How dangerous is nuclear waste? What are we doing with it? What should we do with it? How long do I have to wait until I can cuddle with it and watch a movie together? Grab your geiger counter and jump into this cinematic journey to answer all the questions about with the world's most mysterious byproduct.
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CHAPTERS
00:00 Hanging out with nuclear waste
01:50 What is the high-level waste?
02:50 E=MC2
03:17 How deadly is used fuel when it comes out of the reactor?
04:02 Danger vs Risk: Why the waste has never killed anyone
06:47 The engineering of keeping us safe
08:19 How much waste is there?
09:34 Nuclear waste vs. waste of other electricity sources
11:37 How long is the waste dangerous for?
14:53 How long ’til you can safely cuddle with nuclear waste and watch a film?
17:24 Moving the waste from the plant to the burial site (DGR)
18:23 A visit to the giant waste hole (DGR)
21:49 Nuclear waste vs other toxic wastes
22:47 Is it waste or is it fuel?
24:58 An argument for NOT burying it.
26:24 You can fear it if you like, but you can’t say ‘there is no plan’
27:02 The Dutch Alternative
28:36 Conclusion + Credits
SHOW NOTES
OPG Nuclear Waste (Byproducts) Page
https://www.opg.com/powering-ontario/our-generation/nuclear/nuclear-sustainability-services/types-of-nuclear-by-products/
Dry Casks Weight and Other Info
http://nuclearsafety.gc.ca/eng/waste/high-level-waste/index.cfm
Computing Energy Density of a Fuel Pellet
https://whatisnuclear.com/energy-density.html
0.1% mass lost of U-235 in Fission (E=mc2 in action)
https://chem.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Physical_and_Theoretical_Chemistry_Textbook_Maps/Supplemental_Modules_(Physical_and_Theoretical_Chemistry)/Nuclear_Chemistry/Fission_and_Fusion/Fission_and_Fusion
Some Physics on the Safety of Nuclear Waste
https://jackdevanney.substack.com/p/talking-to-people-about-nuclear-power
How Much Waste Is There?
https://whatisnuclear.com/how-much-waste.html
Kyle Hill: We Solved Nuclear Waste Decades Ago
https://youtu.be/4aUODXeAM-k
John Oliver: Nuclear Waste
https://youtu.be/ZwY2E0hjGuU
Visualizing Carbon (explanation of image of CO2 in Manhattan)
https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2016/02/visualizing-carbon/
How Much Nuclear Fuel is there on Earth?
https://whatisnuclear.com/nuclear-sustainability.html
Dark Side of Solar Power (Waste Version)
https://hbr.org/2021/06/the-dark-side-of-solar-power
Methyl Mercury Risk to Human Health from Hydro Dams
https://seas.harvard.edu/news/2016/11/human-health-risks-hydroelectric-projects
BI - Why Wind Blades Are So Hard to Recycle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knX7NkJILhs
Wyoming News Report on Wind Turbines arriving at Landfill
https://www.wyomingnewsnow.tv/2020/09/24/an-update-on-caspers-landfill-wind-turbine-project/
Everything Is Radioactive
https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/everything-emits-radiation-even-you
Walking with Ligers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vybfyhYK-m0
Edward Teller’s Big Day at the American Petroleum Institute
https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2022/09/16/Petro-Elite-Warned-Climate-Calamity-1959/
Info on Plutonium
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/fuel-recycling/plutonium.aspx
Shadow of a Giant by Clark Ferguson
https://arcticartssummit.ca/articles/shadow-of-a-giant-the-story-of-yellowknifes-giant-mine/
TV Tropes - Can’t spell Failsafe without FAIL
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FailsafeFailure
COVRA: Netherlands Waste Management Organization
https://www.instagram.com/p/COZtMKurnOu/
https://www.covra.nl/en/
What if you fell in a spent fuel pool?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mM-5DhIhYmQ
MY WATER VELOCITY MATH (from 20m10s)
He says they get 10 to the minus 14 or minus 15 metres per second. We’ll start with minus 14 (13 zeroes).
0.00000000000001 m/s
X 60 s/min = 0.0000000000006 m/min
X 60 min/hour = 0.000000000036 m/hour
X 24 hours/day = 0.000000000864 m/day
X 365 days/year = 0.00000031536 m/year
1m divided by 0.00000031536 m/year = 3 170 979.1 years/m
Then to get the result for 10 to the negative 15 m/s, I slide the decimal one place to the right.
31 709 791 years/m
So somewhere around 3 to 30 million years for water to move a metre. In other words, a thousand times slower than completely still.
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