I found this series by accident. I have to say it is refreshing to see the subjects presented by an expert in a simple and clear manner without the sensationalist BS. It is a shame that it doesn't have more views.

@ZhongNanHai_01

11 ай бұрын

I love science but I don’t have a technical background ⋯⋯this is one of the reason I love this professional so much

@wgabrys88

7 ай бұрын

True, no place for interpretation, just facts. Advanced but shared in simple terms. Great job to the author.

I think its a wonderful idea for heating swimming pools cheaply

@0MoTheG

4 жыл бұрын

Yeah, I want 100g of Cs-137 for warm water. Why waste fossils on warm water?

@Karavusk

4 жыл бұрын

As stupid as this sounds it would actually work. After like a meter of water you would be totally fine.

@0MoTheG

4 жыл бұрын

@@Karavusk I wouldn't put it into my bathtub. I want it in a tank in the basement. The temperature is controlled by how well it is insulated.

@Karavusk

4 жыл бұрын

@@0MoTheG You can't turn it off though, you would always have to use some water or it just gets too hot.

@taraswertelecki7874

4 жыл бұрын

Yeah, swimming pools that sterilize people too......

My Father - in- law was the GM of the Yucca Mtn project back in the 90’s. He needed you as a spokesperson to explain it.

@HgRoller

3 жыл бұрын

Don't lie.

After the Chernobyl TV series an educational series on the details of how nuclear power plants operate is incredibly necessary.

@Hibsclass

4 жыл бұрын

He has a couple of videos on that very subject 🖖

@TheBelrick

4 жыл бұрын

he did it before it was cool.

@PhotonBread

4 жыл бұрын

Yeah I think that’s exactly what caused this channel to boom so drastically. He’s added 6k+ subs in the last two weeks or so. This channel is great and deserves the recognition. Glad to see the algorithm doing real work

@TheBelrick

4 жыл бұрын

@@PhotonBread "He got more subs because google algorithm inexplicably put his content in people's recommendations. why?

@PhotonBread

4 жыл бұрын

Bel Rick why is it inexplicable?

Need to respect he has better penmanship in reverse then I’ve ever had.

@johnsvensson6446

3 жыл бұрын

I bet if you also filmed yourself writing on a pane of glass and then flipped the video horizontally, your "reverse" penmanship would be just as good as your normal one.

@phuqit4u

3 жыл бұрын

@@johnsvensson6446 Thanks for answering this question! Especially for those who may not be as well versed with clever techniques used in video production.

@howardroark6594

3 жыл бұрын

@@johnsvensson6446 Exactly. If we look closely we can see the pocket on his suit coat is on the "wrong side" as are his watch, lapel pin, and buttons on suit coat

Good stuff. People comment that they wonder if he learned to write backward to do this; the answer is no, he writes normally on a glass sheet in front of him that he is being photographed trough. However, in the playback, the image is reversed right to left, and so the writing appears normal. However, you can notice small things, like his lapel pin is on the right rather than left side and his shirt pocket in other videos of the series being on his right side. The thing that brought that home was the photo of Yucca mountain. It is usually photographed from the SSE so that the active side is shown, and it stretches from the neat lower left towards the upper right in the distance, but in this photo it is opposite. I was wondering if he had a different mountain in mind until he said the name. Anyway, kudos on the series.

@meyou245

3 жыл бұрын

We made some of these Lightboards in school that have LED lights along the perimeter that light up whatever is written on it with fluorescent markers and the camera mirrors it.

@zecuse

3 жыл бұрын

Looking at it again, the giveaway for me is the jacket buttons. I'm not sure if they're ever made both ways, but his buttons are on the left side instead of the right.

@crimony3054

2 жыл бұрын

He wears a woman's blazer, with the buttons on his left and the button holes on his right.

Set up a molten salt Thorium reactor next to your regular nuclear power plant and you not only get about 500MW more power to sell, but you no longer have to worry about radioactive waste because the Thorium reactor will consume that waste!

@ichich3978

10 ай бұрын

NO! You can split a heavy atom only once. yes you can split the U, Pu and the other transuranium waste. The mentiond 800kg of fission products are the most radioaktive stuff.

@christopherleubner6633

8 ай бұрын

You could simply use trivalant fuel that contains U Pu Th plus minor actinides to create a very even burning long life reactor rod that would create its own fuel as it ages. The fuel would be as nitride or carbide. If the minor activities were removed, it would be only a bit stronger in activity than a straightforward uranium rod when green and still have the same burnup properties. These rods would have roughly a 15-year life compared to a 3 year lifespan, plus they would not need the typical fuel pin rotations nearly as much as straightforward uranium rods because the hot zone would migrate outward as the 239Pu and 233U are generated.

Extremely clearly made lectures. Thoroughly enjoyable to listen to.

Outstanding quality of material; I cannot believe one can find a video like this on KZread. Thanks Prof. for uploading such high quality videos, you should have many many more subscribers, this channel is sooo underrated... p.s. How can he remember the fission byproducts by heart so easily?? I cannot even remember what I ate for lunch...

@Zamolxes77

4 жыл бұрын

He takes more pride in his work than you do in your lunch ;)

@jesusmalena3741

4 жыл бұрын

Before he became a professor he worked at a nuclear power plant.

@VelKozInfernal

10 ай бұрын

That's how much knowledge this guy has

I handled used fuel rods for DOE using large crane to load in casks to put on trucks. Fuel went to France for reprocess.

@basedgodstrugglin

2 жыл бұрын

That’s a bonkers shipping process to get it that far away

@infini_ryu9461

2 жыл бұрын

@@basedgodstrugglin Well, people can't complain about "muh back yard" at least. We have ways to deal with this stuff.

I really like these. Also, he sounds like the Grand Nagus quite often, which I also like

I love this guy ... a natural teacher.

Absolutely loving your videos and presentation - I'm re-teaching myself various sciences, including quantum physics - your presentations are a great way to put certain processes into perspective. Thanks for the knowledge 🖖

To give context as to how much a ton is. I routinely run through at least 3 coils of steel that weigh one ton each in a shift at my factory job. A 1 ton coil of steel is about a meter and a half in diameter (less the hole in the center for the mandrel for the spool I load the steel onto to run through a stamping press). I use a crane to lift and move the coil, but I still have to (and can) use old-fashioned muscle power to help manhandle it into position (mainly by arresting any excess swinging due to the crane setup). Obviously, I wouldn't do this with high-level waste without some serious safeguards in place, but a ton is basically nothing in the grand scheme of things. As a fun experiment do this: go to a Costco or Sam's Club with a large flat cart like you'd use to move large loads. Now load 40 bags of dog food weighing 50 pounds each onto the cart from the pallet they're stored on. Congratulations: you just move one ton of material and it isn't as tiring as you'd expect as long as you're in reasonably decent physical shape.

These videos are consistently very well made.

That was another great lecture! Thank you. Greetings from Arizona.

I'm quite confident the sound of that marker can make uranium fission all on its own. You may have a new energy production method going here!

@Mantramurtim

4 жыл бұрын

Sure made me stop the video and move on ^^

@PhotonBread

4 жыл бұрын

Mantramurtim well if you did stop because of the marker, you clearly don’t care about the content. His whole channel is very educational and worth a listen. The marker squeak is practically a hallmark of the channel by now

@ronaldgarrison8478

4 жыл бұрын

@@PhotonBread Aspies freak out over little stuff like that, and I bet there are a lot of them in the nuclear industry.

I love watching his videos, he makes it easy for an idiot like me to understand

@MrDoboz

4 жыл бұрын

kinda ironic statement with this user name

@vegashdrider

4 жыл бұрын

You're confusing irony with enigmatic

@themonkeyspaw7359

4 жыл бұрын

You are not an idiot if you are watching these videos

@taunteratwill1787

4 жыл бұрын

Yes this one is made for idiots! Whahahahaaaa!

@randymagnum143

4 жыл бұрын

@@themonkeyspaw7359 I'm watching.........explain that! (:^))3

This channel is great, I've watched all the videos. Thank you very much.

These videos are extremely interesting the way he presents them.

There's no reason I need to know this, but damn is it interesting.

@Asrudin

3 жыл бұрын

Isn't there though? With nuclear reactors powering some hydrogen production facilities, we could've easily been entirely green (atmospherically and climatically) by now. But "wooooh, nuclear so dangerous" -sarcasm voice. Public opinion matters.

Left-handed mirror writing gets an automatic thumbs up from me, no matter the subject!

@stargazer7644

3 жыл бұрын

He isn’t writing backwards, the video is mirror imaged.

what a wonderful teacher!!

Dude all this information about nuclear power on all fronts is super interesting! Great educational value!

Your videos are excellent your knowledge is exquisite your means of explanation is intuitive and I cannot get enough of your videos

Keep explaining stuff, professor. you are very good at This format!

This channel, that's the good stuff!

one further point - the "waste" is not really waste. It is just a mix of materials that is currently not used in reactors. But since the 80s we had functioning breeder reactors that could take this material and reprocess it. Yep - nuclear reactors that run of the "waste" of other reactors and turn it back into "fuel". Some of them were constructed in running in their preliminary phases but alter shut down due to the fear mongering over Chernobyl. We now also have reactor-designs that could directly use that "waste" as fuel.

@MaruskaStarshaya

Жыл бұрын

Yep, like MOX fuel

@diegorhoenisch62

Жыл бұрын

Actually, the idea of breeder reactors was shut down by the US government because of proliferation issues. The greatest impediment to creating nuclear weapons is the relative scarcity of plutonium. Producing lots of plutonium, which is what breeder reactors do, is a fantastically bad idea unless the idea of making nuclear weapons easier to make appeals to you. Cheers, Alan Tomlinson

@ABaumstumpf

Жыл бұрын

@@diegorhoenisch62 "was shut down by the US government because" The US govenrment shut down reactors in France, Germany, Russia and more? The creation of plutonium played an important role - but that is the other way around: Breeder-reactors normally tend burn or recycle plutonium, not produce it. Plutonium it self is produced as a by-product of fast fission reactors and fast-breeders alike. And the biggest part were still the eco-terrorists that even managed to get material/medical research reactors shut down. And if you are concerned about nuclear weapons..... plutonium was used cause it was easier to get started with that, but nearly the entire stockpile uses uranium. Plutonium is way better suited for energy production and other uses like for medical procedures.

@carlbennett2417

9 ай бұрын

It's waste. Come back when we're reprocessing waste. Probably never as we'll move on to fusion.

@ABaumstumpf

9 ай бұрын

@@carlbennett2417 "Come back when we're reprocessing waste." We have had that 50 years ago already but then the eco-terrorists came.

I love your videos. Thank you from Portsmouth England.

such an amazing video , i am hooked

Just the facts. Love it!

Outstanding lecture

If you haven't done a video yet on the topic, would you ever consider doing a segment on the use of vitrification of high-level waste, and how that works, as well as its potential cost vs benefits? I really enjoyed your content, will be watching much more! Thank you!

This whole series of videos is incredible! Anyone that isn't trying to educate themselves about the changes in nuclear power technology isn't really serious about dealing with climate change or protecting natural habitats.

It's only waste if you don't use it. As the prof. said, there are many useful isotopes still locked in those fuel rods that can be reprocessed. France which generates over 80% of its power from nuclear power is very aggressive at recycling their waste into other useful fuels and keeping their actual waste very low. If you take all those "waste" and reprocessed them, it is even less we have to deal with.

Watching these video's, I don't even know how people can oppose the idea of more nuclear power! Thank you for an factual, interesting and real video of the topic! You've earned yourself a sub!

@teresashinkansen9402

6 ай бұрын

People fear what they don't understand much more if they can't see it. Is the ideal boogeyman.

Thank you for the amazing video!

I am amazed not only with the knowledge but that you can write so nicely backwards.

@Bert2368

4 жыл бұрын

It is image reversed. Look at the professor's belt buckle, which side his shirt buttons on, which hand his wedding ring is on...

The squeaking of the marker is sooooooooooooo satisfying.

I love you youtube videos' you need to teach everyone!!!!!!!!!!!! i cant stop watching your video's and the writing backwards is awesome

Outstanding Professor.

thanks for good intro, Prof 👍

What a great professor. It’s incredible how i can sit at my kitchen bar and get a wonderful lecture for free($15/month, no commercials)

I love how you explain the measurements of radiation, ive watched other videos and they just say the doses people get but often use 3 types of measurements but i dont know what they all are compared to each other but you did great explaonong it

I want to watch every video Professor Ruzic makes!

Great content. On top of that, he wrote backwards (mirror) text the whole time. Amazing

@paulanderson7796

2 ай бұрын

The image is mirrored in post production.

Nice informercial

Very good explanation. I had the same thinking of leaving the waste at the powerplant. Curious if this idea will be picked up.

Let's get one item perfectly straight. You "burn" U-235 and it turns into fission products; some of the inert ingredients turn into transuranides. That and the inert stuff is all in the spent fuel. Very good. There's lots of talk here about "burning" (that is, fissioning) the waste. That's perfectly feasible for the transuranides, the long-lasting (20,000 years scarry stuff) mildly intense radioactive wastes. Most of them, like the plutonium, are fissile, and so are ready for adding their bit to civilization. That can be done. The fission products, on the other hand, cannot be so burned. Trying to do so in a reactor will only result in more highly radioactive fission products added to those created in the burning. The only way to handle fission products is to cask them and wait for them to decay. They are fairly fast (and therefore highly intense, compared to the tranuranides). Most of those will be decayed away in about 300 years. All the FPs released in the Chernobyl disaster have already decayed to about 40% of their original values. So the LFTR people can quit saying that they burn all the waste. They don't and cannot. They can certainly burn the scarry long-lived stuff, and that's all we care about. The rest can rest in cans much safer than coal ash waste dams for the relatively few years needed. That is, the stuff that can't be profitably chemically separated out and used commercially.

love this guy

very interesting!!!

So what do we do with the waste? Well, the first thing we do is take them out of the reactor 😂. I've been binge watching this guy all day. Going to have myself a PhD by tomorrow morning. Seriously tho, good stuff!

I love your youtube channel. I'm not a nuclear scientist (well, maybe an armchair nuclear scientist), but I continue to be fascinated by the energy locked in the atom, and really think that it's the best base load source we have now, and for the most part, it's pretty darn safe. TV shows like Chernobyl have done well to show how the accident there was entirely preventable and 100% human error. And as long as we continue to learn from history, it will be safer and safer in the future.

"Worrying about the small amount of high level nuclear waste is probably not the smartest thing to do" Everybody gangsta until Vnimanie Vnimanie

Ahh, the perfect way to store forever radio active waste - the opperational word here is Perfect.

Finland is currently the only country digging one of those nuclear tombs. It may turn out to be unnecessary in the future, but it is the safer alternative, and I gather it makes people feel a little bit easier about nuclear energy.

You can't use Yucca Mountain because Stargate Command is already there.

@SailfishSoundSystem

4 жыл бұрын

I think you mean Space Force.

@markgigiel2722

4 жыл бұрын

@@SailfishSoundSystem Oh yeah, Cheyenne Mountain was Stargate. Oops.

@markgigiel2722

4 жыл бұрын

@Ordinary Sessel Yeah, just send it off to other planets, because Humans. LOL

@wwoods66

4 жыл бұрын

@@markgigiel2722 Or just put it on a stand in front of the gate and turn it on. Kawoosh!

@bobby_greene

4 жыл бұрын

You can't use Antarctica because it would melt a hole in the ice wall and all the water would run off the edge of the flat Earth

“Compared with all the other waste systems we have in the US ... “ That’s a very important statement. Nuclear gets a bad rap. It’s high in our consciousness bc of Chernobyl, TMI and Fukushima. But if we only knew how many other chemicals we dump into the environment DAILY far surpassing nuclear ... causing health problems ... we’d spend more of our energy on those chemicals than the boogeyman of nuclear waste. Nuclear is a drop in the ocean compared to conventional chemical waste. ☮️❤️

Good, informative video. But it did drive my cat crazy. *squeak*squeak*squeak*

The main thing I have learned after watching numerous videos from Illinois EnergyProf and other nuclear scientific channels is that Nuclear energy is the energy that WILL save us if we just utilize it correctly. The second thing I have learned is that there is far more misinformation regarding nuclear energy than there is correct information, and the people of the United States are horrendously misinformed and misguided about nuclear energy.

what an overkill procedure for something that's easily able to be watched

Those dry casks stored above ground at plants like that would be a prime target for terrorist attack. Imagine the mess if someone dived a plane into the group of them

@testy462

3 жыл бұрын

Designed so even a large airliner won't do anything but shatter itself. Plus the rumors of air defense at some plants.

@sulphurous2656

3 жыл бұрын

An aircraft shouldn't be able to really penetrate these types of concrete and steel steel in the first place provided they are not paper thin, since they're essentially hollow aluminum tubes with fragile wings. The only part that could deal the most damage would be the engine cores. So the risk should be minimal.

That is so interesting ! I love learning about this topic. I'm still trying to get more intuition about it all. For example, the fuel pellets - is each one it's own self contained nuclear fission volume ? That is to say, when a neutron is emitted, it is absorbed within the same fuel pellet - it never crosses whatever void is there to interact with another fuel pellet. Is that understanding correct ? Thank you.

@puncheex2

4 жыл бұрын

No, that's rarely the case. The neutrons ejected from a fission event are high energy - they would simply escape from the reactor if they were not moderated. The moderation is applied externally to the fuel rod.

@hv1461

4 жыл бұрын

@@puncheex2 Ohh, amazing. So the neutron is ejected at high energy, passes out of the fuel pellet, through a moderator, then back at lower energy into a (potentially different) fuel pellet to initiate another fission event ? So the path it traverses could be what ... centimeters in distance ?

@puncheex2

4 жыл бұрын

@@hv1461 Yup. If you require the moderation to make the neutron useful in the "thermal" energy range, that's what has to happen.

@ryanp6267

4 жыл бұрын

It’s also why the fuel rods need to be close together to sustain critical fission. And shielding is used to reflect neutrons back to increase efficiency.

Prof can you make a video on next generation nuclear reactors that take the nuclear waste and use it to make more electricity like the molten salt nuclear reactor designed by Transatomic?

I've learned more with this guy about nuclear physics and radiation than all my 10 years of clases in college

I like it, it’s just the screeching ahhh!

Can I use it for my house water heater? BTW the professor is awesome! We should have more nuclear plants sounds super safe.

@jeremyO9F911O2

3 жыл бұрын

if you processed some of the fission products that have longer decay lifespan, then yes you could use as a heater, I'm not sure it's as cheap as it sounds or if the risks are worth it, but it could be done

The containment casks should have ThermoCouple(s) installed so they are putting out a constant electrical discharge (a SNAP Generator not based on Pu). Take advantage of the waste to do work!

I want one in my garden. Just to annoy everyone around. Sad that its not glowing like in movies... that would be best garden light in the world...

@aeropone

4 жыл бұрын

Spent fuel does Glow.For example if you put Plutonium into Glassblocks to shield it, they glow blueish.

@royk7712

3 жыл бұрын

@@blacktimhoward4322 no you are not. certainly cherenkov radiation is visible but the most of the ionizing radiation is blocked by water. you could even stare at nuclear power plant that being started up inside experimental reactor

@spvillano

3 жыл бұрын

@@royk7712 started up? You could stare at an experimental 1 MW reactor at full power all day long, the only thing you'd get is bored.

My only problem with the dry cask storage is the potential for terrorists to get hold of the material and use it for a dirty bomb. At least when the casks are stored 1000+ feet underground, it's protected from terrorists.

@aaroncosier735

11 ай бұрын

Most spent fuel is not in dry casks. Any of it would be deadly for terrorists to try and steal. Also deadly if terrorists blew it up. Who would clean up that mess?

I love it how fast he writes mirrored. ;-)

Very interesting! although I must admit the glass vitrification of nuclear waste seems much better than relying on the protective effects of concrete over 100's of 1000's of years.

I like how it's April 2021 and youtube still says this video was upgraded a year ago

The problem with above ground dry cask storage is that it lacks protection from something like a terroristic attack or an act of war.

@paulanderson79

4 жыл бұрын

Any power plant is a target during war or under terrorist attack conditions, whether it's nuclear fueled or fossil fueled. Bigger target still is the water system. Reservoirs have to be open to the air. The dangers associated with nuclear power are outrageously exaggerated. This is entirely intentional.

@aaroncosier735

11 ай бұрын

Less than half of US spent fuel is in dry casks. Over 80,000 tonnes is still in cooling ponds. Much less robust and much more vulnerable to attack or neglect.

Actually the really bad stuff is some of the best stuff if it gets removed and used for something. For example the 137Cs could be used for irradiation of water to make it safe to drink from literal pond scum. Plutonium can be reused and burned. If it has a lot of 240 isotope it won't work for a bomb but will work great for quick startup reactor rods. The 90Sr could be used for space probes and nuclear ion thrusters that would last decades but be far cheaper and safer than an actual reactor and far cheaper than 238Pu.

I see nuclear waste as almost never ending sorce of energy.

@TheBelrick

4 жыл бұрын

Anti Nuclear power was Soviet Cold war social weapons that live on in the organisations that they spawned

@sinephase

4 жыл бұрын

30 tons generates power for 3 years? sounds like a great source of fuel to me :)

@The-Dom

4 жыл бұрын

​@@sinephase watch "Into Eternity" a docu about nuclear waste. This stuff has to be stored safely for 100,000 years (half-life) or destroy the planet.

@sinephase

4 жыл бұрын

@@The-Dom having a long half life means it's a relatively stable form of the element. The shorter the half life, the more radioactive it is.

@jasperdalesamaniego6504

4 жыл бұрын

@@sinephase is that so

it's crazy people argue nuclear is safe, but you need all these levels of precautions and complications to kind of avoid any mess

I dont get why this channel has 70k subs. It should have 700k+

News flash... not all nuclear waste comes from power plants. A lot come from nuclear powered submarines, air craft carriers etc as a DOD truck driver I moved a lot from Olympia, Washington, Sunny Point, North Carolina and Groton, Rhode Island.

Yucca Mountain waste disposal is a very good idea but Germany or Eurpean only have salt mines which are unstable .

@ABaumstumpf

4 жыл бұрын

Europe has several docent locations that have been found to be stable and more than adequate - but the constant fearmongering of lunatics prevents any progress. Heck - there are even locations that were ruled out not because they are too unstable or unsafe but because they are naturally TOO RADIOACTIVE so that nuclear workers there would reach the exposure-limit just from the natural radiation.

@Gilberto90

3 жыл бұрын

I think Germany were a bit too quick to use disposal sites because they thought they could use the convenient deep salt mines; both the DDR and BRD came to a similar solution so it must have seemed like a good, cheap idea at the time. Unfortunately Germany (as a whole) has managed to be both too gung-ho (AVR reactor, salt mine storage) and too cautious (let's shut down all our nuclear power plants and replace them with coal without having a proper debate, post-Fukushima) with regards to the nuclear power.

@BS-vx8dg

10 ай бұрын

Yucca *is* great, AggrarFarmer, but as the Professor points out, not really necessary. It was overkill, and I think because they went to such extreme (and unnecessary) lengths to make it safe, that the reaction was to actually *increase* fear ("oh, see how dangerous it is that you built something like *that* to store the waste in??").

Maybe a dumb question. Is it possible to strip away the nuetrons from the transuranium atoms to transmutate it back to useable material? Or would that use more energy than created during the 3 years it was used?

Just want to note that I'm impressed with his ability to write clearly backwards on glass.

@opmike343

Жыл бұрын

I don't understand why no one else is picking up on this.

@BS-vx8dg

10 ай бұрын

He's not writing backwards. The video is flipped horizontally.

For some reason this is my favorite video by this awesome Professor. Plus it's also great to know the real truth about nuclear waste, not some amped up malarky by the news media warning us the earth is in danger of blowing up or some nonsense.

I agree the commercial power waste is virtually a non-issue, but I would be interested in the professor's opinion on how to handle the Hanford, Washington wastes

Good stuff for total anhialition!

@paulanderson79

4 жыл бұрын

Not without some serious processing. Spent reactor fuel doesn't actually do very much at all. Fresh fuel, strangely, even less so.

Dude ever been to Hanford, WA? Heard of the OLD HUGE underground SS tanks with a nice layer of screaming "hot" peanut butter that farts hydrogen and are next to the Columbia River? Products of weapons manufacture which you don't talk about decades has gone into clean up and very little progress made, if any.

Thank you for your contribution to knowledge and your support of our troops.

is there a loss of mass that can be corrilated to the energy produced? mas to energy?

@dannywilliamson3340

2 жыл бұрын

It's called "mass defect." www.wikihow.com/Calculate-Mass-Defect

The only reason why we use Uranium as a fuel source in nuclear power is the by-products for military propose there is other heavy elements we can use for fission reactors like liquid fluoride thorium reactors that are exponentially safer.

How about the other fission byproducts like Cs137 and Sr-90?

I started to think @5:50 professor/lab technician in white coat in chemistry lab doing things to uranium stuff with tubes... and there is 230kg of Pu waiting in the corner for separation. Not 10g like usually.

Well, there goes my next business idea making affordable nuclear waste containers out of recycled 50 gallon drums and packing peanuts. Why does it always have to be so complicated?

you would think that with it slowly generating heat for such a long time there would be all sorts of uses in cogeneration of either downstream power or heat.

@TheOwenMajor

4 жыл бұрын

The heat isn't that usable. To generate power(HP steam) you need a high heat differential. And for heat, thats an awful complicated and dangerous space heater.

@hosmerhomeboy

4 жыл бұрын

@@TheOwenMajor I was more thinking along the lines of a sterling engine or something. That or at least bury it in the parking lot so the snow melts : p

@theophrastusbombastus8019

4 жыл бұрын

Not worth it: efficiency is too low to justify a generator and monitoring it to avoid radioactive material to spill in the home heating system would make it more expensive than using the main power of the plant.

@Inflec

4 жыл бұрын

+Theophrastus Bombastus - Why not a cascaded heat exchanger? pool water stays in its own isolated loop, transfers its heat to another enclosed container of water (or other heat conducting medium), then to another set of plumbing within the same container which carries a completely separate/isolated water supply to some final end use. You've got double redundancy against any potential radiation leaks, and the isolated heat exchanger would be easily monitored for leaks from the primary system.

@fernarias

4 жыл бұрын

It's called radioisotope thermoelectric generators and they are used for space exploration (mostly using plutonium). They are used by both the USA and Russia. Notable craft were all Apollos that landed on the moon, both voyagers, both vikings (and many more). You can get .57 watts per gram and it will last 87 years. The voyagers are still sending signals to earth (the limit is the antenna size not the power).

is he writing this backwards?? genious! Thank YOU for this valuable info

@rthinds

4 жыл бұрын

They mirror the video. He's right-handed, but notice he's always writing with his left hand in the video.

@-LightningRod-

4 жыл бұрын

@@rthinds wow deep faked

Can't the decay heat be put to use in some kind of energy production plant?

@stargazer7644

3 жыл бұрын

It is very difficult to efficiently make use of low levels of heat.

The dry storage option seems way too optimistic regarding the enthusiasm of our socioeconomic system to monitor and maintain critical infrastructure.

@johncgibson4720

4 жыл бұрын

We keep track of our children's welfare for hundreds of thousands of generations already. How hard can it be? Are our children perfect generations after generations? No. There are great generations and there are fucked up drugged up generations. But as long as we carry on, we continue on.

@nsp5258

4 жыл бұрын

We currently kill millions annually with air pollution from burning fossil fuels for electricity so burying HLW in a safe repository doesn't seem so bad to me.

@KB4QAA

4 жыл бұрын

DD: Our social system has nothing to do with infrastructure maintenance. Don't mix terms.

@willworkforfood7028

4 жыл бұрын

I don't trust dry option either. People forgetting about nuclear waste has happened before. Look up the details of the Goiânia accident.

@puncheex2

3 жыл бұрын

@@willworkforfood7028 Explain to me how a medical instrument is the same as a dry cask.

In the pic at 7:06, I don't think the thing sticking up out of the water is a fuel rod; it is either a dummy or a tool being used, or perhaps a rod that's been in the pool for more than 5 years. When refueling, the spent fuel rods are extracted from the flooded reactor, moved through a water channel to the pool, kept at least a meter below the surface at all times. When fresh, they would be frightfully dangerous out of the water from their gamma radiation.

@dannywilliamson3340

2 жыл бұрын

It's a handling tool for new fuel. There's an air-operated grapple on the end of it.

can you cause a fission reaction or fusion reaction of the high level waste in a breeder reactor? if you bombard armenium with alpha beta gamma neutrons will anyhting happen?

@bocahdongo7769

4 жыл бұрын

Nothing Really, literally nothing happened.

@theophrastusbombastus8019

4 жыл бұрын

Bombarding HLW with alpha, betha or gamma radiation will only heat it like it would with anything else. Fusion is another thing all together, those elements can not fuse. Neutron radiation is what could affect them. You can bombard them with neutron inside a reactor. A normal reactor would simply see that HLW as a neutron absorber, a breeder reactor could in theory use those as fuel as far as I know but you need much higher enrichment of U235 or Pu239 to make a breeder reactor.

@drtidrow

4 жыл бұрын

The heavier elements beyond uranium can be 'burned' in a fast-spectrum reactor (ie, one that doesn't use a moderator.) Seperating them out and using them in new fuel assemblies was what the Integral Fast Reactor was designed to do.

You should add the cost of this to your analysis of Nuclear vs Gas.

@wwoods66

4 жыл бұрын

Until the Yucca Mtn. facility stalled, nuclear plant operators were paying the government 0.1 cents per kW-h to cover the cost of spent fuel disposal. As I recall, that works out to about $300k per ton.

I am Canadian and I appreciate how our CANDU reactors burn natural uranium but I would love to see a French style of reprocessing here to make the most of the waste that has accumulated over the years. There is so much potential in the waste and as you are pointing out, only a small portion of the waste is problematic anyways. Perhaps Yucca mountain is a good place to make a reprocessing facility

@shawnnoyes4620

4 жыл бұрын

Tom - French style of reprocessing here to make the most of the waste - not a good idea - PUREX process - too polluting - See for Molten Salt Chloride Fast Reactor - kzread.info/dash/bejne/kaOpwdqsp6WYkpM.html - Google "moltex energy new brunswick" & "library.sinap.ac.cn/db/fangshexing201102/%E5%85%A8%E6%96%87/41124807.pdf"

@shawnnoyes4620

4 жыл бұрын

Also, with Fluoride Volatility Method, you could look at doing the U235 enrichment from the first step with Separation of isotopes by laser excitation (SILEX) - world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Silex-and-Cameco-agree-terms-for-GLE-acquisition