Eddy's Good News: Turning nuclear waste into glass and a lost ring is found

Virgin Radio

22 Dec 2023, 10:10

Every day our own Eddy Temple-Morris brings you Good News stories from around the world (along with the finest music, of course), to help inject a bit of positivity into your day!

Here are a couple of Good News stories that Eddy has been talking about on his show today.

Friday 22nd December 2023

A fascinating story from the USA now and a new and safe way to dispose of the millions of gallons of nuclear waste left over from the Cold War and - I never thought I or anyone would say this sentence - they’re turning the nuclear waste into glass!

The bonkers nuclear arms race during the 1950s, 60s, and 70s produced a sickening 56 million gallons of radioactive plutonium and other horrendous materials in both solid and liquid forms from now-decommissioned warheads. But what do you do with this murderous sludge that kills anything it touches? The Hanford Nuclear Clean Up facility in Washington State superheats it, and mixes it with glass beads to make a stable nuclear glass. 

When mixed at 2100 degrees they bind together, then cool and become completely stable, so the glass can be stored in stainless steel much like anything else. Bob’s yer uncle. No more leaking hazardous plutonium leaching into the ground. That happened, but no more once they’ve got through the backlog.

Via Good News Network.

Normally doing gardening chores will leave you with a glowing sense of satisfaction and the dopamine that comes from spending time in nature, but for 80-year-old Michigan man, Joseph Novetske, it brought only heartache because he realised that his wedding ring had gone. 

He spent an eternity on his hands and knees but to no avail. The ring he’d worn for more than four decades was lost to the garden gods.

So his wife Mary Anne thought she’d chance her arm on a local Facebook group and told what had just happened, asking if anyone had a metal detector and might be able to help. Within a couple of hours they had six people, none of whom they knew or had ever met, turn up at their front door, three of them with metal detectors. They combed through the garden and one of the kind sextet without the metal detector found the ring in the lawn, the hard way, with eagle eyes.

Joseph and Mary Anne couldn’t believe how many people dropped everything and came to their rescue! Praise the universe and social media used in a positive way :)

Via Good News Network.