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

Episode date: November 4, 2025 | Hosts: Josh Clark & Chuck Bryant

Main Theme & Purpose

In this episode, Josh and Chuck tackle one of the thorniest, most persistent issues in energy and environmental science: what should we do with all the dangerous nuclear waste generated by decades of nuclear power and weapons programs? They demystify what nuclear waste really is, break down the various types and how they're currently handled, survey global efforts (including Finland's "permanent" storage), and explore emerging ideas that could safely recycle or neutralize this hazardous byproduct. Throughout, they keep things approachable, humorous, but also serious about the stakes.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Pop Culture vs. Reality: What Is Nuclear Waste? (01:41–03:42)

• Chuck sets the tone with a Homer Simpson joke, highlighting how pop culture ("green goo," glowing rods) misinforms us about what nuclear waste really looks like.
• Josh clarifies: Most nuclear waste is NOT green or glowing. Some is sludge-like, but typically we're talking about solid metal pellets.
  • "The closest you can get to that from what I can tell is toxic nuclear sludge that is described as having kind of a peanut buttery consistency—which is gross and dangerous, you know." (Josh, 02:45)

2. What Actually Happens to Spent Nuclear Fuel? (03:42–07:14)

• Spent fuel: The “most dangerous kind” is the burned-out uranium pellets inside fuel rods.
  • Size: "About midway up your thumb" (Chuck, 03:59) — roughly “half a thumb.”
• After five or six years in a reactor, these rods become "spent" and must be replaced.
• Since the 1940s, no country (until very recently) has come close to a truly permanent disposal method.

3. The Surprising Scale of Nuclear Waste (05:11–06:43)

• Each individual American’s ‘share’ of lifetime nuclear waste: About the size of a hockey puck.
  • “If you took all the nuclear power that you used... all of that nuclear waste would be compressed to about a hockey puck.” (Josh, 05:43)
• Nationwide, it adds up: ~90,000 tons in the US alone — "Eye-popping, but not that much," per Josh; the issue is how dangerous it is and for how long.

4. Nuclear Reactor Basics & What Happens After (07:14–12:07)

• Quick refresher on nuclear power: Uranium pellets in fuel rods boil water to create steam, generating electricity (no emissions!).
• Spent fuel is initially moved while still underwater, via canals to "spent fuel pools."
  • These pools are “huge... about 40ft of water in it... and they stay there for years because they're so hot and so radioactive.” (Josh, 11:09)
  • Keeping them underwater prevents explosions and environmental release of radioactive elements like cesium-137.

5. Dry Cask Storage: The “Temporary” Solution (12:44–17:42)

• After years in pools, the (slightly) less hot rods are zipped into giant dry casks: huge, thick steel and concrete containers stored above ground “out back.”
  • “That’s what they're doing, man... you stay here until we can figure out what to do with you 100 years from now.” (Josh, 13:47)
• First used in the U.S. in 1986, these casks are rated for about 100 years — but the problem is that clock is already ticking, and it’s not a true long-term fix.

6. America's Long-Stalled Permanent Solution: Yucca Mountain (16:31–18:50)

• The U.S. tried (and failed) to build a geological repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, but local and political opposition (and President Obama in 2010) shuttered the project.
  • "So it's just totally in limbo." (Josh, 17:42)
• For now, “consolidated interim storage sites” in Texas and New Mexico are proposed, but all solutions are interim. At current rates, even the biggest sites fill up in about 15 years.

7. Finland & The World's First "Permanent" Repository (22:17–28:23)

• Finland's Onkalo Facility: Deep-bedrock repository, 1430 feet down (220x an Olympic pool for scale), storing spent fuel assemblies inside steel and copper canisters, surrounded by swelling clay (bentonite) for a tight seal.
  • “The clay...forms a seal around the canisters. And we just have to hope that they did the math correctly and it doesn't pop the canisters open from the surrounding pressure.” (Josh, 24:17)
• Can store waste for centuries; claimed to last 100,000 years — but the hosts note the “permanent” designation is iffy given things like climate change, earthquakes, or societal collapse.
  • “Nobody knows what's going to happen in thousands and thousands of years, so you can't really call it permanent.” (Chuck, 22:25)

8. How Long is Nuclear Waste Really Dangerous? (25:58–28:06)

• Huge uncertainty: Depending on whom you ask (and which isotope), the danger may last decades, centuries, or millions of years.
  • Notable isotopes: Iodine-129 (half-life: 15 million years!), Cesium-131 (30 years)
  • “It's just all over the place. And that actually is a little bit unnerving.” (Josh, 27:27)

9. The Vast Majority Is “Low-Level” Waste (28:23–29:28)

• Only 3% of all nuclear waste is the dangerous high-level stuff — but it accounts for 95% of the radioactivity.
• Over 90% is low-level: gloves, clothing, tools, concrete — decays to safe levels in 20–30 years and treated like regular landfill.
  • U.S. has four disposal sites: SC, WA, UT, TX.

10. Transuranic Waste & Weapons Production (29:29–32:23)

• Waste from military plutonium production lasts millions of years (“transuranic waste”); stored deep in underground salt at New Mexico’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.
  • "We did an episode on nuclear semiotics...trying to figure out how to communicate with people 10,000 years in the future." (Josh, 30:43)

11. Decommissioning Power Plants & Liquid Waste (32:38–36:23)

• Decommissioning creates more low-level waste, but the most concerning material is always the spent fuel.
• The cooling water from nuclear plants is cleaned and then dumped into nearby oceans/rivers.
  • Chuck expresses skepticism about this solution’s safety: "I just don't see how that water can ever be good enough to dump into an ocean or a lake." (35:26)
  • Josh: the main defense is dilution after removing as much radioactive material as possible.

12. Emerging Solutions: Recycling and Beyond (40:27–50:43)

• Many spent rods still have TONS of energy — just not enough for traditional reactors.
  • New, more sensitive advanced reactors could use them, or reprocess the materials into new fuel pellets.
  • “Oklo...estimate[s] that the unused spent fuel that we're talking about just burying...could power the entire United States for the next 150 years.” (Josh, 41:43)
  • Oak Ridge, TN, recycling pilot project: up to 94% of uranium recoverable.
• Problems: Security — risk of weapons proliferation if plutonium is recovered.
  • “That’s a huge risk, but it’s not something we can’t figure out, you know.” (Josh, 43:54)
  • Some skepticism that AI interests (like Oklo, funded by OpenAI’s Sam Altman) are driving these innovations primarily for their own power needs, not humanity’s at large. (45:12)

13. New Tech: Transmutation, Glass, Ceramics (46:52–50:42)

• Transmutation: Bombarding the most dangerous parts of waste with neutrons in particle accelerators to make them less radioactive.
• Vitrification: Embedding nuclear waste into glass or ceramics, creating stable, sealed logs.
  • “You're actually trapping the radioactive particles in glass, not inside glass as part of glass. It's really genius.” (Josh, 48:56)
• Even if we can't use the energy, extracting the "worst" waste and leaving the rest would dramatically reduce the long-term problem.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

With timestamps and attribution:

• On pop culture vs. reality:

  • “I mean, it's just hard not to think of Homer Simpson when you're talking about nuclear power at all.” — Chuck (01:59)
  • "Nuclear waste doesn't really look like that. It certainly doesn't glow green." — Josh (02:17)

• On U.S. solutions:

  • "We're just basically stashing it over here until we can figure out what to do with it in the long term. And we've been doing that for half a century.” — Josh (09:08)

• On Finland’s deep storage:

  • “The clay... forms a seal around the canisters. And we just have to hope that they did the math correctly and it doesn't pop the canisters open from the surrounding pressure.” — Josh (24:17)

• On the timescale of waste:

  • "Nobody knows what's going to happen in thousands and thousands of years, so you can't really call it permanent.” — Chuck (22:25)
  • "It's just all over the place. And that actually is a little bit unnerving... if anything, you should err on the side of caution." — Josh (27:27)

• Humorous sidebar:

  • "I did not get the memo that we have abandoned Big Macs in favor of, I guess, Olympic pools." — Chuck (24:33)

• On disposal skepticism:

  • "I just don't see how that water can ever be good enough to dump into an ocean or a lake." — Chuck (35:26)

• On recycling the “unusable” waste:

  • "The idea is to just bury and forget about it. And it's so stupid that it actually could be considered a lucky break that Yucca Mountain didn't work out back in 2010. And it's in limbo because it bought time for people to come up with other ideas rather than just bury the stuff—that's just such a total waste." — Josh (41:43)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 01:41 – Pop culture vs. real nuclear waste
• 03:42 – Types of nuclear waste, how spent fuel is managed
• 05:43 – Personal scale/amount of waste generated per person
• 07:14 – How nuclear reactors and fuel assemblies work
• 12:07 – Why spent fuel stays in water (risk of explosion)
• 13:45 – Transition to dry cask storage
• 16:31 – The failed Yucca Mountain project and the “interim” problem
• 22:17 – Finland’s deep repository (“Onkalo”), methods, global implications
• 28:23 – Breakdown of high- vs. low-level waste and transuranic discussion
• 30:43 – Communicating danger to future civilizations (nuclear semiotics)
• 32:38 – Decommissioning old reactors & cleaning/dumping coolant water
• 40:27 – Renaissance of recycling nuclear waste: potential and obstacles
• 46:52 – Transmutation, vitrification, futuristic nuclear waste solutions

Takeaways & Conclusion

Josh and Chuck ultimately communicate that the world has postponed dealing with the fundamental problem of nuclear waste for decades, often leaving spent fuel in temporary solutions with time-limited security and environmental risk.

There's hope in advanced reactors, chemical reprocessing, options like vitrification, and even particle physics—many of which could convert radioactive waste into less dangerous material and potentially extract useful energy. But these all come with hurdles: money, public trust, international security, technical limits, and huge timescales.

Meanwhile, as Chuck puts it, the best anyone can do is:
"Go forth and recycle your uranium pellets in your home." (Chuck, 50:46)

Further Listening

• Nuclear Energy episodes (including Fukushima and Can Nuclear Fusion Reactors Save the World?)
• Nuclear semiotics episode

This summary skips advertisements and non-content sections, focusing on the core discussion on nuclear waste—its science, challenges, and possible futures—as delivered in the original engaging, humorous Stuff You Should Know style.