Speaker 1: When I was young, kids from neighboring towns would sometimes
Speaker 1: asked me if I glowed in the dark. It was
Speaker 1: probably because I grew up in Los Alamos, New Mexico,
Speaker 1: home of the Atomic mom and secret plutonium facilities. Those
Speaker 1: kids were kind of joking, but also kind of not
Speaker 1: They didn't really understand what nuclear meant. What they knew
Speaker 1: came from movies and The Simpsons, where nuclear waste was
Speaker 1: a glowing green goo that gave fish a third eyeball. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm a big fan of the Simpsons, but I'm here
Speaker 1: to tell you that I don't glow in the dark,
Speaker 1: and I only have two eyeballs. Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm
Speaker 1: a particle physicist and a professor at u C Irvine,
Speaker 1: and I sincerely hope that my research never kills anyone.
Speaker 1: Both of my parents worked at Los Alumos National Labs,
Speaker 1: and I never knew the details of their projects, but
Speaker 1: I knew that they were involved in the weapons programs,
Speaker 1: so I never visited their offices or even saw the
Speaker 1: front door of their building because it was all in
Speaker 1: the part of the lab that required a Q clearance
Speaker 1: to enter around town. That was called working behind the fence.
Speaker 1: They had their reasons for deciding to contribute to our
Speaker 1: nuclear arsenal, which are pointed at cities and threatened civilian
Speaker 1: populations with horrible death. But I decided to work on
Speaker 1: problems that were more abstract, less likely to put new
Speaker 1: tools of mass destruction into the hands of politicians. It
Speaker 1: means that questions that I answer in my research are
Speaker 1: further removed from humanity. They're less likely to kill anyone,
Speaker 1: but also less likely to improve your quality of life
Speaker 1: in the short term by developing new technology gs or
Speaker 1: more powerful toasters. Of course, I think there's inherent value
Speaker 1: in basic research, you know, knowledge for knowledge's sake. We
Speaker 1: do fundamental research for the same reason that we build parks.
Speaker 1: We do it because it's nice, not because we think
Speaker 1: it's going to lead to a faster graphics processor in
Speaker 1: quarter two of three. But we also know that fundamental
Speaker 1: research is the best way to stumble on transformational technologies,
Speaker 1: just not on the schedule of quarterly product reports. So
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. Daniel and Jorge explain the Universe,
Speaker 1: in which we dive deep into those fundamental questions about
Speaker 1: the nature of the universe, what's it made of? On
Speaker 1: the smallest scale. How did it come to be this way?
Speaker 1: How big is the universe? How small is the smallest thing?
Speaker 1: We seek to understand the basic nature of the universe
Speaker 1: so that we can ask even deeper, more philosophical questions
Speaker 1: like why this way and not some other way. My
Speaker 1: friend and co host Jorge him is on a break,
Speaker 1: so I'm going to do a deep dive into an
Speaker 1: area of physics that is close to my heart and
Speaker 1: my background, not because it answers deep questions about the universe,
Speaker 1: but because it has so much potential to improve or
Speaker 1: damage the lives of humanity. It's a wonderful example of
Speaker 1: the power and danger of putting scientific knowledge to work
Speaker 1: for people. I'm talking about nuclear power and the dangers
Speaker 1: of nuclear waste. While fission reactors have proven that they
Speaker 1: can produce a steady supply of electricity using a very
Speaker 1: efficient fuel and requiring a tiny land footprint, the questions
Speaker 1: that hang over them are safety and waste. The eighteen
Speaker 1: UN Report about Climate change lays out pathways to limiting
Speaker 1: warming to one and a half degrees, and all of
Speaker 1: their pathways include nuclear power expansion by a hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty percent or more. We have recently done a couple
Speaker 1: of episodes on the safety of nuclear reactors. In this
Speaker 1: episode three sixty six about molten salt reactors whether alternative
Speaker 1: designs for fission plants that can produce energy more safely
Speaker 1: than In March at episode three seventy six about is
Speaker 1: nuclear power worth the risks? Where I talked to Kelly
Speaker 1: about whether we need nuclear power to reduce carbon emissions
Speaker 1: and whether it can be done safely so that covers
Speaker 1: the safety of the nuclear reactor itself. Today we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about the question of the waste produced in
Speaker 1: the nuclear cycle. Is a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding
Speaker 1: out there, so I've invited an expert to help us
Speaker 1: break it down and think it through. So on today's
Speaker 1: episode we'll be tackling the question how dangerous is nuclear waste?
Speaker 1: We sit at a critical moment in our history when
Speaker 1: climate change is accelerating, and we need to make important
Speaker 1: decisions right now about how to reduce our carbon emissions,
Speaker 1: but we also need to take care not to spoil
Speaker 1: our environment. What is the best way forward? Answering that
Speaker 1: question requires a sober look at the strengths and weaknesses
Speaker 1: of all of the options. On the table. Our remind
Speaker 1: listeners that in our previous episode we explained what makes
Speaker 1: new your power and attractive option, because while wind and
Speaker 1: solar are wonderful, they can be transient. Sometimes it's cloudy
Speaker 1: or the wind doesn't blow in some places in the
Speaker 1: depths of winter. You need solar power when it's least productive.
Speaker 1: So it's economical to build a grid that uses solar
Speaker 1: and wind for maybe eighty percent of our energy. But
Speaker 1: we need something else, something more robust and steady for
Speaker 1: the other piece, something to help fill in the gap
Speaker 1: when the wind doesn't blow and the sun isn't shining. Now,
Speaker 1: fossil fuels are attractive because they're easy to fire up
Speaker 1: quickly in response to shortages, but they obviously have huge
Speaker 1: costs and pollution and carbon emissions. So how well does
Speaker 1: nuclear power do. It's very steady because it can provide
Speaker 1: power all day and all night, regardless of the weather,
Speaker 1: but it's tricky to ramp it up or down quickly.
Speaker 1: And while it makes no smoke or carbon emissions, it
Speaker 1: produces a very different kind of potentially dangerous pollution in
Speaker 1: its radioactive byproducts. Our first guest is Madison Hilly, executive
Speaker 1: director of the Green New Deal. Maddie, Welcome to the program.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much for joining us today. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much. It's great to be here. Daniel. So, first
Speaker 1: help us understand a little bit about your background and
Speaker 1: your passion for this issue. Obviously, climate change and decarbonization
Speaker 1: of our energy is a vital project, but most of
Speaker 1: us contributed in minor ways. We reduce our use of
Speaker 1: fossil fuels or energy consumption, or we vote. But you've
Speaker 1: made it the core of your life's work and career.
Speaker 1: When did you decide to devote your life to this
Speaker 1: topic and what made you decide to do that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I went into nuclear advocacy straight out of college
Speaker 1: in seventeen after I was presented with the environmental case
Speaker 1: for nuclear I was really concerned about poverty and developing
Speaker 1: countries as well as climate change issues that I thought
Speaker 1: were it odds with one another. So when I found
Speaker 1: out that we can lift people out of poverty with cheap,
Speaker 1: abundant energy while providing unparalleled environmental protection, I was all in.
Speaker 1: So from I traveled all over Europe and Asia, talking
Speaker 1: to journalists, policy makers, and members of the public about
Speaker 1: the need for nuclear power and Meanwhile, back at home
Speaker 1: in the US, we were shutting down perfectly good reactors
Speaker 1: and we're falling behind the rest of the world on
Speaker 1: new builds. And I didn't really see anyone articulating a
Speaker 1: practical vision for transitioning the US nuclear industry from the
Speaker 1: verge of collapse, frankly, to one capable of delivering the economic,
Speaker 1: environmental and security benefits of nuclear power. So in I
Speaker 1: decided to turn my focus to the US and launched
Speaker 1: the campaign for a Green Nuclear Deal. So, going into
Speaker 1: this conversation, I just want to make it clear I
Speaker 1: am not a nuclear waste expert. I don't come from engineering.
Speaker 1: I came out of college with degrees in environmental sciences
Speaker 1: and political science because I wanted to study and protect
Speaker 1: the environment. So everything that I've learned about nuclear was
Speaker 1: to figure out the truth how we can be good
Speaker 1: stewards of the environment without compromising on human development and prosperity.
Speaker 1: And I decided to devote my life to being a
Speaker 1: nuclear advocate because what I learned when I studied was
Speaker 1: so powerful. Great, thank you. And there are a lot
Speaker 1: of interesting issues here, scientific ones, political ones. I thought
Speaker 1: we'd start with the science and organize our conversation by
Speaker 1: following the sort of whole cycle of nuclear power from
Speaker 1: mining the fuel and dealing with the spent fuel rods
Speaker 1: and talking about the waste and the risks at each step.
Speaker 1: So let's start off with just like, what is the
Speaker 1: fuel that we need for nuclear power? For those who
Speaker 1: haven't immersed their lives in fission and engineering, what is
Speaker 1: the fuel that we need? Where do we find the
Speaker 1: fuel for nuclear power? Sure? So the fuel that we
Speaker 1: need for nuclear is uranium, and most of that can
Speaker 1: be an isotope you two thirty eight, and some of
Speaker 1: that needs to be more fissionable or readily fissionable isotope
Speaker 1: you two thirty five. So natural uranium that comes out
Speaker 1: of the ground is in general about point seven percent
Speaker 1: you two thirty five and point three you two thirty eight.
Speaker 1: So we are able to extract uranium and then enrich
Speaker 1: it to be slightly spicier, that's not a scientific way
Speaker 1: to describe it, but with a higher percentage of you
Speaker 1: two thirty five to create a reaction to reach criticality
Speaker 1: within a reactor. And so rather than break up each
Speaker 1: step of the fuel cycle, I think it's important to
Speaker 1: start with the context. So whether it's lignite to fuel
Speaker 1: coal plants, lithium for batteries, or copper for solar panels.
Speaker 1: All energy technologies and systems are going to require some
Speaker 1: amount of extraction. So the question isn't that we're talking
Speaker 1: about whether we need to mine or not, but how
Speaker 1: much mining and extraction is actually required for our system.
Speaker 1: And from an environmentalist perspective, the key is to minimize
Speaker 1: the mining that has to be done. The great thing
Speaker 1: about nuclear from this perspective, throughout the whole fuel cycle,
Speaker 1: from mining to milling and enriching and eventually going into
Speaker 1: the reactor, is that nuclear is extremely energy den The
Speaker 1: technical definition of energy density is just the amount of
Speaker 1: energy stored in a given system or substance per unit volume,
Speaker 1: but that translates to smallness, compactness, minimal impact. And another
Speaker 1: great thing about nuclear is that it's baseload. They don't
Speaker 1: require battery backup, so any time you need to dip
Speaker 1: into batteries or storage, you're suddenly talking about much more mining.
Speaker 1: So minimizing the amount of storage our energy system will
Speaker 1: need is the fastest way to reduce lithium mining needs,
Speaker 1: for example. So wrapping this up nuclear requires the least
Speaker 1: amount of mining and extraction across energy technologies. In fact,
Speaker 1: most of uranium mining globally is done without digging pits
Speaker 1: or tunnels at all. It's about tiny little wells that
Speaker 1: have things like straws suck up the uranium. So you're
Speaker 1: making uranium sound quite tasty. I mean, something you can
Speaker 1: drink through a straw and even maybe has some spice
Speaker 1: to it. Joking aside. I understand the point that all
Speaker 1: technologies require extraction of some resources from the earth, and
Speaker 1: it's certainly true that uranium is very dense source of fuel,
Speaker 1: but tell us more about how we get it out
Speaker 1: of the earth. I know that some uranium is mind
Speaker 1: via open pit mining. There's also this other technique, leach mining.
Speaker 1: Is this what you're referring to with the straws right exactly?
Speaker 1: So you're basically drilling little wells and using liquids to
Speaker 1: extract uranium without having to dig open pits. And that's
Speaker 1: again the beautiful thing about nuclear is that the ways
Speaker 1: that in which we extract uranium are credibly small and
Speaker 1: minimizing an environmental impact. One of the silver linings to
Speaker 1: the stigma around nuclear is that the entire process of
Speaker 1: extracting uranium and milling. It is incredibly regulated, reported with
Speaker 1: very tight controls and reporting needs compared to fossil fuels
Speaker 1: or other metallurgical mining, despite being very similar, being exactly
Speaker 1: the same. So the waste from mining uranium is exactly
Speaker 1: the same, mostly the same as any sort of metals
Speaker 1: that you're mining from the ground. It's just there's a
Speaker 1: lot less of it, way way less, and it's more regulated,
Speaker 1: and it's handling because it's part of the nuclear fuel cycle.
Speaker 1: And I've heard it said that uranium is also very
Speaker 1: plentiful in the oceans, that most of the uranium on
Speaker 1: Earth is actually dissolved into the oceans. Why can't we
Speaker 1: just filter it out of the water. Why do we
Speaker 1: need to dig into the ground at all. So it's,
Speaker 1: you know, as all things of issue with costs. So
Speaker 1: uranium that we can mine is very cost effective, whereas
Speaker 1: when you're getting into the institute or pulling out of water,
Speaker 1: it's not as cheap. So in a future where I
Speaker 1: think a lot of our energy needs will be met
Speaker 1: by mining, I do suspect we will be doing more
Speaker 1: of that. So based on the uranium that we consider
Speaker 1: economically available and the technology that we're using right now,
Speaker 1: we are able to meet all of our nuclear needs,
Speaker 1: but we wouldn't have many years in the bank if
Speaker 1: we ran completely on nuclear power and everyone had a
Speaker 1: high standard of living. However, the current reactors that we
Speaker 1: use barely burn any of the fuel at all, I
Speaker 1: think just about one percent of all energy available in
Speaker 1: the fuel rod. So we have these other reactors, fast
Speaker 1: reactors that can even breed new fuel, which means they
Speaker 1: can produce about a hundred and forty times as much
Speaker 1: energy from the same amount of uranium that non breeder
Speaker 1: reactors can. So that dramatically expands the number of years
Speaker 1: we can use to power society or we have to
Speaker 1: power society. We also have thorium, which can only be
Speaker 1: fully consumed in breeder reactors, which is why we don't
Speaker 1: really use it. Now there's a roughly equivalent amount of
Speaker 1: known thorium reserves as uranium. So again you're doubling that
Speaker 1: time frame. Now we're talking about, you know, a thousand years,
Speaker 1: but what if we want to go longer. This is
Speaker 1: where your question comes into play. So the earth crust
Speaker 1: has an average of less than three parts per million
Speaker 1: of uranium and about six parts per million of thorium.
Speaker 1: So this is a crazy fact that would mean that
Speaker 1: a random scoop of dirt has more energy in it
Speaker 1: than an equivalent scoop of coal. The ocean also has
Speaker 1: about two to three parts per million of uranium, So,
Speaker 1: like you said, we can extract that to get to
Speaker 1: now hundreds of thousands of years of high energy society.
Speaker 1: Because the ocean will continue to pull uranium and thorium
Speaker 1: from the soil to maintain that equilibrium, will be able
Speaker 1: to continue that extraction process. So we have at our
Speaker 1: disposal about four billion years worth of fissionable reefs versus
Speaker 1: it's just what is easily and economically accessible now, given
Speaker 1: that we don't have this fully nuclear, fully decarbonized system
Speaker 1: that we imagine we might have in the future. I
Speaker 1: hope that makes sense. Yeah, absolutely, And we'll be talking
Speaker 1: in a few minutes about reprocessing spent nuclear fuel and
Speaker 1: thorium cycle and all that kind of stuff. But the
Speaker 1: picture I'm getting is that we have economically cheap waste
Speaker 1: access uranium, but we also have vast stores of uranium
Speaker 1: we can access which would be more expensive, but in
Speaker 1: the mining process you take it out of the ground.
Speaker 1: And then you also need to sort of refine it
Speaker 1: a little bit at this step called milling, where they
Speaker 1: grind the ore material to these uniform particle sizes and
Speaker 1: treat them in some process to produce this powder they
Speaker 1: call yellow cake. So we have this mining and this milling.
Speaker 1: What are the byproducts there? I mean, you don't just
Speaker 1: get pure uranium out. You must produce also other stuff.
Speaker 1: Is that stuff toxic? Is it like radioactive? Is that
Speaker 1: something we need to worry about? So, like I said,
Speaker 1: from the mining perspective, it's no different than the tailings
Speaker 1: from most mining, So that's not anything special that we
Speaker 1: need to worry about. For the milling process, you do
Speaker 1: have some against spicy radioactive material left over for a byproduct,
Speaker 1: But the best thing about it is that it's bagged intact.
Speaker 1: There's almost no radioactivity, because that would be a waste
Speaker 1: of the product. You actually want. The radioactive stuff as
Speaker 1: a byproduct of the milling process, or one of the
Speaker 1: by products of the milling process, can sit around until
Speaker 1: we do have these breeder reactors, and again can be
Speaker 1: eaten up and used as fuel. So I wouldn't even
Speaker 1: technically classify that as waste because one day, hopefully it
Speaker 1: will not be waste, right, got it. And so that's
Speaker 1: not just like dumped in piles on the ground, you're saying,
Speaker 1: it's being carefully tracked somewhere. Right Again, because of the
Speaker 1: stigma that the nuclear industry has, it is absolutely necessary
Speaker 1: that this whole process be under far greater regulation and control.
Speaker 1: It's not necessary, it's necessary, and that the industry wants
Speaker 1: to defend itself against anti nuclearism saying that this isn't safe,
Speaker 1: this is dirty, this isn't reported. So it's created this
Speaker 1: hyper safety regulation culture that's allowed it to be what
Speaker 1: it is today. Mills are often owned and run by
Speaker 1: international partners that have all the pressure from their governments
Speaker 1: to stay as clean as possible, so it's got the
Speaker 1: cleanest standards, and mining the cleanest standards, and milling. So
Speaker 1: that covers mining and milling, and now we have the
Speaker 1: basic ingredients. Next we'll talk about enrichment. But first before
Speaker 1: we get into the spiciest side of nuclear power, we
Speaker 1: need to take a short break. Okay, we're back and
Speaker 1: we're talking with Mattie Hilly about the dangers of nuclear waste.
Speaker 1: What is produced, how dangerous is it, What are the
Speaker 1: options for storing it. So far we talked about how
Speaker 1: to get the stuff out of the ground with mining
Speaker 1: and milling, and next we need to talk about enrichment.
Speaker 1: You said earlier that most of the uranium that we
Speaker 1: take out of the ground is two thirty eight, whereas
Speaker 1: this also you two thirty five. So for our listeners,
Speaker 1: those numbers refer to the isotopes of the uranium, essentially
Speaker 1: how many protons and neutrons are in the nucleus. Sounds
Speaker 1: very similar, but just three numbers different means very different
Speaker 1: abilities to fission these materials into something useful. You two
Speaker 1: thirty five is very facile, while you two thirty eight
Speaker 1: needs faster neutrons, So you two thirty five. The rarer
Speaker 1: one is the kind of material that we need the
Speaker 1: actual fuel in these reactors. So there's this step where
Speaker 1: we enrich these things, where we take something which is
Speaker 1: mostly you two thirty eight, and we boost up the
Speaker 1: U two thirty five fraction of it. How does that
Speaker 1: typically happen, Maddie? Is it mostly through centrifuges? So quick
Speaker 1: note some reactors don't currently use enriched fuel, So for example,
Speaker 1: the can does in Canada can use natural uranium, so
Speaker 1: that same ratio of you two thirty five to you
Speaker 1: two thirty eight, But most reactors around them were all
Speaker 1: the light waters that we're talking about do. And yes,
Speaker 1: those are enriched with center fugues. But we might be
Speaker 1: getting a new technology soon, laser enrichment. I'm definitely not
Speaker 1: an expert on enrichment, so I can't describe the laser
Speaker 1: enrichment process. But that might make enriching I think easier
Speaker 1: and cheaper, is the hope. And so this leads to
Speaker 1: some samples of uranium with more you thirty five, and
Speaker 1: some samples with less. I mean, what you're doing, here's
Speaker 1: your operating right, you're concentrating to so there must be
Speaker 1: some waste there, right, Some I think they call this
Speaker 1: depleted uranium. Yes, so with this depleted uranium, if the
Speaker 1: market price for uranium goes up, we use more of
Speaker 1: that depleted uranium. So again, this is not waste in
Speaker 1: the sense that these are byproducts we can never use. Again,
Speaker 1: it's that we do not use them now because it's
Speaker 1: economically cheaper to just not use it. So you can
Speaker 1: call it extra not waste, all right, that sounds like
Speaker 1: a very nice word for it. And in terms of volume,
Speaker 1: there must be sort of a lot of this, right,
Speaker 1: we need to enrich the uranium from less than one
Speaker 1: percent to up to a few percent. We must produce
Speaker 1: a lot of this depleted uranium. Where is that stuff?
Speaker 1: Is it sitting in the warehouses somewhere? Is it being
Speaker 1: used for something else? So first of all, you know,
Speaker 1: when we're talking about a lot that's relative to nuclear,
Speaker 1: I mean, in general, the amounts that we're talking about
Speaker 1: with uranium and nuclear are just very small because it's
Speaker 1: very dense. So a lot is actually a very small
Speaker 1: amount of depleted uranium sitting near the conversion facilities. You know,
Speaker 1: just in general, from the mind to the reactor of
Speaker 1: the material flow is very very small. Which you know,
Speaker 1: so when green Piece talks about all of the nuclear waste,
Speaker 1: there's just so little of it that we really have
Speaker 1: to put it into context. It's important to be reminded
Speaker 1: that there are very small material volumes, so more than
Speaker 1: you could put in your pickup chuck, for example, but
Speaker 1: much less than is produced by coal or mining for
Speaker 1: battery parts, for example. Is your point? Oh absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 1: So all of the waste from commercial nuclear energy, the
Speaker 1: entire history in the US could fit on a football
Speaker 1: field stacked about fifty feet high. So each nation only
Speaker 1: needs a few facilities the size of normal warehouses to
Speaker 1: store any of this waste or extra that comes from
Speaker 1: the process of creating nuclear fuel. So then let's talk
Speaker 1: about the spicy part. Let's talk about actual power generation.
Speaker 1: So we have our nuclear plant. We've got you two
Speaker 1: thirty five in there. We have it critically dense so
Speaker 1: that the neutrons that come off of the fission are
Speaker 1: slowed down by the water and trigger reactions in other
Speaker 1: you too thirty five atoms. And for those listeners who
Speaker 1: want to know more details about the process, check out
Speaker 1: our previous episodes about nuclear power. We talked about the
Speaker 1: technology and light water reactors and salt reactors and all
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. But the key thing to understand
Speaker 1: here is that, as you said earlier, most of the
Speaker 1: fuel that's in the rod is still you two thirty eight,
Speaker 1: and it's there during the process, and it gets split
Speaker 1: apart and it's transformed by the process, but you still
Speaker 1: end up with a fuel rod that has a lot
Speaker 1: of uranium in it. So what exactly is produced when
Speaker 1: you're you're done running the fuel you've gotten your energy out,
Speaker 1: what is it that comes out? What does the fuel
Speaker 1: rod consist of after the process of extracting the energy, right,
Speaker 1: So you pull out the fuel rod assembly from the reactor,
Speaker 1: and that's what is what we called the waste. And
Speaker 1: that waste is made up of three things. One the
Speaker 1: unused uranium, which is most of it, to the fission products,
Speaker 1: which are atomic fragments call them lighter than uranium, and transuranics,
Speaker 1: which are radioactive elements that are heavier than uranium. And
Speaker 1: all three of these things are stored in the pellets,
Speaker 1: which are stored inside the fuel rods. So that's what's
Speaker 1: coming out of the reactor. So heavier than uranium. That's
Speaker 1: a little surprising. I'm thinking fission. I'm thinking uranium is
Speaker 1: breaking down. I'm expecting to get stuff that's smaller than uranium.
Speaker 1: But I know, for example, that plutonium is produced. Is
Speaker 1: that because it's absorbing neutrons. It's not breaking up. It's
Speaker 1: just like grabbing some of these neutrons and it's going
Speaker 1: up the periodic table exactly. So those transuranum are the
Speaker 1: result of uranium absorbing neutrons but not fissioning. So you
Speaker 1: can think of transuranics as future reactor fuel from neutrons
Speaker 1: going into uranium and making them chunking it up. To speak.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, you have these fission products, which
Speaker 1: are small and the result of as you were describing
Speaker 1: the fissioning there the fragments left over at the end
Speaker 1: of that process. Great. So we have these three elements
Speaker 1: you're saying. We have the leftover uranium, we have the
Speaker 1: trans uranics like plutonium, and then we have the byproducts.
Speaker 1: And so here we have things that are like neptunium
Speaker 1: two thirty seven with a two million year half life,
Speaker 1: and uranium two thirty four with the hundreds of year lifetime.
Speaker 1: I think this is the kind of stuff people think
Speaker 1: about when they hear nuclear waste. They hear about things
Speaker 1: that are radioactive and that will last for millions of years.
Speaker 1: So tell us about the dangers of these like how
Speaker 1: dangerous are these things? Why are we worried about them?
Speaker 1: So the general rule of thumb for radiation is that
Speaker 1: a short half life means higher radio activity, so much spicier,
Speaker 1: but for a shorter period of time. Long half life
Speaker 1: means lower radio activity. It's less spicy, but over a
Speaker 1: much longer time. So very short half life products are
Speaker 1: of little concern when we talk about the waste because
Speaker 1: by definition, they've already lost most of their radio activity
Speaker 1: by the time the fuel rods have cooled off. So
Speaker 1: all of waste management is really dealing with these longer
Speaker 1: lasting products. And so transuranics do have a long effective
Speaker 1: half life, but that also means they don't produce nearly
Speaker 1: the heat or penetrating radiation of those short half life
Speaker 1: products or fission products, and so they might last for
Speaker 1: a long time, but they're not nearly as hazardous as
Speaker 1: some of the other materials that were concerned about. And
Speaker 1: because these transuranics can be consumed in fast reactors, that
Speaker 1: would mean their remaining waste is very short lived compared
Speaker 1: to the traditional spent fuel that we currently have a right,
Speaker 1: so you're telling us that the stuff that doesn't last
Speaker 1: very long, like the caesium one thirty seven and the
Speaker 1: strontium nine s have half lives of like decades, These
Speaker 1: things are very toxic because they don't last very long.
Speaker 1: They're like giving up the ghost all in one go,
Speaker 1: spring out all of their toxicity in the moment, whereas
Speaker 1: the other stuff, the stuff that people think about lasting
Speaker 1: a very long time isn't as dangerous because it lasts
Speaker 1: a long time because it sort of spreads out the
Speaker 1: poison or millions of years rather than decades exactly. And
Speaker 1: most of those transuranics actually have radioactivity less than the
Speaker 1: equivalent of their uranium or equivalent to one ton of fuel,
Speaker 1: so it would be like grabbing dirt essentially. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about what we can do with this stuff. Obviously,
Speaker 1: the very short lived products that are the very toxic ones,
Speaker 1: this just needs to be stored and you just need
Speaker 1: to be shielded from it until the radioactivity dies away.
Speaker 1: Those have half lives of like decades. But this other stuff,
Speaker 1: plutonium two thirty eight, plutonium two thirty nine is very
Speaker 1: long lived. You're saying that we can reuse this. It's
Speaker 1: a little surprising and counterintuitive to think, like the waist
Speaker 1: that comes out is also fueled, because why wasn't it
Speaker 1: just fueled the first time around? What do you need
Speaker 1: to do to it to make it like usable again?
Speaker 1: Why wasn't it just useful in the first go around? Right,
Speaker 1: So this in part gets into the difference of reactors
Speaker 1: that we have and reactors that we will use in
Speaker 1: the future. So in thermal nuclear power plants, we're talking
Speaker 1: about slow neutrons. These are neutrons that basically move at
Speaker 1: the same speed of the materials and the reactor, so
Speaker 1: slow relatively speaking, as opposed to fast reactors, where fast
Speaker 1: neutrons smash up everything in there but are less efficient
Speaker 1: doing so. So you need a lot of neutrons and
Speaker 1: you need to move fast because some leak. Right, So
Speaker 1: my understanding is that the slow reactors here, you have
Speaker 1: you two thirty five, and they produce neutrons that are
Speaker 1: a little bit faster than they actually need to take
Speaker 1: in order to do more fission. Right, So YouTube thirty
Speaker 1: five produces neutrons and if those hit other atoms they
Speaker 1: would cause fission, but actually works better if they're a
Speaker 1: little bit slower. It's like a whole nuclear model where
Speaker 1: you have protons and neutrons layered together in these shells.
Speaker 1: The speed at which the neutron hits it really affects
Speaker 1: whether it's going to split in half or get absorbed.
Speaker 1: So in the original process the thermal water reactors, you've
Speaker 1: got to slow down those neutrons to be like the
Speaker 1: optimal speed for you two thirty five. You're saying these
Speaker 1: other fuels they actually like faster neutrons. Now you need
Speaker 1: like a different kind of reactor, one where you have
Speaker 1: the fast neutrons buzzing about to create fission in these
Speaker 1: other products. So the two steps were why are different
Speaker 1: speeds of neutrons, which is why it doesn't just happen
Speaker 1: all at once. Right, So, if you're working with slow neutrons,
Speaker 1: which we do in our current thermal reactors, you form
Speaker 1: but do not fission the transuranics. So what you would
Speaker 1: need to do is take them out and switch them
Speaker 1: to a fast reactor. But you can also just start
Speaker 1: with a fast reactor. In fact, the first ever lightbulb
Speaker 1: to get powered by a generator from a nuclear reactor
Speaker 1: was a fast reactor. And so historically did we start
Speaker 1: out with just the sort of slow neutron reactors and
Speaker 1: not worry about this stuff because it was cheaper to
Speaker 1: be inefficient about it, just sort of use up some
Speaker 1: of the U thirty five and leave the rest of
Speaker 1: the stuff as waste. And now we're developing these faster
Speaker 1: reactors or what's the history of it there, if you know. So,
Speaker 1: we did try a lot of what are now being
Speaker 1: touted as advanced nuclear designs back in the fifties and
Speaker 1: sixties with the commercial nuclear energy program. Part of the
Speaker 1: reason we chose light water is that for these fast
Speaker 1: react afters, you need spicy your fuel. You need that
Speaker 1: higher enrichment, the higher ratio of you toot to youtubet
Speaker 1: to start up that fast reactor, and so the thought
Speaker 1: was that's you know, more difficult, has higher proliferation risks,
Speaker 1: was the main motivation to avoid that and stick with
Speaker 1: the lower enrichment. And light water really helps to slow
Speaker 1: down neutrons a lot while carrying away lots of heat,
Speaker 1: which is how you get energy from a reactor. So
Speaker 1: I think there's this narrative that, oh, we just chose
Speaker 1: this very inefficient technology because we adopted it from the
Speaker 1: Navy and we got locked in, whereas there are these
Speaker 1: other better alternative designs, where there were actually a lot
Speaker 1: of physical and engineering and like sound reasons why the
Speaker 1: light water reactor was a really great reactor tommercialize and
Speaker 1: export to the rest of the world. All right, So
Speaker 1: now we have this technology, we produce waste, and part
Speaker 1: of that we can reprocess into fuel for other reactors
Speaker 1: extract even more energy out of it. As you were saying,
Speaker 1: this gives us a huge extension on our ability to
Speaker 1: like power our society using uranium. But still we're gonna
Speaker 1: have some waste right in the end. We can't burn
Speaker 1: everything up into harmless byproducts. Even if you do these
Speaker 1: fast reactors, you get something. So tell us about what
Speaker 1: it is that actually comes out. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: in people's minds you have these Homer Simpson barrels of
Speaker 1: glowing green goo. What does the nuclear waste actually look like? Right?
Speaker 1: So for most of the world, it looks like this.
Speaker 1: They are long, skinny metallic rods that are all put
Speaker 1: together in a bundle called a fuel assembly, and once
Speaker 1: they're done cooking in the reactor, you take them out there,
Speaker 1: put into what's called spent fuel pool to cool off,
Speaker 1: and then afterwards, you know, maybe like five years or so,
Speaker 1: there's taken out and put into these virtually indestructible, large
Speaker 1: steel and concrete containers called casks. Can I stop you
Speaker 1: there and ask you about that? You said that they
Speaker 1: cool off for five years in a pool. Are we're
Speaker 1: talking about heat in terms of like radioactive spiciness or
Speaker 1: heat in terms of temperature? What takes five years to
Speaker 1: cool down both. So, like I said, there are the
Speaker 1: short lived spicier products that we want to lose their radioactivity,
Speaker 1: but there's also the thermal energy from radiation. So the
Speaker 1: answer is both. So these things are literally hot and
Speaker 1: they take five years to get colder. Is that because
Speaker 1: of the radioactor processes are still happening, Like the caesum
Speaker 1: and the strawntium that's decaying, it's still heating up the
Speaker 1: rod as it's cooling. Yeah, the spiciest stuff is decaying
Speaker 1: rapidly and that's putting off thermal energy. And can we
Speaker 1: capture any of that energy? It seems like you have
Speaker 1: the glowing rods that are dumping heat. Can we just
Speaker 1: use water and capture that heat and turn it into
Speaker 1: energy or is that just wasted somehow? I mean, some
Speaker 1: people have proposed this. I don't actually know what the
Speaker 1: feasibility is. I don't know that it's that important in
Speaker 1: the grand scheme of things, but perhaps all right, And
Speaker 1: so now we have these rods which contain things we
Speaker 1: don't think are useful in the fuel cycle anymore. And
Speaker 1: I spent five years cooling down and bleeding off some
Speaker 1: of the radio activity. And then the question is what
Speaker 1: do we do with it? Right, we need someplace to
Speaker 1: put it that's like geologically stable and that we don't
Speaker 1: think future humans are going to stick a straw into
Speaker 1: it and drink it. So what are the options in
Speaker 1: terms of like where to put this stuff? Right? So
Speaker 1: first let's talk about what we do in the United States.
Speaker 1: Like I said, you get these assemblies out of the
Speaker 1: spent fuel and you put them into these big containers
Speaker 1: and right now they just sit right at the site
Speaker 1: of production in at the power plant. They have a
Speaker 1: perfect safety record, they're regulated, monitored, and you can hug them,
Speaker 1: you can sit on them. I mean the utilities typically
Speaker 1: don't allow people to come in and do that, but
Speaker 1: the times that nuclear advocates have been allowed, you can
Speaker 1: touch them. I mean they're completely and perfectly safe. There
Speaker 1: are videos of these cast getting hit by a train
Speaker 1: and the train does not survive the impact, but the
Speaker 1: cast does. There's also they shot a missile at these
Speaker 1: casts and it was unharmed. I mean, it was damaged,
Speaker 1: but nothing that would open the cast that compromises the
Speaker 1: integrity of the cask. So the way we do it
Speaker 1: currently is just fine. So can I stop you there
Speaker 1: and ask you a question, because the perception among those
Speaker 1: who are not experts and haven't done the research in
Speaker 1: this is that nuclear waste is dangerous and that it's
Speaker 1: been spilled, and that we don't have a way to
Speaker 1: contain it. And you're telling us something quite different. You're saying,
Speaker 1: basically that we have the tech knowlogy to seal it
Speaker 1: up in a way that we never have to worry
Speaker 1: about it. Again. I read a report from Greenpeace. Is
Speaker 1: a quotation from their executive summary. They said, without exception,
Speaker 1: all countries reviewed were found lacking a sustainable and safe
Speaker 1: solution for managing the vast volumes of nuclear waste. This
Speaker 1: includes high level spent fuel produced at all nuclear reactors,
Speaker 1: for which to date all efforts to find secure and
Speaker 1: safe permanent disposal options have failed. How do you reconcile
Speaker 1: their statements with what you're telling us about the safety
Speaker 1: of nuclear waste. Are they talking about different things or
Speaker 1: is it just a different policy approach? Right, So, there
Speaker 1: are two things that you address there. I want to
Speaker 1: start with the first, which is the public perception, and
Speaker 1: I think that's a very real issue. In fact, I
Speaker 1: think that is the most important issue facing nuclear waste.
Speaker 1: It's not that there's any danger. There isn't because the
Speaker 1: hazards of the waste are physically very small and very
Speaker 1: weak to the countermeasures and systems we already have in place.
Speaker 1: The public doesn't know because they haven't been able to visit.
Speaker 1: So their perception of nuclear waste comes from Mr Burns
Speaker 1: shoving green barrels of goo into trees in the Simpsons,
Speaker 1: and not just these big, ugly, boring concrete casks that
Speaker 1: take up the space of, you know, a fraction of
Speaker 1: a parking lot. So I think that there needs to
Speaker 1: be more transparency when it comes to nuclear waste to
Speaker 1: solve that perception issue. Green Peace is a different thing.
Speaker 1: So green Peace is an anti nuclear organization, which means
Speaker 1: they aren't looking for a solution, they're looking for nuclear
Speaker 1: not to exist. Their trick is to be for everything
Speaker 1: that doesn't exist yet, like geological repositories being proposed or
Speaker 1: very advanced nuclear reactors, but then turning against them as
Speaker 1: soon as they even begin to exist. So, for example,
Speaker 1: Finland actually does have a geological repository and green Peace
Speaker 1: has fought it every step along the way, and now
Speaker 1: that it exists, says it's not good enough. So they
Speaker 1: start by defining everything in nuclear as not sustainable. Then
Speaker 1: they point out everything existing and proposed and called it
Speaker 1: unsustainable if it includes anything with nuclear that's the game
Speaker 1: I see. And something else that might give people the
Speaker 1: sense that nuclear power produces waste which leaks out into
Speaker 1: their water table, for example, is that there have been
Speaker 1: nuclear incidents at reactors Fukushima, Ensure Noble, and these things
Speaker 1: have caused radioactive clouds, for example, or into the water,
Speaker 1: and that is something that people need to think about
Speaker 1: when it comes to nuclear power. But today we're just
Speaker 1: talking about the danger of the waste itself, right, the
Speaker 1: actual product that comes out of a nuclear power plant
Speaker 1: which is operating in a stable and safe manner, right right.
Speaker 1: So you can't really understand the fear around nuclear waste
Speaker 1: if you just look at the science and the physical
Speaker 1: evidence and what's coming out of the reactor. So I
Speaker 1: think a better way to understand is when you start
Speaker 1: looking at it in terms of a way to express
Speaker 1: nuclear fear by projecting it onto the waste. And a
Speaker 1: lot of minds there's no difference between nuclear power and
Speaker 1: nuclear bombs, and these tasks of nuclear waste are seen
Speaker 1: as small nuclear bombs, which is a huge public perception problem.
Speaker 1: So again, I think if people were allowed to visit
Speaker 1: the waste like they are in other countries and see
Speaker 1: it for what it is, suddenly you can have a
Speaker 1: conversation about what do we do with a waste that
Speaker 1: deals with the physical nature of the waste and not
Speaker 1: the emotional concerns around it. Agree, thank you. I want
Speaker 1: to talk more are about the storage issues and Yuck
Speaker 1: a Mountain and how we move forward with First, let's
Speaker 1: take another quick break. Okay, we're back and we're talking
Speaker 1: with Maddie Hilly about what to do with nuclear waste,
Speaker 1: and we're talking about the stuff that comes out of
Speaker 1: the reaction. Once you've processed it, you've gotten your fuel,
Speaker 1: maybe you've done some reprocessing to use more of the
Speaker 1: radioactive elements inside the rods, and now you need a
Speaker 1: place to safely keep this. And you're telling us that
Speaker 1: it's basically not a big deal. You can just wrap
Speaker 1: it up in these casks and you can even store
Speaker 1: it above ground. Right. So, in the United States, for
Speaker 1: many years there was this project that Yuck a Mountain
Speaker 1: to basically bury this stuff, to find a place to
Speaker 1: put it where we thought it was not going to
Speaker 1: be geologically a problem for many, many thousands of years,
Speaker 1: and where maybe future humans weren't likely to stumble across it.
Speaker 1: What is the history of yuck A Mountain? Why did
Speaker 1: that fail? And do you think we need a similar
Speaker 1: kind of project or a totally different approach? So I
Speaker 1: think Yucka Mountain is another example of the nuclear industry
Speaker 1: trying to respond to social concerns with costly technological solutions.
Speaker 1: So yuck a Mountain. The idea is that you would
Speaker 1: put your waste in the center of the desert, deep underground,
Speaker 1: so it could harm no one and no one would
Speaker 1: be near it. But we already have a system that
Speaker 1: has a perfect safety record. So Yucca Mountain, if it
Speaker 1: were to get completed, would save zero lives, protect against
Speaker 1: zero injuries, avoid zero cancer. But what it would do
Speaker 1: is give the false impression that nuclear waste is somehow
Speaker 1: uniquely dangerous industrial waste such that it needs to be
Speaker 1: in the middle of nowhere, deep underground. Ironically, because of
Speaker 1: the sheer cost and effort involved in a repository like
Speaker 1: Yucca Mountain, the public fears that about nuclear waste are reaffirmed,
Speaker 1: not diffused, so they see that the industry and government
Speaker 1: are willing to spend all this money and build a
Speaker 1: huge megaproject to bury the waste, and they think, Wow,
Speaker 1: my god, that must be so dangerous. Let's just not
Speaker 1: have it at all. So you're saying it's sort of performative.
Speaker 1: It's not actually making things safer. It's just sort of
Speaker 1: trying to make people feel like something is being done. Exactly.
Speaker 1: It's trying to solve a social concern with the technological fix,
Speaker 1: which is kind of the main theme of the nuclear
Speaker 1: industry over its existence, at least in the US. And
Speaker 1: let me ask you another question about your claim. Earlier
Speaker 1: you said that this has a perfect safety record, and
Speaker 1: I wonder if that sort of jives with people's perception
Speaker 1: of the nuclear industry, because, you know, we hear about
Speaker 1: toxic spills. I was reading report from the Department of
Speaker 1: Energy that says that there are millions of galleons of
Speaker 1: radioactive waste and they're huge quantities of contaminated soil and water,
Speaker 1: and they identify like fifty seven sites that need to
Speaker 1: clean up. Is that because this radioactive waste comes from
Speaker 1: other sources, other processes, other industries, and that the spent
Speaker 1: nuclear fuel itself has never had a safety issue. Is
Speaker 1: that the distinction? Yes, exactly. So almost all of those
Speaker 1: things that you mentioned, including Hanford, including you know, the
Speaker 1: Southwest US, are almost exclusively heritage weapon facilities. So I
Speaker 1: would say, if anything, the creation of a commercial nuclear
Speaker 1: energy industry has made nuclear at large safer because now
Speaker 1: we know how to properly regulate and monitor waste. So
Speaker 1: those are all from the weapons project, which is a
Speaker 1: separate topic and one that I think is really important
Speaker 1: to cover, But none of that is from commercial energy production. Great,
Speaker 1: and so you're telling us that yuck a Mountain wasn't
Speaker 1: actually a great idea because it's mostly performative, it was
Speaker 1: very expensive, and plus then you have to transport this
Speaker 1: waste from where it's produced and where it could be
Speaker 1: safely stored into some other location, carrying these things like
Speaker 1: across the country. So what do you think is the
Speaker 1: best path forward for storing nuclear waste? Should we just
Speaker 1: sort of keep it where it's produced? To start off?
Speaker 1: I would just want to say that I have absolute
Speaker 1: confidence that underground storage will work physically. That's not the
Speaker 1: problem here. The problem is that the impulse misunderstands the
Speaker 1: needs and fears. So for example, I mentioned earlier that
Speaker 1: the Finish have built an underground repository, but the Finish
Speaker 1: are already extremely pro nuclear. Their Green Party has rebelled
Speaker 1: against the Green piece party line and openly supports nuclear power,
Speaker 1: so they had the comfortability with nuclear first and the
Speaker 1: repository came next. In the US, we don't have that comfortability,
Speaker 1: and part to that is I think the lack of
Speaker 1: transparency and honesty and the discussion about waste. So in
Speaker 1: my opinion, nuclear waste is like co parenting. You want
Speaker 1: absolute transparency and visitation rights. What does that mean. We
Speaker 1: need to talk about the waste and put the risk
Speaker 1: into context, which is that there's virtually no risk and
Speaker 1: that our system works great. And then we need the
Speaker 1: public to be able to visit and see that for themselves.
Speaker 1: They'll come and see that this isn't green barrels of
Speaker 1: leaky goop. You know. For example, in the Netherlands, they
Speaker 1: store their process waste in a centralized facility that's basically
Speaker 1: an education and art museum open to the public. They
Speaker 1: can walk on top of the waist with just some
Speaker 1: concrete in between them and the spicier stuff. And that's
Speaker 1: a really spicy stuff compared to what we have because
Speaker 1: it's processed. So I think that in the US, our
Speaker 1: first priority is to allow the public to see that
Speaker 1: nuclear waste is no big deal. Then we can have
Speaker 1: discussions about waste that deal with the physical properties of
Speaker 1: the waste and not how do we ease social and
Speaker 1: emotional concerns. All right, Well, it's a very complex issue scientifically,
Speaker 1: and the politics are even more complicated. So thanks very
Speaker 1: much Mattie for coming on today and walking us through
Speaker 1: some of the details of what exactly is nuclear waste
Speaker 1: to how to store and what the real dangers are.
Speaker 1: Really appreciate your time. Thank you very much. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much. Daniel, great to chat. So that was my
Speaker 1: conversation with Maddie Hilly, who was a very strong advocate
Speaker 1: for commercial nuclear power and feels that the waste is
Speaker 1: something that we can manage. I thought that it was important, however,
Speaker 1: to hear from folks on the other side of the issue,
Speaker 1: so I reached out to representatives from Greenpeace and the
Speaker 1: Natural Resources Defense Counsel. Here are some excerpts from my
Speaker 1: interviews with them. Okay, and so I'm very pleased to
Speaker 1: welcome Jan Horcomp He's a senior expert in nuclear energy
Speaker 1: and energy policy at green Peace, and he's a master's
Speaker 1: degree in environmental science. John, thanks very much for taking
Speaker 1: some time to talk to us. Oh, I'm very happy
Speaker 1: to be there. It's an afternoon here, beautiful weather and
Speaker 1: for you, a very early morning. So my first question
Speaker 1: for you is what is your assessment of the safety
Speaker 1: record of various producers of sort of the most dangerous
Speaker 1: highest level waste. We heard from an advocate for nuclear
Speaker 1: power who told us that the commercial nuclear power industry
Speaker 1: has a quote perfect safety record when it comes to
Speaker 1: spent fuel. Is that how you would characterize it? Well, exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've had a lot of incidents in the Princess,
Speaker 1: in the reprocessing industry, which is dealing with spent fuel.
Speaker 1: One of the most horrible ones is probably incident where
Speaker 1: too much of high level material was thrown together and
Speaker 1: where we had an explosion. I mean, those incidents you
Speaker 1: don't want to see often. But we also have the
Speaker 1: track record of Lahagan in France, and track record of
Speaker 1: seller Field, and the track record of Mayak in Russia.
Speaker 1: There is a lot to tell about that. There is
Speaker 1: so much to tell about that that I want to
Speaker 1: go now into all of them. But the management of
Speaker 1: spending nuclear fuel is not an easy job to do.
Speaker 1: It's technically very complex, and in technical very complex things,
Speaker 1: things go sometimes wrong. Luckily enough, most of the time
Speaker 1: those are minor incidents where we deal with a minor
Speaker 1: contamination of people that are involved. But we have seen
Speaker 1: some very very large incidents like the Mayak nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: seven incidents, or Team incident as it's also known, which
Speaker 1: is probably the third largest emission radioactive substances from the industry.
Speaker 1: Of course, you can argue whether the Russian lucre industry
Speaker 1: is a civil care industry because it's a hybrid industry
Speaker 1: military civil, But that's a discussion you can have. It's
Speaker 1: high level radioactivist is a very complex issue, and I
Speaker 1: think slogans are not really benefit to to discussion about him.
Speaker 1: To help us understand the challenge here, why not just
Speaker 1: store the fairly small volume of nuclear fuel at the
Speaker 1: reactors where it's produced so you don't have to transport it,
Speaker 1: you don't worry about loss and damage during transport. Why
Speaker 1: don't you store them at the reactors or at facilities
Speaker 1: like cobra in the Netherlands. What's the danger there. The
Speaker 1: small amount is at the moment almost half millions of
Speaker 1: four heard eight ninety tons world wide, so it's it's
Speaker 1: not that small of a map. Here in Netherlands we
Speaker 1: have a hundred and ten cubic meters, which is not
Speaker 1: that very much at COD and I think storage of
Speaker 1: spendinger fuel temporarily is basically the default option that the
Speaker 1: majority of the operators is now choosing, and that's done
Speaker 1: in different quality. Is one of my headaches last night
Speaker 1: was shelling sub Region compower station and a shell that
Speaker 1: was falling next to the dry casket towards there. You
Speaker 1: hear my side. I mean that has been a few
Speaker 1: hours off twitting to find out what the what the
Speaker 1: impact was. It was just far enough away. So I'm
Speaker 1: happy about that. There is no incident there in the Netherlands.
Speaker 1: Ferenstans that COVID. How we've chosen for a very large
Speaker 1: and very well protected engineered storage space to habog and
Speaker 1: I think that that is probably at the moment the
Speaker 1: state of the art of how to temporarily store high
Speaker 1: level radioactive waste. Now that's not spent fuel. The Netherlands
Speaker 1: are reprocessing, so that's petrified waste, which we are sure
Speaker 1: that it will have to be kept out of the
Speaker 1: environment for the next a few hundred thousand years. Temporary
Speaker 1: storage for that reason, is only a temporary solution in
Speaker 1: this case until the year two thousand and thirty when
Speaker 1: it is supposed to close. And decision about what to
Speaker 1: do with the waist then is in the Netherlands not
Speaker 1: going to be taken before the year two thousand one hundred.
Speaker 1: That is probably also your great great grandchildren that will
Speaker 1: have to take the decision for something where they have
Speaker 1: had no benefit of at all. You aready noticed there's
Speaker 1: a few things that play here. In principle, if we
Speaker 1: have waste like this, it is better to store it
Speaker 1: with as little transport as possible dry storage on site,
Speaker 1: but you need to take care that also, and will
Speaker 1: we protect against extreme circumstances as we now see in
Speaker 1: a putty difference. Is that why you describe it as
Speaker 1: temporary storage because you don't think this is sustainable for
Speaker 1: five thousand or a million years. This is designed for
Speaker 1: both hundred years and you need to do something with it.
Speaker 1: Then the choice of options is at this moment not
Speaker 1: very large. Most of the people work in the sector
Speaker 1: talking about the geological disposal as the preferred option. My
Speaker 1: remarks then are always if it works. The other options
Speaker 1: that we see now are the fully engineered solution for
Speaker 1: the long term, but that is not what is COVID
Speaker 1: cover is is an engineered solution for a hundred years.
Speaker 1: Just to clarify, I can ask you why does storage
Speaker 1: at the reactor or in coverra only work for a
Speaker 1: hundred years? What happens after a hundred years that it's
Speaker 1: no longer possible to leave these things where they are now. Well,
Speaker 1: the concrete that we have there of the building, it
Speaker 1: is not for eternity. It's been designed to withstand, for instance,
Speaker 1: severe whether impacts tornados for a period of about a
Speaker 1: hundred years and all beyond. At the moment we talk
Speaker 1: about long term storage of this way, so we talk
Speaker 1: about hundreds of thousands of years. There's alstend something you
Speaker 1: can just uphold. You would have to have people take
Speaker 1: over the responsibility time by time to upgrade the installation,
Speaker 1: to repair the installation so that it is still able
Speaker 1: to withstand natural impacts or malevolent impacts. And that is
Speaker 1: a very long responsibility. You could there archly, of course,
Speaker 1: think about engineering something that will all need that, but
Speaker 1: that is something in which there is not very much
Speaker 1: researched on at this very moment. So engineered free engineered
Speaker 1: solutions are not really taken a serious option right now
Speaker 1: within the industry. And the last option that I'm now
Speaker 1: only seeing is extremely deep woreholes that we talk about
Speaker 1: three or four or five thou meter deep. There is
Speaker 1: research ongoing at this moment into that option, but it's
Speaker 1: still in its infancy. And for that reason, Yeah, what
Speaker 1: what is happening comb is really is temporary storage. And
Speaker 1: what is happening in most other cases like Philipsburg in Germany,
Speaker 1: or we see also in Zapper region, I mean in Ukraine,
Speaker 1: or what we see in the Ciano Bill spent fuel
Speaker 1: site that was set up there by Whole Tech, that
Speaker 1: is all temporary storage places and they're designed tetemporary storage places.
Speaker 1: So something that pro nuclear advocates of and comment is
Speaker 1: that the waste that's produced by nuclear power is toxic,
Speaker 1: but temporarily that these things will decay, that in five
Speaker 1: years or million years, it will no longer be toxic.
Speaker 1: Whereas the mercury and lead and cadmium produced in other
Speaker 1: industries is toxic forever. With your response to that kind
Speaker 1: of argument, I worked on mercury who waste in the
Speaker 1: Czech Republic when I was living there with my toxic
Speaker 1: campaigner dreams tech Republic. That's also a headache. I mean,
Speaker 1: if one headache is a headache, it doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: something else is not a headache. I find it a
Speaker 1: very shabby argument in the discussion. That is, yes, that
Speaker 1: is not eternal. It's a risk that endures for well,
Speaker 1: the peaches in a few thousand years. In about twenty
Speaker 1: four thousand years, it's not such an issue anymore. But
Speaker 1: I hesitate taking people seriously who think that that is
Speaker 1: not such a problem in human terms. Geology is an
Speaker 1: interesting science, but it has very little relevance for a
Speaker 1: human lifetime. Well, it has all over the levels for
Speaker 1: human lifetime, but not when we talk about times, and
Speaker 1: even if we talk about low and mid level waste.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've got a canty yas that need to
Speaker 1: be kept out of the environment for about a hundred years,
Speaker 1: three hundred years, seven hundred years, depends a little bit
Speaker 1: on the isotope. Even there to three generations is a
Speaker 1: very long time, and to guarantee political stability for those times,
Speaker 1: guarantee that you can keep that safe is a piece
Speaker 1: of homework that we, of course do not only face
Speaker 1: for radioactive waste, also for other toxic waste. But it's
Speaker 1: it's a piece of homework of our generation that is
Speaker 1: going farther than we currently are able to manage properly,
Speaker 1: say the least. So for that reason, I mean, I've
Speaker 1: my grandchildren are the loveliest of kids, but their generation
Speaker 1: is is going to try to clean up a lot
Speaker 1: of rubbish that we've been met. So here in the
Speaker 1: United States, we've seen some nuclear power plants close with
Speaker 1: our replacements by new facilities, for example Indian Point in
Speaker 1: New York, and a lot of the power that was
Speaker 1: produced by that plan is now being produced by natural gas,
Speaker 1: which admits, of course, lots of carbon. What's your advice
Speaker 1: for policymakers who want to decarbonize the grid and reduce
Speaker 1: our dependent on fossil fuels and needs something to bridge
Speaker 1: the gap between what solar and wind can provide and
Speaker 1: what the grid needs. What's your advice for how to
Speaker 1: close that gap? But the first advice would have been
Speaker 1: start earlier with renewables. I mean, we've been calculating four
Speaker 1: green peace since two thousands and three US. The first
Speaker 1: version the social energy revolution scenarios were the r is
Speaker 1: between records, and that's because we have been only calculating
Speaker 1: technical evolutions conservatively. But we are well aware that thinking
Speaker 1: that way needs a political revolution. Now, if we look
Speaker 1: at the scenarios that have been developed over the time
Speaker 1: until when we stopped producing them, and we look at
Speaker 1: more recent scenarios, the goals that we need to starch
Speaker 1: to keep within the Paris Agreement one and half degree
Speaker 1: mean that we need to speed up development of truly
Speaker 1: clean renewable sources very fast. Anyway, There's just no getting
Speaker 1: around that. And that's point one what needs to be done.
Speaker 1: And if I look at policies of different countries, and
Speaker 1: I look at the policies of countries that have a
Speaker 1: higher amount of nuclear in their mixes, I see that
Speaker 1: the developments towards renewable grid is slowing down there. I
Speaker 1: mean an example is Finland where the development of solar,
Speaker 1: especially wind, where the heavy, huge potential has been slowed
Speaker 1: down enormously by the fact that they were focusing on
Speaker 1: the finalization of Holkylo into three. Now that took twelve
Speaker 1: thirteen years, longer than they expected. That means also that
Speaker 1: the development of renewables they are sold for about thirteen years.
Speaker 1: But are you suggesting that we can use pure renewables,
Speaker 1: just solar and wind as a way to provide energy
Speaker 1: for the grid. Renewables is why the ninjues solar EdWay it.
Speaker 1: I mean, but I think we can come to a
Speaker 1: zero fully renewable energy provision in twenty fifteen. That is
Speaker 1: still possible. It needs a lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: work with that's possible. Now you said, well, before we're
Speaker 1: getting there, there might be a gap. That depends on
Speaker 1: the great structure you have. It depends on where you are.
Speaker 1: We've seen similar discussions in Germany where the closed capacity
Speaker 1: of nuclear has been surpassed with reduced capacity by largely
Speaker 1: wind and solar, but also a good traction of biogas,
Speaker 1: and that appears to be possible. It appeared to be
Speaker 1: possible to phase out sensibly and phase in renewables in
Speaker 1: a sensible way. What went wrong there is that there
Speaker 1: has been a large hesitance to close down Cole and
Speaker 1: we see now that Germany has to speed up even
Speaker 1: it's already relatively well. No, it has slowed down, to
Speaker 1: be very honest, that it's ready to be high development
Speaker 1: of view energy sources. Because it has slowed down, they
Speaker 1: can do it. And that is also the steps that
Speaker 1: we see now in the in the Ukraine War and
Speaker 1: the gas problems that the Germany is facing. We've seen
Speaker 1: especially an increase in development of of their renewable resources,
Speaker 1: and that's possible for the United States. The choice for
Speaker 1: for fracking gas it was I think a politically very
Speaker 1: conscious one. I don't think at the moment it was
Speaker 1: the most wise choice when it happened. And the fact
Speaker 1: that we now see gas increasing as he was increasing
Speaker 1: in the United States when Lucar power stations switches off
Speaker 1: here and there, as you mentioned, has more to do
Speaker 1: with past policies than that it has to do with
Speaker 1: the decision to replace nucre by gas. And I think
Speaker 1: that it makes sense to look at the issue from
Speaker 1: a total grid perspective and prepare also for the coming
Speaker 1: years of an increasing and renewable production, the grids that
Speaker 1: can deal with it, storage that comes with it, with
Speaker 1: more dispatchable verses like biogas, there will be a tiny
Speaker 1: niche for hydrogen in it. There will be a good
Speaker 1: niche for nange I suppose for for bettery storage that
Speaker 1: needs attention at this very bold Thanks very much, that's
Speaker 1: very helpful. I really appreciate your time and your thoughts
Speaker 1: on the issues, so you can hear that Yon has
Speaker 1: a very different view about the long term dangers of
Speaker 1: spent nuclear fuel than Maddie did, and specifically whether storage
Speaker 1: at the plant where the waste is created is a
Speaker 1: temporary solution on the time scale of hundreds of years
Speaker 1: or a long term solution on the time scale of
Speaker 1: thousands of years. Dealing with storage over thousands or millions
Speaker 1: of years is very tricky, not just scientifically but politically.
Speaker 1: Where does it go? Who would accept it and why?
Speaker 1: What promises could we make to them. I spoke to
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Fettis at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a senior
Speaker 1: attorney for nuclear, climate and clean energy and the former
Speaker 1: Assistant Attorney General of New Mexico, and I asked him
Speaker 1: about the prospects for finding a place to keep this stuff.
Speaker 1: Here's what he had to say. That is a terrific question,
Speaker 1: and I love the way you asked it, because I
Speaker 1: think you're asking the right way as you're starting at
Speaker 1: what are the prospects for it? And how do we
Speaker 1: get there? And I want to give a little piece
Speaker 1: of history to your listeners that I hope will be
Speaker 1: really helpful in centering them on where the agreements are
Speaker 1: and where the disagreements are. And I'll start with Yucca,
Speaker 1: because everybody turns to Yucca Mountain and says, oh, it
Speaker 1: was a disaster, or it was all politics, or the
Speaker 1: science was bad, or all of the fights over it,
Speaker 1: and in RBC has a different view than reductive or
Speaker 1: easily breaking it down into it was one thing that
Speaker 1: killed Yucca. And for too long, too many industry advocates
Speaker 1: conflated support for the Yucca Mountain repository is support for
Speaker 1: any deep geological repository. That's just wrong. I'll do a
Speaker 1: fast history and then I hope to get you to
Speaker 1: a narrative that really centers you on and your listeners
Speaker 1: to these are where the agreements are and here the challenges.
Speaker 1: So in ninety seven, the National Academy of Sciences came
Speaker 1: to a conclusion that spent nuclear fuel at high level
Speaker 1: waste and we had both of it by seven not
Speaker 1: much of the spent nuclear fuel yet, but we certainly
Speaker 1: had high level waste at Hanford and Savannah River. They
Speaker 1: came to a conclusion, we have to get this stuff
Speaker 1: into a deep geological repository or repositories, and that's kind
Speaker 1: of been the consensus ever since, and it remains the
Speaker 1: consensus to this day that we can't shoot it into
Speaker 1: the sun, we can't send it under the See. The
Speaker 1: sort of holy grail for nuclear true believers was eventually
Speaker 1: we're going to have hundreds and hundreds of fast reactors
Speaker 1: that we can reprocess the waste. And that hasn't worked out,
Speaker 1: and in r NC sees no suggestion that it ever
Speaker 1: will work out. But in nine seven, Congress short circuited
Speaker 1: the process of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and said, well,
Speaker 1: this looks really expensive and problematic. So Nevada against the
Speaker 1: short straw, and it's all going to go to Yucca Mow.
Speaker 1: And then we spent about twenty years in a ferocious
Speaker 1: fight with Nevada and many others objecting to how YUCKA
Speaker 1: was decided upon and what its technical qualities were. There
Speaker 1: was a one of those classically boring d C. August
Speaker 1: Commissions created called the Blue Ribbon Commission for America's Nuclear
Speaker 1: Future that ran from two thousand ten to two thousand twelve,
Speaker 1: and it came out with three really important again consensus
Speaker 1: bipartisan observations that remained true then and remained true now
Speaker 1: and hopefully can guide the way forward. But they've still
Speaker 1: left one thing off the table. Ready. This is what
Speaker 1: they found. They said, we've got to have a repository
Speaker 1: way or repositories. We've just got to have a repository
Speaker 1: this no other way to do this, to store this
Speaker 1: waste and then eventually dispose of it permanently in a
Speaker 1: way that's morally and technically suitable. Number Two, we're processing
Speaker 1: isn't going to solve things in any time in our lifetime,
Speaker 1: not for years. And number three, we've got to get
Speaker 1: consent based citing, we've got to get the consent of
Speaker 1: the folks of where the waste is eventually going to
Speaker 1: go places plural, we think, but we've got to find
Speaker 1: a way to get consent. And in Ergacy agrees with that.
Speaker 1: And what the Blue Ribbon Commission didn't do was talk
Speaker 1: about how to get consent. They didn't describe how do
Speaker 1: we arrive at consent and what does it look like?
Speaker 1: And so if you look at where we are now,
Speaker 1: this is why your question was so thoughtful because you
Speaker 1: asked it in the right way, which was what's the prognosis, like,
Speaker 1: what's the chance? Where are we? Well? Right now, we
Speaker 1: still can't get consent. That is never going to give consent.
Speaker 1: There's been no indication over forty years the statement consent,
Speaker 1: and nor should they as far as nardc Is concerned.
Speaker 1: They were chosen based on political weakness, not on the
Speaker 1: technical merits of the site. Those bed rock environmental laws
Speaker 1: don't apply to No state will ever be okay with that,
Speaker 1: and this has been bipartisan. Right now, the two efforts
Speaker 1: to site consolidated interim storage sites are in New Mexico
Speaker 1: in Texas. Both governors, as different as they could be,
Speaker 1: Governor Abbott in Texas and Governor Lehan Grisham in New
Speaker 1: Mexico have expressed ferocious non consent. We're going to keep
Speaker 1: ending up in this cul de sac until we deal
Speaker 1: with consent and really figure out how it works. We
Speaker 1: think Congress should pass a law removing the exemption from
Speaker 1: nuclear waste from bed rock environmental laws. Right now, the
Speaker 1: actual organic law that governs the nuclear industry exempts them
Speaker 1: from environmental laws. And we think once that exemption is gone,
Speaker 1: e p A consent, nationwide safety radioactive Protection standards and
Speaker 1: EPA in the States could set up on their own
Speaker 1: limits on how much and on what terms the waste
Speaker 1: would come, and then we can move much faster than
Speaker 1: what we've ever done on nuclear waste on siting because
Speaker 1: the power dynamics will be so deaf. So there's my
Speaker 1: explanation of nuclear waste on how we can go forward. Wonderful.
Speaker 1: Thank you. So your focus then is on establishing consent
Speaker 1: and setting up the situation so that things can be
Speaker 1: monitored and regulated. So is it your opinion then that
Speaker 1: the technical solution exists, that we can put this stuff
Speaker 1: underground fairly safely where he can sit for thousands or
Speaker 1: millions of years and mostly not harm the people living
Speaker 1: above the surface. That it's essentially mostly a political and
Speaker 1: policy issue right now. That's a terrific question. I think
Speaker 1: it should remain absolutely foremost in everybody's mind that this
Speaker 1: is a profound technical challenge like few others. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're a scientist and you're asking an extraordinarily difficult thing.
Speaker 1: Of everybody, from engineers to archaeologists and anthropologists to suggest
Speaker 1: that something can be safe for something beyond the scale
Speaker 1: of human history. It's a profound technical challenge by any measure.
Speaker 1: And do I think it's simple. Do I think that
Speaker 1: the scientific defensibility of any particular site is going to
Speaker 1: be a straightforward process. No, I don't. One of the
Speaker 1: things that's been most interesting as a lawyer to work
Speaker 1: on these issues is I get so much history from
Speaker 1: so many brilliant people, from geologists to physicists, to engineers,
Speaker 1: to archaeologists and anthropologists who looked at so many of
Speaker 1: these sites, from Lions to Tennessee, the Salmon site in
Speaker 1: Mississippi to Yucca, and what I understand, Yucca looked as
Speaker 1: a site much more promising in the eighties than it
Speaker 1: did by the middle of the nineties. The Nuclear Waste
Speaker 1: Technical Review Board. By the early two thousands, they suggested
Speaker 1: that the technical case for Yucca was weak to moderate
Speaker 1: at best, and that was a site that had been
Speaker 1: studied for twenty years. So I think the technical issues
Speaker 1: for any of this going for word, are going to
Speaker 1: outstrip most other decisions we make as a society. They're
Speaker 1: just that difficult because it is. It's a million year challenge.
Speaker 1: It's a challenge beyond the scale of human history. But
Speaker 1: I think the thing that is so apparent to us
Speaker 1: after sixty years of failure to get to even interm
Speaker 1: storage sites that are not just at the point of generation,
Speaker 1: we have interm storage sites, by the way, that are
Speaker 1: technically working, which is at reactor sites. They are still there.
Speaker 1: We haven't had a dreadful accident yet in this country,
Speaker 1: and that's good. And let's hope we can keep the
Speaker 1: NRC on its job to ensure we think, by the way,
Speaker 1: the NRC should do better and require the fuel get
Speaker 1: moved from densely packed pools into dry storage faster. That's
Speaker 1: a safety issue, all right. Thank you very much to
Speaker 1: all of our guests and interviewees for sharing their thoughts
Speaker 1: and the listeners were hanging on for this extra long episode.
Speaker 1: I hope that gave you a taste for the technical
Speaker 1: side of nuclear waste, what it is, how it's made,
Speaker 1: how dangerous it is, as well as the flavor of
Speaker 1: the police nickel complexities of solving the problem a long
Speaker 1: term storage. All of this goes to inform policymakers who
Speaker 1: have to make the really tough decisions in a changing
Speaker 1: landscape and a very hard to predict future. Thanks very
Speaker 1: much for listening and tune in next time. Thanks for listening,
Speaker 1: and remember that Daniel and Jorge explained. The Universe is
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. Or more podcast from
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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.