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Charles W. 'Chuck' Bryant

👤 Person
1271 total appearances

Appearances Over Time

Podcast Appearances

Stuff You Should Know
What To Do With All This Nuclear Waste?

So it's really just a blip of radioactivity that decays in that two to five years.

Stuff You Should Know
What To Do With All This Nuclear Waste?

But what they're really doing is cooling that stuff down

Stuff You Should Know
What To Do With All This Nuclear Waste?

Because if they even pulled it out to transport it and didn't do so in a canal, it seems like it would just combust, right?

Stuff You Should Know
What To Do With All This Nuclear Waste?

Isn't that the idea?

Stuff You Should Know
What To Do With All This Nuclear Waste?

That's very funny to me that you keep liking it to throwing it out back in a pile.

Stuff You Should Know
What To Do With All This Nuclear Waste?

So for the first couple of decades that we had this stuff, all of it was just in those cooling pools.

Stuff You Should Know
What To Do With All This Nuclear Waste?

But those pools started to fill up.

Stuff You Should Know
What To Do With All This Nuclear Waste?

They're all on site.

Stuff You Should Know
What To Do With All This Nuclear Waste?

It's not like they have to transport them, except very locally via canal.

Stuff You Should Know
What To Do With All This Nuclear Waste?

And then they said, hey, these pools are filling up.

Stuff You Should Know
What To Do With All This Nuclear Waste?

We've got to come up with a better way.

Stuff You Should Know
What To Do With All This Nuclear Waste?

They started looking into the dry cask method in the 70s, and I think in 86 –

Stuff You Should Know
What To Do With All This Nuclear Waste?

in the United States at the Surrey Nuclear Power Plant in Virginia is where we had our first dry storage facility.

Stuff You Should Know
What To Do With All This Nuclear Waste?

And these casks are about 20 feet tall, eight feet in diameter, weigh about 100 tons.

Stuff You Should Know
What To Do With All This Nuclear Waste?

And in that cask is several dozen of those fuel assemblies.

Stuff You Should Know
What To Do With All This Nuclear Waste?

And again, those fuel assemblies are made up of

Stuff You Should Know
What To Do With All This Nuclear Waste?

the individual fuel rods that are holding the pellets.

Stuff You Should Know
What To Do With All This Nuclear Waste?

So several dozen of those stack together, sealed inside a canister, they bolt it shut, suck out the air and replace it with inert gas, and then that steel canister is surrounded by a thick concrete wall and they throw it out back.

Stuff You Should Know
What To Do With All This Nuclear Waste?

Yeah, for sure.

Stuff You Should Know
What To Do With All This Nuclear Waste?

Right now, the U.S.