Nuclear Waste Series - 4: Should we dump our nuclear waste into the ocean!?!

The first three videos in this series presented safe and effective solutions for disposing of our nuclear waste. This video "waves" our right to a pragmatic solution and "tests the waters" of less pragmatic solutions, such as dumping our nuclear waste into the ocean! This video explores the practicality of ocean disposal and calculates how much radiation dose you would receive from drinking radioactive ocean water. Is ocean disposal a "sound" plan, will it keep large radiation doses "at bay," or is it just a "fission" expedition?

[allfather]

One thing to consider is your assumption that the volume of ocean water is ## L, as if we would evenly distribute the nuclear waste across every part of the world's oceans. However, the fact is that this wouldn't be feasible, so certain areas (such as that near the Mariana Trench) would receive a higher dose compared to (in that example) the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. That means that anywhere the concentrated nuclear waste would flow would be more impacted than if the waste were to be evenly distributed.

Not to say that this would be "dangerous", but something that should be considered during this exercise.

[attakonbass]

Bro just slapped us all with some Atrax trauma.

[ironviewer]

Awesome to see another episode in the series! I would have liked to have seen the assumptions evaluated for reasonableness, like assuming all fission products are tritium and that all tritium is evenly dispersed in the ocean; I think in the end these assumptions make the calculations carry a lot less real-world accuracy. Then again, I understand that we are talking about a completely unrealistic scenario to begin with lol.

Great editing, thanks for the video!

[EdPheil]

The ocean water is already saturated with uranium so adding more uranium to it will cause uranium precipitate out on the bottom of the ocean, not increase its concentration.

[mightypsychobat]

"I don't want to cure cancer! I want to make dinosaurs!" From a villian in a Spiderman comic

[The.QuasiOG]

Forget radioactive ocean water, I'm now sinking in the Swamp of Sadness after seeing that Artax gif

[zeraphant]

How long would it take to disperse the waste across the ocean? Would it be particularly harmful in localized areas

[clandestinefreedom]

Another banger. Keep it up! Nuclear engineering rules!!!

[burhanbudak]

now a giant lizard roams the earth. Quick we need to find a giant ape to counter it.

[thefunkygibbon]

but would this only "work" if the waste disposal was perfectly distributed over the whole of the ocean? ie each country dunping their waste in their specific dumping point would just lead to aress with much higher pCI/L in those areas and would likely take years to "equal out" over the whole ocean?

[Havron]

Cool video! However, there is one potential flaw in your "conservative" assumptions: the health effects from ingesting radioisotopes depend on not only their activity (so, half-life) but also the particular energies and types of radiation (alpha, beta, gamma) they emit. Assuming that all radioisotopes in nuclear waste can be "at worst" assumed to be tritium because it is a middle-weight isotope in terms of half-life, and then comparing your calculations to EPA limits for this isotope, ignores all of this. Tritium in particular is an extremely low-energy beta emitter, so your body can handle quite a bit more of its radiation than that from a much higher-energy beta emitter such as cesium-137 or especially an alpha emitter such as plutonium-239.

Of course, the vast majority of radiation from nuclear waste is going to be due to beta-emitting fission products, so making the assumption that it's all beta is probably good enough. But you would also need to calculate an average beta energy to properly consider health effects, and also consider the metabolic pathways and biological half-lives of the various elements involved.

In short, I am not sure how useful your assumed scenario is. At the very least, given the extremely low energy betas from tritium, I strongly suspect that the reality would be significantly worse, although I can't tell you by how much.

[ashleyschauer]

Aww, I wanted to hear him talk about spaceships exploding :(

[raulrodriguez]

Love drinking some drinkable ocean water 🤤

[MikeF]

Meanwhile at TEPCO headquarters: 100s of men dressed in white are pulling hoses out to the beach! LOL

[ianprado]

A counter example to Betteridge's law