Argonne explains nuclear recycling in 4 minutes 

Bingo! This makes me sad only tech nerds like everyone here are here...

Sadly this thinking was a layover from the 50s, just keep making new it is better, the metal and glass industry saw the benefits of reusing old material with new, and because of it they saved money and had a stable profit margin which sees a big spike every so often and then it smooths out again. 500 years over thousands is the biggest cost savings there is.

I think few disasters. Chernobyl and Fukushima aroused so much emotions. Fight against nuclear is more emotional than logical.

@@bobmalonza6929 за сокращение ядерного вооружения во всём мире бороться хорошо. Плохо ПАНИЧЕСКАЯ боязнь радиации.

When you grow up

karen l Smith should he hope for a wind/solar fantasyland?

Hi, Strom aus erneuerbaren Energien ist schon jetzt deutlich günstiger als Atomstrom. Und es gibt noch keinen flüssigsalz Reaktor, die sind alle in einer frühen testphase und noch lange nicht soweit. Auch derAufbereitungsprozess ist noch nicht im Großtechnische Verfahren möglich. Die Endprodukte sind nicht entlagerfähig, nur deshalb werden sie in diese Zylinderblöcke verarbeitet.

meanwhile Germany is shutting down all reactors and cancelling any plans for new ones

​@@Schaf_-pm5scMeine Fresse. Wann immer solche Leute verstehen, dass ihre Angstmacherei mit logischen Argumenten widerlegt worden ist kommen sie mit dem Geld daher.

We already know how to to this without thorium. Thorium is for really long term survival of species. There's no need for it yet (and it also relies on uranium).

Luckily it seems india is picking up where the rest of the world left it post-nuclearphobia

I'm confused. Is this bullshit, or are we capable of doing this? Why isn't this our national policy for nuclear energy? Reprocessing the spent fuel rods, which would only dangerous for 500 years should be our top priority.

@@keitht24 One issue was how it allows for production of weapons grade plutonium i think (Double check me on that, it was some sort of breeded product)? Again not an issue if set up right, but easy to fear monger on / make negotiations smooth. Also nuclear-phobia in general makes new fission plants very difficult.

@@ericlotze7724 I looked up some of these issues. I fear around weapons grade plutonium is nothing compared to this waste. 10,000 years is impossible to plan for. 500 is workable. If there's some catastrophic collapse of civilization. Nobody is gonna be digging up something buried 1000-2000 underground surrounded by solid bedrock in the next 500 years. But who knows what would happen in 10,000 years?

Still a hell of a way to boil water though. Isn't that disrupting the hydrological cycle?

@@obsoleteoptics Nothing wrong with boiling water to spin turbines. Have a better idea?

Наверное после каждой топливной сессии нужно будет очищать топливо от продуктов распада и минорных актиноидов, поглощающих нейтроны и тем самым тормозящих цепную реакцию. И плутоний не пробовали эксплуатировать на канальных реакторах РБМК как в Чернобыле, а тем более Канду. Плутоний в топливо добавляют только в корпусные реакторы как российские ВВЭР и французские. Если пробовать использовать плутоний на Канду, то сразу разбавлять обеднённым ураном(ураном-238 с содержанием урана-235 ниже экономически выгодного порога извлечения) до нужного процентного содержания. На производствах по обогащению урана большие запасы обеднённого урана, мировые запасы ,вроде, более 2 миллионов тонн.

Maybe they are contaminated.

@@vitordelima It depends how long you wait to do the chemical separation. The fission products start off fiercely radioactive, but nearly all the radioactivity comes from shortlived isotopes, which rapidly decay into nonradioactive ones. Leave it 10 years from when the spent fuel is removed from the reactor, and there isn't that much radioactive still in there. In fact most of the residual radioactivity comes from just two isotopes: Sr-90 and Cs-137. So I think the platinum group metals should be fine. I know there's a longlived palladium radioisotope (Pa-107) that will be mixed in with the palladium, but it's only very weakly radioactive, so shouldn't present a problem.

There's a chart on Wikipedia showing the radioactivity of fission derived platinum group metals over time. It turns out the ruthenium has potentially hazardous levels of radiation for several decades, but the other two are already fine as long as the fuel has cooled down for several years before being reprocessed. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesis_of_precious_metals#/media/File:Activity_of_pt_group_metals_from_uranium_fission.png

Ask France... They do it! In a similar fashion... Unless Argonne wants to jump in here... ;-)

@@stickynorth i know they do the glass thing with the waste they cant use.

The reason the US doesn't is due to a fear of someone getting their hands on the plutonium while recycling and making a bomb out of it

Unfortunately, Politics.

@@stickynorth France is the PUREX process. This is a different process.

😅😅

По российской технологии циркониевые стержни вместе с топливными таблетками рубятся и растворяются для дальнейшего разделения. В процессе эксплуатации в реакторе топливные таблетки разбухают от осколков деления топлива и будет трудно извлечь таблетки из стержней. И стержни повторно не используются, а перерабатываются, и т.к. получают облучение, видимо, идут на захоронение как высоко радиоактивные отходы.

How was it?

shut up with your nuclear fission pollution you mindless engineer if you were a physicist they might have let you.

Kry CHEANG ok I’m 5 years late in answering but only a small amount of Uranium gets fissioned by the time it gets overloaded with fission products and Neutron poisons and needs to be changed. There is still a huge amount of Uranium that can be fissioned if only it were free of the unwanted contaminants and this is where reprocessing comes in..

CHernobly wa over 30 years ago., To late for how toprevent it.

Hi. Not immediately sure how to answer your question, but here's some additional information for you - www.anl.gov/cfc/reference/pyroprocessing-technologies-0. More information can be found here - www.anl.gov/topic/pyroprocessing

What about plutonium?

I think fusion is pretty focused on being nuclear power without radioactivity involved for PR and safety reasons

Fusion power is a mad scientist pipe dream. As this video points out, nuclear reprocessing can power our civilization for thousands of years with the uranium we've already mined from the Earth. Thorium is an even more energy dense material we can use in molten salt reactors.

The nuclear power could because electrolysis is just a very simple reaction with water.

This is BIG BULLSHIT!

@@WadcaWymiaru why?

Fucks The World?

Yes. That spent fuel has 99 percent of its energy. Imagine if it takes 4 years to use up 1 percent of the fuel, how long can recycled fuel last?

tripple-d 2146972 can we safely reuse it without it leaking dangerously and after using it will it decompose faster to minimize the risk of radiation to almost zero?

@@samuelzev4076 that's what they guys un this video are studying. Molten salt methods are decades old, but hopefully with modern tech we can make it efficient enough

tripple-d 2146972 I am hoping that after 4 years of using it will decompose faster within the same time lap of 4-8 years rather than 10 ,000 years. The faster it decomposes the safer it will be but that’s my opinion.

@@samuelzev4076 I've read somewhere that once you use up more of its energy, it becomes more stable. Down to a few hundreds to a thousand years the more energy you use. And since spent fuel rods only use 1 percent, they are still highly energized to have all those hundreds of thousands, I could be wrong

BN800 in Russia.

because plutonium isnt a waste product it is fissile so it can be used to make more energy in a reactor

Fast reactors can burn those really nasty elements for huge gains in energy. Long lived waste was solved 35 years ago. It's a political problem, not technological

In this sort of reactor there is no water. It uses molten salt as a coolant. Read the book "plentiful energy" for a thorough understanding.

Electrolysis is only part of the process.

Isn't it called galvanization?

Didnt you hear? Electrolisis is part of the process with other chemicsl reactions

We're on it - www.anl.gov/topic/advanced-nuclear-reactors

nazirdjon Fast reactors burn the fuel for a very long time. The good thing is we wouldn't be adding to our nuclear waste stockpile for almost a thousand years.

***** i think i have to agree with this you. One major danger is of course, there is a good chance that greed in corporate world will make these such atomic stations to cut the corners and leave big room for catastrophes..don't you think?

nazirdjon A fast molten salt reactor and LFTR can be made idiot proof, but storing the waste correctly is not. Try letting a 9 year old read a 500 year old book. +Sunny Lu I don't think the waste is reduced, just the mass of waste per KW/h is greatly reduced.

Solar requires vast amounts of surface area and only provides power when the sun is shining. Wind only provides power when the wind is blowing and requires massive amounts of petroleum lubricants. Both are expensive to construct and maintain, have short life spans, and cannot provide near enough power to economicaly meet power demands 24/7. Simply put, solar and wind are not feasible to use to replace fossil fuels. The only reason they are proliferated to the point they are is because the government subsidizes them at the demands of the environmental terrorist.

Shut up

Hagvan yes.. that is my understanding. Nuclear is only in the early stages of its development.

Yes most of the ‘spent’ rods is still perfectly good Fissionable Uranium mixed with waste products that prevent it from fissioning correctly. Also there is some Plutonium which itself can be fissioned. The trick is to get rid of the terribly radioactive fission products and reuse the Uranium and Plutonium in new rods. In theory a spent rod bundle could give over 20 times the energy of its first 4 year run in the reactor if its 100% reprocessed. It’s really a shame the USA is storing spent fuel as waste and digging up new Uranium ore instead of recycling what it has due to politics.

@@Bushcraft-xz6xd for what I heard you can still run those rods until they turn into thorium, which will turn into non-radioactive material

Yes current nuclear power plants are highly inefficient with the fuel. And even than creating massive amounts. Imagen we could use all the fuel. The world could run on nuclear power plants for thousands of years. While in the meantime we could develop fusion technology.

Extreme dangers such as?

That's a good thing, since this "spent" fuel still contains 90% of its energy and can be recycled into fuel as this video explains.

@@MatthijsvanDuin Au contraire. Its a disaster waiting to happen. Plutonium is fiercely chemically toxic, like many other heavy metals, yet as a synthetic element nature has evolved no defenses against it. Britain's Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (Thorp) never hit its performance targets, leaked hazardous materials, lost vast amounts of money, and shut down a decade ahead of schedule. And now they have to clean up the recycling plant itself. Utter.Disaster.

​@@paulgush Just because someone somewhere fucked it up doesn't mean it's a bad idea to recycle spent fuel and greatly reduce both the volume of final waste and the duration it remains dangerous. Note also that the reprocessing method in this video is very different from the PUREX method that is currently used for reprocessing; it completely avoids aqueous solutions (and their risks of leakage). it also doesn't extract/purify plutonium like PUREX does, it extracts the mixed actinides in metallic form to be immediately reformed into fuel for a fast reactor. Look up on the (regrettably cancelled) Integral Fast Reactor for the big picture

@@MatthijsvanDuin To your first point, true. But there are plenty of things that are technically possible, but economically ruinous. Concorde and the Space Shuttle are my favorite examples. And the nuclear industry has a track record of big cost overruns...

1. Loss of power and not being hot enough 2. Location. 3. Leakage.

It honestly sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. In addition it would not work. It doesn't heat the water enough to actually make a big enough difference in the temperature of the water. Imagine a giant pool of radioactive waste in the middle of a mega-city. What do you think will happen if there is a leak between the pool and the water being transported? And even if you make it 100% leak proof, who is going to voluntarily live next to a radioactive pool (regardless of whether the radiation leaks out or not.) If someone has ill intentions toward that city or the country it's located in, where do you think they would attack in order to create the highest amount of distress? Can you imagine the backlash of subjugating hundreds of thousands of citizens to a potential catastrophe waiting to happen?

So... pretty much, Capitalistic interests are preventing us from achieving greener energy because it wouldn't be as profitable of an interest rather than doing it out of the sheer goal of _not_ trashing our planet?

We also need Thorium nuclear energy!

Aren't we disrupting the hydrological cycle by boiling so much water?