Why Don't We Shoot Nuclear Waste Into Space? — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00here in the kotart labs we test very
2. 0:02important ideas to see what happens when
3. 0:05you blow things up or play with black
4. 0:07holes many of you suggested that we look
5. 0:09into an idea that sounds reasonable
6. 0:12shooting nuclear waste into space it's
7. 0:15one of those Concepts that seems like an
8. 0:17easy fix for one of the main problems
9. 0:19with the nuclear energy but it turns out
10. 0:22this idea is not just bad but horribly
11. 0:24bad and it gets worse the longer you
12. 0:26think about it why is that
13. 0:31[Music]
14. 0:37what is nuclear waste nuclear waste is a
15. 0:41fuzzy term and comes in categories which
16. 0:43vary from country to country but in
17. 0:45general there are three broad levels 90%
18. 0:48is lowlevel nuclear waste tools gloves
19. 0:51or trash used at a nuclear facility that
20. 0:54could be weakly contaminated with some
21. 0:56short-lived
22. 0:57radioactivity this stuff is generally
23. 0:59safe for normal disposal 7% is
24. 1:02intermediate level nuclear waste mostly
25. 1:05materials that have been in close
26. 1:06proximity to a reactor core long enough
27. 1:08to become dangerously Radioactive with
28. 1:11proper handling it's either safely
29. 1:12buried or melted down and mixed into
30. 1:14glass or concrete and stored deep
31. 1:17underground so 97% of nuclear waste is
32. 1:20similar to toxic byproducts from other
33. 1:22Industries not great not terrible we can
34. 1:26handle it the remaining 3% is where our
35. 1:30problems begin highlevel nuclear waste
36. 1:33is very concentrated spent fuel taken
37. 1:35out of a reactor core formerly uranium
38. 1:39it's now made of various dangerous and
39. 1:41often highly radioactive elements as a
40. 1:43bonus it's also incredibly hot and not
41. 1:46easy to handle at all this is what we
42. 1:49want to shoot into space All In All
43. 1:51Around 440 active nuclear reactors
44. 1:54create about 11,000 tons of high level
45. 1:57nuclear waste each year since 195 54
46. 2:00we've accumulated 400,000 tons of
47. 2:03dangerous radioactive waste most
48. 2:05countries are dealing with it by not
49. 2:07dealing with it and kicking the can
50. 2:09towards the future great so let's launch
51. 2:12it into space according to scientists
52. 2:15space is big and nobody lives there so
53. 2:19it seems perfect for yeting away this
54. 2:21mess there are a few tiny problems
55. 2:24though problem one stuff ain't
56. 2:28cheap even though space light is getting
57. 2:30more affordable it's still extremely
58. 2:33expensive just to get something into low
59. 2:35earth orbit costs on average about
60. 2:38$4,000 per kog putting that into
61. 2:41perspective it costs about
62. 2:43$1,600 to mine separate and fabricate 1
63. 2:46kg of nuclear fuel so launching waste
64. 2:49into space has suddenly made nuclear
65. 2:51fuel for reactors way more expensive and
66. 2:54greatly increased the cost of the
67. 2:56electricity they produce to launch one
68. 2:59reactor worth of nuclear waste would
69. 3:01cost at least $100 million per year to
70. 3:05deal with all the 440 operational
71. 3:07nuclear power plants high level nuclear
72. 3:09waste would cost some $44 billion per
73. 3:12year for space launch before packaging
74. 3:14transport and security costs are added
75. 3:18okay let's pretend we don't care
76. 3:20currently we couldn't shoot all the
77. 3:21nuclear waste into space even if we
78. 3:23wanted to there just aren't enough
79. 3:26rockets in 2021 we saw a record 35
80. 3:30launches into space if we repurposed
81. 3:33each of those rockets and filled them
82. 3:35all with nuclear waste the total amount
83. 3:36that could be lifted into a low earth
84. 3:38orbit which is the closest orbit above
85. 3:40the atmosphere is nearly 800 tons we'd
86. 3:44need at least 14 times more Rockets to
87. 3:46handle just today's nuclear waste let
88. 3:48alone get rid of the hundreds of
89. 3:50thousands of tons in temporary storage
90. 3:52we would need to create entire new Space
91. 3:54Industries to keep up with the demand
92. 3:56for giant toxic Space trash trucks and
93. 4:00it gets
94. 4:01worse problem two space is hard we only
95. 4:05made the calculation for low earth orbit
96. 4:08where we send most of our rockets and
97. 4:10satellites littering the space around
98. 4:12Earth with thousands of cks of spent
99. 4:14nuclear fuel would be a nightmare for
100. 4:16space junk management and satellite
101. 4:18collision
102. 4:19avoidance worse still at this altitude
103. 4:22there's still a little bit of atmosphere
104. 4:23causing a tiny bit of drag so we might
105. 4:25have nuclear waste raining down from
106. 4:27space within just a few years experts
107. 4:30would call this a huge problem clearly
108. 4:33we have to launch our waste further if
109. 4:36we wanted to send it to perhaps the moon
110. 4:39we either need way more Rockets or we
111. 4:41need to build much bigger ones making it
112. 4:43even more expensive a single Saturn 5
113. 4:47the rocket used by the Apollo program
114. 4:49which cost around 1.5 billion adjusted
115. 4:51for inflation per launch could get about
116. 4:5343.5 tons from the earth to the moon so
117. 4:57we'd need about 260 Saturn f rocket
118. 4:59launches every year and of course using
119. 5:02the Luna's target practice for nuclear
120. 5:04waste tipped Rockets kind of makes a
121. 5:06huge mess so maybe don't aim for
122. 5:09anything space is empty do we really
123. 5:11need a target shooting waste in any
124. 5:14random direction is you guessed it also
125. 5:18a bad idea orbits are Loops which means
126. 5:21they have a tendency to come back to
127. 5:22where they started put enough in the sky
128. 5:25in random directions and you'll get one
129. 5:28back eventually so we'd want to launch
130. 5:30our nuclear waste deep into space which
131. 5:33means we need even bigger rockets that
132. 5:35would be even more
133. 5:36expensive not that we would be
134. 5:38completely safe then Earth might run
135. 5:41into these interplanetary caskets at
136. 5:43some time in the far future and
137. 5:45experience a pretty meteor shower made
138. 5:47from radioactive
139. 5:49dust okay how about we shoot it into the
140. 5:52sun ironically the sun is pretty hard to
141. 5:56hit while the sun has very strong
142. 5:58gravity everything on Earth is moving
143. 6:01with respect to the Sun including the
144. 6:03rockets that we launch meaning a rocket
145. 6:05would have to cancel out all the orbital
146. 6:07motion it has around the Sun so it can
147. 6:09stop orbiting and fall in because of
148. 6:12this it's actually easier to launch a
149. 6:14rocket entirely out of the solar system
150. 6:16than it is to launch it into the Sun but
151. 6:20to do either of these things we need
152. 6:21even bigger Rockets probably the biggest
153. 6:24we've ever
154. 6:25built H nothing works the thing is it
155. 6:30gets even
156. 6:31worse problem three rockets
157. 6:35go rocket engineering has taken huge
158. 6:38steps since the Apollo era we've made
159. 6:40them relatively safe we've mostly
160. 6:42replaced the toxic explosive cancer
161. 6:44fuels of the past decades with much
162. 6:47sailor mixes of liquid oxygen and
163. 6:49hydrogen or kerosene the newest designs
164. 6:52even land themselves so that they can be
165. 6:54reused and yet out of the 146 launches
166. 6:58in 2021
167. 7:00there were 11 failures which means that
168. 7:02a sizable number of our Rockets carrying
169. 7:04high level radioactive waste would be
170. 7:06exploding on the Launchpad or in the
171. 7:08worst case disassembling at high
172. 7:10altitude or crashing from Hypersonic
173. 7:13speeds each failure would be at least
174. 7:15equivalent to a miniature Noble but
175. 7:17instead of being contained under a slab
176. 7:19of concrete spread throughout the
177. 7:21atmosphere radioactive particles could
178. 7:23make their way to far away places by
179. 7:25riding on the winds most would fall into
180. 7:28the ocean but some would land on the
181. 7:30inhabited parts of the world they could
182. 7:32cover farmlands and get concentrated
183. 7:34into our food or enter our water supply
184. 7:37which is well bad imagine regular large-
185. 7:40scale nuclear disasters happening people
186. 7:43wouldn't be happy conclusion and opinion
187. 7:47part nuclear waste is scary but the fear
188. 7:50of it and horrible ideas like shooting
189. 7:52it into space reveals how bad we are at
190. 7:55understanding risk because the largest
191. 7:57amounts of radioactive elements Like Ur
192. 7:59ium and radon are actually released by
193. 8:01coal burning millions of tons of coal
194. 8:04each year leaves Ash as a waste product
195. 8:07that includes about 36,000 tons of
196. 8:09radioactive materials less radioactive
197. 8:12than high level nuclear waste but
198. 8:14there's also a lot more of it and it's
199. 8:16handled way less carefully some of this
200. 8:19ash is caught by filters but most is
201. 8:21simply pushed back into leaky mines
202. 8:23shoved into piles exposed to the wind or
203. 8:26poured into ponds that regularly spill
204. 8:28into rivers and Lakes living within 1.6
205. 8:32km of an ash pile increases your cancer
206. 8:34risk up to 2,000 times over the
207. 8:36acceptable limit and this is on top of
208. 8:39other toxic chemicals like heavy metals
209. 8:42and of course their massive CO2
210. 8:44emissions and yet while nuclear energy
211. 8:47is flawed and its current form may only
212. 8:48be a transitory technology nuclear power
213. 8:51plants are a harder cell than coal
214. 8:54nuclear waste and the lack of
215. 8:55willingness to deal with it are a real
216. 8:58issue it's not not insurmountable though
217. 9:01there are good methods to handle it like
218. 9:03burying it deep underground or
219. 9:05reprocessing some of it into new fuel
220. 9:08but however we ultimately deal with this
221. 9:10issue we hope one thing is clear
222. 9:12shooting nuclear waste into space is one
223. 9:15of the worst ideas
224. 9:18ever researching this crazy thing
225. 9:21conducting all of these important tests
226. 9:23and of course creating this video took
227. 9:25us around 2,000 hours which is insane
228. 9:28for a YouTube video and we couldn't do
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