I used to work for SaskPower, a provincial utility in Canada. They could not consider building a Nuclear power plant, because their maximum base-load was under 3GW. Since all power plants require maintenance, which require shutdowns, they could not see a way to shutdown about 2GW of production for a maintenance period, so they continue with their coal fired plants. Their typical generator is about 150 MW, which fits into the SMR range. I think there are other power companies with similar issues. Thanks for the good work!

@gtranquilla

3 жыл бұрын

Donald McCann - and yet the province of Sask has a group already working on a plan to implement SMRs within the next decade.....PhD Duane Bratt MRU provided a seminar presentation on this to APEGS awhile ago......

@puma7171

2 жыл бұрын

This is a major issue indeed that SMRs can address, especially in smaller grids/countries!!

@ThomasLeonard454

Жыл бұрын

That is a sad example you offer and you are probably correct in assuming they will never build any more nuclear power plants. The government has been bought out by big business. Don't forget that "a lie told often enough becomes the truth" and the government has been lying to us about their safety for decades.

As a recent Engineering graduate with a desire to eventually work in the nuclear industry, this video helped a lot in putting modern nuclear technology in context. Thank you for your balanced approach to this subject.

@ccibinel

2 жыл бұрын

move to canada and try to get involved with a candu based ARC-100 or similar (I think most are out of new brunswick). Modernizing tech from the 50s/60s to work using spent fuel (unenriched) as fuel is awesome. We need solutions to existing waste and base load.

@jamesmorton7881

Жыл бұрын

As a retired Electronics Engineer, lots of processing power works like magic. Landing a Flacon 9 Booster just like Buck rogers, you want to try it ? READ Club of rome 1970 system dynamics model of the Globe, we are in the groove now . . . Global Industrial Production has peaked . . . uh heading down, same as your life.

@bilalafzal6686

Жыл бұрын

Which type of engineering did you do. Im hoping to go into the nuclear industry aswell but ill probably get an electrical engineering degree

@pahasapaman

Жыл бұрын

This isn't balanced because the funding comes from "experimental" sources, not public "voted on" funding. Much of this funding is "military" in nature and will often go to either colleges or black sciences.

The biggest problem at the end of the day is that everyone expects it to work perfectly the first time with as little funding as possible.

@mrwess1927

3 жыл бұрын

Jon Manson spend money on quality

@bilalafzal6686

Жыл бұрын

@@mrwess1927 exactly

You aimed for a balanced assessment of the subject with this video, I think you've succeeded.

I'll spare you my rant. Thank you for your analysis, all your work, and continued commitment to a solution.

@mandomtn1962

3 жыл бұрын

I will open the rant. "Statistically from a operational view, this is a safer option for power" until it isn't and a catastrophe at one site turns into a global environmental disaster just like Japan's incident. This is not safe energy, but there are safe options out there, it's just the big corporations don't want them.

@jchoneandonly

3 жыл бұрын

@@mandomtn1962 salt thorium reactors won't do that though because the reaction has to be kept in the right conditions to continue reacting. Once the reactor breaks or goes critical the reactor itself will make the conditions not conducive to the reaction and the reactor shuts down. This is not so true for uranium reactors like fukishima and so on however most nuclear power catastrophes were the result of idiots in control.

@UserBeenBanned

3 жыл бұрын

To bad carbon emissions dont matter.

@9squares

3 жыл бұрын

@@mandomtn1962 "Statistically" we are in the midst of exponentially abrupt, irreversible, climate change. You might think about what that means in regards to developing new power sources of any description.

@lukerediger8431

3 жыл бұрын

@@mandomtn1962 coal plants have been releasing radioactive waste each year that exceeds all nuclear accidents combined and are responsible for about a million deaths annually. Fukishima was a 70 year old plant that should have been retired for a safer design but ignorant hand wringers like yourself have doomed us to keeping ancient outdated plants running cause you oppose new plants despite the fact that they are vastly more efficient, safer, and create less waste because you''re scared of the safest method of mass power production man has ever created including solar and wind which kills more each year due to accidents.

My son in law works in the nuclear area in the Navy for 20 years. He says why not, the Navy has done some great things with this process. Let's do it!

@bibliotek42

3 жыл бұрын

Ask him where the waste is!

@ThomasLeonard454

3 жыл бұрын

@@bibliotek42 he won't say but he is pro nuke

@ccibinel

2 жыл бұрын

Really wish governments would use similar reactors on cargo ships. The environmental damage this could save would be massive.

@hariowen3840

2 жыл бұрын

@@ThomasLeonard454 Pro nuclear people and those who are employed in the industry never seem to want to talk about dealing with the waste, why?

@MikeB3542

Жыл бұрын

The real issue with nuclear is the cost...both in terms of money and time. The Navy doesn't have to pay out quarterly dividends. Unless the US Federal Government wants to get in the electrical utility business (beyond their current position with things like the TVA) not sure I see utilities buying into nuclear unless the Financials change.

As usual I'm very late to the party, but since you brought up the nuclear waste issue I would have liked to see you give a quick blurb about fast reactors using up all the fuel vs only a few percentage. Also would have liked to seen a mention of the almost inexhaustible supply of surprisingly high amounts of uranium dissolved in seawater.

@maasl3873

2 жыл бұрын

I watched "Planet of the Humans" where a study was mentioned showing that "countries that add renewables to the mix don't seem to phase out fossil fuels", a fact being unknown to politicians. We need nuclear power until we have much more efficient solar panels and cheap energy storage.

@justgivemethetruth

2 жыл бұрын

@@maasl3873 POTH was not a perfect documentary but I was so happy to see some of the same skepticism aimed at the BS green movement as the nuclear industry. It was way past time. The reality of wind and solar is far from the idea that most people seem to have about it. It's been presented dishonestly and out of context for so long. The problem is the humans ... we must be suicidal murderous idiots.

Very interesting. The main concern is the proliferation of these smaller nuclear sites with less regulation and driven by capital enterprise. Nuclear power plants do not do well with cost cutting as you mentioned. I think the risks far outway the benefits.

@justgivemethetruth

2 жыл бұрын

Plus who trusts these idiots who have a patentable money-making idea that they are not going to give up on whatever criticisms or failure they have or someone points out?

Not often an intelligent and interesting channel quickly acquires the audience it deserves. Congrats on 100K subs.

@jakehildebrand1824

3 жыл бұрын

His views on nuclear energy clearly show a lack of said intelligence.

@angelosemeraro3170

3 жыл бұрын

@@jakehildebrand1824 Why? I was on the understanding he was totally in favour of it

@justgivemethetruth

2 жыл бұрын

And some it doesn't. ;-)

Excelent scripting, knowledgeable yet aproachable for the keen layman. A warm welcoming voice that seeks to shape the minds of tomorrow. Well done.

Storing spent fuel from commercial reactors is quite easily manageable. The volume of the waste is small, and it is contained. Advanced reactor designs can burn the long-lived transuranics, thereby requiring storage for only 100 years instead of 100,000 years. It is time that people stop exaggerating the "problem" of nuclear waste. Disposing of solar photovoltaics safely will actually be a much bigger problem.

@st0n3p0ny

3 жыл бұрын

Yeah. Nuclear waste disposal was never a real hurdle. We could literally cast every ounce of nuclear material ever refined, in to blocks, and dump it all in a pile in the middle of the Pacific, and nothing would happen. Yucca Mountain is an absurd joke. The problem is that the word nuclear is scary and the word radiation is scary and most people learned everything they know on the subject, from old monster movies.

@reddingtom

3 жыл бұрын

you are 100% correct. calling fuel rods with 95% of their fuel left a 'problem' is a joke. take a look at michael schellenberger's best seller to see more on this subject.

@aalvarez2914

3 жыл бұрын

Ungha Bungha yeah, plus molten salt reactors are a lot better because they are meltdown-proof and burn up much more of the material, leaving much less waste, and the waste that is left is radioactive for a much shorter period. www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/12/china-spending-us3-3-billion-on-molten-salt-nuclear-reactors-for-faster-aircraft-carriers-and-in-flying-drones.html

@francesconicoletti2547

3 жыл бұрын

William Olenchenko do burn or can burn ? Anything is possible on paper. Fund and build a reactor that burns nuclear waste and then you get to say can burn.

@st0n3p0ny

3 жыл бұрын

@@francesconicoletti2547 We don't need specialized technology to burn nuclear waste. It can be easily and safely dumped.

I think Nuclear would be great for energy production. Caveat: in a sufficiently educated society.

@carlosandleon

3 жыл бұрын

you mean like Japan?

@jakehildebrand1824

3 жыл бұрын

@@carlosandleon clearly they weren't too well educated, since they *IGNORED WARNINGS* about the likelihood of a tsunami that day. You can find coastguard wave forcasting online if you look. Aside from that, the reactor was outdated, and had reached the end of its intended operational life, but was left running because misinformed activists would freak out at the mere suggestion of a new reactor. By the way, nobody died as a result of the meltdown, and the almost radiation from the site will be gone in about 10 more years, since a vast majority of the contamination is from cesium. After the cesium decays, the remaining radioactive contamination will barely even be enough to register on a Geiger Counter, and the yearly dose would likely be somewhat smaller than the dose recieved during an X-ray, or on a plane.

@SmiteTVnet

3 жыл бұрын

The contradiction being the more educated a society is, the less they will need to rely on simple solutions like nuclear and the quicker more sustainable options will be available

@jakehildebrand1824

3 жыл бұрын

@@SmiteTVnet the fact of the matter is, an educated society would embrace nuclear energy with open arms. Nuclear power is the only sustainable alternative to fossil fuels. The benefits of nuclear are nearly endless, and are well worth the high construction costs. Wind turbines are only effective in massive clusters, and only in very specific conditions. They also require constant maintenance, and are not even remotely cost efficient. Solar Power is also only effective in massive clusters. Solar power also only works when exposed to direct sunlight, which means they only produce power during the day. Furthermore, their production requires use of a multitude of toxic metals and chemicals. The Initial parts, along with the constant replacement parts means lots of toxic waste being produced as a byproduct. Hydroelectric power is the only renewable source worth taking seriously, but it still has massive limitations of its own that prevent it from being the answer to the problem. As a side note, the fact that you refer to nuclear power as "simple" shows exactly how uneducated you are. There is nothing simple about nuclear energy, which is why it requires an educated society to responsibly use it. Nuclear power is not something to be feared, but it IS something that requires respect.

@normanmazlin6741

3 жыл бұрын

Mobile phones would be a good thing in a reasonably educated public.

2:52 Hydropower death rate ?!! Dam disasters on rivers claimed more fatalities than the rest of the power industry combined (including mining accidents). Only 1 disaster in 1975 in Banqiao claimed about 170,000 victims. In addition, millions of damaged homes. There were countless smaller disasters in the world. Personally, I prefer to live behind the fence of a nuclear power plant than near a river, even 10 or 20 km below a dam. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Dam_failures

@vojtechfarkas885

2 жыл бұрын

If you count early deaths from respiratory diseases, then fossil fuels kill millions of people every year globally. That I think was the point the graph was trying to make. I agree with the rest, nuclear definitely safer than hydro.

I would enjoy watching a video on the technical differences of the Small Modular Reactors.

@gordondolan6443

2 жыл бұрын

THEN GOOGLE IT!

@domingo2977

2 жыл бұрын

@@gordondolan6443 he asked for my opinion he got it deal with it.

@kerryjennings2661

2 жыл бұрын

I think this channel could do an excellent job describing the differences between SMRs.

@russellm7530

Жыл бұрын

Hey great idea. Thanks 👍

I am bias no matter how much I don't want to but I always try to listen before I speak. So thank you for your hard work. Thank you for doing what's difficult!

@davidjessop2279

3 жыл бұрын

Someone who finds thinking difficult! Oh dear.

That awkward moment that you realize that presenting factual information is intensely disturbing to at least 1/3 of the population......

@mmercier0921

3 жыл бұрын

We call them Democrats in America.

@acmefixer1

3 жыл бұрын

@@mmercier0921 Blame the Democrats, Republicans and any other political persuasion who don't want a nuke -- they're called NIMBYs.

@acmefixer1

3 жыл бұрын

It's not a matter of who, but *what*. The utilities are not going to contract for a plant that takes more than a decade and tens of Billions of dollars to bring online. Small modular reactors may be a better way, but they say they'll have six 200 MW SMRs instead of one big conventional reactor. So the cost could be the same. And there's still the long time -- ten years -- that it'll take to bring online. There is a NPP in Belgium that was completed but never loaded with fuel.

@markw999

3 жыл бұрын

@@acmefixer1 I wasn't even talking about the actuality of BUILDING anything, just the presentation of factual information on KZread "triggers" enough people to fill stadiums these days. You could make the counter-arguments (factually, again) and have a debate about the pros and cons, but for a good chunk of the populace, that isn't going to be satisfactory. They're looking to experience righteous indignation. Republican or Democrat, the outrage mob is waiting to pounce. Gotta get that dopamine supply that vitriolic stupidity coupled with misrepresentation provides. LOL

@663rainmaker

3 жыл бұрын

markw999 facts and interesting 🧐 inFo ? NewCleeeeeeAr families Matter anti Matters pro$ and won ton$ ? There are other alternatives for safe fuel and electrical generation stations ... but wHo benefits? Reactors and Radioactive ☢️ poPPa Gasket or TwO pSi .... look 👀 ouT a Runaway.... GloW Bee 🐝 Fukushima cherry 🍒 knowbaLL gloW BaLL ⚽️.... a Blowout with goal 🥅 Lee’s, Ed U KaTe Ted GuEss’ wHo ... The Duke’s of Nukem

Subscribed. Thank you for intelligent and impartial contributions to the discussion.

'take up large amounts of land'. yeah right. ANYTHING renewable related is going to take up orders of magnitude more land, because the power density is so small.

@dnboro

3 жыл бұрын

But Solar Panels can go on roofs of houses and factories and wind turbines can go in paddocks that have cattle and sheep walking around them. An open pit coal mine certainly isn't dual purpose in that way.

@PeterKnagge

3 жыл бұрын

Solar and wind farms can double as agricultural land, you can't do that with nuclear power unless you want your milk to glow. Agricultural waste can be used to make biogas, just as farmers have been doing for 1000's of years. Solar power on building roofs and window tint film. Easier, more economically and environmentally sustainable, more reliable, and quicker to build renewable energy. A micro algae power plant the size of Texas could feed and power the world + filter water + carbon capture, can't say the same for nuclear. Plus if the renewable power plant comes to the end of life you just pack up shop and use the land immediately for another purpose. Nuclear you have close off the land for 100,000 years (twice as long as civilisation). Renewable energy power plants aren't quite a dangerous target for terrorists and government enemies as nuclear is (a nuclear power plant is essentially a big nuclear bomb, nuclear facilities are the one of favourite targets of US military in the middle east). Sorry but you had 30 years to do something with nuclear, but now renewables has caught up and made nuclear obsolete. Don't worry in another 30 years some new tech will come along and make renewables obsolete.

@Subjagator

3 жыл бұрын

@@dnboro That is true, but those would only generate a tiny fraction of the required load. In order to get the level required to power entire countries a solar panel on a roof or a wind turbine in a farmers field isn't enough, it also makes maintenance and upkeep a much more convoluted process when your power generation isn't in one localised facility but is instead spread across entire cities in/on private property. Nuclear power has to be part of the solution to fossil fuels because solar/wind/hydro just isn't up to it by themselves at the moment. The sooner we engage realistically with nuclear power the sooner we can get away from open pit coal mines completely. If you have concerns with long term reliance on nuclear power then it can be used as an intermediary step between high reliance on fossil fuels and 100% generation by wind/solar/hydro.

@Jake12220

3 жыл бұрын

@@PeterKnagge you seem to not understand a lot of issues, for a start SMRs they were talking about in this clip are nothing like the old nuclear plants, they can be removed completely at the end of their useful life and you could build a school there the next day. Biogas is really not overly environmentally friendly, algae hasn't worked out as well as they wanted and a series of nuclear plants the size of Houston rather than the whole of Texas could easily power the whole world. Renewables can in some setups be in conjunction with farming (grazing) but in the case of solar it greatly reduces the productivity of the land and in the case of wind leads to huge amounts of bird deaths. The amount of toxic chemicals in the production of both soar and wind farms that will never break down is shocking, it really is a huge amount. Both solar and wind farms have a bad track record of not living up to their proposed life expectancy, often breaking far sooner and looking terrible. Mirror type solar plants are possibly the worst, they are amazingly destructive in many ways for the environment. The other huge issue with renewables is the storage and grid control. Currently Australia is trying to bring in laws that will allow the energy regulator to shut down rooftop solar systems due to there being so much installed that it can overload the grid in good weather. Unfortunately the peak power output from these systems does not line up with peak usage and while we have some of the world's best pumped hydro, it's just not possible to deal with such a huge and short lived spike in power input. As for wind, it's useless unless there is suitable backup, it's simply not reliable enough so requires some type of system to back it up. If energy storage is developed that allows for long term storage at a reasonable cost then it will seem better but still leaves us with the huge environmental damage that these plants will lead to in the future. Just think back to the early days of coal, it was the clean green technology of its day because it was so much cleaner to burn and had a far lower environmental impact than burning wood, yet now we think of it as an environmental demon. In years to come future generations may well see today's wind, solar and possibly even hydro the way we now look at coal.

@dnboro

3 жыл бұрын

@@Subjagator My reply wasn't in relation to Nuclear but in relation to the assertion by Greg. "ANYTHING renewable related is going to take up orders of magnitude more land, because the power density is so small." Hi assertion ignores that land based wind farms do not "take" the land from other uses, and nor does offshore wind. And plenty of roof space for solar. I am not totally against Nuclear but prefer comments on renewables be factual. Note that Renewables can also be combined with hydrogen production and there is also the vehicle to grid with the usual short term peaks in demand. The future grid is going to be nothing like the current one. I won't be holding my breath for Nuclear to become cost competitive and solve our woes in the short term. As for whether Renewables can't do it - not everyone would agree with your assertion ... reneweconomy.com.au/csiro-says-australia-can-get-100-per-cent-renewable-energy-86624/#:~:text=The%20Australian%20government%E2%80%99s%20chief%20scientific%20body%20says%20there,considered%20as%20just%20%E2%80%9Ctrivial%E2%80%9D%20in%20current%20energy%20systems.

This is really important. All great great things began with discussion and forethought. Thanks for helping keep that going.

I’d love to see the Thorium MSRs get going.

A correction for you. You said nuclear uses a "huge amount of land", when in fact it takes up the least amount of land per unit of energy. It takes up the smallest amount of land compared with any source of energy.

@robbiero368

3 жыл бұрын

Is that inclusive of dealing with the waste?

@alvarofernandez5118

3 жыл бұрын

@@robbiero368 my understanding, yes. A carbon burning plant generates train wagonloads of ash daily. Consider the tonnage. (That's not including the carbon!) A nuclear reactor on the other hand, as per Wikipedia, produces 25 tons yearly. It could reduce its waste to 3 cubic meters yearly if reprocessed en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-level_waste 25 tons a year isn't all that much when you think of daily wagonloads of coal ash. I think too many people have interiorized the Simpsons farcical view of nuclear power as if it were a documentary. BTW, this is a nuclear power plant, so you have to compare it to an entire wind farm, not a solitary wind turbine. And it would have to be an enormous wind farm too - far greater in real estate than the plant.

@reddingtom

3 жыл бұрын

you are missing the plot if you think spent rods are waste. they are fuel for advanced reactors like the BN-800 that Russia is building (or like we ran in oak ridge for a generation). the rods still contain 95% of their fissable material

@jmd1743

3 жыл бұрын

@@robbiero368 They store it in their parking lots in dry casks.

@TBFSJjunior

3 жыл бұрын

@@alvarofernandez5118 If it is offshore wind not really as that is unused real estate. Same with rooftop solar or agrivoltaik which both use estate which is already in use and stays in use anyhow.

LFTR or somehow recycling nuclear waste seems to make the most sense. That said, doing any nuclear safely requires trusting governments and corporations. That's the real show stopper.

@liamcarlson9259

3 жыл бұрын

LFTRs seem like a good idea, but the high corosivity of fluoride salt is a major hurdle for economic efficiency.

@jmitterii2

3 жыл бұрын

@@liamcarlson9259 China started in 2014 a research assessment on such problems; part of a ten year project. Just takes commitment. And since China is already suffering from its coal burning, and has no other fossil fuels, they've been going full tilt to take care of what would be a major graduates program to figure out. It's not impossible. Far from it. I just hope whatever they discover they provide open source. And other nations do likewise.

@PaulLemars01

3 жыл бұрын

If you don't trust you government or your corporations who's left? Some unattributed conspiracy spreader on Facebook?

@jimgraham6722

3 жыл бұрын

Moltex Energy, a Canadian/British firm developing molten salt reactors fuelled by nuclear waste says it has been awarded a contract aimed at installing its first molten salt reactor in New Brunswick Canada, coming on line in 2030. The initial contract appears to be more than just a feasibility study. www.moltexenergy.com/news/details.aspx?positionId=106

@jackfanning7952

3 жыл бұрын

Trusting government and corporations. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah!

As usual a well produced and thought-out video. Well done.

Some people are so addicted to the doomsday perspective, that they will deny any attempt to solutions.

@eziobertollo3750

2 жыл бұрын

The doomsday perspective has been a good source of funds for some for thousands of years.

@chapter4travels

2 жыл бұрын

The last thing the left wants is a solution. You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before. Rahm Emanuel

@chapter4travels

2 жыл бұрын

@@frogmorely the only replacement for fossil fuel is advanced nuclear, republicans support nuclear and Dems do not. End of story

@chapter4travels

2 жыл бұрын

@@frogmorely Germany has spent $450 billion on renewables and the infrastructure needed to connect them to the grid. This got them to between 40-50% carbon free electricity, depending on how windy it is that month. German brown coal and Russian natural gas still provides most of their power. They also have the highest electricity costs in the EU and almost triple the US, so much for renewables being cheap. Had they spent that same amount of money on nuclear, they would be 100% carbon free today with reactors that have a 90 year lifespan, 3x the renewables which will all need to be replaced twice to match nuclear. Again, how are renewables cheap again? California has invested the most on renewables in the US so clearly they must have the lowest electricity rates, right? Nope, the highest with the bonus of rolling black and brown outs.

Hi there. I've been watching your videos for a while now, but this is my first comment. First of all, thank you for these fascinating discussions on engineering and environmental topics. They're really interesting and well made. Secondly, I guess I'm in favor of Small Modular Reactors. Here in Canada renewable energy is only viable in the warmer months. In our long winters we rely on fossil fuels to keep ourselves alive, so I think there's a certain amount of resistance ( _especially_ in my province of Alberta) to the very idea of completely phasing out fossil fuels and going renewable-only. People equate renewables with freezing to death in January or February when the sun barely shines. Small nuclear reactors could be a viable solution to the problem posed by winter. They'd provide a reliable backup that would always be there to keep us safe.

@Moses_VII

3 жыл бұрын

What about wind power? Nowhere to put it? Not even offshore?

@Kevin_Street

3 жыл бұрын

Wind power is definitely one of the solutions we need to adopt. According to the Canadian Wind Energy Association, Alberta is currently third in Canada with 1685 MW, so I guess it's making an impact already.

@lornegutz95

2 жыл бұрын

I have solar panels and I agree they are useless in December, and have trouble in Jan. and Feb. They have reduced power in very cold weather. Check out the ISS they have to be replaced after 20 years which is another source of garbage. All that said I like my panels, they are 100% better than a gas generator for backup when the power goes out..

@justgivemethetruth

2 жыл бұрын

@@lornegutz95 >> I have solar panels and I agree they are useless in December, and have trouble in Jan. and Feb. They have reduced power in very cold weather. This seems to be something the solar zealots do not even consider.

Molten salt reactors in development are much more efficient, producing about 1/10 the amount of nuclear waste that is dangerously radioactive for about 1/1000 the number of years. In addition, the MSRs can use the current light water reactor waste as fuel.

@brandonsheffield9873

3 жыл бұрын

I also commented about that. Nice to know more people researching this and learning about it. I only learned it because my college professor gave me "Is nuclear Energy Safe" topic for a research paper last year.

@st0n3p0ny

3 жыл бұрын

Can you fill us in on the details regarding the evil conspiracy that prevents us from using molten salt reactors? They've been tried and tried, I believe the UK still maintains one experimental reactor. If it has all of these advantages, it's cheaper and better and safer, why do power companies suppress the technology?

@tsamuel6224

3 жыл бұрын

@@st0n3p0ny The molten salt reactor was tried and proven and then mothballed by the Nixon administration. The UK nor any other nation have any. America built the only one that has been built, it worked extremely well and was decommissioned because Nixon only wanted nuclear research money spent in California. China may have one under construction. Power companies do not suppress the technology, power companies only use technologies that have been developed by other players. The notion that utilities suppress technologies is a conspiracy theory with weak evidence; utilities simply only use old well developed technologies. The first MSRs built today in the US won't be built by nor for a power utility; the most likely first US adopters would be something like a large university, an industrial park, or the Navy, etc, with a large need for power and high temperature heat.

@Bareego

3 жыл бұрын

@@st0n3p0ny One major issue is the corrosive nature of molten salt. If you consider having to move this stuff through pumps, pipes and junctions I'd rather not be one the maintenance people having to look after it.

@st0n3p0ny

3 жыл бұрын

@@tsamuel6224 "The notion that utilities suppress technologies is a conspiracy theory with weak evidence" Is delusional logic-defying nonsense with no basis in reality. Was it space aliens that gave Nixon those magical powers to deny energy companies using all of this superior technology?

No moving parts. Small units. Run a neighborhood for a decade. Drill a hole, pop it in and hook it up. All for it.

@kevinmarshall7933

3 жыл бұрын

Put it on a rocket in space and you'll get to mars and back easy

@sloggnznorgin6285

3 жыл бұрын

Make it the size of a water heater! Boom, portable reactor for each home. Just stick it in the garage.

@mns8732

3 жыл бұрын

@@kevinmarshall7933 can't see a down side risk factor. Make it the size of ruler to power your next off road 4rumner.

@grahambennett8151

3 жыл бұрын

Nice, small, Chernobyl/Fukushima fallout zone - real convenient. Two out of in every 100 reactors have exploded. Can we have one, Dad?

@sloggnznorgin6285

3 жыл бұрын

@@grahambennett8151 it’s not a party till everyone’s pants gets blown off! 😁

I watched a video from Lars Jorgensen yesterday on Thorium Convertor Reactors which looked to me like a version of LFTR which he often discusses and while he didn't answer all of my questions, what was interesting was 6 years to design, build and certify the design and then about 12 month for each unit. They look like they're designed to be built in a standard ship building factory, floated to the location and then presumably sunk into position in a coastal region. I liked the short build time and that they are liquid salt based reducing most risks. They can also be swapped out regularly for maintenance and are modular. You should have a watch so that you can see whether this might add to your sources.

@adamdanilowicz4252

3 жыл бұрын

Yes, Thorcon is definitely doing some interesting work and I wish them well.

@thtiger1

2 жыл бұрын

Thorcom thinks they could build a hundred reactors a year if all the tests work out, and they have customers. Compared to the ships that the Korean shipyards churn out by the dozens they are far less complicated.

"These things take up a huge amount of land". No they don't. Nuclear takes up hundreds of times less land than solar and wind farms for every kilowatt hour of energy they produce. Exactly the same relationship is true for raw material consumption. Nuclear is the most power dense energy source in existence by many orders of magnitude. If conserving nature is a value, there is no competing technology.

@bobwallace9753

3 жыл бұрын

Sorry, you are not making an accurate statement. I suspect you're thinking only about the reactor footprint. Once you include the land mass used for the safety zones around reactors, the amount of land used for mining and refining nuclear fuel the overall footprint of nuclear becomes significant.

@0hypnotoad0

3 жыл бұрын

@@bobwallace9753 As an addition to this, land occupied by solar panels and wind turbines is not unusable, as you can grow crops or have roads in the same spaces. Large form nuclear plants are massive industrial parks and cannot be used for anything other than activities related to nuclear power.

@phamnuwen9442

3 жыл бұрын

@@0hypnotoad0 My local nuclear power plant produces 3.3GW on 4 square km. 88% capacity factor. 25 TWh last year. Give me the corresponding figures from a solar or wind farm of your choosing.

@TBFSJjunior

3 жыл бұрын

@@phamnuwen9442 I doubt the 4km² as the usual primary exclusion zone is a 1 mile radius (so 8km²) while the other exclusion zones are much bigger. Still I take your numbers, that would be 0.825 kW/m² and 6250kWh/m². The solar farm on my roof takes up 0m² unused space, but is 45m² big and delivers 9.1kW (0.2 kW/m²) 11% 9000kWh/a (200kWh/m²). So even with this numbers the factor is around 30 and not "hundreds of times less". (Now I could give you a couple more reasons why that comparison ignores some factors which would lower the 30 even more.) Also this ignores of course that rooftop solar and agrovoltaik have a defacto land use of 0, as they use space which already gets used otherwise. (In the case of agrivoltaik you even increase the yield of farm land in some cases.)

@MrElifire84

3 жыл бұрын

Jakob Schulze Great. Let’s do roof top solar. How much can we get from roof top solar? Answer. Not much. The area required to generate a substantial percentage of our total energy needs vastly dwarfs rooftop area.

I am a 110 % advocate for nuclear power as base load and with efficient renewable energy as a way to minimize base load requirement. I'm particularly interested in LFTR's. Great channel too.

@chapter4travels

3 жыл бұрын

Renewables require full demand sized backup and if that backup is nuclear, what would be the point of adding to its cost with renewables?

@mershymarsh

3 жыл бұрын

​@@chapter4travels A truth that explains why the renewable industry and fossil fuel industry is anti-nuclear. Intermittent renewables are best thought of as fuel savers. They don't replace the fossil fuel or nuclear dispatchable/baseload, but they can save fuel. The cost of fuel for nuclear is so little in comparison to overall cost, that it just doesn't work out favorably to do anything other than run nuclear at full output.

@phamnuwen9442

3 жыл бұрын

@@mershymarsh renewables are not even useful for "saving fuel". You'll need two systems (fossil and renewables), each with 100% capacity, instead of just the fossil system. There is no chance this will ever be affordable.

@croftegan7993

3 жыл бұрын

@Jimmy McTavish You might be happy to here kzread.info/dash/bejne/oXZlq9SzdKevaco.html

@chapter4travels

3 жыл бұрын

@Jimmy McTavish LFTR is going nowhere, they are trying to close the fuel cycle in the thermal spectrum which is either not possible or extremely hard to do. There are simpler once through burner designs that are ready to go today as soon as a country is brave enough to back them. Thorcon power is waiting on Indonesia, they are ready to start now.

So glad to discover a channel like this. Right up my alley. Thanks for doing all the research and summarizing in a manner that we can all understand. Sadly I can not become a Patreon yet, as I am already past the limit I imposed on myself. I need to crank up my income! ;)

Love your video's you are one of the best. Appreciate your balanced views and your efforts to make people understand.

Hello, I'd like to add to the discussion, since I've been very interested in all forms of energy all my live, specially renewables, but since I was exposed to the Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactor 10 years ago, and done some research on my own of the various concepts investigated in the early nuclear era before we settled down on the Light Water reactor for....basically everything, I'm more pro-nuclear than ever. Just not a big fan of the Small Modular Reactor concept: First of all, there are so many interesting concepts that re-emerge from the 60s-70s, that is easy to confuse them. Quick recap: Fuels are U233 (bred from Thorium) U235 (mined and enriched if needed) and Pu239 bred from depleted uranium. Breeder is a reactor that breeds more fuel than it consumes, and burner is one that not. Thermal reactors are the ones that use a moderator (light atoms like hydrogen or carbon) to increase the likelihood of fission, while Fast reactors do not (think heavier atoms, like liquid metals). Proliferation is the easiness of using the reactor for breeding very pure fuel, the grades you need to make a nuclear explosive, for that you need a lot of reprocessing of a shortly irradiated breeding material. SNF means spent nuclear fuel, FP are the fission products (think of nuclear "ashes"). * The passive safety systems you described, like natural convection or strong negative reaction coefficients can be implemented in many reactors types, depending on their nature, regardless of size, so it's not exclusive to SMR . * Thorium is in fact more abundant, but that's inconsequential since we have mined enough uranium to burn for millenia, we just need to move away from the once-through fuel cycle (Light water reactors usually extract 0.5-1% of the energy available before discarting the fuel rod) and use breeder reactors. The fact that they use the thorium-u233 cycle instead of the U-Pu cycle has some advantages and disadvatatges, but thorium is really not needed for transitioning to a carbon neutral society for the next thousands of years. (That's how awesomely dense fission power is) * Regarding the criticisms you expose, I've been interested in nuclear energy since I was a child and I found that more than half of the wall in front of new nuclear energy technolgies is political/psicological (so human-nature based issues) not engineering, economical or technical issues. And that's sad. * I would prefer fewer plants with more SMR, than many disseminated plants with fewer SMR, and I think economics are on my side, and "every town with it's own reactor" is less secure and less safe than one large centralised installation with as many SMR as needed to match the output of a conventional light water plant. But both options are valid and have advantatges and disadvantages. * The point that SMR are more suceptible to flood... no, just no. * Nuclear is not one of the safest energy sources, is statistically THE safest in deaths/Gwh, which in my opinion is the metric that best defines the concept of "safety" in energy sources. * Regarding the waste problem, it's not the size, power or fuel of the reactor that counts, it's the spectrum. Thermal spectrum reactors tend to accumulate actinides, wereas fast spectrum tends to burn them. Transuranics are the things that make SNF have to be contained for so much time, if you remove them and burn them in a fast-spectrum reactor, the FP activity decay away in 300yrs max (and some of them are very valuable). Reprocessing has political issues, but there are fuel cycles that keep the fuel and transuranics together so you can burn them in a fast spectrum and only have to deal with the much smaller volume of fission products (the real waste). My personal opinion on the SMR concept is that they can be made easier, faster and cheaper (with less investment risk too) but having them disseminated will rise some proliferation issues, specially if using the Th-U cycle, and if every country or region have the capacity to reprocess. I prefer centralized plants producing Gigawatts, not smaller plants producing Megawatts... and that model negates a lot of the advantages of the SMR concepts. But it's just my opinion By the way, there are zealots of everything in life, but I doubt you will ever find a pro-nuclear guy that is going to eviscerate a well presented, well researched, and neutral (presenting both pros and cons) video like yours. I've always found the fanatics belonging to the other side when discussing both old and new nuclear. Lastly, this is the first video of your channel that youtube has suggested to me and i'm happy it did, i'll check out the rest of your channel now. Thanks a lot!

@BienestarMutuo

3 жыл бұрын

All the problems has been solved, the best micro nuclear power is this, and is already tested (no waste, ultra low cost, 100% passive): kzread.info/dash/bejne/hIR9mqlvc7LJaMo.html mutualwelfare.org/what-do-we-really-know-about-nuclear-energy/ the problem are government and big energy corporations.

@jackfanning7952

3 жыл бұрын

This is new - The last 75 years of nukes didn't work out too well for us, did they? Especially for the USSR and Japan. But, just you wait and see, Man, we got big plans just over the horizon. You just keep the public money coming and we will keep lying to you about our next great inovation in nuclear energy.

@knifeyonline

3 жыл бұрын

what will the pro-nuclear argument be when solar/wind is cheaper to produce electricity with?

@francesconicoletti2547

3 жыл бұрын

This is new you’re arguing for the breeder reactors I’ve been waiting for since the 70s. Many countries had breeder programs, none seem to have gone anywhere. Not because of greens, places like France & Britain & Japan that had active nuclear programs gave them a shot, but in the end nobody saw them as worth the effort. What would have to change before they become viable ?

@vipondiu

3 жыл бұрын

@@francesconicoletti2547 Hi, as you said, breeders were found not to be worth the effort. Why reprocess the same batch of fuel when new fresh fuel is around the same cost and using it in a once-trough fashion is straight-forward and simple? You'll end up with a hundred times the volume of SNF, yes, but that's basically nothing and still very manageble you avoid having to reprocess SNF and the safety and proliferation concerns about it....Much more convenient, even if "less elegant". And nuclear is an industry that by it's nature has a lot of inertia: It's always easier to keep kicking the can and keep doing the same. Radioactivity always goes down, and tech and processes will always improve. There's no rush to reprocess today since fuel is cheap and additional storage fo SNF is cheaper, so the incentive is always to kick the can one more time. What I think is needed for we to see a breeder fleet, would be an scenario parallel to the coming of age of the electric car. There's no shortage of uranium, like there is no shortage of cheap fossil fuels for decades, but like we are adopting EV because they are just better in every other aspect (performance, no noise, way simpler, etc), so we will adopt "breeders" as a side-benefit of whatever new reactor design reaches the market. Because the main issue breeders solve is a shortage of natural uranium, which is definetly not the case, so like gasoline burning cars we won't replace them for EVs because of the lack of fuel, but for other reasons. Anyway this is my view on it, hope It helps

In the late 1960's and early 70's a series of underground nuclear tests were conducted in Colorado and New Mexico as part of the Plowshares Program (successor to Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace Program). The purpose of these tests were to nuclear fracture the sandstone formations to allow recoverable levels of natural gas to accumulate. While moderately successful as the contamination levels of the gas were considered manageable if blended with non contaminated fuels from conventional sources, growing public opposition prevented commercial development. For a few decades, monitoring of these sites for migration of contaminated groundwater and air quality was maintained. But with most human endeavors after a generation or two are in the grave the current inhabitants of the planet feel less fealty to the economic costs of mitigating the misadventures of long dead cold warriors. So the pressures of human development have encroached on the exclusion zones. And the public is generally unaware these tests ever took place. In recent years oil and gas companies have sought permits to drill and develop these resources. Evidently the half life of human memory is several orders of magnitude less than the half life of U-235. I'm sure my point is clear to those in your audience who have rung the bell above, but to other recent arrivals let me put it this way. The benefits sold to us today by the magicians of Madison Avenue and the wizards of Wall Street, might seem like madness to future generations who are left with the costs long after the benefits are consumed. Thanks Dave.

@provalone

3 жыл бұрын

Try this on for size. For near half a century the US has been collecting funds from power companies for the purpose of constructing a spent fuel repository without producing a viable stop gap measure aside from 'you can just put it in the back till we finish the project'. As of today, the moron and chief and his buddies have put halt to all projects and construction in this direction. Perhaps if there was a viable and safe disposal site for spent fuel, your concern as to radioactive contamination would be assuaged? Mayhaps, instead of rejecting a power source entirely, working to make it viable without citing something that does not relate to nuclear power at all would be a good starting point. Is your assertion that the current structure is sufficient? They are not. Are you claiming that inaction is the best policy? It is not. Are you just scare mongering or do you have a point other than 'NUKES BAD, M'KAY'? We need to shift over to low emission power production now, not in five year, not next decade, now.

@shawnnoyes4620

3 жыл бұрын

What evidence do you offer that Cesium, Iodine, and/or Strontium are causing any issues?

@jacktheglide9411

3 жыл бұрын

@@shawnnoyes4620 eyes wide shut...!

@Nphen

3 жыл бұрын

@@provalone I will say the same thing as I say to anyone else about the problem of today's extant nuclear waste and that in the near future: the best, most efficient, and safest way to deal with it is to develop reactors that can burn it as fuel and drastically reduce the half-life and mass of current waste. France recycles their waste. They've had a lower (per capita) CO2 energy footprint than Germany for decades - and spent much less money to do it. Private industry is already all-in on battery tech. Nuclear research grants and programs can get us to the goal: limitless fusion power. The energy we need to clean up the oceans and skies.

@provalone

3 жыл бұрын

@@Nphen 1: There is no free lunch. Show me fusion tech that can work in the next five years, or stop wasting time and money talking about how nice Christmas dinner will be when we are starving in June. 2: Does any of that have a single thing to do with my point? You are talking around the point that we need to use the sources we have to buy time to find better solutions. Unless you can point out a way that the discussed reactors are incompatible with your recycling proposal or a way in which storing the waste will prevent later use, kindly let the applied science continue, and set to work making your proposal viable in the next two years.

Thank you for this reasoned approach to a touchy subject.

Your dry humor really sells it. Keep up the good work! Tangentially related, I once saw a bumper sticker that definitively answered the nuclear debate. I can’t remember what it said exactly, but it was brilliant.

Great video! I'm pro-nuclear, and I loved the critiques you offered from the other side. I hadn't heard those, but they make sense. I really appreciate you striving for balance and not being too afraid to go into controversial issues. It's the only way we can have intelligent discussions about complex problems! We need to talk about the advantages and disadvantages.

Bahaha that Intro! This man enjoys the dumpster fire that is the Comments Section.

@UltraGamma25

3 жыл бұрын

XD

@kieranh2005

3 жыл бұрын

👍

@PistonAvatarGuy

3 жыл бұрын

People like him are fueling it.

@caleb1031

3 жыл бұрын

Who doesn't? KZread comment section is a gold mine if you enjoy studying people.

@raphaelvibar7481

3 жыл бұрын

"A smart person would never touch on the subject of nuclear power again..." "...so this week we'll touch on the subject of nuclear power" Hahahahaha

New Subscriber. Pro Nuclear all the way (small, thorium, fusion, etc). -> Just so you know there is another one in your subscribers!

@markuslang1869

2 жыл бұрын

What is your opinion about the threat of terrorist attacks on a nuclear power plant? If you sabotage the power converter at the grid connection and the backup power this would pose a serious problem.

@nowandrew4442

2 жыл бұрын

@@markuslang1869 Why would they bother when it's likely far easier just to steal or borrow a full-blown weapon from Pakistan more directly? For that matter in your scenario why does it matter what kind of power station it is? Attacking the power *supply* is actually exactly an argument **for** more distributed stations that can each compensate for several other stations.. only nuclear can ramp up in that manner.

Great look into this topic! Thank you for the fair treatment of the subject. My bias on the table- I have always thought there was room for well regulated nuclear as part of our energy solution. That said, I appreciate that you took the time to illustrate the pros and cons with this size system.

Wow, a rational discussion of nuclear energy. This was great.

@petersimmons3654

3 жыл бұрын

What's rational about nuclear? It adds 100% of the energy it releases into the environment. It's part of the problem, anyone who thinks otherwise is irrational.

@davidjessop2279

3 жыл бұрын

Rerally. Wow you're easily satisfied. There's nothing at all rational about nuclear energy, it's heating the planet, it's IN ADDITION TO THE SUN. Is there anything yopu understand?

@angelosemeraro3170

3 жыл бұрын

​@@petersimmons3654 I don't understand what you guys are saying, what do "adds 100%" and "it's heating the planet" means? It's a true question, I want to understand

@justgivemethetruth

2 жыл бұрын

@@angelosemeraro3170 Somehow the nuts with a know it all tone of voice or writing are taken seriously when it comes to nuclear power.

@russellm7530

Жыл бұрын

Wow that makes no sense.

Correction: the Russian floating nuclear power plant left the shipyard at the end of last year. It is already running 100% now.

@kalzonenu

3 жыл бұрын

Thaught of that aswell and as i recall its not a modular.

@tonychen76

3 жыл бұрын

@@kalzonenu Considering that it's actually 2 x 35 MWe, it's modular. You are confusing the platform (the barge) with the reactors (what's inside). The barge is built around the reactors and thus you can't add a third one into the barge. But you can built a bigger barge for three reactors, or four, or a smaller barge for just one. Or alternatively you can build on land. It's the reactors that are modular, not the barge.

@mbak7801

3 жыл бұрын

@@tonychen76 70MW so roughly 7-10 of the new offshore wind turbines. It will be 7 by the time they are installed. Is a floating nuclear reactor anywhere near as cost effective than 7 turbines? Seems bonkers.

@tonychen76

3 жыл бұрын

@@mbak7801 I think you made the common mistake of assuming that the wind blows all the time at maximum output. Onshore wind average to I think 15% capacity factor, and they are intermittent. With good siting you can get up to 25% capacity factor. However I don't believe Pevek has consistent wind, so I'll use 16.66% capacity factor. So rather than 7 wind farm of 10 MW peak capacity, you actually need 42 of them. You will also need to build a battery system large enough to accept the extra output and store them. At least a 350 MWh battery system, likely more. I'd be more comfortable with 1680 MWh battery system that can cover a whole day without wind/very weak wind. How much will 420 MW wind farm + 1680 MWh battery system cost? How do you transport them to Pevek? It takes one barge to transport the Akademik to Pevek. How many barges will it take to transport the 420 MW of wind turbines and 1680 MWh batteries? A hundred? Two hundred? A thousand? Look, there are places where it makes sense to use wind power. The are regions in the North Sea where one can get 40% wind capacity factor. But you can't just plant a wind turbine at a random place and expect it to give a 100% constant output. They don't work that way.

@reddingtom

3 жыл бұрын

people have lost the plot on this floating nuc plant, bc its russian. they are leading the way into a new paradyme of nuc power plant construction, by moving away from large, ENTIRELY CUSTOM power plants. they will keep building these plants in the same facilities with the same people, they could see dramatic reductions in cost and time to build as they refine their construction techniques and their designs for easier constructibility. People tend to see this floating nuc plant as a strange beast and it causes them consternation, but same people wont bat an eye at one of our nuclear powered aircraft carrier's or nuc submarines. floating nuc plants have been with us for generations, so long that we dont even see them anymore.

Parabéns, foi a análise mais completa mostrando todos os pontos positivos e negativos dos reatores modulares, deve ter exigido muito esforço para pesquisar tudo isso. Merece um like.

FIRST video i see and i like!!! awesome tecnology good information!

Very well presented. As always.

I worked on a nuclear weapon system for over two decades. Security involving those weapons was incredible and incredibly expensive! I see these small nuclear reactors as juicy targets to every terrorist out there, and particularly vulnerable during transport, especially if fueled. I realize that the fuel is not 'weapons grade' material, but it would make a splendid 'dirty' bomb. The security cost of many small, dispersed, units might equal, or exceed, the security cost of one larger centralized unit. In a perfect world, these make sense and may work well. But, in the real world, they scare the Hell out of me!

@charlesstewart9246

3 жыл бұрын

I have transported used fuel in a 56 tonne flask that is double bolted ontop(cos bad people don't know how to undo bolts) the convoy regularly has two full flasks on two flat bed lorries that travel from the station to the rail head for transport to sellafield at the massively fast speed of 12mph max. Cos bad people don't know how to drive slowly. Oh yeah and maybe two hp monitors travelling in a land rover incase 'something happens ' . Armed with a BP 4 probe ( goes click click) and a ,RO 10 radiation detecting device Done it for years,that's nerve racking I can tell you. Soooooo safe . And the radio didnt work cos of tea break or lunch was on at station. Bummer eh. Plus you're not allowed to leave the area of the flask in an incident. Loved that job. Best years of my life.

@Shocker-lh6kn

3 жыл бұрын

I work in nuclear power so I have every motive to disagree but I just can’t. The smaller reactors and fuel transport are real challenges. I’d rather see us move to thorium based reactors. It reduces the amount of radioactive fuel used on-site and needed for transport.

@charlesstewart9246

3 жыл бұрын

@@Shocker-lh6kn my good fellow,thank goodness there are some others that agree,just like most,I wanted it to work,so much. On to the next thing I suppose. Take care in work and don't let the b######s grind you down. Especially the turbine hall staff 👀🤣👍👍👍👍😏or controlroom engineers,now there's a nice bunch of chaps.

@omniking3479

3 жыл бұрын

Pretty much...

@justgivemethetruth

2 жыл бұрын

I share your concern about terrorism, but what does it mean to say you "worked on" nuclear weapons systems and how would that relate to evaluating the threat of a dirty bomb? I'd grant you that a dirty bomb possibility is probably the greatest threat, but then quantify it and how hard it would be to make one. I think coming at it from the other side ... which is the vulnerability of things like public power generation, water supplies, dense cities and finding ways to defend them is a better solution. The assault and stealing of nuclear material and then the making of a dirty bomb would seem to require an organization like James Bond's SPECTRE, and the tracking and recovering of nuclear material before it can be built into a bomb seems remote. How would they ever get into the reactor to get at the nuclear material? But I would definitely be for whatever technology is the least likely to be a target for terrorism like that.

Molten salt thorium reactors that's the way to go thank you for your excellent content

@donraptor6156

3 жыл бұрын

They have spent Billions on Thorium and found it an engineering failure!

@donraptor6156

3 жыл бұрын

You only have to be intelligent enough to Google Thorium Reactor practicality. But obviously you lack the ability!

@protorhinocerator142

3 жыл бұрын

@@donraptor6156 Why the hate? Just produce facts.

@skirkwood

3 жыл бұрын

@@donraptor6156 I must get different results from you.

@nuanil

3 жыл бұрын

@@donraptor6156 They've spent less on Thorium than they've spent on either solar, wind, or fusion. And every search for thorium I've done produces results that say it's eminently possible. The only reason it was abandoned was Nixon earmarked his home state, and plutonium breeding.

In my opinion, the benefits greatly outweighs the dangers. With Fusion reactors still far off, this technology is one of the best ways to quickly shift from the need of fossil fuels. This would not necessarily need to be the permanent solution, as I am sure Fusion reactors would replace it once that technology is perfected enough to be useful in 30 or 50 years.

@justgivemethetruth

2 жыл бұрын

Don't count on fusion ... ever. The choice people should be thinking about is do we allow the whole planet and all our life support systems to burn up and kill everything, which is a high probability, or do we implement nuclear and take a chance that we might have some relatively localized accidents or terrorist incidents on the order of one or two over 50 years? Nuclear is the only option, so whatever is chosen has to be something the public can feel as comfortably as possible with. To me that means have the government oversea the development of the simplest, safest technology and run it until the bugs are worked out of it . Even one small mistake will doom the industry in the US and throw away any possibility that we ( USA ) might have an opportunity to export an acceptable technology across the globe - a big possible money-maker.

@Ben-li9zb

2 жыл бұрын

I have an optimistic 70 year prediction for the first net positive fusion reactors. It ain't coming in 30 years according to many physicists and other indicators

@scratchy996

2 жыл бұрын

"Fusion reactors still far off "- Why is everyone saying that ? We all know Fusion reactors are only 20 years way, since like forever.

@Ben-li9zb

2 жыл бұрын

@@scratchy996 personally I think we're at 70 years away for an actual power plant, the perpetual 20 seems almost over

@abramrexjoaquin7513

Жыл бұрын

Also it's stupid to act as if these modular Reactors power plants will be next to each other centralising power instead of spreading the load towards per province, or towns. Instead of next to each other it's far apart Enough that those power plants are handled and sustained by the towns that are using it.

Dave I love the JHAT series and follow it religiously. I noticed you snuck in a little music near the end this week. That's an excellent addition, makes it easier to stay focused.

@JustHaveaThink

3 жыл бұрын

Thanks Bob. Yes, I thought I'd give it a try. Glad you liked it :-)

@donotlike4anonymus594

3 жыл бұрын

@@JustHaveaThink ILAND PROVINCE OF TAIWAN!?... oh now I'm the angry one... And it has nothing to do with nuclear power... China's a horrible dictatorship while Taiwan in an amazing independent democratic nation .... (I'm from neither just to be clear) -disusting... i like your channel but this is enoguht for me to unsubscribe

@donotlike4anonymus594

3 жыл бұрын

@@JustHaveaThink seriously this is disgusting... we can argue all day and night over energy solutions we your viwers can agree to disagree and... most of us are rational people... but this bullshit will not be tolorated.. taiwan is no province taiwan is the legitmate china the legitamte nation... i'm truely disgusted by u using the ccp's narrative...

@donotlike4anonymus594

3 жыл бұрын

@@JustHaveaThink also i'm pretty sure i was subscribed before but now i'm not idk youtube's been causing some issues and bugs they keep unsubscribing me from china uncensored for example... wich i'd strongly suggest u watch and maybe oh idk read a bit about the dictatorship!

@michaelwright7326

3 жыл бұрын

I was impressed by your summary. Keep it up. Somehow, we need to make the numbers add up to zero or less.

Seaborg in Denmark and Rolls Royce in the UK have some interesting things on their agenda.

Before becoming the President & CEO of the Canadian Nuclear Association, I was a renewables project developer and, afterwards, the President of the Canadian Solar Industries Associaiton. I went through the same type of discovery process you have provided here when I made the switch and feel we need more active discussion like this of the pros and cons of nuclear. One element that you did not cover is the clean and consistent HEAT that SMRs produce (I.e. in addition to clean electricity). This is key as it enables the creation of high-temperature steam which can be used to produce hydrogen or to help decarbonize industrial processes like the production of steel and cement.

@ewaa4152

3 жыл бұрын

John, SMRs use solid fuel and boil water. That design can never achieve the temperatures need for process heat. Molten salt is what is needed. SMRs are 1950s tech in a smaller package. NOT the future.

@skunkjobb

Жыл бұрын

Well, the size of the reactor is not relevant in that aspect. There have been large reactors with usable heat output too but then the electrical efficiency drops significantly due to the laws of thermodynamics.

Love you fave for comin round!!

Solving the *current* waste problem requires investment in future nuclear technology. If government would bother to fund & prioritize nuclear science & nuclear physics in the university system - we could not only get working SMR's, but then move on to Thorium breeder reactors to break down the nuclear waste of past generations. More nuclear physics grad students means fusion becomes reality that much faster - ending the need for fission. This all helps space exploration, too. Critics give too much credibility to negatives without exploring the possible broader good outcomes of nuclear investment.

@paulbradford6475

3 жыл бұрын

Agreed. I'd go further and say that grants (not loans) should be prioritized by government and private lenders for the STEM curricula only.

@jackfanning7952

3 жыл бұрын

I will make a deal with you: you get rid of all the waste and daily radioactive emissions into the environment, safely decommission all of the leaking, rust bucket reactors that are already way past their recommended life cycles, convince me that investment in new nuclear technology is totally safe, will be paid for by private investors without any taxpayer subsidies, and all risks and costs from cradle to the grave can be handled by the producers without any subsidies and then I will listen to your lies - I mean proposals.

SMR’s have an inevitable place in shipping. There are 45,000 bulk carriers in the global fleet all requiring 50 to 100 megawatts of propulsive energy (including their 70% to 50% efficiency loss) a power level SMR’s are ideally matched for. The Toshiba SMR with its 20 year fuel load would be a good starting point to evaluate this. The fact is there is no renewable energy solution for propelling 100,000 to ships. I have less concern about setting 45,000 small reactors free on 4/5th of the Earth’s surface inhabited by few people than I do about allowing far more to be utilised on the 1/5th that we all inhabit.

@jameslawson5237

3 жыл бұрын

probably safer than filling ships with hydrogen. I guess that or biofuel would be the only alternatives to smr. Stupid but someone will probably try!

@zapfanzapfan

3 жыл бұрын

If an aircraft carrier can run for 20 years between refueling then so can container ships. Probably needs a lot of guards to scare away saboteurs and Green Peace though...

@BienestarMutuo

3 жыл бұрын

the best micro nuclear power is this, and is already tested (no waste, ultra low cost, 100% passive): kzread.info/dash/bejne/hIR9mqlvc7LJaMo.html mutualwelfare.org/what-do-we-really-know-about-nuclear-energy/

@Carlos-im3hn

9 күн бұрын

the new Xe-100 reactors each operate continuously for 60 years (without any shutdown for refueling), which are 95% available. If there are four reactors per plant then the total availability and with load following is much higher than 95% for 60 years for the X-energy plant. April 2024 the UK has committed to building 40 of these reactors going forward.

We're planning on building a prototype gen-4 SMR facility here in Sweden believe it or not!

@yamchas

3 жыл бұрын

Gen 4, way to go!

@Azerkeux

2 жыл бұрын

Even the current 3rd gen reactors are better than burning coal, I swear the anti nuclear movement is bought and paid for by oil barons

@madsam0320

2 жыл бұрын

China is already building the first commercial SMR.

@bezahltersystemtroll5055

2 жыл бұрын

@@madsam0320 source? 🤔

@madsam0320

2 жыл бұрын

@@bezahltersystemtroll5055 KZread does not seems to permit links. I made several attempts to post links from World Nuclear News. ‘Construction officially started today of the ACP100 small modular reactor demonstration project at the Changjiang nuclear power plant on China's island province of Hainan.’

I would ask the question “why does it have to be only one or the other?” Use small modular reactors where they are most practical, but don’t exclude MSR designs for more industrial areas...

@protorhinocerator142

3 жыл бұрын

If you design the MSR so it can be built in factories and inspected for safety at every phase of production, the cost will drop significantly and the safety will increase. Then you design the power plants so they can be expanded easily. Maybe start with 2 MSR's and build out to 6 over time. It would also be good to have 6 slots when you only need 5. The first reactor is reaching end of life, so you activate reactor 6 and bring 1 offline. No change in power output. What's the difference between having one large reactor and 10 smaller ones at 1/10th the size each? The output would be the same, but modular construction would allow much more flexibility. Make sure to scale them up over 2,000 MW.

@Dana5775

3 жыл бұрын

It is aggravating that promoters of a concept have to get your attention by making absolute statements regarding their choice of energy systems. Or any topic for that matter.

Dave, good synopsis of Small Modular Nuclear Reactor power units! You have excellent educational material, I'm glad to see that it's getting distributed to educators.👩‍🔬👩‍🏫 Whichever way we go, the missing other side of the equation is consumption. Efficiency gains can get us fast improvements towards our goals, plus warmer homes in winter, newer and better insulation builds a greener economy. Did you do a piece on energy efficiency? And I will check out the center for behavior and climate, thanks!

@JustHaveaThink

3 жыл бұрын

Thanks Chuck. I have touched on energy efficiency in 2 or 3 videos but never made a full episode looking at it. It's a good shout.

@chuckkottke

3 жыл бұрын

@@JustHaveaThink Thanks Dave! The subject was brought to my attention years back by Amory Lovins and one local energy fair linchpin Mick Sagrillo, who kept steering my mind towards the subject, though it's not as exciting as the production end, it might be the dark energy of our renewable energy universe, a hidden resource waiting to be tapped.

I would like to see the evaluations for insurance coverage for public liability. Currently, standard reactors are un-insurable, and requires special governmental dispensations. If it looks good to Geico, State Farm, or Progressive, it will look good to me.

@justgivemethetruth

2 жыл бұрын

The insurance argument is a bad one. What do insurers use for evaluating the risk of nuclear? What do they even know about evaluating the risk of a coal plant - since most of the costs are external in the form of air pollution and global warming? If there was an Insurance company that would underwrite the risk just for it to look good to you - I'd bet you'd find some reason to not accept it.

Thank you, a very informative video with I feel a balanced view.

Really enjoyed your video. Very well balanced view. The only thing that maybe was not delved into was the latest crop of thorium SMRs which do offer the promise of safer energy and work in terms of non proliferation too.

Unfortunately, Andy still ignores the Moltex stable salt reactor, which is so much cheaper because it removes the main hazard rather than containing it. It is molten salt fuelled, as well as molten salt cooled. Its fuel is not thorium but is derived from nuclear waste. Things are moving fast for Moltex in Canada, and so I doubt Andy will still be ignoring their stable salt reactor this time next year.

@bobwallace9753

3 жыл бұрын

It's not cheap enough.

@shawnnoyes4620

3 жыл бұрын

@@bobwallace9753 Provide a basis for your comment - you cannot ;)

@bobwallace9753

3 жыл бұрын

@@shawnnoyes4620 How about you provide proof that the Moltex reactor will produce electricity that can be sold for less than $0.04/kWh (US dollars)? If you can't do that then you have the basis for my claim. If you look at Hinkley Point and Vogtle 3&4 both will need to sell their electricity at $0.15/kWh or more. You're going to have to show how a different reactor design could cut the cost of electricity by about 75%.

@Mivoat

3 жыл бұрын

@@bobwallace9753 Have a look on KZread at the 'Stable Salt Reactor Technology Introduction' (6 mins) kzread.info/dash/bejne/hGh7taaLocTOXZM.html and Ian Scott's 'Moltex Energy - update on Molten Salt Reactor technology' (start at 3:08 mins to skip preamble) kzread.info/dash/bejne/hqqMxdGMlLu_nM4.html&t=188

@andrewfrancis3591

3 жыл бұрын

@@bobwallace9753 Well done Bob got it in one. Has to compete with coal, or how are you going to get Africa and Asia on board.

Your videos a brilliant! Thank you!!!

Dude, your videos are excellent.

Thank you for the great think😉👍

He igonres Thorium SMRs despite the fact that they clean up many of the "traditional" reactor concerns applied to SMRs.

@randompatillo4336

3 жыл бұрын

He briefly mentioned them a couple of times, and specifically said that this was not going to be an in depth discussion of that or any other specific design. I believe he also said he has an in depth look at the topic in another vid.

@benphillips66

3 жыл бұрын

He has in a prior video.

I would recommend checking out the moves being made in Canada with Global First Power, Ontario Power Generation, and Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation.

@gtranquilla

3 жыл бұрын

And Point Lepreau in New Brunswick where i once did electrical engineering work on their gen 3 CANDU reactor....their spent fuel is stored on site in their cooling pool and will be re-used as feedstock for a new SMR.

@Carlos-im3hn

9 күн бұрын

The X-energy Xe-100 reactor GenIV reactor is also getting high marks and goind forward in UK (40 reactors) and some pilot reactors in Dow UCC Texas.

Great video, as always.

Thanks for this video, I really appreciate well researched information on polarizing topics where it's difficult to find information that isn't highly charged. Any time I Google SMR or Thorium, I'm presented with a million resources telling me how great they are and it's so hard to find balanced information

@Just Have a Think Dave, I have to say I am impressed. As you stated at the beginning and the end you tried to be balanced and I believe you mostly succeeded. Your waste numbers are problematic (see separate post) but in general you kept facts and opinion separate and that is awesome. I, and most of my fellow travelers, can deal with people with diverging opinions on nuclear power - it is when they use alternate-reality facts that the argument becomes bitter - so I appreciate that you used actual-reality facts in your video. (again, the waste number appears to be incorrect) However, I do wish you had not relied so much on the Union of Concerned Scientists. The UCS statement (I note you are referencing UCS, not stating it yourself) at 8:00 'because SMRs will have smaller cheaper and less robust containment systems, they carry a higher risk of hydrogen explosions' is disingenuous on UCS' part. Because it the reactor is smaller, it is cheaper - that does not imply the reactor has a less robust containment system - nor does it imply the regulator will accept a less robust containment. In addition, as a general engineering principle, it is easier to make something stronger the smaller it is (the steel to contain the same pressure of a cubic centimetre volume is proportionately less, to the cube root, than a cubic meter volume). UCS is attempting to disguise opinion as fact. The UCS graphs at 8:37 - the variable 'P' in the graphic for site1 and site2 is not the same, however this graphic implies that the site1 and site2 total site risk is the same. different Ps leads to different site risks. Lastly, at 9:05 the UCS tries to disparage the virtue of modularity 'if units are combined to make a bigger power plant this is bad; opponents might be forgiven if this is a loophole to slip SMRs into the mix' (not quite a quote). However, as you have already pointed out at 6:09, "the fact that SMRs are modular and small, means multiple units can be installed on the same site" and "SMRs can be potentially located on brown-field sites" - which are good things. Whether talking about SMRs or traditional plants, what exactly is the benefit/detriment of a 'loophole' that allows multiple reactors to be sited at one power plant? Multi-siting raises operational efficiency and construction learning, and assuming we don't build more than the local demand-load needs - why is this a 'loophole'? As a matter of opinion, I disagree with your point at 9:56 that 'very-small-modular-reactors (VSMRs) designed especially for remote communities' has much to do with 'by 2050 70% of population will live in densely populated cities may make the need for SMR's redundant in the longer term' (not quite quotes). Yes, it would be stupid to build a VSMR for a suburb of London, where the expansion of London would make an SMR or multi-site SMR more appropriate, or a mid-sized city like York which already needs a mid-sized SMR. No, it is not believable that North Uist (Hebrides, pop. 1750), South Uist (Hebrides, pop 1250), Hugh Town (Scilly, pop. 1100) Kangerlussuaq (Greenland, pop. 500) are ever going to attain the status of a major metro areas.

@Nphen

3 жыл бұрын

Underrated comment. Ty for your good info and for covering those UCS talking points.

@allancook1890

3 жыл бұрын

Great comment. Thanks

Does this video come under the category A-SMR? In all seriousness though, nuclear power in my eyes still has use in the future, both fission and fusion.

@protorhinocerator142

3 жыл бұрын

I can see fusion much more important in space. Especially when we start mining all that He3 on the moon. It's supposed to be the wonder fuel for fusion reaction. Maybe some solar in space. No wind of course. And solar could be useful in very small villages in Africa where there's no power grid. For medium sized villages, a modular reactor would make more sense, especially since that village is likely to grow with all that cheap electricity.

@jakehildebrand1824

3 жыл бұрын

Has a lot more use than solar or wind ever will.

@grahambennett8151

3 жыл бұрын

The trouble is that in practical terms, it is just too far in the future and already costs too much before we have even estimated the *full* cost and there will always be doubts around who is going to be trusted with it - given its poor record so far. The only kind of SMR foreseeable is old tech fission complete with steam power and spent fuel pool amassing nuclear waste 300m from our houses. Just how primitive (and dangerous) is an SMR, with all those moving parts, when we already have the tech to produce power with neither a steam boiler nor a mechanical generator, i.e. with solar panels, or without a boiler - as with wind, tidal and hydro? In some respects, it is not *future* at all. It is arguably just futuristic bomb tech coupled to outdated steam, when we already have more modern alternatives, and renewables research has many more cheaper and safer technologies in the pipleline?

@jakehildebrand1824

3 жыл бұрын

@@grahambennett8151 you have clearly done absolutely no research whatsoever.

@grahambennett8151

3 жыл бұрын

@@jakehildebrand1824 Evidence?

Nice video. You are very articulate as well.

What fantastic videos! You apologise for not being a scientist (yes, I watched the thorium video and read the comments..!), but what you do is arguably far more important: you think about the issues, considering the scientific evidence, and encourage others to think too. This is what the world needs more than ever; everyone to engage with the issues and earnestly consider the evidence. Less opinion, more fact. Be encouraged - you're doing a fantastic job!

It's hard to get away from the feeling that we're going to have to change lifestyles, rather that hope that some sort of technology will allow us to continue with business as usual, bulldozing the planet as we go.

@JustHaveaThink

3 жыл бұрын

Well, we probably need to do both, at grand scale, and at great speed.

@Nphen

3 жыл бұрын

@@JustHaveaThink Ecosia is on an exponential growth track for (proper non-plantation) tree planting with local partners all over the world. The "big question" then becomes the allocation of capital & resources in the first world. A Federal jobs program could direct millions of people. We are going to have to leave behind office work and get out into nature doing things like removing dry fuel wood from forests and geo-engineering those spaces to retain more of yearly rainfall. Look up Al Baydha. More people need to farm - in order to switch from factory-farmed meat into carbon-sequestering permaculture livestock.

@incognitotorpedo42

3 жыл бұрын

Depends what you mean by "change lifestyles". We need to stop dumping CO2 into the atmosphere, but that doesn't mean we have to stop driving cars. It just means we build and power them differently. We need to get the greenhouse gases out of agriculture, but that doesn't mean we have to become calorie-restricted vegans. We just need to do agriculture differently. In my experience, it's a lot easier to offer people better technology than it is getting them to give up everything they like.

@factnotfiction5915

3 жыл бұрын

Nuclear power does permit us to continue with (energy consumption) business as usual, without bulldozing the planet (because the fuel is so dense, you need to bulldoze much less).

@garry8390

3 жыл бұрын

@@incognitotorpedo42 Ev's are in no way sustainable in any significant numbers. We do need to radically change our lifestyles. Corporate and large green organisations will say otherwise so as not to scare the public into opposing it. If you do any research instead of listening to the crap that is spoonfed to the public it becomes very obvious how dramatically far off course we are.

Just Have A Think, one of the worst features of large reactors is the huge amount of decay heat on shutdown has to be dissipated. SMR's avoid that basic safety issue by being small. Like the submarine reactors that large scale civilian power reactors were scaled up from.

@davidjessop2279

3 жыл бұрын

And that heast is heating the planet and adding to climate chaos you wanker.

@justgivemethetruth

2 жыл бұрын

What exactly is the problem? At least assuming that any reactor is not continuing to make more heat? Wouldn't it all be within design specs? That's why the LWRs are safer, if they get too hot they shut down the reaction, no?

@MookieZerang

2 жыл бұрын

@@justgivemethetruth not sure what your question is. The answer to you heat question (?) is in my post. Is english your 2nd language?

@MookieZerang

2 жыл бұрын

@@davidjessop2279 not sure who's wanking. Also, you say wanker like it's an insult.

@justgivemethetruth

2 жыл бұрын

@@MookieZerang What is the problem with heating the planet ... is thinking or bring truthful too difficult for you? Whatever we do and however do it - it will heat the planet ... so, unless you are just full of it, explain what is the problem with heating the planet? What has heated the planet is using fossil fuels that create the heat blanketing the Earth with CO2 so that heat which would other wise radiate out into space is held within our atmosphere. If you cannot come up with an answer it will merely confirm you were the troll I thought your silly comment proved you to be to begin with.

Thank you for a great video.

Well done sir!

If I lived on a cold dreary moon like Titan , I sure would want to have a nice little nuclear reactor in the basement keeping the house warm and powering my popcorn popper . Nuclear the warm friendly power source , that won't let you down like solar , beyond the asteroid belt..

@sodalitia

3 жыл бұрын

On titan you got entire crust and oceans of ethanol and mathane to burn. To bad there isn't much free oxygen.

@schrodingerscat6437

3 жыл бұрын

@@sodalitia Oxygen is looked up in the rocks of planets/moon so it is there

@lazergurka-smerlin6561

3 жыл бұрын

@@sodalitia So pretty much oxygen becomes the new fuel. Perhaps you could preform electrolysis on water for a net energy gain in a atmosphere of methane, but I don't know

@kennethferland5579

3 жыл бұрын

Yea beyond the asteroid belt is the right place for nuclear power.

@jackfanning7952

3 жыл бұрын

If you lived on a cold dreary moon like Titan, you'd be dead. Just like we will be if we don't run as fast as we can from nukes.

I heard a whisper about ASMR too

@enigmasshadow9435

3 жыл бұрын

SMR

@DomDoesCoasters

3 жыл бұрын

Advanced Small Modular Reactor 😎

@petersilva037

3 жыл бұрын

The youtube suggestions on the right feature: Relaxing Sleep Music 24/7, healing music, insomnia...

@Gonenow2015

3 жыл бұрын

The low buzz of radiation being emitted is quite calming I believe

@notlessgrossman163

3 жыл бұрын

Pollution to the next level,

I am very appreciative of your balanced approach. There were some very good argument against SMR's which I've never heard of or never considered myself. While I don't dispute there validity, i think SMR's, VSMR's, and traditional nuclear plants will be crucial to helping us balance our base load while we switch off coal, oil, and gas plants. Batteries storage is a part of the solution but with current technologies can no way replace a base load demands. Thanks for the video!

Do yoy know why this channel has made me a believer in instead of a denier of climate change? I'm a very religious, moral conservative. First, it presents solutions more than problems, so it doesn't seem hopeless, so it is in lime with Divine Justice, that problems can be solved and aren't just there to hurt us for no reason. Second, this man is not so sinful as American climate media, and he doesn't talk about dumb TV comedied, but about things which actually open our minds rather than just criticising Christmas presents (just buy sustainable presents or gift money if it's so bad). This man has a very polite and refined attitude and professional presentation of we'll-researched ideas.

I'm not sure it makes sense to compare a stable form of energy with an intermittent form of energy without mentioning what the back-up is. They're simply two different things.

I think one of the best reactors we can go with is the Moltex Stable Salt Reactor. It is both very simple and yet adaptable to any fuel cycle. Pair that will pyro-processing all the spent fuel and thorium, and we don't have to do any uranium mining or major waste disposal at all.

@shawnnoyes4620

3 жыл бұрын

You would want Fluoride volatility processing and then pyro-processing. Look up the czechoslovakia fluoride volatility processing pyro processing

@theatheistpaladin

3 жыл бұрын

@@shawnnoyes4620 I am already aware of Fluoride volatility processing, but I don't see how a Czech form would be any different. A Stable Salt reactor doesn't use fluoride salts, and I don't see any benefit to using fluoride in this process. In proprocessing with a Stable Salt reactor, we can skip several steps since the fuel will be in salt form. What advantages do you think you would gain by using fluoride?

@sampsalyytikainen6244

3 жыл бұрын

At least on paper, the Moltex SSR seems very good indeed. Combining old school technology, molten salts and existing materials with passive safety features, not mentioning the waste burning and the economics offered by modular manufacturing. Aren't they actually starting to build one reactor in New Brunswick Canada? Least they have some kind of agreement with NB Power and funding going on. I really hope that they proceed and everything goes well.

@ronusa1976

3 жыл бұрын

Use the knowledge we have with Nuclear is better. We can recycles the waste. Its a valuable resource. Over 300 years worth that need not be mined. Use the KISS method like the USN does in Nuclear power.

@theatheistpaladin

3 жыл бұрын

@@ronusa1976 It is waste because we are actually wasting it. Solid fuel is just so inefficient to use.

The SMR battery facility concept proposed to deal with two issues.unit 2 is dedicated to lead/lag as well as standby and/or peak power and/or to take over when unit one eventually needs to be shutdown under the maintenance turnaround procedures. Lead/Lag is a common engineering process concept where each unit tags the lead role for specific time periods some that neither is to be worn out first etc.

Good intro. Thank you. I would want to know a lot more about the inherently safe operation; dropping the graphite rods back in place, as well as the emergency cooling. I don't see any detail on the web. These units are quoted at 23m tall so that's a big pond.

Great video. Only wish you would have mentioned breeder reactors burning "waste" and all but eliminating the need for HLW permanent storage.

@stupidburp

3 жыл бұрын

I would like to see a number of new reactor designs built in the US, perhaps several in Nevada. Some of these could be built with the specific purpose of consuming long term waste products. They could utilize the long term storage site as both as source of fuel and a depository of its own lower volume and shorter term waste products.

@thebigmugamba7986

3 жыл бұрын

@Paul Thomas The tech has been around for a couple of decades now and other countries have made prototypes, as well as small lab scale concepts here in the US. We were building a full-scale one (IFR) in the 80's but it was defunded by congress in the early 90's after Clinton won because of their bad policy on non-proliferation. Basically the left (at the time), and not an insignificant portion of the right, thought nuclear = bad and the world would be better off without anything nuclear-powered.

@thebigmugamba7986

3 жыл бұрын

@Paul Thomas Yep that's the one. Both sides have had their fair share of anti-nuclear policies. The left has just been more opposed as a whole over the last half century than the right and led the IFR shutdown effort. The right hasn't been all that favorable towards nuclear power either, but favorable towards nuclear defense projects which has inadvertently helped the development of commercial power tech over time. It seems like the leadership in both parties are coming around though and we could have bipartisan support for it moving forward. The current admin has invested heavily in nuclear tech development and it seems as though democrats are planning to continue that. It will really depend on who Biden appoints as DOE head.

I'm watching this while peering out my window at the cooling towers of Three Mile Island in the middle of the yonder river hungrily gobbling all of the nuke power I can before they decommission it.

don't worry about the negative responses, stick with it because its a sign that you are making people think and challenge current thinking...and thanks for the "our world in data". nice informative site..

Thanks for having the courage and patience to try to explain nuclear power.

Thank you for discussing this topic. Please see Gordon McDowell's excellent (yet boring) videos on SMR and Thorium.

Countries like Canada and regions like Siberia have a LOT of small remote communities, usually first nations and other poor communities (and mining facilities) that need power, and currently have to import diesel for generation at very high rates. (v)SMRs are a very good fit for these. Anyone focused on the downsides will have to say what zero-carbon solution they would use instead - and solar is not an option in the far north (never mind the issues of batteries in cold climates). Even for countries well below the polar circles, solar and wind can only get you so far, and have a huge impact on the countryside (and require a lot more mining), because you are basically having to put machines over a very large part of your countryside. It is hard to see how we can reach net zero Carbon electrical production without at least a 10% nuclear component of the power mix, except in a very few regions with large Hydroelectric power production. (This is even before we figure out how to mitigate the impact of non-electricity uses of fossil fuels). So unfortunately, the Greens are currently part of the problem, because of their resistance to effective methods for decarbonizing.

@gtranquilla

3 жыл бұрын

Hard to get high level applied scientists to give up the comforts of big city life to work in poor comm7nities far from their family and friends.

@justgivemethetruth

2 жыл бұрын

Another thing is that I've never heard anyone mention or acknowledge the possibility of some massive event like a forest fire or volcano eruption, or war, that would throw huge amounts of ash into the air and obscure or cut down on solar. What are people supposed to do if they are dependent on solar and there is no or a reduced amount of sunlight for some amount of time?

@davidbarry6900

2 жыл бұрын

@@justgivemethetruth If we're in a nuclear winter scenario (without any power), I think we're going to have so many other problems that the lack of solar power will just be one of many. However, a more likely scenario (and one that SHOULD be catered for) is a solar flare Carrington-type event. This is a real and likely possible event, at least once per century. If all that circuitry on our solar panels goes, it would be nice to have alternative power sources... if the transmission grid remains intact, of course.

@justgivemethetruth

2 жыл бұрын

@@davidbarry6900 Obviously I was not talking about a nuclear winter scenario, but there are a lot of other things that could happen that would render solar panels useless or insufficient. Also, on top of human structures they are great, but everything dies in nature under solar power and real estate is not a renewable resource.

Thank you for the submarine visuals and numbers. 1:37 Takes the 'unknown' 'new' aspects out of the imagination with a familiar example. It's already being done safely for over 50 years.

Oh I love this, you know why you keep coming back to it. Because as much as everyone wants to hate Nucular, it is the cleanest most doable option we have right now. If we just accept that fact we can get on to the business of making it cheaper and safer then reactors designed during the cold war to manage weapon fuel stocks an not for efficiency.

@derekstannett8477

3 жыл бұрын

A great observation.

1) SMR's don't need crazy levels of safety. It is not like they contain something that means doomsday, in fact they are a childs playground compared to what i.e. the chemical industry runs often next to resedential areas. But if irrational fears demand higher safety it is easy and cheap to put them in a bunker like structure. To often the word "concerned" has become a code for "I hate it and I will find any rational for it". 2) If nuclear in some form is truly nailed there is little market for wind and hardly one for solar (unless it goes into space - orbital PV). It is like a transition from one age into the next one in terms of ERoEI and energy density. Wind and solar are rather pathetic. They are the icing on the cake on a good day but they are not what you want if you prefer to be in control and independent when nature hits. Or if you appreciate nature, wide open land and stuff like that. 3) SMR's have one downside: They are not sophisticated as they do not offer a new reactor principle like a molten salt core or something groundbreaking in terms of nuclear fuel and waste. They could in theory but unless they do they are more like a great yet specialized tool than a large scale solution to mankinds energy problems. 4) "Smart grids": A code for the distribution of energy poverty if you don't know whether your car got charged or discharged or if your oven will start now or in an hour? What has that and other talking points from the book of "funny wind & solar ideas" to do with reality or SMR's? With good SMR's you have a game changer and a way for many out of cities that are maybe no longer worth living. "Remote areas" could become the place to go. It is all a matter of cheap/reliable energy.

@jackfanning7952

3 жыл бұрын

The second leading cause of lung cancer in the US is radon. No. 1 is tobacco. Every other source of lung cancer including chemical production, auto emissions, mold allergies, etc. does not add up to the lung cancer caused by radon from uranium in the earth's crust. Find another boogeyman, pal.

It would be interesting to see your take on the dozen or so plans and methods for handling used nuclear fuel, aka "nuclear waste". Over the years, the nuclear industry and government researchers have developed about a dozen different methods of processing, separating, recycling, harvesting, and disposing of nuclear waste, making it not so much a problem for millennia, but rather similar to disposal of chemical waste. It seems rather odd to me that we treat it so much differently than any other hazardous substance. Oh, and those handling methods don't include what got me interested in nuclear in the first place--all the applications of radiation, or the uses for radioactive, nuclear byproducts, of which there are literally hundreds. Radiation is perhaps the most useful tool we've discovered, but it never seems to receive any attention because there's this notion that it's extremely dangerous, and therefore scary. But so are a lot of chemicals we use all the time, both personally and industrially, and nobody is as scared of those things as they are of radiation.

@LHFX

3 жыл бұрын

It's simple... elected government/legislators need to approve said handling methods and people are constantly told nuclear waste is deadly for hundreds of thousands of years. Unfortunately not even education would do much help... understanding of the non linear behavior of nuclear decay is not accessible to most people. It's just the nature of democracy.

@wayneparke554

3 жыл бұрын

I personally love my glow-in-the-dark Cheerios for breakfast. And my self heating blanket is fantastic in the winter.

@gregwarner3753

3 жыл бұрын

@@wayneparke554 glowing Cheerios are easier go eat in the dark and i married my self heating blanket de ades ago.

@justgivemethetruth

2 жыл бұрын

The government should just use Yucca Mountain and the hell with the Nevada state government. What idiots. ;-)

@Ben-li9zb

2 жыл бұрын

I did some (admittedly very rough) math and got that if we powered the entire word off of nuclear, the amount of waste would be equivalent to about 5 1/2 m1 Abrams tanks (I forget the actual number rn, but those tanks use nuclear waste as armor anyways so it works similarly). Anyways thats pretty easy to store, even for hundreds of years with increasing demand

Greeting from the future! It's been two years since this video and SMRs are still "in development". None are available to purchase (in the West at least, Russia has built some shipborne, mobile nuclear powerplants). We all still hope that they are right around the corner though! I think a problem we will see with SMRs, that is also an issue with larger powerplants, is overly long lead times for delivery. Going by the rate of nuclear submarine production in the US, which is bottlenecked by powerplant delivery, even if there are four companies matching that existing production rate, the availability of SMRs will be very low once they do arrive. Countries looking to implement SMR solutions will probably be sitting on waiting lists for years as manufacturers catch up to demand. Due to this it's not realistic to pin our hopes on widescale deployment of these generators. They will be niche solutions for quite a long time. Time we don't have, unfortunately.

"Hey Dad! We are losing power. Pull out the safety rod 2 centimeter."

As I understand it, Thorium is a byproduct of rare earth mining. Most of it has to be handled as radioactive waste currently. It a viable thorium reactor could be developed, that waste could be put to use. The waste from a thorium reactor is dangerous for only some 500 years, as opposed to 10,000 years for a uranium reactor as I understand it.

@vernonbrechin4207

3 жыл бұрын

My understanding is that there is still no operational permanent disposal sites for that 500-600 years of storage. That also assumes that the fuel went through enough fission passes to remove almost all the transuranic isotopes. The 10,000 year isolation standard in the U.S. was an engineering compromise since engineers can't give a high degree of certainty for periods of time beyond that. The spent nuclear fuel will remain hazardous for at least a half-million years and if a repository is ever created then it should be designed to contain the waste for close to a million years. We don't have the time to play such games. UN chief: World has less than 2 years to avoid 'runaway climate change' thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/406291-un-chief-the-world-has-less-than-2-years-to-avoid-runaway-climate UN Chief warns countries that the 'point of no return' on climate change is fast approaching www.msn.com/en-gb/news/environment/un-chief-warns-countries-that-the-point-of-no-return-on-climate-change-is-fast-approaching/ar-BBXCJHl

@grindupBaker

3 жыл бұрын

@@vernonbrechin4207 "should be designed to contain the waste for close to a million years. We don't have the time to play such games" is a paradox. It contradicts itself.

@grindupBaker

3 жыл бұрын

​@@vernonbrechin4207 "runaway climate" has no physical science definition so it's a social-political term (which is why the UN politician is using it and not Kevin Trenberth or Kerry Emmanuel). There might be some feedbacks that could add "a couple of degrees" to GMST after (and if) humans stop pushing it up directly with their GHGs but nothing over the next "couple of centuries" time scale has ever been suggested by scientists except +0.6 degrees for Arctic methane, which is itself quite speculative and with no time range for it assessed by the scientists who suggested the +0.6 degrees (just "unstable" which is not a time line assessment at all).

@jameswest4819

3 жыл бұрын

Molten salt reactors can burn up the waste of the light water reactors and their waste is a small fraction of what a light water reactor is. Also, the waste has a use in medical and other industries and the waste has a half-life more like 300 years.

@vernonbrechin4207

3 жыл бұрын

@@grindupBaker - In order to hold such positions one has to dismiss, or reject all the reports of the IPCC. Many people have found that to be very fashionable. For them, dismissing all information that clashes with their deeply entrenched world view is done with pride and joy. Most have been convinced that they are part of a great and worthy cause against very evil forces. Most have been convinced that they would be traitors to that cause if they allowed outsiders to alter their views on such issues. === The thinking error at the root of science denial theconversation.com/the-thinking-error-at-the-root-of-science-denial-96099 New study uncovers the 'keystone domino' strategy of climate denial www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2017/nov/29/new-study-uncovers-the-keystone-domino-strategy-of-climate-denial he Threat of Global Warming causing Near-Term Human Extinction Temperature, carbon dioxide and methane arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/threat.html CO2 Concentration - Last 800,000 years scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/wp-content/plugins/sio-bluemoon/graphs/co2_800k.png Global Temperature & Carbon Dioxide www.climatecentral.org/gallery/graphics/global-temperatures-and-co2-concentrations-2020 Climate change: How do we know climate.nasa.gov/evidence Climate change in the era of fake news kzread.info/dash/bejne/dKNrxtxslpmYd6g.html It’s Easy to be Tricked by a Climate Denier medium.com/@willardm22/its-easy-to-be-tricked-by-a-climate-denier-a87ba4b4a087

Small Modular Reactors: SMR Advanced small Modular reactors: ASMR the most relaxing reactors powering your homes

@Tore_Lund

3 жыл бұрын

Whispertech!

Pretty good timing on this video, TerraPower looking like the future of molten salt reactors

Great courage with such a fun topic, and I love daft polarised views!! My biggest doubt for widespread viability of SMR is dealing with *security*. Submarines use costly highly refined U235 to avoid refuelling: but they're secure. Lots more units using shorter-lived lower-grade fuel means more transport to more locations. How safe would they all be from one being nicked and plonked atop some TNT to smear ionising radiation over a city or two?

@paulanderson79

3 жыл бұрын

It's definitely a point worthy of consideration. Spent fuel is far more radioactive than fresh fuel, which would be something a decent terrorist would consider in a bid to do maximum damage. I suppose the easiest target in times of way is the water supply, with reservoirs open to the sky for obvious reasons. A chemical 'drop' could do enormous damage.