I found this video interesting, the numbers & stats says it all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aUODXeAM-k

Spiny Norman said:

I found this video interesting, the numbers & stats says it all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aUODXeAM-k

I’ll watch later.

A few points to start off with.

1. More than half of the nuclear waste in Britain is military nuclear waste left over from bomb making during the cold war. During bomb-making they paid no attention to the environmental concerns of how much radioactive waste was produced. This would be the same in the USA and Russia. Worldwide, civilian nuclear waste is less of a problem than military nuclear waste.

2. Nuclear waste comes in general categories – low level, intermediate level and high level.

• Low level nuclear waste includes things like concrete from dismantled reactors. It the largest volume of nuclear waste by far and is less radioactive than natural granite. Burial in normal clean fill rubble suffices.
• Intermediate level nuclear waste is the second largest volume. It consists of materials that have been directly exposed to nuclear radiation from a reactor. Such as the titanium shielding of rods, moderator and reflector materials, equipment and experiments lowered into the reactor. It requires shielding but not cooling.
• High level nuclear waste is the rarest. It requires both cooling and shielding. My personal view here is that high level nuclear waste is an extremely valuable resource. We use high level nuclear waste (americium) in household smoke detectors. We use dismantled thermonuclear weapon high level nuclear waste (tritium) in key chain lights.

IMHO we should use high level nuclear waste from ore processing (radium) in water heaters and night lights. For example, we could use water heated by radium to cut energy usage for hot water all around the world, and night lights to reduce electric power usage for lighting.

The worst components of high level nuclear waste, such as Cesium-137 and Strontium 90, decay rapidly. Storage for just 60 years (eg. Chernobyl, ANSTO) will cut the radioactivity level by a factor of four or more.

The next worst component of high level radioactive waste is americium. Which as I’ve said is useful in household smoke detectors, and other places such as RTGs onboard spacecraft.

mollwollfumble said:

Spiny Norman said:

I found this video interesting, the numbers & stats says it all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aUODXeAM-k

I’ll watch later.

A few points to start off with.

1. More than half of the nuclear waste in Britain is military nuclear waste left over from bomb making during the cold war. During bomb-making they paid no attention to the environmental concerns of how much radioactive waste was produced. This would be the same in the USA and Russia. Worldwide, civilian nuclear waste is less of a problem than military nuclear waste.

2. Nuclear waste comes in general categories – low level, intermediate level and high level.

• Low level nuclear waste includes things like concrete from dismantled reactors. It the largest volume of nuclear waste by far and is less radioactive than natural granite. Burial in normal clean fill rubble suffices.
• Intermediate level nuclear waste is the second largest volume. It consists of materials that have been directly exposed to nuclear radiation from a reactor. Such as the titanium shielding of rods, moderator and reflector materials, equipment and experiments lowered into the reactor. It requires shielding but not cooling.
• High level nuclear waste is the rarest. It requires both cooling and shielding. My personal view here is that high level nuclear waste is an extremely valuable resource. We use high level nuclear waste (americium) in household smoke detectors. We use dismantled thermonuclear weapon high level nuclear waste (tritium) in key chain lights.

IMHO we should use high level nuclear waste from ore processing (radium) in water heaters and night lights. For example, we could use water heated by radium to cut energy usage for hot water all around the world, and night lights to reduce electric power usage for lighting.

The worst components of high level nuclear waste, such as Cesium-137 and Strontium 90, decay rapidly. Storage for just 60 years (eg. Chernobyl, ANSTO) will cut the radioactivity level by a factor of four or more.

The next worst component of high level radioactive waste is americium. Which as I’ve said is useful in household smoke detectors, and other places such as RTGs onboard spacecraft.

Waste heat from nuclear fusion is a far simpler and more practical source of energy for low level heating such as hot water.

In fact I’ve had a collector on my roof for that very purpose for about 20 years.

for reeders not wotchers

dear viewer you’ve been conditioned
you’ve been tricked by years of
television shows movies and video games
into thinking that nuclear waste looks
like this
yellow barrels of bubbling glowing green
goo just ready to be toxic and
transformative and spill into some
nearby river and make giant insects and
stuff
but like how commercials think that
people actually sit in jackets and jeans
in their own home this depiction of
nuclear waste couldn’t be further from
the truth the reality of the situation
is one of entirely plausible and safe
management nearly indestructible storage
and solutions
that we’ve known about for literally
decades today let’s see if we can’t set
the record straight shall we kevin clean
up all this goo i don’t know what it is
wear some gloves
now entering the facility
according to basically any poll you’d
like to look at on the subject most
people view nuclear waste and its
disposal as a fundamental obstacle for
the expansion of nuclear power many of
you may imagine a disaster like
chernobyl which is now unfortunately
ongoing when i mention nuclear waste but
this is the image in your head that i
want to challenge on today’s program it
is my contention that nuclear waste is
nowhere near the problem you think it is
and this misconception is leading to
both improper management of nuclear
waste and it’s inhibiting the expansion
of nuclear power which of course you
know i’m for so just so you don’t think
i’m in the pocket of big uranium here
today i will start from the ground up
point a to point b give you all the
facts and eventually lead you through my
reasoning if at the end of today’s
episode you don’t agree with me that’s
fine at least i think you have all the
facts which i ran by industry
professionals before filming this video
so we begin
what is nuclear waste
nuclear waste or radioactive waste more
generally is any waste that emits alpha
beta or gamma radiation it can be
anything from spent nuclear fuel rods
down to the gloves that nuclear
engineers wear and it comes from nuclear
medicine nuclear power production and
the reprocessing of nuclear weapons as
well as rare earth mining to date almost
half a million tons of nuclear waste has
been generated though a third of that
has been recycled
instead of going to a dump or some large
single area because of public skepticism
nuclear waste is almost always either
stored where it is generated on site in
pools of water or in so-called dry casks
above the ground which we’ll get to
yeah i called you big uranium because it
sounded cool make the check out to kyle
hill h-i-l
sorry i was just subscribing to some
magazines now with thousands of tons of
nuclear waste accumulating at sites all
around the world you may expect me now
to start listing off all the known
environmental and health effects from
nuclear waste and that’s what makes the
public so skeptical right well
i can’t
properly manage nuclear waste has no
currently known widespread environmental
or public health effects
this isn’t
barrels and barrels of glowing green goo
just waiting to poison your river no
this is reconstituted nuclear material
and ceramic and glass and encased in
many kilograms of concrete and steel
forever sounds like the world is more
affected by the waste generated on tick
tock that’s right arya does anyone know
how to not dance like they’re at a
theater kid’s boring wedding
sheesh what the world seems to have
forgotten about or is just straight up
ignoring is that the non-nuclear waste
we are producing right now every second
is so
so much worse it’s literally killing us
right now most of the world uses fossil
fuels right well let’s do the same
comparisons that we just did on this
program how much fossil fuel waste is
produced well every year in the u.s
alone coal plants put more ash into the
sky
by weight
than 300 times
all of the nuclear waste ever produced
in every single way ever
that happens every year
do the math and an average coal plant in
the u.s will put more ash into the air
and the atmosphere every hour than a
single nuclear plant will
in its entire lifetime
where does all this fossil fuel waste go
well
look around
the trees
the top soil the atmosphere your lungs
how does it affect people
one in five deaths
can be attributed
to the burning of inefficient fuels like
gasoline and coal
and finally have there been any large
scale health and environmental effects
from proper management of fossil fuel
waste
well
yeah
[Music]
this hurts to look at because it’s
hurting the world
and yet we still maintain this
tremendous blind spot for things like
this
you remember this happening right it’s
true that radioactivity can be dangerous
in a different kind of way but even here
if you look into the numbers just by
nature of how coal is processed it
contains some amount of radioactive
material comes from the ground just like
everything else and the average coal
plant through its ash will put more
radiation into the atmosphere than a
hundred times what a nuclear plant of
the same size would look i’m no expert
here i’m no scientist but i think about
radiation a lot i do my research i’ve
been to chernobyl myself and i can tell
you that i’d rather spend a week in
chernobyl maybe not right now than say a
week in beijing when the air quality is
literally so bad it’s worse than what
the first responders at ground zero on 9
11
were breathing
remember this isn’t worst case versus
worst case this is not chernobyl versus
exxon this is complicated reality versus
complicated reality and right now the
reality
is that fossil fuel
is the invisible scourge that people
imagine nuclear waste to be but
administrator if nuclear waste isn’t as
bad as fossil fuel pollution and the
problem is already solved what is the
solution ah yes the whole point of this
episode and uh arya get big uranium back
on the phone i could use a new
lamborghini
magazine subscribe
damn
nothing i’ve said so far actually
demonstrates that nuclear waste isn’t
dangerous just that it’s less harmful
than other forms of waste so let’s talk
about how nuclear waste is actually
managed out of a nuclear power plant
like the one behind me there are three
kinds of waste that can be produced low
level waste which can be anything from
papers to gloves that are lightly
irradiated intermediate level waste that
does require some shielding but decays
well enough over time and high level
waste this is the stuff that people
worry about the stuff that needs to be
cooled down in cooling ponds for a
couple of years before being stored away
now even though this is the stuff people
really worry about it’s only a tiny tiny
fraction of all the nuclear waste
produced in fact all of the high-level
waste ever created by every nuclear
power plant in the world
could be buried in just a football field
size space yeah nuclear power is just
that efficient now as we said high level
waste is stored mostly above ground in
so-called dry casks giant concrete
cylinders that can weigh as much as the
world’s heaviest door and inside of them
is not green goo like you imagine no
it’s
glass
and ceramic nuclear material melted down
combined with glass and ceramic and
inert material such that the nuclear
stuff stays cool
and stays below critical
despite a blue whale’s worth of concrete
despite the known physics of shielding
the public still isn’t comfortable with
these casks the san onofre nuclear
generating station found this out when
they started transferring high-level
waste to above-ground casks near a beach
and the people there are still
protesting that imagining that this will
be a problem for millennia however what
they may not realize is that the vast
majority over 95 percent of all nuclear
waste has a short enough half-life that
it can decay onsite to the point of
harmlessness in the lifetime of a power
plant
some longer-lived materials will have to
be stored away forever of course but
most of it will decay in the lifetime of
a plant to inert rock and glass
at that point standing next to one of
these gargantuan nuclear coffins will
literally be less harmful than taking a
cross-country flight
contrast this with fossil fuels again
coal plants for example are the single
largest source of mercury pollution on
earth and neurotoxic metals like this
will never ever lose their toxicity ever
they will always be a problem and today
they’re not even contained administrator
your request for the new lamborghini
aventador has been denied by big uranium
oh come on how many sensible facts do i
have to shill for a sick lambie when
properly stored and managed nuclear
waste is just
so much easier to deal with than
anything that comes out of fossil fuel
use and production but what about in
between nuclear waste production and
storage couldn’t some accident happen
when moving nuclear waste around that’s
a good question aria i want to show you
something these are nuclear waste
transport casks these are what we use to
put nuclear waste in and move it from
site a to site b or what have you now
for all intents and purposes
these are indestructible
like
hulk level infinity gauntlet level
indestructible watch this for a second
you can throw a runaway train at one of
these things and nothing happens in the
millions and millions of miles these
things have traveled across the globe
for decades there have been
zero recorded accidents where one cracks
open and stuff leaks out there’s nothing
to leak remember this is not green
glowing goo this is concrete and steel
and glass and ceramic and because of
that and because these things are so
indestructible it’s very unlikely any of
this is ever going to get weaponized
like people are worried about that’s
just not how these materials are going
to work what people should be worried
about something like a rogue piece of
medical equipment somewhere as
unfortunately the entire city of goyonia
brazil
found out a few decades ago when
properly stored and managed nuclear
waste might in fact be the safest waste
there is and all of this is even without
the ultimate solution for all of this
stuff that nuclear scientists and
engineers have known about for decades
so with that it’s time
to go underground
all my thoughts the international
scientific consensus is that the best
option for long-term storage of
high-level nuclear waste is deep
geological disposal it sounds simple and
that’s because it is you dig a big hole
that goes really far underground you put
the already safe dry casks in there you
dig the hole so deep that it’s below
anything that’s a water table
geologically active or a biosphere it’s
as isolated as you can get from humanity
without literally throwing these things
into space which you can’t do and we
know that this deep disposal would work
because billions of years ago nature
already tried it
about 2 billion years ago in what is now
gabon africa a rich natural uranium
deposit moderated by intruding
groundwater kicked off a series of
modestly powerful nuclear reactions a
natural nuclear reactor right in the
ground
these reactions generated energy and
heat for hundreds of thousands of years
and i’m telling you this little
geological factoid because in all that
time with all of the movement of the
underlying geology with all of the
erosion with zero protection zero
storage the waste from this natural
reactor which was in contact with
groundwater
moved less than 30 feet away from the
site
even without decades of study backing it
up even without a metric butt load of
specialized concrete shielding this
natural experiment worked and it’s good
evidence that deep disposal is
relatively safe if this is such a good
solution why aren’t we doing it well why
don’t we ask the experts i thought you
were oh no
no no i’m just an expert at this
to make sure i got the facts in this
program right i spoke with the
scientists and engineers over at deep
isolation the world’s first private
company to make advancements in a very
promising twist on deep geological
disposal now instead of wanting to use
giant mines underground that are 18 feet
wide and need people and heavy machinery
and you have to move tasks around with
humans instead of that they want to use
borehole technology that the oil and gas
industry already has instead of those
giant mines you just drill
18 inch diameter holes a thousand feet
or more into the ground
you drill it at an angle or horizontal
or vertical but you drill it all the way
below aquifers below anything that’s
geologically active below more rock than
is in a generic disaster film into these
holes you put nuclear casts you stack
them or you line them up you fill the
entire thing with concrete you seal it
you forget about it the great thing
about this idea is that you can do this
all on-site at a nuclear power plant
deep isolation estimates that it would
take just 20 of these size holes you can
find the space somewhere for that to
contain an entire nuclear power plant’s
lifetime’s worth of nuclear waste which
means no single large repository
somewhere no single national site where
taxpayers would have to pay for it and
accept it not accepting it is exactly
why a project like the yucca mountain
repository died
according to deep isolation
geologic disposal is robust enough to
survive earthquakes ruptured canisters
and broken seals this is simply a
benefit of just being so deep
underground
funding exists right now to try
something like this and deep isolation
has done its own polling to suggest that
most of you would be much more
comfortable knowing that a million-year
solution like this was up and running
look i’m partially making this video
because yes i am pro-nuclear power but
i’m mainly making it because this is a
perceived imagined problem that has an
easy solution that’s staring us right in
the face
we have the funding we have proven
technologies we have scientific
consensus
the thing that’s holding us back from
storing all the nuclear waste in the
world right now
is you
public acceptance whether or not we
store waste in a more safe and
manageable way whether or not we do that
and then expand nuclear power and then
use nuclear power to help fight climate
change that
is all up to you
i believe i’ve given you an accurate
portrayal of this landscape whether or
not it changes your mind
i did all i could as your resident
science boy
until next time i gotta go fuel up my
lamborghini
honda civic
you heard that
now exiting the facility
yeah i know it’s a 250 000 car do you
know how hoarse my voice is from fax
spewing
oh
thank you so much to the very nerdy
staff at the facility for the direct and
substantial support in the creation of
this here video today i want to
recognize everyone who likes the video
it’s an experiment and subscribes to the
channel if you want to continue on this
conversation if you want to drape on a
silky white lab coat which we’re
actually making if you want to join the
discord see videos early go to
patreon.com kyle hill and join the
facility today and as you can see
there’s so many of you
i don’t know how i’m going to spend this
time
sounding in my sultry sick voice
but uh
i bet a lot of you are wondering about
space disposal
it’s just a matter of fact that it’s way
too dangerous and it’s gonna it’s gonna
cost too much money
launching a rocket is hard
it might blow up if it blows up with
nuclear material in it that’s even worse
you don’t want to do that thanks again
to deep isolation
thank you for watching
no i’m fine send me a card

Spiny Norman said:

I found this video interesting, the numbers & stats says it all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aUODXeAM-k

Dude makes some good points about nuclear waste.. OTOH..

Windscale: The British Chernobyl

What about by-products of nuclear detonations are they considered nuclear waste

I don’t like headlines such as this. How dare you assume I’m ignorant.

Cymek said:

What about by-products of nuclear detonations are they considered nuclear waste

Yes, but very difficult to collect.

sibeen said:

Cymek said:

What about by-products of nuclear detonations are they considered nuclear waste

Yes, but very difficult to collect.

I was just reading an article about survival myths that could get you killed.

One was hold up your thumb at arms length and if it covers the nuclear explosion you are a safe distance away.
It apparently isn’t true but it mentions the radiation I wonder if it works for the actual detonation effects

Ian said:

Spiny Norman said:

I found this video interesting, the numbers & stats says it all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aUODXeAM-k

Dude makes some good points about nuclear waste.. OTOH..

Windscale: The British Chernobyl

Reading Windscale now, gee talk about incompetence and lies.

“Hmmm, lets half arse highly dangerous substance and lie as well”

Cymek said:

sibeen said:

Cymek said:

What about by-products of nuclear detonations are they considered nuclear waste

Yes, but very difficult to collect.

I was just reading an article about survival myths that could get you killed.

One was hold up your thumb at arms length and if it covers the nuclear explosion you are a safe distance away.
It apparently isn’t true but it mentions the radiation I wonder if it works for the actual detonation effects

The thumb thing gives you something to do in the few seconds before your immediate or lingering death arrives.

Cymek said:

sibeen said:

Cymek said:

What about by-products of nuclear detonations are they considered nuclear waste

Yes, but very difficult to collect.

I was just reading an article about survival myths that could get you killed.

One was hold up your thumb at arms length and if it covers the nuclear explosion you are a safe distance away.
It apparently isn’t true but it mentions the radiation I wonder if it works for the actual detonation effects

Nah, that one is something to do with time left till sunset

captain_spalding said:

Cymek said:

sibeen said:

Yes, but very difficult to collect.

I was just reading an article about survival myths that could get you killed.

One was hold up your thumb at arms length and if it covers the nuclear explosion you are a safe distance away.
It apparently isn’t true but it mentions the radiation I wonder if it works for the actual detonation effects

The thumb thing gives you something to do in the few seconds before your immediate or lingering death arrives.

Yes but holding up your thumb prevents you from seeing the inward vision of the true hopelessness of your situation.

Ian said:

Cymek said:

sibeen said:

Yes, but very difficult to collect.

I was just reading an article about survival myths that could get you killed.

One was hold up your thumb at arms length and if it covers the nuclear explosion you are a safe distance away.
It apparently isn’t true but it mentions the radiation I wonder if it works for the actual detonation effects

Nah, that one is something to do with time left till sunset

Two fingers held horizontally represents a quarter of an hour as the sun is setting if I recall.

> Waste heat from nuclear fusion is a far simpler and more practical source of energy for low level heating such as hot water.
> In fact I’ve had a collector on my roof for that very purpose for about 20 years.

Do you heat you household hot water with it? Or only swimming pool?
They were very popular for swimming pools here for a while, but most people have stopped.
I liked them.

Solar water heating is not a great success when it is snowing. Waste heat from nuclear fission beats solar heating in northern hemisphere winter.

mollwollfumble said:

> Waste heat from nuclear fusion is a far simpler and more practical source of energy for low level heating such as hot water.
> In fact I’ve had a collector on my roof for that very purpose for about 20 years.

Do you heat you household hot water with it? Or only swimming pool?
They were very popular for swimming pools here for a while, but most people have stopped.
I liked them.

Solar water heating is not a great success when it is snowing. Waste heat from nuclear fission beats solar heating in northern hemisphere winter.

I have a household solar hot water system, as does Woodie. His is better than ours. But ours cost just the installation costs and three coats of paint on the storage cylinder. It had been damaged in a Brisbane hail storm and was replaced by insurance. My neighbour gave it to us, and I had it installed here.