energy/oil lords or war lords just sponsored research in the field instead of stay into oil but, I guess, money and power talks.
The biggest argument against sending the waste to space: rocket accidents that deliver the waste to the atmosphere and the earth. Apart from rocket accidents, the best way to send radioactive waste to outer space is to use the Moon and Venus as gravitational assists until the spacecraft goes fast enough to reach Jupiter. Then Jupiter boosts the speed to greater than the escape speed of the sun.
Heres an interesting question is there a way to take the radio activity from spent rods to make the rods inert so they can be melted down and recycled for other things?
Amazingly what most people understand about Nuclear waste probably comes from the Simpson's, complete with glowing green bars of nuclear waste.
Your insight is always spot on, Elina. By the way, yes, the green stuff is sci-fi, but we can say that it is a color-misinterpreted Cherenkov radiation. The animation is adorable :)
Or when radium and whatever they mixed it with was (and still is for some speciality applications) used for glowing toothpaste, clock and gauge dials, and so on. That was green and glowy.
Thanks and great commentary.
side part , in europe is a program to monitor Radon , because many houses are made from granite which is got uranium that decay to radon , there is even info like open doors and windows as often as possible
I still think it would be a nice idea to shoot it into the Sun. The only problem is that it is very expensive and also things could go wrong. So all in all it isn't going to happen. Again too risky, but it may be technically possible to put it in the middle of large caliber rounds of some sort and literally fire it into the Sun ballistically. There has been some work on high velocity canons and it is easier than orbital insertion.
Why do we set ourselves on fire over used nuclear fuel and used nuclear fuel only? Most of the industrial waste we manage never gets less toxic over time. Not in a million years. Not even in a billion. Mercury, lead, cadmium, arsenic, etc. are all dangerous and remain so forever. There’s nothing special about radiation that prevents us from storing it as we do with this other waste. Unlike the other dangerous waste, the toxicity of used nuclear fuel drops sharply, most is gone within 40 yrs. long term storage is certainly as appropriate for used nuclear fuel as it is for the other high level industrial waste we manage. It's not uniquely dangerous. Unfortunately the nuclear industry has tried to respond to anti NP propaganda with costly technological “solutions” that because of the sheer cost and effort involved, those fears are *confirmed*, not diffused. Think of seeing a bear in a cage, with another cage around the first cage, then another and another. You're going to think just how dangerous is that bear? The problem is failing to differentiate between a communication problem and a science problem.
Uh. No. You dont mess with a star that has potential to release large CME at earth or potential to throw (another) micronova.
The solar winds will bring it back, it will seep through the poles around Northern and Southern polar lights
You still need to cancel out all of the orbital velocity. A cannon will not be able to do that.
Sometimes your reactions are very funny
Glad you enjoy the video ☢️👩🏽🔬
Seemed like a wrong idea from the beginning. Loved your reaction video as always ❤️❤️
Thank you!!☢️👩🏽🔬I appreciate the support
High level wastes now are typically vitrified, literally encased in a kind of glass. That then goes into shielded containers, which then get stored in a nuclear storage cask that can literally withstand a freight train hitting it at full speed. Launching it, just no. Rockets still explode or fail to make it into space for starters. Add in orbital dynamics, it's not impossible that some would eventually orbit back into earth's path.
TMNT cartoon represented nuclear waste as a green ooze leaking out of a barrel was, after all, their origin story. Suspect the green goo = nuclear radiation was popularized from TMNT animated series and the song "Turtle Power", which included the lyrics "He's the leader of the group, transformed from the norm by nuclear goop".
I could be wrong, but I always took Kurzgesagt saying "Nuclear waste and the lack of willingness to deal with it" in terms of the public perception since there's a lot of hesitancy with average people when it comes to using nuclear
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I really like you style of videos over the Kurzgesagt style.
Glad you like them!☢️👩🏽🔬
I love both youtubers very much
Elena's videos have most interesting KZhead algorithm selected commercials I'd rather watch always through and not skip.
Your video is very good! The criticism of the infographics are a little harsh hoewever. Kurzgesagt Do an excellent job of getting the non scientists of the world think about scientific problems, and I commend them for that. The infographics is a big draw for both their direct supporters and the youtube community at large. The cartoony presentation is purposely done to make it fun and entertaining, the message is in in the words of the narrator and the infographics is jsut vehicle in which that message it delivered. Plus the animation is also interactive for the channel's supporters, they can obtain their own 'bird' to have them meet a grisly end in a video. its very cool.
Ooh! Put it on the Moon. That worked so well on Space 1999. You’re probably too young to have seen that TV show. Lol Maybe the spent fuel could be added to the natural reactor Oklo, in Gabon. You’d be returning the fuel back into the earth.
My first reaction to seeing this video’s thumbnail was that I didn’t agree with it and then I figured I should watch this to find out
She feels bad for the bird. Wait until kurzgesagt blows up another bird XD
So it's not economic and it's not safe. Do we need science to figure that out?? The whole idea obviously was a joke that some people took a bit too serious.
I sincerely hope that nobody wasted tax money on studying the feasibility of this idea. I suddenly get a bit worried about that 😃
@@effedrien Not economical or safe used to be an issue but no longer is. They make capsules now that keep astronauts safe during a rocket explosion and with the returning boosters this dramatically reduces the cost and will continue to get cheaper as time goes on. So no I do not agree with that old sentiment that it's not safe or too expensive as it's no longer the case. This is absolutely a more viable option than burying it and giving it a chance to enter our aquifers.
@@effedrien A lot of times stuff that seems "obvious" isn't, and unless you want government to fall prey to charlatans a _lot_ more, you want them spending a little on feasibility studies. If nothing else, it's another set of data that shows it's BS, or it could lead to new discoveries.
We do need to seriously entertain even ridiculous ideas from time to time, so we can be sure they don’t just sound ridiculous, but actually genius. Also, many times when exploring ridiculous ideas, people happen upon other ideas that are not a joke.
@@lynx655 Until we devise a way to have launches without so many failures, the idea was ridiculous from the start.
This woman got 0 humor😂
I think this channel deserves more subscribers, she is very underated
Are you kidding? Try getting 20,000 subscribers in 5 months. She's doing real well.
3:20 "not great, not terrible" nice reference to the chernobyl-meme from the short-series on HBO. :D
This has been a cool video for me to watch today and have a good everybody :]
One thing that I would like to learn about? If you could do a video would be what kind of decay products or decay chains occur Once nuclear fuel has been put into dry cask storage. One specific question I have is would there be isotopes that only really occur/accumulate after it has been removed from an active reactor and placed in dry storage,
12:43 Futurama litteraly has an episode that is this exact premise. In the episode they explain that humanity launched a giant trash ball of of earth 100 years ago and that it had now returned and was going to collide with earth.
it's all chemically processed and filtered in processing then put back into the reactor. finding trace elements in processing is sines of internal erosion the whole facility will be shut down so the inner coatings can be repaired. like a crack in a ceramic tub, water gets thru and rust's it slowly.
Hey, is there any way to recycle high grade nuclear waste? As in, using the energy to continue to boil water if you pile up enough waste?
Reprocessing. Many countries have been doing this. The Greenies would rather you didn't know this though since they want to get you to think there is no solution for nuclear waste.
i remember the drama around the Cassini launch. The launch facilities had to be protected by the military. Where people were terribly concerned about it exploding on launch and spreading the Plutonium from the RTG everywhere. Which was obviously nonsense. Evident by the fact that the RTG (or the casket containing the plutonium) of Apollo 13 had a re-entry from the Moon, which is about as fast as it get's, and fell (intentionally) into a deep part of the Ocean. It's casket survived and is expeted to do so for hundreds of years. It was designed to survive a (far steeper) re-enry, a launch explosion, anythign. As was Cassini's
people think uranium is green, it is actually yellow but people think that because then you shine a UV light on uranium, it looks green
"The nuclear waste into space case" Love it 😂
The point of Kurzgesagt’s videos are to make large, complex topics easier to understand. Since most people imagine nuclear waste as green goo, it makes since to represent the waste as such. This idea applies to all the ‘unrealistic’ points. Explaining how waste is removed from the reactor isn’t necessary to explain an extremely basic and simplified version of this topic.
You know when you have a good heading on your shoulders when you're thinking lines up with the first thing that the physicist is thinking. I think I just broke my arm patting myself on the back. 0:54
I absolutely love how your only complaints about the video are intentional visual misconceptions (Like an excavator carrying unshielded nuclear reactor fuel at *4:38**)* made just for the cartoony zaniness.
I was thinking of using more natural 'recycling processes' but am having a number of issues with handling, transportation, and dissolution. My premise was to use a safe or stable magma flow location - recycling back into the earth - but finding a reliable location that this could be done, and the potentials of transportation to said locations is rather complicated. The idea would in theory place the radio active materials back into the heated core area of the earth which should accelerate the radioactive decay and with the pressures and flow through the magma core would/could allow for changes into more stable decay products. (NO, throwing into a volcano is in general a bad idea due to the unknowns of will it erupt?)
Holy shit this is a bad idea. No, that would not affect half life at all, we would just have radioactive magma contaminating the ground water for Basically Forever.
Why wouldn't we just shoot the waste into the Sun.
The green goo reminds me of the color of fluorescein, a harmless die used in cell biology and in order to trace water when a river goes underground.
The "green goo" for nuclear waste is cinematic short-hand based off the intended audience. It's based off that most humans think "green = infection/waste/bile" so "radioactive waste = green." It's the same kind of thinking that, if they showed the radioactive waste as glowing red, we'd all go "why is the radioactive waste red?" "Waste" is typically green, if not green-brown. So if it were any other color, most of the audience would be confused.
Ash piles are all around Silesian cities in Poland, covered with forests these days
Hey, could you speak a bit about the elaphant foot in chernobil?
"Ok, lets pretend we don't care about the money. There just aren't enough rockets." But if we didn't care about the money, we could just get the required amount of rockets.
Do you have a video on molten salt nuclear reactors using thorium as a fuel? I ask because the waste from these reactors are no longer toxic after 100 years, which would make the idea of launching uranium based nuclear reactor waste into space an unnecessary need.
I’m planning of filming one soon ☢️👩🏽🔬 stay tuned
@@YourFriendlyNuclearPhysicist That would be wonderful, much appreciated :-)
Congratulations on your 20 thousand subscribers 👏 😀
Yay! Thank you!☢️👩🏽🔬