What About the Waste?

Madi Hilly, author of nuclear advocacy’s most viral tweet, joins me to discuss the ultimate bogeyman and best practices when it comes to talking about nuclear waste.
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[@chapter4travels]

I have commented at least 1000 times in every type of nuclear venue where waste is discussed. "Nuclear waste is an asset, not a liability" and I'm glad to hear it repeated.

[@Rompstirdg]

I read this literally exactly when she said 8t in the video lol

[@happyhome41]

Another truly impressive brain on display. Wonderful episode.

[@Mountain-Viking]

Education is the best weapon against big oil. Keep up the good work

[@gijszwartsenberg5089]

Another excellent conversation on how to defuse the myth of the unlimited danger of nuclear waste. In our Dutch network, we've been discussing along parallel lines, I don't know exactly where it started, but I remember somebody saying 'If the Egyptians had done nuclear power, we could safely hold their fuel bundles'. You might like to know that people are starting an official small modelling study specifically for the Dutch waste, which is vitrified fission products and a spoonful of actinides, as it is returned from Orano - the Dutch DO recycle their waste, already.

[@bakedbillybacon]

Production quality increasing! Like to see that. Hope the channel keeps growing so you can pay editors to do that! Thanks for another amazing video.

[@happyhome41]

SNIP: "I want it to be a nuclear-powered, abundant, prosperous future." AMEN 🥰

[@scottmedwid1818]

Waste is collected and stored. Pollution is released into the environment.

[@microburn]

Always great to see Maddie. Thanks for the new episode. Keep it up

[@mrrolandlawrence]

Reactor ”waste” is an opportunity waiting to happen. Literally 1000s of TWh waiting for us. Elysium's MCSFR reactor design has the ability to consume spent nuclear fuel and weapons waste transforming it into useful energy.

[@croftegan7993]

Also this one kzbin.info/www/bejne/aGisn6esjNRno9E

[@elefanny1106]

I searched creepy mustache girls and this is what I got.

[@bobthebomb1596]

Just don't convert it into a form which makes it uneconomic to recycle once breeder technology is commercially viable.

[@joeschiewe7292]

I recommend that you don't talk about risks in nuclear unless you talk about the direct risks of any other energy source: Example: What happens when a meteor strikes a) a stockpile of coal ash? or b) a container of silicon tetrachloride waste from solar panel manufacture? or c) the waste piles of cadmium and lead generated in rare earth processing for wind generators or d) hits a dam for a hydroelectric plant. Keep everything relative. Not to mention all the other annual human costs associated with other sources of energy.

[@Fox-in-sox]

Your guest’s assertions of zero storage risk for waste needs to be unpacked and defined. I’m assuming she is referring to correctly packed in appropriate containers and stored within a dedicated safe storage site capable of repotting said containers every one to two hundred years. So if that’s the case let’s discuss the externalities. Have these storage and repotting costs for the next X,000 years been built into and invoiced during the life of the stored materials generated and sold kWh’s. Now let’s look at Fukushima… plastic bags of waste stored along the coastline. Hundreds of tones of highly contaminated water running into the Pacific Ocean daily. Where do these realities fit in your guest’s utopian storage scheme?

[@jthadcast]

as a kid i hunted for old beer bottles in abandoned properties, so 30+ detritus of the 20th century. every steel container busted open, leaked all their toxic waste into the water table decades earlier from the single local printing factory. so exactly what does a 200 yr old steel and concrete waste container look like? of course recasking will be free in the future making nuclear energy just free forever electricity

[@yooper8778]

Dr. Conca stated that Yucca only exists because Sen. Harry Reid was the junior senator at that time. It does not have good salt chemistry for nuclear waste. WIPP and the Permian Basin are perfect.

[@chapter4travels]

It doesn't need to be stored for that kind of geologic time scale. A thousand years at most before it's all used up and no more is generated.

[@yooper8778]

@@chapter4travels Don't disagree. And Yucca would suffice just fine for that, but not the transuranics. WIPP is the place for permanent disposal.

[@chapter4travels]

@@yooper8778 With the right reactor, even the transuranics are consumed.

[@yooper8778]

@@chapter4travels I want all spent fuel used up in breeder reactors before it ever is permanently disposed of in salts.

[@yooper8778]

@@chapter4travels No pressurized water reactors consume the transuranics. Liquid metal and molten salt breeders work great at using up transuranics because they do chemical processing to removing the fission products and keep the fissions clean.

[@edsteadham4085]

27 years old? What a smart young lady. Actually studied real stuff in college instead of psychobabble. She should be the face and voice of nuclear power.

[@chrisruss9861]

Australian Labor Govt politicians say Australia is not a suitable site for nuclear. I have no idea why. It is infuriating to see so much natural habitat being destroyed by wind, solar, pumped hydro farms and the like.

[@albertomontafia1244]

The Norwegian government is goind to spend 3 to 5 billion dollars to «handle» 17 tons of «nuclear waste». Talk about misuse of public funds

[@chapter4travels]

Nuclear waste is valuable but not that valuable.

[@rd264]

I suspect your information is faulty.

[@scottmedwid1818]

Waste is contained and stored. Waste is accounted for. It is managed. Nuclear waste is spent fuel can be recycled and re-processed and reused to make more energy or harvest, useful fission products can meet other needs of society. It is all accounted for as opposed to filling up a vehicle with petroleum and then driving around spewing the exhaust out the tailpipe that is pollution, burning fossil fuels in a gas, turbine or a coal burner expels pollution out the stack and into an ash pile that’s the difference we either manage waste or suffer with pollution nuclear power does not pollute.

[@ericknox6076]

Madi, great job! Keep up the good work!

[@ericdanielski4802]

Nice episode.

[@EnPatrolle]

Has anyone seen a decouple video that really directly addresses the Fukushima situation? I imagine that when they lost power from the FD plant many premature babies in local NICUs were affected.

[@MaytownMichael]

That was an excellent discussion. I would love to see an episode focused on the issue of nuclear plant decommissioning costs. There is presumably an upper bound on the lifetime of a nuclear plant, and then it will have to be decommissioned and possibly (hopefully) the site will be prepared for a successor plant. How much do we think this will cost, and how significantly could this affect the lifecycle cost of nuclear energy? How much experience do we have to go on?

[@switted823]

Excellent video as always. 10:20 The pedant mindset is required for machines to work, but also makes you terrible at communication. Which is why the people engineering aren't the same people marketing. But when you find a person that is good at science/technology *and* communication. Man, those are the people that push humanity forward.

[@chapter4travels]

Think about utilizing waste differently than you discussed in this video. How hard would it be to sell a nuclear power plant with a negative waste stream that requires no new mining and makes a profit out of eliminating waste? Molten salt fast reactors will not need expensive pyro-processing like recycling back into solid fuel pellets does. It's a simple and cheap process and only needs to be done once. The reactor can be cheaply refurbished indefinitely and costs less than half a PWR. Let's not forget industrial heat applications that are twice the energy demand of electricity. This is a win/win/win/win proposition yet you don't talk about it ever. You really need to have Ed Pheil on from Exody's Energy to explain all the benefits and cost/schedule realities.

[@Jon-hx7pe]

re: Americium, Ionization smoke alarms are actually lousy for smoke from smoldering fires - don't use them.

[@scottmedwid1818]

Just this past week, I drove past an industrial site, a closed factory in the town next-door to me. The old factory parking lot and outdoor storage area covers an area of about five football fields. About 4/5 of that area was covered with cut up windturbine blades I don’t have any details about the facility but I’m going to find out Tuesday.

[@Mountain-Viking]

Preparing them to be buried probably, since those cant be recycled. At least from material point of view. I saw some being repurposed into canopy for charging stations in Germany but that's all.

[@leontb69]

I’m sure you know of the art gallery in the Netherlands With E=MC2 on the cubist orange building that is repainted to lighter yellows as the nuclear waste inside decays over the years to come. I post the images regularly on fb of the art lovers facing paintings on the gallery walls with the stacked yellow barrels behind them in perfect safety. 😊

[@michaelcooney9368]

I've been pretty sure about how waste disposal was going down with China and some other nations with the Belt and Road initiative. Africa and poorer nations get into debt and have to sell off their mineral rights....what do you think China is planning for the deep underground mines it owns overseas? Their could be this huge spinup in Asia with nuclear power, but has deep moral issues with future waste transportation and disposal. Domestic waste by non democratic countries switching to disposal in poorly maintained sites in mines and landfills of indebted developing nations.

[@captainfatfoot2176]

Couldn’t we just dump all the waste in an old depleted coal mine? Just drop that crap down the shaft and forget about it.

[@rd264]

there isnt much usuable volume in those old mines.

[@pityipalko]

The lady states, that spent nuclear fuel is not different than what goes in and that "what goes in is what comes out". Well this is far from being correct, because when it goes in, it is not radioactive and it also does not have to be continuously cooled either. When it comes out it is highly radioactive and needs to be cooled for many years in a huge pool continuously, just that it does not melt through the reactor floor and poison the ground water for many many people. The chemical composition is also very different, with the spent fuel containing plutonium, which, apart from having a half life of hundreds to 24100 years, depending on the isotope. It is also very poisonous chemically. There are a number of additional fission products in there, which are highly radioactive and very dangerous. So saying, that what comes out is what goes in is dangerously misleading.

[@scottmedwid1818]

Hey Madi, where did you get your Atoms for Peace sculpture? That’s really cool.

[@happyhome41]

And should mention at least: Vogtle Unit 3 just reached 100% power in testing and is close to utility connection. [one wonders what is done with the excess energy in testing if not put on the grid ?]

[@davidmitchell4077]

The ammonia hazard comparison isn't the greatest. Ammonia hazard is dependent on concentration. Once emitted, the concentration rapidly decreases with distance from the source. Human breath contains ammonia. High concentrations can kill you if you exceed levels considered hazardous. Great discussion overall.

[@benjones1717]

There are some degree of disproportionate disease amongst uranium miners, some exposure etc.

[@TheSgkerr123]

Evidence please

[@gijszwartsenberg5089]

Oh, and Chris, it's COVRA, not CORVA 🙂

[@Rawdiswar]

The Left actually talking to workers? What a novel idea.

[@rd264]

the Right actually talking to workers? Even rarer!

[@janklaas6885]

📍53:38

[@rodneytrynor7374]

drink a gallon of seawater Human kidneys can only make urine that is less salty than salt water. Therefore, to get rid of all the excess salt taken in by drinking seawater, you have to urinate more water than you drank. Eventually, you die of dehydration even as you become thirstier. (oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/drinksw.html)