What's Nuclear Waste? - By MITK12Videos
Transcript
| 00:0-1 | So you've seen episodes of the Simpsons or other movies | |
| 00:02 | where the nuclear waste is leaking and it's glowing green | |
| 00:05 | and it either gives you superpowers or it kills you | |
| 00:07 | or maybe one and then the other . Yeah . | |
| 00:15 | Yeah . That's not actually what happens most of the | |
| 00:22 | solid materials and nuclear waste . They're just that they're | |
| 00:25 | solid , they don't leak . And even the liquid | |
| 00:30 | materials in nuclear waste , those containers are so robust | |
| 00:34 | that we actually have tests that we've done that are | |
| 00:36 | on video and you can go out and watch on | |
| 00:38 | Youtube douse them in jet fuel and putting them on | |
| 00:40 | a train and running another train at them with a | |
| 00:43 | metal spike aimed at a concrete wall or dropping them | |
| 00:46 | off of the helicopter . These are the sorts of | |
| 00:48 | tests that we do for nuclear waste containers and they | |
| 00:50 | have to survive every single one . It's like we | |
| 00:53 | can't throw anything at these containers that gets them to | |
| 00:56 | break apart . The your immediate reaction is fear and | |
| 01:01 | that's a natural reaction . Were all built with a | |
| 01:03 | fight or flight response . For a reason , it's | |
| 01:05 | kept us out of danger . And it's why the | |
| 01:07 | human race still exists as we haven't been eaten to | |
| 01:08 | death . You , the reason we call nuclear a | |
| 01:13 | clean energy alternative is that it does not emit co | |
| 01:16 | two carbon dioxide . When you use it . When | |
| 01:18 | you actually use the fuel , it produces absolutely no | |
| 01:21 | co two , eating one banana gives you 11 times | |
| 01:28 | as much radiation as living within 50 miles of a | |
| 01:31 | nuclear plant for a year . If you live near | |
| 01:33 | a coal power plant , you get 30 times as | |
| 01:35 | much radiation as you do if you live near a | |
| 01:37 | nuclear plant . The point of a power plan is | |
| 01:42 | to make electricity and they all do so by heating | |
| 01:45 | up water to make steam to drive a turbine . | |
| 01:49 | The turbine drives an alternator like what's in your car | |
| 01:52 | or a generator and that's what produces electricity . The | |
| 01:55 | way nuclear power heats up water is that these fizzle | |
| 01:58 | atoms like uranium 2 35 split apart when neutrons hit | |
| 02:01 | them and the fragments called fission products release a lot | |
| 02:04 | of energy . They bounce around the other atoms heating | |
| 02:07 | them up and water flows around them , making steam | |
| 02:10 | that drives and drives a turbine and makes electricity . | |
| 02:13 | Nuclear waste is all the leftover stuff . When you're | |
| 02:15 | done running the reactor or you're done using the fuel | |
| 02:18 | . This includes those fission products that we talked about | |
| 02:21 | , the structural materials nearby that have absorbed some of | |
| 02:25 | the neutrons and become radioactive and anything else radioactive that | |
| 02:29 | we don't want to get to the outside world . | |
| 02:31 | Radio activity can damage your cells , your D . | |
| 02:33 | N . A . And eventually cause cancer . The | |
| 02:35 | question is though , how much radiation does it take | |
| 02:38 | to do this ? And the answer is a whole | |
| 02:40 | lot more than the amount we naturally tolerate every day | |
| 02:44 | we've evolved in a constantly radioactive world . There's radiation | |
| 02:47 | coming from space from the ground , from the air | |
| 02:50 | . The food you eat Contains potassium carbon 14 . | |
| 02:53 | They're all naturally radioactive occurring isotopes , the building materials | |
| 02:58 | from your house . They're radioactive . There's a lot | |
| 03:00 | of natural background radiation that all of life has evolved | |
| 03:04 | to tolerate . The radiation from uncontained nuclear waste is | |
| 03:07 | way more than the body can tolerate , luckily for | |
| 03:10 | us when it's properly contained , the amount that were | |
| 03:12 | exposed to is next to nothing . It's contained within | |
| 03:15 | metal fuel rods called fuel cladding . Those are contained | |
| 03:18 | in fuel assemblies and those fuel assemblies are sealed up | |
| 03:22 | in either copper stainless steel or concrete containers . So | |
| 03:25 | there's multiple barriers keeping everything inside that waste container . | |
| 03:29 | I'd gladly live next to a nuclear waste burial site | |
| 03:32 | right now . We seal up nuclear waste and store | |
| 03:35 | it on site at the power plants . But what | |
| 03:37 | I'd really like to see us do is get some | |
| 03:39 | value out of that waste . So how much of | |
| 03:41 | the fuel do you think actually gets used in the | |
| 03:43 | reactor ? 90% 80 70 60 50 40 . No | |
| 03:48 | 55% of the fuel is actually used 95% of the | |
| 03:53 | useful fuel exits the reactor as waste . So you | |
| 03:56 | might be wondering ? Well jeez , why are reactors | |
| 03:58 | so bad at utilizing their own fuel ? That's because | |
| 04:01 | even at 5% ends up making things called Neutron Poisons | |
| 04:05 | because they take neutrons away from what otherwise would make | |
| 04:08 | uranium split apart . Now you can chemically separate out | |
| 04:12 | those fission products and recycle the fuel as fresh fuel | |
| 04:16 | . And this is actually done in France japan , | |
| 04:18 | most other countries , The U . S . Is | |
| 04:20 | quite unique and we have laws against re processing . | |
| 04:24 | So you might be surprised at how much other valuable | |
| 04:26 | stuff there is in waste gold , silver , platinum | |
| 04:30 | , rhodium Ruffini . Um Some of the other waste | |
| 04:33 | products like plutonium 2 38 and strontium 90 are used | |
| 04:37 | to power spacecraft that go too far from the sun | |
| 04:39 | or you can't use solar power . There are a | |
| 04:41 | bunch of other valuable byproducts of a nuclear reaction . | |
| 04:44 | There's trillium and isotope of hydrogen and helium three . | |
| 04:48 | An isotope of helium that's missing a neutron . The | |
| 04:51 | street value of those gases are $30,000 and $53,000 . | |
| 04:55 | A kilogram Helium three is really good at detecting neutrons | |
| 04:59 | which is usually tricky to do . And it's so | |
| 05:01 | valuable and we need it so much that it's economically | |
| 05:04 | feasible to mind it on the moon . It actually | |
| 05:07 | makes economic sense to send a rocket to the moon | |
| 05:10 | , accumulate helium three and bring it back to Earth | |
| 05:13 | . If we could get that from the reactors we | |
| 05:14 | already have , that would be fantastic . |
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