right, 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 list 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 radio active 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 you can see recycling fronts. 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 west and most tips of front. 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 visits you would have 12 is if there was a concert munition, then you leave this in the facility and logic. that's one of the of the past we get into the place where all the used fuel arrives. so this is a from spelled station test, the company just 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 the 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 cast 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 little day. 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 the, 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, australia and so, 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 roads are transported to the next area where we get to step to the cooling. so yeah, 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 moments of water on top of the best. that's product. 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 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 fissions. 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 to 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. and to turn you,

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 jimmy code 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 shake the jake with menchie's ok. the chemical process consisted in cigarettes in your on young person, 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 that extracts 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 purify 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 isn't that 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 19 seventy's they extracted plutonium from a can do we offer canadian designs 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 proliferation. 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 pools. but we have many, many protection so that ronald ships the purify plutonium 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 sewing process. that's in

the sense of genic, precision is genet richards at fax to them execute. but there is still one pesky little thing left even after recycling all of this efficient 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. and so done, just below my seats. the floor is to me to speak. the if you have a pitts, we've 9. can you still on top of jo this? so when i spend like this, i got 18. can you skills? that's the space you need for one nuclear power plants operating 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, fide waste 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, those are stored here 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 often 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 ronald's recycling process was

extremely simplified. this is what it would look like if i'd show 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 to recycle a long time ago. more than 60 years ago. but for false, it's a very expensive way to keep. so writing too, because we have a strong pulse of electricity which is produce with new,

fairly $260.00 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 they're recycling much more than they can. we use most of the recycled uranium is sitting around in 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. it's not you can't just go in and pull out, you know, with tweezers. and the ones for cycled mock seal is 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 pirate

processing shown here by the aga national laboratory use as molten salt and high temperatures, to separate out recyclables and doesn't produce pupil atanya. 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 waste 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.