00:00here in the labs we test very important
00:03ideas to see what happens when you blow
00:05things up or play with black holes many
00:08of you suggested that we look into an
00:10idea that sounds reasonable shooting
00:12nuclear waste into space it's one of
00:15those Concepts that seems like an easy
00:17fix for one of the main problems with
00:19the nuclear energy but it turns out this
00:22idea is not just bad but horribly bad
00:25and it gets worse the longer you think
00:27about it why is that
00:37what is nuclear waste
00:40clear waste is a fuzzy term and comes in
00:42categories which vary from country to
00:44country but in general there are three
00:46broad levels ninety percent is low level
00:49nuclear waste tools gloves or trash used
00:52at a nuclear facility that could be
00:54weakly contaminated with some
00:56short-lived radioactivity this stuff is
00:59generally safe for normal disposal
01:01seven percent is intermediate level
01:03nuclear waste mostly materials that have
01:06been in close proximity to a reactor
01:07core long enough to become dangerously
01:09Radioactive with proper handling it's
01:12either safely buried or melted down and
01:14mixed into glass or concrete and stored
01:16deep underground so 97 of nuclear waste
01:20is similar to toxic byproducts from
01:22other Industries not great not terrible
01:28the remaining three percent is where our
01:31high-level nuclear waste is very
01:34concentrated spent fuel taken out of a
01:37formerly uranium it's now made of
01:40various dangerous and often highly
01:42radioactive elements as a bonus it's
01:44also incredibly hot and not easy to
01:47handle at all this is what we want to
01:49shoot into space All In All Around 440
01:53active nuclear reactors create about 11
01:56000 tons of high-level nuclear waste
01:58each year since 1954 we've accumulated
02:01400 000 tons of dangerous radioactive
02:04waste most countries are dealing with it
02:06by not dealing with it and kicking the
02:09can towards the future
02:10great so let's launch it into space
02:13according to scientists space is big and
02:17nobody lives there so it seems perfect
02:20for eating away this mess there are a
02:23few tiny problems though problem one
02:29even though space flight is getting more
02:31affordable it's still extremely
02:33expensive just to get something into low
02:36earth orbit costs on average about four
02:38thousand dollars per kilogram
02:40putting that into perspective it costs
02:42about one thousand six hundred dollars
02:44to mine separate and fabricate one
02:46kilogram of nuclear fuel so launching
02:49waste into space has suddenly made
02:51nuclear fuel for reactors way more
02:53expensive and greatly increased the cost
02:56of the electricity they produce to
02:59launch one reactor's worth of nuclear
03:01waste would cost at least 100 million
03:05to deal with all the 440 operational
03:07nuclear power plants high-level nuclear
03:09waste would cost some 44 billion dollars
03:12per year for space launch before
03:13packaging transport and security costs
03:17okay let's pretend we don't care
03:19currently we couldn't shoot all the
03:22nuclear waste into space even if we
03:23wanted to there's just aren't enough
03:26in 2021 we saw a record 135 launches
03:31into space if we repurposed each of
03:33those rockets and filled them all with
03:35nuclear waste the total amount that
03:37could be lifted into a low earth orbit
03:39which is the closest orbit above the
03:40atmosphere is nearly 800 tons
03:43we'd need at least 14 times more Rockets
03:46to handle just today's nuclear waste let
03:48alone get rid of the hundreds of
03:50thousands of tons in temporary storage
03:51we would need to create entire new Space
03:54Industries to keep up with the demand
03:56for giant toxic Space trash trucks and
04:02problem 2 space is hard
04:05we only made the calculation for low
04:07earth orbit where we send most of our
04:09rockets and satellites
04:11littering the space around Earth with
04:13thousands of casts have spent nuclear
04:14fuel would be a nightmare for space junk
04:16management and satellite collision
04:20we're still at this altitude there's
04:22still a little bit of atmosphere causing
04:24a tiny bit of drag so we might have
04:26nuclear waste raining down from space
04:28within just a few years experts would
04:30call this a huge problem clearly we have
04:34to launch our waste further if we wanted
04:36to send it to perhaps the moon we either
04:39need way more Rockets or we need to
04:41build much bigger ones
04:43making it even more expensive a single
04:46Saturn V the rocket used by the Apollo
04:48program which cost around 1.5 billion
04:51adjusted for inflation per launch could
04:53get about 43.5 tons from the Earth to
04:57so we'd need about 260 Saturn V rocket
05:00launches every year and of course using
05:02the moon as target practice for nuclear
05:04waste tipped Rockets kind of makes a
05:08so maybe don't aim for anything space is
05:11empty do we really need a Target
05:13shooting waste in any random direction
05:15is you guessed it also a bad idea orbits
05:20are Loops which means they have a
05:22tendency to come back to where they
05:23started put enough in the sky in random
05:26directions and you'll get one back
05:29so we'd want to launch our nuclear waste
05:32deep into space which means we need even
05:34bigger rockets that would be even more
05:37not that we would be completely safe
05:39then Earth might run into these
05:42interplanetary caskets at some time in
05:44the far future and experience a pretty
05:46meteor shower made from radioactive dust
05:49okay how about we shoot it into the sun
05:53ironically the sun is pretty hard to hit
05:57while the sun has very strong gravity
05:59everything on Earth is moving with
06:01respect to the Sun including the rockets
06:03that we launch meaning a rocket would
06:05have to cancel out all the orbital
06:07motion it has around the Sun so it can
06:09stop orbiting and fall in
06:12because of this it's actually easier to
06:14launch a rocket entirely out of the
06:16solar system than it is to launch it
06:19but to do either of these things we need
06:22even bigger Rockets probably the biggest
06:26hmm nothing works the thing is it gets
06:30even worse problem three rockets go
06:36rocket engineering has taken huge steps
06:38since the Apollo era we've made them
06:41relatively safe we've mostly replaced
06:43the toxic explosive cancer fuels of the
06:45past decades with much sailor mixes of
06:48liquid oxygen and hydrogen or kerosene
06:51the newest designs even land themselves
06:53so that they can be reused and yet out
06:57of the 146 launches in 2021 there were
07:0011 failures which means that a sizable
07:03number of our Rockets carrying
07:04high-level radioactive waste would be
07:07exploding on the launch pad or in the
07:09worst case disassembling at high
07:10altitude or crashing from Hypersonic
07:13speeds each failure would be at least
07:15equivalent to a miniature Noble but
07:17instead of being contained under a slab
07:19of concrete spread throughout the
07:21atmosphere radioactive particles could
07:23make their way to far away places by
07:25riding on the winds most would fall into
07:28the ocean but some would land on the
07:30inhabited parts of the world
07:32they could cover farmlands and get
07:34concentrated into our food or enter our
07:36water supply which is well bad imagine
07:40regular large-scale nuclear disasters
07:42happening people wouldn't be happy
07:45conclusion and opinion part
07:47nuclear waste is scary but the fear of
07:50it and horrible ideas like shooting it
07:52into space reveals how bad we are at
07:55understanding risk because the largest
07:57amounts of radioactive elements like
07:59uranium and radon are actually released
08:01by coal burning millions of tons of coal
08:04each year leaves Ash as a waste product
08:07that includes about 36 000 tons of
08:09radioactive materials
08:11less radioactive than high-level nuclear
08:14waste but there's also a lot more of it
08:16and it's handled way less carefully
08:19some of this ash is caught by filters
08:21but most is simply pushed back into
08:23leaky mines shoved into piles exposed to
08:25the wind or poured into ponds that
08:28regularly spilled into rivers and lakes
08:30living within 1.6 kilometers of an ash
08:33pile increases your cancer risk up to 2
08:36000 times over the acceptable limit and
08:39this is on top of other toxic chemicals
08:41like heavy metals and of course their
08:43massive CO2 emissions
08:45and yet while nuclear energy is flawed
08:47and its current form may only be a
08:49transitory technology nuclear power
08:51plants are a harder cell than coal
08:54nuclear waste and the lack of
08:56willingness to deal with it are a real
08:58issue it's not insurmountable though
09:01there are good methods to handle it like
09:04burying it deep underground or
09:06reprocessing some of it into new fuel
09:07but however we ultimately deal with this
09:10issue we hope one thing is clear
09:12shooting nuclear waste into space is one
09:15of the worst ideas ever
09:19researching this crazy thing conducting
09:21all of these important tests and of
09:23course creating this video took us
09:25around 2 000 hours which is insane for a
09:30and we couldn't do it without you if you
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