Page 3 - Uranium Pellets News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Once finished, they are highly radioactive waste that could be dangerous for thousands of years. and that's the problem. how do you dispose of nuclear waste? >> actually, how2you dispose o that stuff is just one problem with it. there's a whole different problem that is happening right now. but seeing it being built like that is helpful for understanding what we're dealing with. you saw those little pellets of uranium, right? they're between between like tootsie roll sized and cadbury egg-sized uranium pellets. those pellets are stacked inside these thin 12 foot long tubes. they are metal tub...

Used up eventually. your 12 foot long fuel rod full of the uranium pellets lasts about six years in a reactor, with the reactor turned on, the fission process over about six years uses that uranium fuel up. it becomes something they call spent fuel. and when they call it spent fuel, what they mean is that it is degraded enough that even though it is still wicked radioactive, it is no longer efficient for doing what nuclear power plants are supposed to do, which is generating a lot of heat, boiling a lot of water, making steam that spins turbines that make electricity. so here's the problem. af...

Particles being released by those damaged spent fuel rods. by those uranium pellets in the big now probably damaged metal tubes. this is not a nuclear explosion. there are not nuclear chain reactions going on here, but this is a means by which radioactivity is being released into the atmosphere, and the question is whether or not those fuel rods, even if they're already damaged, whether they can be resubmerged. japanese officials floated the idea of helicopters dropping water on them today. they raised the idea of fire trucks or fire hoses being used to get water on them. we're now going to tu...

Technology and material, the actual physical stuff that is going so wrong right now in that japanese nuclear power plant we have all learned so much about in the last few days. one thing we found in our tape archives is affairly amazing piece of footage from anne thompson from nbc's chief environmental affairs correspondent. p a this aired right after barack obama was elected president in 2008. what anne is setting up, what she's talking about, she's setting up a discussion about the politics of nuclear power in the united states. but what i want you to focus on is what she is showing as she i...

Seeing it being built like that is helpful for understanding what we're dealing with. you saw the pellets of uranium. some tooth see roll size and cad bury egg sized pellets. those pellets are stacked in these thin, 12 foot long tubes. they are metal tubes, basically filled with pellets of uranium. that's what we call fuel rods. that's essentially the business end of a nuclear reactor. big long fuel rods, mounted vertically, inserted into a steel containment vessel. what's happening inside when the reactor is going is a nuclear reaction, fission. atoms splitting. instead of creating a nuclear ...