Who the hell are you?

I just found your channel today and I must say that I love your sense of humor, and that I find your videos very intriguing. ☢😁

@@jipangooshes Sabine Hossenfelder, a scientist. you are jipangoo, the most lowly form of goo.

Why do we all agree that fossil fuels are a problem? I disagree. Energy is not electricity. It is necessary to burn something in order to obtain not electricity, but energy to create something: Goods, heat, tools. The blast furnace is not powered by electricity, it uses fire.

So forget the nuclear waste and the cost of safe storage. Solar and wind plus battery storage is waaaay cheaper, safer, and as reliable, and all can be recycled. Oh, and there's radiation and meltdowns to guard against, and years of engineering and construction and safeguards.. So who cares about nuclear? Makes no economic sense out of the gate! And the nuclear waste of a shut down plant, whoh.

Putin is reliable at releasing propaganda.

In this analogy Putin is like well recycled nuclear fuel in a breeder reactor(20times the original energy content). Uhh that's too dark even for me 🤣

Think of fuel rods like world leaders, toxic for years after they have 'retired '

oh oh, that's good 😂 I like this game 😋

Think of fuel rods like world leaders... when no longer useful, need to be entombed in an underground bunker

✍️✍️✍️✍️🤳🏿

I don't remember Sabine swearing and it only made it hit stronger 😂

@@piotr5566 Exactly. If you always choose your words wisely, you can make your words matter more in each moment.

"every once in awhile, something blows up and we're asked to close our windows and pray that the shit dilutes quickly!" Now that's pretty much a matter-of-fact attitude right there. Nicely done, Sabine; it's not worth getting ourselves into a conniption fit over it all!

Its interesting how everyone knows about TMI, Chernobyl and Fukushima, two of didn´t kill a single person. But hardly anyone know of Bhopal chemical plant accident, that killed 20 000. Also Banqiao Dam falure that killed about 170 000 people. And then there are stuff like Great Smog of London that people have a vague knowledge of, but don´t know that 5000 people died of acute respiratory problems... yea.. they suffocated.

Only in Troma Films is that possible. "The Toxic Advenger."

Quite so. The various movies of high level radiation producing yard long dangerous ants are amazingly stupid. See J.B.S Haldane "On Being The Right Size" which points out that large insects would need complicated things like gills or lungs, of which they have not the slightest trace. Supplying oxygen is more complicated than flying, or seeing things, or even in the case of nectar-fueled insects finding nectar!

Yeah, that sass.

Nice comment . . .

She's hilarious all the more so, as her droll delivery just keeps moving on while the joke hangs out there.

@@courtlandcreekmore1421 This is my most favorite type of comedy, when the comedian dwells in it as little as possible, not at all is best, let me figure out if it's funny or not and how I should react.

"...Take my Neutrons! PLEASE!"

Sabine tries to dumb the basics down so 'special needs' folk *might* understand physics, 'and stuff', that is her fault

Hi, Saying that you haven’t seen videos of Sabine before sounds a bit more friendly than ‘this woman’. (Just a friendly hint)

​The person probably didn't confidently know her name when commenting. (Just a friendly observation).

THIS

😂😂😂😂👏👏👏😘🤣🤣🤣🌹

@@slink4956 well, viewers keep growing, so mayority has spoken, we love it. That's democracy. Learn to accept it... ✊

@@slink4956 To avoid a hangover, never mix the gripe and the grin? 😂

World leaders are far more toxic than nuclear power plant radioactive waste is a great comparison

I always wondered why there are only French and British humour sitcoms on television thinking the Germans had no humor but it justs takes time for the roasts being "not too soon". It's like they are avant-garde in the area. Who knows we someday see the humour of 40-45. Just joking here, love German M.O. and we all are reminded by Russia again how people get forced in doing stuff that they do not endorse. Roast the leaders not the crowds!

A 7 year old German boy who has never spoken a word is sitting at the dining table one evening. Suddenly, he said, "My soup is tepid." His parents are overjoyed, but eventually, his mother asks , "Darling , why have you never spoken before?" the boy replied. "Until now, everything has been satisfactory.

There's a lot that can happen in 100,000 years. She massively underestimates the duration. 100,000 years ago modern humans just started appearing in Africa. 10,000 ago humans were still in the Stone Age. Being so sure about a sketchy hypothesis is unscientific.

@@George.Andrews.😂

@@TomCruz54321used Uranium rods could be re-used in thorium reactors that would incinerate plutonium. (Source Wikipedia)

Elsewhere containers are leaking and radioactive waste is contaminating groundwater. We should not be messing with the most dangerous materials known to man.

the more you know...

U-238 pellets are going to be the Tide Pod Challenge for Gen Alpha.

* cancels Deliveroo order *

She had to include it in case an american would try to do something that stupid..... Then she she can't be sued... I guess the rest of the world will go for the "If you are so stupid you will try to eat it, then it really can't be anyones problem than your own"-approach. 😉... I mean in Europe no one can sue people because you are peeing on an electric fence.... If you can't figure out it is a bad idea without a warning, then you really deserve the pain 😂😂😂😂

And it's good to know that eating one new pellet a year is fine as long as you live in a low radiation area.

If Yucca were to experience an eruption, now tell the informed viewer how much radiation would be released even without nuclear waste in the mix.

He4 will flow harmlessly through the containers just as it does through everything else. They will lose their charge and eventually make their way to the surface where they could be collected and used in theory (The same process under salt domes that contain oil deposits causes it to be in natural gas where we collected all the world helium from, yes every helium balloon has nuclear waste inside of it.) Your worries about disposal do not take into account the extremely low volumes produced and the ability for certain extremely small elements to travel through containment. It will not be an issue as described.

@@mikeburkart8028 He4 is inert and not radioactive and as a decay product itself not direct harmful. He4 is a producer of leaks in the depository due to induced gas pressure and will open the door through the barriers for the radioactive ☢️ harmful isotopes into the biosphere. Therefore the He4 caused cracks into the barriers is the main problem for the safety of a deposit of highly radioactive heat producing waste and is really dangerous and must be considered in the safety assessment.

Wow!! Superbly detailed! Any studies of how to bleed off the He4? On a lighter note, if the Sheriff of Nottingham can't help, how about Robin Hood?

Smoke detectors use Americium sources. Thorium is probably most abundantly available in gas light mantles. I cannot recommend using any radiation source in an attempt to boost cognitive ability.

Are you familiar with responsive sarcasm/humor? I was rather hoping on a funny response, not being taken seriously. Still can't believe I got fact-checked on a joke.

@@guyvandenbroeck8405 I thought my response was a real knee-slapper.

You forgot to mention where the samples come from. Was it coal power plant ash?

@@jannikheidemann3805 He said "industrial and mining byproducts". Doesn't sound like it's from coal ash.

@@thenonsequitur we're talking about two different sets of samples, totally different industries and locations. The scary cyanide samples came from mining. The less scary radioactive samples came from a nuclear reactor.

Corporate lobbyists approve this message.

Interesting, thanks for your comment!

He will end up being the last man standing on earth! Lol

But Cher will be. Dating someone much younger, I bet.

Don't be too sure of that

Bwahaha😂

@@johnnybgoode7983 I have a notion that all the drugs & alcohol in his system has pickled his organs and made him immortal.

10 years after removal, the surface dose of a typical fuel assembly (24.000 half-life) is10.000 rem/hour.

I would add that Sabine uses the right amount of humour on her videos.

Here's the problem with measuring safety by rate of fatalities: The well-known paradoxon that that fatalities might be low precisely because of high awareness of unsafety and lots of safety measures. For example, if you meaure the safety of street types for bicycles and you go by fatalities, you might find that a German Autobahn is safer than a Dutch bike lane - because hundreds of thousands of people cycle on the bike lanes and virtually no one on the Autobahn, and even if one ends up on the road, they will be extremely cautious. Similarly, a worker in a water mill might be much more cavalier with safety precisely because the risk is lower.

@@Nebufelis "a worker in a water mill might be much more cavalier with safety precisely because the risk is lower." If workers being cavalier causes more fatal accidents, then that's a work culture problem _and it makes that workplace less safe than one with a better safety culture._ The risk is not lower. The risk is higher. You are more likely to get hurt working there, which is the bottom line of risk. No one is saying nuclear power doesn't have potential hazards. But if those hazards are mitigated through combinations of hazard removal efforts, engineered controls, safe procedures, and a strong safety culture, then I don't see the issue in saying that this is, in all the ways that matter, a safer work environment than one that lacks these things because there's a failure to perceive potential hazards and therefore gets people hurt. The statistics bear this out. Nuclear is the safest power source by far. _How_ it gets safe isn't the question, what matters is that there's objective and indisputable proof that it _is_ the safest in terms of injuring or killing the fewest people.

@@wasd____ ..potential hazards!!!!!

@@Trylobyte Yes, there are many potential hazards at a hydro plant. All that water has a lot of energy. Read the stories of what happens when those dams break.

She was talking about the process by which work is extracted...i.e. via steam turbine. She was not talking about risk at that point.

Yes the concept is laughable.

Remember in the USA, the top few percent of income earners pay almost all the taxes, and the bottom quartile pay no taxes.

@@donkloos9078 Hahahahaha

@Don Kloos , income-earners aren't the problem. The real problem is untaxed generational wealth.

@@jonathangwynne1917 Inheritance tax is confiscating people's private property that has already been taxed many times over. Socialism does not work and killed almost 150 million people last century.

More generally, I/3 of fuel rods are replaced every 1 and 1/2 years and I was told by ingineers nuclear waste is mesured in Curies.

engineers sorry

@@marcwinkler The use of Curies has been deprecated and the new SI unit for specifying the activity is Becquerel.

@@Psychx_ You are right, 1gr Radium - 1 Curie - 37 000 000 000 becquerels

do all her listeners know German? I know that KZfaq also groups people by their location and Berlin is one of this channel's meta tags, so it could very well be that this basically is a gathering of one person that has English as a second language lecturing to a bunch of people with the exact same linguistic background .. also, nur mal so meine Mutmaßungen dazu 😅

Actually the proliferation of world ending weapons is up there with the problem of waste. Safe storage of waste requires best practice over decades if not centuries. The track record of large companies not caring about anything other than short term profits tells me that the good ideas of this video will not be implemented. Not saying we shouldn’t look at nuclear. Just saying let’s be honest.

@@raoul1234567 You can't make nuclear weapons with nuclear waste, you can only make dirty bombs; which while bad aren't really on the same scale. And as shown in the video the simplest storage method is "put it back where you got it from", which doesn't suggest any imminent danger.

@@PlatinumAltaria No you can’t. Weapons are made by tweaking the fuel cycle and enrichment of the same fuel used to generate electricity. Can’t think of a nuclear powered country that doesn’t have or doesn’t want nuclear weapons. Seepage of nuclear waste from faulty containment into groundwater is a real risk as is radioactive water from tailings dams at uranium mines. That’s not theoretical. That’s has already occurred many times.

@@raoul1234567 No, weapons are made using highly-enriched uranium. It's not a process any individual is going to be able to do, you need HUGE infrastructure. You should really just look this stuff up, nuclear waste does not make nuclear bombs, it just doesn't. Stopping countries from keeping the lights on is not some kind of noble anti-war crusade, it's demanding that old ladies freeze to death because you don't understand science. Mine runoff is nothing to do with nuclear power, it's a problem with all mining that can be solved with proper planning.

@@raoul1234567 At least they won't be implemented if things are decided by companies.

It's dry humor, which is like food. Some people just don't get it.

@@CR67 But this is just DARK humor. Like the skincolor of many people who don't get enough food.

Still just a little more to work on, though. Maybe just the faintest hint of a smile maybe?

@@rand49er the lack of the smile is what makes this kind of humor work though.

the humor seems very... "German." I love it.

@John smart Let's bang, ok?

A 2 hour lecture from Sabine would be perfectly fine with us

You're measuring the wrong dimensions for nuclear waste. You're measuring it in space, when in fact it needs to be measured in time.

I mean China gets to keep building Coal Plants while Americans aren't allowed to drive gas powered cars anymore, and in Ireland they want to get rid of all the Cows. How is any of that fair? The UN shouldn't be able to do any of those things until China is shut down for the sake of the Earth. If you aren't going to do that, THEN GFTO!

Yeah, it’ll be somebody else’s problem long after we’re gone!

@@outerspaceisalieok let’s measure in time. How many years until carbon dioxide is decomposed?

@@igortolstov487 My God...do the world a favor and read a basic science text.

she always uploads on Saturday 😉

And the toxicity of it is contained in a very small volume

The Swiss use nuclear for 35% ish of their energy needs they've been doing it for around 30-40 years, they can fit all their nuclear waste in one room, its a big room, but still.

@@Prometheus7272 - If they did actually put it all in one room, would it go critical? (Only half kidding.)

@@sirrathersplendid4825 You'd get meltdown before it went critical. If you kept on throwing waste into the molten puddle on the floor, it'd get hotter and hotter until it melts the floor and forms a radioactive gas cloud. Getting it to explode requires it to be crushed together quicker than it can melt and vapourise. Not trivial.

@@MattOGormanSmith - Interesting answer. Cheers!

Apparantly, most vitrified HLW has stability issues. The glass tends to anneal into distinct domains with crystal boundaries, especially with ongoing decay heat. As fission products get excluded from the annealing glass, it accumulates in the interfaces and become available to travel through the material and corrode the encapsulating container. Other issues are as you suggest. Too costly for a start. Direct disposal of intact spent fuel has the advantage (touted elsewhere by others) that the pellets are a more robust matrix and sealed in zircal jackets (not counting broken ones), and that the reactors have the handling devices to put these directly in casks with minimal future handling if those casks could be disposal-rated. It is also difficult to process into a form that leads to proliferation risks. In contrast, reprocessing results in two waste streams needing different treatment and disposal facilities. It also concentrates plutonium which then becomes a proliferation and security risk. France has reprocessed about one third of all their spent fuel, and has huge interim stockpiles of both vitrified waste and plutonium. It seems that reprocessing is more expensive than expected, and creates two types of waste that each need more fiddling around than the original intact spent fuel. It multiplies the problems rather than solving them. Something similar seems to happen with the noble attempts to re-use spent fuel. After reprocessing the separated plutonium is added to depleted uranium, plus a top-up from excess weapons material to make MOX. Used MOX has a more diverse set of plutonium bombardment products, in particular U236 and it's product U232 which complicate almost every subsequent option. Or as you suggest, they may not care. The spent fuel inventory increases annually and seems to remain in the "too-hard" basket. No one is willing to allocate the money to do it properly.

Please remember that the reason we have natgas (and oil) in geological reservoirs under high pressure, with methane being an incredibly volatile and tiny molecule, is that nature has put a lid on it for tens of millions of years.

Please remember that fission products are soluble in water and can percolate through salt domes. Natural gas is not water soluble. The two examples are not comparable in practice, though nuclear boosters love to pretend.

yes we can. Its called laws.

Oh, I hope so! 😁 Just listened to Between the Buttons---a great album. Their music has a longer half life than plutonium.

This is absolutely a topic I'd love a 2 hour lecture on! I once watched a 5 hour video on nuclear power and waste straight through without stopping 😅 I'm here for it!

@@b_dawg_17 Agree. 💯 But also the way it is presented matters; she does it so well. 🤗

Start with the economics of storage. Do you think the companies that profit from the making of nuclear waste will be the ones to fund the safe storage? If not, who will? Yes...the public. This is NEVER mentioned when we discuss how cost effective it is. Then, let's look at a world map 100,000 years ago, 50,000 years ago and 12,000 ( during the ice age ) and tell me a storage location that will be suitable. Anyone? Now, the comparison between nuclear waste and other forms of waste from energy production. Basically, this argument boils down to, "they make pollution now, that they could deal with, but don't...with nuclear they will suddenly be concerned about by-product magically". Seriously...I expect better from Sabine. This is where her sarcasm should hit...instead she basically says "well they don't purify waste from coal, but nuclear waste storage will be faultless so it wins" WTF?

@@yt.personal.identification you clearly are an Alien that never bothered to engage or even observe Humans. These Biologicals in their current Evolution will NEVER as a Group do Shit that benefits them as a Group. These Biologicals are to Combative to EVER achieve a Planetary Solution to Topics like Energy Prouduction or Health Care and Education as a Group, a Corporation or Research Institute might do that and then a very interesting aka bloody Time will ensue. The Last Super Power on this Mud Ball keeps it's Citizens in debt on Principle to make sure that a few Control Hungry Biologicals can Feed their urges instead of making all of the above Topics avilable to their Citizens in an achievable Matter. Nuclear Power Is a potent and Right now cheap Energy Prouduction Method, with a high cost for the Public in the Future. It will die when Humans invent a new Method, aka cold Fusion. Until then political needs will dictate the availability of Nuclear Energy to the Public. It Is Not that hard to Understand that, so the question Is what YOU do Not understand about that in regards to this Info Clip. Shine Bright and stay Healthy

@@yt.personal.identification Let's just burn every hydrocarbon in existence then, because nuclear bad. Kek.

@@egparker5 it is based on their behavior.

@@egparker5 If you don't think the oligarch class deserves digs, you are part of the problem.

@@egparker5 Sure is; much like my prejudices against other toxic things. Speaking generally, the top 3% control the world and are hastening its demise. There are a few honourable exceptions within this group.

11 year-olds don't like being told that we have to stand on a huge giger counter and if an alarm goes off the take us, strip us and shower us really well... Obviously everyone was fine...

It was used for making isotopes for Nucular Medicine, not power...

Until there’s an accident

​@@ptech88Statistically still safer than living next to a coal station.

@@ptech88 next to nuclear storage an accident might happen, and it might make you sick. Living next to a coal plant you'll definitely get sick, no accident required. Since the coal plant being there IS the accident.

@@tharealmb nice point

Nice pick for a lobby pr spokesperson

@@sensationsuperthrust I would call you a Troll, but I do not insult Robots. Find a mirror, and think before you speak...

@@damonreitmeier4539 beep boop beep boop :V

And music, don't forget about her music :)

She does has a sense humor

Did you mean shining?

Holtec international has a well thought out storage plan for spent nuclearfue it's above ground in New Mexico far away from any large metropolitan area the dry fuel storage casks are stored in a retrievable manner in a nice safe place, in fortunately United States spent fuel recycling was shut down it was a silly act that industry would have to be restarted be because the working knowledge has been lost there would be an initial learning curve hopefully short. The government will most likely have to get in volved, btw I have over forty years as a radiation protection tech notion and a couple of short stints as an engineer.

I've always considered scientists and lies for huge money schemes involving inflated fears inextricably bound. Sabine is a wonderful example of a fisisist well versed in lies.

And propaganda. She won't be around when Earth will have become a radioactive wasteland, so what does she care? Remember Tchernobyl and Fukushima? More such accidents are to be expect as we rely more and more on aging installations and overconfident and careless personnel.

@@davidnewland2461 Please reread and correct your text. Also add punctuation. You may be an engineer but your explanations make litte sense. "spent nuclearfue it's above ground in New Mexico " what is? "United States spent fuel recycling was shut down it was a silly act that industry would have to be restarted " Etc...

Is that in Egypt?

It just seems true that we need Fission ASAP now for baseload, perhaps gas from grass by ecotricity and hydro for peak time, until we arrive at a nice clean harmless renewables grid? :)

@@jannikheidemann3805 haha, No, it's in CA. Molten salt cooled fission reactors. Nice try.

@@TheHorseshoePartyUK The public image of fission power has recovered some of the lustre that it had in the 60s. Now that the balance of concentrated power justify the negative implications of concentrated waste it's a better trade off than fossil fuels and the harm those emissions do to the climate. Many people are coming to this conclusion. It's spawning a renaissance in atomic energy. Thanks.

@@Quroxify I've heard the latest generation of full size fission reactors are even safer than they already are in good hands? People mean well but they do not quite realise - Fission has been running silently in the background for decades with only one real catastrophic meltdown and a handful of admittedly tragic, but small scale 'minor accidents' where material has escaped into the public and caused serious problems

I believe this was very limited, and long ago. Naval reactor cores use highly enriched uranium. Historically 97% U235, more recently 93%. At end of life these cores still contain far more U235 than natural uranium. They are highly desirable for reprocessing and as a feedstock for existing enrichment plants. They are however a handling nightmare. The fuel have seen ten times the duty of ordinary fuel rods, in an environment with a very rich neutron economy. The zirconium jackets will be much more degraded and fragile, as will the fuel pellets themselves. They contain many times the concentration of fission products of civilian spent fuel. They require longer periods in cooling pools, and more remote handling at every stage until isotopic separation. This happens at Savannah River, but most details are completely classified.

@@aaroncosier735 I don't know if it was the uranium or just the reactor parts that became radioactive that was dumped. Regardless, there's plenty of cooling down there. I am aware of fuel reprocessing. In fact, Canada's CANDU reactors can be used to burn a variety of materials, including plutonium and enriched uranium, IIRC. There is also chemical separation, but that brings it's own problems.

@@James_Knott Only the actual fuel elements need cooling. The housings are usually just iron that has had some small percentage converted to Cobalt-60. These are routinely buried in shallow soil. Yes, CANDU can wring a bit more production out of other types of spent fuel. An extra 20% from standard PWR low enriched fuel. It's a miraculous doubling or anything. Deep-sea disposal is now deprecated. There is no control over escaping materials, and no feasible consistent monitoring.

I just commented above about burial in deep ocean basins - in those basins the likely hood of some unanticipated process occurring (new riff zone or volcanic hot spot) is very low

BY DRINKING STAR : "... AND NOW, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE MOST POWERFUL ENTITY : ....O...P...T...I...O...N.... HUH ?!? YA CHOOSE : TO SLEEP OR ....PRAY.... YEAAAAAAH....LOVE

@Sabii Bryan SABRYAN🤣

I should consider this the night before an exam

She doesn’t mean drugs.

I live on the US Gulf Coast near Houston, and there are gigantic chemical plants near me from Dow, BASF, etc. And we have some coal fired plants. Texas has a lot of wind power, but in the end our electricity in the greater Houston region is still predominantly fossil fuel based. And I would much rather live near a nuclear power plant than near a chemical plant, or our coal fired plants. Wind would be great, except there isn't room for that many wind turbines near our city.

@@alvarofernandez5118 What's the matter with coal fired plants? They don't pollute, they emit plant food.

@@vtbn53 Coal plants emit huge amounts of pollution, including radioactive particles.

@@vtbn53 yeah... nope. They emit burnt plant smoke and ash. :-)

Sabine long ago made up her mind on nuclear energy - she is for it. This video makes a show of objectivity but ultimately confirms her prejudices . . .

@@jamesneilsongrahamloveinth1301 Well - Is it good for environmental groups? I figure Greenpeace has a few prejudices as well as some others.

Yes, it's possible with fast neutrons reactors. However the Greens hate these even more than ordinary reactors, and successfully killed all of these in Europe.

The Pu 239 can be reprocessed into fuel. The problem is that it can be used to make a nuclear bomb, by people with a much lower technology level than needed for a uranium bomb.

@@mikesmith2682 Then we should just make sure it’s processed and used on-site as fuel. Even other radioactive isotopes can technically be transmuted with high energy protons/electrons or used as radioactive sources in industry.

yes, you can further "convert" problematic isotopes into something less harmful using energy. this principle is an even rather old idea. I believe that currently, you'd have net loss not just in that converting process, but overall .. know what I mean? but should like nuclear fusion become a reality, this problem/issue could be tackled. that's why it could be a wise idea to not just bury everything (apart from other potential use cases we currently have no idea of/about like maybe even in medicine). I'm sorry should any of this already be part of this video as well .. I'm yet to watch it 😅

@@cezarcatalin1406 Yes, but there is an energy or neutron budget the facility has to meet. Many (most?) reactor designs don't produce enough extra neutrons to transmute the nasties, and building a big enough proton gun, etc., will cost a LOT.

Re waste: We've done the experiment in the real world of a nuclear waste repository leak. It's called the natural underground nuclear fission reactors at Oklo, Gabon. They ran a few billion years ago, running on and off for millions of years. From this, we can say how far the nuclear waste moves in a water rich environment with absolutely zero kinds of artificial containment. From the core samples, the plutonium moved 5 ft. Nuclear waste disposal is easy, safe, and cheap. You are grossly misinformed about the dangers of radiation. Please find the proper scientific sources and educate yourself instead of relying on Green energy NGOs that are probably funded by fossil fuels. You can find links to many primary scientific sources by googling the following two articles which include many citations to primary sources: "The Guardian the unpalatable truth is that the anti-nuclear lobby misled us all" and "Dr Bernard Cohen the myth of plutonium toxicity". 22

Please consider why we have natural gas despite very high pressure and it being a very volatile gas. Nature put a lid on it for tens of millions of years. Burial is easy and safe, even if even that can be botched.

@@jesan733 Want to google how much of that stuff leaks around for decades on end in some places and then make an educated guess how well that would work with radiating waste? Your example is a very good reason why "bury and forget" might be the second worst solution to nuclear waste after shooting it into space.

@@BugMagnetit really takes a strong bias to be confronted with clear evidence and arguments that burial is great and can easily hold the waste for 100x longer than requirements, yet conclude that this proves that the method is awful.

@@jesan733 Not really, if all that evidence is "It can't hurt us if we can't see it" Putting kilotonnes of some of the most dangerous materials created into an utterly unreachable place hoping it just won't go wrong for longer than our species existed is hardly a sound plan. And what evidence? Whababoutism towards chemical waste is no evidence. "Should be fine" is not either. And your claim aims at a bare minimum of 10^7 years. In half that timeframe our contintents won't even be recognicale anymore but sure. That spot we bury waste in will be fine.

I can't tell if it's entertaining or annoying like the drunk old lady at the bar telling you pointless story's

That wisdom is also a reason for the idea not to record for future generations where the storage sites are. And why I don't think creating an ominous monument over the deposit site is a good idea. It would just spark tourism, and sooner or later the tourism board of the resulting village or the manager of the "ancient spikes" casino would decide to drill for ground water in order to better serve the tourists.

@6:15 the cite of 400 M tons of hazardous waste is useful for comparison, and nonetheless omits a far larger waste stream in billions of tons that is harmful to the environment. These include the like of overburden removed off the top of coal mines, ie entire mountain tops, and other mountains of coal ash with its heavy metals etc. Mining for the materials used to make solar and wind farms will similarly have waste streams in the millions tons per year. The point is that the waste for non nuclear energy is not thousands of times larger, but a million times larger and unconfined.

@@Nill757 As I understand the video, waste from uranium mining isn't included in the comparison. Which obviously you have to do if you want to include that kind of waste from other energy sources. As for wind power, using wind power would reduce waste because wind rotors are made from fiberglass. The base for fiberglass is petroleum (oil) which is mined anyway but would have to be mined less than now because wind power replaces energy from burning oil and gas. The fibers are made from silica which is just the main ingredient of sand. There is no wasteful mining operation from using wind power compared to any other energy source maybe except hydro (which uses large amounts of concrete where the raw materials happen to be mined in wasteful mining, but concrete is used in building wind turbines too). Hoover Dam used roughly 2.5 million cubic meters of concrete and produces 2 GW electric power. A wind turbine uses 1000 cubic meters of concrete and produces 5 MW of electric power. So Hoover Dam uses 6 times more concrete per generated MW of power than wind turbines do and you can argue that wind power is even cleaner than hydro. Unfortunately Sabine didn't elaborate whether she rather would want to live near a nuclear waste site versus living near a wind farm which would be the real benchmark for comparing risk.

@@Rechnerstrom Uranium is mined mostly insitu now, and the amount is trivial including overburden compared to any other mining relevant to energy.

@@Rechnerstrom “live near nuclear waste cite” Currently, most nuclear spent fuel is kept in casks on the plant cite, ie a concrete can containing some rocks. Millions of people live nearby nuclear plants with these casks, which is 95% uranium no different from the U in the ground, and the residents don’t care. Unlike the early days of wind farms which went in the most remote sites, now ever larger wind turbines are pushing up against populated areas, and they are increasingly not welcome. Some 300 proposed new wind farms have been contested by local muni, and many rejected. Regarding material use, I often see these comparisons, and for some reason there is a seldom a wind *plus* whatever comparison, ie wind *plus* a fleet of gas plants and pipelines and storage caverns and drilling. Or, *plus* a mountain of batteries. Then, there’s all the steel needed for new turbines, and as the old ones come down the vast majority of the blades go in landfill, soon to be millions of tons of them. stopthesethings.files.wordpress.com/2020/05/burying-wind-turbine-blades.jpg

Bill Gates is on it .

How do we get people to do what we want? Start a religion! A solution as old as us.

Easiest solution is to place the nuclear waste in the backyards of politicians who lie and say it's clean energy.

In fairness, 3000 years after the Bronze Age cults people are still idiots, so why not imagine they will continue to be idiots well into the future? Sociologists tend to assume that past performance indicates likely future performance

@@henrythegreatamerican8136 nuclear energy is not completely clean, nor is solar, wind, or any other not clean. What is important is whether it is sustainable, and from my point of view it absolutely is. Currently, unless we want to sacrifice our civilization, there is no other feasible solution.

Next best low waste energy source is wind. Bonus is the waste isn't deadly for 100s of thousands of years. Also the cost to build, run, and decommission.

I support the motion to research this topic for an entire video's worth of facts and background. I've heard that a molten salt Thorium reactor is very safe in that the worst thing that could possibly happen to it is that it stops - no radioactive explosions are even possible. I also heard that you could just shred old nuclear weapons and spent fuel rods into them and the material would become part of the reaction until its decay to harmless stuff (that then needs to be filtered out somehow). Unfortunately I keep hearing about molten salt reactors or energy from Thorium only through sources that lack a certain scientific reputation. Seeing the matter dissected by someone like Sabine might actually contribute to our education instead of just spreading rumours.

Are they a thing? Yes. Do they work? Yes. Most important question: are they a significantly better alternative to the fossil fuels that are absolutely destroying the climate and damaging so many environments? Yes. Case closed, for anyone being rational.

Cynically, I think a big 'issue' hampering wider thorium use is that it doesn't help with nuclear weapons.

@@Tao_Tology That's not an issue. Plutonium production stopped a while ago because of various strategic weapons inventory reduction treaties and the cold war ending. Governments have a surplus of plutonium now, and tend to be trying to get rid of some of it rather than make more. The main issue hindering thorium reactors is the usual cast of idiots who know little or nothing about nuclear other than "it's scary" and have decided to obstruct at all costs without actually weighing the benefits.

John, several countries are developing modular molton salt reactors, the benefits of using these reactors are immense they are being ignored by many learned people and I can't think for thr the life of me why.

Very, very weak evidence. Might be true, but we don't have anything remotely close to firm evidence that it is true.

relax

You might want to google "ThorCon documents nuclear waste pdf" for a good and brief introduction.

Thanks for the interesting suggestion, I will keep that in mind!

@@SabineHossenfelder Thank You 🙂 I suggested that topic because I'm so much worried about Germany and UE 😞 ❤

@@SabineHossenfelder Yes, and compare that to the stranglehold fossil fuel and "green energy" companies currently have...

@@ztheiss Is there a monopoly on solar panels? Is there a monopoly on wind turbines? Is there a monopoly on hydropowerplant construction? Is there a monopoly on deep drilling for geothermal power? There certainly is not a monopoly on fuel production for those types of energy generation; they don't need any.

The IAEA has a map on their website showing all known deposits of uranium. The EU has loads of it, even Ireland is rumored to have enough in Co. Donegal to last for centuries.

But the real numbers, comparing to renewables, tell a totally different story. Sabine loves nuclear, and has not bothered to look at the economics of nuclear versus renewables.

A number means nothing without the understanding of its representation

@@luc_libv_verhaegen Could you elaborate a bit? Especially on the first sentence? and: "renewables", such as wind and solar, are inherently intermittent which has some very significant disadvantages, to say the least

@@jonathanjomen See my back-of-the-napkin calculation as a toplevel comment for the details of that.

@@luc_libv_verhaegen Thanks for replying - but I can't find it. I know it is not intuitive but could you link to it? ... copy paste the address next to the timestamp - which is next to your avatar name That will link to the video, with that comment thread shown first, at the top. ... or just copy/paste the content of that comment here?

In the London Underground the Central Line tube had a temperature of 36°C/97°F in the summer of 2018. It started with 14°C/57°F in the summer a century ago. We seem to have no intuition for that.

@@gviehmann Haha, I though about the exact same thing when reading OP's reply

@@gviehmann Is that really 100yr long-term accumulated heat from all the trains and people, or the result of more trains and usage producing a rather shorter-term equilibrium? That 36C is presumably the summer peak - what is the average and seasonal variation, and is it asymptoting yet? I know some of this heat is being used for district heating systems. Presumably we could do quite a lot more of that and thus cap the long term rock temp?

​@@xxwookey Too many questions. The main point is that the temperature of the Tube is not in equilibrium, although it is an open system and there are already measures to cool it. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_cooling

@@gviehmann Useful links. Which answers my main question. So the ground temp has risen from 14 to 22 (average) over 100 years. I wonder why it started at 14? UK ground temp at that latitude is 12ish. Apparently it was already unusually warm for some reason. I see they've only recently got regenerative braking which will make a huge difference to how much energy is dissipated down there.