When Chernobyl happened, I was trying to calibrate stuff in a new nuclear power plant. The factory rep and I were trying to get this one radiation monitor to work correctly. We were looking at the detector response on a spectrum analyzer. We kept seeing spikes we couldn't explain. So we replaced the detector element. It had the same spikes, even after trying two more detectors. So we replaced the interface card. Same spikes. So we replaced the power supplies. Still the same. I don't remember how many days later when we heard about the accident, and we realized we were measuring fallout.

@theunknown4834

2 жыл бұрын

What eventually happened

@davidwilkie9551

2 жыл бұрын

I was in School when the "Very British Bombs" were tested at Maralinga in South Australia, we got dusted, which showed up in the High School Since Lab Geiger Counter. We were told not to worry about Dairy Cattle concentrating it in their Milk, "There's a (Cold) War on!". A long standing excuse that every Citizen on the Earth knows is bs, because of extreme MAD overkill.

@wolfpat

2 жыл бұрын

@@theunknown4834 While we were waiting for a resolution from the manufacturer, we figured out that the detector was seeing real radiation. Some of it was cesium and strontium from Chernobyl. It wasn't much, and the monitor wouldn't have picked it up if it had been in normal service in our plant. We were only seeing the spikes because this was a liquid radiation monitor, and the ultra sensitive detector was out of its normal shielding. Keep in mind, I'm in North Carolina, so that stuff traveled around the world.

@7th808s

2 жыл бұрын

@@wolfpat NORTH CAROLINA?! That's crazy.

@dahleno2014

2 жыл бұрын

That’s fascinating

I was 22 when Chernobyl happened. I remember the reports of radioactive clouds floating over Europe and eventually here to America. Scary stuff for sure but isn't that what is happening with Coal and Gas power everyday.

@Giganfan2k1

2 жыл бұрын

Coal plants have 3 times the background radiation of a nuclear power plant. Chernobyl happened because of a bad design. New reactors literally cannot melt down the same way.

@theGoogol

2 жыл бұрын

At a slower rate, for sure. But that pollution won't last for thousands of years. I think it was Answers With Joe that posed a problem that's not really understood by everyone : If nuclear pollution lasts for thousands, if not tens of thousands of years ... how will we protect future generations? Most languages and pictograms of 4000 years ago, we're still deciphering, so how do you store nuclear waste so future archaeologists don't put their nose where it doesn't belong? That's ... IF we can store the stuff so that it doesn't leak into the future.

@MitzvosGolem1

2 жыл бұрын

Half life of Radon and xeon decay to safe levels before it gets near people out of stacks.

@Giganfan2k1

2 жыл бұрын

@@theGoogol Breeder reactors can irradiate nuclear waste be as inert as wood ash. Thus solving nuclear waste as having a way to safely "burn" the waste we have.

@theGoogol

2 жыл бұрын

@@Giganfan2k1 : Cost vs Profit. Won't happen.

Excellent review. Well done. (Coming from a retired nuclear engineer). I am glad I found your channel. It presents high quality science news/information here that I don't see elsewhere. Please keep up the good work Sabine!

Sabine…you are a gift to all humans who want unbiased information on vitally important topics. Thank you. This video was especially helpful!

@wesleywyndam-pryce5305

Жыл бұрын

time stamp when she said nuclear power can never be safe enough to warrant the risk of using it?

@mukkerman001

Жыл бұрын

Unbiased? I don’t hear anything about the “other” waste besides CO2

@jonasherseth5306

Жыл бұрын

@@mukkerman001 she covers it briefly near the end, where she says she believes it to be a red herring and burrowing it with proper safety standards solves any issue.

@obsoletevalues6209

Жыл бұрын

@@mukkerman001 She has an entire video on the topic of nuclear waste.

@melissasalasblair5273

Жыл бұрын

Exactly 🗞️

Excellent coverage of nuclear power except for the statement that we are running out of uranium and thorium which is misleading. I attach a brief note from a geologist with some standing on the matter. If anyone can bring Geoff's note to Sabine's attention that would be great. I encourage Sabine look into this matter with the view of possibly revisingher video. Comments on “Is Nuclear Power Green?” By Sabine Hossenfelder This You Tube clip is one of the best and most comprehensive analyses of the issues around nuclear power that I have seen but unfortunately the final conclusions are seriously flawed due to baseless assertions regarding the current reserves and future cost of Uranium 235. This is a great shame because this presentation will be used by many others to denigrate nuclear power. For this reason, the errors need to be addressed. Sabine states that if we increase the use of U235 we will only have 20 years of reserves left before it runs out and that the cost of Uranium will therefore escalate, making nuclear power excessively expensive. However, mining companies only ever prove up enough reserves of any mineral to keep the mine going long enough to pay off debt or justify future investments, typically around 10 to 15 years at most. This is because it costs a lot of money to prove up reserves. For example, if the world copper reserves as were known in 1980 were truly the only mineable copper that existed then, we would have run out of copper in around 2010. This would have created quite an issue for renewable sources of energy. Luckily, as existing reserves were depleted, explorers found new deposits and then proved up new reserves. The same arguments apply to Uranium reserves but it is, however, is a special case. Many countries currently have embargoes against uranium mining and exploration and others are shutting down their existing nuclear reactors. This is because of perceived safety concerns that even Sabine demonstrates are baseless. Therefore, there is at present a very limited market and even more limited future for Uranium miners. Few companies are even bothering to explore for Uranium. In such a situation the few existing suppliers are able to command high prices for their existing production because there are not likely to be any new competitive mines in the foreseeable future. If however, nuclear power were recognised world-wide as a viable way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions the demand for Uranium would sky rocket. If just Germany were to change its policy of shutting down existing nuclear power plants, then explorers would begin exploring for Uranium again, future reserves would increase dramatically and competition between new miners would decrease the cost of their product. Uranium is quite common geologically and the world has abundant reserves for millennia to come. Sabine uses the same arguments around limited reserves to define Thorium reactors as also likely to be expensive. This couldn’t be more wrong! Australia and other countries have been discarding thousands of tons of Thorium for decades. It is an unwanted biproduct from the mining of Titanium from beach sands (as the accessory mineral monazite). Thorium is a very common element!! Thorium is significantly more abundant than Uranium. Many countries have abundant thorium deposits. However, they haven’t been turned into “proven” reserves because currently there is not much demand for Thorium. Also, the cost of Thorium reactors is bound to be expensive at present because they are all experimental. Sabine’s arguments appear to be balanced and reasonable. However, her conclusion that nuclear power is not a “green” alternative to fossil fuels is a consequence of her use of the flawed statistics regarding Uranium and Thorium reserves and future costs. I’m sure that around the world millions will be persuaded by her flawed arguments. If not redressed immediately this flawed argument will persist, like the previous false suggested correlation between autism and vaccinations, for decades to come. Associate Professor Dr. Geoffrey R Taylor (Head, School of Mines, University of New South Wales, 1992-2002)

@jonomate

2 жыл бұрын

Thanks! I had an inkling that some of Sabine's points were flawed, and unfortunately there will be many people who will watch this and think that nuclear is not a good way forward.

@TheSrSunday

2 жыл бұрын

Very good comment. It should be noted that the author of the video is no engineer, but a theoretical physicist.

@zsomborszarka2616

2 жыл бұрын

One of the best youtube comments i saw, and one of the most important too!

@Trazynn

2 жыл бұрын

This is why physicists should abstain from dabbling in economics.

@eriklof4475

2 жыл бұрын

I agree with the basic premise of this comment, namely that we aren't going to run out of fuel to mine for the reactors. However, the main point of this video in regards to the economics of nuclear power is still valid. Fuel for the reactors is not a very large cost over the lifetime of a nuclear power plant, the initial construction cost is by far the biggest expenditure. So yes, we COULD in theory replace a lot more fossil fuel energy with nuclear, but it still makes very little economic sense and that is what in the end always matters.

Matching your lipstick to your dress should not go unappreciated. So radiant!

@SabineHossenfelder

2 жыл бұрын

I see what you did there 😅

You are an international treasure. Unbiased information on complex issues delivered with sly, dry humor. 😘

I have discovered that a big part of learning is to like and respect the instructor. This channel has what it takes.

Mostly agree with what you've said, some points: 1. Fast Reactors, the main issue you didn't cover, enrichment, they tend to need higher U235 enrichment to get them started (quickly), and are more difficult to control. This tends to make them more expensive. 2. But, they can run on existing fuel that is classed as waste in the fuel ponds of existing reactors. Which from a fast reactors perspective is already more enriched. U235 + P239 + P240, there is supposedly enough "waste" in fuel ponds, if used in a fast reactor to power the whole world for about 400 yrs! No need to extract any more. 3. Fast reactors can burn most of the fuel. Not 4-5% of a conventional PWR. The waste is also much shorter lived, few 100 of years not tens of thousands. 4. There is a 3rd type of reactor called an ISO, they are a breeder, but classed differently as they only breed enough fuel for their own usage. Breeder's are a proliferation risk as the intention is to remove fuel from the reactor. 5. MSR corrosivity is salt dependent, some salts are corrosive yes, but some are not. 6. They need to focus on a small container sized reactor system that can built in factories and use economies of scale to reduce the cost. 7. Re-use existing, fossil fuel powered generating infrastructure, multiple small reactors powering the turbine sets. This has the advantage that if one reactor needs to go offline, the whole system does not shutdown. 8. ISO operation, no refuelling, reduced proliferation risk, no complex fuelling infrastructure, no fuelling ponds. If anything goes wrong, the affected reactor can be removed and buried in long term storage, simpler cleanup.

@gorioecho9789

2 жыл бұрын

so Andrew - i'm familiar with msr's but wondering if i know iso's by a different acronym / what does your "iso" stand for? - you can get much deeper in the weeds if you like, lol

@guytech7310

2 жыл бұрын

Fast neutron reactors are a disaster ready to go off at anytime. Issue is that they can face prompt criticallity causing a rapid burst of energy. This can happen if there is a change in neutron moderation such as a loss of coolant that is acting as a moderator. Breeder reactors are insanely expensive, back in the 1980s for a breeder reactor to be economically the cost of a kg of natural uranium would need to exceed $5000 (1980 or $17,500 in 2022). Every nation that had a breed reactor decommissioned them 20 years ago because it just wasn't economical. That said, you never see any new nuclear power plants built in the US as all of the utilities are rejecting them: too expensive & too long (about 20 years) to complete planning and construction costs. The one new power plant in the US (Vogtle, GA) costs $30B ( about $15B per 1GWe) and took 20 years.

@andrewharpin6749

2 жыл бұрын

@@gorioecho9789 It's a breeder with a breed ratio of 1.0.

@SC-yy4sw

2 жыл бұрын

1. >Fast reactors are more difficult to control. It isn't what the feedback from Joël Guidez' book "Superphenix: technical and scientific achievements" says. Superphénix was France's 1200MWe SFR. "On the whole, operators found that it was simpler to control a SFR [than a PWR]" p.81 Yes you're right, they are more expensive. Still from the same book: around 2.3x the price of a KWh from a PWR. 4. >There is a 3rd type of reactor called an ISO Never heard of it. Got any links please ?

@guytech7310

2 жыл бұрын

​@@SC-yy4sw SuperPhenix has been shutdown & decommissioned in 1997. So much for *achievements*. I never read his book, but likely just a lot of cheerleading.

It's so refreshing Listening to an intelligent person with no hidden agenda talking sensibly about such a controversial subject .

@Pretermit_Sound

2 жыл бұрын

I think you meant to say “ulterior motive”, not “hidden agenda”. If any of this information was supposed to be kept under wraps, then someone hasn’t done a very good job hiding their “agenda”.

@MrCreeper20k

2 жыл бұрын

@Zangief ☭ I lol’d. I guess then the best we can say is “… LIKELY no hidden agenda …”

@stephenkiernan8520

2 жыл бұрын

@Swag Lord the point was there isn't enough peer reviewed literature. Nor do normal people live in a peer reviewed world ignorant of social, economic or personal issues. Real people in the real world have opinions and are interested in others opinions.

@apgmk1970

2 жыл бұрын

@Swag Lord But that literature was written and reviewed by people with an agenda... And you yourself have an agenda too. Omg agendas everywhere! How can I trust my own thinking? It could be influenced by my agenda... Nothing is true! Life is futile!

@bamboo7099

2 жыл бұрын

This video is misleading Life of nuclear plant is 80 years 4 times that of solar or wind And thrice of gas Twice of coal Which means levelized costs of lifetime is baised towards solar and wind And then storage costs is not calculated for wind and solar which is 200 dollars for kwh for 20 years

Terrific presentation. I love that you clearly state your own feelings (no particular fear of living close to a Nuclear plant) and respect the feelings of others, even if those feelings are not scientifically valid. Thank you.

@ianstobie

Жыл бұрын

James Lovelock, a scientist and green pioneer who was in favour of nuclear power (given the lack of realistically available alternatives), once offered to take the nuclear waste from a typical British nuclear power plant in his back garden. He calculated that with affordable containment arrangements the risk of any damage to his lifespan was worth taking. He also discussed this with his neighbours, mostly Cornish farmers, and claimed they were OK with the idea too. The real worry that united them was that changes to the atmosphere would irreversibly affect climate patterns and eventually our weather. Nuclear was the only comparatively safe option available at the time that had much hope of preventing this.

@n6rt9s

10 ай бұрын

​@@ianstobie did they actually end up doing it?

@ianstobie

10 ай бұрын

@@n6rt9s No. But Lovelock died last year at the age of 103. So his calculation that having a pile of nuclear waste nearby wasn't going to reduce his lifespan by anything he'd miss may well have been correct! By the way, his original PhD was in medicine. One of his first jobs was at the start of WW2. The British govt wanted to know whether the population of London would be safer on the surface running round skipping German bombs in the healthy fresh air, or huddled in shelters and underground tube stations where they might catch infectious diseases. An excellent question! The team Lovelock was part of already had some understanding of how the immune response worked, so I think predicted initial infection rise followed by adaptation and improved resistance. So opted for shelters. Story in one of his books.

@zaneslocombe8008

8 ай бұрын

Proximity is of little consequence after a meltdown. Chernobyl made Welsh sheep inedible.

I am Romanian and our CANDU reactors work just fine, they had to stop them like 2-3 times in 20 years otherwise they produce energy non-stop. No significant incidents or accidents during these years. We have a huge plant to produce D2O (much more than we actually need) and have uranium and brain resources. The problem is indeed complexity, it takes A LOT of time (count 10 years or more) to build them and they are not cheap but once you do they are efficient and generate relatively cheap energy. And would think they are quite safe as well.

@combatepistemologist8382

2 ай бұрын

Similarly in Canada (where the CANDU was first developed in 1954) where they have been chugging along for over 30 years. They didn't strive for the same efficiency as the latest super-engineered American reactors, but the design requires substantially less maintenance and shutdowns. It's a reliable workhorse, not a racehorse.

That is the most comprehensive and balanced discussion I have seen or heard on this topic. Very well done!

@satanofficial3902

2 жыл бұрын

Pffft. There. Is. No. Safe. Form. Of. Nuclear. Period. And no amount of desire for radiation fetish validation will change that. Radiation fetish? Really? You she entity lifeforces (including she entity lifeforces existing in XY DNA template bodies) do the strangest things.

@satanofficial3902

2 жыл бұрын

There is no safe form of nuclear. Period. All forms release radiation into the environment in one way or another. And there is no safe level of radiation. Just increasing amounts of cell damage with exposure. I don't understand all the fetish for radiation. A very strange fetish to have. Having a radiation fetish is like having a fetish for aiming a gun at your foot and then pulling the trigger. A very, very bizarre way to get your endorphin kicks. Sadomasochism is incomprehensible alien gibberish to me. I don't understand it at all. But then i'm not a she entity and just don't use the she entity lifeforce psychological processes.

@satanofficial3902

2 жыл бұрын

Radiation is bad for children and other living things. In case anyone didn't get the memo yet.

@michael511128

2 жыл бұрын

Oilmen and bankers don’t make much money with nuclear power so they have been using propaganda to denounce it since 3 Mile Island incident. Both Chernobyl and Fukushima were built in the 70s. The main contractor for Fukushima was GE. If they had placed the backup generators two floors up to stay above the water there would not have been an accident. 2020 news said Trump stopped Bill Gate’s TerraPower fourth generation nuclear power plant project with China for national security reasons. 2021 I read Bill Gate’s book. I am convinced of his analyses, the world should move from fossil fuel to green but the only hope to save the planet from global warming is technology yet to be invented and nuclear power is a good bet. When all cars in the world turned electric it will cut emission by 6.5%. The current progress is much too slow while the poles are melting. China manufactures or owns 50% of wind power, 90% solar, it has completed its first fourth generation nuclear power plant and exporting third generation to Pakistan and Argentina. Along the Belt and Road China will build green infrastructures per geographic conditions, some countries have more sun and others more wind, some can use dams and others can pay for nuclear. China also is the biggest user of carbon heavy materials such as steel and concrete so they have a huge need to move from coal to oil to gas to green to nuclear. I believe China is doing the most advanced researches on Thorium reactors and atomic fusion. Who knows, maybe in our lifetime China will make breakthroughs to save the world. Before that can happen the world need to change. Western oil tycoons and dollar bankers will not let nuclear power, solar, wind and Chinese Yuan to take away their empire. Only when US hegemony is overthrown can human save herself.

@xxwookey

2 жыл бұрын

Yep. Nice to see a sensible evaluation with accurate data. I didn't learn much as I had reached the same conclusions over the last few years, but a lot more people listen to Sabine than me :-) Hopefully this video will improve the overall quality of discussion, and is a useful one to point uninformed people at.

No power source can be completely "green", but some have much more potential to be less polluting per unit of energy produced than others.

@Giganfan2k1

2 жыл бұрын

Solar panels made on the moon.

@theGoogol

2 жыл бұрын

Erm ... As a Dutch person I'd disagree.

@user-DongJ

2 жыл бұрын

War is more political than scientific? Isn't the study of war a part of social/empirical science? Or because it's not natural science, then It's not scientific (enough)? In that case, formal or non-empirical science/studies like linguistics, statistics, mathematics, etc. would be unscientific too.

@Weissenschenkel

2 жыл бұрын

@@Giganfan2k1 carbon footprint won't magically disappear, since we have to build all the infrastructure there. The ISS cargo is a hassle on its own, let alone assembling solar panels on the Moon - by sending robots and materials needed, if we do it without humans there. We add humans and costs scale up dramatically. Unless we colonize the Moon as a "catapult" for sending cargo elsewhere in the solar system, since it's way easier to win against Moon's gravitational tug (1/16 of the Earth's or thereabouts.) Still a great distance between Earth and Moon but somewhat better depending on what we're going to do in regards of space exploration in a hundred years.

@Llortnerof

2 жыл бұрын

@@Weissenschenkel Well, it would work in so far as that anything not produced in Earth's atmosphere has no practical impact on the Earth's climate. But we're nowhere even remotely close to being able to do that, so it's pretty irrelevant for now.

I really enjoyed watching this video actually more listening to it than watching, and I appreciate the fact that you minimize interjecting your opinions over the facts. Your delivery seems to be well thought out and concise and that is another thing that I really appreciate. I'm looking forward to watching more of your videos in the future I might even sign up for some of your classes. 👍

I really enjoyed the presentation. You made no efforts to hide your stand on the topic and still hold an easy to follow and fair discussion. I can appreciate that, even though I do not agree with the idea of burying and forgetting about the waste. The molten salt reactors looked like a nice idea but they just come too late to make a difference. But as yo said, might make sense in certain environents and conditions.

@alegriart

7 ай бұрын

perhaps you need to see this as she was not accurate - Comments on “Is Nuclear Power Green?” By Sabine Hossenfelder This You Tube clip is one of the best and most comprehensive analyses of the issues around nuclear power that I have seen but unfortunately the final conclusions are seriously flawed due to baseless assertions regarding the current reserves and future cost of Uranium 235. This is a great shame because this presentation will be used by many others to denigrate nuclear power. For this reason, the errors need to be addressed. Sabine states that if we increase the use of U235 we will only have 20 years of reserves left before it runs out and that the cost of Uranium will therefore escalate, making nuclear power excessively expensive. However, mining companies only ever prove up enough reserves of any mineral to keep the mine going long enough to pay off debt or justify future investments, typically around 10 to 15 years at most. This is because it costs a lot of money to prove up reserves. For example, if the world copper reserves as were known in 1980 were truly the only mineable copper that existed then, we would have run out of copper in around 2010. This would have created quite an issue for renewable sources of energy. Luckily, as existing reserves were depleted, explorers found new deposits and then proved up new reserves. The same arguments apply to Uranium reserves but it is, however, is a special case. Many countries currently have embargoes against uranium mining and exploration and others are shutting down their existing nuclear reactors. This is because of perceived safety concerns that even Sabine demonstrates are baseless. Therefore, there is at present a very limited market and even more limited future for Uranium miners. Few companies are even bothering to explore for Uranium. In such a situation the few existing suppliers are able to command high prices for their existing production because there are not likely to be any new competitive mines in the foreseeable future. If however, nuclear power were recognised world-wide as a viable way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions the demand for Uranium would sky rocket. If just Germany were to change its policy of shutting down existing nuclear power plants, then explorers would begin exploring for Uranium again, future reserves would increase dramatically and competition between new miners would decrease the cost of their product. Uranium is quite common geologically and the world has abundant reserves for millennia to come. Sabine uses the same arguments around limited reserves to define Thorium reactors as also likely to be expensive. This couldn’t be more wrong! Australia and other countries have been discarding thousands of tons of Thorium for decades. It is an unwanted biproduct from the mining of Titanium from beach sands (as the accessory mineral monazite). Thorium is a very common element!! Thorium is significantly more abundant than Uranium. Many countries have abundant thorium deposits. However, they haven’t been turned into “proven” reserves because currently there is not much demand for Thorium. Also, the cost of Thorium reactors is bound to be expensive at present because they are all experimental. Sabine’s arguments appear to be balanced and reasonable. However, her conclusion that nuclear power is not a “green” alternative to fossil fuels is a consequence of her use of the flawed statistics regarding Uranium and Thorium reserves and future costs. I’m sure that around the world millions will be persuaded by her flawed arguments. If not redressed immediately this flawed argument will persist, like the previous false suggested correlation between autism and vaccinations, for decades to come. Associate Professor Dr. Geoffrey R Taylor (Head, School of Mines, University of New South Wales, 1992-2002)

Such a shame that Germany phased out Nuclear, especially in light of their problematic dependence on Russian natural gas.

@Laufbursche4u

2 жыл бұрын

Fun Fact: The same party (CDU) forced an early phase out and the dependence on Russian oil.

@brightsideofmaths

2 жыл бұрын

Where does the uranium come from?

@grlcowan

2 жыл бұрын

"Especially in light of their problematic dependence on Russian natural gas" -- which was always the point. Green has always meant gas.

@harmless6813

2 жыл бұрын

Yes, yes, in hindsight it would have been better to keep the nuclear power plants around until renewables had been built out. But now the nuclear plants are gone, so that ship has sailed.

@marioturiddu2628

2 жыл бұрын

Whatever your opinion on nuclear, throwing it away once you have it and you don't have a net-zero country is environmental terrorism.

I found your channel recently and have been enjoying it. So refreshing to hear facts about topics with no perceived bias. Thank you for sharing this channel with the world.

@darryledwards9829

Жыл бұрын

ditto.

@SashaInTheCloud

Жыл бұрын

There's bias. It's unavoidable. The primary thing of importance is how one goes about minimizing that bias. The stories we tell ourselves alter how we read and sift through search results. This is a form of bias that scientists are encouraged to train their mind to minimize, but it's a huge cognitive load when doing research. Fatigue is a problem. Vigilance is difficult to maintain. Worse, when identified by most popular search engines, they will try to use their profiles of us to customize the results, creating bias that many people are not aware of, or aren't sure how to circumvent.

@SashaInTheCloud

Жыл бұрын

The scientists I personally know try to minimize the effects of bias by being both highly skeptical and being careful about how they phrase statements. News tagline: Jellybeans cause toe fungus! Scientist: in these experiments done here by these people, a relationship between jellybeans and toe fungus was found. It wasn't very significant, though, and the population in the study was pretty small. Plus, at that location there's more toe fungus per capita than the global mean by a factor of ten. So, the study is mostly suggesting that further studies are done, hopefully of better quality.'

@kulturfreund6631

Жыл бұрын

She‘s got such snobby british received pronunciation. Ridiculous. German trying hard to not sound German 😂

@DOR8421

Жыл бұрын

_no _*_perceived_*_ bias_ Youre a wise one. Sabine would approve.

I really enjoyed this video. I love how you just presented the facts, with very little personal opinion. (which I think was appropriate and also well communicated to be so)

I think this was an intelligent look at the problem with the main aspects covered and with balanced conclusions. Well done!

Sabine - that’s excellent again. I’m lecturer in electrical power, and for over a decade now I’ve told my students that the key to reducing the requirement for generating energy is a reliable massive, robust and sustainable energy STORAGE. The greenest way of achieving this in by using mechanical systems. My student projects show the unbeatable benefits of gravitational systems (shaft of slope) or where this is not possible, numerous massive (at least grain silo sized, but can be smaller for single buildings) high inertia (ie high ‘m’ and ‘k’) flywheels. These can be used for decades, even centuries, with no loss of efficiency, storage capacity or performance. In addition, Once these systems are built, they would have a minuscule carbon footprint in their operation and maintenance.

@BasementEngineer

2 жыл бұрын

Can you point out a research paper on this, that develops the cost/Kwh and space requirements? Thanks.

@nicholasn.2883

2 жыл бұрын

Fax batteries degrade too quickly.

@richardmasters8424

2 жыл бұрын

@@BasementEngineer - thanks for your interest. This was done by some of my students as a project but their paper was never published. However, if you look on the internet you will see several formal research projects on gravitational storage systems and flywheels which give the information you require. I hope that’s helpful.

@hewdelfewijfe

Жыл бұрын

Flywheels? For grid storage? Get real. Run the numbers. You're off by orders of magnitude.

Hi Sabine. Just want to add a small correction. Whdn you quote the available amount of uranium, the number that is quoted is the current available resources, which is much different from the total available reserves. As we know, for oil the first were projected to already run out by the end of the 80s, but the combination of the (momentary) increase in price of oil and the improvement in prospecting technology brought to light many oil resources that hadn't been discovered before or weren't economically viable, so weren't taken into account as available resources. The same holds for uranium, with the difference that even neglecting the likely undiscovered land resources that likely exist we already know that there is a lot of uranium in sea water. This reserve is extremely abundant (just U235 would last tens of thousands of years, and that is supposing to replace all other energy sources). The con is that extracting it with cirrent technology costs about 4 times as much as uranium from mines. Since uranium typically makes up about 20% of the cost of the energy produced by a nuclear reactor over the course of its lifetime, exploiting this seawater uranium would currently about double the cost of nuclear energy.

@jimml1938

2 жыл бұрын

Thanks for pointing this out - not sure many will see it. I only found it because I did a search for the word seawater on the off-chance someone brought up ocean mining so I wouldn't have to. Yellowcake has been extracted from seawater during tests both by Japanese and American researchers. It is a somewhat passive process. The amount of uranium in the sea would last for tens of thousands of years even if nuclear power were the sole source of humanity's energy needs.

@hasanalarbash4057

Жыл бұрын

I would agree that exploiting the ocean U235 reserves would solve the renewability problem, but just like you said it would make it much less economical. I think we should focus on developing technologies to use U238 or thorium to make them more reliable and economical before looking at ocean U235.

@robertweekes5783

Жыл бұрын

Much of the cost of uranium is due to the lengthy process of enriching (concentrating) U-235 by separating out U-238 - also the complicated process of fabricating uranium oxide into ceramic fuel pellets with exacting tolerances. With a thorium molten salt reactor, there is no need for enrichment after the initial fissile material deposit. Also no need for expensive fuel fabrication because it is all melted. Additionally: you can extract nearly *all the energy* (instead of the paltry 1% typically received from fuel pellets before they are exchanged). Also there is much less cost of containment because molten salt is a low pressure medium

Sabine, thank you for bringing to us all this insight and understanding in such beautifully concise presentations. It is a bit demoralizing though seeing all these forms of energy available to us having such serious limitations. What is the future of energy? Regarding nuclear, the last project I worked on was a large nuclear power plant. I was blown away by the complexity, labor hours, materials, and enormous cost.

This was a _very_ good run-down of the problem! Thank you!

@alegriart

7 ай бұрын

apparently it is not accurate though.

Finally a balanced analysis. A Hossenfelder vs. Lesch would be an interesting format.

@du42bz

2 жыл бұрын

this

@matsv201

2 жыл бұрын

i really would not call it balanced when she is publishing Lazars number as if they where a neutral source, when its in fact a anti nuclear think tank and it got heavy criticism from the industry

@matsv201

2 жыл бұрын

@bk_16 Well the issue with Lazard is that its really popular with the pol people, so they site the paper like crazy, making it come up top on every search While i would agree with that its not here bias... it at least sounds like she is not biased int hat direction, its rather an indication that she lack some core understanding of the situation that explain why nuclear power plant are not built. The "its not economical" argument was just made up a few years back when it was obvious that all other argument was not valid. And... this is the part where some people will say "conspiracy theorist". but its actually not. gas companies have payed policy makers and journalist billions to promote anti nuclear agenda. It have actually been known for decades, but the paper trail was not proven until earlier this year. A fresh professor manage to prove a specific paper trail to a set of specific people in Belgium that currently is under criminal investigation. Some of those was top elected officials. For some odd reason, most of the media is not reporting on it.. how strange. Almost like some of the billions went to other people. But i don´t want to be a conspiracy theorist. So i will just amuse that the all just exchange the money for paper money and just dump it in the ocean.

@mwissel

2 жыл бұрын

I disagree. I like Lesch but he has become a bitter old man who is not interested in hearing the other side's arguments. At least not when it comes to certain topics. He is also a media veteran and would likely talk over Sabine who would have trouble presenting her sound arguments. I wouldn't watch that format.

@OAK-808

2 жыл бұрын

Nothing balanced going on here. This is a one sided assessment that would be an embarrassment to serious analysts

A good attempt at an unbiased review. However, I see two places where I think you may be selling nuclear power short: 1. Concerns over uranium supply seem overstated. The IAEA says that "uranium resources available at a cost below US $130/kg imply around 100 years of supply at current consumption rates"; but per the 2020 NEA/IAEA "red book" where these numbers come from, this is only their estimate of already "identified conventional resources" (it's table 1.1 totals divided by 59.2k use from table 2.1). But if you include their estimate of "undiscovered resources" (from table 1.13), those conventional resources "expected to occur based on geological knowledge of previously discovered deposits and regional mapping", that increases to 167 years supply. And if you then increase the cost threshold to $260/kg, which would increase costs by only about a penny per kWh over current costs, that increases to 227 years supply. Even apart from all of that, the argument here reminds me a lot of the "peak oil" predictions which have repeatedly been proven wrong for decades. If you actually invest in exploration, you will discover more resources. I strongly suspect we could, without too much difficulty, produce a third of the world's needed electric power over the next century using only current nuclear technology. And that would give plenty of time to transition to more efficient technologies (like fast breeder reactors which can be over 50x more efficient in their use of fuel--meaning we might then have 10,000+ years of uranium supply). 2. The argument about nuclear costs seems even more suspect, where it is based on LCOE. I don't think anyone who has looked into this in much depth thinks that it is very useful to compare costs of nuclear and VRE (variable renewable energy) sources using only LCOE, which ignores some of the more significant costs on your electric bill, and especially some of the largest costs of intermittent (VRE) sources. I would be suspicious of any source which quotes those figures without noting these limitations! Look at OVERALL costs, and nuclear is still one of the more affordable sources of reliable baseload (or "firm") power (at least where hydro power is not readily available for this purpose). On the other hand you may have overstated it though, in saying nuclear is available "on demand". This may possibly be more true of future designs (perhaps those modular options will allow this more easily?), but most current nuclear plants don't start and stop that quickly and efficiently. With current technology, nuclear is normally considered baseload (or "firm") power. Power that is truly "on demand" is sometimes referred to as "dispatch" power. Natural gas is still difficult to replace when this is needed, and it tends to be needed with high levels of VRE. For an interesting paper on these various types of power, and their impacts on overall costs, see "The Role of Firm Low-Carbon Electricity Resources in Deep Decarbonization of Power Generation" by Sepulveda, Jenkins, deSisterns, and Lester. If you do a follow up to this, the really interesting question isn't whether nuclear will be part of a green power grid in the future, but how much of it will really be needed.

@AlldaylongRock

2 жыл бұрын

Actually Nuclear is pretty capable of doing load following and peaker duties, if the plant is fitted to do it (1/3 of France's nuclear reactors are fit for quick load following, and are actually quicker than CCGT plants). You can run a Nuclear plant at 50-70% output and pretty quickly ramp up t to 100%. Some setups include "Grey" control rods (absorb less neutrons) and turbine bypass systems similar in concept to the exhaust bypass valve in an automotive turbocharger, other systems are also usable. It's just not economical to do so because it is a waste of fuel, and especially the control rod thing gets less responsive with time. New technology like SFR+molten salt thermal storage (Terrapower's Natrium design) only makes Nuclear load following and peaker duties more fuel efficient, and so, more economical.

@gyozakeynsianism

2 жыл бұрын

These are excellent points. One important point to add is that our current estimate of the potential supply of some mining resource is related to demand. That is, higher demand will drive deeper searchung for that resource and also new technologies to both more efficiently extract it and use it. We saw this with gold (back when it was the money base), and we see this with oil.

@theamici

2 жыл бұрын

I would like to point out that fracking (in the US) and tar sand (in Canada) are ways we've been keeping up with the oil production, and both those methods are environmental disasters. Sure you get more resources - but at what cost? Same thing we have to ask for Uranium

@gyozakeynsianism

2 жыл бұрын

@@theamici Fracking is cheap, tar sands is expensive. They're not really comparable. The important thing is that more investment and R&D plus wider searching usually results in less pessimistic outlooks for any given mining industry. Sustained surges in demand drive supply responses.

@5353Jumper

2 жыл бұрын

She said if we 10x uranium consumption over current levels we would only have 20 years worth of fuel. So her estimates on the amount of fuel is actually greater than yours it seems. What she was saying is IF we build more nuclear plants to take demand away from coal and gas THEN we would only have about 20 years worth of fuel. At current demand we have 200 years worth of uranium fuel, but current demand does not solve the fossil fuel problem.

I work in the nuclear industry. One reactor design you didn't talk about is the Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor, which is used in Canada and has since been exported. It uses a heavy water moderator and U-238 (natural uranium). This is a potential solution to the abundance problem.

@dougfrasher8524

6 ай бұрын

Gotta love those Canadians and their CAN Du attitude!

@Spencergolde

3 ай бұрын

To clarify, CANDU and other PWRs use natural uranium as input, but they only burn U-235, which makes up 0.4% of the uranium. They don't burn U-238, as the neutrons are in the thermal spectrum and don't have enough energy to directly fission U-238 or breed it into Np-239/Pu-239. This can only be done with an unmoderated fast spectrum reactor design

@alexpegg238

3 ай бұрын

@@Spencergolde Thanks for this. I don't work with HWR's so I guess I hadn't really thought about it enough and I was incorrect. The benefit to HWR's then would be removing the need for significant enrichment by providing over-moderation compared to a conventional PWR? Looking at it more closely, the only real example I found of using 238 would be the LMFBR (Light Metal Fast Breeder Reactor). Are there any others?

@Spencergolde

3 ай бұрын

@alexpegg238 U-238 can only be fissioned or bred into Pu-239 using fast neutrons, which means the reactor must be unmoderated (it does happen with thermal neutrons, but at a very slow rate. In thermal reactors less than 1% of energy comes from U-238 fission). There are many different types of fast reactors, but liquid metal reactors are the only ones that have been built at a commercial scale. There are also gas-cooled fast reactors and molten salt fast reactors. Yes, the benefit of using heavy water, or the deuterium in the heavy water, as a moderator is that it's so effective at slowing neutrons, and absorbs so few neutrons, that you can use unenriched uranium. Fast reactors also don't require enrichment, at least not after they get going. The plutonium they breed is chemically separated out, made into new fuel, and natural uranium is added as breeding material in the next run. Special note, the plutonium that comes from breeder reactors that have been operating for more than a few weeks contains a significant amount of Pu-240, which makes it impossible to use in bomb construction. That's because Pu-240 has a high rate of spontaneous fissioning, which would cause a bomb core to melt down or misfire. The only way to extract weapons grade plutonium from a breeder reactor (high Pu-239, low Pu-240) would be to completely shut it down frequently after short runs, which would cause blackouts to any grid connected to it.

I sure appreciate the broad and careful way you explore topics. Because I live not ‘too far’ from huge solar and wind farms I have had years to see their effects on the environment. When windy the wind farms aren’t operating because (according to my power company contacts) there’s no place to store the extra energy and cheaper sources are used when possible. The solar farms are huge and really destroy whole regions for nature and also are not collecting or storing power the way we would like due to the economics of power companies using cheaper sources and the limited optimal daylight. Your comments about using what makes sense for an area are spot on.

Weirdly enough even wind energy has some stigma. My mum who doesn't use internet at all, managed to get convinced that wind turbines cause health problems. Even blamed a bout of sickness on the ones down the road that hadn't even been fully built yet.

@stevenbyks6824

Жыл бұрын

I really like this video about "wind turbine sickness", about how fake it is: kzread.info/dash/bejne/lm2XzbCFeZzKgsY.html

@Prikense

Жыл бұрын

how???

@lolly9804

Жыл бұрын

@@Prikense I'd say some quack got on the morning tv shows. As a lot of weird nonsense that's propagated online, ends up being shared on tv eventually.

@element5377

Жыл бұрын

i think the arguments are: infrasound disability and chopping up of flying creatures.. i found this in wikipedia about infrasound.. this level of sound may be present at some allegedly haunted sites and so cause people to have odd sensations that they attribute to a ghost

@lolly9804

Жыл бұрын

@@element5377 Well my mum seemed to think it was the way they generate electricity. Away the things are up now and she hasn't complained since. Almost like she stopped worried when I pulled a timeline for their constrution, to prove that maybe she just caugh a cold.

Thank you for making this video. I am very skeptical about arguments on both sides of the issue but I'm inclined to believe your perspective is unbiased and evidence based

@robroy5248

2 жыл бұрын

agreed, she does present well balanced arguments and theories, but isnt it like giving yourself cancer, to fix a broken arm

@justjoe942

2 жыл бұрын

Exactly: that's why I'm here also.

@emalee8366

2 жыл бұрын

@@robroy5248 Have you looked into the skeptics of "nuclear causes cancer"? They have valid points. I can't personally tell if it does or doesn't cause cancer, and there's a lot of research on the topic. If nuclear radiation from power plants causes cancer, one would expect cancer rates over time to be relative to radiation dose. That includes not just what's in the air, but also what leeches into soil and water supply. When measured, there isn't a direct correlation. It's seemingly random. To me it's like the stroke belt here in the US. No one knows what causes it, because stroke rates aren't even correlated with any proposed cause. Same with cancer near nuclear plants.

@marco21274

2 жыл бұрын

What is unbiased for you? I read that very often in the US political context. I am really curious.

@MrMpakobec

2 жыл бұрын

@@emalee8366 Of course there is no influx of deaths near nuclear power plants because radiation levels are normal. People not afraid to live near nuclear power plants because they will cause cancer from long exposure (many are because they are idiots and there was not enough coverage of topic in school) but of the fear of big accident. Even if it is absolutely ridiculous and if it ever happen there will be more dire things to care about rather than radiation, like death from war, tsunami or meteorite strike.

I find it interesting, that the issue of the dangers of nuclear waste storage/half-life are not addressed at all. (at least not yet) There are indeed issues related to the amount of space required over time for material storage, safety and security. Over the span of time required for used rods to burn themselves out, it is theoretically possible that multiple social collapses may have led to language and culture shifts, comparable to those from Cunieform to Roman script. It's not that it cannot be transcribed, but the level of difficulty lowers probability and distribution drastically enough to make it unintelligible/useless for warning/safety signage. Modular thorium plants sound very interesting, though.

@kokofan50

Жыл бұрын

1) compared to the tens of billions of years half-life of waste from renewables, nuclear waste is short lived. 2) we can burn spent fuel in advanced reactors, and the isotopes from that have many different uses, like cancer treatment to RTGs for space probes.

@hewdelfewijfe

Жыл бұрын

Once nuclear waste is put in dry cask storage, it's never going to hurt anyone. Please google and read the paper "the guardian the unpalatable truth is that the anti-nuclear lobby lied to us" and "Dr Bernard Cohen the myth of plutonium toxicity".

Nice overview. Another advantage of small modular plants would be that if a 'never' event occurs the consequences would have an expected lower damage outcome compared with knocking out a high capacity plant, perhaps a good reason not to have them co-located. Rolls Royce have a research program looking at the technology.

@alegriart

7 ай бұрын

I was wondering if that was the case. Someone said there is technology for reusing the waste?

@alegriart

7 ай бұрын

I also found this comment below - Comments on “Is Nuclear Power Green?” By Sabine Hossenfelder This You Tube clip is one of the best and most comprehensive analyses of the issues around nuclear power that I have seen but unfortunately the final conclusions are seriously flawed due to baseless assertions regarding the current reserves and future cost of Uranium 235. This is a great shame because this presentation will be used by many others to denigrate nuclear power. For this reason, the errors need to be addressed. Sabine states that if we increase the use of U235 we will only have 20 years of reserves left before it runs out and that the cost of Uranium will therefore escalate, making nuclear power excessively expensive. However, mining companies only ever prove up enough reserves of any mineral to keep the mine going long enough to pay off debt or justify future investments, typically around 10 to 15 years at most. This is because it costs a lot of money to prove up reserves. For example, if the world copper reserves as were known in 1980 were truly the only mineable copper that existed then, we would have run out of copper in around 2010. This would have created quite an issue for renewable sources of energy. Luckily, as existing reserves were depleted, explorers found new deposits and then proved up new reserves. The same arguments apply to Uranium reserves but it is, however, is a special case. Many countries currently have embargoes against uranium mining and exploration and others are shutting down their existing nuclear reactors. This is because of perceived safety concerns that even Sabine demonstrates are baseless. Therefore, there is at present a very limited market and even more limited future for Uranium miners. Few companies are even bothering to explore for Uranium. In such a situation the few existing suppliers are able to command high prices for their existing production because there are not likely to be any new competitive mines in the foreseeable future. If however, nuclear power were recognised world-wide as a viable way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions the demand for Uranium would sky rocket. If just Germany were to change its policy of shutting down existing nuclear power plants, then explorers would begin exploring for Uranium again, future reserves would increase dramatically and competition between new miners would decrease the cost of their product. Uranium is quite common geologically and the world has abundant reserves for millennia to come. Sabine uses the same arguments around limited reserves to define Thorium reactors as also likely to be expensive. This couldn’t be more wrong! Australia and other countries have been discarding thousands of tons of Thorium for decades. It is an unwanted biproduct from the mining of Titanium from beach sands (as the accessory mineral monazite). Thorium is a very common element!! Thorium is significantly more abundant than Uranium. Many countries have abundant thorium deposits. However, they haven’t been turned into “proven” reserves because currently there is not much demand for Thorium. Also, the cost of Thorium reactors is bound to be expensive at present because they are all experimental. Sabine’s arguments appear to be balanced and reasonable. However, her conclusion that nuclear power is not a “green” alternative to fossil fuels is a consequence of her use of the flawed statistics regarding Uranium and Thorium reserves and future costs. I’m sure that around the world millions will be persuaded by her flawed arguments. If not redressed immediately this flawed argument will persist, like the previous false suggested correlation between autism and vaccinations, for decades to come. Associate Professor Dr. Geoffrey R Taylor (Head, School of Mines, University of New South Wales, 1992-2002)

Excellent, unbiased video. Rare these days. Well done.

@metagen77

2 жыл бұрын

Not really, it's loaded. For example Chernobyl was not an "accident" neither is it an accident when you design something to fail, as in putting your backups in a flood zone. How can all the deaths by hydro be from one failed dam in China? I know of people who drowned in reservoir drains, both maintaining them and swimming in them. More like lazy research, falling for propaganda and putting out this poor piece of video. Worst video I saw her upload

@nonyabisness6306

2 жыл бұрын

A bit lacking on the economics. Nuclear is cheap, but when you have lots of regulations, low number and no subsedies the price rises, similarly Solar is cheap because of this as well.

@kedrednael

2 жыл бұрын

​@@metagen77 The deaths for hydropower are *dominated* by a single accident she said. They are not all deaths. Wikipedia says that dam failure Sabina mentioned killed 240,000 people, not 170,000 (although "more than 170,000" does include 240,000.., and you'll find different numbers because those drowned were just lost etc). The next most lethal dam failure killed around 5,000 people. So yes. It's accurate to say the deaths are *dominated* by a single accident.

@metagen77

2 жыл бұрын

@@kedrednael You are right I misrepresented this part, should have listened

@JerehmiaBoaz

2 жыл бұрын

Yeah, it's "unbiased" in the sense that it completely ignores two huge problems with nuclear energy: 1) the unsolved problem of long term storage of nuclear waste (longer than the average life span of a human civilization) and 2) proliferation of nuclear arms. Especially non-proliferation becomes nigh impossible if the world starts using large numbers of small modular reactors.

(17:25) _"..about three metres in diameter and twenty feet tall."_ So they're metric in one dimension and imperial in the other? 😊 Seriously though, the fineness ratio is definitely greater than that. Perhaps they're 20m tall?

@diego1694

2 жыл бұрын

How to piss off the entire world in one sentence.

@patrickegan8866

2 жыл бұрын

Catering to a wide audience lol

@CAThompson

2 жыл бұрын

@@diego1694 I actually found it amusing. I'm used to thinking in Imperial and Metric, so I wasn't confused, just momentarily distracted. 😆

@nagualdesign

2 жыл бұрын

@@CAThompson Me too. Though it's a little confusing to say they're twice as tall as they are wide, while the image clearly shows they're a lot taller or thinner.

@IZn0g0uDatAll

2 жыл бұрын

Isn’t it in aviation that you measure horizontal distances in kilometers and the vertical ones in feet? It’s a neat way to wipe out any possibility of confusion.

In the least amount of words..........You are great!

In my 30-year career in the production of electricity, the first 17 I worked in a fossil fuel plant. I worked in a nuclear power plant in California my last 13 years and I would say that where to put the waste for over 100,000 years is one of the biggest challenges. Regarding life cycle, we were on an 18-month cycle at which time we did a partial refueling and a core shuffle. Only about 1/3 of the fuel rods were degraded enough to no longer be usable. The uranium burns out unevenly throughout the core and based on engineering they would shuffle the rods around to maximize this fuel burnout and only put in about 1/3 new fuel rods at each 18 month interval. It was also a time for doing major maintenance as needed.

As a person in the nuclear field, I can say that molten salt reactors are only used in Red countries, due to the fact that it runs hotter, and at lower pressures. however even the smallest introduction of water, will cause the entire reactor to explode. since they use liquid sodium as a moderator. for those who know about basic chemistry, when sodium is exposed to water, there is a exothermic reaction, causing the chemical reaction site to release a bunch of heat. this is increased in magnitude with a salt reactor. its is the primary reason that in the non-red countries, its preferable to use water cooled reactors. it is overall safer to personal and has a few configurations, including but not limited to PWRs (Pressurized Water Reactors) and open pool reactors. The main advantage of water is that it is used for 3 purposes, over sodium. a moderator (allows for fast neutrons to reach thermal neutron levels of energy), a reflector (re-directs neutron radiation back into the fuel area, thus increasing the neutron flux density within the fuel area), and a shield (basically, the more water there is between the people spaces, and the reactor fuel. the less dose rate the people working at the site receive. thus, you can store spare water for the reactor itself, in its shielding layer. which is normally lead, boron, polyurethane, and steel). Another miss understanding in the video, is that the uranium fuel is extremely limited. this is not true. yes, there is about 8 million tons available on surface deposits. however what is wrong is the duration of the fuel loss when used. U-25 has a very long reaction chain before it becomes stable. resulting in statistically 2-3 times more overall power output then breeder or thorium reaction chains respectfully. this means that gram for gram, U-25 can generate significantly more overall power, in a smaller space. most civilian reactors today use enriched fuel pellets, which is about 7-8% enrichment, basically takes out enough U-28 to raise the 0.7% concentration to 7%. or about 90% of U-28. the 'depleted uranium' or U-28 extracted this way is used for tank armor or ammunition. The main reason the red countries use thorium over uranium, is that majority of the surface uranium deposits are found in the Continental United States. where as thorium is mostly acquired in Asia. it is significantly harder to weaponize thorium, which is why its easier for other countries looking into nuclear energies are aloud to use them. The final overlooked point, is that uranium fuel is not at all like oil, coal, or NG. 1 gram of U-24 will last YEARS, where as 1 gram of other fuels will last about a fraction of a fraction of the time in the power generation process. in civilian powerplants, the same fuel that is loaded day one, will be used until 3-10 years depending on fuel loading and power demand. so that 8 million tons of surface uranium, will not last a few years like you predict, but in fact over 10,000 years after processing. this can be extended with power conservation efforts and renewables. since nuclear power is a variable power generator, you can lower it when renewables would generate constant power, meaning, you don't need a power storage sites. unlike other conventional power generation facilities, nuclear can scale its power level. where as conventional sites will consume the same constant amount of fuel, but can generate excess, unused power, this is why in dams or other facilities, they shut off generators, to maintain a proper consumption to generation ratios. I could go on, but its a KZread comment. so not a proper place to perform a educated rebuttal to your video.

@jims2267

Жыл бұрын

So what are your thoughts on pebble bed reactors?

@FNLastname

Жыл бұрын

@@jims2267 personally, I think it would be a dumb idea in practice. first off, you have to load new fuel similar to how they do it with most current civilian reactors with a fuel pellet design. except now you have to place each fuel 'ball' in a location that would cause the reactors neutron flux to change slightly over core life. this means that they have to prevent a bunch of balls that use the space between them for coolant flow, from A) melting at peak fuel temperatures, and B) shifting from mechanical/natural vibrations. the big issue I don't trust personally, is the fact that its not 100% predictable of what is happening to the fuel while the reactor is in operation. on paper, it may seem great. however, like screws on large machinery, over time, the stresses and micro vibrations may cause things to shift and bend. so, unless they can map and simulate the flux of the pebble fuel in near real time. I fear the reactor is not as predictable as gen 2 or 3 reactors.

@anneblankert2005

Жыл бұрын

@Firstname Lastname I didn't know about the explosive nature of molten salt when combined with water. In your comment, however, you forget to mention what happens when water starts boiling or leaks away from a water reactor. Instead of slowing down the chain reaction, this increases the chain reaction. Physically exploding salt may be less harmful than a run-away nuclear fission reaction in the open air. As you may well know, this melt-down problem has already occurred in several different reactors at several different locations. You claim that the Uranium 235 chain reaction delivers 2-3 times more power than Thorium or breeder Uranium. That is nice. However, the Uranium 235 isotope is 0.7% of all available Uranium isotopes. So if power is 3 times as much as other Uranium isotopes, you compare 3 x 0.7% = 2.1 % of power to the power available from the other sources (97.9% more power available). If you raise Uranium 235 from 0.7% to 7%, you need 10 times the natural Uranium as input. Enrichment of Uranium does not solve the problem of the limited availability of Uranium 235, does it? The 8 million tons of Uranium is the estimated total amount available. Of that amount only 0.7% is U235. You are right that you need much less nuclear fuel than fossil fuel. However, the world estimated amount of oil is about 1.65 trillion barrels of oil (47 years to go) and 1.14 trillion tons of coal (133 years left). A trillion (10^12) is a million times bigger than a million. Please let me know if I misunderstood something.

@FNLastname

Жыл бұрын

@@anneblankert2005 so, most water reactors have what is called a 'void coefficient of reactivity'. this is what happens when liquid water turns into steam, or is absent. most reactors will have a negative void coefficient. this way, if there is ever boiling or lack of coolant, the reactor is less likely to be self sustaining. a example of a reactor with a positive void coefficient is Chernobyl, as the tips of the control rods counted as voids for that type of reactor. basically, the material used does not absorb or reflect neutral flux's. so when boiling occurred, it caused a increase in fission rate, which caused a significant increase in steam pressure... basically it exploded due to steam pressure, not because of a fission explosion. i talk about the tips, since when the operator raised the control rods, while there was little cooling, it added 2 forms of reactivity to the core (industry standard practice is to limit changes of reactivity to one source; control rods, steam loads, or adjusting cooling flow). as for the issue with water released, from a water reactor. since all reactors are contained in a primary containment building. since these buildings are not designed to withstand high pressures, there is a pressure dump where the steam from the primary leak is sent to a condenser. but its rare for that to occur, since the volume of the primary containment is designed to hold, even if 100% of all the coolant was turned into steam. its just a failsafe for the steam dump to a condenser. there is also methods of forced cooling, to rapidly flood ( and cool down) a reactor's containment. honestly, it depends on the design of the plant and what the engineers decided is the best methods. its why every nuclear power plant is different. as for the fuel, again, its not like a car engine that needs to top off its tanks. most fuel lasts years. a 1000MW reactor is typically loaded with about 100 tons of enriched fuel, and lasts for about 4 years at full power output. the average fuel enrichment of the reactor is typically 2%, since a fresh new reactor is at 4%ish. fuel assembly's are periodically replaced and refueled on a 12-24 month basis. (this is based on open pool reactors using fuel pellets at 4% enrichment) if we assume your math, if we enriched the 8 million tons of Uranium ore into 4% enriched fuel, we get about 1.4 million tons of fuel. in 2019, the world consumed about 23900 terawatt hours of energy. so if we used that as a base line for yearly consumption rate. its about 2.7 terawatts per hour. so, if we had ONLY nuclear power plants around the world, using all of our uranium supply at that rate. it would only last 20.7 years. however, currently, in the world, nuclear power accounts for 10% of the worlds current generation, so, its more like 207 years now, and of all these reactors, some are thorium, or breeder reactors. so, the supply of limited uranium is quickly looking like it will last a few centuries at least. hopefully, this answered a few of your concerns. as for the reaction of sodium with water, just look up 'rare earth metals react with water' here on KZread. that would answer your question.

@FNLastname

Жыл бұрын

@LTNetjak which carrier reactors? A4W? A1B? or A2W? each one is different in size, and the safety systems for each requires seawater availability. even so, the reason the reactors are so small on carriers is because they dont use cooling towers, but rather sea water condensers. so, unless you explain the cooling method to replace the huge cooling towers with something tiny. i dont personally think using naval reactors as emergency substation backup power generators. the US Army once had a nuclear power program too, look up SL-1. it was suppose to do exactly as your saying. but it was canned for reasons.

Great content as always. 🤓 As a chemist, I can say that 97% of nuclear waste can be reused for the next generation of reactors (through selective radionuclide extraction by virtue of solid supported ligands). This research is ongoing of course and it takes quite some time for the engineers to modify their thinking and hence designs from previous models and extraction processes. In essence, this means nuclear is here for much longer than the metal abundances may imply.

@7th808s

2 жыл бұрын

I suppose that even if this works, the efficiency will be lower, making it even less profitable.

@timc7035

2 жыл бұрын

France and other countries reprocesses it, which makes the sustainability much better. The US banned nuclear reprocessing for fears of proliferation during the Carter administration. It's a policy problem as much as an engineering problem. France uses ~9k metric tons of Uranium per year while the US uses 18k tons/year. France has 61 GW and the US has 95 GW of installed nuclear, so US has 155% more nuclear energy, but uses 2x more uranium.

@zach2011w

2 жыл бұрын

@@timc7035 Oak Ridge was slated at one point to have a reprocessing facility which got scrapped. Like a lot of things nuclear, seems like the "research is ongoing" is more likely politics making it untenable...

@jafinch78

2 жыл бұрын

​@@timc7035 My Dad never like the Carter admin not only for that. Insane absolutely criminally neglect office of duties and more IMO! More nuclear systems integrated in buffered underground underwater submersibles modules or above water at sea needs to be considered to ease fears. Keep those implements underground and underwater or at sea so there isn't the natural disaster risks and remove the worry of incidents that are serious deviations. Also, highly critical is the reclamation and/or regeneration of used/spent fuel and materials. I think the material science in nucleogenesis and related R&D needs to be advanced as well. Seems the designs can be changed to also be external combustion in design and more closed loop less risks designs in worse case scenario(s). Maybe desalinate water while running through the classical turbines and/or process some landfill waste that isn't recyclable like the plastics nightmare until they're use is more reduced in healthily renewable/recyclable ways... as an added society benefit. I also wonder about more recently dealing with the hydroelectric pumped storage systems... maybe the nuclear plants can cooperate with big agriculture for all of agriculture to pump water from lakes and not underground wells to reprocess the waste water and nutrients and other "-cidals" to reduce those needs and waste. Maybe an agriculture pipeline systems infrastructure.

@DonQuickZote

2 жыл бұрын

For a layman like me, are you talking about fast breeder reactors?

Regarding the Fukushima aftermath, fhere is an issue I have never seen addressed. The population lives on a long, narrow piece of land. At the time of maximum radiation release, the wind was blowing across the populated territory, rather than parallel to it. I've always wondered what the prevailing direction of the wind is there. And the likelyhood that the wind could have been parallel at the time of the accident. And the difference in outcome, if that happened.

@NixHarpinger

2 ай бұрын

It wasn't addressed because the Fukushima accident didn't result in exploding reactors (which normally shouldn't happen in Chernobyl either). So the highly radioactive core wasn't freely exposed to the world like in Chernobyl. I never studied the details of the accident, but as a general rule of thumb, nuclear reactors don't explode.

It's important to remember that LCOE can be misleading in that it often is examined "In Current Market Conditions". Notably, it's factoring in the costs AFTER any private/ public subsidies have affected the base price of an input. Examples would include the artificially low price paid by oil and gas companies to drill / extract on government land and other direct financial aid provided by the government. Nuclear USED to get such subsidies, but after the scare of Chernobyl and other nuclear accidents, those shriveled up. So while Nuclear looks WAY more expensive on a bare reading of LCOE, the gap shrinks significantly once you factor in private / public subsidies that would otherwise be paid by the builder & end consumer.

Excellent video as usual. Suggestion: A video about nuclear waste management and recycling this type of waste.

@OAK-808

2 жыл бұрын

She wouldn't want to do that, mate. The whole nuclear power house of cards will come tumbling down.

@davidj4662

2 жыл бұрын

They make weapons from it.

@SabineHossenfelder

2 жыл бұрын

Thanks for the suggestion!

@jacquespedersen

2 жыл бұрын

I would love that too, since I think it’s the most serious problem with that energy type.

@AMorgan57

2 жыл бұрын

Also, if you make energy cheaper without changing the marketplace, people will just spend the savings doing other destructive stuff. The marketplace depends on what people want in their lives, how they perceive costs and benefits. This will require a revolution of values.

Thanks for this excellent video! A few remarks from an economist's perspective: -Not enough Uranium: availability could be increased substantially by reprocessing and also when new mines are discovered (which usually happens, cf. peak-oil discussion). -Cost: grid and storage costs are not factored in for renewables in LCOE, but will become increasingly important as will cost of (limited) resources, especially in the building phase. Over lifetime, nuclear might still be profitable because so much energy is produced, thus also attracting private investments, but only if there is legal certainty about future regulations. -Renewable death toll: these are mostly industrial accidents and should be compared to comparable average industrial fatality rates (imo).

@0MoTheG

2 жыл бұрын

I guess the reprocessing is already in the calculation as it has always been the practice.

@puma7171

2 жыл бұрын

@@0MoTheG There is few reprocessing happening, because it's more expensive than mined uranium I believe. France does it, who else?

@0MoTheG

2 жыл бұрын

@@puma7171 Every nuclear power. They used to be wild for the Pu and also the elements must be reworked every so often because they mechanically decay.

@bamboo7099

2 жыл бұрын

This video is misleading Life of nuclear plant is 80 years 4 times that of solar or wind And thrice of gas Twice of coal Which means levelized costs of lifetime is baised towards solar and wind And then storage costs is not calculated for wind and solar which is 200 dollars for kwh for 20 years

@gyozakeynsianism

2 жыл бұрын

Economic history might help deepen the argument regarding uranium. When gold was the monetary base in much of the world, higher gold demand drove more widespread searching and new mining and processing technologies. Supply reacted to demand. The same can be said for oil. The argument could be applied prospectively to uranium too: higher demand may provide better information on uranium stores and make our use of it more efficient in the long run.

Thank you Sabine. I live in a place where most of our electricity comes from nuclear. I am super excited about enriching thorium and molten salt reactor technologies for awhile. Thank you for this video. 😎

@brianmi40

4 ай бұрын

try and keep tabs with progress in nuclear efficiency/cost over the next few years. Solar already has demonstrated in labs 1000x. Even at just 30-50x that would mean ONE solar panel powers your entire house. Solar will EAT all other competitors.

Excellent informative and balanced video.

Costs for intermittent solar and wind must include battery or other energy storage costs (or FF backup) for a fair cost comparison.

@fwiffo

2 жыл бұрын

I wouldn't assume that the analysis excludes these. Nuclear must also include its significant PR costs. Every industry needs to spend money on PR, and nuclear is no exception. There's no reason to expect PR to be free, just because the fears are irrational.

@ebehdzikraa3855

2 жыл бұрын

nuclear also needs gas peakers / energy storage / battery to be fully usable in electric grid since it is a baseloader power plant

@pkolloch

2 жыл бұрын

She mentions that in the video but doesn't quantify it.

@mandarmn

2 жыл бұрын

And add changes to transmission infra - battery / storage is at infancy compared to what is needed at scale. Till any reasonable storage technique at scale is deployed, one would need backup power (gas) and transmission infra to manage fluctuations

@yt.personal.identification

2 жыл бұрын

Water makes a great battery. Hydro power is a thing.

Just one more cent: Modular nuclear plants should also have an advantage that their heat output can be used for heating of nearby town(s). (Conventional power plant usually generates too much heat to be used effectively locally and transporting the heat to longer distances is expensive and needs too much infrastructure).

@38vocan

2 жыл бұрын

That's true! However, one needs to remember that heat is cheap compared to electricity (I have already run some numbers on it in the past), so using heat might not improve the economics of SMRs as much as you hope.

@brothermine2292

2 жыл бұрын

Is the modular heat a disadvantage in the summer?

@jimurrata6785

2 жыл бұрын

@@brothermine2292 You can use heat for cooling as well. Look at how a heat pump works. increasing the delta increases the output.

@mityador

2 жыл бұрын

@@brothermine2292 Depends with what you compare it. When there is no demand for the heat, you simply have to dissolve it into atmosphere somehow. But then the conventional power plants have to do that all the time, that's why they have the cooling towers releasing all the warm water vapor. In the end, it's again about trade-offs and local conditions: You could likely use more effectively more of the heat in Canada than in Mexico.

@brothermine2292

2 жыл бұрын

@@jimurrata6785 : I understand the rudiments of heat pumps, and I think you're wrong. Heat pumps become ineffective when the delta is high; for example the heat pump that heats my condo in winter requires switching to a backup "electrical resistance" system (electric current in resistive coils, like a toaster) when it's much colder outside than inside (high delta). In the summertime, the heat pump on the building's roof can't adequately cool the hallways on the hottest days (high delta). Maybe you should be more specific: to where would you suggest pumping away the town's heat in summer?

A great video! Thank you for making it.

Great video. Thank you for your work.

Thank you for this clear and engaging discussion. I look forward to seeing more of your videos.

Maybe we should also talk about the technologies for power storage, that would also change the renewables equation.

@thomasullmann7447

2 жыл бұрын

You mean their carbon footprint ?

@Adrian-mq5ld

2 жыл бұрын

oh right because power storage aka batteries for those who are not mentally impaired don't have a carbon footprint. What you need is a world war to cure your bs obsession for carbon that goes from earth back on earth using nature.

@joeferreti9442

2 жыл бұрын

Yes and no. Most power storage technologies don't emit CO2 (or other bad things), so short discussion.

@stuartburns8657

2 жыл бұрын

@@joeferreti9442 but their construction does. That's why driving a new EV can take between 60-90k miles before the co2 benefits kick in

@adalata

2 жыл бұрын

@@stuartburns8657 When the energy is produced climate friendly that effect is reduced drastically.

Your presentations are seminal doctorate papers.. every single one of them. I force my son to watch them to learn what science is.

First of all: very nice presentation, no background sound or "music", so very good to understand. One of the best types of presentation. Second: I never heard of the problem of thermal pollution. Even when nuclear does not produce CO2, they produce directly or indirectly via their consumers a lot of thermal energy (heat). After all a small piece of matter is converted to much heat that is warming up the planet. I thought that cooling of reactors by water from rivers is sometimes a problem for flora and fauna in these rivers.

As a #YIMBY (Yes! In my back yard!) I’m extremely happy with the nuclear power plants that run here in Illinois. They displaced the disgusting coal plants that were making Chicago’s air quality utterly terrible and they’ve had amazing economic effects on the towns where they’ve been built. The towns are thriving , prosperous, and so amazingly clean. Plus our power costs are a fraction of places like California that are trying so hard to be “green” by destroying massive nature preserves to build solar and wind. I get that Nuclear is unpopular, but that’s really something that we as a society need go get over. Nuclear is needed for our future. Discounting it is not a useful path forward.

@waterzap99

2 жыл бұрын

Everybody thinks of Chernobil as the latest and greatest. It was probably old tech when it was build. Like saying I'm not flying, because look at the 40s Soviet airplane technology.

@thewiirocks

2 жыл бұрын

@N Fels I’m not speaking in hyperbole. I mean that quite literally. Look up the TED talk from Michael Shellenberger entitled “Why I changed my mind about Nuclear power”. He actually has a couple of videos on the topic. In the video he describes the environmental destruction he found himself a part of in trying to deploy wind and solar. I’m not saying wind and solar are useless. There are circumstances under which they can preferable or even ideal. But there has been some very questionable decision making in California where they shut down highly effective nuclear plants and replace them with wind and solar projects which require incredible amounts of land clearing, doing untold damage to the environment. All in the name of saving the environment.

@thewiirocks

2 жыл бұрын

​@N Fels You are honestly saying that it's not destruction to slaughter an endangered species of bird like the Yuma clapper rail and rare desert tortoises? You honestly think that's comparable to a local increase in river temperature without any other stated effects? Michael Shellenberger is a Time Magazine "Hero of the Environment" and President of Environmental Progress, a research and policy organization. Exactly the type of high level environmentalist that is pushing wind and solar. He was literally out there doing some of the clearing and witnessed the destruction of local species. You can dismiss him out of hand if you want, but then why are you commenting? You have no position if you're not willing to engage and debate the facts.

@alyssahayes268

2 жыл бұрын

I'm visiting Dresden tomorrow for a tour!! So excited:)

@trumpisaconfirmedcuck5840

2 жыл бұрын

@@thewiirocks A lot of the nuclear plants shut down in California were super old. Also keep in mind most of California is prone to earthquakes. Did you even watch the video btw? Dr. Hossenfelder points out that current nuclear technology, if increased 10x will run out of U235 fuel in 20 years.

A few years ago they closed my favorite Atomkraftwerk (nuclear power plant) Grafenrheinfeld. It was nice to see the cloud above the cooling towers to recognize the visibility of the atmosphere, because it was 55km away. And it was also a nice navigation point when I was coming back from some flights. Looking in what direction the cloud was, was a good help to determine the own position. But yeah, people are irrational afraid and so it got closed forever... ☹️ A lot people don't believe that around coal power plants the radiotion is higher than around nuclear power plants...

@Azarilh

2 жыл бұрын

I wish people would stop faithfully believe the media and start being more skeptical...

@elabijt1715

2 жыл бұрын

Flights? Aha!

@foopadr9076

2 жыл бұрын

Good. We need less climate change, not more. So good they closed your Nazi kraftwerk.

@eekee6034

2 жыл бұрын

@@Azarilh It would help if certain governments hadn't outright lied about certain accidents. Look up the 3 Mile Island disaster.

@Azarilh

2 жыл бұрын

@@eekee6034 Where's the lie?

You forget one aspect about the market, in the UK the government are happy to underwrite the cost because it subsidises the military use - trident

Thanks for the well prepared video!

"if someone isn't comfortable near a nuclear power plant, that affects their quality of life, and that can't just be dismissed." unfortunately people say that about wind turbines, 5g towers, vaccines, ffp2 masks, mosques, refugees or bicycle lanes, too.

@andrewharpin6749

2 жыл бұрын

You get NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard) everywhere in the world unfortunately.

@briangarrow448

2 жыл бұрын

While my son was at university a few years ago, one of his professors was virulently against coal and oil energy plants. Then state authorities opened up the land to wind turbine installation near where he owned a very nice rural home with impressive views. You can see how he changed his tune overnight. NIMBYism is strong in everyone, including well paid uni profs with rural homes.

@michaelmicek

2 жыл бұрын

@-GinΠΓ Τάο water vapor is just water. Heat radiates into space except to the extent it is trapped by the atmosphere, and CO2 (having three atoms hence more modes of vibration) is better at trapping it than O2 or N2.

@Rocketsong

2 жыл бұрын

The best place to build a nuclear power plant is next to and existing nuclear power plant. (or call it an expansion or upgrade). People who live near one are generally pretty happy with all the high paying jobs generated.

@fwiffo

2 жыл бұрын

PR is an expense in any industry. Nuclear can't expect to get it for free.

Great work Sabine, I really enjoyed the video. One correction on the negative reactivity coefficient. This is a key design feature for current nuclear power plants. The RBMK reactors were exceptions as they were over moderated. Any plant built today, (including SFR and PWR), must have negative power coefficients. If they don’t, the NRC (or similar governing body) will prohibit them from running, this happened in Canada with their MAPLE reactor. Side note, MSR do have amazing reactivity coefficients, and there are some designs which theoretically allow for the reactor to be run without control rods by relying on temperature shifts alone (i.e. if you want to run at power power, you allow the reactor to heat up a bit). That being said, the NRC really likes control rods :) And all future MSR designs will likely use them.

@xxwookey

2 жыл бұрын

power power -> lower power?

@coleb0709

2 жыл бұрын

Yes, should have been ‘lower power’ thank you for the correction :)

@666golem

2 жыл бұрын

The reactivity coefficient doesn't come only from the temperature coefficient, even as you said, it depends on the amount of moderator in the active zone, so it's possible to have a reactor with a positive temperature coefficient while having an overall reactivity coefficient negative.

Hi Sabine. Would you consider a short video about Oklo, Gabon? This natural fission site is fascinating. Your take on it, with your background and unique style/humor, would be very interesting and (I'm certain) entertaining too.

Great presentation, as usual. But I think you continue to overlook the serious Issues with nuclear waste disposal. For example, Oak Ridge is littered with low and medium radiation disposal sites, much of which dates back to the X-10 pile that was used to study the production of plutonium. All of that waste could be fashioned into a dirty bomb and is not closely guarded. The cleanup of Hanford is taking decades, even with current technology. But I think the biggest problem is that Pu 239 has a half life of 20,000 years. Nobody can say what will happen to waste containers exposed to radiation for that period of time. There is good reason that even Nevada no longer wants a national disposal site anymore. However, you gave several excellent reasons to not forge ahead with numerous nuclear power plants, even though the notion has become quite fashionable lately. I thank you for that.

@bramesque

9 ай бұрын

You are right about her. overlooking the waste disposal, she does it another time in a dedicated video. I am getting sad when i hear educated people redicule the worries of the non educated concerning the waste of the industry.

Glad you said that about the chemical industry, as most people don’t know that the most popular brand of fire retardant, Phos-Chek, was created by Monsanto and has many harmful chemicals, including glyphosates, and this years fire season is likely to see record amounts dropped all across the world. Maybe more than any farming method has previously introduced, and even “organic” labeled foods are found to contain these harmful substances. Mean while, even though nuclear power is broken (not in a good way), everyone is still ignoring obvious danger from the chemical industry.

@jimp5133

2 жыл бұрын

I don’t believe technology can solve the ecological issue. How do people actively reduce or reverse their carbon foot print by planting trees? etc.

Thank you for your intelectual honesty. Great summary. I disagree with the comment about leaving this to "the market". High fixed costs/high reward activities (eg. CERN) are the kind that need public money. We need to take those gambles.

@JGRGilbert

2 жыл бұрын

Yes, and I have a feeling that "the market" won't fix climate change either!

@kelvinhbo

2 жыл бұрын

The last time we left energy production to the market, we ended up with global warming.

@nonyabisness6306

2 жыл бұрын

The issue with leaving it to the market is also dismissing the influence of gov regulations and subsedies. There's a reason Solar became big and it has nothing to do with the market.

@cherubin7th

2 жыл бұрын

@@kelvinhbo We never left this to the market, the government subsidized fossil a lot. @Nonya Bisness True, solar gets so much investment and incentives from the government, no other energy source can compete with it on the market without this support from the gov.

@DanDeLeoninthefield

2 жыл бұрын

@@JGRGilbert Markets definitely will not solve the climate crisis.

In the 80's I had a small part in a large geotechnical engineering project to leverage Nevada's Yucca Valley for nuclear waste. That story line is probably worth a small mention in this discussion. Even if seen as less unsafe than alternatives by experts like Sabine, the public is unlikely to allow safest storage alternatives like Yucca. As a result, we have numerous small waste storage sites across the country, which seems even less safe than the original Yucca Valley plan.

@clarkkent9080

Жыл бұрын

LIE- The nuclear waste issue would be solved if Yucca Mountain were just opened.” TRUTH - The 1983 Nuclear Waste policy act specifically stated that no less than 2 nuclear waste disposal sites would be established so that no one part of the U.S. would get all the waste. And that the disposal would be in the scientifically best location and that is a salt formation. Yucca mountain is an extinct volcano and not a salt formation. In 2014, the amount of spent nuclear waste stored at the 100+ reactor sites in the U.S. exceeded the design capacity of Yucca Mountain so if it was ever opened, it cannot hold all the U.S. commercial waste now generated. The U.S. high level radioactive waste generated from the production of weapons grade U239 far exceeds that from commercial power plants. Hanford Wa. Has 53 million gallons of high-level radioactive waste in rusting underground tanks. Savannah River Site has 43 million gallons of high-level radioactive waste. That does not take into account high level radioactive waste stored at other DOE sites. Yucca Mountain was chosen for purely political reasons and it was abandoned for purely political reasons. Trump killed the project completely. We already have a nuclear waste problem that must someday be addressed but it is NOT solved by any means.

Great video, subscribed. I'm grateful for having a brother who has a PhD in plasma physics and every time fusion is in the media he can tell me with authority what is actually the state of affairs in that field. Funny thing is he works for the Philosophy department of University of Tasmania, his second PhD was in epistemology. He knows what it means to know :)

@PBeringer

Жыл бұрын

Gah, it would've been torture for him. Heading towards a PhD and I daily *feel* like I know less and less ... and that's apparently good. Haha ;)

The problem with wind is that it is "allowed" to produce only when it can. Here in Sweden we have closed half of our nuclear power plants (however less than half the effect) and almost replaced the energy loss from nuclear with wind. The result is extreme variations in price (the price on the spot market can vary with a factor much larger than 50 between days) , since there is not enough on demand electricity production (ie hydroelectic). Already some swedish industries, mainly pulp and paper, have been forced to partly close down because of the large fluctuations in prices. Investing in a large paper-making machine or having it running around the clock is not possible with the high fluctuations in energy prices. There are in principle two ways to overcome this: fossil based or more wind. However if we would increase wind to compensate, even on not so windy days, for the loss of effect from our closed nuclear power plants, electricity from wind turbines would probably become more expensive to produce, and since there will be more wind turbines the prices will be lower on the market when it is windy as well as when it is less windy, making wind turbines less economic. The economy of wind turbines seems to be highly dependent on the fact that they "are allowed" produce electricity only when they "want", thereby making nuclear (where short term effect changes are harder to make, at least in sweden) lose money for periods. It essence either wind will not be that cheap and not very economic to produce since we must have a large number of wind turbines to get the desired effect even when it is not very windy, or we will have prices that vary extremely making it hard for certain industries to survive. Here we had a stable energy system and now we have a highly unstable system with extreme price variations with prices we never saw some years ago. It was not a god idea to close our older nuclear reactors, especially since the cost per energy produced was rather low compared to new reactors and not much more expensive than wind. More generally, the cost of wind does not factor in the cost for the energy system as a whole. For example, here the effect from wind varies between 300 MW (seldom), 400-500 MW (not that seldom), to around 7000 MW with a mean around 4000-5000 MW. Thus to have a stable system we need almost 4000-5000 MW on demand effect (the excess wind capacity discussed above, or as fossil). We seldom talk about the cost of this system. Wind has become a cuckoo in the nest!

@erikp6614

2 жыл бұрын

From a political standpoint I find it amazing that Germany, in spite of warnings from a number allied, has shut down nuclear power plants and made itself dependent on gas from a dictator. It is in part the fault of Germany that we are now paying 1 billion € a day for gas and oil to Putins war in Ukraine.

@kreek22

2 жыл бұрын

Yes, this intermittency is especially problematic for small countries that cannot hedge one aspect of their energy system against others. In America, for example, if its grid were properly interconnected (which it is not), intermittency is less of a concern; low wind energy could be balanced by high solar from 2,000 miles away, or low grid energy in one sector could drive up prices throughout the nation by a small amount instead of a sharp increase in a small area. But, it sounds like parts of Europe are rethinking their anti-nuclear paranoia.

@todirbg

2 жыл бұрын

@@kreek22 Unfortunately it is not economically viable to transport electricity 2000 miles away. If that was possible Europe could be powered by solar plants in Sahara.

@markw664

2 жыл бұрын

@@todirbg There is apparently already a 2100 mile DC interconnect in China (I accept this is via Wikipedia though. Search for longest DC interconnect) . Have you got a source for saying that it's not economically viable?

@andsalomoni

2 жыл бұрын

Use the wind to produce hydrogen, which can be stored for when there is no wind. And use the others renewable sources too, wind is not the only one.

Love the video, Sabine! I'm looking for a sequel with geothermal energy from you. Have a great weekend!

Thanks for simplifying the explanation of the breeder reactors, these new modular ones, and the LFTR's Sabine. You even covered insurance costs which in U.S. big government assumes like how we subsidize big oil. I'm a Hanford down winder these past six years now with one reported collapse of their jury rigged septic tanks, along the Columbia River. It's better than living by Hood Canal where all the nuclear weapons are when the Cascade Fault goes I guess. The state of New Mexico is much worse, clean up of open pit Midnite Mine on Spokane Tribal Land is coming along though in Washington. From what I hear about Fukushima, they were getting away with using MOX. Chernobyl was very dumb idea. Farming, and GMO food doesn't seem to be raising much healthy cultural diversity, or intelligent awareness in North America😅 When I lived in Idaho I tried to help Snake River Alliance and learned about Yucca Mountain too of the Eastern Shoshone. One day I helped with nuclear waste removal at McMurdo Station, Antarctica in 1975, and I've deployed on two different nuclear powered carriers with their super saturated steam power, they can go terribly fast! I think I 'd rather live like my First Nation ancestors often rather than all this excavating and trampling down the earth, and oceans, peace to you.

When I was in college back in the mid 1990's my professor for environmental engineering told us the same fun fact about trace radioactive elements in coal & how exposure to radiation is higher near coal plants than nuclear plants.

@jj4791

Жыл бұрын

Same with oil. I work around crude oil every week. It comes up from 5,000-15,000ft down. Its all radioactive to some degree or another.

Great summary, as always Sabine! Nuclear gives power on demand. Yes it does, but there's a limit to this, you can't vary the power at will, this has to do with build up of 135Xe, which absorbs neutrons and can make a reactor unstable. MSR design can help remove Xe Thorium is currently available abundantly in existing 'waste' piles of rare earth mines. Germany had a Thorium-based THTR300 powerplant in Nordrhein-Westfalen operating from 1983 to 1989. Such a shame that they decided to shut it down after some fuel balls got stuck. And because of national policy and fear after the Chernobyl incident.

@christophbarthe6762

2 жыл бұрын

wouldn't it be possible to vary power at will by cogenerating heat and/or hydrogen and switching between power and heat at demand? Present designs are not made for that. But with some changes it should be possible in future.

@cinemoriahFPV

2 жыл бұрын

You can easily vary the power on demand by wasting steam or directing more steam through the turbine.

@Martin-wj6um

2 жыл бұрын

Xenon comes from iodine decay, so...hydrogen from excess power of renewables or nuclear is a viable option with a lot of problems and no one has done it yet. And no venting excess steam is wasting energy, so no...edit thorium cycle is a proliferation nightmare thats the reason no one is willing to scale it up ...

@rjgarnett

Жыл бұрын

Spot on. In fact it was xenon moderation which contributed to the Chernobyl explosion. There are some ways around the loading rates problems. In a coal fired station with modern controls we could do step load changes of 20% at 10% per minute, but due to combustion stability we had a minimum load of 20%. But we had a 100% turbine steam bypass system so we could use this to absorb excess steam to enable very rapid load reductions 500 MW to house load in less than a second. I know that similar systems are used in the nuclear industry as our LP bypass valves were nuclear power steam turbine valves re-purposed. Of course they only work for load reductions, not load increases unless you run the reactor flat out and dump excess steam through the bypass to control output. Not very economic and very, very noisy. I am sure that with sufficient R&D some of the rate limitations of fusion could be worked out. Also coordination of nuclear reactors with pumped storage would be a good combination in some electricity grids, but don't mention batteries or I'll have a melt-down. The problem at the moment is the people making these decisions don't understand that (A) you need base load and (B) Renewables just cannot economically or environmentally provide it. That is if you don't want every square meter of land covered in solar panels and windmills.

@hewdelfewijfe

Жыл бұрын

France's reactors can ramp at +-5% / min over a wide range of power output. That's about as fast as a combined cycle gas turbine. That's plenty fast enough.

One interesting aspect about the cost of nuclear power is that it is very expensive to build a nuclear power station but the cost of running one are quite cheap. So in this sense, once you built a nuclear power plant you want to use it as long as possible

@JayVal90

2 жыл бұрын

Life extensions are ridiculously cost-effective.

@hikashia.halfiah3582

2 жыл бұрын

from the video the levelized cost is still somewhat more expensive than coal. Though I think there's debatable assumptions in that calculation, so the answer still will be "it's complicated".

@carlbrenninkmeijer8925

2 жыл бұрын

Well, to dismantle it is extremely costly. But the next generation (fewer young people), facing a climate collapse, will grind their teeth.

@JayVal90

2 жыл бұрын

@@hikashia.halfiah3582 VERY debatable. Nuclear cost includes all commissioning and decommissioning costs, those renewables probably don’t even include repair costs, and half the supply chain is subsidized. Also batteries bring the cost up like 5x.

@JayVal90

2 жыл бұрын

@@carlbrenninkmeijer8925 You don’t have to dismantle. You can retrofit nuclear power plants for a fraction of the cost as new, saving money at both ends.

In view of your more recent video about the potential problem of waste heat build-up (Thomas Murphy's calcs), I guess we need to add that to the negative side of the nuclear power ledger.

Yes, a quite briiliant and informative analysis.

Thank you for a balanced discussion on nuclear energy. Price seems to be its biggest downfall…after fear.

@Achrononmaster

2 жыл бұрын

Price (monetary) is _not_ an issue for currency-issuing government, they can always bring on line as much electricity as real resource availability allows, including of course labour availability to build stuff. The money costs is not a constraint for fiat currency issuers. (Money is not a _real_ resource for a fiat currency issuer. Votes in Parliament to issue the currency are the constraint. They issue currency by typing numbers into bank accounts with a computer, so almost zero energy cost.) They have inflation risk only when real resource constraints are reached (usually labour). So the limiting factor is speed of construction. Sabine doe snot understand monetary economics, but cannot be blamed, since she lives in the eurozone which self-imposes unnecessary austerity (because they still think their currency is like gold).

@jellyd4889

2 жыл бұрын

Is Mr Smith saying that you can just print more money or borrow more if you need it? Ah. That only works if you are an exporting nation.

@Robert-cu9bm

2 жыл бұрын

They always say price, but look a Europe.... France has cheap reliable energy and the rest has expensive unreliable renewables. Because you have to rely on Gas.

@captaindave88

2 жыл бұрын

@@Robert-cu9bm so the answer is nuclear and renewables. Gas and coal can go away now if it weren't for irrational fear of nuclear

@Kyragos

2 жыл бұрын

@@Robert-cu9bm France offers indeed one of the cheapest electricity in Europe, thanks to its nuclear power plants that are financially self-sufficient, including the daily costs, maintenance and ultimately decommissioning. The initial investment is pretty steep, but a nuclear power plant lasts at least 60 years, giving far enough time to pay it off and even more.

Great video. Looking at all the infrastructure required to harness the energy and store it is helpful

It's very good information. Thank you.

One thing about these molten salt reactors is the presence of numerous decay products in solution. As one person put it, " we're dealing with half the periodic table" in there.

That is the most even handed evaluation of nuclear power I have ever seen! Not once in all the years I have been looking at it has someone done an evaluation that comes up with the answer "that depends". Thank you!

After watching a couple of Sabine’s videos, I’m starting to appreciate the bone dry humor. She’s hilarious!

@mrkiplingreallywasanexceed8311

Жыл бұрын

Oh totally - she'd be hilarious to go out drinking with!😀

@crazycutz8072

Жыл бұрын

Yes.. That famous dry German humor.. Lol

@jeremiahlynn9584

Жыл бұрын

Look at her old videos where she sings science stuff. They are amazing

@fugoogleandyourgodamnedplu8260

Жыл бұрын

Her dryness makes the Sahara desert seem wet as hell. Occasionally she has a corny joke, but when she lands a perfectly thrown sardonic lob, it’s absolutely brilliant.

@andrewvida3829

Жыл бұрын

Seems a might too dry because to my admittedly loused up eye, she seems to believe in nonsense like "climate change" as peddled by the watermelon Marxists. I fully admit I may have missed sarcasm, but it seemed very sincere to me, which I found most disappointing. I know many in the hard sciences and to my knowledge none of them buy into the climat panic nonsense.

Thank you for this video. I will use it as a source for future debates off and online. What I love about this video is that I've come from the opposite direction. I'm a PhD candidate for particle physics in Austria and I've grown up hearing horror stories from my older siblings and parents about Chernobyl, have seen Fukushima unfold as a teenager and am now exposed to the scare about nuclear fallout from the war in Ukraine. One of the most opinion shaping moments for me was a talk from an anti-nuclear physicist/activist at my highschool, organized by my physics teacher at the time. At the time I started my university education, I was ideologically opposed to nuclear power. It is a bias I still find hard to get rid off. The negative emotions are hard to control, impossible to ignore. During my undergrad years, we didn't spend much time learning about the physics (let alone the economic and safety aspects) of nuclear power plants since you're spending much more time refining your skills in linear algebra, playing around with Maxwell equations in electrodynimcs or bra-ing your kets in quantum theory ;) ... but I learned enough about it in my applied physics classes to have experienced a bit of cognitive dissonance concerning the safety aspects and the dimensions of waste compared to other energy sources. Hence my journey into personal research about the validity of nuclear power. And the beautiful result: Even tho I came from the very opposite ideological direction, we both came to the same conclusion: Nuclear power is comparably safe and comparably green. It has the potential to contribute to the reduction of carbon emissions. However, this potential is most likely very limited compared to renewable energy and with our current technology, it simply isn't economically viable compared to wind or solar. That being said, it might be the only viable solution for places with limited wind, solar and hydro potential and there is no good reason to make research into future reactor tech even harder than it is through restrictive regulations. I usually hate "both sides-isms" but in this particular it is unfortunately the case that both opponents and - in my humble opinion often even more so proponents - of nuclear power have left the realms of an objective and fact based analysis and debate. Thank you again.

Excellent analysis!

You cannot completely dismiss the waste disposal. It will still add to the overall costs. The facilitiess containing and working the wastes also have a carbon footprint and add a significant chunk the price tag.

@owlofminerva1397

2 жыл бұрын

Not necessarily, as there is so little volume and mass of waste produced. Also, some molten salt breeder reactors are designed to run on nuclear waste as a fuel. That eliminates the need for a long-term waste disposal.

@heggedaal

2 жыл бұрын

No you shouldn't and I'd be interested where all the electronic waste from PV and windfarms is going after the equipment has reached the end of it's lifetime.

@Luxalpa

2 жыл бұрын

@@heggedaal It goes directly into the production of new PVs and Windfarms. Copper is extremely valuable, nobody throws that away. That being said, PV panels can last basically forever, it's just that their energy production goes down over time.

@heggedaal

2 жыл бұрын

@@Luxalpa "It goes directly into the production of new PVs ..." That's exactly what I doubt. So far we're exporting all of our electronic waste to Africa. Copper there is reclaimed by burning the trash with detrimental results. I doubt also that PV panels last forever. That is plainly wrong. Albeit their electronic waste amount is quite small (basically glas with some aluminium leads and a bit of gallium etc.) it is the huge amount of this waste that is going to pose a problem.

@kaymish6178

2 жыл бұрын

@@Luxalpa PV's don't last forever, they begin to degrade as soon as they come out of the box and only last for about 30 years before replacement is needed. Then they become toxic waste because the glass is loaded up with toxic elements to improve transparency and efficiency. A study from India found that spend PV panels leach toxic elements into ground water no matter the disposal conditions, cracked ones were the worst but even pristine ones leached. After hurricanes in the USA all the smashed solar panels have to be swept up and thrown out where they leach toxins into the ground water.

Can you please address the problem of waste disposal please?

I'm retired and 73, I worked in radiation hardness with various radioactive sources and at reactors most my life in electronics. I'm a native born California with family in Nevada near Yucca Flats storage facility. When I was 50 I moved to a job in Kansas to raise my children away from large populations. In 1992 the NRC decided to attempt to place a nuclear storage facility on a 50 year flood plain within 5 miles of my home on Indian reservation land surrounded by several small towns, countless ranches and thousands of acres of dairy and wheat farm land...We literally had to fight to stop them! This IS THE PROBLEM...WHERE will they put the waste? Who will help when accidents occur? How will it be transported? Will it be safe and secure for thousands of years???? Too many unknown variables and too many security issues for such deadly waste. If anyone is pro nuclear just ask if the waste can be placed in their state, country or neighborhood...and if THEY will clean up an accident? Only an insane person would consider a technology that has no means to eliminate DEADY waste that will pollute grass, dirt, animals and people for thousands of years!

@Fetherko

11 ай бұрын

Agree. Those nuclear fuel rods are going to sit on the banks of our domestic water sources for a thousand years.

@hewdelfewijfe

10 ай бұрын

Nuclear waste transported in dry cask storage is basically indestructable. You can find videos online of them hitting those things with planes and train locomotives at full speed; they disintegrate on contact, leaving a small scratch on the massive wall of reinforced concrete that is the dry cask. Also, you have been lied to regarding the scale of the dangers of nuclear waste. It's not as dangerous as you think it is. Please google and read "the guardian the unpalatable truth is that the anti nuclear lobby has misled us all" and "dr bernard cohen the myth of plutonium toxicity".

Excellent video, merry Christmas

Thank you for this informative video, you are doing a great job regarding making complicated subjects much more understandable.

This is the best, balanced and information packed segment I've seen on this subject.

@MG.50

2 жыл бұрын

There were still a few important pieces missing, but I agree that it was much better than average coverage of a politically charged topic. Misinformation on the dangers of nuclear energy have traumatized 4+ generations, and unnecessarily I might add. See my other post at the top level for some info and a reference that should be mandatory reading.

@alileevil

2 жыл бұрын

She just said radiation poisoning is nothing to worry about :/

@alileevil

2 жыл бұрын

@@MG.50 Ofc Chernobyl was definitely propaganda pushed by those opposing nuclear energy. Fukishima the same. All fake news pushed by fossil fuel companies. Nuclear energy is good because it does not emit the evil carbon dioxide that coincidently we also exhale. So nuclear would definitely be good for the planet because if things go wrong, it will kill people and that means less carbon emissions as a whole :)

@robertcastles22

2 жыл бұрын

@@alileevil It's a contextual thing. By the numbers it's like people having a fear of flying when they're safer in the airplane than they are in cars getting to the airport.

@robertcastles22

2 жыл бұрын

@@alileevil did you catch the part where people get more radiation poisoning from carbon fuels than they do from nuclear energy?

On the economic damage section I would have liked you to mention which factors they (the diff ppl u cited) included in their calculations. F.ex. Healthcare costs that could - in part - be attributed (indirectly) to coal, via its pollution.

I love the principle of least action! I remember first learning about it when I took a bond graph class (the linear components of all fields of engineering can communicate nicely with bond graphs). You'll even see the principle of (approximate) least action crop up in machine learning. The gradient penalty for generative adversarial networks can arguably be viewed as minimizing the action taken as the neural network changes it's prediction.

I was hoping there'd be mention of recycling used nuclear fuel. It's extremely difficult to find reliable information on the subject.

@meleardil

2 жыл бұрын

Breeder reactors can "burn" nuclear waste... Biggest problem with breeder reactors: those are BREEDER reactors. Creating a lot of funny isotopes, which makes nuclear weapon building very easy. So, countries are PROHIBITED to use those kinda reactors, and also, nuclear power plants must surrender their nuclear wastes to some already "nuclear" nations to prevent them to build their own nuclear weapons. So, nuclear energy is expensive because it was artificially made expensive by the Nuclear Nations. It is all political.

@eventhisidistaken

2 жыл бұрын

@@meleardil I've argued the same thing many times. This is a political problem, not a technological problem. But the largest polluting nations are already all nuclear anyway, so it's just a matter of security. Okay, put the reactors at missile silos where there is already high security. It feels like a no brainer.

@natiezclement4400

2 жыл бұрын

What do you wish to know ? I'm well placed to inform you on nuclear recycling.

@Joltzis

2 жыл бұрын

I am still concerned with nuclear waste which will be dangerous for thousands of years, at least when using current technology. You know how much information have been lost since the Roman Empire, a mere two thousand years from now

@eventhisidistaken

2 жыл бұрын

@@Joltzis The key is "at least with current technology". We actually already have a good way to dispose of it, - which is to use it all in breeder reactors, but for political reasons we don't. We would have thousands of years worth of energy from just the *existing* waste, if we did that.

Regarding mortality ratings of human activities, practically ANY catagory immaginable will have shocking statistics. Sports/ recreation, timber, farming, metalurgy, transportation, medicine, and on and on and on. Life is deadly.

This is an excellent question, vid, etc.

"Is nuclear power green" This is not the question to ask. "Is nuclear power greener" Is the proper question to ask. Thanks for the excellent video.

@fyrchmyrddin1937

Жыл бұрын

I'd be very interested in knowing whether that "Levelized cost of energy" has the same metrics for nuclear vs. all the other kinds. My guess is that legal fees & regulatory requirements are *counted* for nuclear but not for any of the "green" sources. There's a reason both George Monbiot & (un-personed Greenpeace founder) Patrick Moore are nuclear power advocates, and it's not because there's some sort of nuclear "sugar daddy" paying Green leaders to defect...

@DMDvideo10

Жыл бұрын

The only "green" that our governments are concerned with is "green" paper with 1s and with a lot of zeros...

Thanks Sabine. that was a truly excellent presentation

Accidents from renewables dont lay waste to the Vicinity , and food production downwind for decades plus. ,and making lots of small cheaper reactors just seems to make a higher risk of smaller accidents /terrorist attack targets. i knew people who worked at the local reactor during the time it was operational . Pollution figures were "Fiddled". it was being decommissioned ( an operation that was due to last 100 years) but in 2021&2022 moves to develop a 300mw small modular reactor on the land next to it have been announced. I was encouraged to hear of the thorium reactors ..and an interesting video thanks.

INTERESTING AND WELL EXPLAINED

this was an incredibly informative video. I haven't changed my stance on nuclear, I still think it is without a doubt the best type of energy production we currently have, especially factoring in that I live in a cold climate where both wind and solar are extremely unreliable 3-4 months per year and since our politicians have closed nuclear reactors do we expect rolling power outages 2-3 times per week, 4-5 hours each time this winter due to lack of electricity and sky high electricity prices when we have electricity in our homes.

@RusskiBlusski

Жыл бұрын

Event though Nuclear isn't 100% green it is significantly more green than the alternatives like wind or solar. The only real pollution from Nuclear comes from building the plant and mining, refining the fuel. But it is outweighed by how efficient nuclear is at energy production. Compare that to say wind turbines that has an average life span of about 30 years, sounds good on paper until you dig a little deeper and realize that the cost of creating a single turbine would take about 25 years to recover, not to mention the sheer amount of oil needed to keep it lubricated. You also need vast areas of land that then become unusable. And to top it of about 250k birds are killed by turbines every year. All that just for a measly 5 years of energy net positive at the verge of the turbines lifespan. (if it even makes it that far)

@isaks3243

Жыл бұрын

@@RusskiBlusski we had a turbine topple over recently in sweden and it spilled out roughly 3000 liters of oil into nature...

@Semmelein

Жыл бұрын

Problem is - it's also the most expensive. By far. And a lot of the cost isn't even factored in yet. Renewables are now so much cheaper - so I really don't see nuclear energy being there in the long run. But maybe for now - tackling climate change - it might help.

@isaks3243

Жыл бұрын

@@Semmelein renewables are cheaper when they actually run, which is almost not at all. the electricity price we have this month is 3 times more expensive than we have ever had any winter month through out our entire history (when counting in inflation) and this is in the middle of summer. this price is also roughly 10 times higher than we have ever had a summer month through out our history. this insane price increase have been going since our polititians turned off two of our nuclear reactors. we need a way of producing electricity on demand and that is one thing that isn't possible with renewables cause you can't make the wind blow or sun shine on demand. we are also now looking at a big risk of rolling power outages 4-6 hours, 2-5 times per week because we will not have enough electricity

@HueghMungus

Жыл бұрын

@@isaks3243 Then you must live in one of the northern countries, except Norway. They are extra retarded: I know, they live an outdated mindset not allowing nuclear generators. So they buy Carbon quotas and buy coal from Denmark and others. Stuck in 1950s. Look at France they have a nuclear power generating clean energy for profit. Germany is the same as Norway, they have closed their coal plants, but resource them (LN gas) from Russia... Which resulted in this political catastrophy in Europe. Warned by Trump (love him/hate him), but they ignored this. Stupid.

Thank you Sabine. Your logic is inescapable. Common sense minus the "spin" is so refreshing and rare.

@mrjan7002

2 жыл бұрын

Pure science is not common sense but science. The common needs to be added on political level. And that is the game changer.

@dirk-janheemstra4064

2 жыл бұрын

Well almost up until she answers the question "is nuclear power green?", the physical arguments should have led her to the conclusion "Yes it is." but she conflates social and economic arguments against it as making it less green? and therefore "complicated"

@michael511128

2 жыл бұрын

Oilmen and bankers don’t make much money with nuclear power so they have been using propaganda to denounce it since 3 Mile Island incident. Both Chernobyl and Fukushima were built in the 70s. The main contractor for Fukushima was GE. If they had placed the backup generators two floors up to stay above the water there would not have been an accident. 2020 news said Trump stopped Bill Gate’s TerraPower fourth generation nuclear power plant project with China for national security reasons. 2021 I read Bill Gate’s book. I am convinced of his analyses, the world should move from fossil fuel to green but the only hope to save the planet from global warming is technology yet to be invented and nuclear power is a good bet. When all cars in the world turned electric it will cut emission by 6.5%. The current progress is much too slow while the poles are melting. China manufactures or owns 50% of wind power, 90% solar, it has completed its first fourth generation nuclear power plant and exporting third generation to Pakistan and Argentina. Along the Belt and Road China will build green infrastructures per geographic conditions, some countries have more sun and others more wind, some can use dams and others can pay for nuclear. China also is the biggest user of carbon heavy materials such as steel and concrete so they have a huge need to move from coal to oil to gas to green to nuclear. I believe China is doing the most advanced researches on Thorium reactors and atomic fusion. Who knows, maybe in our lifetime China will make breakthroughs to save the world. Before that can happen the world need to change. Western oil tycoons and dollar bankers will not let nuclear power, solar, wind and Chinese Yuan to take away their empire. Only when US hegemony is overthrown can human save herself.

@ekalbkr

2 жыл бұрын

@@dirk-janheemstra4064 Sabine understands what nuclear idealists don't: many great plans fail not because they are bad, but because they can't overcome costs, and other powerful, very real concerns - like public perceptions. That she points these concerns out is the difference between ignorance and reality.

@edwardlulofs444

2 жыл бұрын

"Your logic is inescapable." I have heard that so many times in my long life. Good luck.

The accident at Fukushima was forseen, planned and designed for, however the in-depth-design-defense was not sufficient for the actual conditions of a known fault line at 2 tectonic plates. undersea. Had there been proper engineering of the sea wall, the spent fuel storage and the emergency backup generators, the accident would not have happened or could have been controlled to much less catastrophic results.

1:53 As an Italian... I feel your pain. We got rid of all of our new clear power (and everything else new and clear) after Chernobyl. And then we started buying power from France. Who in turn promptly started building Superphénix reactors right on the border. Because apparently *they* didn't get hit with an epidemic of the sudden stupid.

I congratulate you for a fair, unbiased and well informed report on a very importat subject. this is the kind of content that makes this kind of technology worthwhile