The Nuclear Waste Problem 

"The form of the danger is an emanation of energy. The danger is unleashed only if you substantially disturb this place." I cannot think of a better way to peak someone's curiosity.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Radioactive Uranium Rods

"If you open this, everyone gets sick and dies." That's better than that mysterious interesting shit they wrote.

Just create a secret society dedicated around protecting the future from the past

honestly that message sounds like some kind of amazing weapon is buried there if I was a warlord or something I might want to dig for it

"I've got it, to prevent future civilizations from getting curious, we should build massive stone monoliths carved with hieroglyphics that detail a cryptic danger buried beneath. Surely nobody would ever try to figure out what the horrible thing buried here is".

From what I can observe, it looks like containing the nuclear waste would at least be easier than pulling a bunch of carbon dioxide out of the air.

On the contrary, that's the exact kind of message that increases the curiosity

-What's it saying, blob? -Danger, Death, Radiation, Useless, Heavy. -Blob, what is it really? -Barely used nuclear fuel, for free! Just what we need for the Beta Fusion Reactor mark XVI...

Clicked on this expecting to learn about nuclear energy, left questioning my existence

As somebody who works in nuclear, and specifically in spent fuel storage, I can assure that a number of things stated are false or misleading. For one, dry cask storage systems (the concrete steel cylinders) have various different designs that take natural disasters based on area into account. In California, at sites like San Onofre and Diablo Canyon, the casks each have their own individual slot 20' deep inside of a seismic safe concrete pad; this design is called a UMAX. On the east coast US, you don't have to worry about earthquakes or tsunamis of course. Two... No government or company in their right mind would leave an underground mausoleum unguarded; that bunch about the Finnish site is a complete lie, or at least would not apply in the US; happy to see it's being memed.

Im surprised you left out the US's waste deposit site in Yucca Mountain. Billions of dollars went into it and is very similar to the one in Finland. Isolated and deep into earth for permanent waste disposal.

Thousand years later ... Some random tomb raider think he/she found an ancient artifact. Read the warning, and say : Look at these religious superstitious bloke. They think they can scare us with a nonsense mythical curse.

That warning just sounds too much like the Ancient Egyptian warnings which we completely ignored.

Between 2008 and 2017 there were over 1500 deaths resulting from oil extraction. The argument against nuclear power being safety issue is not a good one…

"the only way to truly forget this this place, is to forget humans entirely" "TODAY'S SPONSER IS" what an oh so good transfer of topics

Just name the site Flint Michigan and I'm pretty sure any government will forget about it if not ignore it.

7:55 Wow that message TOTALLY won't just make them more curious

wendover is like the more depressing twin brother of HAI

Imagine being alive in the year 32094 and the ancient languages expert translates the sign, only for everyone to conclude that humans of the era in which it was made were too primitive to have known such a thing. Then they pick you to investigate.

Future human reading "dangerous message" be like : " *THIS MUST BE WHERE THE TREASURES BURIED !* "

"Forbidden blocks" Wow I really want to open it up now

I always wonder, if spent fuel rods still have enough energy to boil off water and cause meltdowns.. then why don't we use them to generate electricity?

I would literally travel to see a huge field of 30' spikes at odd angles with huge blocks of black dyed granite.. I cannot possibly be alone

7:55 If that message was in a video game I would dig that up in no time.

In one thousand years someone will find one of those caskets, read the message, and it will become a creepypasta about some ancient demon that is trapped in it

The more I read these warning messages the more they sound like the curses that were meant to dissuade explorers of Egyptian tombs, and I think it highly likely that an advanced civilization would see them the same way.

Nuclear waste does not have to be buried/thrown away, if it's recycled dangerous radiation levels only last about 100.years, and these wastes are more compact, and we get more nuclear fuel to produce power for several 100 years - this without removing any ore from the ground.

Wendover: "the only way to secure this place is to let it be forgotten" Also Wendover: tells me about this place

Just flex tape it.

8:00 They can just say: This is a Nuclear waste dump piles.

That got unexpectedly deep.

"The form of danger is emanation of energy. The danger is unleashed only if you disturb this place" there are no better words than this to make them more curious.😂😂😅😅. In every sci-fi movie they type the exact same words near a super-powerful material like vibranium.

"This information needs to not be spread and be forgotten" 2.3 million views.

Casks are permanent storage devices. They’re laced with cement so it water gets in, the cement activates and fills the seal. And casks can be kept in the ground for centuries and nothing would happen to it. So what if an earthquake occurs? The cask shakes a bit in the ground. And nuclear fuel can be recycled into the next batch. Meaning somewhere in the neighborhood of 10% of all the spent fuel needs to be sealed and stored. The rest is used up or recycled. Just like in France

To be fair though, the probability of a nuclear meltdown is slim to none.

"Nuclear waste here, if you open this everyone will die" that's a better message :)

they should fill the tunnels with flex seal

man I came here looking for informative energy solutions and only got existential dread

So glad this video is 4 years old and we have technology to store the waste and a better understanding that the actual harmful radiation comes from 1-3% of what’s actually used. We also have the ability to use the same drilling practices as the oil companies and use bore holes to store the material at much much deeper depths

That message sounds ominous as fuck. I think it would do the opposite and attract more people than it scares off. It kind of sounds like something that would be in a horror movie.

What if we took our nuclear waste... *And pushed it somewhere else?*

230 years of fuel is a pretty good bandaid if it gives us time to fix the environment and come up with better solutions for energy. Look at the progress of technology in just the last 100 years.

I suffer from amenonemophobia, which is the fear of wind turbines (definition used to be windmills, but those are uncommon nowadays). When they popped up on the screen I had to cover my eyes like a parent does to a kid during a violent scene in a movie.

Theese structures will not be dug up in 1000 years, they will be dug up in a few decades when we want the Uranium 238 for breeder reactors.

Wait, but stonehenge, the pyramids of Giza and the statues on Christmas are super touristy these days because of how mysterious they are. If we build something like a "spike field" or "forbidding blocks". I think that it's only natural that future societies will also flock there in huge numbers to experience and better understand them. I don't think that that is really what we want, especially with radiation!

You can build breeder reactors that can turn 5 tons of nuclear waste into one ton of waste and use it for energy.

Japan 2021: I do apologize for all that I ve done Japan 2041: its not my fault, it was done by a previous generation Japan 2071: there is no such thing

I love how the message isn't even written in simple English

I like a lot of your videos, but this one is horrible. You imply that most nuclear waste is sitting in pools at the moment (it's not). You imply that there are only 230 years' worth of uranium, and fail to mention 99.5% of nuclear waste is unused fuel, and that there are much larger theoretically recoverable sources of uranium (like the ocean), and make no mention whatsoever of thorium (which has a comparatively limitless supply). In noting the economic costs of the exclusion zones, you don't mention they were made far too large around the melted down reactors, and basically result in unofficial nature reserves, probably more pristine than our national parks flooded with poorly-behaving tourists. "As a radioactive element decays, the individual atoms split into two." REALLY? You mean fission, not decay, right? How are you even making this video while mixing up these terms, ESPECIALLY because you are making one on nuclear waste (where "decay" becomes an important concept). Shaking my head. You state that the fuel rods "use up" their energy which is why they are no longer useful in the reactor. NOT TRUE. It is because of gaseous fission products building up inside of the rod, causing it to swell and crack. Most of the "fuel" remains unused, as there is a lot of uranium 238 which could absorb neutrons and become fissile plutonium, which would keep the reactor running for decades more just fine. The problem is the solid fuel currently used would break the reactor due to the gaseous products breaking the rods. You imply that nuclear waste is dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years. It's not really, since the radiation emitted will be low. This is a necessary consequence of long-lived nuclear waste having a long half life. An intrinsic property to long-term nuclear waste. You also completely ignore that "new" technologies (50 years old, but newer than the current concepts of nuclear reactors we keep building) could burn up all long-lived nuclear waste and leave us with rapidly decaying (in 300 years) fission products. That's right. We could completely rid ourselves of long-lived nuclear waste, while at the same time providing carbon free energy, for thousands of years, all without mining another single atom of uranium. This is because nuclear waste is 99.5% unburned fuel. Who would pay for this? The taxpayer? NOPE. The power companies for decades have paid a nuclear waste fee, and the fund now has 46 billion US Dollars in it. Google Nuclear Waste Fund. The federal government promised to collect the waste, and the companies have been paying for the fee, and yet so far, anti-nuke activists and paralyzed government have crippled responsible stewardship. Let's develop reactors that can burn up the waste (my preference would be by using molten salt reactors, first developed in the 1970s) and get to a zero carbon economy within the next decade. Using the fund, development and much of the construction of these reactors is even already paid for! No business case in selling the electricity needed (though for technical reasons it should be the cheapest ever generated, except from perhaps hydro). I really cannot understand the stupidity of our elected leaders and the electorate in general for not having done this ages ago. We need scientific literacy NOW. Your video FAILED in even mentioning this quite important point. And it's not like "closing the nuclear cycle" is a new concept. It was the idea from the beginning. It should have been included in merely talking about the history of nuclear waste storage and the motivation for the pools and dry cask storage. You say that every little bit ever is currently in short term storage, but this is clearly not the case. Stalin put some nuclear waste in long term storage, pumping it underground in a sealed aquifer. Also, the french put nuclear waste in glass, and to me this is long term storage. Sure, it's not buried, but it's also not going anywhere, even if we disappear. How do we know this? The vitrification (glass) of nuclear waste happened because they saw how nuclear waste was stored billions of years ago in the natural nuclear reactors in Gabon. No, i'm not making this up. You have a laptop - go google it. NATURAL nuclear reactors stored their fission products (obviously by accident) in a way that kept them from escaping "into the environment", even though they were in ground water. Actually, I would say this is another reason your claim that no nuclear waste has ever been disposed of long-term is false, even though people didn't produce it. You say that when the spent fuel rod pool is dry, the radiation "goes out into the environment", implying it's the same as a cloud of caesium-137 or strontium-90 approaching Tokyo. But it's not. Maybe a discussion about what is meant by the term "radiation" is warranted here. Yes, you'd have radiation coming off the rods (alpha, beta, gamma particles), and it could induce some radiation in items exposed to it, but it's not the same as having the radioactive particles directly on your farmland, in your body, whatever. It's not like the fuel rods would magically move out of the pool unless there were some other type of problem, like an explosion. Then you say that "thousands would have been killed". How? Were thousands in a direct line of sight with the rods of the pool? Please explain yourself. I will give you props in correctly asserting that NOBODY was killed in the Fukushima reactor meltdown from radiation (two were killed in car crashes during the evacuation as a consequence of the exclusion zones being too large as a response to unreasonable and unscientific fear of radiation). But you then incorrectly state that 130 early cancer deaths are expected. I assume that this is due to the linear no threshold "theory" of the effects of radiation on humans, when the reality is that you need to have a dose of radiation above a threshold to be harmed by it. At lower levels, radiation is even good for you, protecting you from cancer (google radiation hormesis to read up on it). Evidence suggests the latter, fear mongers love the former. Finally at least the "scientific" UN changed it's stance on the matter and rejects the linear no threshold model. So when you say 130 deaths expected, please state your source. I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's anti-science hogwash, unless you can show that that many people received more than a threshold of 100 mREM (they didn't). Instead of accurately describing nuclear reactors and the nuclear waste problem, and showing potential plausible ways for long term disposal, you take the narrow political view that it's an unfeasible problem to solve. It's not. You use anti-nuke fear mongering instead of elucidating the science. Thank you for not adding any value to the lives of your viewers with this video due to careless research and narrow political aims. 100,000 years from now long term buried waste would not be waste anymore. The "bad stuff" would have long since decayed away to safe levels. Though still radioactive, I wouldn't mind touching it! But one thing it would contain plenty of - Plutonium. And you'd only need chemical separation to get it refined, with nearly no radiation to make it in any way difficult. It would be a perfect plutonium mine (not a "naturally occurring" element). We will have succeeded in giving whatever warlord owns the territory above in a post-apocalyptic world a monopoly on easily-buildable "gun type" nuclear bombs. Especially if we mark the X on the map with a thorny landscape and pictographs to help her or him figure out what lies buried there. No discussion of this either. Aaaaand at the end you have an advertisement for math and science education. The irony is thick here.

Well it's about time someone talks about the waste of nuclear energy that's many many many years

Question: where is the waste from wind, solar and carbon based energy production? Nuclear energy production is the ONLY way of energy production where we have figured out before production starts what we are going to do with the waste.

Warning message written on an Ancient Egyptian Tomb (Pyramid): "Watch out not to take (even) a pebble from within it outside. If you find this stone you shall transgress against it." Modern humans: "Yeah, let's respect the warning and never touch any of those pyramids."

That sounds like a good Netflix plot SMALL FINNISH TOWN NORMAL LIFE SUDDENLY NUCLEAR STUFF SOME KID DISAPPEARS PEOPLE LOOK FOR HIM GO INSIDE NUCLEAR WASTE STORAGE MONSTER OR SOMETHING DUN DUN DUN

Now i will never forget it

There is only one solution for this *"Call Dr Strange and ask him to cast a spell that everyone forgot this Location"* 😅🙌

>Convey a vague warning about death and destruction awaiting within >Build a landscape of inhospitable and evil-looking structures around it to ward off intruders This is how you get a classic dungeon

That message low-key made me even more curious

Finland has figured it all out.

That message does the opposite of its intended effect

Generally accurate, but very selective use of facts. The reason why the rods are in temporary storage is because they have value for future energy generation, in summery when we run out of Uranium we can reprocess the rods and get more energy. When we need to dispose of it we need to remembered no radiation is being created, its just being concentrated. It can be merged in with another inert material in low density to be placed back, in the same density as it was originally mined, such as Synroc. This technology exists today. Burying it in a concentrated manner is cheaper, avoids the not in my back yard protests and can earn Finland a great deal of cash. But at this point in time there is very little high-level nuclear material that anyone would want to dispose of, its simply worth too much money and has too much value for future energy production. Only contaminated material is being disposed of, such as the 5 t of plutonium-contaminated waste at British Nuclear Fuels Sellafield plant, on the northwest coast of England. There is no insurmountable nuclear waste issue; its just no one wants the diluted radioactivity material in their back yard, even if was originally in that location. As a result we have to bury it in a concentrated format using a technology like synroc, or not so smart, contained in its original form in steel containers.

A message to future civilisations saying essentially "keep out, nothing but danger here" will NOT stop them from opening up the site and taking a peek. *After all, didn't the Egyptians leave messages about "Nothing but Death and Curses come to all who disturb this place"??* We (humans) didn't take heed of dire, death warnings then, and we won't in 1,000 years. Essentially the message should describe exactly what is there, why it is what it is and how it is harmful. Full explanation so that future people will know EXACTLY what it is, and not something cryptic that they will be curious to look for. After all, in 1,000 years, humans could have figured out how to get more energy from the waste using technology we don't have now, and they could in fact make very good use out of it. If the decay is consistent and significant, there may be a way that we haven't learned yet to use it......

One day we will find a way to utilize the things we call waste now.

The ending was deep.

"Do not open. Extremely toxic waste"

Why did they write that piece in such a cryptic, "OH NOW I GOTTA KNOW" way? It was so odd and flowery, more like some hypnosis youtuber's attempt at "induction"

Waste that never goes away.

The message left out some important facts. The most significant one that I am aware of is that the rod is considered spent not because it lacks sufficient energy to continue using, it actually has 95+ percent of its fissionable material. The problem is that the rod pellets take on mehanical changes that make them unsuitable for continued use. THEY CAN BE REPROCESSED. This is CURRENTLY BEING DONE by other advanced nations such as France, UK, and Russia. It reduces the need and timeline for disposal, dramatically increase its efficiency, and extends the supply of uranium by leaps and bounds. It also minimizes the need for storage both long term and short term. The other shortcoming is the failure to mention the heavy water reactors, in very wide use, developed in Canada, and spread all over the world in a safe and efficient manner. Uranium enrichment is unnecessary, natural uranium is fine, and there are models Canada has developed that even can use spent rods. Each reuse cycle efficiently reduces the radiological danger, and the tiny remainder is very manageable. There is also another sin of omission. The failure to mention thorium as an extension of the usable supply of fuel. It is of itself not fissionable but what nuclear scientists call fertile, if bombarded by the same kind of radiation emanating from a reactor, it converts over to a fissionable form of uranium. The bundle of uranium reactor rods, if surrounded by a couple of rows of thorium rods, will create new fuel as the old is being used. It is thereby called a "Breeder reactor", and currently generates 80 percent or more of France's electrical energy grid. It has done so safely for decades. Finally, permanent disposal. Really very simple. There is a huge area in the North Pacific ocean. At the bottom, there is a huge area that has a deep muddy bottom, with the consistency of peanut butter that runs very deep. The long term storage concrete cylinders that it is currently in can be dropped down from a ship, and they will sink down in deep from their heaviness, and unless the Earth's gravitational field reverses itself, they're not going anywhere. Problem solved.

Disappointed that alternatives weren't even mentioned in the video. Thorium waste is safe after only hundreds of years, rather than hundreds of thousands. It's something that really needs more exposure.

Who in their right mind would abstain from further research with that message? What would we do if some ancient civilization sent us that message? I know what I would want to do

It would have been good to discuss, or at least mention the potential for reprocessing. To a large extent this could remove the need for long term storage of high level waste.

You know what is a good sign of something bad. skeletal remains of thousands of animals and humans. You come across a few kilometres of bones you just know something bad went down.

Just tell Candice that Phineas and Ferb made the radiation, and it will all be gone before mom gets home.

I love how nuclear waste is supposedly such a big problem for people that nuclear technology is nonviable, yet fossil fuel waste (which (1) kills millions of people every year as a result of air pollution, (2) Has contaminated large areas of our planet with toxic chemicals from spills and the dumping of organic compounds as waste, (3) is poisoning our oceans and cooking our atmosphere) is not sufficient motivation to abandon that technology. Nuclear power is to coal what airplanes are to cars. The failure of an airplane is more scary and spectacular than that of a car, and (as we saw in 9/11) airplanes have the potential to do a huge amount of damage in a worst case scenario. However, when you look at it statistically airplanes have a much better safety record than cars, with far fewer incidents per mile traveled. Same is the case with nuclear, one of the safest power sources in terms of deaths per unit energy generated. Managing risks is an inescapable part of our existence on this planet. If we want to unleash massive am amounts of energy on the surface of our little planet, (so that we can drive cars, and watch TV, and have air conditioning) we have to expect to pay some price. People need to think about the risks and ask what they really want. Because of how the grid works we need consistent power from a turbine generator to balance supply and demand on the grid, nuclear is the only option that is really viable.

We use to have hydro dams that were much cleaner than the thousands of years it takes for the waste to decay.

That message may become the reason for someone's curiosity bagning of the footsteps

The letter condemning the future generation from opening up the Nuclear waste storage, sounds to epic. They might be even more motivated to open it up, just make it boring and simple not a start of a movie trailer.

the part about translating the message in every UN languages made me think it might become the future Rosetta stone maybe 🤔

I think "Danger! Radioactive!" will do. Simple and to the point.

Very informative documentary, thank you so much!

Surely if they can read that long message, then just saying "dangerous radiation" is all you need to say.

Correction. Most of Fukushimas exclusion zone is safe now and people are returning, only a small area near the plant is still closed. Most of the chernobyl exlusion zone is not very dangerous, while the nearest town pripyat will remain uninhabitable for a long time there are already thousands working in chernobyl and mainy who are living there permanently within the zone. I've been there and it's surprisingly clean.

Just a thought, the fuel rods can still power an engine smaller than a power station. What better solution than to launch them into space aboard nuclear-powered rockets?

7:53 when I first watched this vid, I thought that message was one of the scariest things I've ever heard. Especially when it said "the danger is still present". What could be that dangerous? The devil? The message is frightening.

Best message would be, "Buried below is your total amount you owe for you student loans" NO ONE will touch that.

The "WARNING" seems like a riddle characters in a movie would find before royally messing everything up from doing exactly what is says not to do.

It's kind of a moral issue. We can't just bury radioactive waste that will be dangerous for thousands of years and forget about it. Future generations would be inheriting our problems without their knowledge. Very interesting topic.

Not true that Fukushima still has “massive” exclusion zones. All original exclusion due to radiation has been cancelled save for areas immediately around the plants that failed. The destruction to infrastructure brought by the 2011 quake and tsunami however may still make it difficult to live in the area.

Hey lets make an extremely vague and interesting message to scare away future humans they won’t possible look if we tell them it’s dangerous

Seems to me like the problem with the "this is not a place of honor" message is that it's too complex and prone to linguistic and physical corruption. Let's say we carve that in stone, but the stone becomes weathered over time, and what remains is: "... powerful culture. .. This ... a place of honor… esteemed deed ... commemorated here… valued.... ... dangerous and repulsive to us.... warning ... danger. " It gives the intriguing impression that something frightfully dangerous but very powerful is buried there, that curious individuals or ambitious polities would spare no expense in digging up.

That warning makes me want to dig it up.

The radioactive metal came from the earth, we are just using it and putting it back where we found it.

“Open for a surprise”

What if the nuclear warning in every language became the future's Rosetta stone?

If it can still create some heat after usage we can just make a little more energy out of the rods

wow! I learned so much! Thanks!!!!!

Even if the languages survive in some lucid form, the substance of the message doesn’t sound that different than the foreboding warnings of damnation left on the tombs of the ancient Egyptians.

A liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) burns up 99% of the fuel put in to it and the remaining radioactive isotopes will disappear in 300 years. The LFTR can also utilize current stock piles of Nuclear Waste to produce energy and again, reduce it down to something that disappears after 300 years.

I’ll be honest, that statement scares the shit out of me. I already know that the contents of it are beyond “NOPE”, but if I came across a sign that said shit like that, I wouldn’t be touching it. I’ve seen enough movies to know bad shit happens when you play with “ancient magic”. If they ever made a movie where I was the protagonist, it’d be really short, because I’d see “don’t go in here; bad things will happen”, and I’d be “okay; I’m not doing that”.

Please make a new video about this subject. Amazing work