Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is a good
Speaker 2: old fashioned episode of Stuff you Should Know.
Speaker 1: D D.
Speaker 2: Are you talking about the Green Gow? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean it's just hard not to think of Homer
Speaker 1: Simpson when you're talking about nuclear power at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and nuclear waste in particular.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, Like you know that little Rod flies right
Speaker 1: into his hood, right.
Speaker 2: This inanimate carbon Rod is the employee of the Year.
Speaker 1: I think that's right.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, it turns out that nuclear waste doesn't really
Speaker 2: look like that. It certainly doesn't glow green. Probably the
Speaker 2: closest you could get to what the Simpsons depict, and
Speaker 2: not just the Simpsons, I think the classic movie Men
Speaker 2: at Work featuring brothers Melio Estevez and Charlie Sheen.
Speaker 1: Never saw it.
Speaker 2: It's good as far as eighties comedies.
Speaker 1: Go, it's pretty good.
Speaker 2: And they play a lot of two live crew too.
Speaker 1: Oh well, there you go.
Speaker 2: Because I think it takes place in Miami. I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: But the closest you can get to that from what
Speaker 2: I can tell, is a sludge toxic nuclear sludge that
Speaker 2: is described as having kind of a peanut buttery consistency.
Speaker 2: This is gross and dangerous, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not as sandwich you want unless you cut
Speaker 1: the crust off.
Speaker 2: So for the most part, though, nuclear waste is solid,
Speaker 2: it's like pellets of solid essentially metal material made up
Speaker 2: of a bunch of different elements and metals and all
Speaker 2: sorts of crud pressed together to form essentially a uranium
Speaker 2: fuel what it starts out as, but after it undergoes
Speaker 2: nuclear fission for five or six years, it says, I'm spent,
Speaker 2: get me out of here, and a new fuel assembly
Speaker 2: sprought in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. And this is clearly the most dangerous
Speaker 1: kind of nuclear waste We're going to go over, you know,
Speaker 1: several different kinds of nuclear waste, but this is the
Speaker 1: stuff that you really really got to take care of.
Speaker 1: I mean, you got to take care of all it,
Speaker 1: of course, but this is stuff that's super dangerous, right,
Speaker 1: And these pellets are these little cylinders about the size
Speaker 1: I guess it depends on your thumb, but you know,
Speaker 1: like midway up your thumb, half a thumb.
Speaker 2: Okay, half thumb anything but metric.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not the thumb stump, like the actual thumb print
Speaker 1: section of your thumb, the thumb sprout, Yeah, the thumb
Speaker 1: sprout exactly. And you know, disposing of this stuff is
Speaker 1: sort of the highest level of concern because we have
Speaker 1: to do it, so we don't there's not a place
Speaker 1: in the world that has a permanent solution for this,
Speaker 1: even though Finland is pretty close to you know, I'm
Speaker 1: going to put air scare quotes as you call them,
Speaker 1: around a permanent solution, because who knows what permanent means,
Speaker 1: you know, in fifty thousand years, and we were going
Speaker 1: to build one of these in twenty ten, and we'll
Speaker 1: talk about why that didn't happen. But since the nineteen forties,
Speaker 1: we've had a lot of different kinds of nuclear waste
Speaker 1: to dispose of, and we've been getting rid of it
Speaker 1: and storing it in a few different ways since then.
Speaker 1: But there's a potentially a brighter future ahead with some
Speaker 1: pretty ingenious ideas.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fingers crossed, because right now we're going down the
Speaker 2: road that was proposed a long time ago, and it's
Speaker 2: kind of a dumb, unnecessary road, and hopefully smarter heads
Speaker 2: will prevail. But yeah, we'll get into that later. But
Speaker 2: one thing I thought was fascinating is that there is
Speaker 2: way less nuclear waste than you would think, right. I
Speaker 2: think something like if you took all of the nuclear
Speaker 2: power that you used, you Chuck used for your entire
Speaker 2: lifetime moment of birth.
Speaker 1: Yep, the moment you die in a couple of years.
Speaker 2: All of it now far longer than that, I hope.
Speaker 2: So all of that nuclear waste would be compressed to
Speaker 2: about a hockey puck. So each of us in the
Speaker 2: United States have a hockey puck worth of nuclear waste
Speaker 2: assigned to us, and each of us has to figure
Speaker 2: out what to do with that hockey puck individually. That's
Speaker 2: the new standard.
Speaker 1: That's right. And by the way, if people think I
Speaker 1: do have Chuck Stradama's powers of the future, please do
Speaker 1: not get concerned that I foretold my death in two years.
Speaker 1: It's okay, okay.
Speaker 2: I don't know if that erased it for everybody, but
Speaker 2: all right. It was a good attempt.
Speaker 1: I could to hear someone out there being like, oh, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: Chuck said he's going to die in two years. That's
Speaker 1: he shan't even say things like that, Lest we forget
Speaker 1: Jared and Hugh Jackman.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't like you saying it, but you know,
Speaker 2: I'm just I'm nervously laughing instead.
Speaker 1: All right, so we should kind of quickly go over
Speaker 1: how nuclear reactors work, even though we have a pretty
Speaker 1: great episode on that.
Speaker 2: But the upshot of all this is, even though each
Speaker 2: of us just has a hockey pucks worth of nuclear
Speaker 2: waste and it amounts to you, I think, like ninety
Speaker 2: thousand tons, which is eye popping in the United States alone,
Speaker 2: it's eye popping, but it's actually not that much. The
Speaker 2: problem is, is it that it's very dangerous for a
Speaker 2: very long time afterward, and you have to put it
Speaker 2: in very very special places. And those special places are
Speaker 2: essentially what we're gonna kind of go over today.
Speaker 1: Yeah, disposing of that stuff. Yeah, we have a pretty
Speaker 1: good episode on nuclear energy. I can't remember what it
Speaker 1: was called, do you happen? Did you check that? I know?
Speaker 2: The only one I can think of where we really
Speaker 2: talked about what happens in nuclear reactors was Fukushima.
Speaker 1: That kind of like I thought, we did one just
Speaker 1: on creating nuclear energy.
Speaker 2: Now I don't know, man, I don't think so.
Speaker 1: All right, well we'll go over quickly again just how
Speaker 1: it works, because it works how creating energy works at
Speaker 1: a coal plant or a natural gas plant, because what
Speaker 1: you're essentially trying to do is boil water to produce steam,
Speaker 1: and that steam turns a turbine. But in this case,
Speaker 1: the fuel is not coal or natural gas. It's these
Speaker 1: little uranium two thirty five pellets, like I said, the
Speaker 1: sort of a half of a thumb size. And you
Speaker 1: mentioned fuel assembly, a fuel assembly, Well, you get these
Speaker 1: little pellets, you put them inside these long fuel rods,
Speaker 1: and then you bundle together those fuel rods and those
Speaker 1: are the fuel assemblies. And depending on the size of
Speaker 1: the reactor and the type, there's anywhere from one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty to about eight hundred of those bundled up
Speaker 1: cylindrical fuel as fuel assemblies in the reactor.
Speaker 2: Core, right, And they're kept underwater. And the water does
Speaker 2: a couple of things. One, it actually helps carry out
Speaker 2: the nuclear chain reaction that produces the heat that boils
Speaker 2: the water, that produces the steam that turns the turbine
Speaker 2: that creates the electricity, right, But it also keeps it
Speaker 2: from going critical. It also cools it, so there's a
Speaker 2: constant flow of water in and out to maintain it
Speaker 2: at a fairly constant temperature at like one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifteen fahrenheit or something like that. And what's great about
Speaker 2: this is this is a it's a self contained process,
Speaker 2: unlike burning natural gas or coal. There's no emissions. And
Speaker 2: everybody says, hooray, no emissions, and then they say, yes,
Speaker 2: but we also have this nuclear waste as a resultant,
Speaker 2: and he says, oh, so that's where we stand. Nuclear
Speaker 2: power has a lot of promise if done well, especially
Speaker 2: with some of the advanced designs that are coming down
Speaker 2: the Pike's not a bad energy source. It's just we
Speaker 2: haven't figured out what to do with the nuclear fuel.
Speaker 2: And that's such an understatement, Chuck that if you actually
Speaker 2: once you start figuring out what we're doing with our
Speaker 2: spent nuclear fuel, it's it's almost embarrassing that this is
Speaker 2: what we're doing. We're just basically stashing it over here
Speaker 2: until we can figure out what to do with it
Speaker 2: in the long term. And we've been doing that for
Speaker 2: half a century.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's been going on for a long time.
Speaker 1: The thing is, you know, these things wear out, which
Speaker 1: is why we have to remove you know, once you
Speaker 1: spin that fuel, just like a lump of coal would
Speaker 1: get spent. You got to do the same with the
Speaker 1: nuclear stuff. So every I think five or six years
Speaker 1: it can go before that's basically on empty. But it's
Speaker 1: not on empty, as we'll see, because there's still a
Speaker 1: little bit of juice left, just not enough to power
Speaker 1: sort of the old school reactors. Right, So every year
Speaker 1: and a half to two years, a nuclear reactor is
Speaker 1: going to close the doors and they're gonna cycle through
Speaker 1: about a third of their fuel assemblies and get rid
Speaker 1: of those. And that is the really high level nuclear
Speaker 1: waste that is the most concerning and the stuff that
Speaker 1: we need to be the most judicious with.
Speaker 2: Yes, very fortunately they don't just take these fuel assemblies
Speaker 2: and toss them out back into an ever growing pile.
Speaker 2: They kind of do, but there's a little more to it.
Speaker 2: What they do initially is so remember these things are underwater,
Speaker 2: and they're underwater for a reason, not just for to
Speaker 2: carry out the chain reaction that produces power, but also
Speaker 2: to keep them from going critical. So they're moved from
Speaker 2: the reactor core to what are called spent fuel pools
Speaker 2: I want to say spent fuel puels. Every time I
Speaker 2: say that out loud, but can't. So they and they
Speaker 2: never leave the water. They're taken down these special canals
Speaker 2: that connect the core, the reactor core, to the spent
Speaker 2: fuel pools. And just to add a little charm to it,
Speaker 2: they actually attach them to the bottom of a gondola
Speaker 2: that it through the canal. It is very cute. And
Speaker 2: then once they get to the spent fuel pool, they're
Speaker 2: basically dropped into this huge pool, stainless steel pool that's
Speaker 2: about has about forty feet of water in it, and
Speaker 2: there I don't know, I think about ten feet or
Speaker 2: so tall. So they sink down at the bottom and
Speaker 2: they've got twenty thirty feet of water over them and
Speaker 2: they stay there for years because they're so hot and
Speaker 2: they're so radioactive, it would be insane to do anything
Speaker 2: else with them, but basically put them in the pools
Speaker 2: and let them sit there for a while.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can look up a picture of a spent
Speaker 1: fuel pool and it's really cool looking. And like you said,
Speaker 1: I mean two to five years just for these things
Speaker 1: to cool off. They decay a little bit as far
Speaker 1: as the radioactivity goes, But you know, that's a process
Speaker 1: that for the most critical stuff that takes you know,
Speaker 1: thousands of years, so it's really just a blip of
Speaker 1: radioactivity that decays in that two to five years. But
Speaker 1: what they're really doing is cooling that stuff down, because
Speaker 1: if they even pulled it out to transport it and
Speaker 1: didn't do so in a canal, it seems like it
Speaker 1: would just combust, right, isn't that the idea?
Speaker 2: Yeah, a fuel assembly, especially a bunch of fuel assemblies
Speaker 2: exposed to air, would just produce so much heat that
Speaker 2: they would blow up. And when they blew up, remember
Speaker 2: these are fairly recent spent fuel rods, they would release
Speaker 2: a lot of really bad stuff like sasium one thirty
Speaker 2: seven that spreads in the air very quickly, It settles
Speaker 2: into the environment very quickly, it enters the food chain,
Speaker 2: and it causes all sorts of problems when it enters
Speaker 2: the body and it sticks around for a while. It's
Speaker 2: one of the big problems with nuclear waste. So you
Speaker 2: want to keep those spent fuel assemblies underwater for basically
Speaker 2: as long as you possibly can before you put them
Speaker 2: into basically dry dock. And this is where essentially what
Speaker 2: I was saying, where they just toss them out back.
Speaker 2: That's what they do, but they put them into something
Speaker 2: called the dry cask first, and it's at a little
Speaker 2: more technical than just throwing it into a pile, but
Speaker 2: it's imprinciple roughly the same thing.
Speaker 1: That's very funny to me that you keep liking it
Speaker 1: to throwing it out back in a pile.
Speaker 2: Because that's what they're doing. Man. Like these dry casks.
Speaker 2: It goes from a pool to a dry cask on
Speaker 2: the same site and they just sit there in the
Speaker 2: dry cask like, Okay, you stay here until we can
Speaker 2: figure out what to do with you one hundred years
Speaker 2: from now.
Speaker 1: So for the first couple of decades that we had
Speaker 1: this stuff, all of it was just in those cooling pools.
Speaker 1: But those pools started to fill up. They're all on site,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not like they have to transport them
Speaker 1: except you know, very locally via canal. And then they said, hey,
Speaker 1: these pools are filling up. We got to come up
Speaker 1: with a better way. They started looking into the dry
Speaker 1: cask method in the seventies and I think in eighty
Speaker 1: six in the United States at the Surrey Nuclear Power
Speaker 1: Plant in Virginia is where we had our first dry
Speaker 1: storage facility and these casks are about twenty feet tall,
Speaker 1: eight feet in diameter the way about one hundred tons,
Speaker 1: and in that cask is several dozen of those fuel assemblies.
Speaker 1: And again those fuel assemblies are made up of the
Speaker 1: individual fuel rods that are holding the pellets, So several
Speaker 1: dozen of those stacked together sealed inside a canister. They
Speaker 1: bolt it shut, suck out the air, and replace it
Speaker 1: with the inert gas. And then that steel canister is
Speaker 1: surrounded by a thick concrete wall and they throw it
Speaker 1: out back right.
Speaker 2: They stand it up out back, and the inert gas
Speaker 2: x as a coolant rather than using water, which would
Speaker 2: corrode things. The inert gas can also absorb the radiation
Speaker 2: and the heat. And then the concrete they use is
Speaker 2: like very special concrete with polymer fibers and added boron
Speaker 2: to make it even denser. And then they also mix
Speaker 2: in magnetite and b baryte to essentially absorb radioactive particles.
Speaker 2: So it's like the dry casks are pretty good as
Speaker 2: far as I know, though they're only rated for about
Speaker 2: one hundred years of storage. After that, they're like, we're
Speaker 2: not guaranteeing anything. And so I think you said the
Speaker 2: first one was sealed up in nineteen eighty six, So
Speaker 2: we're at forty years essentially already ticking off the clock
Speaker 2: for those earliest dry casks that were sealed, which, when
Speaker 2: you start to think of it like that, like it
Speaker 2: makes this like getting to a solution of what to
Speaker 2: do long term permanent storage essentially how important it is
Speaker 2: to do it as soon as possible, because if we
Speaker 2: don't figure out exactly how to do it and then
Speaker 2: start building it, that sixty years is going to come
Speaker 2: and go quicker than we think. That's a long time
Speaker 2: to design something that's one of probably the most persistent
Speaker 2: problems that the world faces environmentally spent nuclear fuel.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. Right now, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Speaker 1: NRC is looking at applications for a couple of larger
Speaker 1: storage sites here in the US for those dry casts,
Speaker 1: one in New Mexico and one in Texas. These are
Speaker 1: called consolidated interim storage sites. Again because it's just you know, temporary,
Speaker 1: and I think all over the world about seventy percent
Speaker 1: of the fuel that's used up is in pools, about
Speaker 1: thirty percent is in these dry casks, and you know,
Speaker 1: these things supposedly are built to withstand natural disasters and
Speaker 1: things like that. But like you said, like they're stored
Speaker 1: either on or near the surface. It's not like they're
Speaker 1: buried in bedrock, which is we'll see, is maybe a
Speaker 1: more permanent solution. And in fact that's that's the one
Speaker 1: that the US was working on inside the Yucka Mountain
Speaker 1: and Nevada, and it had NRC and EPA approval, but
Speaker 1: Nevada said, Nope, we don't want that here. Obama canceled
Speaker 1: it in twenty ten, and so far we don't have
Speaker 1: a new sort of again scare quote permanent solution here
Speaker 1: in the US.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the big problem is in nineteen eighty seven, Congress
Speaker 2: said Yucka Mountain is the only site that the DOE
Speaker 2: and the NRC can use to dispose of nuclear waste.
Speaker 2: You can't put it anywhere else geologically for long term storage.
Speaker 2: And then they never went back and said, well, since
Speaker 2: we're not going to put it Yucka Mountain, we'll do
Speaker 2: it here instead. So it's just totally in limbo. So
Speaker 2: in the interim literally, these interim storage sites, like you said,
Speaker 2: in Texas and New Mexico, that's kind of the next
Speaker 2: big hope after the dry casks. I think the one
Speaker 2: in New Mexico will be capable of containing one hundred
Speaker 2: and twenty thousand tons of spent nuclear fuel, which is
Speaker 2: a lot, especially considering that the US has only about
Speaker 2: ninety thousand tons of spent fuel total. But we're also
Speaker 2: adding about two thousand tons a year, so in fifteen years,
Speaker 2: New Mexico would be full up. So again, you kind
Speaker 2: of see how this clock is ticking, because it's not
Speaker 2: like anyone saying, well, let's wait on nuclear power any
Speaker 2: further until we figure out what to do with this.
Speaker 2: They're just it's just a go go go swinging kind
Speaker 2: of industry.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe we should go go go on a break. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I promised talk of Finland earlier, and maybe we'll
Speaker 1: pick up with that right after this good look up
Speaker 1: with Joe shoe on cho.
Speaker 2: Stuff.
Speaker 1: You shit, all right, So we mentioned Finland early on
Speaker 1: as being kind of the only place in the world
Speaker 1: now that is close to being done with a again
Speaker 1: scare quote permanent solution. And the reason we keep saying
Speaker 1: scare quotes is because you know, you sent me some
Speaker 1: information that was like, hey, nobody knows what's going to
Speaker 1: happen in thousands and thousands of years, so you can't
Speaker 1: really call it permanent when there's climate change and potential
Speaker 1: like asteroid impacts and things like that that like, we
Speaker 1: just don't know what's coming our way, so you can't
Speaker 1: really say it's permanent, but they're calling it permanent even so.
Speaker 1: This one is called on Collo, which means cavity or pit,
Speaker 1: and it's the first on planet Earth a geologic repository
Speaker 1: where supposedly, you know, they say that you can store
Speaker 1: this stuff, you know, close to fifteen hundred feet down
Speaker 1: under the earth in the bedrock, and that stuff's been
Speaker 1: there for millions of years, so this stuff should be
Speaker 1: pretty good down there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean they're like in the bedrock. They're
Speaker 2: talking about fourteen hundred and thirty feet down, which for reference,
Speaker 2: is two hundred and twenty times deeper than the depth
Speaker 2: of an Olympic swimming pool. The spent fuel assemblies are
Speaker 2: put into steal canisters and then just to show off,
Speaker 2: Finland surrounds them with a two inch thick layer of
Speaker 2: copper because copper won't corrode in the anaerobic conditions down
Speaker 2: fourteen hundred and thirty feet under the ground. They're putting it.
Speaker 2: Once they get to that fourteen hundred and thirty feet depth,
Speaker 2: they go into shafts that are another thirty feet deep,
Speaker 2: which is four point six times deeper than an Olympic pool,
Speaker 2: and then they stack the canisters one on top of
Speaker 2: each other. Finally they top off that thirty foot deep
Speaker 2: shaft and then they fill them with bentonite, which is
Speaker 2: a clever thing to add because it's it's compressed clay
Speaker 2: that essentially remember those little dinosaur sponges that were really
Speaker 2: tiny and then you drop water on them and they
Speaker 2: turn into like a full size Tyrannosaurus rex. It's like that,
Speaker 2: but it's the clay version of that. When it makes
Speaker 2: contact with water, it expands, and as it expands, it
Speaker 2: will form a seal around the canisters. And we just
Speaker 2: have to hope that they did the math correctly and
Speaker 2: it doesn't pop the cannisters open from the surrounding pressure.
Speaker 1: Sure, I did not get the memo that we have
Speaker 1: abandoned Big Max in favor of I guess Olympic pools.
Speaker 1: What happened pool means nothing to me.
Speaker 2: I just you know, it's just six and a half
Speaker 2: feet deep.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, So they know it means something to me,
Speaker 1: a big mac.
Speaker 2: I know it does, but I don't know. Okay, I'll
Speaker 2: bring back the Big Max.
Speaker 1: Well we don't. We can't pause for you to do
Speaker 1: that mass.
Speaker 2: No, No, I mean in the future. Okay, okay, I'll
Speaker 2: bring it back for you here there, all right, Okay.
Speaker 1: It's just a little worried. I thought maybe an email
Speaker 1: got by me.
Speaker 2: Well, Jerry commanded I leave the Big Max alone. I
Speaker 2: think you were so really on that. Yeah, she said,
Speaker 2: it's old Josh and tired.
Speaker 1: Oh no, yeah, and you how about Olympic pools?
Speaker 2: She said, I don't care as long as it's not
Speaker 2: Big Max.
Speaker 1: So that side in Finland can store three thousand canisters,
Speaker 1: which is enough to handle Finland. They have five nuclear reactors,
Speaker 1: and they said, hey, hey, the whole operational life of
Speaker 1: these things, and we'll get to operational life of the
Speaker 1: whole reactor site. Because you know, you can't make those
Speaker 1: go forever either. You've got to shut those things down eventually.
Speaker 1: But Finland can take care of all their business. They
Speaker 1: said one hundred and twenty years or so to fill
Speaker 1: that thing completely. It'll last one hundred thousand years, and
Speaker 1: after one hundred thousand years. The idea is that it's
Speaker 1: no longer radioactively dangerous.
Speaker 2: Right, which is just wrong. It depends on what source
Speaker 2: you go to, and it's not clear like ones from
Speaker 2: one side and ones from another side. It really depends
Speaker 2: on the source. Some people say nuclear waste is really
Speaker 2: just dangerous for the first few decades, right. Other people
Speaker 2: say one thousand years. Other people say tens of thousands
Speaker 2: of years. Other people point out that an isotope of
Speaker 2: uranium I think two thirty six or eight has a
Speaker 2: half life of four point five billion years, So it
Speaker 2: depends on who you talk to just how long the
Speaker 2: stuff is really toxic for. But it seems like the
Speaker 2: stuff that the people are most concerned of are things
Speaker 2: like iodine one twenty nine, which has a half life
Speaker 2: of fifteen million years. It's not good. But then on
Speaker 2: the other hand, you have caesium one thirty one. I
Speaker 2: think I mentioned earlier that that is really easy to
Speaker 2: get into the environment, so it causes a lot of problems.
Speaker 2: So does iodine one twenty nine, but it has a
Speaker 2: half life of I think like thirty years, so as
Speaker 2: long and a lot of the worst stuff actually goes
Speaker 2: away while it's in those pools for the first few years.
Speaker 2: So it really kind of depends on what element or
Speaker 2: isotope you're worried about, whether it's safe after however many
Speaker 2: years or not, or if it ever will be safe
Speaker 2: under anything but geological deep time. You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wonder if they just said, I don't know,
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand years sounds like a long time. Just
Speaker 1: put that down.
Speaker 2: You know. You get the impression on some of this
Speaker 2: that they are saying that because no one will care,
Speaker 2: Like you would think that, I mean, this is some
Speaker 2: really studied science, so you would think that it would
Speaker 2: be like figures bandied about everywhere, like, oh, this is
Speaker 2: how long nuclear waste is dangerous for, you know, and
Speaker 2: this is why it's just all over the place. And
Speaker 2: that actually is a little bit unnerving. So I think,
Speaker 2: if anything, you should err on the side of caution,
Speaker 2: which is I think what they're doing with the geological
Speaker 2: repositories essentially is saying, put it as deep in the
Speaker 2: earth as we possibly can, cover it up, walk away,
Speaker 2: dusting your hands off, and pretend that it never even happened.
Speaker 1: You know. What I bet they do is they say
Speaker 1: how many years in the future. Do you think people
Speaker 1: no longer care about their future family line? Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: like one hundred thousand years. Yeah, that's great. Put that down.
Speaker 2: I think it was one hundred and they just multiply
Speaker 2: it to buy a thousand.
Speaker 1: All right, So we should talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: other kinds of nuclear waste. We were talking about the
Speaker 1: high level waste again, the most problematic obviously, that is
Speaker 1: just three percent, though of total nuclear waste, but contributes
Speaker 1: ninety five percent of the total radio activity. More than
Speaker 1: ninety percent of nuclear waste is low level, and this
Speaker 1: is stuff that you know, it might be like the
Speaker 1: protective clothes that you wre on site. It's got a
Speaker 1: little radioactive dust on it, maybe some tools, maybe some
Speaker 1: disposable materials. We have four locations in the US for
Speaker 1: disposing of this low level stuff, one in South Carolina
Speaker 1: and one in Washington State, one in Utah, and one
Speaker 1: in Texas. And this stuff is not nearly as problematic.
Speaker 1: It decays to safe levels in about again, who knows
Speaker 1: for sure, but about twenty to thirty years. Well, I
Speaker 1: guess in that case they can test it out at
Speaker 1: this point. But that's treated almost like a landfill. It's
Speaker 1: in case in concrete and covered with backfill.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so yeah, we don't really have to worry too
Speaker 2: much about low level waste, I think is the upshot
Speaker 2: of that, right. Yeah, there's also transuranic waste, which has
Speaker 2: incredibly long half lives, and these are often called defense
Speaker 2: wastes because they are produced when we produce plutonium for
Speaker 2: nuclear weapons. So sometimes plutonium grabs on to some of
Speaker 2: the neutrons we've bombarded with and says, oh, let me
Speaker 2: form some neptunium, which has a half life of two
Speaker 2: point one four million years, or how about some americium
Speaker 2: or plutonium two thirty nine itself has a half life
Speaker 2: of greater than twenty four thousand years. So this stuff
Speaker 2: is really it's really dangerous, But at the same time,
Speaker 2: it also is really fissile, meaning it's ready to go.
Speaker 2: It's hit me with some more neutrons and let's split
Speaker 2: some more atoms so we can release some more energy.
Speaker 2: So it's not necessarily a problem if we can figure
Speaker 2: out what to do with it. It's just that we
Speaker 2: haven't quite figured out how to use it yet, so
Speaker 2: in the meantime it gets dropped into the waste isolation
Speaker 2: pilot play and for longtime listeners of the podcast, we're
Speaker 2: those curious enough to go through the back catalog, which
Speaker 2: is really great. We did an episode on nuclear semiotics,
Speaker 2: remember that, oh yeah, which is essentially trying to figure
Speaker 2: out how to communicate with people ten thousand years in
Speaker 2: the future that the waste isolation pilot plant is really
Speaker 2: dangerous and to steer clear of it. That was probably
Speaker 2: one of my favorite all time episodes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, And you know, I'm glad you mentioned
Speaker 1: that real quick, if we could just quickly say we
Speaker 1: have many, many, many hundreds up to how many episodes
Speaker 1: do we have a couple of thousand.
Speaker 2: If you include the short stuff it's coming up on
Speaker 2: like twenty three hundred.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, a lot of people like the reason
Speaker 1: we mentioned this is we get emails every single day
Speaker 1: where people like, you should do an episode on like
Speaker 1: these five things, and we've done four of the five
Speaker 1: of those, and so I think a lot of people
Speaker 1: don't realize that. You know, we've been at this for
Speaker 1: close to eighteen years, and so we have a vast
Speaker 1: repository of things. And if you go to your podcast player,
Speaker 1: I know on Apple podcasts, there's a little button you
Speaker 1: can click at the bottom that says show all episodes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so go forth and listen. And in fact, we did
Speaker 1: have one from twenty fourteen called can nuclear fusion Reactors
Speaker 1: Save the World?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that was a good one too. I love
Speaker 2: that one. That's different than this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's different than this anyway. Lots of good back
Speaker 1: catalog episodes, so we encourage you to seek them out.
Speaker 1: A little googling can go a long way as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and our webmaster, Brandon Reid, has put together a
Speaker 2: world class search engine on our site, stuffyshould know dot com.
Speaker 2: So if you type in any keyword of something you're
Speaker 2: looking for, it's probably going to bring up bad episode,
Speaker 2: maybe some other episodes that we cover that in, and
Speaker 2: then you can listen to it right there on the
Speaker 2: site too. So yeah, we do have a very deep
Speaker 2: back catalog. It's almost geologic in its stretch.
Speaker 1: How many Olympic pools deep? Is it?
Speaker 2: At least ten to fifteen million? I would say.
Speaker 1: Okay, so back to the waste isolated pilot plant in
Speaker 1: New Mexico. Here they bury this transuranic Is that how
Speaker 1: you said it?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Okay inside a salt layer. That's a couple of thousand
Speaker 1: feet below the surface, and salt doesn't have any maybe
Speaker 1: a little bit, but basically no groundwater flow. And you know,
Speaker 1: water's your enemy as far as a corrosive agent with
Speaker 1: all this stuff. But the salt is going to form
Speaker 1: a seal, just sort of like that clay did around
Speaker 1: those canisters. And that's what we do with that stuff.
Speaker 1: And I mentioned, you know, decommissioning entire nuclear power plants
Speaker 1: and reactors. That's something that you have to do because,
Speaker 1: like I said, these things, you can't just keep tightening
Speaker 1: the bolts on these and expect it to keep running.
Speaker 1: I think, in fact, in the United States, sixty years
Speaker 1: is like the maximum limit before they say shut this
Speaker 1: thing down.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And strangely I did not realize this, but most
Speaker 2: of the contaminated stuff is low level waste, like you know,
Speaker 2: hazard suits and stuff like that. And even the concrete
Speaker 2: that the whole power plan is made from. I saw
Speaker 2: that only about one percent of it is radioactive. The
Speaker 2: rest can just be treated as construction waste. Essentially. I
Speaker 2: saw a proposal saying like, don't do that, like reuse
Speaker 2: this stuff as the concrete, like recycle it as the
Speaker 2: concrete that seals in the dry casks and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: So there's actually there seems to be much more of
Speaker 2: a push to recycle all this stuff, as we'll see.
Speaker 2: But there's a whole process to decommissioning, and one of
Speaker 2: the parts of this process is making sure all those
Speaker 2: fuel assemblies spend or otherwise end up in the cooling
Speaker 2: pool and then when it's their time to dry casks.
Speaker 2: So what's interesting is a whole power plan will be
Speaker 2: taken offline decommission. It's not producing power any longer, but
Speaker 2: it still has all those fuel rods, and it's spent
Speaker 2: fuel pool, it still has dry casks out back, and
Speaker 2: there's still people watching over that stuff because we don't
Speaker 2: have anywhere to put it. We're literally leaving them in
Speaker 2: spent fuel pools after we turn the power off on
Speaker 2: the nuclear power plants. That's what we're doing with our
Speaker 2: nuclear waste right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there's that water in the pools. Like let's
Speaker 1: say you finally get all of them out of the
Speaker 1: pool and in dry cask, then you got a big
Speaker 1: pool of I imagine, very soothing nuclear water that was
Speaker 1: used as a coolant, and you got to do something
Speaker 1: with that and what we do with it, And I
Speaker 1: guess you know what's basically done with it all over
Speaker 1: the world is it's cleaned and then dumped into a waterway,
Speaker 1: an ocean or a river or a lake. And most
Speaker 1: of these plants are by a body of water for
Speaker 1: this reason. And you know, we'll talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about how this is done, the two main processes. But
Speaker 1: I'm not like a conspiracy guy or hugely cynical, but
Speaker 1: I just don't see how that water can ever be
Speaker 1: good enough to dump into an ocean or a lake.
Speaker 2: The only thing I've seen is dilution that full first
Speaker 2: of all, so they filter out as much of the
Speaker 2: radio nuclides as possible, right, Yeah, and there's whole processes
Speaker 2: for separating those things out from the water, but there's
Speaker 2: still some left. But their premise is that they're adding
Speaker 2: so much fresh water to it. Yeah, before they dump
Speaker 2: it into the ocean. It's fine. But I think that's
Speaker 2: a very valid point. Like we're talking about nuclear science here,
Speaker 2: and this is how far behind the environmental part of
Speaker 2: nuclear science is lagging that we're just like, it's fine,
Speaker 2: forget about it, We're just gonna dump it in the
Speaker 2: ocean and yes, it's not so bad that they're not
Speaker 2: treating it first and diluting it first, but it's still
Speaker 2: it's like, really, that's what we can do. That's the
Speaker 2: best we can do right now. And the answer is.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, I mean that's Uh, if I don't mention
Speaker 1: the three eyed fish on the Simpsons, we're gonna get emails.
Speaker 1: I guess that we have to mention that, right you bet?
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 1: Did that fish have a named blinky?
Speaker 2: I think, Oh really, I'm pretty sure.
Speaker 1: Didn't it blink? In sequence? Yeah, like pink pink pink. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's very funny.
Speaker 2: That was a pretty cool fish.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah. So that's that's what happens to the water.
Speaker 1: So maybe we should take our second break here and
Speaker 1: talk about a bit of a brighter future with ideas
Speaker 1: for recycling and more. Right after this, goods.
Speaker 2: Up with jaw shoe on chow out stuff fish. Okay, check.
Speaker 2: So I think I said that there's kind of a
Speaker 2: new spirit of recycling that's kind of starting to sweep
Speaker 2: the nuclear industry as far as environmental aspects are concerned.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, like you can recycle this stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Because there's a couple of things. One is where
Speaker 2: when a nuclear fuel rod is spent, it still has
Speaker 2: like like a lot of energy left in it. It's
Speaker 2: just like you said, not enough energy to power an
Speaker 2: old school nuclear reactor. So one solution is to develop
Speaker 2: more advanced reactors that can use those same things as fuel.
Speaker 2: They're just much more sensitive. Another thing is to take
Speaker 2: those and recycle them, like extract the usable stuff out
Speaker 2: of it, form new pellets and just start the cycle again.
Speaker 2: And you're doing a couple of cool things here. One,
Speaker 2: you're taking out the most dangerous part of the radioactive
Speaker 2: nuclear waste and leaving behind far less dangerous waste that
Speaker 2: you still have to figure out what to do with,
Speaker 2: but it's not nearly as bad as the stuff that
Speaker 2: you took out of it. And then you're also reusing
Speaker 2: power that otherwise under the current plans of just bury
Speaker 2: and forget it, you're burying all of that energy. There's
Speaker 2: so much energy. There's a startup called oakloh and they
Speaker 2: they estimate that the unused spent fuel that we're talking
Speaker 2: about just burying thousands of feet under the ground could
Speaker 2: power the United States, the entire United States for the
Speaker 2: next one hundred and fifty years, just with the spent
Speaker 2: nuclear fuel we have right now, and the idea is
Speaker 2: to just bury and forget about it. And it's so
Speaker 2: stupid that it actually could be considered a lucky break
Speaker 2: that Yucca Mountain didn't work out back in twenty ten,
Speaker 2: and it's in limbo because it bought time for people
Speaker 2: to come up with other ideas rather than just bury
Speaker 2: the stuff that's just such a total waste.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Oaklo says they can recycle and reuse ninety four
Speaker 1: percent of uranium in those spent fuel assemblies, and they're
Speaker 1: just one of ten companies. I think they got a
Speaker 1: license from the Department of Energy to build a recycling
Speaker 1: plant in Oakridge, Tennessee. Shout out to the boys. Sure,
Speaker 1: and they're one of ten companies that the Department of
Speaker 1: en selected as part of their reactor Pilot program to
Speaker 1: build these new reactors that can be powered by recycled uranium.
Speaker 1: So that seems like a great way forward. One of
Speaker 1: the concerns here is that you know there is a
Speaker 1: security risk even though like that stuff is again, like
Speaker 1: you said, spent, if you can recycle it to use again,
Speaker 1: even in that small quantity of unspentness, you could also
Speaker 1: make a dirty bomb. Or something for that, so it
Speaker 1: needs to be pretty pretty locked down.
Speaker 2: And the same fear, except even worse, is associated with
Speaker 2: extracting plutonium from spent nuclear fuel to use that because
Speaker 2: that is the core of a nuclear weapon, and that's
Speaker 2: the kind of thing that a foreign country that doesn't
Speaker 2: have a nuclear program but really wants one has the
Speaker 2: resources to steal from some startup that is refining and
Speaker 2: extracting their facility in Tennessee. That's a huge that's actually,
Speaker 2: from what I can tell, the number one obstacle to
Speaker 2: recycling nuclear waste that security concern.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean they could fix that though.
Speaker 2: I guess. I mean, we keep our nuclear stockpile safe,
Speaker 2: or we have for this long, so why can't we
Speaker 2: apply some of that same security to these recycling plants.
Speaker 2: I don't understand. It just seems like, a yeah, that's
Speaker 2: a huge risk, but it's not something we can't figure out,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Well, I feel like it probably have to be in
Speaker 1: working in concert with the government and not just saying
Speaker 1: like all right, Oaklow, you got your security team. I
Speaker 1: see those people with the black eyes odds on, It's
Speaker 1: all good.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So one of the other things we should say,
Speaker 2: I think that people are kind of wary about is
Speaker 2: that these startups that are talking about new ideas for
Speaker 2: nuclear power are typically doing it to get government buy
Speaker 2: in to help fund them to build nuclear plants to
Speaker 2: power their AI. So these are like like I think
Speaker 2: Oaklo is backed by Sam Altman from Open AI. Essentially
Speaker 2: humanity would benefit as a side effect from new advanced
Speaker 2: designs for producing nuclear power with less waste. That'd be great,
Speaker 2: But the intent, the immediate intent by the people who
Speaker 2: are doing this is typically to produce cheaper power to
Speaker 2: power their increasingly massive artificial intelligences. That's I think makes
Speaker 2: some people wary, including me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean combining those businesses is a little it's
Speaker 1: a little worrisome.
Speaker 2: It is. And I can't let an opportunity pass to
Speaker 2: shout out. If anyone builds it, everyone dies. By Eliezer
Speaker 2: Yukowski and Nate Sores, it's so good where they just
Speaker 2: lay out a very straightforward example of how AI could
Speaker 2: just get out of control and how we humans would
Speaker 2: be in big trouble. And yet it's it's not like
Speaker 2: they're AI haters. They're just basically saying, like, we're going
Speaker 2: at this at such a terrible pace so recklessly that
Speaker 2: we need to put the brakes on globally and figure
Speaker 2: out how to do it safely and then do it
Speaker 2: and then humanity can benefit from it. So they're not
Speaker 2: like lightites or anything like that, and they know what
Speaker 2: they're talking about. It's just a good book.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, you know, with things how things are going
Speaker 1: these days, I could use little pick me up, so
Speaker 1: maybe a little light reading. Maybe I'll start that again.
Speaker 2: It is like you could read it in a day, man.
Speaker 1: A very depressing day.
Speaker 2: It's good though. It's really interesting too because it's also
Speaker 2: a peek inside the current state of the AI industry too,
Speaker 2: Like they're insiders, they know what's going on all right.
Speaker 1: So I mentioned earlier these deep geological repositories that they've
Speaker 1: almost finished in Finland, Like those aren't the best idea
Speaker 1: because who knows what's going to happen long term here
Speaker 1: on planet Earth. But they are, you know, extracting the
Speaker 1: most highly radioactive parts of this waste from everything else else.
Speaker 1: Seems like that's headed toward a pretty a pretty good solution.
Speaker 1: So they don't know quite what to do with it afterward.
Speaker 1: But one way of doing it is something called transmutation, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought this was kind of genius. So essentially
Speaker 2: it's taking the extracted most radioactive parts of nuclear waste
Speaker 2: and tossing it into a particle accelerator and bombarding it
Speaker 2: with neutrons, and by doing so you actually either you
Speaker 2: either change them a neutron knocks them proton or some
Speaker 2: something off of one of these off of each of
Speaker 2: these atoms and converts it into something far less radioactive
Speaker 2: that might decay much more quickly, or they grab onto
Speaker 2: a neutron and they transform in that way and become
Speaker 2: something that might be much more stable that isn't radioactive
Speaker 2: at all. And so you're taking the really radioactive stuff
Speaker 2: and you're degrading it really quickly in a particle accelerator,
Speaker 2: and if you do it correct Flea, I guess in principle,
Speaker 2: I think all of this is theoretical right now, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you could actually produce energy while you're doing this, So
Speaker 2: while you're getting rid of waste, you could be producing
Speaker 2: energy from the bombardment bombardment.
Speaker 1: I love this thought process. Another one that holds a
Speaker 1: lot of promise is actually glass and ceramics. Glass and
Speaker 1: ceramics can both trap those radio nuclides that you were
Speaker 1: talking about, and for like a long period of time,
Speaker 1: and you know, the idea is that you store this
Speaker 1: stuff in these like like glass logs or ceramic logs. Basically,
Speaker 1: glass doesn't degrade very easily, forms a very tight bond
Speaker 1: that's kind of like a force field that says nothing's
Speaker 1: getting in or getting out. It's a process called vitrification.
Speaker 1: But it's not just regular old glass. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of heavy duty nuclear containing glass.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and what's cool about it is the glass law
Speaker 2: uggs don't act as like container that you put waste in.
Speaker 2: You melt the glass, making minerals and the waste together
Speaker 2: and it forms the glass log together, so like you're
Speaker 2: actually trapping the radioactive particles in glass, not inside glass
Speaker 2: as part of glass. It's really genius.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I thought that was clear. But yeah, it's
Speaker 1: thanks for clearing that up.
Speaker 2: You're welcome. And you can also do the same thing
Speaker 2: with ceramics too, apparently.
Speaker 1: Yeah, ceramics work just as good. We can also re
Speaker 1: recycle the fistle material we're trying to you know, the
Speaker 1: gold there is to recover uranium and plutonium, the main
Speaker 1: materials main fissle materials and again separating out the most
Speaker 1: radioactive parts of the waste product. Is what you're doing,
Speaker 1: is you're trying just to make it all less bad,
Speaker 1: less radioactive for.
Speaker 2: Sure, and then hopefully doing something with it, like turning
Speaker 2: it back into pellets like I saw to make a
Speaker 2: mixed uranium plutonium oxide MOX fuel, you can use eight
Speaker 2: old pellets to create one new one, so it actually
Speaker 2: is pretty efficient, and you can keep doing that over
Speaker 2: and over again until essentially you just don't have enough
Speaker 2: left to actually produce any energy. And one of the
Speaker 2: other points that I saw, Chuck, is that even if
Speaker 2: we can't figure out how to reuse the fuel that
Speaker 2: we've isolated and extracted from the spent nuclear fuel waste,
Speaker 2: just being able to do that would reduce it by
Speaker 2: so much that it would take a huge amount of
Speaker 2: our problem for figuring out what to do with the
Speaker 2: waste off of the table. So like, if that stuff
Speaker 2: is one percent of all nuclear waste and the United
Speaker 2: States has ninety thousand tons of it, that would drop
Speaker 2: it down to just nine hundred tons of really problematic
Speaker 2: stuff that we had to figure out how to get
Speaker 2: rid of ninety thousand so there's I mean, aside from
Speaker 2: that security risk thing, there's really no reason not to
Speaker 2: process nuclear ways to get the high energy stuff out
Speaker 2: of there for one reason or another.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, I think that's it.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, go forth and recycle your uranium pellets in your home.
Speaker 2: That's right, Chuck. And since Chuck talked about recycling uranium pellets,
Speaker 2: obviously it's time for listener man.
Speaker 1: This is from Kelly Gizmondi. Hey, guys, I'm a lawyer
Speaker 1: in Louisiana, started listening to Stuff You Should a few
Speaker 1: years ago and currently working my way through the back
Speaker 1: log and enjoying every minute. Just got done listening to
Speaker 1: your solitary confinement episode and was thrilled to hear you
Speaker 1: talk about the Angola Three. I have represented folks from
Speaker 1: Angola and one of the most interesting stories from Angola
Speaker 1: that was recently published by Calvin Duncan, who was wrongfully convicted.
Speaker 1: By the way, It's called The Jailhouse Lawyer, which is
Speaker 1: a deep dive into what life is like for inmate counsel.
Speaker 1: Inmate counsel or a group of incarcerated folks who learn
Speaker 1: and then teach others the law, draft motions and legal
Speaker 1: islings for others who are incarcerated and help advocate for
Speaker 1: those incarcerated as a whole. This is an essential service
Speaker 1: for the incarcerated community because there is no right to
Speaker 1: precuncel for post conviction relief, and many people who have
Speaker 1: been convicted of crimes cannot afford legal fees for post
Speaker 1: conviction relief. Man Essentially, if you are poor and have
Speaker 1: been wrongfully convicted of a crime, or if there's another
Speaker 1: legal issue with your conviction, often the only way to
Speaker 1: get legal help is to work with inmate counsel. They're
Speaker 1: incredibly effective and have helped get thousands of incarcerated folks
Speaker 1: across Louisiana home to their communities. Would love to hear
Speaker 1: an episode on this. Thanks for all you do for
Speaker 1: my brain. That is sincerely from Kelly GISMONDI and Kelly,
Speaker 1: that may be a good short stuff. There's not a
Speaker 1: ton out there, but I bet you we could find
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes easy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's do it, man, because that is definitely as
Speaker 2: far as I'm concerned, and overlooked issue and the justice
Speaker 2: system for sure.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: Well, God bless you Kelly for what you're doing, your
Speaker 2: work helping people who may have gotten screwed over by
Speaker 2: the system. And if you want to be like Kelly
Speaker 2: and email us to let us know what you're doing
Speaker 2: to help your fellow person we want to hear about that.
Speaker 2: You can send it to stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.