Is Nuclear Energy Green?
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- Опубліковано 9 тра 2024
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Correction to what I say at 17 mins 29 seconds: It's 3 meters in diameter and 20 meters tall (not 3 meters in diameter and 20 feet tall). Sorry about that!
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Is nuclear power good or bad? In this much-asked-for episode I will summarize the most up-to-date numbers on the status of nuclear power and break down it's pros and cons. We will also look at what the new technological developments have to offer: molten salt reactors, thorium reactors, and small modular reactors. I learned a low while working on this video and I hope you find this summary useful.
The table which I show at 3 minutes 16 seconds is from this IPCC report www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploa...
The paper from Muellner et al which I discuss at 6 minutes 43 seconds is here:
www.sciencedirect.com/science...
The figure which I show at 7 mins 22 seconds is from the World Nuclear Energy Status Report that you can read here:
www.worldnuclearreport.org/IM...
The 2013 paper I mention at 8 minutes 51 seconds is this:
pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/...
The 2016 paper about the death toll of nuclear versus renewables that I mention at 9 minutes 22 seconds is here:
www.sciencedirect.com/science...
The WHO/Chernobyl Forum estimate for the death toll from the Chernobyl accident is from this report:
inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLC...
The quote I show at 14 minutes 36 is from this report:
www.iaea.org/publications/135...
(sorry for the weird audio quality there)
The Nature article about the thorium reactor in China which I show at 15 minutes 28 seconds is this:
www.nature.com/articles/d4158...
And finally, the Science news piece I mention at 17 mins 46 seconds is this:www.science.org/content/artic...
Many thanks to Jordi Busqué for helping with this video jordibusque.com/
0:00 Intro
2:30 Climate Friendly
6:04 Not Renewable
7:05 Expensive
8:22 Dangerous
12:13 Fast Breeders
13:42 Molten Salt Reactors
14:22 Thorium Reactors
15:43 Small Modular Reactors
18:00 Summary
21:12 Sponsor Message
#science #technology #nuclear #climate - Наука та технологія
When Chernobyl happened, I was trying to calibrate stuff in a new nuclear power plant. The factory rep and I were trying to get this one radiation monitor to work correctly. We were looking at the detector response on a spectrum analyzer. We kept seeing spikes we couldn't explain. So we replaced the detector element. It had the same spikes, even after trying two more detectors. So we replaced the interface card. Same spikes. So we replaced the power supplies. Still the same.
I don't remember how many days later when we heard about the accident, and we realized we were measuring fallout.
What eventually happened
I was in School when the "Very British Bombs" were tested at Maralinga in South Australia, we got dusted, which showed up in the High School Since Lab Geiger Counter. We were told not to worry about Dairy Cattle concentrating it in their Milk, "There's a (Cold) War on!". A long standing excuse that every Citizen on the Earth knows is bs, because of extreme MAD overkill.
@@theunknown4834 While we were waiting for a resolution from the manufacturer, we figured out that the detector was seeing real radiation. Some of it was cesium and strontium from Chernobyl. It wasn't much, and the monitor wouldn't have picked it up if it had been in normal service in our plant.
We were only seeing the spikes because this was a liquid radiation monitor, and the ultra sensitive detector was out of its normal shielding.
Keep in mind, I'm in North Carolina, so that stuff traveled around the world.
@@wolfpat NORTH CAROLINA?! That's crazy.
That’s fascinating
I was 22 when Chernobyl happened. I remember the reports of radioactive clouds floating over Europe and eventually here to America. Scary stuff for sure but isn't that what is happening with Coal and Gas power everyday.
Coal plants have 3 times the background radiation of a nuclear power plant.
Chernobyl happened because of a bad design. New reactors literally cannot melt down the same way.
At a slower rate, for sure. But that pollution won't last for thousands of years.
I think it was Answers With Joe that posed a problem that's not really understood by everyone :
If nuclear pollution lasts for thousands, if not tens of thousands of years ... how will we protect future generations?
Most languages and pictograms of 4000 years ago, we're still deciphering, so how do you store nuclear waste so future archaeologists don't put their nose where it doesn't belong?
That's ... IF we can store the stuff so that it doesn't leak into the future.
Half life of Radon and xeon decay to safe levels before it gets near people out of stacks.
@@theGoogol Breeder reactors can irradiate nuclear waste be as inert as wood ash. Thus solving nuclear waste as having a way to safely "burn" the waste we have.
@@Giganfan2k1 : Cost vs Profit. Won't happen.
I am Romanian and our CANDU reactors work just fine, they had to stop them like 2-3 times in 20 years otherwise they produce energy non-stop. No significant incidents or accidents during these years.
We have a huge plant to produce D2O (much more than we actually need) and have uranium and brain resources.
The problem is indeed complexity, it takes A LOT of time (count 10 years or more) to build them and they are not cheap but once you do they are efficient and generate relatively cheap energy. And would think they are quite safe as well.
Similarly in Canada (where the CANDU was first developed in 1954) where they have been chugging along for over 30 years. They didn't strive for the same efficiency as the latest super-engineered American reactors, but the design requires substantially less maintenance and shutdowns. It's a reliable workhorse, not a racehorse.
Sabine…you are a gift to all humans who want unbiased information on vitally important topics. Thank you. This video was especially helpful!
time stamp when she said nuclear power can never be safe enough to warrant the risk of using it?
Unbiased? I don’t hear anything about the “other” waste besides CO2
@@mukkerman001 she covers it briefly near the end, where she says she believes it to be a red herring and burrowing it with proper safety standards solves any issue.
@@mukkerman001 She has an entire video on the topic of nuclear waste.
Exactly 🗞️
Excellent coverage of nuclear power except for the statement that we are running out of uranium and thorium which is misleading. I attach a brief note from a geologist with some standing on the matter. If anyone can bring Geoff's note to Sabine's attention that would be great. I encourage Sabine look into this matter with the view of possibly revisingher video.
Comments on “Is Nuclear Power Green?” By Sabine Hossenfelder
This You Tube clip is one of the best and most comprehensive analyses of the issues around nuclear power that I have seen but unfortunately the final conclusions are seriously flawed due to baseless assertions regarding the current reserves and future cost of Uranium 235. This is a great shame because this presentation will be used by many others to denigrate nuclear power. For this reason, the errors need to be addressed.
Sabine states that if we increase the use of U235 we will only have 20 years of reserves left before it runs out and that the cost of Uranium will therefore escalate, making nuclear power excessively expensive. However, mining companies only ever prove up enough reserves of any mineral to keep the mine going long enough to pay off debt or justify future investments, typically around 10 to 15 years at most. This is because it costs a lot of money to prove up reserves. For example, if the world copper reserves as were known in 1980 were truly the only mineable copper that existed then, we would have run out of copper in around 2010. This would have created quite an issue for renewable sources of energy. Luckily, as existing reserves were depleted, explorers found new deposits and then proved up new reserves.
The same arguments apply to Uranium reserves but it is, however, is a special case. Many countries currently have embargoes against uranium mining and exploration and others are shutting down their existing nuclear reactors. This is because of perceived safety concerns that even Sabine demonstrates are baseless. Therefore, there is at present a very limited market and even more limited future for Uranium miners. Few companies are even bothering to explore for Uranium. In such a situation the few existing suppliers are able to command high prices for their existing production because there are not likely to be any new competitive mines in the foreseeable future.
If however, nuclear power were recognised world-wide as a viable way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions the demand for Uranium would sky rocket. If just Germany were to change its policy of shutting down existing nuclear power plants, then explorers would begin exploring for Uranium again, future reserves would increase dramatically and competition between new miners would decrease the cost of their product. Uranium is quite common geologically and the world has abundant reserves for millennia to come.
Sabine uses the same arguments around limited reserves to define Thorium reactors as also likely to be expensive. This couldn’t be more wrong! Australia and other countries have been discarding thousands of tons of Thorium for decades. It is an unwanted biproduct from the mining of Titanium from beach sands (as the accessory mineral monazite). Thorium is a very common element!! Thorium is significantly more abundant than Uranium. Many countries have abundant thorium deposits. However, they haven’t been turned into “proven” reserves because currently there is not much demand for Thorium. Also, the cost of Thorium reactors is bound to be expensive at present because they are all experimental.
Sabine’s arguments appear to be balanced and reasonable. However, her conclusion that nuclear power is not a “green” alternative to fossil fuels is a consequence of her use of the flawed statistics regarding Uranium and Thorium reserves and future costs. I’m sure that around the world millions will be persuaded by her flawed arguments. If not redressed immediately this flawed argument will persist, like the previous false suggested correlation between autism and vaccinations, for decades to come.
Associate Professor Dr. Geoffrey R Taylor
(Head, School of Mines, University of New South Wales, 1992-2002)
Thanks! I had an inkling that some of Sabine's points were flawed, and unfortunately there will be many people who will watch this and think that nuclear is not a good way forward.
Very good comment. It should be noted that the author of the video is no engineer, but a theoretical physicist.
One of the best youtube comments i saw, and one of the most important too!
This is why physicists should abstain from dabbling in economics.
I agree with the basic premise of this comment, namely that we aren't going to run out of fuel to mine for the reactors. However, the main point of this video in regards to the economics of nuclear power is still valid. Fuel for the reactors is not a very large cost over the lifetime of a nuclear power plant, the initial construction cost is by far the biggest expenditure. So yes, we COULD in theory replace a lot more fossil fuel energy with nuclear, but it still makes very little economic sense and that is what in the end always matters.
It's so refreshing Listening to an intelligent person with no hidden agenda talking sensibly about such a controversial subject .
I think you meant to say “ulterior motive”, not “hidden agenda”. If any of this information was supposed to be kept under wraps, then someone hasn’t done a very good job hiding their “agenda”.
@Zangief ☭ I lol’d. I guess then the best we can say is “… LIKELY no hidden agenda …”
@Swag Lord the point was there isn't enough peer reviewed literature. Nor do normal people live in a peer reviewed world ignorant of social, economic or personal issues. Real people in the real world have opinions and are interested in others opinions.
@Swag Lord But that literature was written and reviewed by people with an agenda... And you yourself have an agenda too. Omg agendas everywhere!
How can I trust my own thinking? It could be influenced by my agenda... Nothing is true! Life is futile!
This video is misleading
Life of nuclear plant is 80 years 4 times that of solar or wind
And thrice of gas
Twice of coal
Which means levelized costs of lifetime is baised towards solar and wind
And then storage costs is not calculated for wind and solar which is 200 dollars for kwh for 20 years
Excellent review. Well done. (Coming from a retired nuclear engineer). I am glad I found your channel. It presents high quality science news/information here that I don't see elsewhere. Please keep up the good work Sabine!
You are an international treasure. Unbiased information on complex issues delivered with sly, dry humor. 😘
Matching your lipstick to your dress should not go unappreciated. So radiant!
I see what you did there 😅
Mostly agree with what you've said, some points:
1. Fast Reactors, the main issue you didn't cover, enrichment, they tend to need higher U235 enrichment to get them started (quickly), and are more difficult to control. This tends to make them more expensive.
2. But, they can run on existing fuel that is classed as waste in the fuel ponds of existing reactors. Which from a fast reactors perspective is already more enriched. U235 + P239 + P240, there is supposedly enough "waste" in fuel ponds, if used in a fast reactor to power the whole world for about 400 yrs! No need to extract any more.
3. Fast reactors can burn most of the fuel. Not 4-5% of a conventional PWR. The waste is also much shorter lived, few 100 of years not tens of thousands.
4. There is a 3rd type of reactor called an ISO, they are a breeder, but classed differently as they only breed enough fuel for their own usage. Breeder's are a proliferation risk as the intention is to remove fuel from the reactor.
5. MSR corrosivity is salt dependent, some salts are corrosive yes, but some are not.
6. They need to focus on a small container sized reactor system that can built in factories and use economies of scale to reduce the cost.
7. Re-use existing, fossil fuel powered generating infrastructure, multiple small reactors powering the turbine sets. This has the advantage that if one reactor needs to go offline, the whole system does not shutdown.
8. ISO operation, no refuelling, reduced proliferation risk, no complex fuelling infrastructure, no fuelling ponds. If anything goes wrong, the affected reactor can be removed and buried in long term storage, simpler cleanup.
so Andrew - i'm familiar with msr's but wondering if i know iso's by a different acronym / what does your "iso" stand for? - you can get much deeper in the weeds if you like, lol
Fast neutron reactors are a disaster ready to go off at anytime. Issue is that they can face prompt criticallity causing a rapid burst of energy. This can happen if there is a change in neutron moderation such as a loss of coolant that is acting as a moderator.
Breeder reactors are insanely expensive, back in the 1980s for a breeder reactor to be economically the cost of a kg of natural uranium would need to exceed $5000 (1980 or $17,500 in 2022). Every nation that had a breed reactor decommissioned them 20 years ago because it just wasn't economical.
That said, you never see any new nuclear power plants built in the US as all of the utilities are rejecting them: too expensive & too long (about 20 years) to complete planning and construction costs. The one new power plant in the US (Vogtle, GA) costs $30B ( about $15B per 1GWe) and took 20 years.
@@gorioecho9789 It's a breeder with a breed ratio of 1.0.
1. >Fast reactors are more difficult to control.
It isn't what the feedback from Joël Guidez' book "Superphenix: technical and scientific achievements" says. Superphénix was France's 1200MWe SFR.
"On the whole, operators found that it was simpler to control a SFR [than a PWR]" p.81
Yes you're right, they are more expensive. Still from the same book: around 2.3x the price of a KWh from a PWR.
4. >There is a 3rd type of reactor called an ISO
Never heard of it. Got any links please ?
@@SC-yy4sw SuperPhenix has been shutdown & decommissioned in 1997. So much for *achievements*. I never read his book, but likely just a lot of cheerleading.
I have discovered that a big part of learning is to like and respect the instructor. This channel has what it takes.
Terrific presentation. I love that you clearly state your own feelings (no particular fear of living close to a Nuclear plant) and respect the feelings of others, even if those feelings are not scientifically valid. Thank you.
James Lovelock, a scientist and green pioneer who was in favour of nuclear power (given the lack of realistically available alternatives), once offered to take the nuclear waste from a typical British nuclear power plant in his back garden. He calculated that with affordable containment arrangements the risk of any damage to his lifespan was worth taking. He also discussed this with his neighbours, mostly Cornish farmers, and claimed they were OK with the idea too. The real worry that united them was that changes to the atmosphere would irreversibly affect climate patterns and eventually our weather. Nuclear was the only comparatively safe option available at the time that had much hope of preventing this.
@@ianstobie did they actually end up doing it?
@@n6rt9s No. But Lovelock died last year at the age of 103. So his calculation that having a pile of nuclear waste nearby wasn't going to reduce his lifespan by anything he'd miss may well have been correct!
By the way, his original PhD was in medicine. One of his first jobs was at the start of WW2. The British govt wanted to know whether the population of London would be safer on the surface running round skipping German bombs in the healthy fresh air, or huddled in shelters and underground tube stations where they might catch infectious diseases. An excellent question!
The team Lovelock was part of already had some understanding of how the immune response worked, so I think predicted initial infection rise followed by adaptation and improved resistance. So opted for shelters. Story in one of his books.
Proximity is of little consequence after a meltdown. Chernobyl made Welsh sheep inedible.
That is the most comprehensive and balanced discussion I have seen or heard on this topic. Very well done!
Pffft. There. Is. No. Safe. Form. Of. Nuclear. Period. And no amount of desire for radiation fetish validation will change that.
Radiation fetish? Really?
You she entity lifeforces (including she entity lifeforces existing in XY DNA template bodies) do the strangest things.
There is no safe form of nuclear. Period. All forms release radiation into the environment in one way or another. And there
is no safe level of radiation. Just increasing amounts of cell damage with exposure.
I don't understand all the fetish for radiation. A very strange fetish to have.
Having a radiation fetish is like having a fetish for aiming a gun at your foot and then pulling the trigger. A very, very
bizarre way to get your endorphin kicks.
Sadomasochism is incomprehensible alien gibberish to me. I don't understand it at all.
But then i'm not a she entity and just don't use the she entity lifeforce psychological processes.
Radiation is bad for children and other living things.
In case anyone didn't get the memo yet.
Oilmen and bankers don’t make much money with nuclear power so they have been using propaganda to denounce it since 3 Mile Island incident. Both Chernobyl and Fukushima were built in the 70s. The main contractor for Fukushima was GE. If they had placed the backup generators two floors up to stay above the water there would not have been an accident. 2020 news said Trump stopped Bill Gate’s TerraPower fourth generation nuclear power plant project with China for national security reasons. 2021 I read Bill Gate’s book. I am convinced of his analyses, the world should move from fossil fuel to green but the only hope to save the planet from global warming is technology yet to be invented and nuclear power is a good bet. When all cars in the world turned electric it will cut emission by 6.5%. The current progress is much too slow while the poles are melting. China manufactures or owns 50% of wind power, 90% solar, it has completed its first fourth generation nuclear power plant and exporting third generation to Pakistan and Argentina. Along the Belt and Road China will build green infrastructures per geographic conditions, some countries have more sun and others more wind, some can use dams and others can pay for nuclear. China also is the biggest user of carbon heavy materials such as steel and concrete so they have a huge need to move from coal to oil to gas to green to nuclear. I believe China is doing the most advanced researches on Thorium reactors and atomic fusion. Who knows, maybe in our lifetime China will make breakthroughs to save the world. Before that can happen the world need to change. Western oil tycoons and dollar bankers will not let nuclear power, solar, wind and Chinese Yuan to take away their empire. Only when US hegemony is overthrown can human save herself.
Yep. Nice to see a sensible evaluation with accurate data. I didn't learn much as I had reached the same conclusions over the last few years, but a lot more people listen to Sabine than me :-) Hopefully this video will improve the overall quality of discussion, and is a useful one to point uninformed people at.
No power source can be completely "green", but some have much more potential to be less polluting per unit of energy produced than others.
Solar panels made on the moon.
Erm ... As a Dutch person I'd disagree.
War is more political than scientific? Isn't the study of war a part of social/empirical science? Or because it's not natural science, then It's not scientific (enough)? In that case, formal or non-empirical science/studies like linguistics, statistics, mathematics, etc. would be unscientific too.
@@Giganfan2k1 carbon footprint won't magically disappear, since we have to build all the infrastructure there. The ISS cargo is a hassle on its own, let alone assembling solar panels on the Moon - by sending robots and materials needed, if we do it without humans there. We add humans and costs scale up dramatically.
Unless we colonize the Moon as a "catapult" for sending cargo elsewhere in the solar system, since it's way easier to win against Moon's gravitational tug (1/16 of the Earth's or thereabouts.) Still a great distance between Earth and Moon but somewhat better depending on what we're going to do in regards of space exploration in a hundred years.
@@Weissenschenkel Well, it would work in so far as that anything not produced in Earth's atmosphere has no practical impact on the Earth's climate. But we're nowhere even remotely close to being able to do that, so it's pretty irrelevant for now.
I really enjoyed watching this video actually more listening to it than watching, and I appreciate the fact that you minimize interjecting your opinions over the facts. Your delivery seems to be well thought out and concise and that is another thing that I really appreciate. I'm looking forward to watching more of your videos in the future I might even sign up for some of your classes. 👍
I really enjoyed the presentation. You made no efforts to hide your stand on the topic and still hold an easy to follow and fair discussion. I can appreciate that, even though I do not agree with the idea of burying and forgetting about the waste.
The molten salt reactors looked like a nice idea but they just come too late to make a difference. But as yo said, might make sense in certain environents and conditions.
perhaps you need to see this as she was not accurate -
Comments on “Is Nuclear Power Green?” By Sabine Hossenfelder
This You Tube clip is one of the best and most comprehensive analyses of the issues around nuclear power that I have seen but unfortunately the final conclusions are seriously flawed due to baseless assertions regarding the current reserves and future cost of Uranium 235. This is a great shame because this presentation will be used by many others to denigrate nuclear power. For this reason, the errors need to be addressed.
Sabine states that if we increase the use of U235 we will only have 20 years of reserves left before it runs out and that the cost of Uranium will therefore escalate, making nuclear power excessively expensive. However, mining companies only ever prove up enough reserves of any mineral to keep the mine going long enough to pay off debt or justify future investments, typically around 10 to 15 years at most. This is because it costs a lot of money to prove up reserves. For example, if the world copper reserves as were known in 1980 were truly the only mineable copper that existed then, we would have run out of copper in around 2010. This would have created quite an issue for renewable sources of energy. Luckily, as existing reserves were depleted, explorers found new deposits and then proved up new reserves.
The same arguments apply to Uranium reserves but it is, however, is a special case. Many countries currently have embargoes against uranium mining and exploration and others are shutting down their existing nuclear reactors. This is because of perceived safety concerns that even Sabine demonstrates are baseless. Therefore, there is at present a very limited market and even more limited future for Uranium miners. Few companies are even bothering to explore for Uranium. In such a situation the few existing suppliers are able to command high prices for their existing production because there are not likely to be any new competitive mines in the foreseeable future.
If however, nuclear power were recognised world-wide as a viable way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions the demand for Uranium would sky rocket. If just Germany were to change its policy of shutting down existing nuclear power plants, then explorers would begin exploring for Uranium again, future reserves would increase dramatically and competition between new miners would decrease the cost of their product. Uranium is quite common geologically and the world has abundant reserves for millennia to come.
Sabine uses the same arguments around limited reserves to define Thorium reactors as also likely to be expensive. This couldn’t be more wrong! Australia and other countries have been discarding thousands of tons of Thorium for decades. It is an unwanted biproduct from the mining of Titanium from beach sands (as the accessory mineral monazite). Thorium is a very common element!! Thorium is significantly more abundant than Uranium. Many countries have abundant thorium deposits. However, they haven’t been turned into “proven” reserves because currently there is not much demand for Thorium. Also, the cost of Thorium reactors is bound to be expensive at present because they are all experimental.
Sabine’s arguments appear to be balanced and reasonable. However, her conclusion that nuclear power is not a “green” alternative to fossil fuels is a consequence of her use of the flawed statistics regarding Uranium and Thorium reserves and future costs. I’m sure that around the world millions will be persuaded by her flawed arguments. If not redressed immediately this flawed argument will persist, like the previous false suggested correlation between autism and vaccinations, for decades to come.
Associate Professor Dr. Geoffrey R Taylor
(Head, School of Mines, University of New South Wales, 1992-2002)
Such a shame that Germany phased out Nuclear, especially in light of their problematic dependence on Russian natural gas.
Fun Fact: The same party (CDU) forced an early phase out and the dependence on Russian oil.
Where does the uranium come from?
"Especially in light of their problematic dependence on Russian natural gas" -- which was always the point. Green has always meant gas.
Yes, yes, in hindsight it would have been better to keep the nuclear power plants around until renewables had been built out.
But now the nuclear plants are gone, so that ship has sailed.
Whatever your opinion on nuclear, throwing it away once you have it and you don't have a net-zero country is environmental terrorism.
Costs for intermittent solar and wind must include battery or other energy storage costs (or FF backup) for a fair cost comparison.
I wouldn't assume that the analysis excludes these. Nuclear must also include its significant PR costs. Every industry needs to spend money on PR, and nuclear is no exception. There's no reason to expect PR to be free, just because the fears are irrational.
nuclear also needs gas peakers / energy storage / battery to be fully usable in electric grid since it is a baseloader power plant
She mentions that in the video but doesn't quantify it.
And add changes to transmission infra - battery / storage is at infancy compared to what is needed at scale. Till any reasonable storage technique at scale is deployed, one would need backup power (gas) and transmission infra to manage fluctuations
Water makes a great battery.
Hydro power is a thing.
I work in the nuclear industry. One reactor design you didn't talk about is the Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor, which is used in Canada and has since been exported. It uses a heavy water moderator and U-238 (natural uranium). This is a potential solution to the abundance problem.
Gotta love those Canadians and their CAN Du attitude!
To clarify, CANDU and other PWRs use natural uranium as input, but they only burn U-235, which makes up 0.4% of the uranium. They don't burn U-238, as the neutrons are in the thermal spectrum and don't have enough energy to directly fission U-238 or breed it into Np-239/Pu-239. This can only be done with an unmoderated fast spectrum reactor design
@@Spencergolde Thanks for this. I don't work with HWR's so I guess I hadn't really thought about it enough and I was incorrect. The benefit to HWR's then would be removing the need for significant enrichment by providing over-moderation compared to a conventional PWR? Looking at it more closely, the only real example I found of using 238 would be the LMFBR (Light Metal Fast Breeder Reactor). Are there any others?
@alexpegg238 U-238 can only be fissioned or bred into Pu-239 using fast neutrons, which means the reactor must be unmoderated (it does happen with thermal neutrons, but at a very slow rate. In thermal reactors less than 1% of energy comes from U-238 fission). There are many different types of fast reactors, but liquid metal reactors are the only ones that have been built at a commercial scale. There are also gas-cooled fast reactors and molten salt fast reactors. Yes, the benefit of using heavy water, or the deuterium in the heavy water, as a moderator is that it's so effective at slowing neutrons, and absorbs so few neutrons, that you can use unenriched uranium. Fast reactors also don't require enrichment, at least not after they get going. The plutonium they breed is chemically separated out, made into new fuel, and natural uranium is added as breeding material in the next run. Special note, the plutonium that comes from breeder reactors that have been operating for more than a few weeks contains a significant amount of Pu-240, which makes it impossible to use in bomb construction. That's because Pu-240 has a high rate of spontaneous fissioning, which would cause a bomb core to melt down or misfire. The only way to extract weapons grade plutonium from a breeder reactor (high Pu-239, low Pu-240) would be to completely shut it down frequently after short runs, which would cause blackouts to any grid connected to it.
It's important to remember that LCOE can be misleading in that it often is examined "In Current Market Conditions". Notably, it's factoring in the costs AFTER any private/ public subsidies have affected the base price of an input. Examples would include the artificially low price paid by oil and gas companies to drill / extract on government land and other direct financial aid provided by the government. Nuclear USED to get such subsidies, but after the scare of Chernobyl and other nuclear accidents, those shriveled up. So while Nuclear looks WAY more expensive on a bare reading of LCOE, the gap shrinks significantly once you factor in private / public subsidies that would otherwise be paid by the builder & end consumer.
I found your channel recently and have been enjoying it. So refreshing to hear facts about topics with no perceived bias. Thank you for sharing this channel with the world.
ditto.
There's bias. It's unavoidable. The primary thing of importance is how one goes about minimizing that bias. The stories we tell ourselves alter how we read and sift through search results. This is a form of bias that scientists are encouraged to train their mind to minimize, but it's a huge cognitive load when doing research. Fatigue is a problem. Vigilance is difficult to maintain. Worse, when identified by most popular search engines, they will try to use their profiles of us to customize the results, creating bias that many people are not aware of, or aren't sure how to circumvent.
The scientists I personally know try to minimize the effects of bias by being both highly skeptical and being careful about how they phrase statements. News tagline: Jellybeans cause toe fungus! Scientist: in these experiments done here by these people, a relationship between jellybeans and toe fungus was found. It wasn't very significant, though, and the population in the study was pretty small. Plus, at that location there's more toe fungus per capita than the global mean by a factor of ten. So, the study is mostly suggesting that further studies are done, hopefully of better quality.'
She‘s got such snobby british received pronunciation. Ridiculous. German trying hard to not sound German 😂
_no _*_perceived_*_ bias_
Youre a wise one. Sabine would approve.
(17:25) _"..about three metres in diameter and twenty feet tall."_
So they're metric in one dimension and imperial in the other? 😊 Seriously though, the fineness ratio is definitely greater than that. Perhaps they're 20m tall?
How to piss off the entire world in one sentence.
Catering to a wide audience lol
@@diego1694 I actually found it amusing. I'm used to thinking in Imperial and Metric, so I wasn't confused, just momentarily distracted. 😆
@@CAThompson Me too. Though it's a little confusing to say they're twice as tall as they are wide, while the image clearly shows they're a lot taller or thinner.
Isn’t it in aviation that you measure horizontal distances in kilometers and the vertical ones in feet? It’s a neat way to wipe out any possibility of confusion.
I find it interesting, that the issue of the dangers of nuclear waste storage/half-life are not addressed at all. (at least not yet) There are indeed issues related to the amount of space required over time for material storage, safety and security. Over the span of time required for used rods to burn themselves out, it is theoretically possible that multiple social collapses may have led to language and culture shifts, comparable to those from Cunieform to Roman script. It's not that it cannot be transcribed, but the level of difficulty lowers probability and distribution drastically enough to make it unintelligible/useless for warning/safety signage. Modular thorium plants sound very interesting, though.
1) compared to the tens of billions of years half-life of waste from renewables, nuclear waste is short lived. 2) we can burn spent fuel in advanced reactors, and the isotopes from that have many different uses, like cancer treatment to RTGs for space probes.
Once nuclear waste is put in dry cask storage, it's never going to hurt anyone. Please google and read the paper "the guardian the unpalatable truth is that the anti-nuclear lobby lied to us" and "Dr Bernard Cohen the myth of plutonium toxicity".
Nice overview. Another advantage of small modular plants would be that if a 'never' event occurs the consequences would have an expected lower damage outcome compared with knocking out a high capacity plant, perhaps a good reason not to have them co-located. Rolls Royce have a research program looking at the technology.
I was wondering if that was the case. Someone said there is technology for reusing the waste?
I also found this comment below -
Comments on “Is Nuclear Power Green?” By Sabine Hossenfelder
This You Tube clip is one of the best and most comprehensive analyses of the issues around nuclear power that I have seen but unfortunately the final conclusions are seriously flawed due to baseless assertions regarding the current reserves and future cost of Uranium 235. This is a great shame because this presentation will be used by many others to denigrate nuclear power. For this reason, the errors need to be addressed.
Sabine states that if we increase the use of U235 we will only have 20 years of reserves left before it runs out and that the cost of Uranium will therefore escalate, making nuclear power excessively expensive. However, mining companies only ever prove up enough reserves of any mineral to keep the mine going long enough to pay off debt or justify future investments, typically around 10 to 15 years at most. This is because it costs a lot of money to prove up reserves. For example, if the world copper reserves as were known in 1980 were truly the only mineable copper that existed then, we would have run out of copper in around 2010. This would have created quite an issue for renewable sources of energy. Luckily, as existing reserves were depleted, explorers found new deposits and then proved up new reserves.
The same arguments apply to Uranium reserves but it is, however, is a special case. Many countries currently have embargoes against uranium mining and exploration and others are shutting down their existing nuclear reactors. This is because of perceived safety concerns that even Sabine demonstrates are baseless. Therefore, there is at present a very limited market and even more limited future for Uranium miners. Few companies are even bothering to explore for Uranium. In such a situation the few existing suppliers are able to command high prices for their existing production because there are not likely to be any new competitive mines in the foreseeable future.
If however, nuclear power were recognised world-wide as a viable way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions the demand for Uranium would sky rocket. If just Germany were to change its policy of shutting down existing nuclear power plants, then explorers would begin exploring for Uranium again, future reserves would increase dramatically and competition between new miners would decrease the cost of their product. Uranium is quite common geologically and the world has abundant reserves for millennia to come.
Sabine uses the same arguments around limited reserves to define Thorium reactors as also likely to be expensive. This couldn’t be more wrong! Australia and other countries have been discarding thousands of tons of Thorium for decades. It is an unwanted biproduct from the mining of Titanium from beach sands (as the accessory mineral monazite). Thorium is a very common element!! Thorium is significantly more abundant than Uranium. Many countries have abundant thorium deposits. However, they haven’t been turned into “proven” reserves because currently there is not much demand for Thorium. Also, the cost of Thorium reactors is bound to be expensive at present because they are all experimental.
Sabine’s arguments appear to be balanced and reasonable. However, her conclusion that nuclear power is not a “green” alternative to fossil fuels is a consequence of her use of the flawed statistics regarding Uranium and Thorium reserves and future costs. I’m sure that around the world millions will be persuaded by her flawed arguments. If not redressed immediately this flawed argument will persist, like the previous false suggested correlation between autism and vaccinations, for decades to come.
Associate Professor Dr. Geoffrey R Taylor
(Head, School of Mines, University of New South Wales, 1992-2002)
A good attempt at an unbiased review. However, I see two places where I think you may be selling nuclear power short:
1. Concerns over uranium supply seem overstated. The IAEA says that "uranium resources available at a cost below US $130/kg imply around 100 years of supply at current consumption rates"; but per the 2020 NEA/IAEA "red book" where these numbers come from, this is only their estimate of already "identified conventional resources" (it's table 1.1 totals divided by 59.2k use from table 2.1). But if you include their estimate of "undiscovered resources" (from table 1.13), those conventional resources "expected to occur based on geological knowledge of previously discovered deposits and regional mapping", that increases to 167 years supply. And if you then increase the cost threshold to $260/kg, which would increase costs by only about a penny per kWh over current costs, that increases to 227 years supply. Even apart from all of that, the argument here reminds me a lot of the "peak oil" predictions which have repeatedly been proven wrong for decades. If you actually invest in exploration, you will discover more resources. I strongly suspect we could, without too much difficulty, produce a third of the world's needed electric power over the next century using only current nuclear technology. And that would give plenty of time to transition to more efficient technologies (like fast breeder reactors which can be over 50x more efficient in their use of fuel--meaning we might then have 10,000+ years of uranium supply).
2. The argument about nuclear costs seems even more suspect, where it is based on LCOE. I don't think anyone who has looked into this in much depth thinks that it is very useful to compare costs of nuclear and VRE (variable renewable energy) sources using only LCOE, which ignores some of the more significant costs on your electric bill, and especially some of the largest costs of intermittent (VRE) sources. I would be suspicious of any source which quotes those figures without noting these limitations! Look at OVERALL costs, and nuclear is still one of the more affordable sources of reliable baseload (or "firm") power (at least where hydro power is not readily available for this purpose).
On the other hand you may have overstated it though, in saying nuclear is available "on demand". This may possibly be more true of future designs (perhaps those modular options will allow this more easily?), but most current nuclear plants don't start and stop that quickly and efficiently. With current technology, nuclear is normally considered baseload (or "firm") power. Power that is truly "on demand" is sometimes referred to as "dispatch" power. Natural gas is still difficult to replace when this is needed, and it tends to be needed with high levels of VRE. For an interesting paper on these various types of power, and their impacts on overall costs, see "The Role of Firm Low-Carbon Electricity Resources in Deep Decarbonization of Power Generation" by Sepulveda, Jenkins, deSisterns, and Lester.
If you do a follow up to this, the really interesting question isn't whether nuclear will be part of a green power grid in the future, but how much of it will really be needed.
Actually Nuclear is pretty capable of doing load following and peaker duties, if the plant is fitted to do it (1/3 of France's nuclear reactors are fit for quick load following, and are actually quicker than CCGT plants). You can run a Nuclear plant at 50-70% output and pretty quickly ramp up t to 100%. Some setups include "Grey" control rods (absorb less neutrons) and turbine bypass systems similar in concept to the exhaust bypass valve in an automotive turbocharger, other systems are also usable. It's just not economical to do so because it is a waste of fuel, and especially the control rod thing gets less responsive with time. New technology like SFR+molten salt thermal storage (Terrapower's Natrium design) only makes Nuclear load following and peaker duties more fuel efficient, and so, more economical.
These are excellent points.
One important point to add is that our current estimate of the potential supply of some mining resource is related to demand. That is, higher demand will drive deeper searchung for that resource and also new technologies to both more efficiently extract it and use it. We saw this with gold (back when it was the money base), and we see this with oil.
I would like to point out that fracking (in the US) and tar sand (in Canada) are ways we've been keeping up with the oil production, and both those methods are environmental disasters. Sure you get more resources - but at what cost? Same thing we have to ask for Uranium
@@theamici Fracking is cheap, tar sands is expensive. They're not really comparable. The important thing is that more investment and R&D plus wider searching usually results in less pessimistic outlooks for any given mining industry. Sustained surges in demand drive supply responses.
She said if we 10x uranium consumption over current levels we would only have 20 years worth of fuel. So her estimates on the amount of fuel is actually greater than yours it seems.
What she was saying is IF we build more nuclear plants to take demand away from coal and gas THEN we would only have about 20 years worth of fuel.
At current demand we have 200 years worth of uranium fuel, but current demand does not solve the fossil fuel problem.
Sabine - that’s excellent again. I’m lecturer in electrical power, and for over a decade now I’ve told my students that the key to reducing the requirement for generating energy is a reliable massive, robust and sustainable energy STORAGE. The greenest way of achieving this in by using mechanical systems. My student projects show the unbeatable benefits of gravitational systems (shaft of slope) or where this is not possible, numerous massive (at least grain silo sized, but can be smaller for single buildings) high inertia (ie high ‘m’ and ‘k’) flywheels. These can be used for decades, even centuries, with no loss of efficiency, storage capacity or performance. In addition, Once these systems are built, they would have a minuscule carbon footprint in their operation and maintenance.
Can you point out a research paper on this, that develops the cost/Kwh and space requirements? Thanks.
Fax batteries degrade too quickly.
@@BasementEngineer - thanks for your interest. This was done by some of my students as a project but their paper was never published. However, if you look on the internet you will see several formal research projects on gravitational storage systems and flywheels which give the information you require. I hope that’s helpful.
Flywheels? For grid storage? Get real. Run the numbers. You're off by orders of magnitude.
Regarding the Fukushima aftermath, fhere is an issue I have never seen addressed. The population lives on a long, narrow piece of land. At the time of maximum radiation release, the wind was blowing across the populated territory, rather than parallel to it. I've always wondered what the prevailing direction of the wind is there. And the likelyhood that the wind could have been parallel at the time of the accident. And the difference in outcome, if that happened.
It wasn't addressed because the Fukushima accident didn't result in exploding reactors (which normally shouldn't happen in Chernobyl either). So the highly radioactive core wasn't freely exposed to the world like in Chernobyl. I never studied the details of the accident, but as a general rule of thumb, nuclear reactors don't explode.
I think this was an intelligent look at the problem with the main aspects covered and with balanced conclusions. Well done!
Finally a balanced analysis. A Hossenfelder vs. Lesch would be an interesting format.
this
i really would not call it balanced when she is publishing Lazars number as if they where a neutral source, when its in fact a anti nuclear think tank and it got heavy criticism from the industry
@bk_16 Well the issue with Lazard is that its really popular with the pol people, so they site the paper like crazy, making it come up top on every search
While i would agree with that its not here bias... it at least sounds like she is not biased int hat direction, its rather an indication that she lack some core understanding of the situation that explain why nuclear power plant are not built.
The "its not economical" argument was just made up a few years back when it was obvious that all other argument was not valid.
And... this is the part where some people will say "conspiracy theorist". but its actually not. gas companies have payed policy makers and journalist billions to promote anti nuclear agenda. It have actually been known for decades, but the paper trail was not proven until earlier this year.
A fresh professor manage to prove a specific paper trail to a set of specific people in Belgium that currently is under criminal investigation. Some of those was top elected officials.
For some odd reason, most of the media is not reporting on it.. how strange. Almost like some of the billions went to other people.
But i don´t want to be a conspiracy theorist. So i will just amuse that the all just exchange the money for paper money and just dump it in the ocean.
I disagree. I like Lesch but he has become a bitter old man who is not interested in hearing the other side's arguments. At least not when it comes to certain topics. He is also a media veteran and would likely talk over Sabine who would have trouble presenting her sound arguments. I wouldn't watch that format.
Nothing balanced going on here. This is a one sided assessment that would be an embarrassment to serious analysts
Thank you for making this video. I am very skeptical about arguments on both sides of the issue but I'm inclined to believe your perspective is unbiased and evidence based
agreed, she does present well balanced arguments and theories, but isnt it like giving yourself cancer, to fix a broken arm
Exactly: that's why I'm here also.
@@robroy5248 Have you looked into the skeptics of "nuclear causes cancer"? They have valid points. I can't personally tell if it does or doesn't cause cancer, and there's a lot of research on the topic.
If nuclear radiation from power plants causes cancer, one would expect cancer rates over time to be relative to radiation dose. That includes not just what's in the air, but also what leeches into soil and water supply. When measured, there isn't a direct correlation. It's seemingly random.
To me it's like the stroke belt here in the US. No one knows what causes it, because stroke rates aren't even correlated with any proposed cause. Same with cancer near nuclear plants.
What is unbiased for you? I read that very often in the US political context. I am really curious.
@@emalee8366 Of course there is no influx of deaths near nuclear power plants because radiation levels are normal. People not afraid to live near nuclear power plants because they will cause cancer from long exposure (many are because they are idiots and there was not enough coverage of topic in school) but of the fear of big accident. Even if it is absolutely ridiculous and if it ever happen there will be more dire things to care about rather than radiation, like death from war, tsunami or meteorite strike.
This was a _very_ good run-down of the problem! Thank you!
apparently it is not accurate though.
Sabine, thank you for bringing to us all this insight and understanding in such beautifully concise presentations. It is a bit demoralizing though seeing all these forms of energy available to us having such serious limitations. What is the future of energy? Regarding nuclear, the last project I worked on was a large nuclear power plant. I was blown away by the complexity, labor hours, materials, and enormous cost.
Hi Sabine. Just want to add a small correction. Whdn you quote the available amount of uranium, the number that is quoted is the current available resources, which is much different from the total available reserves. As we know, for oil the first were projected to already run out by the end of the 80s, but the combination of the (momentary) increase in price of oil and the improvement in prospecting technology brought to light many oil resources that hadn't been discovered before or weren't economically viable, so weren't taken into account as available resources.
The same holds for uranium, with the difference that even neglecting the likely undiscovered land resources that likely exist we already know that there is a lot of uranium in sea water. This reserve is extremely abundant (just U235 would last tens of thousands of years, and that is supposing to replace all other energy sources). The con is that extracting it with cirrent technology costs about 4 times as much as uranium from mines. Since uranium typically makes up about 20% of the cost of the energy produced by a nuclear reactor over the course of its lifetime, exploiting this seawater uranium would currently about double the cost of nuclear energy.
Thanks for pointing this out - not sure many will see it. I only found it because I did a search for the word seawater on the off-chance someone brought up ocean mining so I wouldn't have to. Yellowcake has been extracted from seawater during tests both by Japanese and American researchers. It is a somewhat passive process. The amount of uranium in the sea would last for tens of thousands of years even if nuclear power were the sole source of humanity's energy needs.
I would agree that exploiting the ocean U235 reserves would solve the renewability problem, but just like you said it would make it much less economical. I think we should focus on developing technologies to use U238 or thorium to make them more reliable and economical before looking at ocean U235.
Much of the cost of uranium is due to the lengthy process of enriching (concentrating) U-235 by separating out U-238 - also the complicated process of fabricating uranium oxide into ceramic fuel pellets with exacting tolerances.
With a thorium molten salt reactor, there is no need for enrichment after the initial fissile material deposit. Also no need for expensive fuel fabrication because it is all melted. Additionally: you can extract nearly *all the energy* (instead of the paltry 1% typically received from fuel pellets before they are exchanged). Also there is much less cost of containment because molten salt is a low pressure medium
Thank you for your intelectual honesty. Great summary.
I disagree with the comment about leaving this to "the market". High fixed costs/high reward activities (eg. CERN) are the kind that need public money. We need to take those gambles.
Yes, and I have a feeling that "the market" won't fix climate change either!
The last time we left energy production to the market, we ended up with global warming.
The issue with leaving it to the market is also dismissing the influence of gov regulations and subsedies. There's a reason Solar became big and it has nothing to do with the market.
@@kelvinhbo We never left this to the market, the government subsidized fossil a lot. @Nonya Bisness True, solar gets so much investment and incentives from the government, no other energy source can compete with it on the market without this support from the gov.
@@JGRGilbert Markets definitely will not solve the climate crisis.
You forget one aspect about the market, in the UK the government are happy to underwrite the cost because it subsidises the military use - trident
Great presentation, as usual. But I think you continue to overlook the serious Issues with nuclear waste disposal. For example, Oak Ridge is littered with low and medium radiation disposal sites, much of which dates back to the X-10 pile that was used to study the production of plutonium. All of that waste could be fashioned into a dirty bomb and is not closely guarded. The cleanup of Hanford is taking decades, even with current technology. But I think the biggest problem is that Pu 239 has a half life of 20,000 years. Nobody can say what will happen to waste containers exposed to radiation for that period of time. There is good reason that even Nevada no longer wants a national disposal site anymore.
However, you gave several excellent reasons to not forge ahead with numerous nuclear power plants, even though the notion has become quite fashionable lately. I thank you for that.
You are right about her. overlooking the waste disposal, she does it another time in a dedicated video.
I am getting sad when i hear educated people redicule the worries of the non educated concerning the waste of the industry.
Great content as always. 🤓 As a chemist, I can say that 97% of nuclear waste can be reused for the next generation of reactors (through selective radionuclide extraction by virtue of solid supported ligands). This research is ongoing of course and it takes quite some time for the engineers to modify their thinking and hence designs from previous models and extraction processes. In essence, this means nuclear is here for much longer than the metal abundances may imply.
I suppose that even if this works, the efficiency will be lower, making it even less profitable.
France and other countries reprocesses it, which makes the sustainability much better. The US banned nuclear reprocessing for fears of proliferation during the Carter administration. It's a policy problem as much as an engineering problem. France uses ~9k metric tons of Uranium per year while the US uses 18k tons/year. France has 61 GW and the US has 95 GW of installed nuclear, so US has 155% more nuclear energy, but uses 2x more uranium.
@@timc7035 Oak Ridge was slated at one point to have a reprocessing facility which got scrapped. Like a lot of things nuclear, seems like the "research is ongoing" is more likely politics making it untenable...
@@timc7035 My Dad never like the Carter admin not only for that. Insane absolutely criminally neglect office of duties and more IMO! More nuclear systems integrated in buffered underground underwater submersibles modules or above water at sea needs to be considered to ease fears. Keep those implements underground and underwater or at sea so there isn't the natural disaster risks and remove the worry of incidents that are serious deviations. Also, highly critical is the reclamation and/or regeneration of used/spent fuel and materials. I think the material science in nucleogenesis and related R&D needs to be advanced as well. Seems the designs can be changed to also be external combustion in design and more closed loop less risks designs in worse case scenario(s). Maybe desalinate water while running through the classical turbines and/or process some landfill waste that isn't recyclable like the plastics nightmare until they're use is more reduced in healthily renewable/recyclable ways... as an added society benefit. I also wonder about more recently dealing with the hydroelectric pumped storage systems... maybe the nuclear plants can cooperate with big agriculture for all of agriculture to pump water from lakes and not underground wells to reprocess the waste water and nutrients and other "-cidals" to reduce those needs and waste. Maybe an agriculture pipeline systems infrastructure.
For a layman like me, are you talking about fast breeder reactors?
Weirdly enough even wind energy has some stigma. My mum who doesn't use internet at all, managed to get convinced that wind turbines cause health problems. Even blamed a bout of sickness on the ones down the road that hadn't even been fully built yet.
I really like this video about "wind turbine sickness", about how fake it is: ua-cam.com/video/d9ckNLI9dRc/v-deo.html
how???
@@Prikense I'd say some quack got on the morning tv shows. As a lot of weird nonsense that's propagated online, ends up being shared on tv eventually.
i think the arguments are: infrasound disability and chopping up of flying creatures.. i found this in wikipedia about infrasound.. this level of sound may be present at some allegedly haunted sites and so cause people to have odd sensations that they attribute to a ghost
@@element5377 Well my mum seemed to think it was the way they generate electricity. Away the things are up now and she hasn't complained since. Almost like she stopped worried when I pulled a timeline for their constrution, to prove that maybe she just caugh a cold.
One thing this completely failed to address is the externalities of fossil fuels and the battery supplies.
The market cannot properly address the problem because of the external used costs.
When I was in college back in the mid 1990's my professor for environmental engineering told us the same fun fact about trace radioactive elements in coal & how exposure to radiation is higher near coal plants than nuclear plants.
Same with oil. I work around crude oil every week. It comes up from 5,000-15,000ft down. Its all radioactive to some degree or another.
As a person in the nuclear field, I can say that molten salt reactors are only used in Red countries, due to the fact that it runs hotter, and at lower pressures. however even the smallest introduction of water, will cause the entire reactor to explode. since they use liquid sodium as a moderator. for those who know about basic chemistry, when sodium is exposed to water, there is a exothermic reaction, causing the chemical reaction site to release a bunch of heat. this is increased in magnitude with a salt reactor. its is the primary reason that in the non-red countries, its preferable to use water cooled reactors. it is overall safer to personal and has a few configurations, including but not limited to PWRs (Pressurized Water Reactors) and open pool reactors.
The main advantage of water is that it is used for 3 purposes, over sodium. a moderator (allows for fast neutrons to reach thermal neutron levels of energy), a reflector (re-directs neutron radiation back into the fuel area, thus increasing the neutron flux density within the fuel area), and a shield (basically, the more water there is between the people spaces, and the reactor fuel. the less dose rate the people working at the site receive. thus, you can store spare water for the reactor itself, in its shielding layer. which is normally lead, boron, polyurethane, and steel).
Another miss understanding in the video, is that the uranium fuel is extremely limited. this is not true. yes, there is about 8 million tons available on surface deposits. however what is wrong is the duration of the fuel loss when used. U-25 has a very long reaction chain before it becomes stable. resulting in statistically 2-3 times more overall power output then breeder or thorium reaction chains respectfully. this means that gram for gram, U-25 can generate significantly more overall power, in a smaller space. most civilian reactors today use enriched fuel pellets, which is about 7-8% enrichment, basically takes out enough U-28 to raise the 0.7% concentration to 7%. or about 90% of U-28. the 'depleted uranium' or U-28 extracted this way is used for tank armor or ammunition.
The main reason the red countries use thorium over uranium, is that majority of the surface uranium deposits are found in the Continental United States. where as thorium is mostly acquired in Asia. it is significantly harder to weaponize thorium, which is why its easier for other countries looking into nuclear energies are aloud to use them.
The final overlooked point, is that uranium fuel is not at all like oil, coal, or NG. 1 gram of U-24 will last YEARS, where as 1 gram of other fuels will last about a fraction of a fraction of the time in the power generation process. in civilian powerplants, the same fuel that is loaded day one, will be used until 3-10 years depending on fuel loading and power demand. so that 8 million tons of surface uranium, will not last a few years like you predict, but in fact over 10,000 years after processing. this can be extended with power conservation efforts and renewables. since nuclear power is a variable power generator, you can lower it when renewables would generate constant power, meaning, you don't need a power storage sites. unlike other conventional power generation facilities, nuclear can scale its power level. where as conventional sites will consume the same constant amount of fuel, but can generate excess, unused power, this is why in dams or other facilities, they shut off generators, to maintain a proper consumption to generation ratios.
I could go on, but its a UA-cam comment. so not a proper place to perform a educated rebuttal to your video.
So what are your thoughts on pebble bed reactors?
@@jims2267 personally, I think it would be a dumb idea in practice.
first off, you have to load new fuel similar to how they do it with most current civilian reactors with a fuel pellet design. except now you have to place each fuel 'ball' in a location that would cause the reactors neutron flux to change slightly over core life. this means that they have to prevent a bunch of balls that use the space between them for coolant flow, from A) melting at peak fuel temperatures, and B) shifting from mechanical/natural vibrations. the big issue I don't trust personally, is the fact that its not 100% predictable of what is happening to the fuel while the reactor is in operation. on paper, it may seem great. however, like screws on large machinery, over time, the stresses and micro vibrations may cause things to shift and bend. so, unless they can map and simulate the flux of the pebble fuel in near real time. I fear the reactor is not as predictable as gen 2 or 3 reactors.
@Firstname Lastname I didn't know about the explosive nature of molten salt when combined with water. In your comment, however, you forget to mention what happens when water starts boiling or leaks away from a water reactor. Instead of slowing down the chain reaction, this increases the chain reaction. Physically exploding salt may be less harmful than a run-away nuclear fission reaction in the open air. As you may well know, this melt-down problem has already occurred in several different reactors at several different locations.
You claim that the Uranium 235 chain reaction delivers 2-3 times more power than Thorium or breeder Uranium. That is nice. However, the Uranium 235 isotope is 0.7% of all available Uranium isotopes. So if power is 3 times as much as other Uranium isotopes, you compare 3 x 0.7% = 2.1 % of power to the power available from the other sources (97.9% more power available). If you raise Uranium 235 from 0.7% to 7%, you need 10 times the natural Uranium as input. Enrichment of Uranium does not solve the problem of the limited availability of Uranium 235, does it?
The 8 million tons of Uranium is the estimated total amount available. Of that amount only 0.7% is U235. You are right that you need much less nuclear fuel than fossil fuel. However, the world estimated amount of oil is about 1.65 trillion barrels of oil (47 years to go) and 1.14 trillion tons of coal (133 years left). A trillion (10^12) is a million times bigger than a million.
Please let me know if I misunderstood something.
@@anneblankert2005 so, most water reactors have what is called a 'void coefficient of reactivity'. this is what happens when liquid water turns into steam, or is absent. most reactors will have a negative void coefficient. this way, if there is ever boiling or lack of coolant, the reactor is less likely to be self sustaining.
a example of a reactor with a positive void coefficient is Chernobyl, as the tips of the control rods counted as voids for that type of reactor. basically, the material used does not absorb or reflect neutral flux's. so when boiling occurred, it caused a increase in fission rate, which caused a significant increase in steam pressure... basically it exploded due to steam pressure, not because of a fission explosion. i talk about the tips, since when the operator raised the control rods, while there was little cooling, it added 2 forms of reactivity to the core (industry standard practice is to limit changes of reactivity to one source; control rods, steam loads, or adjusting cooling flow).
as for the issue with water released, from a water reactor. since all reactors are contained in a primary containment building. since these buildings are not designed to withstand high pressures, there is a pressure dump where the steam from the primary leak is sent to a condenser. but its rare for that to occur, since the volume of the primary containment is designed to hold, even if 100% of all the coolant was turned into steam. its just a failsafe for the steam dump to a condenser. there is also methods of forced cooling, to rapidly flood ( and cool down) a reactor's containment. honestly, it depends on the design of the plant and what the engineers decided is the best methods. its why every nuclear power plant is different.
as for the fuel, again, its not like a car engine that needs to top off its tanks. most fuel lasts years. a 1000MW reactor is typically loaded with about 100 tons of enriched fuel, and lasts for about 4 years at full power output. the average fuel enrichment of the reactor is typically 2%, since a fresh new reactor is at 4%ish. fuel assembly's are periodically replaced and refueled on a 12-24 month basis. (this is based on open pool reactors using fuel pellets at 4% enrichment)
if we assume your math, if we enriched the 8 million tons of Uranium ore into 4% enriched fuel, we get about 1.4 million tons of fuel. in 2019, the world consumed about 23900 terawatt hours of energy. so if we used that as a base line for yearly consumption rate. its about 2.7 terawatts per hour. so, if we had ONLY nuclear power plants around the world, using all of our uranium supply at that rate. it would only last 20.7 years. however, currently, in the world, nuclear power accounts for 10% of the worlds current generation, so, its more like 207 years now, and of all these reactors, some are thorium, or breeder reactors. so, the supply of limited uranium is quickly looking like it will last a few centuries at least.
hopefully, this answered a few of your concerns.
as for the reaction of sodium with water, just look up 'rare earth metals react with water' here on UA-cam. that would answer your question.
@LTNetjak which carrier reactors? A4W? A1B? or A2W? each one is different in size, and the safety systems for each requires seawater availability.
even so, the reason the reactors are so small on carriers is because they dont use cooling towers, but rather sea water condensers. so, unless you explain the cooling method to replace the huge cooling towers with something tiny. i dont personally think using naval reactors as emergency substation backup power generators.
the US Army once had a nuclear power program too, look up SL-1. it was suppose to do exactly as your saying. but it was canned for reasons.
"if someone isn't comfortable near a nuclear power plant, that affects their quality of life, and that can't just be dismissed."
unfortunately people say that about wind turbines, 5g towers, vaccines, ffp2 masks, mosques, refugees or bicycle lanes, too.
You get NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard) everywhere in the world unfortunately.
While my son was at university a few years ago, one of his professors was virulently against coal and oil energy plants.
Then state authorities opened up the land to wind turbine installation near where he owned a very nice rural home with impressive views. You can see how he changed his tune overnight. NIMBYism is strong in everyone, including well paid uni profs with rural homes.
@-GinΠΓ Τάο water vapor is just water.
Heat radiates into space except to the extent it is trapped by the atmosphere, and CO2 (having three atoms hence more modes of vibration) is better at trapping it than O2 or N2.
The best place to build a nuclear power plant is next to and existing nuclear power plant. (or call it an expansion or upgrade). People who live near one are generally pretty happy with all the high paying jobs generated.
PR is an expense in any industry. Nuclear can't expect to get it for free.
Thank you Sabine. I live in a place where most of our electricity comes from nuclear. I am super excited about enriching thorium and molten salt reactor technologies for awhile. Thank you for this video. 😎
try and keep tabs with progress in nuclear efficiency/cost over the next few years. Solar already has demonstrated in labs 1000x. Even at just 30-50x that would mean ONE solar panel powers your entire house.
Solar will EAT all other competitors.
I find it funny that they are only now starting to look at the cost of production and running costs in relation to co2.
I find it really unfortunate though that they never ever bother looking at the end of life costs where the numbers become really horrific.
Those are basically lies from Greenpeace et al who demand absolutely ridiculous overkill for disposal. Disposal of nuclear waste is easy, cheap, and safe. You just have to ignore everything the liars from the Greens tell you and listen to the actual experts such as most leading climate scientists.
This is a great point. End of life of each method should always be included in such discussions. I'd also like to see "failure risks" and "fear of failure risks" get treated separately. Seeing historical data on how each kind of energy production fared when faced with natural disasters (earthquakes, tsunamis, cyclones, fires), as well as reparation costs, would also be good information to have.
yes just think of the disposal issues for a lot of renewabls
this was an incredibly informative video. I haven't changed my stance on nuclear, I still think it is without a doubt the best type of energy production we currently have, especially factoring in that I live in a cold climate where both wind and solar are extremely unreliable 3-4 months per year and since our politicians have closed nuclear reactors do we expect rolling power outages 2-3 times per week, 4-5 hours each time this winter due to lack of electricity and sky high electricity prices when we have electricity in our homes.
Event though Nuclear isn't 100% green it is significantly more green than the alternatives like wind or solar. The only real pollution from Nuclear comes from building the plant and mining, refining the fuel. But it is outweighed by how efficient nuclear is at energy production. Compare that to say wind turbines that has an average life span of about 30 years, sounds good on paper until you dig a little deeper and realize that the cost of creating a single turbine would take about 25 years to recover, not to mention the sheer amount of oil needed to keep it lubricated. You also need vast areas of land that then become unusable. And to top it of about 250k birds are killed by turbines every year. All that just for a measly 5 years of energy net positive at the verge of the turbines lifespan. (if it even makes it that far)
@@RusskiBlusski we had a turbine topple over recently in sweden and it spilled out roughly 3000 liters of oil into nature...
Problem is - it's also the most expensive. By far. And a lot of the cost isn't even factored in yet. Renewables are now so much cheaper - so I really don't see nuclear energy being there in the long run. But maybe for now - tackling climate change - it might help.
@@Semmelein renewables are cheaper when they actually run, which is almost not at all.
the electricity price we have this month is 3 times more expensive than we have ever had any winter month through out our entire history (when counting in inflation) and this is in the middle of summer. this price is also roughly 10 times higher than we have ever had a summer month through out our history.
this insane price increase have been going since our polititians turned off two of our nuclear reactors.
we need a way of producing electricity on demand and that is one thing that isn't possible with renewables cause you can't make the wind blow or sun shine on demand.
we are also now looking at a big risk of rolling power outages 4-6 hours, 2-5 times per week because we will not have enough electricity
@@isaks3243 Then you must live in one of the northern countries, except Norway. They are extra retarded: I know, they live an outdated mindset not allowing nuclear generators. So they buy Carbon quotas and buy coal from Denmark and others. Stuck in 1950s. Look at France they have a nuclear power generating clean energy for profit. Germany is the same as Norway, they have closed their coal plants, but resource them (LN gas) from Russia... Which resulted in this political catastrophy in Europe. Warned by Trump (love him/hate him), but they ignored this. Stupid.
Thanks for this excellent video! A few remarks from an economist's perspective:
-Not enough Uranium: availability could be increased substantially by reprocessing and also when new mines are discovered (which usually happens, cf. peak-oil discussion).
-Cost: grid and storage costs are not factored in for renewables in LCOE, but will become increasingly important as will cost of (limited) resources, especially in the building phase. Over lifetime, nuclear might still be profitable because so much energy is produced, thus also attracting private investments, but only if there is legal certainty about future regulations.
-Renewable death toll: these are mostly industrial accidents and should be compared to comparable average industrial fatality rates (imo).
I guess the reprocessing is already in the calculation as it has always been the practice.
@@0MoTheG There is few reprocessing happening, because it's more expensive than mined uranium I believe. France does it, who else?
@@puma7171 Every nuclear power.
They used to be wild for the Pu and also the elements must be reworked every so often because they mechanically decay.
This video is misleading
Life of nuclear plant is 80 years 4 times that of solar or wind
And thrice of gas
Twice of coal
Which means levelized costs of lifetime is baised towards solar and wind
And then storage costs is not calculated for wind and solar which is 200 dollars for kwh for 20 years
Economic history might help deepen the argument regarding uranium. When gold was the monetary base in much of the world, higher gold demand drove more widespread searching and new mining and processing technologies. Supply reacted to demand. The same can be said for oil. The argument could be applied prospectively to uranium too: higher demand may provide better information on uranium stores and make our use of it more efficient in the long run.
I really enjoyed this video. I love how you just presented the facts, with very little personal opinion. (which I think was appropriate and also well communicated to be so)
I sure appreciate the broad and careful way you explore topics. Because I live not ‘too far’ from huge solar and wind farms I have had years to see their effects on the environment. When windy the wind farms aren’t operating because (according to my power company contacts) there’s no place to store the extra energy and cheaper sources are used when possible. The solar farms are huge and really destroy whole regions for nature and also are not collecting or storing power the way we would like due to the economics of power companies using cheaper sources and the limited optimal daylight. Your comments about using what makes sense for an area are spot on.
Excellent video as usual. Suggestion: A video about nuclear waste management and recycling this type of waste.
She wouldn't want to do that, mate. The whole nuclear power house of cards will come tumbling down.
They make weapons from it.
Thanks for the suggestion!
I would love that too, since I think it’s the most serious problem with that energy type.
Also, if you make energy cheaper without changing the marketplace, people will just spend the savings doing other destructive stuff. The marketplace depends on what people want in their lives, how they perceive costs and benefits. This will require a revolution of values.
You cannot completely dismiss the waste disposal. It will still add to the overall costs. The facilitiess containing and working the wastes also have a carbon footprint and add a significant chunk the price tag.
Not necessarily, as there is so little volume and mass of waste produced. Also, some molten salt breeder reactors are designed to run on nuclear waste as a fuel. That eliminates the need for a long-term waste disposal.
No you shouldn't and I'd be interested where all the electronic waste from PV and windfarms is going after the equipment has reached the end of it's lifetime.
@@heggedaal It goes directly into the production of new PVs and Windfarms. Copper is extremely valuable, nobody throws that away. That being said, PV panels can last basically forever, it's just that their energy production goes down over time.
@@Luxalpa "It goes directly into the production of new PVs ..." That's exactly what I doubt. So far we're exporting all of our electronic waste to Africa. Copper there is reclaimed by burning the trash with detrimental results.
I doubt also that PV panels last forever. That is plainly wrong. Albeit their electronic waste amount is quite small (basically glas with some aluminium leads and a bit of gallium etc.) it is the huge amount of this waste that is going to pose a problem.
@@Luxalpa PV's don't last forever, they begin to degrade as soon as they come out of the box and only last for about 30 years before replacement is needed. Then they become toxic waste because the glass is loaded up with toxic elements to improve transparency and efficiency. A study from India found that spend PV panels leach toxic elements into ground water no matter the disposal conditions, cracked ones were the worst but even pristine ones leached. After hurricanes in the USA all the smashed solar panels have to be swept up and thrown out where they leach toxins into the ground water.
In my 30-year career in the production of electricity, the first 17 I worked in a fossil fuel plant. I worked in a nuclear power plant in California my last 13 years and I would say that where to put the waste for over 100,000 years is one of the biggest challenges. Regarding life cycle, we were on an 18-month cycle at which time we did a partial refueling and a core shuffle. Only about 1/3 of the fuel rods were degraded enough to no longer be usable. The uranium burns out unevenly throughout the core and based on engineering they would shuffle the rods around to maximize this fuel burnout and only put in about 1/3 new fuel rods at each 18 month interval. It was also a time for doing major maintenance as needed.
Thank you for this clear and engaging discussion. I look forward to seeing more of your videos.
Can you please address the problem of waste disposal please?
Great video, subscribed. I'm grateful for having a brother who has a PhD in plasma physics and every time fusion is in the media he can tell me with authority what is actually the state of affairs in that field. Funny thing is he works for the Philosophy department of University of Tasmania, his second PhD was in epistemology. He knows what it means to know :)
Gah, it would've been torture for him. Heading towards a PhD and I daily *feel* like I know less and less ... and that's apparently good. Haha ;)
Your presentations are seminal doctorate papers.. every single one of them. I force my son to watch them to learn what science is.
Just one more cent: Modular nuclear plants should also have an advantage that their heat output can be used for heating of nearby town(s). (Conventional power plant usually generates too much heat to be used effectively locally and transporting the heat to longer distances is expensive and needs too much infrastructure).
That's true! However, one needs to remember that heat is cheap compared to electricity (I have already run some numbers on it in the past), so using heat might not improve the economics of SMRs as much as you hope.
Is the modular heat a disadvantage in the summer?
@@brothermine2292 You can use heat for cooling as well.
Look at how a heat pump works. increasing the delta increases the output.
@@brothermine2292 Depends with what you compare it. When there is no demand for the heat, you simply have to dissolve it into atmosphere somehow. But then the conventional power plants have to do that all the time, that's why they have the cooling towers releasing all the warm water vapor. In the end, it's again about trade-offs and local conditions: You could likely use more effectively more of the heat in Canada than in Mexico.
@@jimurrata6785 : I understand the rudiments of heat pumps, and I think you're wrong. Heat pumps become ineffective when the delta is high; for example the heat pump that heats my condo in winter requires switching to a backup "electrical resistance" system (electric current in resistive coils, like a toaster) when it's much colder outside than inside (high delta). In the summertime, the heat pump on the building's roof can't adequately cool the hallways on the hottest days (high delta). Maybe you should be more specific: to where would you suggest pumping away the town's heat in summer?
Thank you for a balanced discussion on nuclear energy. Price seems to be its biggest downfall…after fear.
Price (monetary) is _not_ an issue for currency-issuing government, they can always bring on line as much electricity as real resource availability allows, including of course labour availability to build stuff. The money costs is not a constraint for fiat currency issuers. (Money is not a _real_ resource for a fiat currency issuer. Votes in Parliament to issue the currency are the constraint. They issue currency by typing numbers into bank accounts with a computer, so almost zero energy cost.) They have inflation risk only when real resource constraints are reached (usually labour). So the limiting factor is speed of construction. Sabine doe snot understand monetary economics, but cannot be blamed, since she lives in the eurozone which self-imposes unnecessary austerity (because they still think their currency is like gold).
Is Mr Smith saying that you can just print more money or borrow more if you need it? Ah. That only works if you are an exporting nation.
They always say price, but look a Europe.... France has cheap reliable energy and the rest has expensive unreliable renewables.
Because you have to rely on Gas.
@@Robert-cu9bm so the answer is nuclear and renewables. Gas and coal can go away now if it weren't for irrational fear of nuclear
@@Robert-cu9bm France offers indeed one of the cheapest electricity in Europe, thanks to its nuclear power plants that are financially self-sufficient, including the daily costs, maintenance and ultimately decommissioning. The initial investment is pretty steep, but a nuclear power plant lasts at least 60 years, giving far enough time to pay it off and even more.
In the 80's I had a small part in a large geotechnical engineering project to leverage Nevada's Yucca Valley for nuclear waste. That story line is probably worth a small mention in this discussion. Even if seen as less unsafe than alternatives by experts like Sabine, the public is unlikely to allow safest storage alternatives like Yucca. As a result, we have numerous small waste storage sites across the country, which seems even less safe than the original Yucca Valley plan.
LIE- The nuclear waste issue would be solved if Yucca Mountain were just opened.”
TRUTH - The 1983 Nuclear Waste policy act specifically stated that no less than 2 nuclear waste disposal sites would be established so that no one part of the U.S. would get all the waste. And that the disposal would be in the scientifically best location and that is a salt formation. Yucca mountain is an extinct volcano and not a salt formation.
In 2014, the amount of spent nuclear waste stored at the 100+ reactor sites in the U.S. exceeded the design capacity of Yucca Mountain so if it was ever opened, it cannot hold all the U.S. commercial waste now generated.
The U.S. high level radioactive waste generated from the production of weapons grade U239 far exceeds that from commercial power plants. Hanford Wa. Has 53 million gallons of high-level radioactive waste in rusting underground tanks. Savannah River Site has 43 million gallons of high-level radioactive waste. That does not take into account high level radioactive waste stored at other DOE sites.
Yucca Mountain was chosen for purely political reasons and it was abandoned for purely political reasons. Trump killed the project completely. We already have a nuclear waste problem that must someday be addressed but it is NOT solved by any means.
محطات الطاقة النووية أقل كفاءة من محطات الوقود الأحفوري .
لأن المحطات النووية تبرد بالماء فقط ، بينما المحطات الأحفورية تبرد بالماء وبالهواء .
ولأن الهواء مجاني ، هذا يجعل تكلفة الواط الأحفوري أقل من الواط النووي .
Excellent, unbiased video. Rare these days. Well done.
Not really, it's loaded. For example Chernobyl was not an "accident" neither is it an accident when you design something to fail, as in putting your backups in a flood zone.
How can all the deaths by hydro be from one failed dam in China? I know of people who drowned in reservoir drains, both maintaining them and swimming in them.
More like lazy research, falling for propaganda and putting out this poor piece of video. Worst video I saw her upload
A bit lacking on the economics. Nuclear is cheap, but when you have lots of regulations, low number and no subsedies the price rises, similarly Solar is cheap because of this as well.
@@metagen77 The deaths for hydropower are *dominated* by a single accident she said. They are not all deaths. Wikipedia says that dam failure Sabina mentioned killed 240,000 people, not 170,000 (although "more than 170,000" does include 240,000.., and you'll find different numbers because those drowned were just lost etc). The next most lethal dam failure killed around 5,000 people.
So yes. It's accurate to say the deaths are *dominated* by a single accident.
@@kedrednael You are right I misrepresented this part, should have listened
Yeah, it's "unbiased" in the sense that it completely ignores two huge problems with nuclear energy: 1) the unsolved problem of long term storage of nuclear waste (longer than the average life span of a human civilization) and 2) proliferation of nuclear arms. Especially non-proliferation becomes nigh impossible if the world starts using large numbers of small modular reactors.
"Is nuclear power green"
This is not the question to ask.
"Is nuclear power greener"
Is the proper question to ask. Thanks for the excellent video.
I'd be very interested in knowing whether that "Levelized cost of energy" has the same metrics for nuclear vs. all the other kinds. My guess is that legal fees & regulatory requirements are *counted* for nuclear but not for any of the "green" sources.
There's a reason both George Monbiot & (un-personed Greenpeace founder) Patrick Moore are nuclear power advocates, and it's not because there's some sort of nuclear "sugar daddy" paying Green leaders to defect...
The only "green" that our governments are concerned with is "green" paper with 1s and with a lot of zeros...
Thanks for simplifying the explanation of the breeder reactors, these new modular ones, and the LFTR's Sabine. You even covered insurance costs which in U.S. big government assumes like how we subsidize big oil. I'm a Hanford down winder these past six years now with one reported collapse of their jury rigged septic tanks, along the Columbia River. It's better than living by Hood Canal where all the nuclear weapons are when the Cascade Fault goes I guess. The state of New Mexico is much worse, clean up of open pit Midnite Mine on Spokane Tribal Land is coming along though in Washington. From what I hear about Fukushima, they were getting away with using MOX. Chernobyl was very dumb idea. Farming, and GMO food doesn't seem to be raising much healthy cultural diversity, or intelligent awareness in North America😅 When I lived in Idaho I tried to help Snake River Alliance and learned about Yucca Mountain too of the Eastern Shoshone. One day I helped with nuclear waste removal at McMurdo Station, Antarctica in 1975, and I've deployed on two different nuclear powered carriers with their super saturated steam power, they can go terribly fast! I think I 'd rather live like my First Nation ancestors often rather than all this excavating and trampling down the earth, and oceans, peace to you.
1:53 As an Italian... I feel your pain. We got rid of all of our new clear power (and everything else new and clear) after Chernobyl.
And then we started buying power from France. Who in turn promptly started building Superphénix reactors right on the border.
Because apparently *they* didn't get hit with an epidemic of the sudden stupid.
As a #YIMBY (Yes! In my back yard!) I’m extremely happy with the nuclear power plants that run here in Illinois. They displaced the disgusting coal plants that were making Chicago’s air quality utterly terrible and they’ve had amazing economic effects on the towns where they’ve been built. The towns are thriving , prosperous, and so amazingly clean. Plus our power costs are a fraction of places like California that are trying so hard to be “green” by destroying massive nature preserves to build solar and wind. I get that Nuclear is unpopular, but that’s really something that we as a society need go get over. Nuclear is needed for our future. Discounting it is not a useful path forward.
Everybody thinks of Chernobil as the latest and greatest. It was probably old tech when it was build. Like saying I'm not flying, because look at the 40s Soviet airplane technology.
@N Fels I’m not speaking in hyperbole. I mean that quite literally. Look up the TED talk from Michael Shellenberger entitled “Why I changed my mind about Nuclear power”. He actually has a couple of videos on the topic. In the video he describes the environmental destruction he found himself a part of in trying to deploy wind and solar.
I’m not saying wind and solar are useless. There are circumstances under which they can preferable or even ideal. But there has been some very questionable decision making in California where they shut down highly effective nuclear plants and replace them with wind and solar projects which require incredible amounts of land clearing, doing untold damage to the environment. All in the name of saving the environment.
@N Fels You are honestly saying that it's not destruction to slaughter an endangered species of bird like the Yuma clapper rail and rare desert tortoises? You honestly think that's comparable to a local increase in river temperature without any other stated effects?
Michael Shellenberger is a Time Magazine "Hero of the Environment" and President of Environmental Progress, a research and policy organization. Exactly the type of high level environmentalist that is pushing wind and solar. He was literally out there doing some of the clearing and witnessed the destruction of local species.
You can dismiss him out of hand if you want, but then why are you commenting? You have no position if you're not willing to engage and debate the facts.
I'm visiting Dresden tomorrow for a tour!! So excited:)
@@thewiirocks A lot of the nuclear plants shut down in California were super old. Also keep in mind most of California is prone to earthquakes.
Did you even watch the video btw? Dr. Hossenfelder points out that current nuclear technology, if increased 10x will run out of U235 fuel in 20 years.
Maybe we should also talk about the technologies for power storage, that would also change the renewables equation.
You mean their carbon footprint ?
oh right because power storage aka batteries for those who are not mentally impaired don't have a carbon footprint.
What you need is a world war to cure your bs obsession for carbon that goes from earth back on earth using nature.
Yes and no. Most power storage technologies don't emit CO2 (or other bad things), so short discussion.
@@joeferreti9442 but their construction does. That's why driving a new EV can take between 60-90k miles before the co2 benefits kick in
@@stuartburns8657 When the energy is produced climate friendly that effect is reduced drastically.
Hi Sabine. Would you consider a short video about Oklo, Gabon? This natural fission site is fascinating. Your take on it, with your background and unique style/humor, would be very interesting and (I'm certain) entertaining too.
Oak Ridge ran a molten salt reactor for more than a decade since the 1960s. It can be done in the long run.
There was just no interest in developing it because all the investment in the US went to pressurized water reactors used by the US Navy in aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines. In these use cases there is never ever the fear of running out of cooling water. So these type of reactors received funding and the thorium molten salt reactor in Oak Ridge laboratory was shut down.
Great summary, as always Sabine!
Nuclear gives power on demand. Yes it does, but there's a limit to this, you can't vary the power at will, this has to do with build up of 135Xe, which absorbs neutrons and can make a reactor unstable. MSR design can help remove Xe
Thorium is currently available abundantly in existing 'waste' piles of rare earth mines. Germany had a Thorium-based THTR300 powerplant in Nordrhein-Westfalen operating from 1983 to 1989.
Such a shame that they decided to shut it down after some fuel balls got stuck. And because of national policy and fear after the Chernobyl incident.
wouldn't it be possible to vary power at will by cogenerating heat and/or hydrogen and switching between power and heat at demand? Present designs are not made for that. But with some changes it should be possible in future.
You can easily vary the power on demand by wasting steam or directing more steam through the turbine.
Xenon comes from iodine decay, so...hydrogen from excess power of renewables or nuclear is a viable option with a lot of problems and no one has done it yet. And no venting excess steam is wasting energy, so no...edit thorium cycle is a proliferation nightmare thats the reason no one is willing to scale it up ...
Spot on. In fact it was xenon moderation which contributed to the Chernobyl explosion. There are some ways around the loading rates problems. In a coal fired station with modern controls we could do step load changes of 20% at 10% per minute, but due to combustion stability we had a minimum load of 20%. But we had a 100% turbine steam bypass system so we could use this to absorb excess steam to enable very rapid load reductions 500 MW to house load in less than a second. I know that similar systems are used in the nuclear industry as our LP bypass valves were nuclear power steam turbine valves re-purposed. Of course they only work for load reductions, not load increases unless you run the reactor flat out and dump excess steam through the bypass to control output. Not very economic and very, very noisy.
I am sure that with sufficient R&D some of the rate limitations of fusion could be worked out.
Also coordination of nuclear reactors with pumped storage would be a good combination in some electricity grids, but don't mention batteries or I'll have a melt-down.
The problem at the moment is the people making these decisions don't understand that (A) you need base load and (B) Renewables just cannot economically or environmentally provide it. That is if you don't want every square meter of land covered in solar panels and windmills.
France's reactors can ramp at +-5% / min over a wide range of power output. That's about as fast as a combined cycle gas turbine. That's plenty fast enough.
Thank you Sabine. Your logic is inescapable. Common sense minus the "spin" is so refreshing and rare.
Pure science is not common sense but science. The common needs to be added on political level. And that is the game changer.
Well almost up until she answers the question "is nuclear power green?", the physical arguments should have led her to the conclusion "Yes it is." but she conflates social and economic arguments against it as making it less green? and therefore "complicated"
Oilmen and bankers don’t make much money with nuclear power so they have been using propaganda to denounce it since 3 Mile Island incident. Both Chernobyl and Fukushima were built in the 70s. The main contractor for Fukushima was GE. If they had placed the backup generators two floors up to stay above the water there would not have been an accident. 2020 news said Trump stopped Bill Gate’s TerraPower fourth generation nuclear power plant project with China for national security reasons. 2021 I read Bill Gate’s book. I am convinced of his analyses, the world should move from fossil fuel to green but the only hope to save the planet from global warming is technology yet to be invented and nuclear power is a good bet. When all cars in the world turned electric it will cut emission by 6.5%. The current progress is much too slow while the poles are melting. China manufactures or owns 50% of wind power, 90% solar, it has completed its first fourth generation nuclear power plant and exporting third generation to Pakistan and Argentina. Along the Belt and Road China will build green infrastructures per geographic conditions, some countries have more sun and others more wind, some can use dams and others can pay for nuclear. China also is the biggest user of carbon heavy materials such as steel and concrete so they have a huge need to move from coal to oil to gas to green to nuclear. I believe China is doing the most advanced researches on Thorium reactors and atomic fusion. Who knows, maybe in our lifetime China will make breakthroughs to save the world. Before that can happen the world need to change. Western oil tycoons and dollar bankers will not let nuclear power, solar, wind and Chinese Yuan to take away their empire. Only when US hegemony is overthrown can human save herself.
@@dirk-janheemstra4064 Sabine understands what nuclear idealists don't: many great plans fail not because they are bad, but because they can't overcome costs, and other powerful, very real concerns - like public perceptions. That she points these concerns out is the difference between ignorance and reality.
"Your logic is inescapable." I have heard that so many times in my long life. Good luck.
Regarding mortality ratings of human activities, practically ANY catagory immaginable will have shocking statistics. Sports/ recreation, timber, farming, metalurgy, transportation, medicine, and on and on and on. Life is deadly.
The accident at Fukushima was forseen, planned and designed for, however the in-depth-design-defense was not sufficient for the actual conditions of a known fault line at 2 tectonic plates. undersea. Had there been proper engineering of the sea wall, the spent fuel storage and the emergency backup generators, the accident would not have happened or could have been controlled to much less catastrophic results.
Glad you said that about the chemical industry, as most people don’t know that the most popular brand of fire retardant, Phos-Chek, was created by Monsanto and has many harmful chemicals, including glyphosates, and this years fire season is likely to see record amounts dropped all across the world. Maybe more than any farming method has previously introduced, and even “organic” labeled foods are found to contain these harmful substances. Mean while, even though nuclear power is broken (not in a good way), everyone is still ignoring obvious danger from the chemical industry.
I don’t believe technology can solve the ecological issue. How do people actively reduce or reverse their carbon foot print by planting trees? etc.
This explains in detail very well. So basically i come to a similar conclusion of not using fossil fuels, use part renewables and part nuclear depending on the location and practicality. But also improve nuclear power tech, resource acquistion and all chains of the proces. And storage tech, for the renewables.
My conclusion is to invest money in research to improve the tech and make it more viable. China just spent over a trillion researching thorium reactors and are currently running real world tests. Unfortunately, we live in a country that only worships markets and always trying to stop public funding.
Corporations will not spend what's needed to make nuclear more safe and viable. We are where are due to public investment but have not made any major advancements in decades because it's mostly in private hands using decades old tech.
@@robertnicholls9917 absolutely. Even in a neoliberal economy, states must invest in 'positive externality'. Climate change is only down to governments. Instead we get a) individuals problem stop taking baths and unplug the tv or b)capitalists will somehow fix it even though they basically have one short term aim and some can't even see the bigger picture for their own company to survive let alone society.
@@jorgepeterbarton Exactly! That's why I think it's a wrap. We're going to exceed that temperature threshold because everyone has been trained to worship the corporations and high net worth individuals who caused this.
Even now, as a 1200 km ice shelf just broke off of Antarctica, we're still squabbling.
Unfortunate, the leaders today are corrupt with no vision. The PMCs who actually have the knowledge and knowhow won't risk their standing in society to challenge the leaders they work for. It's been decades of doing nothing.
That's why I was disappointed when she took a shot at activists based on their waste worries, then, spent no time discussing waste. They worry because these assholes have lied to us for decades. They don't even admit leaks unless you go out of your way to get that info.
Anyway, I don't mind nuclear but we are nowhere close to making it 100% safe, which is what's needed. Or, something close enough that won't mean total destruction of the environment it fails in. Unfortunately, the same people who are for nuclear hate the idea of public spending to advance it.
The nuclear energy industry is the one industry that should absolutely be nationalized because of the materials we're dealing with. That's why I don't think those pushing nuclear are serious.
We can easily fix the issues she discussed (generally speaking) but it won't happen in private industry. They don't have the money.
Nuclear adds energy that would otherwise not be part of the mix, it is therefore heatying Earth and can't be part of the solution to heating.
@@robertnicholls9917 Nothing is 100% safe, but nuclear when built properly is 99.999% safe. Even in the Cherynobl Exclusion Zone the natural environment still exists, and is doing fairly well. Life has been dealing with radiation since forever, and it will find a way. As far as I'm concerned we shouldn't be worried about nuclear waste tens of thousands of years into the future, because if we aren't around to manage it or store it properly we have probably destroyed everything anway, with climate change or atomic weapons, and there won't be any people to worry about. As far as the environment, life finds a way, and radiation isn't an existential threat. However I totally agree with you that nuclear energy should not be left to the private sector, and I haven't seen anyone saying that we should, it's governments that need to create it, not companies.
whoops - just watched the rest of the video. My opinion (as a power engineer) is that the waste issue, i.e. safely storing waste for tens of thousands of years - is a very significant issue.
Note: There were underground natural nuclear reactors in Oklo, Gabon, a few billion years ago, running for millions of years. We know what happens to nuclear waste after being buried for a billion years in a water rich environment. The plutonium moved about 5 ft.
The one issue that Sabine seemed to gloss over is that earlier on she mentioned the issue that battery backup would be needed when considering solar and wind, but then when she showed the cost of power comparing the different sources solar and wind continued to drop decline while nuclear increased. This is a faulty picture. In fact, since solar power is only available during the daytime, between 9 AM and 3 PM, solar resources will provide over 100% of total needed power when they produce a mere 17% of total average power. Increasing solar resources beyond this point requires massive battery backup power so it can be stored until it can be used, primarily between 4 PM and 8 PM when power usage reaches its maximum. This battery requirement greatly increases the resources required to support solar, including massive Lithium mining.
Maybe a follow-up video on atomic waste and finding suitable final disposal sites would be interesting. You made it seem quite easy in your summary and I would like to hear your arguments. From what I've heard, it would be really difficult (speaking as a German) to find one in Germany, and I think it is doubtful that other countries accept and store our waste. Unless you pay a lot of money, which then makes the technology even more expensive.
It is NOT difficult to find one here in Germany. For scientists it isnt. Politicians and lay people cant find a suitable place, cause they simply dont want one in their vicinity. Its a political and societal issue, not a scientific one.
@@hooplehead1019 I'm still not sure to claim it was easy, especially if we started producing more waste. The more waste, the bigger the storage facility and the bigger the stone layer has to be (salt, granite or clay), which must not have cracks. Or you have to built several smaller storage sites. Also, even if the wish of most people not to live near the deposit site may not be rational, it's still a real life problem. Im also wondering whether the costs for storing the waste long term and for deconstruction of the nuclear power plants after their life time has been included in the CO2 emission and cost tables she showed, as she didn't mention it and it wasn't listed in the tables while other factors were.
@@sebastiandierks7919 Ofc its a problem if people are irrational. We cant risk our future because people are irrational and give in to their irrationality. We cant do that in any major, complex problem we face: People have also been irratinal about climate change per se (not accepting it, because - look! - it snows outside). With Corona. With cars. With wind turbines. There simply is neither time nor leeway to comfort people´s irrationality - we must explain, convince and if necessary ignore or fight that irrationality.
The storage facility is a binary need - you need to have one, because you have waste, but the amount of waste is neglibible to other kinds of waste. Meaning the storage site itself doesnt really scale with energy production.
Costs of storage is small: Most people misunderstand that you dont need to calculate costs for the storage time of 100k yrs, but mainly for the time the waste is deposited there. After that, a couple of dozens of yrs, the site will be closed. Even better, waste reduces the cost of nuclear, if it is recycled for fast reactors, generating much more energy (approx. x8) with the waste in its 2nd than in its 1st cycle of usage.
@@sebastiandierks7919, Well said! The speaker fails to factor in the gargantuan costs of de-commissioning nuclear power plants (reportedly it takes twenty years to do this), not to mention the gargantuan costs of deep geological storage of radio-active waste, at present just a gleam in the eye of most countries on the planet . . .
Great work Sabine, I really enjoyed the video. One correction on the negative reactivity coefficient. This is a key design feature for current nuclear power plants. The RBMK reactors were exceptions as they were over moderated. Any plant built today, (including SFR and PWR), must have negative power coefficients. If they don’t, the NRC (or similar governing body) will prohibit them from running, this happened in Canada with their MAPLE reactor.
Side note, MSR do have amazing reactivity coefficients, and there are some designs which theoretically allow for the reactor to be run without control rods by relying on temperature shifts alone (i.e. if you want to run at power power, you allow the reactor to heat up a bit). That being said, the NRC really likes control rods :) And all future MSR designs will likely use them.
power power -> lower power?
Yes, should have been ‘lower power’ thank you for the correction :)
The reactivity coefficient doesn't come only from the temperature coefficient, even as you said, it depends on the amount of moderator in the active zone, so it's possible to have a reactor with a positive temperature coefficient while having an overall reactivity coefficient negative.
I heard/read that a big part of the costs of building a nuclear power plant is due to the stigma. That since the general population are fearful of nuclear power, that constructions can get bogged down in political miasma and increase costs.
However I admit I do not the specifics of building a plant.
It doenst help but that doesnt influence the price too much because construction sites are protected, at least here in germany they were.
What makes it complicated is that each reactor is unique and so needs governmental aproval and that takes forever.
Its even worse if youre building a new design or worst case a new technology like a molten salt reactor. That will take forever.
Then finding a proper place to build, design and concept the reactor and then getting it started takes years. The reactor cant go online the day construction has finished. There needs to be a fuel delivery, that takes half a year. Then you have to start operations and ramp the reactor up very slowly, that takes months. Then you ahve to synchronise with the grid and then you can start producing power and be online. That all together takes about two years.
it adds up and there isnt that much to speed up without compromising security and if you look at ohio, Im sure we can agree, that nobody is interested in that.
@@invalid8774 You've correctly identified a lot of problems. You've also inadvertently implicitly identified a lot of fixes for those problems, such as using the same design over and over again, and streamlining the government approval process. The problems with nuclear are political, not technical, but the problems with renewables are technical, not political.
One thing about these molten salt reactors is the presence of numerous decay products in solution. As one person put it, " we're dealing with half the periodic table" in there.
Thanks for the video! I don't think that the question about radioactive waste is unimportant because it changes a lot of numbers: it makes the energy more expensive, less climate friendly (depending which energy you use for transporting the stuff), more dangerous, and puts more uncertainties in the equations.
The more dangerous part is essentialy wrong, and ofc the part about more CO2 emitted and more expanses is typically accounted for whenever we talk about nuclear in the relevant chapter. So it is perfectly fair to dismiss it.
@@marioturiddu2628 How is it wrong? The waste has to be transported. This is an added danger. You can dismiss it, but that doesn't actually make it go away.
The storage facilities are also unlikely to be black holes. They can, and will, leak.
Whenever I see CO2 discussed in this context it is usually in the building and maintaining of the reactor plants, not the waste management at all, but that may be selection bias.
@@marioturiddu2628 An objective risk assessment would have to calculate the risks over the entire time that the waste needs to be stored. Given the long half-life of the waste, that's almost impossible to calculate. But it is incorrect to dismiss the long-term risk out of hand.
Another point that is omitted in the video is the cost of decommissioning old nuclear power plants. That makes the cost comparison even worse for nuclear.
@@dalstein3708 This is a completely impossible standard that I could easily apply to all the chemical waste produced by all renewable energies. There is absolutely no credible scenario studied that pose any treat to us, especially if weighted against the possibility of not reaching a stable system alone with wind and solar, which is far more dangerous. Not only, nuclear waste are present anyway unless you want to cut away all nuclear medicine, so a deposit is absolutely needed nevertheless.
in the LEC typically power plant decommissioning is typically included, do you have a reason to say she omitted it? Just because is not directly mentioned does not mean that it is omitted.
I think you got a key point here. Although the video is a very good scientfic summarization of the pros and cons, the issue on nuclear waste should not be underestimated. Leaving waste that can effect biological life in a very harmful way, radiating up to 100000!!!!!!!!! years, is not what i would regard exactly as environmental friendly power! Even if there were no C02 emissions. On the other hand, humanity needs huge amounts of energy. So we probably have to go with nuclear power nevertheless...
A few years ago they closed my favorite Atomkraftwerk (nuclear power plant) Grafenrheinfeld. It was nice to see the cloud above the cooling towers to recognize the visibility of the atmosphere, because it was 55km away. And it was also a nice navigation point when I was coming back from some flights. Looking in what direction the cloud was, was a good help to determine the own position. But yeah, people are irrational afraid and so it got closed forever... ☹️
A lot people don't believe that around coal power plants the radiotion is higher than around nuclear power plants...
I wish people would stop faithfully believe the media and start being more skeptical...
Flights? Aha!
Good. We need less climate change, not more. So good they closed your Nazi kraftwerk.
@@Azarilh It would help if certain governments hadn't outright lied about certain accidents. Look up the 3 Mile Island disaster.
@@eekee6034 Where's the lie?
I'm retired and 73, I worked in radiation hardness with various radioactive sources and at reactors most my life in electronics. I'm a native born California with family in Nevada near Yucca Flats storage facility. When I was 50 I moved to a job in Kansas to raise my children away from large populations. In 1992 the NRC decided to attempt to place a nuclear storage facility on a 50 year flood plain within 5 miles of my home on Indian reservation land surrounded by several small towns, countless ranches and thousands of acres of dairy and wheat farm land...We literally had to fight to stop them! This IS THE PROBLEM...WHERE will they put the waste? Who will help when accidents occur? How will it be transported? Will it be safe and secure for thousands of years???? Too many unknown variables and too many security issues for such deadly waste. If anyone is pro nuclear just ask if the waste can be placed in their state, country or neighborhood...and if THEY will clean up an accident? Only an insane person would consider a technology that has no means to eliminate DEADY waste that will pollute grass, dirt, animals and people for thousands of years!
Agree. Those nuclear fuel rods are going to sit on the banks of our domestic water sources for a thousand years.
Nuclear waste transported in dry cask storage is basically indestructable. You can find videos online of them hitting those things with planes and train locomotives at full speed; they disintegrate on contact, leaving a small scratch on the massive wall of reinforced concrete that is the dry cask.
Also, you have been lied to regarding the scale of the dangers of nuclear waste. It's not as dangerous as you think it is. Please google and read "the guardian the unpalatable truth is that the anti nuclear lobby has misled us all" and "dr bernard cohen the myth of plutonium toxicity".
Excellent informative and balanced video.
One interesting aspect about the cost of nuclear power is that it is very expensive to build a nuclear power station but the cost of running one are quite cheap. So in this sense, once you built a nuclear power plant you want to use it as long as possible
Life extensions are ridiculously cost-effective.
from the video the levelized cost is still somewhat more expensive than coal. Though I think there's debatable assumptions in that calculation, so the answer still will be "it's complicated".
Well, to dismantle it is extremely costly. But the next generation (fewer young people), facing a climate collapse, will grind their teeth.
@@hikashia.halfiah3582 VERY debatable. Nuclear cost includes all commissioning and decommissioning costs, those renewables probably don’t even include repair costs, and half the supply chain is subsidized. Also batteries bring the cost up like 5x.
@@carlbrenninkmeijer8925 You don’t have to dismantle. You can retrofit nuclear power plants for a fraction of the cost as new, saving money at both ends.
The problem with wind is that it is "allowed" to produce only when it can. Here in Sweden we have closed half of our nuclear power plants (however less than half the effect) and almost replaced the energy loss from nuclear with wind. The result is extreme variations in price (the price on the spot market can vary with a factor much larger than 50 between days) , since there is not enough on demand electricity production (ie hydroelectic). Already some swedish industries, mainly pulp and paper, have been forced to partly close down because of the large fluctuations in prices. Investing in a large paper-making machine or having it running around the clock is not possible with the high fluctuations in energy prices. There are in principle two ways to overcome this: fossil based or more wind. However if we would increase wind to compensate, even on not so windy days, for the loss of effect from our closed nuclear power plants, electricity from wind turbines would probably become more expensive to produce, and since there will be more wind turbines the prices will be lower on the market when it is windy as well as when it is less windy, making wind turbines less economic.
The economy of wind turbines seems to be highly dependent on the fact that they "are allowed" produce electricity only when they "want", thereby making nuclear (where short term effect changes are harder to make, at least in sweden) lose money for periods. It essence either wind will not be that cheap and not very economic to produce since we must have a large number of wind turbines to get the desired effect even when it is not very windy, or we will have prices that vary extremely making it hard for certain industries to survive.
Here we had a stable energy system and now we have a highly unstable system with extreme price variations with prices we never saw some years ago. It was not a god idea to close our older nuclear reactors, especially since the cost per energy produced was rather low compared to new reactors and not much more expensive than wind.
More generally, the cost of wind does not factor in the cost for the energy system as a whole. For example, here the effect from wind varies between 300 MW (seldom), 400-500 MW (not that seldom), to around 7000 MW with a mean around 4000-5000 MW. Thus to have a stable system we need almost 4000-5000 MW on demand effect (the excess wind capacity discussed above, or as fossil). We seldom talk about the cost of this system.
Wind has become a cuckoo in the nest!
From a political standpoint I find it amazing that Germany, in spite of warnings from a number allied, has shut down nuclear power plants and made itself dependent on gas from a dictator. It is in part the fault of Germany that we are now paying 1 billion € a day for gas and oil to Putins war in Ukraine.
Yes, this intermittency is especially problematic for small countries that cannot hedge one aspect of their energy system against others. In America, for example, if its grid were properly interconnected (which it is not), intermittency is less of a concern; low wind energy could be balanced by high solar from 2,000 miles away, or low grid energy in one sector could drive up prices throughout the nation by a small amount instead of a sharp increase in a small area.
But, it sounds like parts of Europe are rethinking their anti-nuclear paranoia.
@@kreek22 Unfortunately it is not economically viable to transport electricity 2000 miles away. If that was possible Europe could be powered by solar plants in Sahara.
@@todirbg There is apparently already a 2100 mile DC interconnect in China (I accept this is via Wikipedia though. Search for longest DC interconnect) . Have you got a source for saying that it's not economically viable?
Use the wind to produce hydrogen, which can be stored for when there is no wind.
And use the others renewable sources too, wind is not the only one.
A great video! Thank you for making it.
Nuclear power plants building will be much cheaper if it would not take 10-15 years. i saw a video where they argued that the power plant cost directly depends on amount of years it takes to clear bureaucratic hurdles. If the plants were to be built in 5 years, not in 15+, the cost would be a fraction of what it is today.
Thank you for the video. I agree: local conditions are what matters regarding nuclear power. However, I think there is one issue regarding them that wasn't mentioned: water consumption. From what I know, a nuclear power plant needs a large and steady supply of water for operation. If this is true, that limits greatly its suitable places.
A coal fueled plant does that, too, as I learnt when I attended a guided tour through a plant that produced 640 Megawatt (now 778 MW) that was fueled with coal dust which is more efficient. Nevertheless it is going to be replaced by a natural gas station, because the exhaust fumes are producing too much CO2. We were shown the cooling tower that condensed most of the water to bring it back to the plant, yet it lost 200 litres (that is about 50 to 55 gallons) of water *per second*. They are taking the water from the adjacent river, which meant they had to filter it, to prevent anything living inside from entering the cooling system. Maybe the CO2 footprint isn't the only issue.
That has nothing to do with the nuclear process, though. It almost doesn't need any water at all.
Most small modular reactor and GEN-IV designs are looking at dry cooling options and it is possible to dry cool large reactors too. Paolo Verde, the largest nuclear power plant in the US (~4.5 GWe), cools itself entirely on waste water.
That's why they are often situated on the coasts, which will all flood as sea levels rise. This heated water is a direct addition of energy to an already heating planet.
@@petersimmons3654 the amount of water being heated isn't nearly enough to contribute to global warming. Humanity won't have to worry about heat production issues until we hit a population of around 20 billion if you do the math.
And nuclear power plants on coastlines are prepared for flooding. Although permanent sea level rise is a concern, new power plants (and Sweden's and Finland's new long-term waste storage sites) plan and account for this.
After watching a couple of Sabine’s videos, I’m starting to appreciate the bone dry humor. She’s hilarious!
Oh totally - she'd be hilarious to go out drinking with!😀
Yes.. That famous dry German humor.. Lol
Look at her old videos where she sings science stuff. They are amazing
Her dryness makes the Sahara desert seem wet as hell. Occasionally she has a corny joke, but when she lands a perfectly thrown sardonic lob, it’s absolutely brilliant.
Seems a might too dry because to my admittedly loused up eye, she seems to believe in nonsense like "climate change" as peddled by the watermelon Marxists. I fully admit I may have missed sarcasm, but it seemed very sincere to me, which I found most disappointing. I know many in the hard sciences and to my knowledge none of them buy into the climat panic nonsense.
Dear Sabine, thank you for your interesting Sunday of the topic. Two things I don’t understand though. First of which, how come you do include the fear of people in the equation but not any geopolitical factors? If the latter is ‘not scientific’, I don’t see how the fear of people is. I believe both factors should be considered. The second issue I don’t is the waste. I understand we are pretty good in hiding it and solving this issue for the current times as well. But how does that look like in less stable political times and who knows how the world will look like in a few thousand years from now when the waste can still be dangerous for forms of life?
Keep in mind that there were underground natural nuclear reactors in Oklo, Gabon, a few billion years ago, running for millions of years. We know what happens to nuclear waste after being buried for a billion years in a water rich environment. The plutonium moved about 5 ft.
A quick point about the baseline economic figures for renewable energy sources. Very few (extremely few) incorporate storage and network costs in the renewables sector. This is fine if you're wanting every house to have their own wind and solar plant with battery, but that's not feasible globally, and few nations are seriously considering that either. That option also doesn't work in built up, multi-story environs. The factors of the renewable network, such as land use, reduced produce output - as to make the energy close enough to cities for it to be transported by the wires, it is almost invariably established on fertile agricultural land, reducing the food produced for that city - but also the immense battery needs, which face even greater issues than uranium mining, not to mention the costs of such facilities, nor the damage when accidents occur, make it almost impossible to accurately compare the overall network cost of electricity/kWh with the present existing figures. What can be accurately seen, however, is the effect economically, environmentally and socially where such networks have been established. South Australia, for instance, is completely renewable. However, it cannot produce enough energy for its own needs from it's extensive renewable energy network, and therefore requires imported power from outside networks, almost completely importing coal networks in lieu. To put this in perspective, less than a decade ago when South Australia had coal and gas generators, it was an exporter of energy itself, and brownouts and blackouts were extremely rare (and due to power network outages, not power generation outages, where they did occur). Today, brownouts are common in rural areas (some more remote regions have moved from terrestrial communication services - mobile and landline - to SATCOM and HF communications due to the brownouts, as terrestrial infrastructure does not have enough battery to last during outages), energy is imported, almost all major infrastructure (hospitals, emergency services, fuel services, transport hubs, wharves and railways, etc) relies on fossil fuel generators to guarantee power supply, and the cost to consumer is increasing exponentially. In addition, the network itself is becoming more expensive due to the need to create more backbone transmission lines, as rather than having a few strategically located generators (coal, gas or nuclear power plants, for instance), the generation sites are large, prolific, and widely scattered. Other jurisdictions, not just in Australia, but around the world, that are moving away from traditional power sources into renewable only grids, are facing identical issues (although maybe not so pronounced, noting the distribution of population in South Australia compared to other areas of the world). In addition, unlike in third world nations that face regular power outages, in South Australia, home services are completely dependent on power (ovens, stoves, heating, cooling, etc). This means that a unique situation exists where as renewables have become the dominant power source, the risk of starvation, malnutrition and death due to the elements has become an increasing issue, especially among the poorer and the elderly, where diesel generators are either too expensive or they are too feeble to operate them. Fire places only exist in older homes, and fire stoves/ovens are incredibly rare, and replacing them when they wear out is almost impossible. In addition, in many council areas, it is illegal to operate fires at certain times of the year, or in suburban environments (even for cooking). Not to mention, as a power source, individual households burning for energy needs is the least efficient and most pollutant of all the energy generation methods.
Dismissing nuclear waste as a "red herring" seems to be a bit neglectful to the topic - did reprocessing and storage costs go into the economic calculations ? Since this is a long-term topic for highly problematic substances which require special transport, special containers as well as high-security guarding, this should go into profitability calculations.
I was hoping there'd be mention of recycling used nuclear fuel. It's extremely difficult to find reliable information on the subject.
Breeder reactors can "burn" nuclear waste...
Biggest problem with breeder reactors: those are BREEDER reactors. Creating a lot of funny isotopes, which makes nuclear weapon building very easy.
So, countries are PROHIBITED to use those kinda reactors, and also, nuclear power plants must surrender their nuclear wastes to some already "nuclear" nations to prevent them to build their own nuclear weapons.
So, nuclear energy is expensive because it was artificially made expensive by the Nuclear Nations.
It is all political.
@@meleardil I've argued the same thing many times. This is a political problem, not a technological problem. But the largest polluting nations are already all nuclear anyway, so it's just a matter of security. Okay, put the reactors at missile silos where there is already high security. It feels like a no brainer.
What do you wish to know ? I'm well placed to inform you on nuclear recycling.
I am still concerned with nuclear waste which will be dangerous for thousands of years, at least when using current technology.
You know how much information have been lost since the Roman Empire, a mere two thousand years from now
@@Joltzis The key is "at least with current technology". We actually already have a good way to dispose of it, - which is to use it all in breeder reactors, but for political reasons we don't. We would have thousands of years worth of energy from just the *existing* waste, if we did that.
I'm not sure how correct this is, but I have been informed by several pro nuclear outlets over the years that the earthquake safe seismic civil engineering is there. Fukashima is an example of it working, the failure was the flooding of poorly placed Diesel backup generators that several safety agencies had pre-warned about. As well as a US DOE report on Diablo Canyon in California saying it is still seismic safe, and continuously inspected. I've always assumed with all the scare tactics around nuclear that this is probably accurate, but I've never actually dug into it myself. Well I guess I did skim the US DOE report on Diablo Canyon since it's my local nuclear power plant, but I would consider the US DOE a pro nuclear source.
The numbers cited for different power sources were from 2019... the trends since then have been away from coal and towards wind and solar. Nuclear and gas haven't changed much, but the long term prospects for both are declining. Obviously, future technology shifts could change any of these trends, but as it stands the world is moving strongly towards wind and solar.
A major factor impacting nuclear which wasn't mentioned is 'time to market'. From the initial proposal of a nuclear power plant to actual activation can take decades... and a growing percentage are abandoned before completion. Even in countries (e.g. France) with few barriers and streamlined approval, a new nuclear power plant going up in less than ten years is rare. Basically, nuclear power takes so long to deploy that the economic viability of any given plant will almost certainly be different (and in recent decades, much worse) when it is under construction than when it was initially conceived. Solar power, on the other hand, can be deployed locally in a matter of days and even large utility projects seldom take more than a year or two.
The study cited on the deaths per power source used blatantly improper methodology... counting every death conceivably related to renewable power (e.g. construction, traffic accidents in transport, and electrocutions), but only 'disaster deaths' for nuclear power. Add in deaths during nuclear power plant construction, when radioactive material ISN'T transported or stored safely, and from nuclear weapons (i.e. Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and likely future cases if nuclear power became a global standard) and it is a very different picture.
Finally, I'd challenge the offhand comment about, 'even breathing has a carbon footprint'. Yes, breathing adds carbon to the atmosphere... but humans (and other animals) do not just magically generate carbon atoms. Every single carbon atom we breathe out into the atmosphere ultimately came from some form of plant which we ate/drank either directly (e.g. an apple) or indirectly (e.g. a steak, which the cow grew by eating plants). Those plants, in turn, ALSO did not magically generate carbon atoms... they pulled them OUT of the atmosphere through photosynthesis. Ergo, every single molecule which animals expel INTO the atmosphere by breathing at some point came OUT of the atmosphere by photosynthesis and therefore there is no 'carbon footprint' from breathing. It doesn't matter how many animals there are on the planet or how much they are breathing, they literally CANNOT expel more carbon atoms into the atmosphere than they (through the food they eat) took OUT of the atmosphere. Breathing is 100% carbon neutral.
The main disadvantage of nuclear power is the fact that our civilization needs to last forever and the dumps need to be safe for years or massive damage to the environment without our control. Anything which doesn’t become inert when civilization collapse is simply hubris and shows how we aren’t mature enough to use nuclear power. We need to reduce our energy consumption and live within our energy means. Anyone who thinks differently has their own agenda wouldn’t you say?
Heavy metals will stay toxic if civilisation collapses, and they are much more common and have less environmental protection
Heavy metals are used in solar panels
Nuclear we dig a several km deep hole, line it with concrete, and by the time any nuclear material naturally makes it back up humanity will be long extinct
Think you are right. It all comes to the question if we still can remain a technological Civilisatiion up to a level, only relying on renewable Materials and renewable energy.
Most People take our hightech Chemical industry as granted. They dont understand that in the future we will have to substitute the wonders of petrochemie with Plants and Energy to go on on a technical world.
And yes... 2 billion People are maybe the Longtime Limit ..
I love the principle of least action! I remember first learning about it when I took a bond graph class (the linear components of all fields of engineering can communicate nicely with bond graphs). You'll even see the principle of (approximate) least action crop up in machine learning. The gradient penalty for generative adversarial networks can arguably be viewed as minimizing the action taken as the neural network changes it's prediction.
Nive video!
At 17:28 ...about 3 meter in diameter and 20 feet tall...
Why this mixing of units?
Even in the US engineering companies use SI units.
That is the most even handed evaluation of nuclear power I have ever seen! Not once in all the years I have been looking at it has someone done an evaluation that comes up with the answer "that depends". Thank you!
Great video. A couple notes.
First off, Nuclear is interesting in terms of future theoretical reserves because, unlike fossil fuels, there is an almost limitless theoretical reserve that is just really hard to tap. To explain, seawater and nominally non-ore quality rock both contain PPM concentrations of Uranium. Unlike with other energy sources where even if you could mine such low concentrations it would not be energy viable, Uranium is so energy dense that you could purify that PPM concentration into a usable fuel and end up with a net energy gain. Current tech has proven this works on small scales, via filters, but there are serious engineering concerns to ramping up production so it's not realized technology.
Hence while Uranium may not be renewable, the *possible* maximum lifespan of Uranium, if seawater purification and mass processing of marginal deposits is possible, is incredible. Combined with very real reasons to believe that deposits are underestimated due to various causes (regional legality of mining, corporate incentives, scale-back on nuclear power and thus exploration and mining) and availability is not a valid concern so much as the economic viability of nuclear is. It might become more expensive, but it will still work. Oil and gas reserves have much bigger concerns over long-term reserves, and even solar and wind rely on limited resources.
Second, Thorium is not simply 3-4x more abundant than Uranium, there are very simple physics reasons why Thorium *must* be more abundant than uranium by around 3-4x due to how radioactive decay works and the formation of the earth happened. However, because Uranium is water soluble and Thorium is not, it's not always found in the same types of deposits. This means that while Uranium is easy to locate and thus exploit, Thorium requires a different approach to exploration and exploitation in some situations-you will almost always find Uranium and Thorium in the same place, but some Thorium deposits won't have as much Uranium and vice-versa.
So basically, a lack of proven reserves does not indicate there is something happening to disappear the Thorium, just that it has different chemical behavior and isn't being actively sought.
This video presents an intimately mixed bag of relatively honest and accurate facts and reasoning with some egregious falsehoods.
The piece starts off very reasonable - sounding. Acknowledging this is an area with passionately presented widely differing claims regarding what is and is not.
Then, a bit further down, we encounter a passage in which Sabine claims that "maybe the biggest disadvantage of nuclear power" is that "there just isn't enough uranium on this planet" to meet ongoing needs.
This is huge falsehood. Her figures are entirely fraudulent.
And that's without getting into the fact that uranium is not the only possible "fuel" for nuclear reactors... thorium 232 is easily "bred" into uranium 233, which is superb reactor fuel, and there is four times as much thorium known to be available as there is uranium. Thorium is about as common as lead.
Uranium is said to be economically worth obtaining as reactor fuel if it costs under $130 per kilogram. Note that the cost of electricity from nuclear power plants is only 25% due to cost of the fuel (uranium). Unlike fossil fuel plants, where cost of fuel is a far greater fraction of the cost of the power.
Tho Sabine mentions in passing fast breeder reactors, she doesn't give details. And she selectively neglects to mention the considerable progress being made by China and other nations in trying to economically extract uranium from sea water.
This Scientific American (hardly an ideologically pro nuclear publication!!) observes:
www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last/
"Two technologies could greatly extend the uranium supply itself. Neither is economical now, but both could be in the future if the price of uranium increases substantially. First, the extraction of uranium from seawater would make available 4.5 billion metric tons of uranium-a 60,000-year supply at present rates. Second, fuel-recycling fast-breeder reactors, which generate more fuel than they consume, would use less than 1 percent of the uranium needed for current LWRs. Breeder reactors could match today's nuclear output for 30,000 years using only the NEA-estimated supplies."
Note, too, that the supply of uranium in the ocean is truly "renewable", in that each year more uranium washes into the ocean via rivers. I've seen some calculate the ocean can supply all our foreseeable power needs for the next million years. But even at 60,000 years, we're talking for all practical purposes a "forever" supply of fuel... certainly FAR longer than it would take (on the off chance our species survives that long, and still needs energy) for us to come up with an alternative (black holes, anti-matter, or something entirely un-imagined presently).
Her claim that there isn't enough uranium (or other fuel for nuclear fission power plants) [available] on this planet is one big lie. Pure and simple.
She goes on to assert:
nuclear is the most expensive. It’s even more expensive than coal, and at the moment roughly 5 times more expensive than solar or wind. If the current trend continues, the gap is going to get even wider.
Again, she cites ONE source... one from either a deceitful or confirmation bias driven perspective. Not a range of sources. Many have fond nuclear power OVER THE 60 YEAR LIFE of a plant to be comparable in cost to coal... or even the lower priced natural gas. The issue with nuclear power is less its cost, but rather the long time to return on investment. THIS issue has been a big factor in making capitalist investors reluctant to invest in it, compared to natural gas, which returns money on investment far more quickly.
Eventually we get to her speaking some truth about nuclear power:
"we have to talk about the biggest problem that nuclear power has. People are afraid of it."
Unfortunately, Sabine follows that quite accurate sentence with THIS immensely huge falsehood:
"Accidents in nuclear power plants are a nightmare because radioactive contamination can make regions uninhabitable for decades,..."
In fact, NO nuclear accident EVER released enough radiation to merit evacuation of the land around it. Indeed, in all but the case of Chernobyl, the radiation levels were unequivocally below those that could remotely possibly pose ANY risk AT ALL to the surrounding population. [Sabine actually later admits this!] But... thanks to malignant hysteria mongers, presented as educated authorities, thousands were killed and tens of thousands had their lives destroyed by 100% unnecessary prolonged evacuations. In the case of Chernobyl, a rare case of an ancient reactor design without a containment that blew up in a steam explosion, with tons of highly radioactive core material blasted into the air, the death toll from radiation is variously estimated at between 80 and 400. There are high estimates at 4000, but credible experts on the biological effects of radiation don't find that high figure as likely to have any truth. And the radiation levels in the area around it are FAR below those that endanger health.
But Sabine... using her authority as ... a physicist... makes malignantly and deadly false assertions of NON EXISTENT dangers from radiation.
To her credit, she does state:
"The number of direct fatalities from the Fukushima accident is zero"
But she follows that with an outrageous falsehood:
"One worker died 7 years later from lung cancer, almost certainly a consequence of radiation exposure. "
No. Sabine is NOT qualified to weigh in on medicine and epidemiology. In fact, all credible authorities in those areas are claer that one lung cancer death CAN NOT be ascribed to exposure to radiation. All of the evidence in terms of how much exposure he got STRONGLY indicates his lung cancer had nothing what so ever to do with radiation. Sabine shows herself to be credulous and ignorant of mecical fact and principle here... apparently confirmation bias driven.
Talking more about Fukushima (in April of 2022 !) Sabine writes:
"About 500 died from the evacuation, mostly elderly and ill people whose care was interrupted. And this number is unlikely to change much in the long run."
No, Sabine. The figure is 2000 dead. And 60,000 or more with their lives wrecked due to the prolonged evacuation. Sabine's dividing by four the accepted figure for deaths due to the unwarranted evacuation from around Fukushima, her failure to mention the harm to the other tens of thousands from same, her failure to mention the 100,000 to 200,000 electrive abortions in Europe post Chernobyl by women fearing their child would be born with birth defects from exopsure to what actually was lower than background levels of excess radiation from the "plume of radiation" from Chernobyl shows she is LYING BY SELECTIVE NEGLECT OF DATA, trying to minimize the massive harm done by ignorant, baseless, hysterical fear of radiation.
On the other hand, we then encounter a remarkably cogent and honest and accurate statement from Sabine here:
"According to the WHO, the radiation exposure of the Fukushima accident was low except for the direct vicinity of the power plant which was evacuated. They do not expect the cancer risk for the general population to significantly rise. The tsunami which caused the accident to begin with killed considerably more people, at least 15 thousand."
Additional rational presentation follows this:
"I don’t want to trivialize accidents in the nuclear industry, of course they are tragic. But there’s no doubt that they pale in comparison to fossil fuels, which cause pollution that, according to some estimates kills as much as a million people per year. Also, fun fact, coal contains traces of radioactive minerals that are released when you burn it. Indeed, radioactivity levels are typically *higher* near coal plants than near nuclear power plants.
Again, you see, there are some differences in the details but pretty much everyone who has ever seriously looked at the numbers agrees that nuclear is one of the safest power sources we know of."
Later on she discusses newer reactor technologies. To help contain the length of this already long comment, I'll pass on commenting on her treatment of that.
But then she says:
"It also speaks against nuclear power that people are afraid of it. Even if these fears are not rational that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. If someone isn’t comfortable near a nuclear power plant, that affects their quality of life, and that can’t just be dismissed."
Excuse me? Would you write of vaccination for polio, MMR, and Covid 19 that its a REASON to not try to vaccinate people that some are afraid of vaccination? Note she DOES NOT speak of making efforts to educate. She just accepts anti-nuclear and radio-phobic hysteria as a given. Hysteria and misconceptions SHE HERSELF helped in the past... and still helps somewhat in the present... to create!
The video ends on a surprisingly honest and accurate note, however:
"There are two points I didn’t discuss which you may have expected me to mention. One is nuclear proliferation and the risk posed by nuclear power plants during war times. This is certainly an important factor, but it’s more political than scientific, and that would be an entirely different discussion.
The other point I didn’t mention is nuclear waste. That’s because I think it’s a red herring which some activist groups are using in the attempt to scare people. For what I am concerned, burying the stuff in a safe place solves the problem just fine. It’s right that there aren’t any final disposal sites at the moment, but Finland is expected to open one next year and several other countries will follow. And no, provided adequate safety standards, I wouldn’t have a problem with a nuclear waste deposit in my vicinity."
So... what we have is a mixed bag. Some lies, some hysteria, and some sober honest assessment.
@@davidwalters9462 I would hesitate to ascribe malice here. The fact is that there has been a lot of misinformation or speculation over nuclear risks, and Sabine didn't invent those deceptions.
I happen to agree that no safe level stance does not pass scientific muster-at best it's an overfitting of data to say that there are any effects at extremely low dosages. If you accept the premise, you do end up with the narrative she's reporting...But narratives aren't accurate just because you're premise is wildly popular, nor is it academically justifiable to report them as such.
The truth is that the risk of nuclear disaster is absurdly low, can be minimized where present, and is less than the corresponding risk from non-nuclear energy sources (Except true renewables, like solar). More people get lung cancer from mining coal than get it from nuclear power, likely by orders of magnitude. Even if you accept the wildest estimates from the few disasters we've had as a species, fossil fuel use has killed many more people. By several orders of magnitude.
Further, our potential stockpile of nuclear fuel is, as you say, incredibly large. Even the Uranium from seawater is only one source. While gravity harvesting and anti-matter technologies aren't really plausible, as we lack black holes to turn into engines and anti-matter is just a very efficient battery, nuclear fusion or industrial-scale orbital solar arrays are both within human capacity. They are both achievable before we run out of uranium from seawater. Likely, they are achievable before we exhaust ore-quality deposits.
The only really good argument against nuclear power as a solution to the climate crisis is the political one-if we mean to replace the fossil fuel power plants in third world countries, we have to accept that these countries will have capacity to enrich material and the technical knowledge to produce nuclear weapons. That is inevitable anyway-either we basically abandon those people to squalor and death as the climate disintegrates or we accept that they will achieve a technological proficiency similar to that in western democracies.
It's also irrelevant to domestic policy. We should have converted to nuclear power in the late 90's, if we did we'd have a much stronger economy and industry. We can still make that investment now, and break our crippling fossil fuel addiction within the next decade. Solar power and dreams of Fusion aren't enough-current generators would be. But because our political system is completely broken and nuclear power plants are expensive it won't happen, over and over again.
It's depressing. And we could, and should, do better.
@@MrCharles7994 The comment by "Mr Charles 7994" is, in one respect, much like Sabine's video, a curious mixture of fact and intelligent assessment with major misunderstandings of reality and falsehood.
To be sure, the Mr. Chraless ultimate thrust and conclusion is FAR more (appropriately and correctly) pro nuclear than Sabine's video. And much to Mr. Charles' credit, he comes out defintively rejecting LNT hypothesis hysteria about radiation danger. Tho still doesn't seem to understand the full implication of his rejection of LNT, for he does in his comment ascribe some actually non-existent dangers to radation.
Problems with his comment:
"More people get lung cancer from mining coal than get it from nuclear power, likely by orders of magnitude."
Wrong. Likely NO people get lung cancer from radiation. If any do, we're talking something approaching single or double digit numbers out of a population of 9 billion on the planet. While millions get lethal lung disease of various sorts... including cancer... from mining. It's not ">likely< by orders of magnitude". It IS a factor that is somewhere between infinity and many orders of magnitude.
While you might reasonably call this a "nit picking criticism", Mr. Charles' next incorrect assertion is far more squarely and significantly wrong:
" nuclear fusion or industrial-scale orbital solar arrays are both within human capacity.
They are both achievable before we run out of uranium from seawater. Likely, they are achievable before we exhaust ore-quality deposits. "
It not likely nuclear fusion will be able to be used to make electrical power in any practical sense for the truly indefinite future. As measured certainly in decades, but likely in terms of centuries. Mr. Charles apparently lacks an understanding of the physics involved, or of the facts relating to just how many orders of magnitude we currently are from making this work.
Briefly, regarding this:
(a) From the time nuclear fission was discovered until a controlled chain reaction in a reactor was produced was a matter of just a very few years. And it worked the first time it was tried. Just a VERY few years after that, reactors were successfully used to make heat to drive generators, and a few years later this was being done on a large scale. And EVERY test of concept and subsequent large scale trail WORKED THE VERY FIRST TIME, for all intents and purposes. In contrast, after 50 years of failed "efforts to make fusion work" and billions spent on it, we are still VERY VERY MANY orders of magnitude from any sort of system that might be usable, with NO path to the goal likely remotely to get us close to it.
(b) The above is exactly what one would expect from the difficult of containing and controlling fusion. Fission produces heat at manageable temperatures, in the hundreds to around a thousand (in gen 4 designs) degrees. Temperatures EASILY used. Fusion requires tens of millions of degrees. Temperatures that cannot be managed at all right now, and cannot be managed efficienty in any case.
The ignorant say "the challenge of controlling fusion is that of producing conditions like those in the center of the sun, where it occurs." The fact is that even in the center of sun, at the immense temperatures and pressures there, hydrogen hydrogen fusion occurs so infrequently that the heat produced per unit volume is about the same as that in a compost heap... or by an awake box turtle. It produces enormous energy because of the enormous SIZE of the center of the sun. But to make power in something confined by a building on earth, VASTLY greater temperatures and pressures are needed than those in the center of the sun.
To be sure, the fraudsters and con artists getting funding for "fusion research" do use fuel for fusion that fuses somewhat easier than hydrogen and hygrogen. Lithium, Deuterium, etc. This helps... but only a little. You're still talking pressures and temperatures FAR greater than those in the center of the sun.
Only the ignorant and gullible believe these pork barrel projects (for the suppliers of the parts of such, and for the feather-bedding scientists and engineers involved in the projects) will produce anything useful for many generations, if indeed they ever do.
It's not for nothing that the jokes "Fusion Power is the energy source of the future... and this always will be true!" and "We'll have practical fusion energy production in 25 years... and this statement will always be true" have been stock lines for more than half a century.
(c) The other serious falsehood implied or asserted by Mr. Charles is his mistaken belief that developing nuclear power will lead to proliferation of atomic weapons. Apparently he does not know either the physics and engineering or the history of nuclear weapons production, or he'd name assert such a clear cut falsehood.
With only one exception out of the tens of thousands of nuclear weapons produces, ALL nuclear weapons were constructed using bomb grade fissionable material made in either reactors or uranium enrichment facilities SPECIFICALLY engineered for the production of bombs. NOT in power generating reactors. Note that while the number of nuclear power using nations has continuously be growing, the number of nuclear weapons possessing nations has stalled at a low figure long ago. Is Mr. Charles aware that there are two nations... North Korea and Israel... that posess an arsenal of nuclear weapons (Israel with hundreds of sophisticated ones and delivery systems for them) but DO NOT HAVE ANY nuclear power making electricity?? What better shows up the falsehood of the fact that nuclear power is needed or even useful in making nuclear weapons?
Actually, tho I raked her over the coals for other major falsehoods she asserted, Sabine Hossenfelder got this one right in her video. TOTALLY right. She asserted that issue of making nuclear weapons is a POLITICAL one, not one controlled by such technological issues as those involved in construction of power reactors.
Still... Mr Charles' central thrust is on target, and I heartily agree with his concluding sentence:
"We could, and should, do better."
---marty
Martin H. Goodman MD
@@davidwalters9462 Uh-huh.
So, three things.
First, the assertion that radiation has never caused cancer is inane. There are cases that have clear correlations and strong evidence for a casual mechanism, they just involve extreme exposure levels. Many of the workers involved in cleaning up the Chernobyl incident, for instance.
Where it breaks down is in assertions linking these cases to low levels of exposure. We can't conclusively correlate low levels of radiation exposure to cancer, and there is a large body of research which disputes the casual mechanism. Even if it exists, the risk is lower than that from fossil fuels.
But there is a world of difference between acknowledging that, and asserting that there is no risk at all. If nothing else, the industrial processing of nuclear waste involves potentially damaging chemicals itself. It's a manageable risk that is worth it for the benefits.
Hyperbole serves no one. Nuclear doesn't need to be perfect to be the right option.
Second, you have *no idea* what you are talking about with nuclear fusion, and are *dangerously, pervasively* ignorant on the topic. No, we have not been spending "billions and billions" on nuclear fusion, if anything we have *chronically and tragically* underfunded nuclear fusion research. The government has spent 30 billion on nuclear fusion research since *1950* , and that includes some research that only helps in the context of H bombs.
In contrast, we've spend *110 billion* on corn subsidies over a much shorter time frame, which has done absolutely nothing to benefit the people of the country. The *annual* price tag for oil and gas subsidies is in the range of 10-50 billion, depending on year and if you include state/local tax breaks.
If Fusion was, in fact, pork barrel spending, you'd expect it to receive a comparable amount to what agricorps and oil companies are getting...Not a rounding error on that amount.
There are several estimates out there by government and scientific sources that estimate how much money and time it would take in RND to develop a working fusion reactor for power generation. The lowest estimates are in the realm of 60 billion dollars, which could be spent over a 20-30 year time spam to get a working prototype.
We spent half that over 50 years, and are about halfway there-in the prototype stage, just about to or barely capable of breaking even, with many engineering challenges ahead to push to making the actual reactors.
In other words we know how much is/would have been required to get working fusion reactors, and we undershot it every year for the past 70 years.
That's not pork barrel spending. It's the opposite. No one could look at our actual spending and come to your conclusions here.
I don't mean to be combative. But the idea that Fusion is pork barrel spending is grossly misinformed in very dangerous ways.
Finally-nuclear fission and proliferation of nuclear weapons. You are right insofar as a nation state does not need access to a working energy reactor to get fissile material, it needs a reactor to do so. North Korea and Israel have reactors, they just aren't energy positive for power generation purposes.
The type of research reactors used for those purposes are *very helpful* for a power program-not directly, but they can be used to enrich the fuel, help train nuclear engineers, and reprocess waste fuel.
Further, the education and training base required for nuclear power generation is directly translatable to weapon projects. This is an often overlooked aspect, but simply having individuals who know how to manage nuclear waste, understand nuclear physics, and can manage electricity generation demand and throughput is vital to a weapon program as well as a power program. That base of technical knowledge is foundational to developing weapons tech and is developed by a thriving civilian sector.
The two examples you listed "cheated" in that regard-they either had the requisite technical and scientific personnel on formation (Israel) or probable access to developed research and a blatant disregard for safety measures (North Korea). It's also worth noting that the example country with less access to those advantages, North Korea, has had a much harder time creating a viable nuclear weapon than Israel. Assuming either actually has functional devices-that's not actually confirmed public knowledge. It's probable enough that we can assume they do though.
Hence, while technically accurate that nuclear power proliferation is not a requirement of nuclear weapon proliferation, it certainly helps and acts as a potential accelerant to this weapons program.
That said, it's not a certain consequence-many countries have power programs that are regulated by international organizations and no nuclear weapons program. The key difference is that Israel and North Korea are basically junior partners in an international alliance which is willing to protect and shield them from the consequences of developing nuclear weapons.
A country like Columbia or Egypt doesn't have that-they have no big brother willing to defend them from massive reprisal-and thus any weapons program is a huge risk for the leadership and populace. Hence the international concerns, despite being real, are ultimately political smoke screens.
Again-the issue can be complicated without compromising the conclusion. Fission doesn't need to be completely safe to be worth it on the balance and Fusion does not need to be a dead end for Fission to be an important energy technology.
@@MrCharles7994 So, Marin Goodman an MD, responds. he can't post to UA-cam so I offered to let him use mine:
Mr. Charls" wrote of on part of my response to his earlier comment:
"First, the assertion that radiation has never caused cancer is inane."
I never wrote in any blanket fashion "radiation does not cause cancer". As one who has studied extensively most if not all of the major studies of biological effects of radiation on humans, and one trained and qualified to evaluate such studies in a way that I suspect Mr. Charles is not, it's quite clear to me that at sufficiently high dose exposures radiation DOES increase the chance of getting a number of cancers. Most speedily and sensitively leukemia, but also many others.
The discussion was about LUNG CANCER specifically, and it was that which I was addressing. In what I wrote I acknowledged there may be some rare instances where radiation exposure has caused lung cancer... but if so they must be VERY VERY rare. I wanted to emphasize this with respect to lung cancer (the kind of cancer Mr. Charles originally brought up for discussion) because there has been SO much overt LYING and malignantly false "information" put out about risk of getting lung cancer due to exposure to radiation... specifically to radon released in basements. By, in particular, the frauds of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). They have for DECADES been warning people about risk of lung cancer from certain levels of radon in their basements, and shilling for con artists who call themselves "Radon Abatement Services" who, for some exorbitant fee, will provide a homeowner with inexpensive fans that protect against a 100.00% totally NON EXISTENT risk. Not only do many independent studies establish this... the data collected BY THE EPA in THEIR studies also show essentially no cancer-risk from the radon levels one might encounter in a home basement. The one very limited exception is that those who were VERY HEAVY SMOKERS (3 packs a day) did have a very slightly elevated risk of lung cancer ABOVE the massive risk they incurred from smoking cigarettes when exposed to high basement radon concentrations.
But a rational public health effort would involve getting the EPA to RETRACT its years of lies about radon in basements causing cancer, end ALL spending of government money on promoting such falsehoods, and take the money saved and invest it in programs to help people quick smoking cigarettes, encourage smokers to quick, and discourage all... especially youth... from taking up this deadly and powerful addiction.
Thus, Mr. Charles' specific reference to LUNG cancer caused by radiation was what caused me to so strongly emphasize how very little risk that poses.
What was "inane" was Mr's Charles' false claim I said radiation could not cause lung cancer.
One other note about radon and lung cancer here: In Ramsar, Iran, the background radiation level gets as high as 300 milli sieverts per year... 100 times that normally encountered in most places. 2/3 of this exposure is from RADON GAS released in the course of the decay of natural uranium. The people of that town are exposed to this 24/7/365, for their entire lives. BREATHING IN TO THEIR LUNG this radioactive gas in quantities 100 times greater than most folks around the planet do.
These people have been INTENSELY studied and compared to closely matched nearby control subjects, of the same gentic, cultural, etc. backgrounds as those in Ramsar, but not exposed to those high levels of radon. Specifically (among other things) with respect to prevalence and incidence of lung cancer. Guess what? Their rates of such are NO DIFFERENT from controls. NOT AT ALL.
As for fusion: You simply are wrong on most counts of your assertions... tho you DO admit I was correct in noting that billions HAVE been wasted on what I find all evidence shows is clear fraud. I note you did not address my citing the fact of how near instantly workable fission power generation of electricity was established, compared to the near century without getting within many orders of magnitude of making fusion work for that.
You also selectively neglect to mention that in times past, "fusion research" was a COVER for efforts to develop military laser weapons.
Today that scam is, as I understand it, no longer used.
I have no doubt you will be proved wrong in the fullness of passage of time, and that we will NOT see use-able fusion for many many decades... most likely centuries... if indeed it ever is developed. IF I had to bet, I'd bet some OTHER technology... black holes, anti-matter, or something un-imagined entirely presently... will eventually replace nuclear fission as a means of making the energy we need, if indeed by then we exist at all and if by then we exist in a form that NEEDS such amounts of externally produced energy.
Your understanding of physics may be limited, but you'd do well to look into the implications of the Stefan Boltzman 4th power law (something I learned studying physics (3 semesters of physics for scientists courses, not the physics for poets course) at Harvard when I was an undergraduate there). It makes claer how hard it is to keep an enormously high temperature area from heating its surroundings, and helps explain why the immense temperatures at which fusion occurs pose impossible difficulties in USING the energy of that heat.
For you... and for all who are generally well educated and science-literate but not specifically trained in math, physics, and engineering... a good treatment of fusion power can be found in James Mahaffy's book "Atomic Adventures". Mahaffy was a long time nuclear engineer, who (among other things) designed control systems for nuclaer reactors. His best book is "Atomic Accidents", which I urge ALL to read. But he wrote two other books with two word titles where both of the words begin with "A". One about the history of nuclear physics ("Atomic Awakenings") and one kind of loose collection of curious short to medium length tales, titled "Atomic Adventures", and it is in this less well known book by him that one finds an excellent treatment of why fusion simply IS NOT EVER (for the forseeable future) going to be other than a pork barrel pointless project.
Note Mahffy received huge national attention years ago when he and his team for the first to attempt to duplicate the reported results of Pons and Fleishman's "cold fusion". Two chapters in his book "Atomic Adventures" detail this. This part is not centrally relevant to this discussion here of the feasibility of fusion, of course... but it is peripherally relevant.
Mahaffy is both an exceptionally entertaining writer, and comes across as first and foremost a SCIENTIST of exceptional integrity when it comes to fighting confirmation bias and applying intellectually honest / scientific method - based approaches to learning truths about the world.
This comes across particularly clearly in the two chapters of "Atomic Adventures" in which he relates his experience trying to repeat the "cold fusion" experiments.
Finally... the issue of nuclear proliferation is, as you too clearly understand well, a complex one, with many factors invovled. But the bottom line is that when all is said and done there is little connection between setting up nuclear power plants and developing nuclear weapons. This is clear both from theory, and from what we have seen over the decades in practice as well.
Again, wide spread use of nuclear power by increasing numbers of nations WILL NOT significantly affect the likelihood a given nation will develop nuclear weapons.
This must also be considered in the context of the fact that ONLY nuclear fission power can replace the role of fossil fuel in supplying the bulk of the electrical (and much of the other) energy we need to maintain the benefits of our advanced technological civilization (long life spans, quality medical care, access to effective transportation, vast entertainment choices, access to education, etc.).
NOTHING else works, and continuing to use fossil fuel for this is generally felt to be likely to lead to a climate disaster.
And every penny spent on "renewable" (solar and wind) fraud serves only to both lock in depednence on fossil fuel, and be money not available for doing what we need to do... massively build out nuclear fusion power around the world.
To close on the subject of biological effects of radiation: Yes, at sufficiently high doses radiation can both increase risk of cancers of many sorts down the line, and even acutely kill if the dose is high enough AND delivered quickly enough. But these thresholds are staggeringly high. Below rather high doses, radiation IS entirely 100.0% harmless... at worst. Some believe there is good evidence radiation exposure of a moderate amount protects against cancer and other disease. I've looked at this evidence, and SOME of it is very intriguing, but the evidence is also a bit spotty... some studies support this strongly, others don't.
The studies which I as a youth thought showed the deadly danger of radiation... of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors, of the "Radium Girls" who painted dials of watches and military instruments with a mix of a radium compound and a fluorescent one (zinc sulfide in many cases), of Chernobyl, of the fishermen covered with radioactive fallout from the Castle Bravo thermonuclear bomb test... in fact show how near totally harmless radiation is, if you look fully and carefully at the data.
---marty