We Solved Nuclear Waste Decades Ago

Nuclear waste is not glowing barrels or green goo. And nuclear waste storage is not at the bottom of some river. This is the reality of a situation we actually solved decades ago.

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😎: Kyle
✂: Charles Shattuck
🤖: @Claire Max
🎼: Mëydan

[kylehill]

*Thanks for watching!* Proud of this one — I hope it’s educational and entertaining enough to share.

[meepmoop]

I really appreciate that a method of impact testing is literally just "hit it with a train".

[kenner]

Yeah, when I was on the USS Eisenhower back in 1982 (a nuclear aircraft carrier) we had a device in the engine room that could detect very tiny amounts of radioactive particles in the air. The only times I ever saw the detector needle rise much above zero was pulling into Naples, Italy -- and it did that almost every time we pulled in...as soon as we'd get out to sea the needle would drop back. I was told that there was a temperature inversion layer over Naples and what we were reading was Carbon 14 isotopes from coal-burning powerplants.

[stepbystepawsomness]

its bizarre that we even need deep isolation. it's not a solution to issue of waste, as you said, it's solved, its a solution to public perception.

[LadySnowfaerie]

I live next to one of Finland's biggest nuclear plants, and tbh it's kinda chill here most of the time. The only issue is that we sometimes get weird marine life near the exhaust ports, since their wastewater is naturally warmer than our seas tend to be in the winter. Means that species that couldn't usually live at these latitudes keep turning up with cargo ship ballast waters and chilling there.

[Amigo]

One of the weird things you learn looking into this matter is that the part of the process of handling nuclear waste that is _most damaging_ to the environment is... The production of all that concrete.

[panqueque]

I think what freaks people out is all the precautions. Fossil fuels are worse but we just throw them up into the air so "How bad can they be right?". But nuclear waste needs these concrete tombs and all these security precautions, so even if they're way safer, it freaks people out and makes them think "What if something goes wrong tho?". The only way to fix this is educating people.

[userNULL]

I think it would be really cool if you cite your sources in the description so its easier to navigate for my more academically-inclined friends

[erinedwards]

I didn’t realise how little I knew, I genuinely thought it was radium being out in the ground with a millennia half life. Power is such an issue and we need a better solution and yet we have been told to fear the best solution we have. Trying to do the right thing for the future is such a difficult thing when you have no idea what the choices even are

[Jordan-hzwr]

"Fossil fuel IS the invisible scurge that people imagine nuclear waste to be"
Perfectly stated!

[mutantryeff]

Nuclear waste is safer than political waste. You can't just dig a six foot hole for politicians as the environmental damage is too high.

[Rynneer]

My dad is a petroleum engineer in the natural gas industry. I remember when Deepwater Horizon happened, every night when I would say good night, he had a livestream of the leak pulled up. He flat-out refused to see the Deepwater Horizon movie—hit too close to home for him, I guess. And then my uncle was a paralegal on the case against BP. Fascinating and horrifying stuff.

[albasphaysal]

I think the reason the masses are afraid of nuclear waste is because of what people have seen with nuclear weapons and meltdowns and think it's also the same with anything that's a byproduct of nuclear energy. I don't know the full history of fossil fuel discovery (yet) but my theory is it was accepted by people when it was first introduced because it solved a problem (or rather acted as a fuel to solve a problem or make something easier/faster) while the first introduction of nuclear to the masses was destruction.

[rager]

Something isn't talked about much is that Chernobyl had other reactors that didn't melt down. They kept the power plant operational, generating electricity until the reactors were deactivated in the 90s and early 2000s.

[scraub]

The more I learn about nuclear power the more pissed off I become that we haven't used it to its fullest potential

[davidcox]

Most of the years I was growing up my home town had a coal-fired power plant. I think that it was putting out 40x the radiation of a fission plant. Of course, it was just a fraction of the background radiation.

[mr.e]

I don't know why but the "big uranium" gag had me dying every time, especially 1:36 and 2:46. Thank you.

[peterhessedal]

30 years ago as a sophomore in physics we did a study and found higher radio activity in the fly ash pile outside a coal plant than outside a nuclear powerplant.

[DarkDodger]

I'm German, and one of the things that I'm actually unhappy with my country is how we've handled nuclear power. In the last century there was a massive anti nuclear energy movement, which led to the downsizing and closing of nuclear power plants. Green party members have been slapping each other's backs for decades over this, but sadly the rising energy requirements massively overtook the rise in renewable energy. What did that mean?

Coal plants. I shit you not, hundreds of thousands of people fought for years to exchange clean, nuclear power for horrible dirty coal power. I don't have enough hands to face palm as hard as I want.

Big Uranium needs to step up their game.

[maxthibodeau]

it makes me really angry how misinformed the general population is on nuclear energy.