The most impressive part of this video, to me, was the professor's ability to write backwards. Incredible!

@jimtrowbridge3465

2 ай бұрын

He probably wrote normally; then they flipped the screen.

@_PatrickO

2 ай бұрын

He writes normal, they flip the video. It is an excellent way to make videos with a whiteboard. He is actually right handed, not left. He wears clothes without writing on it, so you cannot tell the video is flipped.

_"Did the marker have its own mic?"_ No, a foley artist dubs it in during post production. I believe they use a mouse.

@OmarDelawar

3 жыл бұрын

Lmao enough with the pen noise jokes/puns already

@manw3bttcks

2 жыл бұрын

I wonder if the audio software could be told "filter out that high frequency sound at 14000hz" or whatever the pen squeak is.

@ibrahimdeniz7308

4 ай бұрын

I can tell you use reddit. Why do you hate yourself? Would you like a reward for that?

Did the marker have its own mic?

@wochuchen1349

4 жыл бұрын

The equation for efficiency to temperature dependence is inaccurate: Eff = 1 - Tcold /Thot would be different if you use F vs. C, let alone K. It is over simplified. There is precise one in thermal dynamics of college level.

@puncheex2

4 жыл бұрын

@@wochuchen1349 Sure but in any country but the US (my country, as it happens) the SI unit is used: Kelvin. This is understood. Even among US physicists.

@justgivemethetruth

4 жыл бұрын

hahahaha

@ikester475

4 жыл бұрын

@@puncheex2 Indeed. The temperature scale is relative to absolute zero. I was waiting for the presenter to mention that.

@scottcoston7832

4 жыл бұрын

Pitch... higher frequency... it was annoying

His backwards writing skills are next level

@darksnipedflyingmadness6830

4 жыл бұрын

You can just mirror the who scene in post-processing.

@dokenboken5542

4 жыл бұрын

Exactly that. He's wearing a wedding ring and a watch on his right hand? If he was left handed, he'd still have his wedding ring on his left hand as that's the culture in the US and apparently he's from Illinois.

@MaxRuso

4 жыл бұрын

Doken, damn!

@eitkoml

4 жыл бұрын

It just requires a little practice. I learned how to write backwards, upside down and upside down plus backwards in school. I was just trying to keep myself awake when the teachers' lectures were so boring and they went so painfully slow.

@daos3300

4 жыл бұрын

@@darksnipedflyingmadness6830 hehe.. you know people are going to fall for it every time

Meh, I'm gonna wait for the Gen V before I get one.

@3vimages471

4 жыл бұрын

You can get Gen 3's really cheap on Amazon now.

@treasurehunter3744

3 жыл бұрын

Dusty Plasma Fission Fragment Reactor

@spvillano

3 жыл бұрын

@@3vimages471 they're cheaper on eBay, although quite a few appear of Chinese manufacture.

@protorhinocerator142

3 жыл бұрын

I would say a fusion reactor is Gen 5.

@heinz-haraldfrentzen1261

3 жыл бұрын

@@spvillano Be sure yours comes with the original box and warranty papers, lots of fakes out there :-)

I still remember walking into a fast breeder reactor in India, it was a school thing, also got to see their largest electron scanner device for finding defects in large metal structures.

@kgd9725

2 жыл бұрын

When did you visit this reactor in India because according to Wikipedia its still under construction?

@mgatelabs

2 жыл бұрын

@@kgd9725 sometime in 2008-2009

@pradeepkachari4648

Жыл бұрын

@@kgd9725 He probably visited the fast breeder test reactor (reached criticality in 1985), which has been in operation for quite some time now. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Breeder_Test_Reactor

“Down to a couple of weeks” I work as a nuclear contractor in the us and I can confirm that. 4 week jobs are considered long within my craft

@bobdexter1029

10 ай бұрын

Depends in what work is being done and if its a PWR or BWR. It took almost 2 weeks for me to dry the generator out on my last BWR nuke job. Alot of dirty stuff being lifted and the deck was be taped off daily.

That was one really good aspect of the RBMK. Being able to fuel it without shutting down

@mbican

3 жыл бұрын

I had the same thought. Let's bring RBMK back 🔙

@piotrd.4850

3 жыл бұрын

Add to this much lower power density ....

@YZFMANIAC08

3 жыл бұрын

@@mbican 🤣🤣🤣

@davidcampbell1420

3 жыл бұрын

CANDU does this too. And Canadians uh.... use concrete domes to protect their cores like sane poeple. /facepalm Oh USSR...

@loglad5394

2 ай бұрын

​@@mbican Just not the 1000

"As long as we have an economic imperative for the future, these could be the reactors of 30 or 40 years." Can someone get this man a larger microphone.

I believed pebble bed style reactors died after the big problems of the THTR-300 in Germany. Interesting to see that these concepts are being worked on again. Thanks for your outstanding videos, professor!

@karendarbres

Жыл бұрын

What problems?

@nuhrii3449

Жыл бұрын

@@karendarbres it got clogged, it was mostly cherynobl fears and bureaucracy

@fatsassin2546

10 ай бұрын

@@nuhrii3449i just like to imagine some npp worker getting a giant steel plunger And going like "Aw hell, the reactor is clogged again"

@Petriiik

9 ай бұрын

​@@karendarbreschernobyl panics lead to a "non compromise" polici, turn off everything and forever.

@timmyjones1921

9 ай бұрын

Seems India has a auto machine re loader and takes out spent rods at the same time and is already operational and China is already running Sodium Nuclear Power Plants.

Expecting to wait at least 30 or 40 years is a defeatist attitude. Some of these designs have already had functional research reactors built a long time ago. All that is required is the will to build a pilot commercial reactor and then copy it. That could be done in less than ten years if we make it a priority or it may never happen if we don't.

@Bradgilliswhammyman

4 жыл бұрын

Too expensive and they never are profitable.

@stupidburp

4 жыл бұрын

@@Bradgilliswhammyman Check out the profit video comparing nuclear to natural gas power plants on this channel.

@zolikoff

4 жыл бұрын

It could be done in a few years but still expect to wait 30 because the world doesn't want it. They're too scared, politically or otherwise, of anything "nukular".

@pedrobrando4606

4 жыл бұрын

The Navy has a near perfect safety record when it comes to Nuclear energy or at least you do not hear of accidents.They could permanently dock a older ship.I believe a nuclear aircraft carrier could power most of a city like New York. The conventional carrier I was on produced 100000 shaft horsepower.I worked in the boiler room on CV-62.

@strcat666

3 жыл бұрын

The Thorium Cycle was prototyped 60 years ago. A Thorium reactor was shown and mentioned in this video. It is the green zero carbon technology that get rid of Coal and Gas while we are refining the sun based power sources and the batteries we need for the future. so yes you are correct sir.

I find it weird that activists were able to stultify the progress of nuclear energy development; It is the next level of progress; That's undeniable. It's good to criticize any dangerous/polluting nuclear, but we need to get better at nuclear and replace fossil fuels with it. Paving everything with solar panels is bad for the environment too, and it probably won't meet the energy needs of the future, because we're always going to want to do more and use more energy. There have been hundreds of nuclear reactors built since the beginning 60-70(?) years ago, and only a few of the earliest-built reactors ended in disaster. Fukushima was built from 1967-1971. Chernobyl was built 1972-1977. Three mile island was built 1968-1978. How many issues have there been with reactors built in the last 30 years? There are over 400 in operation; We're obviously learning how to make them better, and there are all kinds of new avenues to explore there that can lead to significant progress. We need better reactors to reduce our society's footprint on earth and we need them for any type of sci-fi future that you might want to build elsewhere. (e.g. solar is terrible on the moon; 1 night lasts 15 earth-days. Also, solar energy obviously gets worse and worse if you want to go places that aren't as near to the sun)

@Minuz1

4 жыл бұрын

@ebulating what's irrational about people being scared of 500 Bn $ of disasters and counting.

@boggless2771

4 жыл бұрын

@@Minuz1 citation needed. Also, how much has been saved because of how cheap nuclear is. Not to mention fossil fuels had to become more efficient to compete with nuclear.

@Minuz1

4 жыл бұрын

@@boggless2771 those are the rough estimates of costs for the 2x biggest nuclear disasters, chernobyl and fukushima. Those are moderate estimates, some estimates for fukushima will net you results of around 650 Bn $

@boggless2771

4 жыл бұрын

@@Minuz1 $15 Billion for cleanup. About half of nasas annual budget. The estimates for the whole disaster,including the TSUNAMI that caused it totals around $200B. www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2016/03/10/after-five-years-what-is-the-cost-of-fukushima/#11f92d6022ed Your citations are still needed.

@boggless2771

4 жыл бұрын

Remember the energy industry is about 10% of Global GDP. The numbers we are dealing with are incredible. In 2011, expenditures on energy totaled over US$6 trillion, or about 10% of the world gross domestic product (GDP). - wiki.

This was awesome. Thank you for putting this together. Hope you do more of these!

Damn, this channel is a gem.. subbed!

I love listening to your videos,you do such a good job breaking it all down.

You are a very good explainer of difficult subjects. amazing stuff here.

Whoever came up with that pebble bed design is a damn genius.

@heinzhaupthaar5590

3 жыл бұрын

Yeah, well, it's been quite a disaster.

@YZFMANIAC08

3 жыл бұрын

@@heinzhaupthaar5590 why?

@davidcampbell1420

3 жыл бұрын

@@heinzhaupthaar5590 I agree, why? I'm not a fan of pebble bed, but I haven't heard of problems?

@caav56

3 жыл бұрын

@@davidcampbell1420 THTR-300 high-temperature thorium reactor got fuel pebbles lodged in the feed pipe to the reactor core, in addition to the fuel elements breaking more often, than anticipated.

@davidcampbell1420

3 жыл бұрын

@@caav56 aha. So its because they are using a hopper. I had wondered if that would ever be an issue. Someone else in this thread mentioned it looked bad, too. Thanks!

The advance from current nuclear fuels to the new pebblebed method reminds me of the advance from musket balls to bullet cartridges...this was very educational by the way, thank you

This guy is a genius at writing backwards!

Really love your channel and teaching style! Looking forward to new videos :)

He spoke so much about the pebble bed design whereas only one sentence about the molten salt designs, which are the most promising ones.

@davidcampbell1420

3 жыл бұрын

I'd agree. It may be unfair of me to suggest this, as I don't know this gentleman.. but I get the impression that because most of the promising new technology is small start up companies, they fall outside of the traditional nuclear industry.

@AntiNeoFascist

3 жыл бұрын

Agreed. He seemed stuck in the solid fuel mentality. Like even when he mentioned the molten salt, he referred to the salt as the coolant, and then followed up with "These all still follow the same basic idea of solid fuel in rods of pellets" while overlooking the designs where the molten salt is both fuel and coolant.

@davidcampbell1420

3 жыл бұрын

@@AntiNeoFascist Is anyone actually doing molten salts without liquid fuel? I suppose it might be one way to speed up new tech due to the dinosaur regulators... helps with one key safety issue that's always bothered me, with the pressurized water. Still though, I'm unaware of this statement of his being true?

@user-xl5kd6il6c

3 жыл бұрын

He had a partnership to shill the pebble bed design. He said so in a previous video, so that might be the reason

@chazzhou

3 жыл бұрын

Pebble bed design will enter commercial operation this or next year with HTR-PM (200MWe) reactor, and a scaled-up 1000MWe version will be built within the next five years. So far, all the molten salt designs are in the experimental phase. I think that's why.

This is amazing ! Thanks professor !

Great videos professor, keep up the amazing work

The Canadian CANDU heavy water system, around since the 70s, has the ability to be hot refueled. It also runs on natural uranium so you don't need access to enrichment.

Refueling downtime a major weekness with light water reactors. It means that one has to have another reactor to compensate the loss of power.

Dear Professor: Thank you for your very informative series of videos. Please do a video on breeder reactors and the potential they have to not generate waste products which is a big problem with current commercial reactors. Also, please take a look at French Nuclear Program and the social benefits that this program, i.e. cheap electricity and reduced carbon emissions.

We need innovative Gen 4 plants NOW, and personally I would love it if they were either mini or micro reactors and spread them to every town city and village in the USA

Great summurization of PBR. Thanks Sir.

I would be very interested in learning about small modular reactors, Could you please make a video about these ?

@atheistpeace7579

9 ай бұрын

been using them on submarines for decades

@sommeone

2 ай бұрын

In case you're still waiting, he made 2 videos on SMRs and one on MMRs :)

I wish I had you as a prof. back in the 80's

Excellent overview, inspiring.

Such a informative video, thanks professor.

I appreciate the professor's online mini lectures. Thank you for doing them! I feel one major advantages of Gen4 wasn't touched on strongly enough. It seems to me most (but not all) new nuclear is smaller startups employing molten salts. Configurations or design ethics to eliminate nuclear waste by using it as fuel. That's a political problem solved. Pebble bed makes this goal harder by making the waste really hard to process. Simultaneously, using liquid fuel jumps the efficiency to near full efficiency, rather than nearly zero. Most of the transuranic actinide fission products burned away, most of what's left is valuable material able to be sold. What's left of waste won't matter in it's quantities or lifespan.

@LordZontar

2 жыл бұрын

Remaining waste radiologically hazardous for only 500 years (as opposed to 10,000 - 30,000) with thorium fuel cycle and fast neutron reactor designs. A marked improvement in both waste-stream safety and fuel efficiency.

@paulbedichek2679

2 жыл бұрын

Absolutely not! TRISO is never meant to reprocess in any way.

@davidcampbell1420

2 жыл бұрын

@@paulbedichek2679 I like TRISO for niche scenarios such as diesel generator replacement systems.. its just so simple. You might happen to know... are any of the TRISO systems load following? If so the annoying waste stream might be massively minimized due to the business use cases. Big stuff, its molten salts all the way. Hurry up and wait!

@paulbedichek2679

2 жыл бұрын

@@davidcampbell1420 Yes,TRISO load follows, there is no troublesome waste problem with TRISO it is a containment system unto itself when the majority of its energy has been extracted. You can load them with Th and spent fuel if the need arises.

@davidcampbell1420

2 жыл бұрын

@@paulbedichek2679 If TRISO based reactors can load follow then this is amazing. Does this mean that micro reactors rated for 8 or 20 years prior to refueling, assume 100% loads throughout those years? Could that not mean far higher expectations of fuel life if their average loads are a fraction of capacity?

Who needs nuclear research. Clearly everyone in the comments section knows everything already.

@3vimages471

4 жыл бұрын

Now I know how everything works I don't need you.

@haliax8149

4 жыл бұрын

I see this type of comment quite a bit, and it's annoying. Mainly because you're actively discouraging somebody's investigation, and thus ability to debate, of this topic.

@turningpoint4238

4 жыл бұрын

I know the one important thing and thats it's dam expensive and will be for the foreseeable future.

@turningpoint4238

4 жыл бұрын

@@haliax8149 ?

@shadowpoet4398

4 жыл бұрын

Hey, u want some whine with that wahh-burger and french cries? -_- this is fun stuff, try to have a good time m'kay?

Brilliantly simple explanation.

Oh wow, you have a whole course! I saw the economics one, will now watch all the others :)

7:48 When I read the text below it and noticed it was my native tounge (german), as well as this prb. beeing an older version so the ideas of it has been around in my country for quite a while, I felt ashamed for what my goverment and country has done in the last couple of years. We had the technology to solve most of our issues, but politics and naive ideology of Wind&Sun made us blind.

@MrCantStopTheRobot

3 жыл бұрын

It's kein politics, alles corruption.

I learned a bit about pebble bed reactors after playing Reactorcraft.

Dude, you really know how to write really well backwards for the rest of us to read!

outstanding presentation, thank you

"It's the Sony Nuke-Man. A personal portable nuclear power source. They were a big fad on Malnak. Come to think of it, they were the last fad on Malnak. " Alf

The Soviets made a class of submarines that operated with reactors that used lead for coolant. They were really loud, but it allowed for a smaller maritime reactor.

@hamansing787

2 жыл бұрын

When you say "really loud," does that mean audibly loud where the crew had to put headphones or loud on a radar ? Please explain. Honest question.

@caav56

2 жыл бұрын

@@hamansing787 Sonar-loud.

Thank you for sharing!

Really genius design Thank you very much

Next episode: Pens Of The Future Same efficiency as today's pens, but without emitting a sound that stabs your brain.

@Fish-ub3wn

4 жыл бұрын

@uploadJ

4 жыл бұрын

Never heard it; mind over matter. Numpties, YMMV.

@sbravo3761

4 жыл бұрын

Grown ass adults out there crying over things not even babies would. Shameful really.

@texasdeeslinglead2401

4 жыл бұрын

Lol

@nomangreybeard535

3 жыл бұрын

alexej davidov yeah, i couldn’t make it past him writing ‘passively safe’

What about Thorium powered molten salt reactors?

@jamesricker3997

4 жыл бұрын

They have a small problem. The molten salt dissolves a lubricant on the pumps and the lubricant clogs the reactor channels

@imonlyamanandiwilldiesomed4406

4 жыл бұрын

@@jamesricker3997 Can you support this claim with evidence? I have video of an interview with the nuclear engineers/scientists who worked on the molten salt reactor and were asked if there were any problems with it and said that there really weren't (some issues with corrosion and tritium which were solvable): kzread.info/dash/bejne/ka2DkrOkXcKtndY.html

@tigertiger1699

4 жыл бұрын

I'm Only A Man And I Will Die Some Day Didn’t they run it for ages...

@imonlyamanandiwilldiesomed4406

4 жыл бұрын

@@tigertiger1699 Ya, they ran it for over a year. I remember seeing a picture with one of the scientists holding a readout with 5000 consecutive operational hours circled on it.

@tigertiger1699

4 жыл бұрын

I'm Only A Man And I Will Die Some Day Absolutely.., I’m visiting a nuclear station tomorrow as it happens, taking my doubting Wife to get a calm professional overview 👍

Awesome work! Thank you so much!

Thank you for the knowledge!

You can't get a new nuclear power plant permitted in the US. Which is a shame, because until nuclear fusion is perfected, nuclear fission is the only reliable non-greenhouse gas producing power source we have. Hydroelectric is maxed out, there are only so many rivers. Wind only works when it is blowing, and solar only works during the day. Germany went with wind and solar, with coal fired plants as backup power. They now burn so much coal at night and when tne wind does not blow that Germany produces more pollution than before they switched to green energy. France stuck with nuclear power, and is doing just fine. We need to build a massive number of generation 4 nuclear power plants around the world to supply the worlds power needs without carbon emissions. By the time these nuclear plants are worn out in 40 years, hopefully we will have solved the problems with nuclear fusion and can switch to that.

@spvillano

3 жыл бұрын

@odegaard the Foundation series was a series of Azimov books on that subject. The Foundations kept knowledge alive for when civilization gradually rebuilt from the inevitable collapse.

I need to know what generation his DaVinci script is on.

Thanks Prof, excellent lecture

Really clear and well explained

Moltexenergy.com has an interesting twist on the molten salt reactor concept. The static salt reactor keeps the fission products separate from the coolant.

@KoralMae

4 жыл бұрын

Great link. Thank you for posting it.

@adlucem9845

4 жыл бұрын

No one is developing MSR's. Theyre developing fussion plasma reactors that have 0 waste.

@davidcampbell1420

3 жыл бұрын

@@adlucem9845 About a dozen or more companies around the world are designing MSRs. They merely sit outside the traditional industry, so you have to seek them out. None of the media, or policy analysts seem to be even aware. It's all over KZread though.

Should we look into building low efficiency reactors where we can allow ' spent ' nuclear fuel to continue to decompose. The goal is to reduce radioactive spent fuel storage and environment contamination.

@arthurzettel6618

4 жыл бұрын

Finally, someone who thinks the same way I do on nuclear waste. Rapid Radioactive Entropy is what you are referring to. For the life of me; I believe that (R.R.E.) can be done but these Nuclear Engineers aren't thinking far enough out of the box. I mean Nuclear Waste could be rendered innert by Rapid Radioactive Entropy.

@jeebusk

4 жыл бұрын

Or MSR

@haliax8149

4 жыл бұрын

@@arthurzettel6618 Except that the OP's comment is false. High efficiency means less waste overall, and waste reprocessing can handle any leftovers.

@AximandTheCursed

4 жыл бұрын

The most efficient way to eliminate spent nuclear fuel/high level waste (trans-uranics and other actinides) that I know of is in a fast-spectrum reactor. Both Moltex and Elysium have proposed designs using Chloride salts in a fast spectrum analogue for this purpose. It seems like a win-win scenario to me, as you eliminate the waste while generating electricity. The design even allows for the elimination of weapons-grade fuel, once diluted in the salts.

@strcat666

3 жыл бұрын

That is The Thorium Cycle. The end products have a half life of less thes a week. The products are safe for reuse in a year.

Great video!

What a wonderful lecture

Dude is from mirror universe

Cooling: Lead would be too heavy for anything in industrial scale (also bismuth). Sodium is OK, but a little bit more dangerous for operation personel. Salt containing any halogens is really corrosive in high temperatures, but we can mostly deal with that some way. The "cold water" in the primary cooling circuit in nuclear power plant Temelín is about 290°C (hot is only above 320°C). Fuel: Thorium as a fuel is already used for example in India and Soviets have used it in Kazakhstan. But you don't have waste useful for nukes, so it is not so much supported.

@uploadJ

4 жыл бұрын

No mention of Gallium either.

@paulbedichek2679

2 жыл бұрын

Lead isn't too heavy.

His ability to write backwards is the true breakthrough in efficiency.

awesome video. The sources I found only list Gen 4 ideas, but they don't explain what they are trying to achieve!

He forgot to mention, than liquid sodium fast neutron reactor is commercially operated right now. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-800_reactor

what about the molten salt reactor ??? there is models where the fuel is directely disolve in the coolant

@adlucem9845

4 жыл бұрын

No country is building thorium. Theyre prototyping fussion plasma. Thorium is a youtube fad.

@mukiex4413

4 жыл бұрын

@@adlucem9845 MSRs don't need to be thorium-based. They're designing several uranium-based molten salt reactors and making their way through vendor review. Fusion is a research fad. When they get a whole second of steady state, maybe we'll talk. Probably not tho

Thank you for such info.

Nicely explained

damn squiking marker

@uploadJ

4 жыл бұрын

I never even heard it ... until the numpties in the COMMENTS section mention it.

@uploadJ

4 жыл бұрын

Numpty, if it had been finger nails on a chalkboard or someone chewing, that's a different story. I hope those two bother you as well.

The molten salt reactor uses fuel that is resolved in the carrier salt, reaches criticality only when introduced to the graphite moderator in reactor core, can be simply drained and separated from the moderator by means of gravity when all possible system fail, there's no need for any downtime while refuelling nor removing fission products, any fuel processing can be done during normal reactor operation. The salt doesn't have to be held under pressure while being at very high temperature, eliminating the risk of leaks, radioactive steam explosion, the necessity for hight vessels strength that can significantly reduce costs.

@davidelliott5843

4 жыл бұрын

The issues with all new designs are regulatory. Solid salt "freeze plugs" and dump tanks are active safety devices so they will exercise the regulators. Pumped fuel is another where they'll have difficult questions. What happens when the pump which moves highly active fuel goes wrong? How do you change it out without putting operators at any risk? It's a tough one to answer and it won't be low cost to solve. Simply not pumping the salt solves it entirely as there are no pumps to be regulated. Thermal convection will do the job. But that would mean a high fuel inventory so why not put the fuel in fuel tubes which can be lifted in and out just as we do right now with AGRs. The coolant can be the same salt but with no fuel content. That does need control rods but the industry expects to see these so regulations are easier.

@ano2425

4 жыл бұрын

At the moment the things you are talking about are dreams.

@proximo1033

4 жыл бұрын

@@ano2425 Oh really? check out this then: kzread.info/dash/bejne/o5iTzqSJksi8orQ.html

@proximo1033

4 жыл бұрын

@@davidelliott5843 the pumps in this design are not that critical because even when they fail the fuel will simply drain down completely without any dramatic situation so where do you see such big regulatory concern. Well-designed pumps can run for many decades well over the life span of graphite moderator. But really there's no need for this discussion because there are already many existing designs and experts that have MUCH more knowledge. Example? check out my other answer. So if you're interested then check out also Gordon Mcdowell channel.

@guytech7310

4 жыл бұрын

@@proximo1033 Issue is that salt forms cakes in the cooling system that break off and hit the pump blades, leading to damage or short life. Also with a failed pump, clogged with highly radioactive solidified salt is a nightmare. The MSR reactor from the 1960s wasn't fully decommissed until 2005 due to the hazard of getting the contaminated salt. A MSR reactor would have to operate using pellets or some other system to isolate the fuel from the molten salt to avoid the salt from being contaminated. However all future nuclear plants are on hold due to Fukashima & the huge cost overruns at Vogtle, GA plant. No utility wants to dump tens of billions into plants which are now largely unprofitable. Currently about 2 plants per year are getting shutdown and the only reason its not higher is because a lot of states are subsidizing operating costs to keep them running.

Interesting use of real time slide graphics semi transparent and alpha keyed during the recording of the presentation. Plus reverse image allowing writing on glass to appear right ways. Oh and the information is interesting too..

Thank you sir!

worth doing a video on just MSRE

@OleTange

4 жыл бұрын

See kzread.info/dash/bejne/p39nmJmNZ8ucirw.html

Molten Salt Reactors are allot better. They are absolutely safe, work at high temperatures suitable for high efficiency and industrial applications, can be refueled while operating, can load follow, their energy can stored to be used for peak power needs, they can power the whole country for over a 100 years on the present nuclear waste stock piles, so why so little discussion about them?

@ano2425

4 жыл бұрын

You are another victim of the thorium propaganda 😂 check the facs.

@davidcampbell1420

3 жыл бұрын

Right? All these companies need is a couple billion dollars in seed money to get the problems solved. Stuff like salt corrosion of piping seems like a pretty easy engineering problem to solve. Everyone's locked in by regulatory hurdles it seems. I feel someone's going to get it done sooner or later, and then suddenly out of nowhere there will be a renaissance of companies across the world doing it.

@davidcampbell1420

3 жыл бұрын

@@ano2425 Propaganda? The Thorium people are coming from outside the industry, not within it. They are starving artists. They can't even afford propaganda :) They'd be the victims of propaganda. Besides, thorium use in MSRs has been thoroughly tested for many years.

@croftegan7993

2 жыл бұрын

They are a no brainer.

@croftegan7993

2 жыл бұрын

Hopefully Thorcon will demonstrate the technology. kzread.info/dash/bejne/oXZlq9SzdKevaco.html

4:24 I never realized this. So you can avoid using heat engines and the carnot limit(?!), to produce power. You can feed it to a solid oxide fuel cell, that coincidentally only works on high temperatures, but can be (according to claims 80-90% efficient). The big question is how efficient such a cycle can be? The output of it is water again, which can be fed back to the reactor for re-splitting. If it's insulated the heat loss should be minimal.

hi professor, how do these high-temp coolant pumps work? (to pump molten metal or molten salt)

2:15 so a Thorium power plant at the south pole of Mars would be more efficient?

@matthewgrotke1442

4 жыл бұрын

Any heat exchanger placed in a cool environment will be more efficient than one placed in a hot environment. To increase the efficiency, you can either increase the hot temp and/or decrease the cool temp. Putting it on mars would decrease the cool temp.

@FixItStupid

4 жыл бұрын

Lies Of Nuclear Cancer For You Too

@haliax8149

3 жыл бұрын

@@FixItStupid morons like you everywhere

@davidcampbell1420

3 жыл бұрын

@@FixItStupid Cancer Medication Is Made By Nuclear Reactors :)

I scrolled to the comments only to confirm my presumption that the first one would be about the screeching marker

Fantastic! The future looks good.

@piotrd.4850

3 жыл бұрын

Nope, until uneducated public, regulators, lefties, Gretards, gas-lobby and other luddites get of the way....

You are practically describing the rbmk reactor in green. - on the fly refueling - carbon moderated - cannot blow up ; )

yes some russian reactors used lead+cadmium for cooling... but making that liquid again when reactor was down was no fun thing

Listening to the Daily talk about carbon offsets with Delta airlines got me thinking about generation 4 nuclear reactors. There's about six different designs with six different criteria one of course is they're walk away safe / self moderating. They're non-proliferation, they burn more spent-fuel than they make and it shines for substantially less time. The benefits are so pronounced but even Bill Gates is got his own company building this right now. China, Russia, India and Indonesia are moving ahead while the Trump administration has given the green light to explore this new technology. I would like to see them as common as a hospital in any City. We're not talking about gigantic generation three reactors that can run away or meltdown. One of the generation for designs makes a lot of oxygen and hydrogen and this hydrogen could be used in airplanes. Now everybody wants to freak out about hydrogen flying around but right now they're full of kerosene so no matter what being in an airplane is not all that exciting if you're going to crash. At any time there's about 10,000 airplanes in the air and they could all be carbon neutral with a sustainable source from generation 4 reactors. There's also talk about airplanes running on methane that could be extracted out of the atmosphere and then put back into airplanes. The energy to extract as methane could be from generation 4 reactors. Same with desalination plants in many parts of the earth. If there's drought in one particular area you could have a generation 4 reactor on a floating barge that comes to a certain port and makes fresh water. The media has got to stop scaring people along with politicians. I would much rather live next door to a generation 4 reactor or any reactor than a fossil fuel plant. Start doing a real comparison of the deaths that actually come from radiation exposure versus industrial deaths from oil or coal, natural gas, fracking, even working on wind power or solar. Anybody who works at any kind of industry producing things runs risk of injury or death and nuclear to date is far safer then fossil fuels. I can start going on about the exaggerated fear of Fukushima or Chernobyl but there isn't room for that discussion today.

I would also be interested to know what defined generations 1, 2 and 3.

Someone please tell me this guy is an educator too in the broader sense than just this offering. Wow, just wow.

While I found the lecture interesting, I would like to have reference made to the historical context of reactor design. The original light water reactor was designed by Alvin Weinberg to be used in nuclear submarines and never intended for domestic electricity generation. In fact, he advised against there use as the design does not scale up well, being difficult to maintain safety. Alvin was then approached by the airforce to design a nuclear reactor for the airforce to match the submarines. Clearly, the light water design would be too heavy so he developed the molten salt reactor (which you refer to as GEN 4) which was built and tested in the 70s proving to be inherently safe and efficient burning up the majority of the fuel. (as opposed to the light water reactor which can only burn about 3% of the uranium). The strengths of the LFTR design were many including the fact that fuel is dissolved in the molten salt rather than relying on very expensive pellets or pebbles, there is no need for a hugely expensive containment housing (as required by a light water reactor). This type of reactor can be made small enough to fit on a lorry and cost about the same as a passenger aircraft to build.

@maltekoch1632

4 жыл бұрын

All systems have there problems. At light water reactors I would guess we know them the best. For example liquid fuel has problems when some elements falling out of the solution an pile up in pipework or other places. With the fuelballs we have worked in Germany and had problems that piles of balls don't behave nicely and get very chaotic. By this balls had very different times in the reactor. Like 5-10 times faster in the middle. The coating of the balls wasn't sufficient to hold back radioactive isotopes from the inside and leaked them in the cooling gas, which isn't wanted in the design. A broken pipe in the heat exchanger could have caused a runaway reactor like in Tschernobyl, because of the influx of water in the hot core.

@davidcampbell1420

3 жыл бұрын

I hope Kirk Sorenson, or any of the other start up companies trying to make this happen will have success. They seem so optimistic, and fresh, and come from outside the traditional nuclear industry.

@paulbedichek2679

2 жыл бұрын

Alvin Weinberg is a hero, but he also developed the LWR and the BWR,which are the safe clean cheap electricity we enjoy today the world over. Te first thing the Russian did was empty salt reactors for missiles these are the all day missiles Putin brags about, we know exactly where they have flown as they leave radioactivity. We will deploy the molten salt reactor with an IMSR which has many advantages over a LFTR,Terrestrial Energy although the Canadians were supposed to support it yet the went with a boiling water small reactor design instead, but US has smr PWR NuScale ,salt cooled TRISO test reactor Kairos, XEnergy He cooled TRISO,and fast reactor with thermal salt storage Natrium,plus a small experiment of a fast reactor with molten chlorides it would be nice to hear someone order a Terrestrial Energy IMSR,gthey are better than LFTR's in many aspects they run 7 years and are replaced, no pipeline or leaks everything contained in a pot can burn waste and Th. The best salt reactor would be ThorCom,they won't even talk to the US with our rediculous regulations a clean sheet with Indonsia,they'll write the laws and regulations together and they have a very small island for themselves to build the first one on with a cable underwater for a mile or two to the mainland.

A 15 megawatt helium-cooled pebble bed reactor ran in Germany from 1969 until 1988. During this time it apparently encountered all kinds of problems, had several potentially dangerous accidents, and released a bunch more radioactive materials into the environment than it was supposed to. One of the scientists working on the project for over 30 years therefore expressed doubts on the general viability of pebble bed reactors, and criticised their export into countries like China or South Africa. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVR_reactor

@recklessroges

4 жыл бұрын

More research is a good idea. I'm still stuck with the feeling that packing spent spheres can't be the most efficient. Tetrahedron pebble bed?

@phobos134

2 жыл бұрын

but also were llik 50 years into the future and may today better work out its kinks

@paulbedichek2679

2 жыл бұрын

Germans love coal and are generally pretty backwards technically,China and the US are both running HTGR's.

@Goo-ke1rx

2 жыл бұрын

@@paulbedichek2679 That‘s the result of the ignorance of the politicans and their blindness for new ideas in engineering and breakthroughs in research, especially in the nuclear-energy research.

@paulbedichek2679

2 жыл бұрын

@@Goo-ke1rx Yes, the Germans lost their nerve with the HTGR, the near accident I heard about was they were emptying the reactor of the spheres and one got caught in the door, no harm, but that was the last of German clean energy research for constant sources. Everyone who works on these US, especially XEnergy, and China, are very cognizant of the German design flaw, so progress is made. The Germans used to have confidence in their science and technology, but they are so frightened of the Russians that they do everything to make Russia stronger and more of a menace, they import Russian coal, oil, and gas, not only paying Putin so he can build more tanks to terrorize Urkraine and the rest of Europe, but Germany is in the forefront of helping the Russians to melt the Artic, Russia is cold, covered in permafrost and Germany needs a melted Artic so the Russians can dig more coal gas and oil currently under the ice and also get their fossil fueled ships to move through Russian waters so Germany can buy more goods from China the world’s largest burner of coal.

Hi Energy Prof, I have a question with regards to the Pebble Bed Reactor. With the continues refuelling as shown in the picture, wouldn't safety be an issue because it means the reactor is open to the outside world at these points? I'm going to assume it will be in a containment building of some sort, but you would still have to accommodate these access-/ exit-points for the pebbles, which could be a potential exposure hazard. How would we go about that?

@raylopez99

2 жыл бұрын

I think the pebble is always safe since it has sheathing. In theory I guess you could use a pebble as a paperweight and you only have ionizing radiation flowing from it (i.e., an X-ray source) which is dangerous long term but it's not like it will go inside your lungs and give you cancer within 12 months. The real question to me, without Googling it, is how a Pebble Bed Reactor prevents runaway fission? I guess when they are very close to one another (i.e., not suspended) the carbon in the outside of the pebble ball will absorb any nuclear particles and not create fission? Whereas if the pebbles are separated in a fluidized stream, they are separated at the right distance so there's no modulation of nuclear particles (neutrons), and a chain reaction can occur?

@swokatsamsiyu3590

2 жыл бұрын

@@raylopez99 I'm not so much referring to the pebbles themselves, but more to the reactor as a whole. Normally with for example a PWR, the fuel is hermetically sealed inside the reactor vessel. The only time it comes out is during a refuelling outage and that happens under water involving a lot of complicated planning etc.. Even the CANDU reactor that has online refuelling (just like with the Russian RBMK you can add/remove fuel bundles when the reactor is at, or near full power) involves dual robots in a secluded area that hermetically seal the pressure tube to be refuelled from both ends so nothing bad comes out. I'm just wondering how they would go about such things safety-wise with a Pebble Bed reactor, because it would need two access-points for the entry/exit of the pebbles. Carbon is always a moderator, meaning it doesn't slow down/ stop the fission, it actually helps it along! So, it is the opposite from a neutron absorbing element like Boron that will stop any fissioning going on dead in its tracks. The professor mentioned that, if for some reason the coolant that holds the pebbles boils away, the pebbles would fall back down in a place where there is a neutron absorber present like Boron that will instantly stop the chain-reaction.

@raylopez99

2 жыл бұрын

@@swokatsamsiyu3590 OK thanks. I did Google it, and I confused a water/carbon moderator (slows down neutrons so a chain reaction can occur, and produce fission easily) with a boron neutron absorber (stops a chair reaction). Lern something new every day...

@swokatsamsiyu3590

2 жыл бұрын

@@raylopez99 That's OK, it's a complicated topic where it is very easy to mistake certain things for something else. I'm by no means an expert, I just happen to have a really not-at-all nerdy hobby. As someone with an extensive technical background, studying nuclear reactors has always been a life-long interest of mine. How I would have loved to be able to sit in on a class with one of the Energy Prof's lectures going! And trust me, I learn something new almost every day about this particular topic as well^^ That's the nice thing about it. If you are open to it, there's always new things to learn, new avenues to explore. Never stop learning!

that marker is awesome

I would love to show this video to all the green people that want to turn off all nuclear reactors. I hope politics agrees with science and europe builds them.

@danadurnfordkevinblanchdebunk

3 жыл бұрын

It's going to have to happen in a climate-change future.

@MrCantStopTheRobot

3 жыл бұрын

The Greens are a strange cult. It's such a shame, but almost as a rule I can't think of any major party that actually matches their label.

what about Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor?

@haliax8149

4 жыл бұрын

That's Gen IV.

@adlucem9845

4 жыл бұрын

No one is building thorium reactors for a reason. Everyone is actually developing fussion plasma. Zero waste.

@elefnishikot

4 жыл бұрын

@@adlucem9845 the us is not building thorium reactors because they are being suppressed by vested interests they are being researched by many other countries like india

@davidcampbell1420

3 жыл бұрын

@@adlucem9845 Tons of people are developing Thorium reactors. They are just outside the traditional industry. They are all smaller startups, who will leapfrog the older industry. In fact, the Thorium people have been helping the Fusion people. They've helped by employing some of the chemistry they've cooked up while working with molten salt design.

@davidcampbell1420

3 жыл бұрын

@@elefnishikot I see this too. The regulators and the laws surrounding this are absurd. You have Americans going to Indonesia to partner with that government to replace coal plants over there with molten salt tanks. Still, there's some hope, especially as "old nuclear" is essentially in free fall collapse.

Inconceivable!

well described

Chernobyl-type RBMK reactors make refueling a breeze because you don't even have to stop them to replace fuel assemblies :-)

@jaakkooksa5374

4 жыл бұрын

@@Trowo Seriously, the fuel assemblies are in individual tubes which are accessible from above. Just open the cap, pull out the assembly and put in a new one. The reactor can operate at full power the whole time. This also makes it ideal for producing plutonium for nuclear weapons, because that requires changing the assemblies at a fast cycle because otherwise the isotope ratio will be wrong.

@jaakkooksa5374

4 жыл бұрын

@Matt S In Chernobyl a core catcher would hardly have helped, because the whole damn reactor exploded :-)

@puncheex2

4 жыл бұрын

Sure, at the risk of eliminating the outer enclosure.

@davidelliott5843

4 жыл бұрын

RBMK uses solid fuel so the burn-up rate is low and the fuel itself is expensive. Molten salts (or using fuel salt in fuel rods) solve the burn-up issue and they also solve the noble gas pressure issue. But fuel salt in rods will not retrofit into an existing water reactor designs because the temperatures are too low.

@jaakkooksa5374

4 жыл бұрын

@@puncheex2 Who wants to pay for an outer enclosure anyway? :-)

In Europe (and many other places) heating homes and businesses uses more energy than electricity. Nuclear could play a part in heating. Nuclear heat can be generated at low temperatures low pressure and would be close to 100% efficient The problem is you would have to build a big district heating grid. This would be slow and costly but once built it would last a hundred years and could be powered by cheap heat only nuclear reactors There would also technically be no waste because the waste can just keep on powering the nuclear heated grid indefinitely so long as humans need warm homes the waste is not waste but low power long lasting energy for the district heating grids. New reactors for electricity generation are 3-5 GW thermal. District heating reactors that are 1/10th the power so around 0.5MW and supply the needs of 200,000 homes would work the energy side would be very cheap. Nuclear should concentrate to address this market. It's a huge market. And the technology needed isn't an advance in nuclear but and advance in methods to build cheap distributed heating grids.

@davidelliott5843

4 жыл бұрын

Molten salts especially those with no moving parts can do all of this. The high core temperature makes efficient electricity but there is still much waste heat perfect for district heating or water desalination, etc.

@davidcampbell1420

3 жыл бұрын

I agree with you, and with David Elliott. In fact, the Chinese are planning a district heating system just like this. They're building it right now. I don't think it's anything as cool as the molten salt stuff, but it's a high thermal loop they're planning, for exactly this purpose. The nuke plant's heat exchanger loop will basically be the city itself.

@paulbedichek2679

2 жыл бұрын

@@davidcampbell1420 There are two different programs, one uses rejected heat to heat water in a district heating loop, the other would be ti build a new type reactor, very low cost, very safe and sited close to where people live, part of the question asked was the people's reaction, even though it is a brutal dictatorship,the leaders want to keep it that way and public acceptance is important.Chernobyl helped destroy the Soviet model. There are already district heatingnloops in different part of Europe and the world.

@davidcampbell1420

2 жыл бұрын

@@paulbedichek2679 I see. Ive often wondered about micro reactors that are coming. Helium cooled TRISO fueled ones are super simple. Or, if we can get molten salt reactors such as Elysium where it runs right at the edge of criticality and merely sips fuel. Anyway tiny systems that can replace boilers in large buildings. It would fill the role of natural gas nicely if regulatory regimes were in place. I dont see it as any different as how they inspect gas pumps at gas stations. Just require the HVAC company to allow inspections of the core.

@paulbedichek2679

2 жыл бұрын

@@davidcampbell1420 The Ultra Safe Nuclear co is building TRISO fueled He cooled 15MW reactors, OKLO wanted to get a license for their reactor1.5MW, fast reactor, sealed with heat pipes and super critical CO2 Brayton cycle turbine, but the NRC denied the license without prejudice so they can apply again. There are other companies building micro reactors that will go on military bases, they were printing the reactor internals which saves time and money.

What clear board do you use in your videos?

Great video! As the pellets grind against each other in a fluidized bed some of the shell material will slowly erode away. Will this dust damage pumps and other parts of the reactor?

@edpiv2233

4 жыл бұрын

Failure rates will be part of the pilot program. The issue w this video was his only brief mention of Thorium MSR or even this design w Thorium fuel.

@davidelliott5843

4 жыл бұрын

The big problem with pebble bed reactors was broken pebbles jamming the system.

ahhhhhh stop that noise please!!!!!!!!!!!

@kennyfordham6208

4 жыл бұрын

😭

No one: this guys marker: LET ME SING YOU THE SONG OF MY PEOPLE XD

Cool video. I'm subscribing

Sir what are you thoughts on Thorium as fuel / LFTR - is it the solution for future as has been claimed.

I don’t know if anyone has noticed this 🤷‍♂️ .... Is there a camera trick? Or is this guy able to right backwards legibly??? 😱

@alexmagno2

4 жыл бұрын

Probably the video was inverted. Note that, from our point of view, he is wearing a watch on the right hand and writing with the left hand. It is possible to be a coincidence, but very unlikely.

@33VMUH

4 жыл бұрын

@@alexmagno2 Also, the breast pocket of his shirt is on his right side, not his left side. Finally, he is wearing his wedding ring on his right hand, not his left hand.

@lowspeedyoyo

4 жыл бұрын

@@33VMUH yup, but then he would be writing from the right to the left

@dunneincrewgear

4 жыл бұрын

I think he's writing on a mirror. The camera is behind him but filming his image in the mirror.

@lowspeedyoyo

4 жыл бұрын

@@dunneincrewgear yup!

CANDU reactors fuel online and they've been in operation for decades.

@davidcampbell1420

3 жыл бұрын

Heavy water CANDU with online refueling was the best of the old designs. It's lack of a need for an enrichment facility is also great in that it uses standard U238 with the 0.7 U235 naturally found in ore. What's nice about this now is because the fuel pellets are simple chemically/neutronically. Moltex, which is a UK company collaborating with New Brunswick Power are going to take the CANDU waste and use it as a fuel in a molten salt design. Liquify it and burn it right down to nearly nothing, while powering your cities.

@greggolding2291

3 жыл бұрын

@@davidcampbell1420 All great points! I'm very excited to see what Moltex has to bring!

@davidcampbell1420

3 жыл бұрын

@@greggolding2291 They need to hurry up. Darlington is going to get mothballed soon. Ontario cant afford to move backwards on green house gases.

This guy is brilliant

Impressed by the backwards writing abilities.