Why It's Nearly Impossible to Hit the Sun

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Credits
Writer: Julia Masselos
Editor: Felix Dennis
Thumbnail Designer: Peter Sheppard
Animator: Peter Sheppard
Producer: Alex McColgan / Raquel Taylor

#Astrum #Astronomy #sun #oursolarsystem #Space #environment

[kylehill]

Keep in mind this question presupposes that nuclear waste is so dangerous and abundant that we need it off-world. It's not. All nuclear waste in the US. ALL OF IT could fit in the square footage of two Walmarts.

[AustinSteingrube]

Stop with the Better Help ads. Seriously. A company that sells mental health data collected from its patients is beyond supportable.

[waynedarronwalls]

Can we just fire BetterHelp into the Sun...?

[arelissanchez]

The real waste was betterhelp all along

[emmacavalier]

Why do you still have a betterhelp sponsorship? Do you not know how predatory they are?

[BlackJeansxx]

Incredibly dissappointed by your choice of sponser. Please do as diligent research into your sponsers as the topic if your videos.

[_BullsEyeBob]

Can we launch BetterHelp into the sun instead?

[daleleblanc]

"And then, there's the dangerous industrial waste" accompanied by videos of cooling tower steam...which has 0 pollution in it. I'm not saying there's no industrial waste, but it's frustrating to see clean steam when mentioning it.

[hansdampfindengassen]

Your sponsor "better help" is a scam!
There are numerous videos on youtube about this topic...

[redheadsilver]

"No" and "don't do it", nuclear waste is too valuable a resource, once it becomes viable to parcel aside the 5% that's useless. The remaining 95% can be repurposed for numerous uses.

[GoldenSunDS]

Please don't take BetterHelp sponsorships.

[Zacharyswansonchannel]

Noooo, Astrum! Why taking the BetterHelp sponsorship? Please, have some integrity. I am really disappointed to see you go down that path.

[joshuagrunz]

I'm really dissapointed that Astrum chooses to work with the scam that is BetterHelp. Please Astrum, vet your sponsors so you don't recommend people truly harmful services.

[Embo_Marrok]

One problem I've learned is a lot of city controlled recycling, don't actually do much actual recycling. Most just ends up getting thrown away anyway.

[solandri]

Nuclear "waste" is a problem in the U.S. because of a Carter-era policy prohibiting reprocessing of spent fuel from commercial nuclear reactors. Reprocessing is where the spent fuel is used in a different type of a reactor, which uses it as fuel, and converts it into materials which can be sent back to the original reactor to be used as fuel again. The entire process extracts about 90% of the energy in the uranium (versus the about 10% we currently extract). So the resulting waste is only dangerously "hot" for a few centuries, instead of tens of thousands of years. Most of the rest of the world transports their spent fuel to France or Russia for reprocessing.

So why did Carter prohibit it? Because one of the byproducts of reprocessing is weapons-grade plutonium. He didn't want corrupt workers stealing some and selling it in the black market to terrorists. But with Iran and North Korea developing their own nuclear weapons program, it's a foregone conclusion that terrorists will eventually be able to buy materials to make nuclear weapons. And the reason for the reprocessing ban will cease to exist. When that happens, all that spent fuel in the U.S. will suddenly become a valuable energy source. We'll want to reprocess it and use it regular reactors both for the energy it provides, and to reduce the time it'll be dangerous from tens of thousands of years, to centuries. i.e. The last thing we want to do is to get rid of it.

[EgoChip]

If you ever watched Futurama, you will know they tried it with a big ball of rubbish, and it only ended up returning to earth about 1000 years later.

[monarchofrymden]

how many times do we have to tell you that better help has been proven multiple times to be selling patient data off. stop

[mikeshannon]

Dude, enough with the better help. Your content is great, they are not.

[Dionaea_floridensis]

For Christ's sake STOP taking better help sponsorships

[MattisProbably]

If you aren't locked into a contract with better help you should drop them as a sponsor...