What To Do With All This Nuclear Waste?

Stuff You Should Know

iHeartPodcasts

Society & Culture

4.6 • 79.3K Ratings

🗓️ 4 November 2025

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

You can make a case that it’s a little off-putting to learn the world doesn’t really have any idea what to do with the nuclear waste we’ve been generating for several decades. The best we’ve come up with so far is bury it real deep and forget about it.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is an IHeart podcast.
0:05.6	Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of IHeart Radio.
0:15.2	Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too.
0:20.1	And this is a good old-fashioned episode of Stuff You Should Know.
0:23.6	Dan, dun, dun, dun, dan, dan, then, then, da, then, da, da, da, da, da, da, da.
0:29.6	Are you talking about the green goo?
0:32.6	Yeah, I mean, it's just hard not to think of Homer Simpson when you're talking about nuclear power at all.
0:38.6	Yeah, and nuclear waste in particular, right?
0:40.6	Yeah, like, you know, that little rod flies right into his hood.
0:44.6	Right.
0:45.5	This inanimate carbon rod is the employee of the year, I think.
0:50.0	That's right.
0:51.2	So, yeah, it turns out that nuclear waste doesn't really look like that.
0:55.4	It certainly doesn't glow green.
0:57.5	Probably the closest you could get to what the Simpsons depict.
1:02.2	And not just the Simpsons, I think, the classic movie Men at Work featuring brothers Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen.
1:09.2	Never saw it.
1:10.7	It's good.
1:11.7	As far as 80s comedies go, it's pretty good.
1:15.0	Yeah. All right.
1:16.1	And they play a lot of two live crew, too.
1:18.5	Oh, wow.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 8 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from iHeartPodcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of iHeartPodcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.