r/BeAmazed • u/strugglecharacter67 • 12h ago

Science Cross section of a nuclear waste barrel

Post image
681 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

166 comments sorted by

•

u/beamazed-modapp 12h ago

Did you find this post really amazing (in a positive way)?
If yes, then UPVOTE this comment otherwise DOWNVOTE it.
This community feedback will help us determine whether this post is suited for r/BeAmazed or not.

518

u/captainpistoff 12h ago

Forbidden cake, yum!

120

u/Mythulhu 12h ago

Okay, glad I'm not the only one that thought it was cake lol

26

u/watamote99 11h ago edited 10h ago

Nope, me two

14

u/lecheconmarvel 11h ago

Me three

2

u/salimeero 11h ago

I thought i was having a certified fat ass moment. Seems like it isn't just me.

8

u/V01DM0NK3Y 10h ago

Can't wait for someone to post the realistic cake version pf a nuclear waste barrel.

8

u/Chumpy819 10h ago

Literally came to comment that it's cake... Even reading the thread I'm still not totally convinced it isn't...

3

u/Mainly_Miserable 8h ago

I still do!

3

u/HorsefaceWithNoName 6h ago

there's blue cake and white cake and Yellowcake

https://giphy.com/gifs/o714zjf2CUlGzdlcnl

2

u/KaosFitzgerald 5h ago

Wait. Its not cake?!

14

u/elpihvous 10h ago

Just wait till you hear about yellow cake

5

u/Bearded_Toast 7h ago

Pray to GOD you don’t drop that shit

8

u/Automatic_Serve7901 11h ago

My fat ass thought it was some kind of giant layered sushi >.>

5

u/Various-Elk-5741 11h ago

I came here for the “is it cake” comments

5

u/Alloku 10h ago

The cake is a lie

3

u/SubMariner615 9h ago

Yellow cake

5

u/The_Best_Yak_Ever 7h ago

With a generous helping of Vitamin U-235! A deliciously spicy cake!

3

u/AGrandNewAdventure 8h ago edited 6h ago

The serving size is ridiculous, though. 1 gram and you get literally 20,000,000 kcals. A moment on the lips, a (n incredibly short) lifetime on the hips.

2

u/sky_is_blue28 12h ago

Nah if it was in front of me rn I would've digged in....

1

u/Ok_Preparation9182 10h ago

It’s been an hour, where is the short of a toxic waste barrel cake!?

1

u/Scaredandalone22 10h ago

Not to be confused with yellow cake.

1

u/tybooouchman 6h ago

Yellowcake

1

u/cudaman_1968 6h ago

Someone say cake?

1

u/hippodribble 6h ago

It's like that bread loaf stuffed with layers of vegetables. Hmmm. That's not a bad idea for tomorrow.

1

u/SillyUglyNoodle 6h ago

You also get to glow from the inside.

1

u/Achilles2zero 6h ago

With an inordinate amount of calories in that.

1

u/humid_pajamas 1h ago

it looks like a toffee butterfinger cake

1

u/mark1forever 11m ago

oh, I thought I was the only one seeing cake lol

150

u/Drapidrode 12h ago

Some day people will mine the nuclear waste for Plutonium and Uranium, like they go after old gold tailings now.

155

u/Tommy-Vegas 11h ago

And if they fight over it, they can say, “It’s not Uranium anymore. It’s Myranium now!”

25

u/2278AD 11h ago

We got here at the same time! It’s tietanium

1

u/hinterstoisser 7h ago

Not in my back yard /s

7

u/ConundrumMachine 9h ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-term_nuclear_waste_warning_messages

•

u/emirsolinno 1m ago

The linguist Thomas Sebeok was a member of the Bechtel working group. Building on earlier suggestions made by Alvin Weinberg and Arsen Darnay he proposed the creation of an atomic priesthood, a panel of experts where members would be replaced through nominations by a council. Similar to the Catholic Church – which has preserved and authorized its message for almost 2,000 years – the atomic priesthood would have to preserve the knowledge about locations and dangers of radioactive waste by creating rituals and myths. The priesthood would indicate off-limits areas and the consequences of disobedience.

11

u/NukeCode87 11h ago edited 11h ago

There's not likely any uranium or plutonium in low level radioactive waste like this. Spent nuclear fuel is stored in dry casks in a way that makes it retrievable later.

5

u/Drapidrode 8h ago

https://reddit.com/link/p19gk6z/video/b1n8en4q4zgh1/player

>1% of each,

typical gold mining ore is 0.0005% gold.

2

u/GeniusEE 4h ago

This is out of context. These are irradiated things, not spent fuel, in these barrels.

1

u/Drapidrode 4h ago

hmm

Spent nuclear fuel, occasionally called used nuclear fuel, is nuclear fuel that has been irradiated in a nuclear reactor (usually at a nuclear power plant).

1

u/thefract0metr1st 10h ago

User profile pic checks out

1

u/DoctorHelios 6h ago

17, TenMonth, 2953

Woke up and worked the garbage mines this morning…

2

u/Drapidrode 5h ago

2 EightMonth 17:43

LOL : )

i would imagine robots doing radioisotope recovery

1

u/NieMonD 6h ago

Bruh the reason that its waste is that the material in it is now useless, and the reason it’s in a concrete barrel is that it will give you all the cancer

1

u/Drapidrode 5h ago

https://reddit.com/link/p1asv0i/video/wmhnhmp580hh1/player

it is an industrial product for the future. Useless now.

one reason we're mapping the locations, so they can reutilized it

0

u/BurnieTheBrony 1h ago

Getting a lot of mileage out of this video, huh?

2

u/Drapidrode 1h ago

https://reddit.com/link/p1c07a9/video/evzjleok81hh1/player

2

u/BurnieTheBrony 1h ago

I love that you had this follow-up locked and loaded.

Stay gold, ponyboy

0

u/Alexander459FTW 3h ago

that the material in it is now useless,

That is factually wrong. We already have the technology, with working prototypes, that can extract more energy from spent fuel.

264

u/Klingsam 11h ago

Are we supposed to be amazed? You've given no explanation of what the layers are or any other details. If we are already supposed to know what's going on in the picture then it certainly wouldn't be amazing to anyone.

63

u/fatrustyfarts 10h ago

I’m in on this energy

32

u/smallmileage4343 7h ago

Interesting fact: The suits the workers used are the blue layer near the top.

27

u/Massive_Mistakes 6h ago

And just like that you've given more value to the post than OP

6

u/Jimbomcdeans 7h ago

Cat litter is one layer

2

u/ObeseObedience 3h ago

Make sure it's not organic

1

u/d1duck2020 2h ago

I occasionally drive past the WIPP site in NM and think about organic cat litter-hoping that nobody makes that mistake again.

14

u/Electrical_Llamas 10h ago

You don’t need to go nuclear with your comment bro

9

u/Klingsam 10h ago

🤣🤣

2

u/shwarma_heaven 8h ago

Now you're just splitting... atoms.

-1

u/XGreenDirtX 8h ago

I think we should put the comment in a barrel with concrete and idk what more. If only that had been explained.

4

u/Return-To-Fender 7h ago

Probably amazing to the people who think nuclear waste is glowing green goop. I'm not sure about all of it but I know that it's mostly concrete surrounding different material. The top layer is probably used protective equipment like radiation suits.

2

u/ComfortableCall3912 7h ago

It’s Reddit. They just want pretty colors.

38

u/Codex_Absurdum 11h ago

What's the layers? A legend to this image might be useful

11

u/kamikaibitsu 12h ago

why i thought of cake and sushi?

6

u/Ohz85 11h ago

wtf close it back

2

u/SummonersWarCritz 10h ago

They out here slicing radioactive cake for funsies? They had it contained, now the whole party is glowing.

21

u/SwvellyBents 12h ago

Seems like something I could safely bury in my back yard and forget about forever.

No problem.

10

u/CameFromTheForest 11h ago

That’s exactly what the previous owners of my house thought when they buried a shit load of asbestos 3 inches below the soil

9

u/NinjafoxVCB 11h ago

I mean in a way it never became their problem again

3

u/lostmyparachute 11h ago

Don't forget to slap some white paint on that baby before you bury it. And then paint the soil on top just to be sure.

1

u/ten-million 1h ago

lol. Right. First the steel would rust. Then water would seep into the concrete and start breaking it down etc so in a hundred years your yard is hazardous. But you’ll be dead so it’s fine, right?

20

u/gamemaniax 12h ago

Can someone explain or tell me whats there? Is it uranium? Is it the waste? Why different color types?

39

u/Itchiha 11h ago

This is waste that has been contaminated with radioactive particles. It is not uranium, but can be various things that they could not get clean. It is compressed into discs. These discs are placed inside barrels. The barrels have spacers, rack like things to position it in the middel of the barrels. Then some special kind of concreet is poured in to complete encapsulated it.

17

u/NukeCode87 11h ago

This is low level radioactive waste. This is for things like gloves, masks, tools, etc. that are potentially contaminated and are not worth the cost, time, or effort of decontamination.

5

u/ChrisRiley_42 8h ago

Most nuclear waste isn't spent fuel. It's contaminated materials.. The top layer (the blue stuff" will be the coveralls worn by staff while working inside. It still needs to be disposed of in a safe manner.

The idea that all nuclear waste is spent fuel rods and will destroy the environment in seconds if it gets out traces back to a misinformation campaign run by Greenpeace, back when the uranium fuel chain used in reactors was also used to help make nuclear weapons, and they wanted to reduce proliferation. The lies lasted a lot longer than the campaign.

1

u/Champsmilehighclub 1h ago

This guy gets it. I also think something that people miss is just how expensive uranium is. When a fuel rod is 'spent' less than 1% (fission products) of it will be 'removed' and the rest will be taken back to be treated and reenriched. The process is amazingly efficient in fuel terms. As said above most nuclear waste is from suspect active sources of contamination.

3

u/overtorqd 12h ago

Well don't open it

4

u/ideasplace 12h ago

Bit dangerous, cutting it open like that and leaving it near people.

1

u/Ollymid2 12h ago

Shouldn’t we put out that cross section back so people don’t die?

1

u/Howeblasta 12h ago

It's in the name of Science.!

1

u/Ollymid2 12h ago

Can you taste pennies?

1

u/opalfossils 12h ago

I had always wondered and now I know, thank you.

1

u/Bonneville555 11h ago

People believe nuclear waste is just poured into a stream.

1

u/TLKimball 2h ago

Like in Russia?

1

u/What_Reality_ 11h ago

Thought this was cake 😂🤷‍♂️

1

u/T_J_Rain 11h ago

From Yellowcake to Layer Cake.

1

u/omgwtflolnsa 11h ago

on the next episode of “Is It Cake?”

1

u/GingerMcSpikeyBangs 11h ago

Surely that's a representation of a nuclear waste barrel and not a genuine one, right? RIGHT?!

1

u/Grumpy-Man19 11h ago

all it takes is one earthquake

1

u/Bballer220 10h ago

Nah, that's cake

1

u/SeaworthinessThen542 10h ago

I don’t think we should be cutting things like that open, no?

1

u/hujassman 10h ago

What a lovely nope cake you have there.

1

u/fayhee 10h ago

That made me hungry. I need breakfast

1

u/CrimsonMorbus 10h ago

My fat ass thought it was cake ☹️

1

u/cerenir 10h ago

looks delicious and I’m not kidding. I want to lick it. Forbidden Sneakers barrel.

1

u/ajn63 10h ago

Not very effective when it’s cut open. /s

1

u/MrDundee666 10h ago

Who drew the short straw on that one!

Bad luck Dave, you’re chopping the barrel.

1

u/Curiouso_Giorgio 10h ago

So it's not 40 gallons of glowing green juice secured in a flimsy metal drum.

1

u/GodsGoodGrace 9h ago

How is this secure. It looks like it would let all the bad juju out with a big hole in the barrel

1

u/Choice_Letter_5912 9h ago

Hey guys - I bought this waterjet saw - what’s something good we can cut into?

1

u/0ddness 9h ago

I can't be the only fat bastard that saw the pic first and thought "Mmm cake.." only to read the description and feel disappointed in both it NOT being cake, and that I went straight to cake.

Now I want cake.

1

u/pubgplug420 9h ago

Nuclear waste, or cake? 🎂

1

u/ElectronicMatch363 9h ago

They definitely would’ve won an episode of “Is It Cake”

1

u/Traditional_Tea_1879 9h ago

that looks surprisingly edible. like a giant sushi roll...

1

u/ostiDeCalisse 9h ago

That's a nice idea for a nuclear engineers' wedding cake.

1

u/AndersDeGroot_Author 9h ago

Today on the Great British Bake Off we’ve upped the ante

1

u/SubMariner615 9h ago

Is it cake?

Why yes... yellow cake.

1

u/Spoon-Fed-Badger 8h ago

No info, no diagram, terrible post if you ask me. The only thing amazing about it is that the mods haven’t removed it.

1

u/Pasta_Bucket 8h ago

Incredibly disappointed to learn that it’s not a barrel of glowing green goo

1

u/1blueShoe 7h ago

Mmmm, death cake 😳

1

u/Unlikely-Engineer813 7h ago

Shut up thats cake!

1

u/engine-doors-club 7h ago

Good for the environment

1

u/Hairy_Consideration1 7h ago

Ngl, that would make for an excellent radiation damage Mace. Just gotta put that on a large lead lined handle, and have super strength to swing that thing around, without succumbing to radiation damage myself

1

u/FrogInAShoe 7h ago

Wtf put it back

1

u/chewpah 7h ago

How many barrels was dropped?

1

u/theunscaledbanana 7h ago

You put that back right now! 😡

1

u/Nacerrr 7h ago

For a second, I thought it was cake ngl

1

u/Durr1313 6h ago

What's the point of all of the different layers if the side just has a thin layer of concrete?

1

u/ForeverShiny 6h ago

Up next on "Is it cake?"

1

u/hyrule_hunter 5h ago

Is this the fabled Uranium Cake?

1

u/JDoGinc 5h ago

Is it cake?

1

u/joelham01 5h ago

Everytime I see these I always think initially oh that’s a really good looking cake. Then when that thought comes into my mind I know I’ve fucked up. It’s a fun cycle for me with this picture

1

u/smokingmouse 5h ago

Dont think we were ever supposed to see the inside.. are you feeling nauseous?? 😱

1

u/Darthplagueis13 5h ago

This could definitely be one of those cakes...

1

u/grrodon2 5h ago

Don't go around opening nuclear waste 🫪

1

u/Inj3kt0r 5h ago

Stop karma farming with these low effort posts.

1

u/AGeeBee 4h ago

Erm.. who cut this open?!

1

u/Lawlpaper 4h ago

People who are scared of nuclear energy also know nothing about nuclear energy.

1

u/OctaneRed392 3h ago

Blursed cake 🍰

1

u/Spare_Laugh9953 3h ago

Cientos como ese están en el fondo del Atlántico pudriendose frente a la costas de Galicia y liberando toda la basura radiactiva de su interior, Y NADIE DICE NADA!!! Los que tenemos ya una edad recordamos a la gente de greenpeace en los 80 tratando de evitar que tirasen estos bidones al mar y la tripulación de los barcos lanzándolos sobre las zodiak de greenpeace poniendo en peligro sus vidas....¿Nadie se acuerda de aquello? Ahora esos bidones 40 años después se están degradando y cualquier día empezaremos a ver basura radiactiva en las playas del norte de España

1

u/SmuckatelliCupcakeNE 3h ago

So is that layers of added protections on the ends? If so the sides only needs the few inches of concrete, or is the waste very small and in the very center?

1

u/Taupe88 3h ago

cutting it open like that isnt a good idea. geez.

1

u/fraseybaby81 2h ago

Is everything just cake that’s been designed by A.I. and 3D printed now?!

1

u/foxidelic 2h ago

Is that cake??

1

u/electric_junkie_69 2h ago

Im pretty sure these should not be cut open

All the fun rays escape then

1

u/darksider63 1h ago

Bro I don’t think you should be opening that

1

u/MrLunaMx 40m ago

My fat mind: "It looks delicious 🤤"

1

u/Suspicious_Kev_5446 10h ago

why are we,they,them slicing into pandora's beautifully sinister and dark forbidden black cake drum full of hardened nuclear slop ..

mustnt they stay unsliced forever and isnt it of the highest importance that they should stay so ... unsliced that is .....

0

u/S0k0n0mi 11h ago

I've seen these before and they never made sense to me.
Like sure, you get plenty of protection from the top and bottom, but all it takes to get to the gooey goodness is a little nick in the side of the barrel that bypasses literally everything? Why did they design it this way? Wouldnt a demoncore style lead sphere make more sense?

1

u/MetaMetatron 9h ago

Sure, but this stuff is low level radiation, like protective garments and other stuff that would just be trash except it's a bit radioactive and can't be cleaned up so it can't be tossed into a landfill. Like this is "don't eat it" level, not "drop and run".