Month: February 2024

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Rhetoric Blog 4: “Nuclear Waste is the Safest Waste.” YouTube Video by Kyle Hill

Recently, I came across a video by one of my favorite online science educators, Kyle Hill, which featured a thumbnail of him kissing a cask of nuclear waste. In the video, Hill visited the Dresden Nuclear Power plant in Illinois, showing viewers the facility, particularly the spent fuel pool and the dry cask storage of nuclear waste, to inform about how nuclear waste is really stored and why people shouldn’t be worried about it. The video definitely has a pro-nuclear view to it, however this is supported by sound evidence, as Hill states that he wants viewers to be informed enough to form their own opinions on the matter. 

Hill uses his credibility as a well-known science educator to assure his audience that the facts he is using are based on evidence and research; with over 2 million subscribers his channel has a reputation for sharing accurate information. However, Hill’s ethos does conflict slightly with his persuasion in this video, since his channel is also known for being pro-nuclear. This slightly discredits his claims of the safety of nuclear waste, since he has a known bias.  

However, Hill is still able to use logic to promote the idea of the safety of nuclear waste. He uses objective evidence in the video, such as dosimetry (radiation detection readings) to show that the radiation near spent fuel or dry storage casks is less than the radiation received when flying at high altitude. Similarly, Hill also, in a manner conducive to clickbait, gets close enough to a dry storage cask to kiss it, showing the objective fact that our radioactive waste storage methods don’t cause any harmful effects. Additionally, this action also appeals to pathos in a way, since it invokes a slight fear and unease in the viewer for Hill to be so close to nuclear waste, however this tension is resolved once it is shown that there are no negative health effects. Highlighting this tension and resolution helps viewers acknowledge their own apprehensions of nuclear waste and reveal that these fears are rooted in false knowledge.  

However, the point of Hill’s video isn’t just to prove that nuclear waste is safe, it’s to prove that it’s safer than the waste from other forms of electricity generation too. One of the most powerful statements in the video was when Hill quotes, “Where is the waste from a nuclear power plant? It’s in the spent fuel pool; it’s right here (points at fuel storage cask). Where is the waste from a fossil fuel plant? It’s in there (points to lungs), it’s in the air, it’s in the water.” By using strong rhetoric based in factual evidence and logic, Hill is able to effectively communicate the misinformation around nuclear waste storage and promote a better understanding of our current safety. 

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American Nuclear Waste: Store, Dump, or Recycle?

Although nuclear energy promises one of the safest and cleanest forms of electricity generation, it’s impossible to ignore its ugly drawback – nuclear waste. While nuclear waste does not pose as drastic a danger as popular media would suggest (there have been zero recorded deaths from nuclear waste), nuclear waste creates challenges in the fact that it remains radioactive for a long period of time and could, if not properly contained, harm humans or the environment during that timeframe.  

Some radioactive waste, low-level waste loses its radioactivity after a few years, so it is just stored in facilities for that duration, after which it can be disposed of in a conventional manner. Still, a considerable amount (around 20 tons per year for a 1000 MW reactor) of high-level waste is generated in the US, and this waste remains radioactive for millions of years. Currently, no solution has been devised to safely contain waste for this long, however there are three main types of short-term solutions that each have their pros and cons. 

Store on Site 

With a lack of federal action to control nuclear waste, nuclear energy vendors are currently obligated to store each plant’s waste on site. High level radioactive waste is first stored in pools for a few years, then it can be vitrified — the radioactive material is broken down and then melted with other radiation-absorbing elements to form a glass. This vitrified substance helps to contain radiation emission and is durable enough to prevent pieces of waste from fragmenting and spreading into the environment. Furthermore, this glass is then encased in a metal and concrete shell to further contain radiation and make the waste resistant to “earthquakes, projectiles, tornadoes, floods, temperature extremes and other scenarios” (NRC). These casks of concrete remain on site at the nuclear plant under continuous surveillance.  

Dry cask storage remains the most implementable solution to nuclear waste, but it is not without its problems. First is that communities living near nuclear plants are concerned with the minimal radiation released by these casks and would rather have nuclear waste shipped off-site. However, a greater problem is that dry casks are not a permanent solution. Although it is generally agreed that casks will last for at least 1,000 years, a lack of time for testing leaves uncertainty as to how casks will fare 100,000 – millions of years from now. Leaving this waste on the sites of nuclear reactors means that far into the future, radioactive contamination could potentially spread across many different areas in the US.  

Yucca Mountain: A Dumped Plan 

It would therefore be more convenient for future humans if all radioactive waste were stored in one national repository. Plans were originally made in 1987 by the federal government to establish a repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, where nuclear waste would theoretically be able to be buried for millions or billions of years without contaminating the environment. However, after issues with planning and with public sentiment, the project was abandoned in 2010 amid speculation of seismic and volcanic activity in the region, and a recognition of the Yucca Mountain site as belonging to the native peoples of the region. However, the Trump administration revisited the Yucca Mountain repository as a potential project in 2017, meaning that could be the possibility of a national repository being built in the future.  

Reprocess, Recycle 

But what if there were a way to reuse nuclear waste to power more reactors? After a fuel assembly’s 3-5 years in a nuclear reactor, only 50% of the fissionable isotopes have been burned up, and 95.6% of the fuel is still composed of uranium. It would therefore seem safe and economical to chemically process spent fuel, removing the highly radioactive substances (2.9% of spent fuel) and re-manufacturing the rest of the metal into more fuel rods.  

However, although this concept is currently a part of the fuel cycle in countries like France and Japan, American agencies see used fuel reprocessing as too risky to implement. This is a valid argument, since reprocessing purifies the plutonium in fuel. Plutonium is the element most easily made into atomic weapons, causing concerns that terrorist organizations might target reprocessing plants to catastrophic effect. Although all fuel contains some plutonium, for other storage methods of fuel this plutonium is naturally combined with highly radioactive elements, making theft deadly and nearly impossible.  

Additionally, the cost of reprocessing also poses an issue, since the cost to reprocess fuels exceeds the current cost of mining and refining natural uranium and storing spent fuel in dry casks. Perhaps there will one day be a more efficient reprocessing method, but for now the consensus of scientists and civilians seems to be against it.  

The Current State 

As of now, the US has a safe and efficient method of storing nuclear waste with dry cask storage. Even though it is not a permanent solution, it should buy the country enough time to implement the policies and technologies to solve the problem of nuclear waste for good. 

 

Sources:

 Hagan, Eva. “Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository: What You Need to Know.” greenmatters, 21 Feb. 2023, https://www.greenmatters.com. 

Jacoby, Mitch. “As Nuclear Waste Piles up, Scientists Seek the Best Long-Term Storage Solutions.” Chemical and Engineering News, 30 Mar. 2020, https://cen.acs.org. 

“Backgrounder On Dry Cask Storage of Spent Nuclear Fuel.” United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 12 Jun. 2023, https://www.nrc.gov. 

Von Hippel, Frank N. “Nuclear Fuel Recycling: More Trouble Than It’s Worth.” Scientific American, 1 May 2008, https://www.scientificamerican.com. 

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Rhetoric Blog 3: Matthew 6 – The Sermon on the Mount (Part 2)

In blog post 1, I wrote about the rhetorical strategies used by Jesus during the sermon on the mount to reach a rhetorical audience of the people from the countryside who came to hear him speak. However, as much as the Book of Matthew is a documentation of this spoken rhetoric, Matthew’s writing is also its own piece of rhetoric, directed at a different rhetorical audience.  

Written around 30-40 AD, the transcription of the sermon on the mount, and Book of Matthew as a whole, was written as an eyewitness account of Jesus’ life and teachings specifically for a Jewish audience. The exigent situation for documenting this account was that many people of the Jewish faith, particularly those in power through Jewish religious institutions, were reluctant to accept Jesus’ teachings either because of a lack of belief or a lack of information. The Book of Matthew responds to this exigence by informing its audience about who Jesus was and what he taught, and it specifically attempts to convince its audience of Jesus’ identity by referencing scripture from the Old Testament – Matthew cites the Jewish prophesies such as Isaiah 50 and Micah 5 in connection with Jesus’ birth and life.  

In order to best inform his audience about the character of Jesus, Matthew uses a deliberate structure for his rhetoric. This can be seen throughout the whole book, as it is divided into 7 (conventionally considered a holy number) sections, with each section showing a segment of Jesus’ life, and then a portion of his teaching that were exemplified through his way of life. Within these sections there is structure too, and this is perhaps most pronounced in the section of the sermon on the mount. Given over multiple days, the sermon on the mount contained a lot of information in its teachings. Matthew organizes these teachings into one clear and flowing passage, which helps readers better understand the sermon’s meaning. He breaks the sermon down into 3 parts – Jesus’ explanation of God’s kingdom, his main teachings about how his followers should act, and a conclusion. The main teachings are then further sorted into 3 main parts, and each of these parts have 3 subsections to record the necessary detail to Jesus’ teachings while still presenting each theme in a straightforward and easily understandable manner.  

Overall, I personally find the rhetoric used to structure this book of the Bible makes it particularly informative and persuasive one, as it incorporates a strong logos through its logical organization, and it is based on the ethos of an eyewitness to the events transcribed.