coming up next to its planet, a looking at the recycling nuclear waste and why we don't do more of it for us and get all the latest news information anytime you want on our website at w dot com. i'm terry larkins, thanks for the long voyage through the ocean and mother how well was the cost for a long time, they had to be a humans on the journey. now the trenches have become very protective of whales until the results of the ocean conservation start september full dw, i've done a lot of reporting on nuclear waste. this from the line contains over a 100000 barrels of radioactive trucks. i also went to the world's fast permanent storage for nuclear trash. but one day i stumbled upon

a crazy fact that stopped me in my tracks. there's still over 90 percent of the energy left in the nuclear fuel rods when we throw them out. this is such a crazy number because we usually only use nuclear fuel for a couple of years and then it just sits around and stays radioactive for tens of thousands of years. the kicker is that actually up to 96 percent of spent? nuclear fuel is recyclable. but surprisingly only very few countries are we using nuclear waste? i wanted to find out why. and the best way to do that is a visit to the undisputed leader and usually a recycling front. so that's where we're headed. the we're going to the one and only nuclear recycling plant in the country operated by the company o'rando. it's located about 5 hours away from paris at one of the very the wisdom.

most tips from the country has the highest share of nuclear power in the world. about 2 thirds of its electricity comes from nuclear plants, and all of the country spent nuclear fuel gets transported here to be recycled. this is still valid and he's been working at the site for nearly 20 years. so, so this is on the ground and we have $24000.00 rooms in the plants. it's a huge maze. during the visit, unit 12 is if there was a concert munition, then you leave this in the facility and not your best in the the 1st we get into the place where all the used fuel arrives. ringback this is a transfer station test, the complete task to wait one and drug and samsung. it's very easy because we need to process from read your activity in this one, we have some of the moments. oh,

there is some, there are some in there. and we can stay next to that to see you, don't you? oh, you can, you can see the eats. sometimes it's a very close to lazy inside. it's around $2300.00 degrees celsius. but as the, the task is made, we still, we are fully protected against magicians. that's crazy. i've never been this close to radio. we have one just like this one. building. and you see we have all those ready to be unloaded. the right, that's the moment when we go into the new pill area. so i would just have to activate this. so that's, that's the doesn't mean. so if something happens, it tutoring. so you can

see inside step one is taking the fuel roads out of the transportation costs. nowadays, most of the shoes are coming from pulse. today, instead of more than 95 percent of the fuse are coming from the country. but we also have 4 in the contracts. we've never lance we've, let's try the answer and we also provide doing recycled fuel to folds up and the fuel rods are taken out in these completely sealed of chambers with remote controlled machinery. the process is operated from the controller and then the was transported to the next area where we get to step to the cooling. so you all very close to one of the storage pools. so we can see that we have baskets down here in the baskets. we have video cues,

so we have told me sales of was all on some of the residents project. this is really strange there to be this close to this for me. i have them, i am the value of it. the rod spend 5 to 7 years in this pool until they have cooled down enough to be processed further. we use it 5 years to understand why most other countries consider them waste. we need to take a quick look into how nuclear reactors work. basically, nuclear power is created by splitting atoms, also called fission. one specific type of uranium love splitting up. when a neutron hits it, it breaks apart and releases more neutrons. these neutrons then hit all the uranium atoms which also split, causing

a chain reaction. when the atom split inside the reactor core, they create heat that he then boils water, which produces theme, which then drives a turbine. this split and creates by products called fission product. after about 3 to 5 years, they build up so much that they absorb, neutrons weakening and slowing down the chain reaction. and that's when the fuel rod is declared spent. the problem is that according to your physics, it's very hard to get more electricity out of this type of nuclear fuel safely. there are a handful of other types of reactive way more of the energy can be used continually . but those are mostly experimental, very expensive and complicated to build and maintain the majority of nuclear waste around the world sitting around on used. so what's left is mostly uranium that doesn't like to spit up that much fission product. antonia, and this will turn here is one of the big reasons why the, on that many countries doing this. but we'll come back to that later.

so that's one of the fuel lines here. the next step is this assembly and separation band as though we have the chemical process. everything is inside of new bel sales . we found the windows. we only use it since sol between hostile can sand robots on drones. inside to make measurements to check that the equipment is okay. the chemical process consisted in cigarettes in your, on your printer, you know, and fission clinics. first you separate the metal cladding from the fuel pellets, then you put them into nitric acid, to solve them. after that, you put the solution together with a solvent, had extract the uranium and plutonium, leaving the fission product behind. then the chemical is added that changes the state of the plutonium, letting it separate from the uranium deficient products which make up about 4

percent of the waste unlock recyclable. we'll get back to these later. this uranium can be used in regular nuclear power plants instead of mind uranium, but this process also produces purified, plutonium. and that's where it gets interesting. one grime of plutonium represents the energy equivalent of one metric ton of oil. and this is the not so peaceful part of nuclear technology. and the 1st we then why recycling is less straightforward as it sounds. because that plutonium is also what makes nuclear bombs. so destructive nuclear weapons are usually produced with dedicated military technology. but you can also use recycle plutonium from civilian reactive like india in the 1970s they extracted plutonium from a can do we offer canadian designed reactor using us supplies nuclear fuel? this is allison mach falling. she used to work for the us nuclear regulatory

commission. and this really terrified the us government. and so that's when the us in definitely deferred reprocessing and wanted to set an example for the rest of the world because they now saw that reprocessing was a great threat in terms of nuclear weapons for corporation. so what does the ronald do with the plutonium today? it's a product that's we have to take care of it because it can be dangerous because we have many, many protection so that around those ships, the purified, paterny and all the way across the country in secret using specific trucks. and this quoted by the french army, they are the company mix it with uranium to make something called mox fuel. this fuel can then be used in regular nuclear reactive. this whole process means that the operators can use up to 70 percent less fresh uranium. in the energy, so in photos, that's in the sense of duty. precision is genet richards at fax to them execute.

but there is still one pesky little thing left. even off the recycling, all of this deficient product, which brings us to the 4th and final step of the recycling process. the cruise vacation, that's when deficient products are trapped in gloss. and they are stored where we're headed now. exactly. so i'm just below my fits the floors to me tells speak bill nice if you have a pitts with 9. can you still on top of jo this? so when i spend like this, i've got 18 tennis girls. that's the space you need for one nuclear power plants approaching during one year. i got 5 rows by 20. that's one

year of wasteful falls. if you did not recycle, how much more room would you need? 5 times more than this. so the victory sideways means less space. the whole tripping last thing also makes it safer. but it's the same if you don't recycle the lifetime, use the same. the kansas, the stored year year after year for now, until fronds completes its final storage site, which is supposed to start construction in the coming years. so sounds neat. yes. but the biggest hurdle here as is awesome, the case is cost. the $24000.00 rooms the security needed, the transportation costs bespoke technology. all of this cost a lot of money. just buying mind uranium using it once and throwing it away is cheaper. the price of uranium is rising, but it's still quite abundant. the way i explained or honors recycling process was extremely simplified. this is what it would look like if i'd showing you the entire

video. and not many countries know how to do this at scale. russia is the 2nd biggest recycler reprocessing, about the 10th of what fonts does. india also reprises its own waste and is planning on expanding its capacities. china has one demonstration planned and is currently building more the u. k. used to recycle a gave up a couple of years ago also because it was too expensive. japan has been building a reprocessing plan for over 30 years with massive delays and cost increases. but out of $32.00 countries that use nuclear power, that's it almost made the choice for recycle a long time ago. more than 60 years ago. that's a false. it's a very strategy way to do. so right to, because we have a strong faults of electricity which is produce when you fail to, to succeed. so it's logical to of on then this is also why the entire recycling

operation is state owned. so is the operator of all the nuclear power plants in the country. fonts, just locked in that strategy through 2014. but right now, their recycling much more than they can reuse most of the recycled uranium is sitting around at another location and could be used if uranium becomes more expensive. plus recycling does it reduce the amount of extremely radioactive waste . but it also creates another problem. those chemicals and all the other equipment and other materials that you use generate a lot of ways, or it's not, you can't just go in and pull out, you know, with tweezers. and the once recycled mach fuel isn't currently recycled again. so it also becomes waste after another couple of years. so this is frances way of doing things, but there are other ways of recycling being researched right now. like tyra processing shown here by the aga national laboratory use as molten salt and high

temperatures, to separate out recyclables and doesn't produce fuel latania. so it's less risky. but it's all still in the lab. and like with everything nuclear, other methods will probably still take a very long time to scale. and because this is still in the experimental phase, we really have no idea how much it will cost. meaning it doesn't seem like the price problem will be correct any time soon. so as with many other things right now, it's cheaper to just use version materials. recycling seems like the logical thing to do, but with nuclear power even that doesn't solve the problem of having to store ways for hundreds of thousands of years. it might make sense for countries that are determined to build up this technology. no amount of the costs, like russia, china, india, or of course fronts. another beta, cheaper technology may come around, but it doesn't seem super likely right now. the nuclear waste that's piling up is

a resource. it just doesn't make sense for everyone to tap it. the face sparkle, big laser shimmer, and shine diamonds are rich, regal, short for our way to make you feel like a queen, or at least the princess from wrappers to robbers and romantics, diamonds inspire and to rouse our emotion. when i saw this diamond stairs, i mean what makes the mistake cause this most mythical lift gems? the i don't actually own the diamond myself, but i've always been fascinated by them.