@@rtsp that's the point. The waste is frozen solid so it can't leak, and even if it did it definitely won't be able to break through steel and concrete, same goes for the radiation. It's safe when stored like this
@@aqowamancows8213 not exactly. he kissed the container of the waste not the waste itself. however, because the container is now waste as well you might be able to say that, but i feel it's intellectually dishonest.
Back in 1984 the Central Electricity Generating Board in the UK did a public demo, when they crashed a train at 100mph into a flask of the type used to transport waste to the Sellafield reprocessing plant. Nothing leaked from the flask. The train (remote controlled obviously) was totally wrecked. And that was with 1984 technology!
That whole "Where is nuclear waste? *points at massive concrete container* Where is fossil fuel waste? *breathes* " was like the single best argument I've seen for like anything.
not going to lie it actually made me cry a bit just because it's such a good argument and it makes me so irrevocably angry at the fossil fuel cartel and the damage it's done [doing] to our planet.
It was mentioned somewhere else that we should turn it around. Nuclear power is the ONLY type of energy generation that manages its waste, not to mention that "waste" is ~95% unburned fuel and ~4% inert or useful byproducts.
Let's be honest 99% of the argument these days are about how much nuclear and how much renewables should be used. No one is even arguing for more coal. The video entirely misses the point in my opinion because it tries to win an argument that is long over.
Former Nuclear Plant Operator here: we toured the dry casks daily, recording the temperatures and inspecting for damage. Even after the plant was shut down, they kept operators around to continue to monitor the spent fuel. Every single closed down plant out there has people at it, keeping an eye on the spent fuel 24 hours a day, every day of the year. It really is incredibly safe and well monitored.
@@flem6 Radioactive waste (especially highly radioactive waste) naturally emits radiation( edit, to make that more clear: a big part of that is or gets thermal energy = heating). This must be monitored and partially cooled. At least this is a safe job that is not threatened by rationalization (sure? ... spot the error/danger here, hehehe) for many 10,000 years:)
@@dieSpinnt so more of a “just in case” safety check? My (very limited) understanding of this science is that for the waste material to start emitting *more* radiation instead of less over time would be nigh impossible
If the temp rose above a certain level, it indicated that there might be something blocking the ventilation for the natural circulation cooling. The waste is put into a metal drum which is then put into a larger metal drum filled with gas to prevent oxidization, and THAT outer drum is then placed in the concrete drum, but the spent fuel is still really hot temperature wise, so the concrete drums have a natural ventilation system that draws cool air in through the bottom and releases hot air out the top to make sure everything complies with NRC standards, since concrete can start to crumble at certain temperatures due to the water evaporating out of it. It isn't even for the safety of the spend fuel. It's for the integrity of the container that holds the container's container.@@flem6
It’s so much better and I hope we start a system where we re use spent fuel rods, they’re still full of power but instead of re using them they crack and get discarded because they’re not as efficient so they just get stored, taking up more and more space as the years go on, I agree that is better but there’s still that problem I wish we could fix them being this idea to the table as a unbeatable solution, we can use MSR molten salt reactors to use up all of that fuel but…it’s not cost efficient so we resort to dumping the fuel rods taking up more and more space every two years. This isn’t me saying I’m against it I just wish we had all bases covered and we wasn’t taking up so much land over the years storing massive barrels when there can be alternative options
I’m actually working at the Dresden nuclear site right now! My jaw hit the floor as I saw you walk through the hallways I walk through everyday. Currently in my hotel room about to go in for todays shift. How cool! This past Monday we opened up the top of the reactor and just yesterday I was down inside the cavity performing maintenance. Was there for about 3 hours and only picked up about 5mR. Awesome video!
I have a feeling I pickup more working at the hospital Edit: looked it up.... my God. Everyone. This should be a given.... but if you don't need to go to the hospital don't! (Obviously go if you need to. I just get like a couple weeks of this guy's exposure in a day 😅 so many x-rays flying around. Even if we try not to get exposed. Especially in ORs and we use them for live views of certain procedures.. we wear leads... but they ain't exactly perfect)
For more information, I recommend the book _What if?_ by Randall Monroe of XKCD; specifically the chapter on "What if I took a swim in a typical spent nuclear fuel pool?" As he says, "Assuming you're a reasonably good swimmer, you could probably survive treading water anywhere from 10 to 40 hours. At that point, you would black out from fatigue and drown. This is also true for a pool without nuclear fuel at the bottom."
I could also survive the same amount of time inside a pool of pure gas yet i still would not die, unless somebody ignited that shit. Yet this stuff is still fucking dangerous as you know. The same thing about water with the differenfe that it is one of the biggest natural murderers of the world. I'd be afraid inside of an acid pool. Some things dont appear as dangerous as they are.
@@BogWarThunder So its not dangerous unless you lack common sense and you do something really, really stupid? Thats pretty much what we mean with "not dangerous"
@@A-G-F- in that case also bullets are not dangerous and bombs arent too, neither is a bottle of nitroglycerin in the middle of a parade. One wrong action and we have people dying, just like cancer patients that got healed by radiation and later died to that same thing that saved them. These weapons that i counted up are inside a hull of metal, yet the whole world fears these things. Would you fear a nuke bomb when i show it to you or would you start realizing the danger only if i am about to drop it on somebody? War is nothing than fucking around with peoples minds and only the shots are deadly the danger? As long as you dont get hit, no weapon aint do shit to you. As long as the waste is sealed, Kyle can kiss the cask as often as he wants (if there was even waste inside, he didnt tell if i remember right). NOTHING is dangerous if nobody does dumb shit. But if you paid a bit attention around Ukraine war you should have noticed that somebody is crazy enough to shoot a fucking powerplant with warheads and these people wont be afraid to shoot another one, just to use their danger as a weapon.
I visited a decommissioned plant about 4 years after shut down and one of the other people on the tour asked our guide a similar question about how long you’d survive in the pool and the guide pointed to an armed guard and said, “you’d be dead before you hit the water” so I guess maybe it depends on which spent fuel pool you are jumping into 😂
"The world looks different when you understand it" - understanding things is so important and so understimated by so many people. I love that you are giving everything to spread this message.
Well, it certainly "looks different" than the genome-warping effects of radiation would have it... Oh, you DON'T have an answer for the radiation? I'm outa here...
Well as someone who works on windmill wings, I can confidently say they are huge producers of waste, since a small fracture will mean a decommission of a wing, sometimes all 3 wings are replaced just as a precaution because if a stress fracture has occurred in 1 most likely the other 2 also has. And while there have been a development breaking down the epoxy layers, so we can reclaim the balsa, the now epoxy waste cannot be reused or recycled and will either be buried or burned, and wings are replaced a lot all over the world.
Got to go up into a windmill for a class I was taking and we were talking with the guy who maintains them about how often they need to replace the wings. The amount of replacements and cost of replacements is astronomical for the amount of energy you get.
Former US Navy nuclear reactor operator here. I really appreciate the lengths you (Kyle) go to in order to communicate reactor and spent fuel safety! I'll be a proponent of nuclear power until the day I die. How else can you pack so much energy into so small a volume?
At this point only nuclear fission will get us off fossil fuels the fastest. Fusion will definitely come through I believe in the next hundred years but for now first generation and next generation nuclear are going to take us into the future. The potential is literally limitless.
Thank you for everything you said about waste OTHER types of power generation creates (like coal). In your lungs, in the air, as mercury in the ground, water, and food supply. Then in your body. Such an important point to highlight that I think a lot of people can relate to. Keep fighting the good fight!
Not to mention fracking often encounters radioactive material deep in the earth's crust, which makes a huge amount of the waste (which is totally unchecked and unregulated) incredibly radioactive as well.
@@exorcisttypebeat That "Unchecked and Unregulated" part is why nuclear waste is always safer than waste from fossil fuels, The waste from fossil fuels is released carelessly and sometimes not even cleaned, whereas Nuclear waste is regulated and stored in large cylinders strictly guarded in a way where the nuclear waste won't escape for thousands of years.
As somebody who works at a nuclear plant, this was a phenomenal video that shows how truly focused on safety we are. Thanks a ton for showing the public how amazing this generation method is. I absolutely adore your content and cant wait for more!
Thank you for producing this. My brother used to work in nuclear site cleanup including Santa Susana and the sodium burn fields of Rocketdyne, so you can believe I did a lot of research about his safety, and that research convinced me that even when cleaning up after the early days of nuclear experiments is safer than many other occupations. I am also a chemist by trade and I worried about his safety. He's in his 50s now and in excellent health. Anecdotal? Of course. Reckless people create sensational catastrophes, but careful professionals do not. And the professionals involved follow strict safety rules to protect themselves and the community, which, I might add, includes one of the priciest zip codes in California. Nuclear energy is a safe, clean energy source and we should follow the science, not sensationalism.
I kinda just imagine him frolicking around and enjoying himself more than most people reasonably would. His excited gesticulation in the video and eventual escalation to skipping and or dancing with confined nuclear waste could be a distraction to power plant operators.
I had a friend who was the head of security at a nuclear power plant, and the stuff he COULD tell me was absolutely amazing. The plans upon plans within plans in case of other plans are so intricate and practiced so regularly, I'd be surprised if a mosquito could get within a mile of a plant without a year's notice and a federal background check.
@@fwiffo Since the "we" that Kyle's talking about don't run nuclear reactors overseas, you'll have to ask the people overseas instead. In the US, the plans don't include "fighting off an Army" - but the US Army's plans DO. So it would be fine...
I have friends that work security at another generation station no more than 2 hours’ drive from where this video was filmed. If I may…I know them because I deployed to the Middle East with them in the military. The people guarding that station are among the highest quality human beings this world has to offer. There’s good people watching over this stuff.
I agree with Kyle about 100% on nuclear energy, but the second he gets any type of illness, I can already feel the thousands of comments saying "see, we told you nuclear wasn't safe!!!!"
He doesn't live near a dumping site, he won't get sick. It's the poor people who live on low value land near these industrial facilities who will get sick. Erin Brockovich style.
@@gladitsnotme I mean, as they said, the waste facilities for nuclear power are safe to live around. Also, poor people around the world already suffer massively from fossil fuels, on a scale which has probably not yet been properly measured.
Upon seeing the cooling pool, my mind immediately went, "ah yes, the forbidden swimming pool." Thanks for letting us know that we're not allowed near the water in fear of us contaminating it rather than it contaminating us.
"taking a swim in the pool? Oh no you will die before even making it to the water!" "Why?" "Well 9mm has very prompt adverse effects to the body so..."
@@TylerMusgrave9 There's an old XKCD what if on swimming in a spent fuel pool. The ending is pretty similar, "You’d die pretty quickly, before reaching the water, from gunshot wounds.”
Kyle, I just wanted to share that because of you and your work with nuclear energy, I decided my major to be nuclear engineering. Thank you for continuing to prove how safe nuclear energy is.
@@kylehill Of course you can kiss a sealed canister. Of course sealing nuclear waste makes it "non pollutant" compared to fossil fuels. That's NEVER been the issue. The issue is what's happening in Ukraine right now. If a terrorist or war time bomb destroys a nuclear waste fancily, then what? America will eventually be attacked. If they only want to hurt the country what better place than nuclear waste facilities to detonate. Who's going to clean that area up? How long will it be inaccessible? How many will die that can't get away? Worse? Who will pay for perpetual inspections and maintenance for the next 1000 years? Before technology can find uses or ways to discard safely in the future? Until then we still have to spend money. Is that expenditure calculated into the cost benefit of using nuclear? Of course not, fuk our kids. If we keep building more there will come a time when costs of maintaining all these waste facilities will be greater than the cost of energy they generated. Who's going to pay for all that? Or you don't care, fuk the future.
I visited an active hydroelectric power station here in Quebec. I was very impressed by the security back then, no phone, no camera, ... You are very lucky to have been allowed to visit an active power station and to record your experience, especially a nuclear station. Our local government pulled the plug on our only nuclear power station in 2012, it was a CANDU reactor. I'm so sad they shut it down, it's a green energy and more reliable than a dam which depends on the rain level in a specific location. Fun fact about the province of Quebec, 94% of our energy comes from hydroelectricity. Thanks again for sharing your experience with us! ❤
I've never been to Quebec but I've recently become somewhat fascinated online by Radisson, Quebec, and how it's one of the most isolated spots in the world from any other real settlement. All because of clean hydroelectric power. 600 km / 7 hour drive of basically 100% wilderness.
I believe one of the main psychological issues with nuclear waste is precisely how uneventful it is. As humans, we always feel the need to pinpoint where the danger is coming from with our own senses: a volcano is dangerous because it slings hot rocks into the sky, a thunderstorm is dangerous because of bright lightning strikes soaring through the darkness, an earthquake is dangerous because you can very clearly feel the shockwave in your bones, etc. Radiation is kind of the odd one out, because the main source of danger here is just... metal. Like, raw uranium doesn't look all that different from cobalt or even graphite to an untrained eye, it's just hard for most people to believe that such a legendarily dangerous substance appears as something so relatively tame. But the truth of the matter is, no one is born with a built-in geiger counter and therefore none of us can detect radiation solely by relying on our senses. We wish we could, and that's possibly the reason why we try "humanizing" nuclear waste by depicting it as a gooey slime of sorts - that way we would know it to be dangerous right away. Even I, as a physics student, am sometimes swayed bt that kind of imagery. I've dealt with actual radiation emitters in laboratories, and it's just weird to wrap your head around them being the real deal because of how dull they look, lol
I've had difficulty finding (or understanding) exact figures, but afaik any geiger counter sensitive enough to detect Uranium will also detect Bananas (I don't remember if it's specific to 235 or 238)
@@yutahkotomi1195 I know this is meant as a joke, but it's bad. You can receive a lethal dose of ionizing radiation and not notice until hours (or even days) later as you shit out the inner lining of your intestines and your organs start shutting down as your body rots from the inside out. Of course, chemical waste can be just as insidious a killer, and people are not near as neurotic about that (despite the chemical industry having a history of unsafe disposal that the nuclear industry never had).
I always felt iffy about my country's government (Germany) suddenly deciding to drop all nuclear power in the panic following the Fukushima incident and now, thanks to your wonderfully educative videos, I think it's a straight-up tragedy... Sadly, by now it's far too late to change anything about it, especially in the eye of the politicians... We are literally doing nothing good by shutting down our nuclear plants, it's just increasing the usage of coal plants...
The government knows that nuclear is actually a dead end in the long run. We already have gravity propulsion, why keep beating a radioactive dead horse when we have better tech coming up
as my dad likes to say (we are germans too btw): "Grün ist Konzept!" ("Green is just a concept") talking about the political party with that nickname btw
Y'know, I try to tell my family about this all the time, and they always respond with "what if people hit it with a nuke?!". I find this hilarious, because if you drop a high powered nuke on a place, a power plant melt down isn't going to make it that much worse😂
The funny part is, the answer to "if these were inside of the blast radius of a nuke" is nothing. They will remain there, still sealed concrete casks. Unless they are in the direct blast of a nuke that literally atomizes everything, these things will survive. If they were buried like Kyle suggested, if they were hit by 100 surface nukes, they'd probably still be buried in the same spot, totally unaffected.
The response: "My dude, if our power plants are getting hit with nukes, WE HAVE MUCH BIGGER PROBLEMS AND YOU ARE ALREADY FUCKED ANYWAY SO IT DOESN'T MATTER."
@@Kaiju3301 then why are the people wanting complete abolishment of fossil fuels, selling solar, wind, geothermal, and hydroelectric sorces to power EV cars, also scared of nuclear energy?
I actually lived near this power plant! I could see it whenever I drove to school too, and seeing it in a video like this is wild. I was in such a small town I never thought I'd see this
I’m blown away you were at Dresden in July. I’ve been watching you for years and am currently in operations at Dresden! I would’ve lost my lid if I saw you here, you’re one of the reasons I’m here in the first place
it's not irrational, Chernobyl was no Joke, granted there isn't a need to be as fearful now thanks to all the stringent technological advancements and safety precautions, but those fears are valid, Chernobyl had the potential to cover half of Europe in radiation, that's objective fact
nuclear energy + another reneweable source is the perfect combination to handle unfullfilled promises, lack of energy output of the renewable source and reliability.
@@AH-ms5uv Every single person throughout the entirety of human history has constantly been exposed to ionizing radiation during all, or at least the overwhelming majority of, their lifespan. In fact, pretty much *every living thing* in the *entire history of life on this planet* has been constantly exposed to radiation for their entire lifespans. As a result, we've evolved to be able to handle quite a bit of radiation with little to no adverse effect; it's only at high doses that it becomes a problem. The Linear No-Threshold (or LNT) model that a lot of anti-nuclear fearmongering is based on has been largely discredited at this point - there is little to no solid evidence for it, and there is considerable evidence that it vastly overestimates the risk. For what it's worth, the best estimates of Chernobyl's total death toll - which again was the worst nuclear disaster in history - including long-term radiation deaths come in under 20,000. Fukushima's radiation death toll was... 1 person - a worker at the plant - and they didn't die until years later. For reference, studies indicate *the PM2.5 alone* from fossil fuels kills over 10,100,000 people every year - and that may just be a drop in the bucket compared to the future death toll from climate change - while credible estimates put the death toll of the Banquiao hydroelectric dam failure in the ballpark of 200,000. Nothing is perfectly safe, so of course nuclear energy does have its hazards, but the magnitude of the hazard is low compared to pretty much anything else (in terms of deaths per GWh, reliable statistics show nuclear is safer than wind energy and vastly safer than hydropower) - especially considering the excellent controls we put on it, which should ensure nothing like Chernobyl can *ever* happen again. The Chernobyl accident, it must be noted, took a perfect storm to create - incompetent/poorly-trained operators working under high-stress conditions deliberately bypassing safety mechanisms, a catastrophically flawed reactor design, unknown/poorly understood phenomena, numerous hardware failures, and a general lack of information due to the highly secretive/politicized nature of the Soviet nuclear industry at the time, among other things - and even a modicum of care could've prevented it. Still, we could have a Chernobyl every month and not come anywhere close to the death toll from fossil fuels. There are *a lot* of things we should be far, far more worried about than nuclear accidents.
@@AH-ms5uvthe lesson of chernobyl shouldn't be that nuclear energy is inherently dangerous, it should be that we need to learn how to mantain it safe, it was an accident caused by the government both using shoddy materials and not properly training and equipping their workers.
I agree, I only know a tiny bit about thorium and it's enough to say we should be using only it. I would absolutely love a video on the topic from Kyle
@@chakko007 I think I am guilty of that myself. The way education worked @ school was... well.. I've learned more about history by listening to sabaton an being intrigued by them to discover more and same is true for Channels like Kyle's.
@@schlossgoldftw There's surely a lot of misinformation these days, also at school. I was lucky enough to have a father who explained these things to me, in a rational and factual way. I remember how he once told me that he went to a nuclear power plant with a Geiger counter, and measured nothing out of the ordinary, while studies of course "proved" that there is an increased number of leukemia cases in the vicinity of nuclear power plants... He also was IN a nuclear power plant, and got told by the people who work there how "strongly" radioactive material, like the ballpens they used there, had to be disposed of in castor containers. I just hope the employees don't have to be disposed of in castor containers as well. Nowaydays, more than ever, these are things you are not allowed to talk about. You also are not allowed to say that 20.000 people died in Fukushima, by cause of the flood, not by cause of nuclear contamination. It's forbidden. Also, don't ask about investigation into Covid, and what it has done to people, and how many people actually were affected, and died in the process. Never ask such things, or you are an inhumane, cruel individual. It's sad, because, that way, we will never find out what really happened with this disease, how harmful it was, and what we can do next time to avoid harm to the people, and, I also include the mental harm, the harm of isolation, due to being rejected, and the harm of isolating people by measures which might not be the least appropriate.
@@chakko007 Let's not get around the bush here. I dont feel old being thirty, but social media really came around in my youth and I was having none of it, because it annoyed me and it still does. What are people watching and reading nowadays constantly? Brainmelting stupidity on facebook and else. You see exactly what it's doing with them. They see some stupid post and assume it must be real.
My family has had three generations of kids swimming in the rivers near Dresden. Just took a boat ride past the facility a few weeks ago! Was never worried about it, but always glad to hear how safe the plant is!
Sounds a bit like when the faux environmentalists at Burning Man oppose geothermal power expansion, they always ask, "well, would you want a geothermal power plant in your backyard", and would always be shocked when I could say, "well, it wasn't exactly my backyard, it was about half a mile away, and there was a creek and a highway between me and it... but yeah, first 18 years of my life had one in my backyard, even moved back and lived in the same neighborhood for another 6 years after graduating college, never once bothered by the geothermal plant... the highway on the other hand..."
To give anyone curious some context for the radiation values he shows in this video: A standard chest x-ray is about 10 millirem or 100 microsieverts, and a chest CT is 7000 microsieverts. When he is near the spent fuel pool, his geiger counter is showing 700-800 clicks per minute, which translates to about 4-4.5 µSv per hour, corroborated by the yellow Terra-P dosimeter at 4.2. He would need to stand there next to the pool for about a full 24 hour day to get the equivalent of a single chest X-ray. The plane at altitude showed 1.71 µSv/h, so around 50 hours in flight to get the equivalent of a single chest X-ray. I forget where in the video he showed the geiger counter near the dry casks, but IIRC it was around 350 CPM or so? So about half of that, around 2 µSv/h. Finally, the worldwide average yearly dose is ~2400µSv/year although it can vary wildly depending on where you live, and the US occupational safety limit is 10,000µSv/year for normal members of the public while it is an incredible 5,000,000µSv/year total body dose for radiation workers. That's the safe limit, which is still below where you expect to start seeing deleterious effects. The very rough risk estimate is an increased 0.02-0.04% increased chance of dying to cancer per 1,000,000µSv. Putting this all together, if you lived full time with those storage casks in your house with you and never left your house ever, it would take you just over 57 YEARS to achieve a 0.04% increased chance of dying to cancer.
Concrete is slightly radioactive itself, so some of that reading will be from the cask itself. (probably most of it, as there's a lot of shielding between you and the spent fuel.)
And are we hearing pilots dying left and right from elevated radiation exposure over their career spans? That's a nope. If it would be the case, the aviation industry has the blackest belt in information control not letting a single word reach the public somehow. Clearly not a danger factor. It's probably worse when they have a lay-over hitting the beach working on their sun tans
@@spindleblood Yeah, they can be SUPER confusing, especially since there are multiple related but distinct ways of quantifying radiation. Thankfully a lot of them are sorta depreciated by now and we have some consolidation, but it is still way too complexly laid out.
I work at a nuclear power plant and this was awesome to see. I love how uniform everything is including equipment and designs at other plants. I felt at home watching this. Thank you for bringing KNOWLEDGE to the masses who seem super confused as to what a nuclear plant actually is. Appreciate you!
We are soo privileged to have our favorite nerd in disguise, it's awesome that Kyle takes the time to make it easily understandable to any viewer. On literally any topic he covers. Bravo! 👏🏼👏🏼
He does really does do it in a way even the layman can understand. It's why we need people like him pushing the need for nuclear power, and videos like this on national television. Not just UA-cam. Nuclear power is by far the cleanest and safest form of green energy period.
xkcd did a "What if?" question about what would happen if you swam in a nuclear fuel pool, and it was fairly informative and very much in line with what Kyle said. Though the ending expert comment also summed up the security on nuclear plants quite nicely: "If you tried to swim in OUR pool? Oh you'd be dead before you hit the water. Because you'd be shot. By the guards."
Question: Can you drink the water from the fuel pool Answer: No you would die. Not because the water isn't clean, but because they would take you out the second you got close to it, because they don't want your nasty anything touching their clean water.
I grew up in Illinois and it made me chuckle when you said you were going there. The place has an insane amount of nuclear power plants (like 6). I would hear on the radio out there when I was a kid that said "Vote to remove Nuclear Power". Being a high school student at the time I was baffled that people lived around these their whole lives and nothing bad has ever happened, so why? I looked into it and was blown away at how goofy people were being about it. Thanks for pushing information on this, its well needed.
Not just nuclear, very sad to see how humans are generally just horrible at one of the most important tasks there is. Assessing risk vs reward. Just think of how many graves wouldn't be occupied if it hadn't taken fifty years to get us to just fasten our damn seat belts. And radiation is definitely causing plenty of harm. Only it's the ever so natural radon and ultraviolet from everyone's favorite reactor, the one they are oblivious to.
I worked on naval trainer reactors in both Charleston, SC and Ballston Spa, NY and it was wild how many long time residents didn't even know the plants were there. My assumption is that, since the plants are pretty important military installations - nothing short of divine intervention is going to convince the DoD to relocate, making 'de-nuclearization' of the area a hopeless political stance. Ergo, the media doesn't care and people whose lives are completely unaffected by the plants don't complain because... there's nothing to actually complain about (besides the rowdy junior enlisted). Also, just generally speaking (and this is anecdotal of course) I have never experienced any negative interaction with someone in all my years of working on nuclear powered aircraft carriers. I've seen people protesting the military in general (mostly in foreign countries), but never its use of nuclear power. Even Japan lets us park nuclear ships in Tokyo bay.
@@RetiredAccount3737 IIRC, there are 41 towns across the us named "Springfield" and as such it's considered a generic name that could be anywhere, and that's why it was chosen as the name for the Simpsons' town.
@@MagsonDare: We as not just a nation, but an entire species, positively _suck_ at naming things. If you were to do a tour of all the places on or near the US/Mexico border that are named Nogales, there would be no fewer than 6 stops, on _both_ sides of that border. Expand that to include all locations formerly named Nogales, and that number more than doubles. Again, on both sides.
When I was a kid, my dad told me about the dangers of Nuclear waste, and when I was in seventh grade science, I learned about it as well. It's been so weird to hear that it's not actually dangerous because it goes against things I was told over half my life ago to the point where they were really baked into how I saw the world.
to be fair, the FIRST generation of nuclear waste wasnt handled that well- but i am an old person. my chemistry professor took a group tour of a chemical /nuclear facility with no guards, no safety, no restrictions... it wasnt run well.
@@calebrobinson6406 Probably the same people who'd take a financial hit unseen since their businesses began if people _weren't_ afraid of nuclear energy...
@@fabricdragon The first, and current generation of fossil fuel waste aren't handled well at all, it's just that you can't cuddle a cloud of sulphur, and when those plants burn away for decades their waste can't all be gathered in one place.
Okay then, let's deposit all the nuclear waste in your peoples gardens, if it's that safe. Cause there isn't even a reliable deposit for all the waste and the time it needs.
Dad worked in a nuke plant for 20+ years. When I was a kid, before 9/11, our schools would take educational field trips to the plant to learn about the process and safety. They locked it down tighter than a dolphin's butt after 9/11, though. Thanks for picking up the torch on nuclear education.
it would be really cool to see a comparison video where you tour a conventional fuel power plant and see what their safety and waste disposal facilities are like
@@doncomputer5931 To be honest, coal power plants have giant electrostatic precipitators in their smoke stacks to filter out all the fly ash. It's not like back in the 50s that literally everything just got blown into the atmosphere. But the fly ash gotta go somewhere. Waste disposal? You mean those stacks of sheetrock over there? Or that big pile over there? (That really happened - fly ash was and is put into sheetrock/plasterboard and that contaminated many houses with radioactive crap because coal always contains trace amounts of radioactive materials - and they just concentrate so many traces into the fly ash that whoops now we have radioactive sheetrock - but AFAIK now in the western world there are more strict regulations, so if you get radioactive sheetrock it's likely made in china where the fly ash regulations aren't as strict).
I think that a big reason for the fearmongering around nuclear power is residual fear from the cold-war era parents and teachers that hammered our parents with these misconceptions.
That's really the unfortunate thing. "Nuclear energy" became a big scary word. It fell into the NIMBY zone and it's incredibly hard to convince even the people who fully understand the harms of other power sources to allow a nuclear plant in their area despite our urgent need for them because of the absolutely horrendous PR nuclear energy has.
Or maybe because it's much more efficient than fossil fuels, so less profit for the big corporations. They'd want to keep the fearmongering alive to keep their profits higher with fossil fuels.
The biggest fear factor is: what happens if the maintenance of the fuel waste is stopped? How much damage will it do in 20.000 years? The waste needs to be maintained and is therefore a forever lasting threat that only grows in size.
This video must get way more views for the future of the world. Kyle, you're an awesome educational youtuber, and your work will make the world better and smarter ❤
As a former US Navy nuke, I love seeing stuff like this. I can't talk about the stuff I did when I was in, so having someone like Kyle showing how safe nuclear power gives me hope that more people will come around to its potential.
You’re doing exactly what is needed Kyle! When I was in elementary school, 30 some years ago, we visited the (at the time) INEEL where we saw most of what you saw and I have never feared nuclear power. Unfortunately, laboratories like this are usually built in low population areas meaning most young people will never have the opportunity to visit one and have their own opinions formed before they are fed misinformation born of politics and distributed by mainstream media. Keep educating and hopefully soon enough we will reach enough minds!
@@rossramsdell7584 That depends on which portion of my comment you’re asking in regards to? If it’s the opinions of those who have actually witnessed nuclear power with their own eyes then yes. If you are trying to imply that the mainstream media claims it’s safe and clean then no, that is the opposite of what they do.
It's really funny to think how a nuclear reactor is just a hyper advanced steam engine. All the waste it produces is basically an insert solid material that can be re-enriched to be used again, and the depleted uranium can be used in armor penetrating ammunition.
I think a lot of the misinformation is from entertainment media. If a TV show or movie showed the area you walked through everyone would be in Hazmat suits because it's more dramatic. It's like when people get locked in walk-in freezers in TV shows or films. Never mind they all have safety handles that can always be opened from the inside, but it's not dramatic enough to show that.
Almost every time you see the word 'nuclear' on an article you have people immediately associating it with Chernobyl or Hiroshima, even if it has nothing to do with either of those topics. Just that simple word alone, by itself, produces a very strong emotion. We can talk about the safety of everything until the waste decomposes into an inert substance, but as soon as the word 'nuclear' is seen, all eyes get closed and brains turn off. They completely focus on disasters and bombs.
Yup, that's why the word "nuclear" got dropped from "nuclear magnetic resonance imaging" (NMRI, now known as MRI)... even though semantically it was a rather crucial part of the name (magnetic resonance of _what_ ? oh, atomic nuclei)
@@MatthijsvanDuin Bingo. That didn't have anything to do with nuclear power or bombs but yeah. Stigma is a thing and there's lots around that word. Trying to get people to not be scared of a single word is tough.
It's also super frustrating when the people championing green energy the most don't want to look at nuclear, even though it's one of the best (if not the best right now) energy sources to curb pollution.
We in South Africa need more than just the one Nuclear Power plant we have to solve our loadshedding energy crisis. Nuclear Power information is virtually non existint in South Africa for the general public. I use your videos to show how safe it can be and how much improvements it would bring
The university of Potchefstroom has a working pebble bed reactor. Though, I think the research has ground to a halt thanks to ANC pro coal shenanigans.
I wish that this was required watching by EVERY school aged child - at least twice in their progression through the education system. You present the information with no bias - just the raw information and the facts behind it, making it much easier to understand the whole process, which in turn gives a much better understanding. Knowledge is indeed power, and I hope that you are able to keep spreading the facts like this!
Can you talk about the SL1 meltdown? I loved the video- I’m a nuclear operator and really enjoyed watching this, thank you for the effort and research put into this and the other vids.
The nice thing about that is that prior to that, he goes into how safe it actually is to swim in there - that is to say, if it wasn't for the gunshot wounds, you'd probably be fine as long as you don't go below the top of the water. Which says some good things about just how fanatically safe the whole thing is.
I've been to a couple dozen spent fuel pools. I've almost never seen guns in that building. Those buildings have secured access thru other buildings. The guards don't stand by the fuel pool waiting for folks to try to go for a swim.. If you can get to the fuel pool, you wouldn't have trouble making it into the water.
@@MrEscape314 Yeah, but you would likely not make it past security at the gate or the door. That is the point. If you make a run past security they are likely gonna shoot you.
@@MrEscape314every nuke related place has DOE "SWAT" (I don't know what they are actually called) in a room nearby. I know a guy who used to do that. Yeah, the DOE has special forces whose job is to give you a lead supplement if you try any shenanigans
Dear Kyle and Aria, a favorite quote I heard in my childhood that affected my life; "People are scared of what they don't understand." -Which motivated me into learning more things. 16:00 Thanksalot Sir Lancelot!
Same story with air travel. People have no issues getting into their cars and share a road with angry and mentally unstable people every day, but somehow the question "Are you afraid of flying?" exists. No, I'm afraid of driving ...I'm perfectly fine with trained professionals and computers taking me somewhere, what I'm not fine with is sharing a road with teenagers trying to impress their crushes, drunks and road-ragers.
One of these days, Kyle is gonna get access to a nuclear waste storage container, and then like a Mr.Beast video he’s gonna keep hitting it with larger and larger explosions to show how strong it is
it would be watching the same thing happen over and over again. a nuclear detonation would be required to open these (ironically), and at that point youve got a nuclear detonation to worry about lol. the soil you kick up will be just as radioactive as the fragments released. im pretty sure these can withstand being hit by a plane.
They actually did that I think lol; not Kyle but other nuclear engineers They put storage containers for IIRC either nuclear fuel materials or nuclear waste (just the container, not with the radioactive stuffs) onto a truck. - First they crashed the truck. - Then they crashed the truck the second time but harder. - Then they hit the truck with a train. - Then they also did other insane stuffs. TL;DR the container survived XDDD
It’s so cool that this stuff is so comically safe. Turns out, the people who are in charge of nuclear reactors want to keep the whole thing as safe and uneventful as possible.
"The world looks different when you understand it." Great episode Kyle, I appreciate the work and effort you put into your videos. Science communication is one of the most important jobs that science needs and when done correctly, we can spread understanding!
Really this came off as a flippant fanboy rant to us. How safe is a place that cannot be filmed and put on public view, needs military guardians and has to have a tank of ultra pure water they guard against a single hair to drop into...
@@instantchow I take it you prefer the alternative of Shoving chemicals into the ground to pull up oil out of the ground, (A messy process that can allow toxic chemicals to seep into nearby water supplies), Transports the oil across borders, usually coming from Countries with unfair human rights practices, such as Russia or Saudi Arabia, and then Releases the toxins produced by the burning of the fuel straight into the atmosphere? Before you start with the "I want renewables" crybaby talk, Remember what happened with Germany. Were they able to replace their energy grid with renewables? No, They're not reliable. Germany quickly became Dependent on Russian Oil and has since been attempting to reverse anti-nuclear policies. Before you complain about nuclear power because "The stuff on the simpsons looks scawwy", Actually research the matter for once.
I live in Illinois and got to tour the Braidwood power plant just southeast of Dresden. The atmosphere in the facility was much the same as your experience. Everyone seemed to be enthusiastic about their job and were excited to tell visitors about what they do. Glad you got to have a similar experience!
Used to live down by Braidwood, I remember when I took a field trip to a nuclear power plant training facility, probably one of the coolest things I ever did in middle school
I absolutely love the exposure you give nuclear power and how safe it actually is. As someone who works in the field it is really great to see. Thank you for giving me a video to show my family and friends to put their minds at ease about what I do.
Sure its safe until a corporation faces a decision between profits and safety. Theoretically its totally safe if everyone acted with the best of intentions and no natural disasters occur, but then reality smacks you in the face and you have an industrial disaster of enormous scale and you have to evacuate an entire prefecture. Its one of man's great failures that they believe they can tame everything.
@titan5525 that's why you have large overstretching organizations like naval reactors which is the foremost organization in the entire world get to decide who gets to build them and operate them for almost any reactor in America and how much oversite the reactor accepts the more fuel they can use so if they don't want anyone else look at them they will not turn a profit.
When I saw the casks, my mind went: 'The Forbidden Coke Cans' But then I remember theres no goo inside. So instead its: 'The Forbidden Pringles Can' Lol great video
The facf that germany chose to shut of ALL of its nuclear reactors in favor of coal power plants is insane. They are literally evolving backwards there.
Germany is in an absolutely horrible state politically with the "green party" pushing for coal lol. Germany shutting down its reactors was absolutely moronic and funnily enough made it far more dependent on Russia for energy.
The situation in Germany is a bit more complicated. 5-10 years ago, I've also been saying, that nuclear energy is preferable to coal. But nowadays, after all of this back and forth of shutting down nuclear, then not shutting it down and then shutting them down again, the existing reactors are just not worth to keep running. We'd have to build new reactors, but there's just no point in doing so, when building a new nuclear power plant would take ~10 years. Renewables are cheaper and faster to build. We can get to 70-80% renewables in 10 years even without nuclear energy. And if we're doing so, we'll be needing adjustable power plants, instead of inflexible nuclear reactors. The last 20-30 percent will be challenging, but doable witch a Power-to-Gas infrastructure.
I have a degree in Environmental Sciences and deeply appreciate the work you do on education about nuclear power, fuel, waste management, and real risk. Nuclear is the stop-gap measure we desperately need.
@user-yp2ps3gn3x so what's your solution then? Using it as a stopgap isn't saying that nuclear is without harm, it's saying that it's the best harm reduction in comparison to things like fossil fuels until more widespread adoption of clean energy
@@zeusalliance6954 you're missing my point here - obviously dirty energy needs to go. But there is far less documented industrial, environmental, and biological harm that has occurred from nuclear accidents than there has been from fossil fuels. Yes, ideally we switch over to self-sustaining, harmless energy, but until fusion is available on a large scale and governments put massive funding into solar, there needs to be something in the interim that isn't oil or coal based
I remember back in 7th grade when we visited a local nuclear power plant, the director of the plant who was our guide there, when asked where would he run and hide in the case of a sudden bombing raid, w/o even thinking for a second, he replied "right under the reactor's shielding unit". Then he went on to explain how it was designed in such a manner that no conventional human weapon was capable of destroying it. That was 22 years ago. I can only imagine the safety standards being even higher today.
I took a tour of the braidwood plant 7ish years ago. For reference, dresden (the plant in the video), lasalle, and braidwood are 3 plants all grouped up in an hour radius
i imagine if he gets cancer in the future even if the cancer is completely unrelated to nuclear energy because it is safe people are still gonna point and go "look see he got cancer omg radiation." and some other chaos is gonna start up I just know it
Not to mention permanent employment in the facilities, the relatively small footprint of the generator vs other so called "green" options, and the other community support systems in place. Our local nuclear plants are heavily involved in community activities, mostly to perpetuate a positive outlook on them but all in all they're great influences. Excellent video 🤘
It really is the future. And we have enough Uranium to power civilization growing at 2% per year for 8000 years. (napkin calculations I did, don't take it much seriously)
You're probably one of my favorite content creator intellectuals here, Kyle. Not only does it take immeasurable ambition to do what you do, but the sheer level of desire to try what you can to inform your fellow humans because you know for a fact, the more people who are well informed, the better we are off as a species.
As someone presently working at a nuclear site in the US, I've been waiting for a video like this from Kyle to help demystify nuclear power from its sensationalism in the media and entertainment. Showcasing the safety regulation and safeguards we currently employ. Hopefully can help everyone understand where we presently are and not just where we were.
I always cringe when someone bases their dislike of nuclear power on Chernobyl or 3 Mile Island. We don't base our views of automotive safety on a Lada or a 1970 Buick. Why should we do so with nuclear?
As an Energy Engineer with a passion for renewable/alternative energy, thank you for making these videos! it's great to see you spreading the word about how awesome and not scary nuclear power is!
You shouldn't kiss those fuel casks, I hear they have warts. Another great video, Kyle. It was fascinating to see the inner workings! I'm not someone who could have the opportunity to see it otherwise so I am eating up this content!
@@AllmenshouldrespectallwomenBro really spent his entire afternoon going and replying to every single comment on this video now that's what I call corny, go touch grass little Timmy, don't throw your iPad mini at the wall again please😂😂
The simple genius of "it can't leak because it's not goo" is right up there with "the fuel can't melt because it's already a liquid" in molten salt reactors.
Personally, I like Vitrification, It's an easy way to deal with nuclear power by turning it into glass and easily sealing it away in completely safe steel and concrete structures.
As an R&D nuclear chemist and process engineer with projects involving radiopharmaceutical purification and, in the very near future, spent nuclear fuel reprocessing, I approve this message. I've never heard of your channel until a daily email from the American Nuclear Society mentioned this video. Great message and excellent delivery!
Hi Kyle. My thoughts on nuclear power were pretty much defined by the opinion of politicians in my country and the general direction Germany has taken on this type of power generation (stopping to use it). While this video couldn't completely change how I feel about the topic, it certainly did change the way I think about it and I am deeply impressed. I will do my own research on this and, knowing you, will recognize the truth in your message. Thank you for this. ❤
For so long I've been frustrated by the lack of general understanding of nuclear power that has skewed public perception. I very much appreciate all of the work you do that's helping to correct the misconceptions around this industry. We desperately need nuclear energy, and even more so, we desperately need the populace to see it for what it is. Thank you!
It's amazing to think that the biggest opponents to nuclear power have been Democrats. I grew up in Seattle and I was deemed a "right winger" just because I was the only kid in my school who looked up the stats. It's scary how the Democratic Party has gotten away with normalizing anti-environmental misinformation in the past 20 years. By their own rules, they have blood on their hands. Why was I shamed for supporting "Republican anti environmental movements" by so many people, including teachers?
Taken out of context, this is the science Thor origin story. Excellent job Kyle, great to see you gaining this access and how even the US government is recognizing your work.
For most of his career, a relative of mine worked on the computer systems for multiple nuclear power facilities around the world as they were being built & then started up. They spend SO MUCH time on perfecting the programs that help to run it all! Like you said, safety is their 1st priority.
9:49 Correction… The fuel stored in those dry casks has not been melted down but is stored as fuel bundles exactly the same shape as to when it was in the reactor. No, these hasn’t been through vitrification process. I only see them do that when they need to separated the plutonium from the used nuclear fuel.
I worked in the nuclear safety dept for Massachusetts emergency management when I was a senior in high school. I have made this same argument for nuclear power to people many times over the years. Awesome video man.
This video reminds me of the tours we used to get to take as a kid in the 90s. My dad was a nuclear engineer at a plant in South Jersey and they would host family organization days. Pre 9/11 life was crazy. Awesome getting to see it all again in this video. Thanks for the video and work you do Kyle!
When I was in secondary school in Spain, our class visited the operating nuclear power plant at Ascó in Catalunya, and I think it was a very valuable experience for many people. If only everywhere did the same I think acceptance would be so much higher. You are doing such a great thing for us all, literally on a crusade to save humanity for itself. Would support you monetarily if I wasn't so poor 😭
@@gnaarW Good for you, evidently you didn't learn much from these videos though. Sad that people still have this opinion (and the desire to spread it) when it's so easy to be educated on this stuff these days.
@@Bryzerse While i favor nuclear power over the nastier alternatives myself, i can understand what the dude there said, the whole video was about nuclear power being safe, not about it being simple and cheap! 😂
Kyle Hill has actually done more for my education on nuclear power and what makes it clean then all of the years that I've ever spent in school. People like this are super important to the growth of like society and to our ability to solve big issues. This guy is truly one of the best educators currently speaking English
the effort you've put into explaining the history, risks, and overall safety of nuclear power is commendable and will hopefully go a long way towards removing some of the stigma and fear surrounding nuclear power
Part of the problem is that people aren't aware how bad coal power plants are. That they spread radioactive particulates, and Mercury to the surrounding environment.
Except, that's not what he did. He's not explaining the "History", otherwise he would have come into a simple little fact: nuclear power is more or less dead, because it's hugely expensive, unreliable (Germany and France where forced to stop their plants last summer for lack of water, France stopped 32 of her plans for lack of mantainance and so on), and that we have much better alternatives that won't cost us 600 billions (Fukushima estimated cleanup cost) if they go wrong. He's a nuclear fanboy still struck in the early 80s......
So it had one stoppage in 40 years how is that unreliable? 600 billion is nothing compared to the cost of climate change already. Instead of insulting people why dont actually use facts to compare energy generating methods.
@@francescosirotti8178 You gonna give us reliable, proven sources for all those claims or are you just gonna hope that people will believe you and not read any deeper?
I've worked inside a reactor dome before as a construction contractor during a scheduled shut down and the safety and security are the highest I've ever seen. Now @Kyle hill, you need to do a video on the low level waste since you did such an amassing job on this high level waste video
You’re the reason I wanna get into radiobiology. I wanted to just be a biochemist but now I really wanna specialize in this area of study. Thanks for you videos!!!
My Dad worked at a nuclear plant his whole career until he retired (VC Summer in SC), and I've seen the control room, turbines, and spent fuel pool there on family days. The blue glow of cherenkov radiation feels like magic as a kid.
I actually visited the Forsmark nuclear power plant in Sweden during a field trip in high school as well. 😊 We got to see the underground storage facility for nuclear waste too. It was very educational.
My sister is an electrician and did some wiring in a nuclear power plant. The buildings and infrastructure are four times stronger than industry standard so that they can withstand an earthquake. Because, y'know, massive earthquakes is a real problem in Sweden. Happens all the time.
@@Efeye-s It's not really earthquakes they have in mind but more "man made" disasters (artillery strikes, airstrikes and sometimes even nuclear strikes)
@@sevenproxies4255 Sverige har skuda heller ikke så syge jordskælv som han påstår? alt jeg kan læse mig frem til er under 2.5, og næsten kun omkring Sverige men ikke i Sverige
During a Nuclear Engineering Camp I attended at the Missouri University of Science and Technology, myself and all the other campers actually got to operate the on-campus reactor. We were also taught about almost all the things you discussed in this video. While the public view on Nuclear technology is very negative, perhaps it is because of that it is so safe. But then again, we need more people in the field. I just hope that more people will learn at least the basics of things before they express their thoughts and opinions about them. It would be so much more easy to avoid misinformation.
I think it’s more about politics, either that or politicians are stupid. Germany shut down a lot of reactors in the past years and it really screwed them after industry picked up after covid and the war in Ukraine caused embargos which made gas prices skyrocket. There are no logical reasons to not use nuclear power, so why we don’t use more of it is really interesting.
This video is rad and I appreciate all the hoops you had to jump through to make this happen. I can't wait to show this video to my students! U rock kyle!
The fears are not unfounded fears of the byproducts or malfunction. They're rational fears from understanding humans are lazy, make mistakes, and like to take shortcuts. It's not the machines or materials people are justifiably scared of; it's the human element. All the "it's perfectly safe" stuff keeps making assertions that humans are NOT as lazy or prone to mistakes as they are.
This! I am all for nuclear power, but the only argument i can agree with and understand is the human factor. Many people against nuclear power are people that think chernobyl would happen again
Very true, which is why nuclear reactors have MANY automatic safeguards that don't require human interference. It's why there are many people working in a reactor and not just one. Working in a group makes mistakes VASTLY more likely to be caught and fixed before they cause problems. I don't think concerns regarding the imperfection of humans is valid.
Nearly 10 years ago I moved across the country...and I happened to be about 12 miles from a nuclear plant. I wasn't really worried because I knew nuclear was much safer than people felt, but I did all the research that you have shown off in a much more fun and flashy fashion on my own. Now I can just show people your videos! Yay! keep doing awesome work!
*Thanks for watching,* and thank you to Dresden, the DOE, the Office of Nuclear Energy, and Constellation!
You kiss container, not the nuclear waste. Thats a big difference.
A lot of bizarre talking points in the comments about "thermal pollution".
I think new anti-nuclear lobby buzzword just dropped...
@@rtsp that's the point. The waste is frozen solid so it can't leak, and even if it did it definitely won't be able to break through steel and concrete, same goes for the radiation. It's safe when stored like this
One could say @kylehill found unity through Constellation.
@@aqowamancows8213 not exactly. he kissed the container of the waste not the waste itself. however, because the container is now waste as well you might be able to say that, but i feel it's intellectually dishonest.
Honestly, by kissing a Cask, you'd be astronomically more likely to die from bacteria on its exterior than by any radiation sickness.
I find this hilarious.
And kissing that cask you probably get less bacteria then by getting a drink at a club 😂
That too if you do it deeply................
That’s just a can sir.
what about radiated bacteria?
Back in 1984 the Central Electricity Generating Board in the UK did a public demo, when they crashed a train at 100mph into a flask of the type used to transport waste to the Sellafield reprocessing plant. Nothing leaked from the flask. The train (remote controlled obviously) was totally wrecked. And that was with 1984 technology!
Minor correction - not remote controlled, but safety devices isolated then set in motion by a driver who jumped immediately after it set off
Thanks.
Never heard of that. Please link your sources otherwise it’s a fib
@@danners4302not true either
@@Allmenshouldrespectallwomen
Literally the first google result if you Google "Central electricity board 1984 train test" 🥴
That whole "Where is nuclear waste? *points at massive concrete container* Where is fossil fuel waste? *breathes* " was like the single best argument I've seen for like anything.
not going to lie it actually made me cry a bit just because it's such a good argument and it makes me so irrevocably angry at the fossil fuel cartel and the damage it's done [doing] to our planet.
It’s the natural radioactivity of coal ash that really gives the atmosphere flavor.
*Breathes*
Ahhhhhhhh, lung cancer
It was mentioned somewhere else that we should turn it around. Nuclear power is the ONLY type of energy generation that manages its waste, not to mention that "waste" is ~95% unburned fuel and ~4% inert or useful byproducts.
Let's be honest 99% of the argument these days are about how much nuclear and how much renewables should be used. No one is even arguing for more coal. The video entirely misses the point in my opinion because it tries to win an argument that is long over.
Former Nuclear Plant Operator here: we toured the dry casks daily, recording the temperatures and inspecting for damage. Even after the plant was shut down, they kept operators around to continue to monitor the spent fuel. Every single closed down plant out there has people at it, keeping an eye on the spent fuel 24 hours a day, every day of the year. It really is incredibly safe and well monitored.
Just out of interest, why would they need to monitor temps?
@@flem6 Radioactive waste (especially highly radioactive waste) naturally emits radiation( edit, to make that more clear: a big part of that is or gets thermal energy = heating). This must be monitored and partially cooled. At least this is a safe job that is not threatened by rationalization (sure? ... spot the error/danger here, hehehe) for many 10,000 years:)
@@dieSpinnt so more of a “just in case” safety check? My (very limited) understanding of this science is that for the waste material to start emitting *more* radiation instead of less over time would be nigh impossible
If the temp rose above a certain level, it indicated that there might be something blocking the ventilation for the natural circulation cooling. The waste is put into a metal drum which is then put into a larger metal drum filled with gas to prevent oxidization, and THAT outer drum is then placed in the concrete drum, but the spent fuel is still really hot temperature wise, so the concrete drums have a natural ventilation system that draws cool air in through the bottom and releases hot air out the top to make sure everything complies with NRC standards, since concrete can start to crumble at certain temperatures due to the water evaporating out of it. It isn't even for the safety of the spend fuel. It's for the integrity of the container that holds the container's container.@@flem6
It’s so much better and I hope we start a system where we re use spent fuel rods, they’re still full of power but instead of re using them they crack and get discarded because they’re not as efficient so they just get stored, taking up more and more space as the years go on, I agree that is better but there’s still that problem I wish we could fix them being this idea to the table as a unbeatable solution, we can use MSR molten salt reactors to use up all of that fuel but…it’s not cost efficient so we resort to dumping the fuel rods taking up more and more space every two years.
This isn’t me saying I’m against it I just wish we had all bases covered and we wasn’t taking up so much land over the years storing massive barrels when there can be alternative options
I’m actually working at the Dresden nuclear site right now! My jaw hit the floor as I saw you walk through the hallways I walk through everyday. Currently in my hotel room about to go in for todays shift. How cool! This past Monday we opened up the top of the reactor and just yesterday I was down inside the cavity performing maintenance. Was there for about 3 hours and only picked up about 5mR. Awesome video!
Small world! Incredible. Thanks to you and your colleagues for being so accomodating
Thank you! Been a fan for years since before you made this channel!
I have a feeling I pickup more working at the hospital
Edit: looked it up.... my God. Everyone. This should be a given.... but if you don't need to go to the hospital don't! (Obviously go if you need to. I just get like a couple weeks of this guy's exposure in a day 😅 so many x-rays flying around. Even if we try not to get exposed. Especially in ORs and we use them for live views of certain procedures.. we wear leads... but they ain't exactly perfect)
For more information, I recommend the book _What if?_ by Randall Monroe of XKCD; specifically the chapter on "What if I took a swim in a typical spent nuclear fuel pool?" As he says, "Assuming you're a reasonably good swimmer, you could probably survive treading water anywhere from 10 to 40 hours. At that point, you would black out from fatigue and drown. This is also true for a pool without nuclear fuel at the bottom."
I could also survive the same amount of time inside a pool of pure gas yet i still would not die, unless somebody ignited that shit. Yet this stuff is still fucking dangerous as you know. The same thing about water with the differenfe that it is one of the biggest natural murderers of the world. I'd be afraid inside of an acid pool. Some things dont appear as dangerous as they are.
@@BogWarThunder I'm...honestly not sure what point you're trying to make here...
@@BogWarThunder
So its not dangerous unless you lack common sense and you do something really, really stupid?
Thats pretty much what we mean with "not dangerous"
@@A-G-F- in that case also bullets are not dangerous and bombs arent too, neither is a bottle of nitroglycerin in the middle of a parade. One wrong action and we have people dying, just like cancer patients that got healed by radiation and later died to that same thing that saved them. These weapons that i counted up are inside a hull of metal, yet the whole world fears these things. Would you fear a nuke bomb when i show it to you or would you start realizing the danger only if i am about to drop it on somebody? War is nothing than fucking around with peoples minds and only the shots are deadly the danger? As long as you dont get hit, no weapon aint do shit to you. As long as the waste is sealed, Kyle can kiss the cask as often as he wants (if there was even waste inside, he didnt tell if i remember right). NOTHING is dangerous if nobody does dumb shit. But if you paid a bit attention around Ukraine war you should have noticed that somebody is crazy enough to shoot a fucking powerplant with warheads and these people wont be afraid to shoot another one, just to use their danger as a weapon.
I visited a decommissioned plant about 4 years after shut down and one of the other people on the tour asked our guide a similar question about how long you’d survive in the pool and the guide pointed to an armed guard and said, “you’d be dead before you hit the water” so I guess maybe it depends on which spent fuel pool you are jumping into 😂
"The world looks different when you understand it" - understanding things is so important and so understimated by so many people. I love that you are giving everything to spread this message.
It is an incredibly powerful statement, words to live by for real
homophobic mfs thatve never met a gay person in their life:
Hope everyone doing good and staying safe. If you need to talk to someone or need help, there are people who care. Sending support and hearts. ❤❤❤
Well, it certainly "looks different" than the genome-warping effects of radiation would have it... Oh, you DON'T have an answer for the radiation? I'm outa here...
420 likes (i ruined it )
Well as someone who works on windmill wings, I can confidently say they are huge producers of waste, since a small fracture will mean a decommission of a wing, sometimes all 3 wings are replaced just as a precaution because if a stress fracture has occurred in 1 most likely the other 2 also has. And while there have been a development breaking down the epoxy layers, so we can reclaim the balsa, the now epoxy waste cannot be reused or recycled and will either be buried or burned, and wings are replaced a lot all over the world.
Company near me recently got a contract for recycling wings but all it has amounted to is putting them in huge messy piles.
Got to go up into a windmill for a class I was taking and we were talking with the guy who maintains them about how often they need to replace the wings. The amount of replacements and cost of replacements is astronomical for the amount of energy you get.
Former US Navy nuclear reactor operator here. I really appreciate the lengths you (Kyle) go to in order to communicate reactor and spent fuel safety! I'll be a proponent of nuclear power until the day I die. How else can you pack so much energy into so small a volume?
Nuclear fusion
Theoretically
@@asherwiggin6456 Very theoretically lol, we basically have no idea how to make it work on a large scale iirc.
@@ShinyWasTakenTwice We do have ideas and there are several reactors that are currently being built to test those ideas.
Looks like this video is calling out all of us former nukes. When did you have to do your time???
At this point only nuclear fission will get us off fossil fuels the fastest. Fusion will definitely come through I believe in the next hundred years but for now first generation and next generation nuclear are going to take us into the future. The potential is literally limitless.
Thank you for everything you said about waste OTHER types of power generation creates (like coal). In your lungs, in the air, as mercury in the ground, water, and food supply. Then in your body. Such an important point to highlight that I think a lot of people can relate to.
Keep fighting the good fight!
Yes 👍👍 the the power plants green energy. I. I am infertile from eating scented candles
I've seen the dead zone near a coal power plant. The fly ash kills everything for a few miles around it. 😢
Not to mention fracking often encounters radioactive material deep in the earth's crust, which makes a huge amount of the waste (which is totally unchecked and unregulated) incredibly radioactive as well.
@@exorcisttypebeat That "Unchecked and Unregulated" part is why nuclear waste is always safer than waste from fossil fuels, The waste from fossil fuels is released carelessly and sometimes not even cleaned, whereas Nuclear waste is regulated and stored in large cylinders strictly guarded in a way where the nuclear waste won't escape for thousands of years.
@doncomputer5931 Exactly. Totally senseless and beyond dangerous
As somebody who works at a nuclear plant, this was a phenomenal video that shows how truly focused on safety we are. Thanks a ton for showing the public how amazing this generation method is. I absolutely adore your content and cant wait for more!
Being afraid of nuclear waste is like being afraid of flying.
Hey Homer, how's it going?
So we can keep that nice safe byproduct at your place?
Astroturfing brings excellent results and doesn't need frequent maintenance.
and he didn't even get into the tech details about how the waste can be reused using special processes for the most part.
Thank you for producing this. My brother used to work in nuclear site cleanup including Santa Susana and the sodium burn fields of Rocketdyne, so you can believe I did a lot of research about his safety, and that research convinced me that even when cleaning up after the early days of nuclear experiments is safer than many other occupations. I am also a chemist by trade and I worried about his safety. He's in his 50s now and in excellent health. Anecdotal? Of course. Reckless people create sensational catastrophes, but careful professionals do not. And the professionals involved follow strict safety rules to protect themselves and the community, which, I might add, includes one of the priciest zip codes in California. Nuclear energy is a safe, clean energy source and we should follow the science, not sensationalism.
This should be a mandatory watch in science classes at schools across the US. Fantastic video.
and across germany
@@CaptnCrnch honestly internationally
Yeah more mandates!! We hate freedom!!
@@CaptnCrnchfor real
Yeah, cool unreflected shill propaganda in schools. Wait, the US...yeah go ahead...seems to be about right.
Never let Kyle into a nuclear power plant on his own
Why are you so focused on what another man does
Wait, let him cook
@@Allmenshouldrespectallwomen I'm joking about this lol 14:45
The waste about to call the FBI 😂
I kinda just imagine him frolicking around and enjoying himself more than most people reasonably would. His excited gesticulation in the video and eventual escalation to skipping and or dancing with confined nuclear waste could be a distraction to power plant operators.
I had a friend who was the head of security at a nuclear power plant, and the stuff he COULD tell me was absolutely amazing. The plans upon plans within plans in case of other plans are so intricate and practiced so regularly, I'd be surprised if a mosquito could get within a mile of a plant without a year's notice and a federal background check.
And then Fukushima happens
How would those plans have worked out in Ukraine?
@@unklimiteder An earthquake and a tidal wave? And even then, no one died from the nuclear disaster? I think you're proving Kyle's point...
@@a24396that he is
@@fwiffo Since the "we" that Kyle's talking about don't run nuclear reactors overseas, you'll have to ask the people overseas instead. In the US, the plans don't include "fighting off an Army" - but the US Army's plans DO. So it would be fine...
I have friends that work security at another generation station no more than 2 hours’ drive from where this video was filmed.
If I may…I know them because I deployed to the Middle East with them in the military. The people guarding that station are among the highest quality human beings this world has to offer.
There’s good people watching over this stuff.
Good people with the experience to put down any ill intended individual. Just as God intended
I agree with Kyle about 100% on nuclear energy, but the second he gets any type of illness, I can already feel the thousands of comments saying "see, we told you nuclear wasn't safe!!!!"
the biggest danger of nuclear power is the thermal pollution
@@theTavis01biggest danger of nuclear energy is weirdos like you spreading misinformation with nothing to back it up
He doesn't live near a dumping site, he won't get sick. It's the poor people who live on low value land near these industrial facilities who will get sick. Erin Brockovich style.
Honestly you have more to fear from Radon Gas than you do from most anything else. And that is naturally occurring.
@@gladitsnotme I mean, as they said, the waste facilities for nuclear power are safe to live around. Also, poor people around the world already suffer massively from fossil fuels, on a scale which has probably not yet been properly measured.
Upon seeing the cooling pool, my mind immediately went, "ah yes, the forbidden swimming pool." Thanks for letting us know that we're not allowed near the water in fear of us contaminating it rather than it contaminating us.
"taking a swim in the pool? Oh no you will die before even making it to the water!"
"Why?"
"Well 9mm has very prompt adverse effects to the body so..."
@@mobiuscoreindustries lol underrated comment!
@@TylerMusgrave9 There's an old XKCD what if on swimming in a spent fuel pool. The ending is pretty similar, "You’d die pretty quickly, before reaching the water, from gunshot wounds.”
forbidden but in the opposite direction than the expected one
@@thadevans1789 That was the image that popped into my head when I wrote the comment.
Kyle, I just wanted to share that because of you and your work with nuclear energy, I decided my major to be nuclear engineering. Thank you for continuing to prove how safe nuclear energy is.
This is exactly what we need, a new generation of nuclear engineers to run the power plants of the future.
What about oil?
How hard was that major?
I'm honored. Thank you for sharing this with me!
@@kylehill Of course you can kiss a sealed canister. Of course sealing nuclear waste makes it "non pollutant" compared to fossil fuels. That's NEVER been the issue. The issue is what's happening in Ukraine right now. If a terrorist or war time bomb destroys a nuclear waste fancily, then what? America will eventually be attacked. If they only want to hurt the country what better place than nuclear waste facilities to detonate. Who's going to clean that area up? How long will it be inaccessible? How many will die that can't get away?
Worse? Who will pay for perpetual inspections and maintenance for the next 1000 years? Before technology can find uses or ways to discard safely in the future? Until then we still have to spend money. Is that expenditure calculated into the cost benefit of using nuclear? Of course not, fuk our kids. If we keep building more there will come a time when costs of maintaining all these waste facilities will be greater than the cost of energy they generated. Who's going to pay for all that? Or you don't care, fuk the future.
I visited an active hydroelectric power station here in Quebec. I was very impressed by the security back then, no phone, no camera, ... You are very lucky to have been allowed to visit an active power station and to record your experience, especially a nuclear station. Our local government pulled the plug on our only nuclear power station in 2012, it was a CANDU reactor. I'm so sad they shut it down, it's a green energy and more reliable than a dam which depends on the rain level in a specific location. Fun fact about the province of Quebec, 94% of our energy comes from hydroelectricity. Thanks again for sharing your experience with us! ❤
I've never been to Quebec but I've recently become somewhat fascinated online by Radisson, Quebec, and how it's one of the most isolated spots in the world from any other real settlement. All because of clean hydroelectric power. 600 km / 7 hour drive of basically 100% wilderness.
If there's anyone who can kiss nuclear waste, it's our beloved scientific Thor.
He's both thor and aquaman
He is the god of nuclear energy....and great hair
Dude gonna die 2 weeks from the kiss 😢
@@hamnporkgamerand tony
And nuclear power being 'safe' is just as much a fiction as Thor.
I believe one of the main psychological issues with nuclear waste is precisely how uneventful it is. As humans, we always feel the need to pinpoint where the danger is coming from with our own senses: a volcano is dangerous because it slings hot rocks into the sky, a thunderstorm is dangerous because of bright lightning strikes soaring through the darkness, an earthquake is dangerous because you can very clearly feel the shockwave in your bones, etc.
Radiation is kind of the odd one out, because the main source of danger here is just... metal. Like, raw uranium doesn't look all that different from cobalt or even graphite to an untrained eye, it's just hard for most people to believe that such a legendarily dangerous substance appears as something so relatively tame. But the truth of the matter is, no one is born with a built-in geiger counter and therefore none of us can detect radiation solely by relying on our senses. We wish we could, and that's possibly the reason why we try "humanizing" nuclear waste by depicting it as a gooey slime of sorts - that way we would know it to be dangerous right away.
Even I, as a physics student, am sometimes swayed bt that kind of imagery. I've dealt with actual radiation emitters in laboratories, and it's just weird to wrap your head around them being the real deal because of how dull they look, lol
Nah mate, we do have a built-in radiation detector! When you start coughing up blood and your bones crumble, you know you've been irradiated!
(/jk)
@@yutahkotomi1195 💀 (literally)
I've had difficulty finding (or understanding) exact figures, but afaik any geiger counter sensitive enough to detect Uranium will also detect Bananas (I don't remember if it's specific to 235 or 238)
@@yutahkotomi1195 I know this is meant as a joke, but it's bad. You can receive a lethal dose of ionizing radiation and not notice until hours (or even days) later as you shit out the inner lining of your intestines and your organs start shutting down as your body rots from the inside out.
Of course, chemical waste can be just as insidious a killer, and people are not near as neurotic about that (despite the chemical industry having a history of unsafe disposal that the nuclear industry never had).
@@JeiJozefu would also likely detect background radiation
Some people say "ignorance is bliss", but as this video proves, ignorance is stupid.
People twisted that statement to suit their conspiracies.
I always felt iffy about my country's government (Germany) suddenly deciding to drop all nuclear power in the panic following the Fukushima incident and now, thanks to your wonderfully educative videos, I think it's a straight-up tragedy... Sadly, by now it's far too late to change anything about it, especially in the eye of the politicians... We are literally doing nothing good by shutting down our nuclear plants, it's just increasing the usage of coal plants...
I remember that there were plenty of Wind Farms that had to be shut down in order to make coal plants lol
While buying tones of energy from nuclear France because of this, alongside with the increase in fossil fuels plants. Such a cheap, cheesy politics
The government knows that nuclear is actually a dead end in the long run. We already have gravity propulsion, why keep beating a radioactive dead horse when we have better tech coming up
as my dad likes to say (we are germans too btw): "Grün ist Konzept!" ("Green is just a concept")
talking about the political party with that nickname btw
@@Blackwing2345635even france is closing down reactors…it’s sad.
Y'know, I try to tell my family about this all the time, and they always respond with "what if people hit it with a nuke?!". I find this hilarious, because if you drop a high powered nuke on a place, a power plant melt down isn't going to make it that much worse😂
The funny part is, the answer to "if these were inside of the blast radius of a nuke" is nothing. They will remain there, still sealed concrete casks. Unless they are in the direct blast of a nuke that literally atomizes everything, these things will survive.
If they were buried like Kyle suggested, if they were hit by 100 surface nukes, they'd probably still be buried in the same spot, totally unaffected.
Along with the fact the core most likely would be atomized before it melts down
The response: "My dude, if our power plants are getting hit with nukes, WE HAVE MUCH BIGGER PROBLEMS AND YOU ARE ALREADY FUCKED ANYWAY SO IT DOESN'T MATTER."
ppl are so dumb
this kitchen knife is safe in the knife holder.
but what if you throw a grenade at it?
I love your dedication to destroy the ignorance around nuclear power
My convincing a couple dozen people that nuclear is safe and a good idea pales in comparison.
But we all can play a part.
Going up against decades of pro oil propaganda is an uphill battle but one worth undertaking.
It’s not just oil companies feller
@@Kaiju3301 then why are the people wanting complete abolishment of fossil fuels, selling solar, wind, geothermal, and hydroelectric sorces to power EV cars, also scared of nuclear energy?
@@Unsensitiveevery person counts!!
I actually lived near this power plant! I could see it whenever I drove to school too, and seeing it in a video like this is wild. I was in such a small town I never thought I'd see this
I’m blown away you were at Dresden in July. I’ve been watching you for years and am currently in operations at Dresden! I would’ve lost my lid if I saw you here, you’re one of the reasons I’m here in the first place
Holy crap, it was back in July? I remember my dad telling me about him coming over but I didn't remember it being that long ago
"The world looks different, when you understand it. " - Kyle Hill.
Beautiful quote. Gonna use it more often :D
Agreed strong quote
My only fear about nuclear power is that we don't get past the irrational fear of everything nuclear soon enough.
The build-up to electric everything may push governments to go on a charm offensive for nuclear.
it's not irrational, Chernobyl was no Joke, granted there isn't a need to be as fearful now thanks to all the stringent technological advancements and safety precautions, but those fears are valid, Chernobyl had the potential to cover half of Europe in radiation, that's objective fact
nuclear energy + another reneweable source is the perfect combination to handle unfullfilled promises, lack of energy output of the renewable source and reliability.
@@AH-ms5uv Every single person throughout the entirety of human history has constantly been exposed to ionizing radiation during all, or at least the overwhelming majority of, their lifespan.
In fact, pretty much *every living thing* in the *entire history of life on this planet* has been constantly exposed to radiation for their entire lifespans.
As a result, we've evolved to be able to handle quite a bit of radiation with little to no adverse effect; it's only at high doses that it becomes a problem. The Linear No-Threshold (or LNT) model that a lot of anti-nuclear fearmongering is based on has been largely discredited at this point - there is little to no solid evidence for it, and there is considerable evidence that it vastly overestimates the risk.
For what it's worth, the best estimates of Chernobyl's total death toll - which again was the worst nuclear disaster in history - including long-term radiation deaths come in under 20,000. Fukushima's radiation death toll was... 1 person - a worker at the plant - and they didn't die until years later.
For reference, studies indicate *the PM2.5 alone* from fossil fuels kills over 10,100,000 people every year - and that may just be a drop in the bucket compared to the future death toll from climate change - while credible estimates put the death toll of the Banquiao hydroelectric dam failure in the ballpark of 200,000.
Nothing is perfectly safe, so of course nuclear energy does have its hazards, but the magnitude of the hazard is low compared to pretty much anything else (in terms of deaths per GWh, reliable statistics show nuclear is safer than wind energy and vastly safer than hydropower) - especially considering the excellent controls we put on it, which should ensure nothing like Chernobyl can *ever* happen again. The Chernobyl accident, it must be noted, took a perfect storm to create - incompetent/poorly-trained operators working under high-stress conditions deliberately bypassing safety mechanisms, a catastrophically flawed reactor design, unknown/poorly understood phenomena, numerous hardware failures, and a general lack of information due to the highly secretive/politicized nature of the Soviet nuclear industry at the time, among other things - and even a modicum of care could've prevented it.
Still, we could have a Chernobyl every month and not come anywhere close to the death toll from fossil fuels. There are *a lot* of things we should be far, far more worried about than nuclear accidents.
@@AH-ms5uvthe lesson of chernobyl shouldn't be that nuclear energy is inherently dangerous, it should be that we need to learn how to mantain it safe, it was an accident caused by the government both using shoddy materials and not properly training and equipping their workers.
Hi Kyle! You should do a series on Thorium reactors and how they could be way more beneficial AND safer than the traditional designs.
I agree, I only know a tiny bit about thorium and it's enough to say we should be using only it. I would absolutely love a video on the topic from Kyle
@@skippy2987 we didnt use it bc you can't make bombs from it but hopefully it'll be used in the future
@@dijital4801 this is America. We can make bombs out of anything, given enough time and determination.
I cannot stress enough how important and appreciated your effords are, Kyle. Thank you a lot.
You know what's really sad? That people have to go to UA-cam to get it. Or not get it. Shows what our modern world is like.
@@chakko007 I think I am guilty of that myself. The way education worked @ school was... well.. I've learned more about history by listening to sabaton an being intrigued by them to discover more and same is true for Channels like Kyle's.
@@schlossgoldftw There's surely a lot of misinformation these days, also at school. I was lucky enough to have a father who explained these things to me, in a rational and factual way. I remember how he once told me that he went to a nuclear power plant with a Geiger counter, and measured nothing out of the ordinary, while studies of course "proved" that there is an increased number of leukemia cases in the vicinity of nuclear power plants... He also was IN a nuclear power plant, and got told by the people who work there how "strongly" radioactive material, like the ballpens they used there, had to be disposed of in castor containers. I just hope the employees don't have to be disposed of in castor containers as well.
Nowaydays, more than ever, these are things you are not allowed to talk about. You also are not allowed to say that 20.000 people died in Fukushima, by cause of the flood, not by cause of nuclear contamination. It's forbidden. Also, don't ask about investigation into Covid, and what it has done to people, and how many people actually were affected, and died in the process. Never ask such things, or you are an inhumane, cruel individual. It's sad, because, that way, we will never find out what really happened with this disease, how harmful it was, and what we can do next time to avoid harm to the people, and, I also include the mental harm, the harm of isolation, due to being rejected, and the harm of isolating people by measures which might not be the least appropriate.
@@chakko007 Let's not get around the bush here. I dont feel old being thirty, but social media really came around in my youth and I was having none of it, because it annoyed me and it still does. What are people watching and reading nowadays constantly? Brainmelting stupidity on facebook and else. You see exactly what it's doing with them. They see some stupid post and assume it must be real.
My family has had three generations of kids swimming in the rivers near Dresden. Just took a boat ride past the facility a few weeks ago! Was never worried about it, but always glad to hear how safe the plant is!
Sounds a bit like when the faux environmentalists at Burning Man oppose geothermal power expansion, they always ask, "well, would you want a geothermal power plant in your backyard", and would always be shocked when I could say, "well, it wasn't exactly my backyard, it was about half a mile away, and there was a creek and a highway between me and it... but yeah, first 18 years of my life had one in my backyard, even moved back and lived in the same neighborhood for another 6 years after graduating college, never once bothered by the geothermal plant... the highway on the other hand..."
To give anyone curious some context for the radiation values he shows in this video:
A standard chest x-ray is about 10 millirem or 100 microsieverts, and a chest CT is 7000 microsieverts. When he is near the spent fuel pool, his geiger counter is showing 700-800 clicks per minute, which translates to about 4-4.5 µSv per hour, corroborated by the yellow Terra-P dosimeter at 4.2. He would need to stand there next to the pool for about a full 24 hour day to get the equivalent of a single chest X-ray. The plane at altitude showed 1.71 µSv/h, so around 50 hours in flight to get the equivalent of a single chest X-ray. I forget where in the video he showed the geiger counter near the dry casks, but IIRC it was around 350 CPM or so? So about half of that, around 2 µSv/h. Finally, the worldwide average yearly dose is ~2400µSv/year although it can vary wildly depending on where you live, and the US occupational safety limit is 10,000µSv/year for normal members of the public while it is an incredible 5,000,000µSv/year total body dose for radiation workers. That's the safe limit, which is still below where you expect to start seeing deleterious effects. The very rough risk estimate is an increased 0.02-0.04% increased chance of dying to cancer per 1,000,000µSv.
Putting this all together, if you lived full time with those storage casks in your house with you and never left your house ever, it would take you just over 57 YEARS to achieve a 0.04% increased chance of dying to cancer.
Concrete is slightly radioactive itself, so some of that reading will be from the cask itself. (probably most of it, as there's a lot of shielding between you and the spent fuel.)
You forgot to put the radiation in bananas
And are we hearing pilots dying left and right from elevated radiation exposure over their career spans? That's a nope. If it would be the case, the aviation industry has the blackest belt in information control not letting a single word reach the public somehow. Clearly not a danger factor. It's probably worse when they have a lay-over hitting the beach working on their sun tans
Thanks for this. The one thing that confuses me the most about nuclear stuff is the zillion different units of measure. 💀
@@spindleblood Yeah, they can be SUPER confusing, especially since there are multiple related but distinct ways of quantifying radiation. Thankfully a lot of them are sorta depreciated by now and we have some consolidation, but it is still way too complexly laid out.
"The world looks different when you understand it." is such a powerful quote/closing statement. I love seeing your channel grow 🙏🏽
I work at a nuclear power plant and this was awesome to see. I love how uniform everything is including equipment and designs at other plants. I felt at home watching this. Thank you for bringing KNOWLEDGE to the masses who seem super confused as to what a nuclear plant actually is. Appreciate you!
Would you eventually cover current thorium stuff? Your nuke stuff deserves awards
You like listening to his voice you must like him a lot
Scientific Thor covering Thorium. Brilliant!
Also this doesn’t deserve any rewards. I learned about this stuff in school
@@AllmenshouldrespectallwomenI bet ur fun at parties
@@Jamk14 that one doesn't get invited in the first place 😭
Brilliant stuff man. “The world looks different when you understand it”. Thanks for helping us all to understand it better.
Kyle hill really does have to be one of my favorite UA-cam creators hands down. Love what you do!
Find you a person who holds you like Kyle holds nuclear waste
That's difficult, I'm not nearly as hot as nuclear waste
@@marcopohl4875 Try to get a fever, that might help
@@marcopohl4875 Hey now, I'm sure you're just as good at decaying over time.
We are soo privileged to have our favorite nerd in disguise, it's awesome that Kyle takes the time to make it easily understandable to any viewer. On literally any topic he covers. Bravo! 👏🏼👏🏼
He does really does do it in a way even the layman can understand. It's why we need people like him pushing the need for nuclear power, and videos like this on national television. Not just UA-cam. Nuclear power is by far the cleanest and safest form of green energy period.
In disguise?
yeah, he's not your stereotypical nerd, don't think too hard on it lol@@Desasteroid
xkcd did a "What if?" question about what would happen if you swam in a nuclear fuel pool, and it was fairly informative and very much in line with what Kyle said. Though the ending expert comment also summed up the security on nuclear plants quite nicely: "If you tried to swim in OUR pool? Oh you'd be dead before you hit the water. Because you'd be shot. By the guards."
Question: Can you drink the water from the fuel pool
Answer: No you would die. Not because the water isn't clean, but because they would take you out the second you got close to it, because they don't want your nasty anything touching their clean water.
I work in security for constellation, think it’s awesome you’re doing this to give people information about how everything works.
I grew up in Illinois and it made me chuckle when you said you were going there. The place has an insane amount of nuclear power plants (like 6). I would hear on the radio out there when I was a kid that said "Vote to remove Nuclear Power". Being a high school student at the time I was baffled that people lived around these their whole lives and nothing bad has ever happened, so why? I looked into it and was blown away at how goofy people were being about it. Thanks for pushing information on this, its well needed.
Not just nuclear, very sad to see how humans are generally just horrible at one of the most important tasks there is. Assessing risk vs reward. Just think of how many graves wouldn't be occupied if it hadn't taken fifty years to get us to just fasten our damn seat belts. And radiation is definitely causing plenty of harm. Only it's the ever so natural radon and ultraviolet from everyone's favorite reactor, the one they are oblivious to.
I worked on naval trainer reactors in both Charleston, SC and Ballston Spa, NY and it was wild how many long time residents didn't even know the plants were there. My assumption is that, since the plants are pretty important military installations - nothing short of divine intervention is going to convince the DoD to relocate, making 'de-nuclearization' of the area a hopeless political stance. Ergo, the media doesn't care and people whose lives are completely unaffected by the plants don't complain because... there's nothing to actually complain about (besides the rowdy junior enlisted).
Also, just generally speaking (and this is anecdotal of course) I have never experienced any negative interaction with someone in all my years of working on nuclear powered aircraft carriers. I've seen people protesting the military in general (mostly in foreign countries), but never its use of nuclear power. Even Japan lets us park nuclear ships in Tokyo bay.
When you realize Springfield is in Illinois (Homer Simpson lives there)
@@RetiredAccount3737 IIRC, there are 41 towns across the us named "Springfield" and as such it's considered a generic name that could be anywhere, and that's why it was chosen as the name for the Simpsons' town.
@@MagsonDare: We as not just a nation, but an entire species, positively _suck_ at naming things. If you were to do a tour of all the places on or near the US/Mexico border that are named Nogales, there would be no fewer than 6 stops, on _both_ sides of that border. Expand that to include all locations formerly named Nogales, and that number more than doubles. Again, on both sides.
When I was a kid, my dad told me about the dangers of Nuclear waste, and when I was in seventh grade science, I learned about it as well. It's been so weird to hear that it's not actually dangerous because it goes against things I was told over half my life ago to the point where they were really baked into how I saw the world.
I wonder who funded all the nuclear fearmongering
to be fair, the FIRST generation of nuclear waste wasnt handled that well- but i am an old person. my chemistry professor took a group tour of a chemical /nuclear facility with no guards, no safety, no restrictions... it wasnt run well.
@@calebrobinson6406 Probably the same people who'd take a financial hit unseen since their businesses began if people _weren't_ afraid of nuclear energy...
@@fabricdragon The first, and current generation of fossil fuel waste aren't handled well at all, it's just that you can't cuddle a cloud of sulphur, and when those plants burn away for decades their waste can't all be gathered in one place.
Okay then, let's deposit all the nuclear waste in your peoples gardens, if it's that safe. Cause there isn't even a reliable deposit for all the waste and the time it needs.
Dad worked in a nuke plant for 20+ years. When I was a kid, before 9/11, our schools would take educational field trips to the plant to learn about the process and safety. They locked it down tighter than a dolphin's butt after 9/11, though. Thanks for picking up the torch on nuclear education.
(enduring the urge to type in another overused 'glowing Homer Simpson joke' here)
Q How tight is a dophin's butt?
A Watertight, duh
I am so glad Kyle explains and de stigmatizes nuclear power/energy.
it would be really cool to see a comparison video where you tour a conventional fuel power plant and see what their safety and waste disposal facilities are like
"Waste Disposal"? Are you talking about our Smokestack?
@@doncomputer5931 To be honest, coal power plants have giant electrostatic precipitators in their smoke stacks to filter out all the fly ash. It's not like back in the 50s that literally everything just got blown into the atmosphere.
But the fly ash gotta go somewhere. Waste disposal? You mean those stacks of sheetrock over there? Or that big pile over there?
(That really happened - fly ash was and is put into sheetrock/plasterboard and that contaminated many houses with radioactive crap because coal always contains trace amounts of radioactive materials - and they just concentrate so many traces into the fly ash that whoops now we have radioactive sheetrock - but AFAIK now in the western world there are more strict regulations, so if you get radioactive sheetrock it's likely made in china where the fly ash regulations aren't as strict).
Yeah, I'd love to see a tour of a Greek lignite power plant.
They probably wouldn't let him make a video about that…
@@khadrelt yeah, I don't think a coal power plant would agree to let him inside so that he could expose how bad it is for the environment.
I think that a big reason for the fearmongering around nuclear power is residual fear from the cold-war era parents and teachers that hammered our parents with these misconceptions.
That's really the unfortunate thing. "Nuclear energy" became a big scary word. It fell into the NIMBY zone and it's incredibly hard to convince even the people who fully understand the harms of other power sources to allow a nuclear plant in their area despite our urgent need for them because of the absolutely horrendous PR nuclear energy has.
That and also fossil fuel industries pushing anti-nuclear propaganda and paying off politicians.
Or maybe because it's much more efficient than fossil fuels, so less profit for the big corporations. They'd want to keep the fearmongering alive to keep their profits higher with fossil fuels.
No, it's an active disinformation campaign by rich interests, such as fossil fuel barons.
The biggest fear factor is: what happens if the maintenance of the fuel waste is stopped? How much damage will it do in 20.000 years? The waste needs to be maintained and is therefore a forever lasting threat that only grows in size.
This video must get way more views for the future of the world.
Kyle, you're an awesome educational youtuber, and your work will make the world better and smarter ❤
As a former US Navy nuke, I love seeing stuff like this. I can't talk about the stuff I did when I was in, so having someone like Kyle showing how safe nuclear power gives me hope that more people will come around to its potential.
If your claims are true. to put it into perspective. It is quite possible you may have been one of the safest men in America during your time on duty.
i am confused, you were a bomb?
Thank you for your service ICBM (in all seriousness thank you for your service)
@@rhubarbdedubarb4232 submariner
@@rhubarbdedubarb4232He was in charge of the nuclear reactor onboard a warship.
You’re doing exactly what is needed Kyle! When I was in elementary school, 30 some years ago, we visited the (at the time) INEEL where we saw most of what you saw and I have never feared nuclear power. Unfortunately, laboratories like this are usually built in low population areas meaning most young people will never have the opportunity to visit one and have their own opinions formed before they are fed misinformation born of politics and distributed by mainstream media.
Keep educating and hopefully soon enough we will reach enough minds!
do you mean about how safe and clean nuclear energy is?
@@rossramsdell7584 That depends on which portion of my comment you’re asking in regards to? If it’s the opinions of those who have actually witnessed nuclear power with their own eyes then yes. If you are trying to imply that the mainstream media claims it’s safe and clean then no, that is the opposite of what they do.
the fact that it produces huge power with little waste is already a win.
Yup
Similarly Land Value tax is a win also.
Just implementation is needed somehow 😢
It's really funny to think how a nuclear reactor is just a hyper advanced steam engine. All the waste it produces is basically an insert solid material that can be re-enriched to be used again, and the depleted uranium can be used in armor penetrating ammunition.
"Litte waste"
With the need to store it thousands of years🙄
@@siddhartacrowley have you even seen the video
We figured out steam engines and were like "yep good enough" and kept using and modifying for the next 300 years@@K_Bogz
I think a lot of the misinformation is from entertainment media. If a TV show or movie showed the area you walked through everyone would be in Hazmat suits because it's more dramatic.
It's like when people get locked in walk-in freezers in TV shows or films. Never mind they all have safety handles that can always be opened from the inside, but it's not dramatic enough to show that.
Almost every time you see the word 'nuclear' on an article you have people immediately associating it with Chernobyl or Hiroshima, even if it has nothing to do with either of those topics. Just that simple word alone, by itself, produces a very strong emotion. We can talk about the safety of everything until the waste decomposes into an inert substance, but as soon as the word 'nuclear' is seen, all eyes get closed and brains turn off. They completely focus on disasters and bombs.
Yup, that's why the word "nuclear" got dropped from "nuclear magnetic resonance imaging" (NMRI, now known as MRI)... even though semantically it was a rather crucial part of the name (magnetic resonance of _what_ ? oh, atomic nuclei)
@@MatthijsvanDuin good to know.
@@MatthijsvanDuin Bingo. That didn't have anything to do with nuclear power or bombs but yeah.
Stigma is a thing and there's lots around that word. Trying to get people to not be scared of a single word is tough.
@@Paladwyn same goes for Hydrogen, people still say "Hindenberg" whenever the possibility of hydrogen use is on the table
It's also super frustrating when the people championing green energy the most don't want to look at nuclear, even though it's one of the best (if not the best right now) energy sources to curb pollution.
We in South Africa need more than just the one Nuclear Power plant we have to solve our loadshedding energy crisis. Nuclear Power information is virtually non existint in South Africa for the general public. I use your videos to show how safe it can be and how much improvements it would bring
Stop supporting the apartheid
@@AllmenshouldrespectallwomenWasnt that abolished in 1991?
@@Xnoob545south africa disposed of its nuclear bombs in the 90’s
The university of Potchefstroom has a working pebble bed reactor. Though, I think the research has ground to a halt thanks to ANC pro coal shenanigans.
South Africa has vast areas where there's nothing there and it never rains. Surely solar makes far more sense? It's a lot cheaper!
I wish that this was required watching by EVERY school aged child - at least twice in their progression through the education system. You present the information with no bias - just the raw information and the facts behind it, making it much easier to understand the whole process, which in turn gives a much better understanding. Knowledge is indeed power, and I hope that you are able to keep spreading the facts like this!
My school actually did that. Not in person, but they explained to us and made us read about how nuclear waste is handled.
Yep... get'm young
Can you talk about the SL1 meltdown? I loved the video- I’m a nuclear operator and really enjoyed watching this, thank you for the effort and research put into this and the other vids.
The one in Idaho Springs? He already has a video on it.
"The world looks different when you understand it", I love that quote and is the reason why I love science communication so much
same
To quote XKCD about taking a swim in a spent-fuel pool:
“You’d die pretty quickly, before reaching the water, from gunshot wounds.”
The nice thing about that is that prior to that, he goes into how safe it actually is to swim in there - that is to say, if it wasn't for the gunshot wounds, you'd probably be fine as long as you don't go below the top of the water. Which says some good things about just how fanatically safe the whole thing is.
I've been to a couple dozen spent fuel pools. I've almost never seen guns in that building. Those buildings have secured access thru other buildings. The guards don't stand by the fuel pool waiting for folks to try to go for a swim..
If you can get to the fuel pool, you wouldn't have trouble making it into the water.
@@MrEscape314so you wrote all that to confirm that in fact you would die from gunshot wounds before reaching the water.
@@MrEscape314 Yeah, but you would likely not make it past security at the gate or the door. That is the point. If you make a run past security they are likely gonna shoot you.
@@MrEscape314every nuke related place has DOE "SWAT" (I don't know what they are actually called) in a room nearby. I know a guy who used to do that. Yeah, the DOE has special forces whose job is to give you a lead supplement if you try any shenanigans
Dear Kyle and Aria, a favorite quote I heard in my childhood that affected my life; "People are scared of what they don't understand."
-Which motivated me into learning more things.
16:00
Thanksalot Sir Lancelot!
Same story with air travel. People have no issues getting into their cars and share a road with angry and mentally unstable people every day, but somehow the question "Are you afraid of flying?" exists. No, I'm afraid of driving ...I'm perfectly fine with trained professionals and computers taking me somewhere, what I'm not fine with is sharing a road with teenagers trying to impress their crushes, drunks and road-ragers.
One of these days, Kyle is gonna get access to a nuclear waste storage container, and then like a Mr.Beast video he’s gonna keep hitting it with larger and larger explosions to show how strong it is
I mean
@@kylehillthis is not a suggestion
@@NUCL3AR991 Speak for yourself
it would be watching the same thing happen over and over again. a nuclear detonation would be required to open these (ironically), and at that point youve got a nuclear detonation to worry about lol. the soil you kick up will be just as radioactive as the fragments released. im pretty sure these can withstand being hit by a plane.
They actually did that I think lol; not Kyle but other nuclear engineers
They put storage containers for IIRC either nuclear fuel materials or nuclear waste (just the container, not with the radioactive stuffs) onto a truck.
- First they crashed the truck.
- Then they crashed the truck the second time but harder.
- Then they hit the truck with a train.
- Then they also did other insane stuffs.
TL;DR the container survived XDDD
It’s so cool that this stuff is so comically safe. Turns out, the people who are in charge of nuclear reactors want to keep the whole thing as safe and uneventful as possible.
"The world looks different when you understand it." Great episode Kyle, I appreciate the work and effort you put into your videos. Science communication is one of the most important jobs that science needs and when done correctly, we can spread understanding!
i feel like whenever people think about nuclear power plants, they think of the Simpsons and think that's how they operate Irl.
This is the kind of fact-based reporting we need more of. Less hype, more truth.
Really this came off as a flippant fanboy rant to us. How safe is a place that cannot be filmed and put on public view, needs military guardians and has to have a tank of ultra pure water they guard against a single hair to drop into...
@@instantchow A lot more safe than a place where the chemical residue ends up in your body!
@@instantchow
Such an ignorant comment.
@@instantchowlet me guess, you support more solar panels and wind turbines?
@@instantchow I take it you prefer the alternative of Shoving chemicals into the ground to pull up oil out of the ground, (A messy process that can allow toxic chemicals to seep into nearby water supplies), Transports the oil across borders, usually coming from Countries with unfair human rights practices, such as Russia or Saudi Arabia, and then Releases the toxins produced by the burning of the fuel straight into the atmosphere? Before you start with the "I want renewables" crybaby talk, Remember what happened with Germany. Were they able to replace their energy grid with renewables? No, They're not reliable. Germany quickly became Dependent on Russian Oil and has since been attempting to reverse anti-nuclear policies.
Before you complain about nuclear power because "The stuff on the simpsons looks scawwy", Actually research the matter for once.
I live in Illinois and got to tour the Braidwood power plant just southeast of Dresden. The atmosphere in the facility was much the same as your experience. Everyone seemed to be enthusiastic about their job and were excited to tell visitors about what they do. Glad you got to have a similar experience!
I live in Illinois I need to go there
Just apply, always hiring
Used to live down by Braidwood, I remember when I took a field trip to a nuclear power plant training facility, probably one of the coolest things I ever did in middle school
I absolutely love the exposure you give nuclear power and how safe it actually is. As someone who works in the field it is really great to see. Thank you for giving me a video to show my family and friends to put their minds at ease about what I do.
Sure its safe until a corporation faces a decision between profits and safety. Theoretically its totally safe if everyone acted with the best of intentions and no natural disasters occur, but then reality smacks you in the face and you have an industrial disaster of enormous scale and you have to evacuate an entire prefecture. Its one of man's great failures that they believe they can tame everything.
@titan5525 that's why you have large overstretching organizations like naval reactors which is the foremost organization in the entire world get to decide who gets to build them and operate them for almost any reactor in America and how much oversite the reactor accepts the more fuel they can use so if they don't want anyone else look at them they will not turn a profit.
@@titan5525 The only time that happened was in the sovietunion, no further explanation needed
@@legendaerycraft2226 Fukushima did not happen. /s
Is that "only Japan" and that is all that needs to be said?
American exceptionalism at it's best.
@@jasperzanovich2504 I am german lol and fukushima was because of an tsunami
When I saw the casks, my mind went: 'The Forbidden Coke Cans'
But then I remember theres no goo inside.
So instead its: 'The Forbidden Pringles Can'
Lol great video
The facf that germany chose to shut of ALL of its nuclear reactors in favor of coal power plants is insane. They are literally evolving backwards there.
Germany is in an absolutely horrible state politically with the "green party" pushing for coal lol. Germany shutting down its reactors was absolutely moronic and funnily enough made it far more dependent on Russia for energy.
Can confirm, we are back in the Stone Age again.
The situation in Germany is a bit more complicated. 5-10 years ago, I've also been saying, that nuclear energy is preferable to coal. But nowadays, after all of this back and forth of shutting down nuclear, then not shutting it down and then shutting them down again, the existing reactors are just not worth to keep running. We'd have to build new reactors, but there's just no point in doing so, when building a new nuclear power plant would take ~10 years. Renewables are cheaper and faster to build.
We can get to 70-80% renewables in 10 years even without nuclear energy. And if we're doing so, we'll be needing adjustable power plants, instead of inflexible nuclear reactors.
The last 20-30 percent will be challenging, but doable witch a Power-to-Gas infrastructure.
I mean it is better than coal, but it's still not good.
Fusion is ideal but for now fission is the best we have.@@sociallyresponsiblexenomor7608
I have a degree in Environmental Sciences and deeply appreciate the work you do on education about nuclear power, fuel, waste management, and real risk. Nuclear is the stop-gap measure we desperately need.
"stop gap measure we need" too bad radiation is such a KILLER for humans...
@user-yp2ps3gn3x except it doesn't kill us with radiation, cause of the safety procedures.
@user-yp2ps3gn3x so what's your solution then? Using it as a stopgap isn't saying that nuclear is without harm, it's saying that it's the best harm reduction in comparison to things like fossil fuels until more widespread adoption of clean energy
@@zeusalliance6954I don't care about any of those things. That being said you are ignorant.
@@zeusalliance6954 you're missing my point here - obviously dirty energy needs to go. But there is far less documented industrial, environmental, and biological harm that has occurred from nuclear accidents than there has been from fossil fuels. Yes, ideally we switch over to self-sustaining, harmless energy, but until fusion is available on a large scale and governments put massive funding into solar, there needs to be something in the interim that isn't oil or coal based
I remember back in 7th grade when we visited a local nuclear power plant, the director of the plant who was our guide there, when asked where would he run and hide in the case of a sudden bombing raid, w/o even thinking for a second, he replied "right under the reactor's shielding unit". Then he went on to explain how it was designed in such a manner that no conventional human weapon was capable of destroying it. That was 22 years ago. I can only imagine the safety standards being even higher today.
You went to a nuclear plant! in 7th grade! Man I wish I had a fun field trip like that
I took a tour of the braidwood plant 7ish years ago. For reference, dresden (the plant in the video), lasalle, and braidwood are 3 plants all grouped up in an hour radius
i imagine if he gets cancer in the future even if the cancer is completely unrelated to nuclear energy because it is safe people are still gonna point and go "look see he got cancer omg radiation." and some other chaos is gonna start up I just know it
Not to mention permanent employment in the facilities, the relatively small footprint of the generator vs other so called "green" options, and the other community support systems in place. Our local nuclear plants are heavily involved in community activities, mostly to perpetuate a positive outlook on them but all in all they're great influences.
Excellent video 🤘
It really is the future. And we have enough Uranium to power civilization growing at 2% per year for 8000 years. (napkin calculations I did, don't take it much seriously)
You're probably one of my favorite content creator intellectuals here, Kyle.
Not only does it take immeasurable ambition to do what you do, but the sheer level of desire to try what you can to inform your fellow humans because you know for a fact, the more people who are well informed, the better we are off as a species.
As someone presently working at a nuclear site in the US, I've been waiting for a video like this from Kyle to help demystify nuclear power from its sensationalism in the media and entertainment. Showcasing the safety regulation and safeguards we currently employ. Hopefully can help everyone understand where we presently are and not just where we were.
Thank you for what you do.
I always cringe when someone bases their dislike of nuclear power on Chernobyl or 3 Mile Island. We don't base our views of automotive safety on a Lada or a 1970 Buick. Why should we do so with nuclear?
As an Energy Engineer with a passion for renewable/alternative energy, thank you for making these videos! it's great to see you spreading the word about how awesome and not scary nuclear power is!
You shouldn't kiss those fuel casks, I hear they have warts. Another great video, Kyle. It was fascinating to see the inner workings! I'm not someone who could have the opportunity to see it otherwise so I am eating up this content!
Your comment is corny
@@Allmenshouldrespectallwomen your comment is mean and that's worse 🫤
@@AllmenshouldrespectallwomenBro really spent his entire afternoon going and replying to every single comment on this video now that's what I call corny, go touch grass little Timmy, don't throw your iPad mini at the wall again please😂😂
🍿🥤 Enjoy
@@Allmenshouldrespectallwomen And you are very persistent for all the wrong causes
The simple genius of "it can't leak because it's not goo" is right up there with "the fuel can't melt because it's already a liquid" in molten salt reactors.
Personally, I like Vitrification, It's an easy way to deal with nuclear power by turning it into glass and easily sealing it away in completely safe steel and concrete structures.
As an R&D nuclear chemist and process engineer with projects involving radiopharmaceutical purification and, in the very near future, spent nuclear fuel reprocessing, I approve this message. I've never heard of your channel until a daily email from the American Nuclear Society mentioned this video. Great message and excellent delivery!
Hi Kyle.
My thoughts on nuclear power were pretty much defined by the opinion of politicians in my country and the general direction Germany has taken on this type of power generation (stopping to use it). While this video couldn't completely change how I feel about the topic, it certainly did change the way I think about it and I am deeply impressed. I will do my own research on this and, knowing you, will recognize the truth in your message.
Thank you for this. ❤
For so long I've been frustrated by the lack of general understanding of nuclear power that has skewed public perception. I very much appreciate all of the work you do that's helping to correct the misconceptions around this industry. We desperately need nuclear energy, and even more so, we desperately need the populace to see it for what it is.
Thank you!
It's amazing to think that the biggest opponents to nuclear power have been Democrats. I grew up in Seattle and I was deemed a "right winger" just because I was the only kid in my school who looked up the stats. It's scary how the Democratic Party has gotten away with normalizing anti-environmental misinformation in the past 20 years. By their own rules, they have blood on their hands. Why was I shamed for supporting "Republican anti environmental movements" by so many people, including teachers?
Taken out of context, this is the science Thor origin story.
Excellent job Kyle, great to see you gaining this access and how even the US government is recognizing your work.
For most of his career, a relative of mine worked on the computer systems for multiple nuclear power facilities around the world as they were being built & then started up. They spend SO MUCH time on perfecting the programs that help to run it all! Like you said, safety is their 1st priority.
9:49 Correction… The fuel stored in those dry casks has not been melted down but is stored as fuel bundles exactly the same shape as to when it was in the reactor.
No, these hasn’t been through vitrification process. I only see them do that when they need to separated the plutonium from the used nuclear fuel.
I worked in the nuclear safety dept for Massachusetts emergency management when I was a senior in high school. I have made this same argument for nuclear power to people many times over the years. Awesome video man.
I worked for MEMA too, dispatch back in the day, did 2 nuclear plant drills Seabrook and Vermont yankee.
This video reminds me of the tours we used to get to take as a kid in the 90s. My dad was a nuclear engineer at a plant in South Jersey and they would host family organization days. Pre 9/11 life was crazy. Awesome getting to see it all again in this video. Thanks for the video and work you do Kyle!
Yeah we did that too and now I poop funny.
When I was in secondary school in Spain, our class visited the operating nuclear power plant at Ascó in Catalunya, and I think it was a very valuable experience for many people. If only everywhere did the same I think acceptance would be so much higher. You are doing such a great thing for us all, literally on a crusade to save humanity for itself. Would support you monetarily if I wasn't so poor 😭
My acceptance for nuclear is close to zero. It's so complicated and with it comes a price tag I am not willing to pay for ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@@gnaarW Good for you, evidently you didn't learn much from these videos though. Sad that people still have this opinion (and the desire to spread it) when it's so easy to be educated on this stuff these days.
@@Bryzerse While i favor nuclear power over the nastier alternatives myself, i can understand what the dude there said, the whole video was about nuclear power being safe, not about it being simple and cheap! 😂
Where do you guys dispose the portion of waste which is not recyclable?
@@zvvl3465 Underground most likely, way better than just putting everything in the atmosphere like its done with fossil fuels.
Kyle Hill has actually done more for my education on nuclear power and what makes it clean then all of the years that I've ever spent in school. People like this are super important to the growth of like society and to our ability to solve big issues. This guy is truly one of the best educators currently speaking English
the effort you've put into explaining the history, risks, and overall safety of nuclear power is commendable and will hopefully go a long way towards removing some of the stigma and fear surrounding nuclear power
I despise Greenpeace for poisoning the well on nuclear power. So-called environmentalists being useful idiots for the oil and coal companies.
Part of the problem is that people aren't aware how bad coal power plants are. That they spread radioactive particulates, and Mercury to the surrounding environment.
Except, that's not what he did. He's not explaining the "History", otherwise he would have come into a simple little fact: nuclear power is more or less dead, because it's hugely expensive, unreliable (Germany and France where forced to stop their plants last summer for lack of water, France stopped 32 of her plans for lack of mantainance and so on), and that we have much better alternatives that won't cost us 600 billions (Fukushima estimated cleanup cost) if they go wrong. He's a nuclear fanboy still struck in the early 80s......
So it had one stoppage in 40 years how is that unreliable? 600 billion is nothing compared to the cost of climate change already. Instead of insulting people why dont actually use facts to compare energy generating methods.
@@francescosirotti8178 You gonna give us reliable, proven sources for all those claims or are you just gonna hope that people will believe you and not read any deeper?
I've worked inside a reactor dome before as a construction contractor during a scheduled shut down and the safety and security are the highest I've ever seen. Now @Kyle hill, you need to do a video on the low level waste since you did such an amassing job on this high level waste video
You’re the reason I wanna get into radiobiology. I wanted to just be a biochemist but now I really wanna specialize in this area of study. Thanks for you videos!!!
I'm a nuclear medicine tech. Truly facinating stuff
We employ several radiobiologists. They help us design radiation therapy options! Critical personnel in cancer care!
grow up, this guy is a loser. find better hero's.
@@craigroth8710 on the internet everyone is a talking dog.
My Dad worked at a nuclear plant his whole career until he retired (VC Summer in SC), and I've seen the control room, turbines, and spent fuel pool there on family days. The blue glow of cherenkov radiation feels like magic as a kid.
I actually visited the Forsmark nuclear power plant in Sweden during a field trip in high school as well. 😊
We got to see the underground storage facility for nuclear waste too.
It was very educational.
My sister is an electrician and did some wiring in a nuclear power plant. The buildings and infrastructure are four times stronger than industry standard so that they can withstand an earthquake.
Because, y'know, massive earthquakes is a real problem in Sweden. Happens all the time.
@@Efeye-s It's not really earthquakes they have in mind but more "man made" disasters (artillery strikes, airstrikes and sometimes even nuclear strikes)
@@sevenproxies4255 Sverige har skuda heller ikke så syge jordskælv som han påstår? alt jeg kan læse mig frem til er under 2.5, og næsten kun omkring Sverige men ikke i Sverige
@@stalinzd2580 Jo precis. Sverige ligget ganska mitt på en stor tektonisk platta.
Så vibrationerna from jordbävningar märks knappt av här
So what you're saying is they let highschool kids into a nuclear power plant? Either you're lying or you're telling us there's a security issue.
During a Nuclear Engineering Camp I attended at the Missouri University of Science and Technology, myself and all the other campers actually got to operate the on-campus reactor. We were also taught about almost all the things you discussed in this video. While the public view on Nuclear technology is very negative, perhaps it is because of that it is so safe. But then again, we need more people in the field. I just hope that more people will learn at least the basics of things before they express their thoughts and opinions about them. It would be so much more easy to avoid misinformation.
It is handled and made ver, safely because it is so dangerous in its raw power.
Yooo! Callaway ftw
PFFFFT, learn?
I think it’s more about politics, either that or politicians are stupid. Germany shut down a lot of reactors in the past years and it really screwed them after industry picked up after covid and the war in Ukraine caused embargos which made gas prices skyrocket. There are no logical reasons to not use nuclear power, so why we don’t use more of it is really interesting.
@@donb2527because fossil fuels make people more money
This video is rad and I appreciate all the hoops you had to jump through to make this happen. I can't wait to show this video to my students! U rock kyle!
Hehe "rad".
eh unlikely to be even 1 rad.
I'll see my self out.
The fears are not unfounded fears of the byproducts or malfunction.
They're rational fears from understanding humans are lazy, make mistakes, and like to take shortcuts. It's not the machines or materials people are justifiably scared of; it's the human element.
All the "it's perfectly safe" stuff keeps making assertions that humans are NOT as lazy or prone to mistakes as they are.
This! I am all for nuclear power, but the only argument i can agree with and understand is the human factor. Many people against nuclear power are people that think chernobyl would happen again
Very true, which is why nuclear reactors have MANY automatic safeguards that don't require human interference. It's why there are many people working in a reactor and not just one. Working in a group makes mistakes VASTLY more likely to be caught and fixed before they cause problems. I don't think concerns regarding the imperfection of humans is valid.
Nearly 10 years ago I moved across the country...and I happened to be about 12 miles from a nuclear plant. I wasn't really worried because I knew nuclear was much safer than people felt, but I did all the research that you have shown off in a much more fun and flashy fashion on my own. Now I can just show people your videos! Yay! keep doing awesome work!