The Big Lie About Nuclear Waste
Aug 10, 2023
The Big Lie About Nuclear Waste
What if we could actually USE nuclear waste?https://storyblocks.com/cleoabram https://www.youtube.com/cleoabram?sub …https://www.tiktok.com/@cleoabram https://www.instagram.com/cleoabram https://twitter.com/cleoabram https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/02/nucle …https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1209/ML120 … https://www.vox.com/authors/cleo-abram https://www.imdb.com/name/nm10108242/
Content
0 -> "Nuclear power!"
0.949 -> "Nuclear power..."
1.613 -> "NUCLEAR POWER"
2.848 -> "Nuclear waste..."
3.828 -> "Nuclear waste?"
4.539 -> "Nuclear waste"
5.959 -> Ok. I need to show you something:
7.644 -> This is a nuclear reactor built in 1962...
10.539 -> "The atomic power plant of the future..."
12.535 -> "being developed by Argonne
National Laboratory..."
14.849 -> But it's not just any old nuclear reactor.
16.713 -> "This reactor is different in many
ways from the nuclear power plants that
20.76 -> supply some of our homes today with electricity..."
23.455 -> The biggest difference was the fuel they used
25.32 -> to make electricity. This
nuclear reactor made electricity out of
29.529 -> nuclear waste.
31.075 -> "Nuclear waste!"
31.898 -> "Nuclear waste..."
32.72 -> "Some kind of nuclear waste..."
34.453 -> "Well sir, where should we dump this batch?"
35.996 -> When I think of nuclear waste, I think of
37.56 -> that classic glowing green goo in yellow
barrels... this radioactive stuff that
43.38 -> we end up with after all of the fuel is used up...
that we have to store for hundreds of thousands
48.36 -> of years because it's so dangerous. We fight
about nuclear waste all the time! We say, can we
53.46 -> even use nuclear because we end up with this
radioactive waste? And where should we store
57 -> it? And not near my house! And you're telling
me that there's a nuclear reactor that can
60.96 -> make electricity out of nuclear waste and it was
built in the 1960s? Back then, they were predicting
67.44 -> that we would use this technology to build this
incredible clean energy future:
71.442 -> "By the year 2000 more than half the electric power
of the country will come from atomic sources."
77.04 -> But today, we're nowhere close to that.
We don't reuse any of our nuclear waste.
81.459 -> Instead it just piles up. But if this
technology works, that means
85.166 -> that our nuclear waste isn't
radioactive trash. It's an incredible
89.52 -> clean energy resource and it's just sitting there
sucking up money to keep it safe! We think about
95.46 -> technology as constantly moving forward but this
is a story about how we left behind a technology
102.48 -> that could change our energy future.
So this video is about what happened...
107.281 -> to using nuclear waste to make electricity,
110 -> to the clean energy future that we could have had.
But more importantly, this video
114.158 -> is about the people trying to bring that future back.
117.4 -> "Nuclear waste"
118.341 -> "Nuclear waste problem..."
119.517 -> "A concern about nuclear energy..."
120.987 -> "There are concerns about emissions..."
122.987 -> "Abundant power!"
124.139 -> "We need clean energy!"
125.399 -> "Energizes the city..."
126.68 -> "We are coming up with new nuclear reactors -"
128.478 -> "that will guarantee a plentiful supply
of atomic power for the nation
132.184 -> "and the world for centuries to come."
141.024 -> I first got obsessed with this topic because a
couple of weeks ago my friend and fellow
145 -> video journalist Johnny Harris called me
up and he asked me for some help
148.163 -> on a video that he was making
all about nuclear power...
150.575 -> "Let's do this. I'm going to go
down the rabbit hole on why people are afraid of
155.34 -> nuclear energy. What are the events
and the things that freak us all out?"
158.694 -> "And I kind of want you to do
the opposite. To look at, is there
162.55 -> a future for this technology and
should we actually be as afraid as we are?"
167.53 -> So I started to dig into it! And as part of
my research process into nuclear power,
171.48 -> I got invited to go visit one of the largest and
oldest national research centers in the United States.
176.423 -> Here we are! This is Argonne National Laboratory.
We're going to get to go see the research
180.123 -> that they're doing and they have been doing
research on nuclear power since before I was born.
184.498 -> Hold on. Do you recognize that name?
"Argonne National Laboratory"
187.698 -> Yeah. This was the same national lab
that developed that incredible
190.521 -> old nuclear waste recycling reactor.
But I didn't know that yet...
193.8 -> So we go on this incredible tour,
it's awesome, I'm learning a ton. I'm thinking, oh
198 -> my god I'm going to be so over-prepared to talk
to Johnny about nuclear power. And on this tour
201.96 -> with me are these two people from Oklo, which is
a company that's working on new kinds of nuclear
205.98 -> reactors. And at the end of the tour, I'm sitting
with them under this big tree and one of them
210 -> says something that just short circuits my brain:
212.637 -> "So we're actually working with Argonne closely on
215.46 -> how to recycle existing nuclear waste in the US.
219.154 -> There's enough used fuel to power
the country for the next 150 years.
224.86 -> Wait... I'm sorry... what?
226.041 -> There is enough used fuel in
the country, in the US alone,
230.22 -> to generate power for the
country for the next 150 years.
234.884 -> "There's enough used fuel - meaning nuclear waste -
238.009 -> in the US to power the country for 150 years."
You can see me not believing her! I think
244.56 -> it's some fake math. Like maybe technically
there's enough energy there
248.374 -> but like we could never really use it,
we don't know how to do that...
251.046 -> Is it like when they say, you know
"Geothermal, you can power the Earth
254.428 -> for like thousands of years if we could
get all of the energy out of the earth!" It's like
258.66 -> yeah, we can't, we don't know how to do that.
Do we know how to...??
261.554 -> "Yeah! We just don't have the facility,
263.52 -> a commercial facility to do so.
But the technology is there."
267.014 -> Experts differ on the exact number of
years here but they agree that
270.291 -> the nuclear waste we have now
could be used as a large energy source
274.38 -> based on technology that we've already built. But
it gets even better: If you reuse that nuclear
279.48 -> waste, especially if you reuse it more than once,
you can dramatically cut down on the amount of
283.86 -> time that the waste after all of that's done is
radioactive for. So the amount of time that we have
288.84 -> to store our nuclear waste. The problems are cost
and global politics, not fundamental technology.
294.81 -> Here we go!
295.94 -> *Knocking*
296.712 -> By the time I got to DC to talk
to Johnny about this, I was obsessed.
301.573 -> Hello! Good morning!
303.736 -> Welcome to our studio!
305.151 -> We have all this nuclear waste, right?
And it is scary. But imagine that there
309 -> was a way that you could actually
not just store it but actually use it.
312.266 -> "So you can use nuclear waste
as fuel for more energy..."
316.728 -> You can recycle nuclear waste, yes.
318.738 -> And I dived all the way into this in a
video that I'm now going to promise is
323.007 -> going to be on my channel by the time we air this one.
325.175 -> This is that video. To understand
what's going on here,
327.796 -> you have to understand that
nuclear waste isn't what you've been told.
330.72 -> Okay hang on a sec. So a lot
of the footage that I got in this
333.66 -> video is from Storyblocks and they're sponsoring
this video. I genuinely love Storyblocks. I use them
338.52 -> in every video. If you watch Huge If True, you've
seen Storyblocks. Here are just a few examples: So
342.54 -> in my recent video with Marques Brownlee, all
of these beautiful shots, all from Storyblocks.
346.56 -> Or this shot in my recent episode from curing
cancer, also Storyblocks. Or this whole montage
351.36 -> in my video on the James Webb Space Telescope,
also from Storyblocks. So here's how this works:
355.32 -> I just go to their website, Storyblocks dot com, I type
in what I want to show and tada! And the best part
361.92 -> is with my subscription I can go through this and
I can download as many clips as I want from their
365.52 -> library and it's all royalty free. They even have
a creative cloud plugin so I can access all of
370.26 -> this footage and templates and audio and all
of that from my editing software. I use Adobe
374.52 -> Premiere. So go check them out! I think you'll
like them. I'll put a link in my description
377.46 -> or you can just scan the QR code
right here. Now back to the story...
380.858 -> All right, let's zoom out for a sec. Basically
all the electricity that you use,
384.84 -> except solar comes from spinning a turbine.
387.231 -> *whispers* "It's magic..."
388.248 -> Most of the time, inside a power plant, what
390.18 -> you're really doing is you're heating up a liquid
into steam and using that to spin the turbine.
394.62 -> The most common way to do that is still burning
stuff near it. That's fossil fuels. But you could
399.72 -> also use liquid that the Earth already heated up
for you! That's geothermal. Or you can split atoms
406.26 -> apart inside special rocks and make them
really hot. That's nuclear.
410.498 -> And the special hot rocks are uranium.
412.54 -> "Uranium"
413.369 -> "Uranium 235"
414.735 -> "Uranium"
415.701 -> "Uraaaaaaanium fever"
417.701 -> But only a really small part
of natural uranium, less than
420.78 -> one percent, is a kind of breakable uranium
that can sustain a nuclear reaction. This is
425.76 -> "Uranium-235." The number refers to the number
of neutrons in the atom. So typically uranium
430.98 -> goes through a process called "enrichment," which
is making more of the Uranium-235 out of the
435.9 -> less useful Uranium-238. By the time that's all
done, your fuel looks like this. If you take your
440.94 -> finger up to your first joint, that's about the
size of a uranium fuel pellet. Those pellets then
445.38 -> go into these long metal rods that I got to see
while I was at Argonne and then comes the nuclear
450.12 -> reaction. So you fire a bunch of free atoms at
your Uranium-235, which cracks it into smaller
455.52 -> very unstable atoms and throws off a couple other
neutrons in the process which zoom off and hit
460.44 -> more uranium nearby and then more and more, a chain
reaction of splitting atoms. And each time they get
466.98 -> split a little mass turns into energy which makes
the rods really hot, which heats the water, which
472.2 -> spins the turbine, which generates electricity... tada!
But, eventually after four to six, years you've
477.72 -> broken enough of that special uranium that the
reaction stops working efficiently and that spent
482.22 -> fuel is now considered high level nuclear waste.
At this point, that waste is a mix of 238 and a
487.68 -> little bit of leftover 235 and a bunch of very
unstable atoms that give off ionizing radiation.
493.08 -> That ionizing radiation in large doses is the bad
stuff. It's the scary invisible killer that affects
499.62 -> our tissues and our DNA in often deadly ways. And
the thing is this nuclear waste stays radioactive
505.44 -> for an insanely long time. We're talking hundreds
of thousands of years sometimes
511.178 -> which is - to put it mildly - a problem.
514.304 -> "We've got to find better and
safer ways to store nuclear waste."
518.585 -> "Waste that can remain radioactive for centuries,
that remains a big problem..."
522.19 -> Right now, most nuclear waste
in the United States is stored in
523.98 -> dry casks that look like this to
protect people from the radioactive
528.42 -> material inside. Those dry casts are meant to
last decades, but not hundreds of thousands of
533.04 -> years which is what we're talking about here. So
we've been having this ongoing fight for decades
537.42 -> about what to do with nuclear waste. There are
options for long-term storage and some countries
541.2 -> are already doing that - Johnny and I got into the
details in his video. But right now in the US and
545.64 -> in lots of other countries there are a lot of dry
casks full of nuclear waste just sitting there at
550.68 -> nuclear power plants. So to summarize: We take
uranium out of the ground, we use it once, and
555.6 -> then we store it basically forever. This is the
"once through" fuel cycle that the US has today.
560.4 -> Now listen to the analogy that
they used in the 1960s
563.628 -> to describe how stupid this fuel cycle would be:
567.619 -> "Would you say that using the 235
and not the rest is sort of like
572.106 -> using the cream and throwing away the milk?"
574.4 -> "Exactly."
575.316 -> The key is to figure out how
to filter out the stuff that's
577.56 -> still useful from the real waste that's not. Turns
out, Argonne is one of the few places that is still
582.66 -> testing nuclear waste recycling in
the US, and I got to go see it.
586.138 -> I'm just gonna go right on up and they're
gonna tell me to stop filming right... now.
591.466 -> It was as a whole thing. I had to send them
my passport to prove that I was a US citizen
595.424 -> before they'd let me on the tour
and I wasn't allowed to film inside.
598.581 -> In order to go into this place that I can't
show you, I have to wear these cool safety glasses...
603.9 -> How do I look? Let's do it.
606.508 -> Luckily, Argonne itself has actually published
footage from the lab that I toured, so
610.515 -> here's what they're doing inside
that large protective box: First they cut
613.8 -> up the nuclear waste into little pieces then they
dissolved those pieces into a vat of molten salts
618.66 -> when they run electricity through that vat it
separates the uranium and other useful materials
623.7 -> from the rest of the junk and pushes it across
the vat where it creates deposits of the useful
629.4 -> stuff on the other side. Then they make new fuel
rods out of those deposits and stick them back
633.9 -> in a reactor. And it's not just possible to do that
once, you can do it multiple times, not just making
638.28 -> electricity but also reducing how long that waste
is radioactive for because you're using up the
643.02 -> materials that last the longest, from hundreds of
thousands of years down sometimes to hundreds of
647.7 -> years, which is a much easier time frame to store
something. If you can pull this off you can have a
652.02 -> nuclear fuel cycle that looks like this: You mine
the uranium, you use it in a reactor, filter out
656.58 -> the useful stuff, then you use it again and maybe
again and again. And when you can't anymore, then
661.62 -> you put it in much shorter term storage that's
much more manageable. This is called a "closed"
666 -> fuel cycle and there are lots of variations. But
it's not hypothetical. Some countries like Japan
670.74 -> for example are already doing this, and they say
they do it because it reduces their dependence on
675.06 -> imported fuel it conserves uranium and it reduces
the radioactivity of their nuclear waste, which
680.34 -> makes sense. So what happened in the United States?
684.735 -> "Tonight I want to have an unpleasant talk with you..."
687.416 -> In 1977, President Jimmy Carter announced
new policies meant to stop the growing risk
692.34 -> of nuclear war. And that meant stopping all nuclear
recycling. Why? Well, you remember the materials that
697.92 -> we separated out during the recycling process.
One of those materials was plutonium which is
702.54 -> a highly radioactive element that was seen as
the highest concern for nuclear proliferation.
706.8 -> So President Jimmy Carter stopped all nuclear
recycling, saying "a viable and economic
711.96 -> nuclear power program can be sustained without
such reprocessing and recycling." The US moved
717 -> away from the kinds of reactors that could handle
nuclear waste called "fast reactors" and toward the
721.56 -> kinds of reactors that exist today called "light
water reactors." But while the US stopped nuclear
726.18 -> recycling, other countries didn't. The ban on
nuclear recycling stopped being seen as helpful
730.08 -> to slow the threat of nuclear proliferation, so
President Reagan lifted the ban in 1981. But by
735.24 -> then companies, had invested in the kinds of
reactors that couldn't recycle, the kind that
739.2 -> we have now. Today, the main claim is that nuclear
fuel recycling is too high cost it's just not
744.72 -> economical. And that's true, compared to using new
uranium which has been cheap and plentiful. What
750.96 -> incentive did anyone have to recycle their fuel?
But those incentives are changing. The combination
756.24 -> of wondering whether global conflict will cut off
fuel supply and the recognition that we need more
761.1 -> clean energy in as many ways as possible as fast
as possible has started to wake people up to a
766.14 -> technology and a dream that we left behind.
768.784 -> "We are not far off from it.
We're not talking about a technology
773.456 -> that we're dreaming of, that we hope can
work. We're talking about technology that
777.84 -> has already been demonstrated before and
proven. We just need to commercialize it."
781.593 -> There is a lot to figure out
and a long way to go
784.744 -> but if we can recycle nuclear waste,
I think it says something profound
788.137 -> about what we as humans are capable of:
790.216 -> Splitting atoms, sure! But I mean
something much more simple:
793.93 -> Changing our minds, and overcoming
our fears, to use our resources and our technology
799.02 -> and our ingenuity to make other people's lives a
little bit better tomorrow than they are today.
805.02 -> "And this of course is just the beginning. Not only will
atomic power be released, someday we will harness
810.36 -> the rise and fall of the tides and imprison the
rays of the sun. We have indeed just begun."
821.424 -> Huge If True is an optimistic show about using
technology to make the world better. If that's
826.5 -> something that you believe in the best thing that
you can do to support us is to subscribe. And if
830.58 -> you do subscribe, let me know I'd love to meet you
in the comments. See you for the next one!
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzQ3gFRj0Bc
