How Dangerous Is Nuclear Waste? | 5-Minute Videos

Even environmentalists concede that nuclear power is a clean source of abundant, reliable energy. But they stop short of supporting it. Why? Because of the “waste problem.” But how real are their concerns? James Meigs, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, answers this question.

Script:

Whenever I talk to people about the benefits of nuclear power—how dependable, how efficient, how clean it is—I’m always challenged with this: Yeah, but what about the waste?

Their question is hardly surprising.

The New York Times claims that the U.S. is “awash in radioactive waste.”

The Los Angeles Times writes that “figuring out where and how to safely store radioactive waste is one of the biggest obstacles to nuclear power…”

And Wired magazine warns that even our next generation of reactors “may still have a big nuclear waste problem.”

And so it goes.

Even though the greenest of Greens will admit that nuclear power is a clean source of abundant, reliable energy, many stop short of supporting it.

The nuclear “waste” problem ends discussion before it begins.

After all, why develop this great source of energy if it’s going to poison our air and water with deadly radioactivity?

There’s only one problem with this well-worn disaster scenario. It’s not true.

The nuclear “waste” problem is a myth.

How so?

Let’s start with what nuclear waste actually is or to be more precise what it isn’t.

It’s not a green goo oozing out of rusted barrels like you see on the Simpsons. That’s literally a cartoon.

The real radioactive stuff—usually Uranium-235—comes in hard ceramic pellets. A single pellet contains more energy than a ton of coal or three barrels of oil. Ten pellets can power a typical American home for a year.

These pellets are stacked into narrow, very strong tubes made from zirconium, a natural element much stronger than steel. These are the fuel rods.

#nuclear #energy #power

[vaughanellis]

As someone who live within spitting distance of two nuclear storage sites in the UK and one plant that cleans low level contamination from metals so they can be recycled, I can tell you that properly handled nuclear waste is not a problem, 'Properly Handled ' are the key words there you cannot afford to skimp on anything you do around nuclear waste and 'lowest bid' contracts can never be a thing, at the moment there is consideration of underground storage site being build of the Cumbria Coast in the stable rocks there. All of the nuclear waste in the UK if collected into one place would it into the average house size in the UK which is 76 m2 (818 ft2) which amazes most people as they expect a huge volume.

[oldtop]

Once upon a time, the US reprocessed spent fuel rods. You can do this effectively about 4 times. The key thing here is that it also reduces the half-life of the Uranium from thousands of years to less than 200. Unfortunately, reprocessing went away during the Carter Administration and was somehow (evidently) tied to a nuclear treaty.

[Rstars]

It’s almost like D.C. doesn’t want us to have clean, affordable and readily available power.

[wert]

The part that always bugs me is this, we use radioactive materials to make power. If that material is still radioactive then in the future we could find a way to strip that last bit of power from it rendering it inert. So yes it makes a mess and it's dangerous, all power is. We need to use what we have to make it better or we are wasting the very tools that could make the world better.

[freedomwriter]

The problem isn't economic it's political. Anti-nuclear politicians and lobbies will fight tooth and nail to prevent any new reactors, even small modular ones, from being built.

[nicbahtin]

The nuclear energy "controversy" highlights more the dangerous of activism then nuclear energy.

[davidjernigan]

We can thank Jimmy Carter for the executive order preventing reprocessing of spent fuel, and every president who followed him for not over ruling the order.

[macbig]

A large majority of Frances electricity is powered by nuclear power plants. Not only do they have low rates, they also have very low carbon emissions

[benjaminshealey]

As a nuclear medicine technologist, I approve of this video.

[psyxypher]

Something I don't see mentioned often is that nuclear waste can be processed with breeder reactor technology, further reducing the amount of waste that needs to be stored.

I also would like to point out in the time it'd take a sample of nuclear waste to fully decay ten times over, solar panel parts will still be deadly.

[jimdavies]

This is a good one. I was amazed to learn that if it was all from a nuclear source, my lifetime use of electricity would result in waste that would fill just one soda can.

Interested too to learn that the "waste" still contains usable energy and that in some countries that power is being recovered. I'd like to see more about how.

[jerrybenzl]

I find the climate change alarmists entirely disingenuous if they are not pro-nuclear power.

[nebula]

Thank you for making this!!! The nuclear waste "issue" is the single most commonly used argument when ever I speak to people about how great nuclear energy is. Every single person I've ever talked to (probably about a dozen) all don't realize how little waste is generated from modern facilities, and they *definitely* don't realize how stable and reusable it is. We're literally holding ourselves back from one of the cleanest sources of energy, which is incredibly ironic considering how loudly our leaders claim they want to transition to green energy.

[heresy]

I worked at a Nuke plant for years. It is amazing what people do not know about them.

[owenmcfetridge]

I’m a chemical engineering major and I didn’t even know this. I didn’t realize that nuclear waste takes up that small of an area and how secure they are. Very informative! Hopefully more people see it and understand that nuclear power is the future!

[manonanisland]

Good video, but doesn't address radioactive waste water.

[Duben-ymvi]

I once worked for a contractor involved in a nuclear power plant shut down. I was stunned to see how small the rods were yet produced megawatts of power. Everything was checked and rechecked for safety. The only reason a nuclear powered sub must surface is to get supplies.

[Green.Country.Agroforestry]

@3:30 This is actually where I, and many other serious minded scientists have concerns for the current design of nuclear power plants - the handling of spent fuel rods between their service life in a reactor, and their movement into dry storage. The time that a zircalloy rod has to remain in the cooling pool varies from 5-7 years, during which it is still generating heat. Not enough heat to power the reactor, but enough to evaporate the water in the cooling pond. These ponds do not simply sit passively while the spent fuel slowly cools down to the point that it can be relocated into a cask .. it requires a constant flow of at least 200 gallons per minute, every minute, without fail, every hour, 24 hours per day, seven days per week, fifty two weeks per year, and for five to seven years in order to prevent those rods from becoming exposed .. and when they become exposed, they burn. The ash produced from burning fuel rods can be carried by prevailing winds, downwind for hundreds of miles, resulting in large numbers of cases of accidental consumption, mainly through inhalation. The resulting deaths occur over the span of several years, and can number in the hundreds of thousands from the exposure of one reactor's worth of spent fuel. The idea of a meltdown or failure in the reactor core has some people concerned, but the odds of criticality occurring by accident, even in the core of a reactor is very low; it is this crucial stage in the life of nuclear fuel that poses the greatest risk. It is an accident that has not happened yet, but one that is inevitable if we do not change the design of nuclear power plants.

To date, the closest that mankind has come to an accident of this nature is the currently unfolding situation at the Zaporizhia power plant in Ukraine: 6 reactors, each with its spent fuel in cooling ponds, requiring at normal times 1200 gallons per minute to keep pace with evaporation .. but as the Ukrainians running the plant had been storing FRESH fuel in the pools, waiting to load it into the reactors at a future date, the precise amount of water necessary to prevent an accident is much greater. Zaporizhia gets its water for the cooling pools from the Kakhovka reservoir, which has been emptied following its collapse on Jun 6 as a consequence of being attacked previously by Ukrainian forces using HIMARS missiles supplied by the United States. Russian sources claim that the dam was destroyed deliberately by renewed attacks, as that was the intended purpose when the HIMARS rockets were first used - to see if the dam _could_ be breached. Pro war propaganda from the West makes the ludicrous claim that Russia sabotaged the dam themselves .. even though doing so only harms Russian interests, and threatens the civilian population in areas that have no interest in being a part of Ukraine. If you are the sort that prays, pray that Russia will be able to relocate the spent fuel rods before the last of the water stored at the plant's own backup reservoir has been depleted: based upon what we can tell by looking at the satellite imagery, there is not much time left.

[robertnicoletti]

Most people cite Fukushima and Chernobyl and 3 Mile Island as prime reasons NOT to expand nuclear power.
Great video.

[beltwaybandit]

Yucca Mountain was actually 'completed' and opened in 1983 under federal contract by Westinghouse. Within a week of its opening, environmental groups filed lawsuits against its operation. Those lawsuits have festered now for FORTY YEARS, and the Yucca Mountain project has been in limbo ever since.