I found this series by accident. I have to say it is refreshing to see the subjects presented by an expert in a simple and clear manner without the sensationalist BS. It is a shame that it doesn't have more views.

I think its a wonderful idea for heating swimming pools cheaply

My Father - in- law was the GM of the Yucca Mtn project back in the 90’s. He needed you as a spokesperson to explain it.

After the Chernobyl TV series an educational series on the details of how nuclear power plants operate is incredibly necessary.

Need to respect he has better penmanship in reverse then I’ve ever had.

Good stuff. People comment that they wonder if he learned to write backward to do this; the answer is no, he writes normally on a glass sheet in front of him that he is being photographed trough. However, in the playback, the image is reversed right to left, and so the writing appears normal. However, you can notice small things, like his lapel pin is on the right rather than left side and his shirt pocket in other videos of the series being on his right side. The thing that brought that home was the photo of Yucca mountain. It is usually photographed from the SSE so that the active side is shown, and it stretches from the neat lower left towards the upper right in the distance, but in this photo it is opposite. I was wondering if he had a different mountain in mind until he said the name. Anyway, kudos on the series.

Outstanding quality of material; I cannot believe one can find a video like this on KZfaq. Thanks Prof. for uploading such high quality videos, you should have many many more subscribers, this channel is sooo underrated... p.s. How can he remember the fission byproducts by heart so easily?? I cannot even remember what I ate for lunch...

Set up a molten salt Thorium reactor next to your regular nuclear power plant and you not only get about 500MW more power to sell, but you no longer have to worry about radioactive waste because the Thorium reactor will consume that waste!

I handled used fuel rods for DOE using large crane to load in casks to put on trucks. Fuel went to France for reprocess.

Extremely clearly made lectures. Thoroughly enjoyable to listen to.

I really like these. Also, he sounds like the Grand Nagus quite often, which I also like

Left-handed mirror writing gets an automatic thumbs up from me, no matter the subject!

I'm quite confident the sound of that marker can make uranium fission all on its own. You may have a new energy production method going here!

I love watching his videos, he makes it easy for an idiot like me to understand

To give context as to how much a ton is. I routinely run through at least 3 coils of steel that weigh one ton each in a shift at my factory job. A 1 ton coil of steel is about a meter and a half in diameter (less the hole in the center for the mandrel for the spool I load the steel onto to run through a stamping press). I use a crane to lift and move the coil, but I still have to (and can) use old-fashioned muscle power to help manhandle it into position (mainly by arresting any excess swinging due to the crane setup). Obviously, I wouldn't do this with high-level waste without some serious safeguards in place, but a ton is basically nothing in the grand scheme of things. As a fun experiment do this: go to a Costco or Sam's Club with a large flat cart like you'd use to move large loads. Now load 40 bags of dog food weighing 50 pounds each onto the cart from the pallet they're stored on. Congratulations: you just move one ton of material and it isn't as tiring as you'd expect as long as you're in reasonably decent physical shape.

Watching these video's, I don't even know how people can oppose the idea of more nuclear power! Thank you for an factual, interesting and real video of the topic! You've earned yourself a sub!

I love this guy ... a natural teacher.

There's no reason I need to know this, but damn is it interesting.

Keep explaining stuff, professor. you are very good at This format!

Absolutely loving your videos and presentation - I'm re-teaching myself various sciences, including quantum physics - your presentations are a great way to put certain processes into perspective. Thanks for the knowledge 🖖

This channel is great, I've watched all the videos. Thank you very much.

That was another great lecture! Thank you. Greetings from Arizona.

These videos are consistently very well made.

These videos are extremely interesting the way he presents them.

one further point - the "waste" is not really waste. It is just a mix of materials that is currently not used in reactors. But since the 80s we had functioning breeder reactors that could take this material and reprocess it. Yep - nuclear reactors that run of the "waste" of other reactors and turn it back into "fuel". Some of them were constructed in running in their preliminary phases but alter shut down due to the fear mongering over Chernobyl. We now also have reactor-designs that could directly use that "waste" as fuel.

It's only waste if you don't use it. As the prof. said, there are many useful isotopes still locked in those fuel rods that can be reprocessed. France which generates over 80% of its power from nuclear power is very aggressive at recycling their waste into other useful fuels and keeping their actual waste very low. If you take all those "waste" and reprocessed them, it is even less we have to deal with.

This channel, that's the good stuff!

Dude all this information about nuclear power on all fronts is super interesting! Great educational value!

Just the facts. Love it!

what a wonderful teacher!!

such an amazing video , i am hooked

The squeaking of the marker is sooooooooooooo satisfying.

Thank you for the amazing video!

I love your videos. Thank you from Portsmouth England.

If you haven't done a video yet on the topic, would you ever consider doing a segment on the use of vitrification of high-level waste, and how that works, as well as its potential cost vs benefits? I really enjoyed your content, will be watching much more! Thank you!

I am amazed not only with the knowledge but that you can write so nicely backwards.

This whole series of videos is incredible! Anyone that isn't trying to educate themselves about the changes in nuclear power technology isn't really serious about dealing with climate change or protecting natural habitats.

Your videos are excellent your knowledge is exquisite your means of explanation is intuitive and I cannot get enough of your videos

Outstanding Professor.

What a great professor. It’s incredible how i can sit at my kitchen bar and get a wonderful lecture for free($15/month, no commercials)

Finland is currently the only country digging one of those nuclear tombs. It may turn out to be unnecessary in the future, but it is the safer alternative, and I gather it makes people feel a little bit easier about nuclear energy.

You can't use Yucca Mountain because Stargate Command is already there.

I want to watch every video Professor Ruzic makes!

it's crazy people argue nuclear is safe, but you need all these levels of precautions and complications to kind of avoid any mess

Let's get one item perfectly straight. You "burn" U-235 and it turns into fission products; some of the inert ingredients turn into transuranides. That and the inert stuff is all in the spent fuel. Very good. There's lots of talk here about "burning" (that is, fissioning) the waste. That's perfectly feasible for the transuranides, the long-lasting (20,000 years scarry stuff) mildly intense radioactive wastes. Most of them, like the plutonium, are fissile, and so are ready for adding their bit to civilization. That can be done. The fission products, on the other hand, cannot be so burned. Trying to do so in a reactor will only result in more highly radioactive fission products added to those created in the burning. The only way to handle fission products is to cask them and wait for them to decay. They are fairly fast (and therefore highly intense, compared to the tranuranides). Most of those will be decayed away in about 300 years. All the FPs released in the Chernobyl disaster have already decayed to about 40% of their original values. So the LFTR people can quit saying that they burn all the waste. They don't and cannot. They can certainly burn the scarry long-lived stuff, and that's all we care about. The rest can rest in cans much safer than coal ash waste dams for the relatively few years needed. That is, the stuff that can't be profitably chemically separated out and used commercially.

I love you youtube videos' you need to teach everyone!!!!!!!!!!!! i cant stop watching your video's and the writing backwards is awesome

I love how you explain the measurements of radiation, ive watched other videos and they just say the doses people get but often use 3 types of measurements but i dont know what they all are compared to each other but you did great explaonong it

Great content. On top of that, he wrote backwards (mirror) text the whole time. Amazing

So what do we do with the waste? Well, the first thing we do is take them out of the reactor 😂. I've been binge watching this guy all day. Going to have myself a PhD by tomorrow morning. Seriously tho, good stuff!

Very good explanation. I had the same thinking of leaving the waste at the powerplant. Curious if this idea will be picked up.

thanks for good intro, Prof 👍

Outstanding lecture

very interesting!!!

Those dry casks stored above ground at plants like that would be a prime target for terrorist attack. Imagine the mess if someone dived a plane into the group of them

Can I use it for my house water heater? BTW the professor is awesome! We should have more nuclear plants sounds super safe.

“Compared with all the other waste systems we have in the US ... “ That’s a very important statement. Nuclear gets a bad rap. It’s high in our consciousness bc of Chernobyl, TMI and Fukushima. But if we only knew how many other chemicals we dump into the environment DAILY far surpassing nuclear ... causing health problems ... we’d spend more of our energy on those chemicals than the boogeyman of nuclear waste. Nuclear is a drop in the ocean compared to conventional chemical waste. ☮️❤️

I love your youtube channel. I'm not a nuclear scientist (well, maybe an armchair nuclear scientist), but I continue to be fascinated by the energy locked in the atom, and really think that it's the best base load source we have now, and for the most part, it's pretty darn safe. TV shows like Chernobyl have done well to show how the accident there was entirely preventable and 100% human error. And as long as we continue to learn from history, it will be safer and safer in the future.

The problem with above ground dry cask storage is that it lacks protection from something like a terroristic attack or an act of war.

Good, informative video. But it did drive my cat crazy. *squeak*squeak*squeak*

Nice informercial

I want one in my garden. Just to annoy everyone around. Sad that its not glowing like in movies... that would be best garden light in the world...

The main thing I have learned after watching numerous videos from Illinois EnergyProf and other nuclear scientific channels is that Nuclear energy is the energy that WILL save us if we just utilize it correctly. The second thing I have learned is that there is far more misinformation regarding nuclear energy than there is correct information, and the people of the United States are horrendously misinformed and misguided about nuclear energy.

"Worrying about the small amount of high level nuclear waste is probably not the smartest thing to do" Everybody gangsta until Vnimanie Vnimanie

I've learned more with this guy about nuclear physics and radiation than all my 10 years of clases in college

Ahh, the perfect way to store forever radio active waste - the opperational word here is Perfect.

love this guy

The dry storage option seems way too optimistic regarding the enthusiasm of our socioeconomic system to monitor and maintain critical infrastructure.

Prof can you make a video on next generation nuclear reactors that take the nuclear waste and use it to make more electricity like the molten salt nuclear reactor designed by Transatomic?

I see nuclear waste as almost never ending sorce of energy.

News flash... not all nuclear waste comes from power plants. A lot come from nuclear powered submarines, air craft carriers etc as a DOD truck driver I moved a lot from Olympia, Washington, Sunny Point, North Carolina and Groton, Rhode Island.

I’m constantly distracted at his ability to write backwards.

That is so interesting ! I love learning about this topic. I'm still trying to get more intuition about it all. For example, the fuel pellets - is each one it's own self contained nuclear fission volume ? That is to say, when a neutron is emitted, it is absorbed within the same fuel pellet - it never crosses whatever void is there to interact with another fuel pellet. Is that understanding correct ? Thank you.

My only problem with the dry cask storage is the potential for terrorists to get hold of the material and use it for a dirty bomb. At least when the casks are stored 1000+ feet underground, it's protected from terrorists.

I dont get why this channel has 70k subs. It should have 700k+

I love it how fast he writes mirrored. ;-)

what an overkill procedure for something that's easily able to be watched

Well, there goes my next business idea making affordable nuclear waste containers out of recycled 50 gallon drums and packing peanuts. Why does it always have to be so complicated?

I like how it's April 2021 and youtube still says this video was upgraded a year ago

Yucca Mountain waste disposal is a very good idea but Germany or Eurpean only have salt mines which are unstable .

Maybe a dumb question. Is it possible to strip away the nuetrons from the transuranium atoms to transmutate it back to useable material? Or would that use more energy than created during the 3 years it was used?

Did he actually learn how to write backwards. Respect

I like it, it’s just the screeching ahhh!

For some reason this is my favorite video by this awesome Professor. Plus it's also great to know the real truth about nuclear waste, not some amped up malarky by the news media warning us the earth is in danger of blowing up or some nonsense.

How about the other fission byproducts like Cs137 and Sr-90?

How do you write backwards so well?

Very interesting! although I must admit the glass vitrification of nuclear waste seems much better than relying on the protective effects of concrete over 100's of 1000's of years.

The elaborate disposal of the radioactive waste must have a pretty stiff cost: the storage in a special water pool for years, the encapsulation of the material, transportation, the everything-proof cave for permanent storage, etc. does not come cheap. Are these costs factored into the profit / loss accounting of the nuclear power plant?

You mention the high level waste but what about Strontium-90, Iodine-131 and Caesium-137,isn’t that mix in with with these other fission products ? Plus isn’t there also Tritium too?

Is it possible to use some high energy particles to split the waste? To something shorter half life?

I'm guessing this is filmed behind glass, with a front-projected periodic table onto the glass, then the video is mirrored in post?

You should add the cost of this to your analysis of Nuclear vs Gas.

Just want to note that I'm impressed with his ability to write clearly backwards on glass.

Looks like he needs an up-to-date periodic table. The last of the elements were officially named in 2016.

I agree the commercial power waste is virtually a non-issue, but I would be interested in the professor's opinion on how to handle the Hanford, Washington wastes

But how do we store all the waste CO2 of oil, gas, and coil in a contained and geologically stable fashion?

In the pic at 7:06, I don't think the thing sticking up out of the water is a fuel rod; it is either a dummy or a tool being used, or perhaps a rod that's been in the pool for more than 5 years. When refueling, the spent fuel rods are extracted from the flooded reactor, moved through a water channel to the pool, kept at least a meter below the surface at all times. When fresh, they would be frightfully dangerous out of the water from their gamma radiation.

Wait 'til you find out he isn't left-handed, but The Dread Pirate Roberts!

What does the HLW eventually decay into? Just a non radioactive heavy metal?

is there a loss of mass that can be corrilated to the energy produced? mas to energy?

One mans waist is another mans treasure. Hello David, I firmly believe at some day we will find a way to use the Alphas, Beta's and Gamma's for energy production but my question is where the waist fuel rods are put on a pool of water to cool. Can this be a secondary way to create electricity via steam production using the fuel rods?