Why is Uranium Dangerous but So Useful?

[Music] as you guys know we're making videos of the coolest and most interesting elements on the periodic table we've introduced some different metals and some of them were dangerous like mercury or lead in today's video we're going to look at the most dangerous metal in the world the u and it's named uranium on the periodic table we first have to know that uranium is not a rare metal and we have to know that it's 40 times more common than silver uranium was founded in the 18th century by martin heinrich claperoth around the same time a new planet had been discovered in the solar system and it was named uranus the person that discovered uranium said we're gonna name this uranium so it's very similar to the uranus name because they were discovered around the same time uranium is found in earth's crust but it's not in pure form [Music] back in the day glass workers would apply uranium to glass to give it a cool green color but they didn't know by doing this they're making that piece of glass extremely toxic [Music] when you take uranium and turn it into a solid metal it looks like any ordinary metal a silver piece [Music] but what is uranium good for [Music] back in the day they would put it in glass but make it very toxic else can we use it for the most used uranium gets is in nuclear power plants and atomic bombs [Music] but most of it is used by nuclear power plants because they make nuclear weapons that has uranium and it doesn't need to be swapped out [Music] but nuclear power plants work day and night and their fuel is uranium when we say nuclear power plants we're not talking about these ordinary ones that you know of we have submarines and ships that work with nuclear power and in these vessels they're powered by nuclear power plants just like the ones you see on ground [Music] and whenever it gets filled up it works for more than 30 years and you don't have to keep filling it up with diesel gas or gasoline [Music] the power that moves these things is the nuclear power plant and the power plant gives the power for moving and the electricity or whatever power they need [Music] so we can take the uranium 238 from the ground and put it in the nuclear power plant or a submarine and keep moving unfortunately not you're not going to get much energy like that just like we said uranium-238 is found everywhere uranium-238 has no use either and it's a toxic metal so you have to be careful but if we want to use uranium as a fuel we have to enrich it you basically have to enrich uranium-238 and turn it into uranium-235 we said uranium is toxic radioactive and enriching it is very hard so why do we want to use it as a fuel because scientists believe that this fuel is 8 000 times cleaner than oil and when you put the fuel in a nuclear reactor it works for years [Music] one tip of a finger uranium gives you the same energy with 564 liters of oil so it seems easy you take uranium-238 -3 and now you have uranium-235 but it's not that easy when you take uranium from earth's crust it's not even in metal form it's a ore they first take it into the factory break it down and roast it roasting it makes you take out the carbon from the uranium the powder you get is dipped into water and sulfuric acid this turns the uranium ore to uranium oxide after this they give it ammonia and it turns into yellow k when we get to the yellow cake we're just beginning because this is the uranium 238 we needed and it's not very radioactive but we want to turn this into uranium-235 so we can use it as fuel now we need to enrich it something that the centrifuge does but before the yellow cake enters the centrifuge it has to be turned into a gas to turn yellow cake into gas you have to give it fluorine and when you add fluorine to it it's ready to enter the centrifuge the centrifuge spins it very fast and it removes some isotopes from uranium 238 and it turns it into 235 the longer this goes on the higher the nuclear enrichment is reached [Music] when the uranium is enriched to 20 percent it is ready to be used in a nuclear power plant but if you want to make nuclear weapons that number has to go way higher and you need 90 uranium-235 but let's just say we reach 90 percent how can we use it the uranium is still in gas form and we have to turn it back into a solid piece of metal to do this we have to add calcium calcium turns the gas into uranium oxide after that the uranium oxide is roasted at 1400 degrees celsius [Music] they pour the liquid metal into molds and these pellets are made then they insert these into fuel rods and they enter the nuclear reactor if you've seen our video about how nuclear power plants work on pulse deck you know what happens after this stage now we realize that producing uranium fuel is not an easy job and it's very dangerous but if everything is done correctly it's one of the cleanest energies if you know the story about chernobyl the thing that caused the accident is poor maintenance in the power plant not because of the dangers of uranium [Music] if a nuclear power plant is located somewhere safe that's away from natural disaster unlike fukushima a tsunami doesn't attack it it's a very good source of energy but if it's somewhere very dangerous and it has poor management is the most dangerous place on earth [Music] you

Channel: OnTen Inc

Views: 10,434

Keywords: science, cool, insane, awesome, knowledge, discovery

Id: y0Bv9551hcQ

Length: 8min 31sec (511 seconds)

Published: Sun May 29 2022