Why nuclear plants are shutting down
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- Опубліковано 30 вер 2021
- The nuclear power dilemma, explained.
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The infamous Indian Point nuclear plant, located roughly 30 miles north of Manhattan, shut down earlier this year. To some, the shutdown was a victory following decades of protests about safety and environmental concerns. Here’s the problem: When operating, Indian Point provided more electricity than is produced annually by all solar and wind in New York state. And Indian Point is not the only plant closing. Cleo Abram explores why so many nuclear plants are shutting down - by taking a closer look at Indian Point.
For more from David Roberts: www.volts.wtf/p/welcome-to-volts
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Thanks for watching! If you’re interested in nuclear power, there’s a lot more we weren’t able to include in this video (but might in future videos). One area is possible nuclear innovations, including both ways to make nuclear safer and less expensive to build.
Another is nuclear waste, which hasn’t been the driving reason for these shutdowns but is a big topic of discussion in this space. “Nuclear waste” usually refers to fuel that’s been used in a reactor. Disposing of that waste is one reason Indian Point will take at least 12 years to fully decommission. But, at the same time, finding ways to reuse that fuel is another area of potential innovation.
- Cleo
Nice video
Hello Cleo
I wish Vox ventured into UK/Europe issues. The way you cover the story/argument feels that you always highlight both sides of the story. We need more of this, calm, clear, factual and neutral discussion of issues. Great work.
Interesting Video
Nuclear Fusion is a very important topic that should be adressed as well.
These people who want to shut down always say that the nuclear power will get replaced by renewables, but what they fail to understand is that what they should be replacing is the fossil fuels, not the nuclear.
And nuclear power is much more powerful than renewables and is a pretty clean and safe source, it just gets a bad rep because of Chernobyl and nuclear weapons
@@rmichels05 it’s like evolving but backwards
@@rmichels05 the bad PR around nuclear has halted progress on the technology for decades. It's really sad because we would have a much better starting point with climate policy if nuclear had been allowed to develop
Nuclear power is absolutely safer than in the last century, just people think another Chernobyl will happen
@@rmichels05 And Fukushima.
When all the coal plants have shut down, then we can start to discuss shutting down nuclear. If you are an environmentalist and want to shut down nuclear before coal, then you are not an environmentalist...
Exactly.
Spot On!
Nuclear plants generate nuclear wastes. I can't rank carbon emission and nuclear wastes but even nuclear wastes are pollutants.
@@tirumanisaivarma4212 but nuclear waste is easier to localize and control. It is also a lot less than the carbon emissions produced because uranium is energy dense.
@@tirumanisaivarma4212 now nuclear waste can be used in reactors again the problem is no one wants them (for some reason)
The fish being killed in the water pumps are comparable to birds being killed annually by wind turbines. Both are negligible enough to continue striving for clean energy however. Just an interesting point I leaned from studying environmental biology.
Poor fish, they could've ended on my bri'ish plate but the fookin nukes
These people who want to shut down always say that the nuclear power will get replaced by renewables, but what they fail to understand is that what they should be replacing is the fossil fuels, not the nuclear.
It’s obviously these “environmentalists” are paid for by fossil fuels and “renewable” industry
Yes, but neither should be ignored. They are both problematic.
can you point to this statistic? reference please.
I'm from Kenya, blackouts are almost natural. Watching advanced countries that at least have options just shutting a source of power because of fear of a possibility just shows how different our lives are.
This should be a pinned comment. Yes, anti-nuclearism is a first world problem where people don't know how easy they have it.
Yesss. THIIS. A million times this. First world countries with a lot of options keep making decisions like this that make no sense.
@@SC-yy4sw A fault of democracy, which gives the uneducated people power. But what alternative is there?
Because they're living in comfort, they didn't know why they don't have an energy crisis is because of these nuclear power plants powering their megacities.
Wacha kuharibia Kenya jina, uko wapi huko kwenye hakuna stima. Silly.
Nuclear energy is by far one of the cleanest and most reliable sources of energy available to us and protesting against it seems contradictory to the net zero goal. It seems like people protested for the sake of protest and not for a viable reason. Nuclear energy has more merits than demerits like it can provide energy at any time we want. If there's a surge in demand it can fulfill the demand and it doesn't need to be stored. I mean I can go on talking about its advantages for hours.
Where do you put nuclear waste
Human are afraid of things that they don't understand.
We shouldn’t ban Nuclear, but why build New expensive fission plants when fusion is freely avaliable from the sun?
@@clementcage9092 it’s put in safe confinement underground
@@clementcage9092 in a concrete bunker underground
As with every other large-scale problem in the world, the majority of people want the problem solved but have no solution or do not want to pay for the solution.
Yes
It's pretty obvious the power problem won't be solved in the supply side alone.
Only by getting demand down will alternative concepts of power generation be able to get CO2 emissions down far enough.
But that's often ignored, especially in the countries with the highest power consumption per person, including the country I live in.
The status quo is just so comfortable. And with the warmer climate, just buy a new AC or dial up the existing ones.
I doubt any of the activists significantly reduced their power consumption ...
@@zUJ7EjVD the majority of people support nuclear power, but they dont want to live near it.
It's a liberal minded thing.
Cant see past the point they're arguing
You're literally exposed to far more radiation from the isotopes in coal ash particulates than you are from living next door to an NPP (which is zero above background levels).
THIS
Fly ash contains around 5-10 tonnes of uranium and thorium each year from EACH coal power station.
Now multiply that with ALL of them
@@MaydayKeeper hum. I don’t doubt what you are saying, but I think that when you talk about that much uranium, your not talking about the radioactive one. The uranium 235, used for nuclear energy is in really low concentration by default, and is pretty rare compared to other isotopes (I think it is far less than a percent in general), so you might just talk about the more general non radioactive uranium.
I’ve been searching and could not find any evidence for this, and I would rather think it’s unlikely for that much U235 to be rejected by coal factories, as it’s probably more in a year than all the uranium used by humankind in the past 70 years for nuclear energy.
@@vizender All Uranium is radioactive,... and since coal dont discriminate(and also dont enrich) we are talking about 0,711% U235,...
@@vizender You can also split U-238 to create energy. In fact, power plants just use low enriched fuel and some reactors (e.g. CANDU) even run on natural Uranium which doesn't need enrichment.
You also forgot to add the pollution breaking down the ozone layer, thus exposing them to more radiation from the sun.
I always hate people being like, we can't afford putting nuclear waste into abandoned mines, but not considering burning fossil fuels puts the garabage into the air they breathe
and the ash pond (for coal) which are much bigger and maybe more toxic.
Also, the amount of waste produced is very small in comparison. All the nuclear waste that has been produced by every reactor built since the 1960s could fit inside a building the size of a typical Walmart superstore.
As a friend i think you should know,, "Your ignorance is showing, and it is OUTSTANDING!"
@@ludovicdouay1635 Fly Ash is a major component of Wether Mitigation Programs injected in the upper atmosphere as an Aerosol.
@@NexAngelus405 But its not securely maintained anywhere. You have forgot time? Your Wallmart walls would decay and turn back into dust 20,000 years before the Radiation is non-Hazordous.
While Vox did a great job being even-handed in their coverage, I find it odd that they didn't note the fact that just weeks after Indian Point closed, NYC began to experience a series of rolling power blackouts. In summary, they lobbied to shut down the largest source of low-carbon energy in the name of climate change, replaced it with fracked gas, hiked energy bills across the board, and made your regional power supply more reliant on intermittent and fossil-based generation. Make it make sense.
Rolling blackouts?
South Africans: first time?
Exxon probably funded that protest.
Ah, the people who want to eat their cake and have it too. The Luddite mindset of letting perfection get in the way of progress (while ignoring harm done by fossil fuels).
Absolutely spot on. California is headed down the same path with Diablo Canyon made worse by the droughts reducing their hydroelectricity output. Natural gas will gobble up the gap in demand from reduced hydro and squandered nuclear power.
they never talk about the fact that nuclear is the most regulated and the most expensive and only operates in 20 countries. which is very different when nuclear is proliferated to 200 countries. Japan can dump waste into the ocean and no one can say other wise, what will other countries do?
"You can't have a nuclear meltdown on a solar farm" yeah, but we aren't replacing them with solar panels.
Its straight up a flawed argument. False equivalency by comparing nuclear to reneweable. Since in order to setup a solar farm, you need battery storage and Lithium batteries can explode and start fires...
The point is that a solar farm cannot cause an accident that makes the surrounding area uninhabitable.
@@bierrollerful nor can modern reactors, we got some cool new reactor design that prevents it from melting down
Just think of all the forests you'd have to cut down to create a solar farm powerful enough to replace Indian point, just to eventually save 0 g of CO2
@@bierrollerful No, but fossil fuels may make the entire planet uninhabitable, and as this video points out, it is counterproductive to shut down CO2-free power while we're racing to decarbonize.
Humanity’s rejection of Nuclear power was a massive mistake, and the environment has payed dearly for it as we continue to rely on fossil fuels for our electricity
“Paid”
The only reason why most ppl reject nuclear power is because they’re terrified of the devastating affects it will have on the environment and humanity. Sadly climate change is devastating both already 🥲 some people just don’t want to believe it (or in denial)
the true massive mistake is our dependence on fossil fuel. That, not the omission of nuclear, is what our environment paid, and still pays, dearly for.
We only have 80 years of uranium left on earth at the current rate. Also radioactive waste is produced, which currently has no viable solution to store long-term safely.
@@tomtomnoodles9659 well structures like Onkalo Nuclear Repository might be a solution. It's lifespan depends on the source, but that specific structure should be safe in 1.000-100.000 years
Just like planes, they're the most safe travel transport, yet people loose their minds when one of them suffers an accident.
Yes the nuclear power is safe because of the measures put around it. But if something goes wrong, a huge chunk of land will not be uninhabitable for decades or centuries.
So you can see that public fear is understandable.
For me, what's much more worrying is the lack of deposing nuclear waste these plants produce cuz the US currently does not have a place to bury these spend fuel rods and other waste nuclear power make.
Depending where you live many plants have emergency protocols of dumping their stuff into the rivers/oceans to avoid a major meltdown.
Ah yes, that one accident that almost polluted all of Europe, or that one just 10 years ago that continues to pollute today. Very safe...
@@scientificreactions7938 that would be nice to re-enrich but the process is costly, takes a lot time and would still produce radioactive byproducts which leads us back to square 1 on nuclear waste disposal.
It's pretty much turning lead to gold, it can be and has been done but takes a lot of effort for low reward.
@@AA-os2bfdidn’t you see that plane crash in Thailand, or in Poland? I ask myself why people still want to take one… so scary….
@@contrariobastian4046 Nice sarcasm. One is a plane containing at max 300 people, the other is a central near a populated area that has the potential to do unreversible damage to the health of populations and the local environment. Nice comparison.
I do understand Mark Ruffalo's issue with gamma radiation
SMASH!!!💥
Ruffalo likes coal and gas.
Yes...
As tragic as Bruce's issues with the whole gamma thingy, I did see an interview where he expressed his coming to grips with the accident...at least he's handling it well.
That is too funny 🤣
My problem with the “nuclear plants are killing fish in the river” is that Fossil Fuel plants *also* have that problem. Where do people think the steam in the turbines comes from?
You can't rationalize with a fanatic.
fossil fuel is slowly killing us
slowly but surely
Yea and so do renewables
But they don't, all nuclear power plants use the water for cooling, nothing else.
"al-qaeda actually considered targeting a nuclear power plant."
Well they actually did target commercial planes. why haven't we shut down air travel yet?
good point
The potential destruction another Chernobyl like meltdown would create is fare more devastating than any hijacked plane. Nearly four decades later and Chernobyl is still a wasteland that cannot be inhabited for centuries. You cannot compare the two threats at all. They have a valid concern.
@@emmanueldoe7517 I hate when people compare to Chernobyl They had a very old out of tech reactor, compared to todays tech it will be much harder for a destruction like Chernobyl. Modern reactors have alot of safety tech inside compared to Chernobyl
After those terrorist threats, and Fukishima there was a double whammy in terms of added costs. Security, plus safety overhaul...
These plants have very large concrete domes. Very thick. Designed to contain explosions. Part of why they are so expensive. I could be wrong, but I'm not sure low level weapons could breach that easily. Another airplane? I honestly don't know. Pretty tall order though.
Or outlaw tall buildings
those two environmentalists they interviewed make me so angry. The notion that we have to chase a perfect source of power, that it's "no pollution or nothing" is absolutely holding us all back. Nuclear is better than fossil fuels. That's a fact. Change in steps is much more attentable than a giant leap into perfection
They are not environmentalists they are paid stooges of gas and coal.
Those aren't environmentalists those are coal people all environmentalists are ardently pro nuclear.
I would say that nuclear has better externalities than intermittent, space-wasting renewables.
I mean, you have to cover a whole roof with PV panels to power one house. Imagine for every house we build, we cover half as much ground with solar panels (assuming the other half of the panels are on the house). That is a lot of land.
Like i have been saying for years, we must have a pragmatic way of thinking regarding nuclear energy, not an ideological one.
I worked at another nuclear plant that closed. The town has been dying ever since the closure. I was in the industry in 2011 when Fukushima Daiichi happened. The folks that marched on our plant expressed fears that had nothing to do with our energy generation. Thank you for posting this video - it's so refreshing to see the correct information expressed in such a calm and concise manner.
Towns 'dying' due to a closure is not an argument against closure. This happens all the time, and alternatives to nuclear employ just as many people.
@@snowstrobe I don’t think he is talking about the jobs I think he is saying that it was there main source of power and with it gone they don’t have power.
@@snowstrobe you know what is an argument against closing nuclear power plants? The fact that they produce energy reliably, and can also alter the output in accordance to demand. With solar you gotta hope that the sun shines extra bright when demand picks up, because you can’t store the energy from the sun, no battery can store the electricity to power an entire city. Look at the power outbreaks in California and now the energy crisis in the EU to understand why this is important.
Fun fact: 65+ percent of France’s electricity comes from nuclear for many decades now, and it just works.
@@snowstrobe the alternatives don’t employ “just as many people”, nuclear has the highest number of employees per megawatt. The vast majority of those jobs are local unlike wind and solar, meaning the economic multiplier effect of its employees and the tens of millions of dollars in annual property tax revenue from the plant are both concentrated in a town/county. The Indian Point facility mentioned in the video was responsible for 1/3 of the local school budget thanks to its property taxes, and the Bryon nuclear facility has the highest property tax bill in the nation outside of New York City.
Sweden only achieved relatively environmentally friendly because big portions of their energy is nuclear, 40-60%.
If fact, the way western world found out about Chernobyl was, one of Sweden’s power plant found radiation outside of facility and looked for leaks.
Same for France
Sadly it seems they’ve actually reduced that number a lot from shutting down power plants
sweden is a small country US is way bigger and Relying on nuclear power plant alone is a disaster waiting to happen
@@zedrhyx1788 No reason you can’t just scale up. China, India, and Russia are also big countries betting nuclear power
@@zedrhyx1788 China has 3 times the population and they are developing all the new types of nuclear energy including thorium plants. So not really an argument
it's really disheartening to see someone like the man in the boat. Clearly passionate, clearly devoting a lot of time and energy and emotional investment into being aggressively wrong and actively damaging a good thing.
River keeper are a bunch of wack o's to begin with.
Before engineering for a nuclear plant, sure I thought it was scary stuff. Once you've spent a year in it, you'd be far more afraid of coal plants. Nuclear is one of our best options for clean bulk generation. Depending on the reactor style used, it isn't as expensive or risky to run either.
The Germans must have dismantled all their nuclear reactors because they are terrible engineers....
@@kirkmarch4713 they have good engineers with bad politicians.
@@kirkmarch4713 nah they are good engineers, just bad government and mobs of people that don't understand a thing about nuclear energy wanting it gone
@@bigcnmmerb0873 Is that why they send their nuclear waste to Russia for recycling, which would give Russia more nuclear fuel?
@@kirkmarch4713 Germany shut down their nuclear reactors chiefly in response to the fukushima accident. Much of southern germany is a geologically active zone, not an ideal location for nuclear plants.
Basically "I'm ok with nuclear power, but not in my backyard"
Yeah, I have never experienced someone on the pro-nuclear side lobbying to build a nuclear plant close to their own homes.
@@JS-wv6of yeah, your experience not mine tho
Pretty much everyone lol 🤦♂️
@@JS-wv6of I do. I want more nuclear everywhere
@@JS-wv6of I have lived 5 minutes down the road from a Nuclear Power Plant my entire life and I couldn't be happier about it as it as provided nothing but positives. In fact, I would absolutely love for more plants to be built around me and within my state in general. Nuclear Energy is the only feasible future if we not only wish to save the planet but meet our growing energy needs as well. It is not something to be feared, but something to be revered and recognized as the necessity it is. The closure of Indian Point will literally provide nothing but negatives for not only New York City but the state as well. The loss of the power plant will do far more harm than the plant being open ever possibly could have. I guarantee that many people who wanted the plant to close will end up regretting the decision deeply once they inevitably realize the result of the fearmongering they fell victim to. We need to be embracing Nuclear Energy, not actively working against it.
"The ecosystem cant afford this kind of enviromental impact." He talks about nuclear power, not coal and oil.
Thats the same as saying "I dont want that street noise" and moving from the suburbs to philadelphia city.
Yup, he is just using environmental concerns to cover up that he just doesn't want it that close to new york. If it was 100 miles further north, he would stop caring.
Exactly. Nuclear is the cleanest viable source of energy we have. Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t it literally ZERO emissions? It’s just steam coming out those silos. But Hollywood has taken inspiration from real historical disasters and giving us this Homer Simpson Springfield Power Plant view of nuclear energy. Our understanding of nuclear energy has never been more advanced, therefore it’s never been safer. Everyone thinks of Chernobyl without realizing those reactors were built with all sorts of corner-cutting by an deeply corrupt Soviet Union worried more about competing with the west in numbers rather than optimizing safety and quality of construction.
@@hawkward957 there is some, but it's mainly from building the plant, and the rest is the mining, refinement, processing, and transportation of ore. The nuclear reaction is indeed done without emissions. (then again, a coal/gas/oil plant also needs to be built, and also needs the mining, refinement, and transportation of the ore. Only those also emit CO2 when burning their fuel source).
@@thomasbessems1654 The same could be said for all forms of energy, even renewables.
Its like birds dying on windmills. While coal kills 2.000.000 each year and will lead to +4 or +8°C more.
"Lets destroy the planet with oil and coal beacuse glowy rock scary"
@Apfelsaft gut und günstig Nuclear waste? A modern 1000 MW reactor produces about 25 tons of used fuel rods per year. And that's the only waste there is, nicely and securely packaged. In an average coal powerplant, were talking about tens of milions of tons of emisions being spread all over the place every year (highly carcinogenic and radioactive ash/dust, nitrates, CO2...). Isn't burying 25 tons of used fuel rods into ground much better for us all than breathing, eating and drinking highly carcinogenic and radioactive, probably also toxic, coal powerplant waste?
@Apfelsaft gut und günstig Yes and no. It's still way, way... way less waste than what comes out of coal power plants and these days we take those used fuel rods from these older nuclear power plants and recycle them into fuel that can be used in the more advanced/modern nuclear power plants.
@Apfelsaft gut und günstig Only the US and Germany, France have been researching on reusing nuclear waste and modernize nuclear technology.
@@redegg7530 they should as most public when hear nuclear loose there mind
People: NUCLEAR IS DANGEROUS SHUT IT DOWN
NYC: Ok.
NYC: *gets rolling blackouts*
People: \*surprised pikachu face*
I prefer rolling blackouts to rolling meltdowns. Use solar and wind and you get neither. We already are. Cheaper and safer, too.
@@jackfanning7952 And what happens when the wind slows down or when the sun sets? Where do you think you get your energy from?
@@jackfanning7952 just to let you know 1000 hectares worth of Land used by Wind Energy produces only 40 megawatts
Compared to 50 or less hectares needed by a Nuclear Plant to produce 1Gigawatt worth of energy
@@jackfanning7952 or you just do what germany does, shut down nuclear plants and then import natural gas derived energy from Russia. Problem solved. Germany is now officially greener! Another win for environmentalism.
Cheaper? No. And most nuclear costs come from excessive regulation and irrational fear people have because of the word "nuclear" which probably reminds them of nuclear bombs. Never in the West have we had any major problems with nuclear plants. What we do have is a problem with fossil fuels, increasingly as energy demand continues to increase.
@@jackfanning7952 wow Chernobyl was an old reacter 34 year old with not much safety regulations
It's also the oil industry that's lobbying for these plants to shut down and increase our dependence on fossil fuels
that's a pretty good point!
NY will get the electricity from Hydro Quebec
Nonsense, stop talking nonsense, thats totally wrong, the oil industry has absolutely nothing to do with oil. Oil has a larger/wide field of applications, there are about millions of by-products.
partly true, they're also lobbying for renewables because they KNOW they don't have the energy density and are too intermittent to be of use powering an entire grid. Nuclear is a threat to the fossil fuel industry, which is why it's always targeted.
@@MarkDavis77 i totally agree with you, nuclear has a gigantic potential if we could just develop those modular power plants that are way cheaper/faster and easier to build. I mean there are submarines and aircraft carriers around the world with nuclear propulsion, those nuclear systems can be used to make abundant electricity on land, while also working on reusing the waste to make more energy.
Surely there is a solution to avoid catching the fish.
Wait until they find out how many fish oil rigs kill
@@zachryder3150 or hydroelectric dams
@@y0uCantHandle yeah that seem about right
@@y0uCantHandle or wind turbines… wait no
@@sci_pain3409 Wind turbines and nuclear power stations aren’t comparable, unless you like having no power every time there’s good weather.
“The River has rights” okay sure, but what about fossil fuels damaging the environment?
It's ok they mean it has rights to be flooded by sludge from coal and gas plants!
They could just make a filter that's safer to the fish too
They say that nuclear plants are the radioactivity issue, but they don’t remember that coal plants emit mild amounts of radiation in the coal dust. Coal dust is handled with little to no care and has very little enforcement for keeping it safe. Coal dust gets everywhere and is on most seaports, that stuff is TERRIBLE for you and far worse than it gets credit for. Not to mention that oil leaks a lot, is terrible for you, and suffocates the planet.
@@s.f.i736 what’s your brilliant solution for the air of atmosphere then? 😂
Simple answer: The public doesn't know what they are talking about
We can't afford an accident when flying on a jet either. Nuclear power has a PR problem, and it's fixable.
crash is going to be terrible, get prepared
And whenever you see a shot in a film of "fossil fuel", it's often of a nuclear cooling tower emitting steam 😂 it is a PR problem
@@chris-hayes This isn't true at all. In fact, it's the other way around. Stock footage of FF plant cooling towers is mistaken for nuclear. All steam turbine power stations have cooling towers and there's no design that nuclear uses and FF doesn't.
We make 'conventional' weapons out of material from spent nuclear fuel rods, and if the human race continues to exist, killed over a billion people. The death count for nuclear power is thus off. Above ground nuclear testing in the USA has already killed over 2.4 million.
The alternative is to use mandatory vaccination on the population to reduce reproduction rates while pretending it's just a means to fight the curve of some disease that isn't our very presence... oh, wait, that's already beeing done...
Why does everyone instantly relate nuclear power plants with nuclear bombs?!
Because of shows they watch on TV.
Because it has the word "nuclear". And anything that has the n word is automatically bad.
hollywood has done a great job fear mongering. It's all intentional
Greenpeace did hellot of job to do it,... and it sadly worked,...
I just love how the people complaining about the dangers of nuclear and dismissing the much greater dangers of fossil fuel power have no skin in the fossil fuel game. Let them work in a coal mine or an oil rig and then we'll talk.
We all breathe air, we all have skin whether or not we know it.
Anyone who worries about the condenser loop dsirupting the fish should think about what happens at a hydro dam. Unfortunatelly we yet to find a completely safe and enviromentally neutral way to mass produce the energy a modern society requires.... but probably nuclear is the nearest to this goal.
That man failed to recognize that most energy sources will harm the fish
Or how wind turbines are also killing birds
Not to mention how many dams you have to make to match the power that a Nuclear plant makes
Nuclear isn't even remotely close to the goal.
And there is also danger of those dams breaking and cause floods too
With how advanced nuclear reactors have come in the last 50 years (new reaction methods such as Gas cooling, Pebble beds, Pressurized Water, etc), it's really a whole different ball game we have on our hands. The safety and redundancy efforts are practically built in to the reactions itself. Nuclear also gives a great option for smaller regions who don't want to depend on neighbors a great way to sustain themselves. It's super exciting technology!
If you have the fundings.
we can also use thorium
Because stopping thorium rector is very easy
@@kajetus0688 thorium is still way behind and expensive, well in future maybe it be better but for now it hella expensive
@@kajetus0688 thorium reactors also require plutonium to become fissile
@@sovietdies so in order to stop a thorium reactor you need to take plutonium away
Chernobyl had a meltdown because it was poorly maintained by an overworked and understaffed team, and it didn’t have the best construction either.
Fukushima had a meltdown because a plant already crippled by earthquakes was utterly decimated by a tsunami many times taller than what it was built to withstand.
Im not as well read on three mile island, but I can’t imagine the story is very different.
Nuclear energy itself isn’t inherently dangerous, it’s mostly the waste you need to worry about. The water used to cool the reactor, any used control rods, any steam made from contact with the reactor.
And even then, modern containment of the reactor and its waste are built to last many years after the plant itself may be defunct. The reactor will be surrounded by many feet of solid concrete, there are some waste containers that are able to withstand being hit by a train and still function perfectly. We’ve spent more than enough time, money and manpower to make nuclear energy as safe as it can be. The big three just have such an awful reputation that it puts anyone without the finer details off the idea of nuclear energy entirely.
I was shocked to hear that guy describes the numbers of deaths from each energy type as a 'valid study' then say how the risk of a melt down causing deaths isn't worth it. When those numbers SHOW how low that risk is, and how HIGH the risk is from the currently only immediate viable alternative (fossil fuels). Ignoring the fact that renewables sadly can't yet reliably meet the demand that nuclear covers. He clearly also doesn't know what a molten salt/ thorium reactor is since that can't go into a meltdown..
If I were to move to live next to a power plant, I'd choose a nuclear one over a fossil fuel one every time.
Some people just can't take in new information, and actually develop their understanding of things.
The "cost" of fossil fuels fails to account for externalities, pollution, health, climate, subsidies.
Why don't we just stop using electricity. For 6000 years of mans being here on earth he didn't need it. We don't need it now. Problem solved.
@@dfpolitowski2 that would disrupt our massive current flow of information therefore would collapse societies. Watch a show called "tribes of Europe"
@@dfpolitowski2 yea let's stop using electricity, stop using cars, stop living in houses, stop working... nice idea buddy
@@dfpolitowski2 you mean we should evolve, backwards?
@@kulik03 @Hibiscus @Mohit Dhameja You all took the bait, Hook, line and sinker.
Oh I thought Indian Nuclear power plant gonna shut but it's US 😅
india is building nuclear
Same thought here😂😂😂😂
Yep
Lol! Same.😅😅
I thought they'd be showing Kudankulam turns out to be somehwhere in the outskirts of NYC xD
It's incredible how vox is able to present both points of views, both sides of opinion and all arguments and counter arguments. In summary, nuclear is still the best what we have for now.
The nuclear we have already build* is better* than fossil fuels. That's it.
Thanks for doing the work you do - please keep up the fantastic investigative, deeply informative, and easy to digest journalism. 👏
Mark Ruffalo takes his roles seriously, he is really against gamma emissions
😅
best comment out here yet
He always angry
hulk doesnt want another hulk
It makes him green with anger!
4:22 - This is why I have no faith in humanity. "Here are the numbers." "Numbers are beside the point." How can we move forward as a society when facts aren't disputed, yet simply ignored as inconvenient.
I'm making this reply copying from another reply I saw from a user named Gary Ermann
Gary Ermann • 15 hours ago Trained engineer who works in safety management for a government agency here. While what he is saying is inelegant, he is touching on a reasonable point. You can't rely on historical data to measure the risk posed by ultra-low frequency, high consequence events. If, for instance, you have something that is expected to have a high casualty event once every 100 years, you can't just point to the past 60 years of data and conclude its a completely safe activity just because that high casualty event hasn't happened yet. This is especially true once you start taking into account other engineering concerns, such as the increasing challenges associated with maintaining and repairing aging infrastructure that conflict with incentives to operate that infrastructure as long as possible before decommissioning it.
Have no faith, have faith, can people just choose already?
Well, it is a fact that existing nuclear reactors can melt down under certain circumstances. But it's also a fact that this risk is not inherent to nuclear power -- it comes with design choices that turn out to be unfortunate. Think putting the backup generators at Fukushima Daiichi in the basement, where they were swamped by that tsunami.
I think the way forward with nuclear (fission) is to build a bunch of new-design prototypes and get some operating experience on them. Let them prove they are safer and less expensive than the old LW & BW reactors.
If we move everyone away from a town we can save x dollars a year. People in the town "thouse numbers are beside the point." You are asking us to move away from our lives.
Why is your faith in humanity shook so easily? Here's the deal, economic dislocation of any kind can be more disastrous than the opportunity cost of whatever new innovation that can be had. When globalization happened, all the jobs went to China. On paper, it should have yielded great economic benefit, but the people that lost their jobs were not able to adapt to the changing economy for a number of reasons. The same can be said when nuclear energy starts looking like a viable option. It's the difference between having a safe and efficient nuclear energy source, and having mutated irradiated freaks roaming around because we couldn't consider the negative consequences of nuclear facilities leaking into a public space full of poor people that were too ignorant to politically lobby for themselves, or because of corruption and cut corners. The whole REASON for the nuclear reactors is because it is supposed to save the environment, not destroy it.
NYC was probably the greenest city b4 Indian Point closed. Most ppl used public transportation and the electricity that both people and subways use came from clean nuclear
Don’t forget Niagara Falls
I used to live in Haverstraw, NY. I could see Indian Point from my home on the Hudson River. There were frequent nuclear alarm testing all across Rockland County. I agree that it is not the best Nuclear Reactor but I do believe Nuclear power is the way of the future and should not be shunned upon because of past mistakes and negligence. Since then I have moved away but that area was one of the most interesting places I have lived in.
4:49 "The numbers don't matter to me. A meltdown is rarer and more dramatic!" How much are they paying this guy?
Trained engineer who works in safety management for a government agency here. While what he is saying is inelegant, he is touching on a reasonable point. You can't rely on historical data to measure the risk posed by ultra-low frequency, high consequence events. If, for instance, you have something that is expected to have a high casualty event once every 100 years, you can't just point to the past 60 years of data and conclude it's a completely safe activity just because that high casualty event hasn't happened yet. This is especially true once you start taking into account other engineering concerns, such as the increasing challenges associated with maintaining and repairing aging infrastructure that conflict with incentives to operate that infrastructure as long as possible before decommissioning it.
The numbers are not accurate at all though. According to the the soviet union, only a few hundred people died from Chernobyl, and those were the soldiers who went on the roof for 10 seconds at a time to push the nuclear material back into the hole. No civilians died according to the official numbers, which we know is not true from video documentation of civilians with radiation burns in hospitals. The vast majority of those who died from Chernobyl died from cancer many years later and studies have shown it's actually millions of people who were damaged or killed by Chernobyl. That's also ignoring the fact the every human in the world alive at the time was exposed to it's radiation also, unlike an oil spill that primarily effects the region of the spill.
I believe strongly in climate change and cleaning up our environment, but I can't sign onto something that when an accident happens, the entire worlds environment is effected, and the damage to humans is impossible to measure in society, as was the cancer from every day chemicals, or from nuclear fallout that every human on the planet is exposed to during meltdowns? Look at the fact that fukashima is STILL leaking high levels of radiation a decade later, and will for at least another decade until the rods lose their strength and the reaction slows down. That damage to the environment can't be mitigated in the way an oil spill can to a specific area. We all feel the effects, and with thyroid problems becoming more and more common in society, whose to say all of this nuclear fallout isn't to blame? I think it's impossible to prove because there's too many variables to isolate our fallout exposure, so no one really knows...
@@heyaisdabomb I live in Kyiv not that far from Chernobyl, many mdmbers of my family have cancer undoubtedly bc of it. I'm still a strong proponent for the nuclear power. You can't measure even millions of lives against the damage that climate change brings us.
Pure Availability heuristic.
Excellent video.
One important distinction I want to make: the Lazard graph at 7:20 shows the cost of energy by source for *new builds*, not for existing plants. The cost of electricity from decades-old nuclear plants like Indian Point is cheap because they were built a long time ago when capital costs were lower, and it only gets cheaper the longer the reactors operate, because they have a longer period of time to offset the up-front costs with sales of electricity.
Thus, while costs for *new* nuclear may be going up, costs for *existing* nuclear are low and getting lower.
Correct
You are only (about) half correct. The US reactors that have been closed in the last few years and the ones closing, if they don't get subsidies, are not economically competitive.
Our nuclear plants that have a single, smaller reactor cost too much to run. Our paid off nuclear plants that have multiple reactors are still competitive with renewables.
The cost of electricity from existing, paid off reactors can only go up. As machinery gets older repairs become a larger issue and that money has to be recovered via higher selling costs.
That's what happened to Fort Calhoun. That plant needed some serious work and went offline for a year. When it came back the competition's costs had dropped and Calhoun had to charge more than when it went down for repairs. Soon after the restart Fort Calhoun was permanently closed because the market would not buy its electricity.
There are some Mark II reactors that have been in service coming up on 50 years - waay past their design lifespan. Jalopy reactors held together with hope.
@@paulborneo7535 The US has four or five reactors that are now in their 51st year of operation. I'm guessing they have some brittle bones after five decades of radiation striking critical metal parts.
It is more expensive to run an existing generation plant than to replace it with distributed solar + storage managed by autobidder software. They are stranded assets that are no longer economical to operate.
A very well structured video. Thanks for creating this type of content ❤️
Fun fact: nuclear power plants dont explode, the core could melt but there is nothing that could explode like atomic bomb
@@sandal_thong8631 It was still a steam explosion, like a normal boiler can.
@@caav56 And hydrogen explosions, as at meltdown temperatures, the zirconium cladding catalyzes water into oxygen and hydrogen
Did they protest against COAL PLANTS?
I know right
This.
Especially the innumerable plants in China with essentially no emission controls.
Yes they did protest against coal plants. Quite a bit. The group Kentuckians For The Commonwealth led opposition to the coal generation and "coal ash" waste in many Ohio River cities with coal-fired plants.
China inflation in vox
Even as a kid in high-school, I recognized the power of nuclear energy to not only make our world greener in the long term but make our grid more efficient too. Whenever we had a self-research project, I always did nuclear energy.
But most of the existing nuclear power plants are from the 60s or 70s, they are not safe! It would be way to expensive to improve or replace those old ones.
Same, as is evidence by my name haha
I had the same project strategy as you. I noticed it also had a built-in bonus of always grabbing the audience's attention.
@Apfelsaft gut und günstig If my calculation are correct (hopefully they are) all nuclear waste produced till now **WORLDWIDE** could fit in a 120m by a 120m by 1m rectangle (which is about a large super market ish and that doesn’t account for stacking it vertically! Though you also have to think of the space it requires for radiation shielding and maintenance so this isn’t exactly a full picture
@@nullnummer i kind of agree, people doesnt recognize the year the fukushima, chernobyl, TMI were built, it was in the 70s
Finally they address the mortality of cooling water entrainment. Its not the larger fish its the gametes, zygotes, larvae and micro-invertebrates (copepods etc.) that have the aggregate negative impact. On a side note there are many industries that use ambient water as coolant with the same trophic compromising impact.
This was one of the most neutrally framed thing about a hot-button issue I've seen in a while. I actually felt kind of unsettled waiting for the rhetorical framing and picking a side. Instead it summarized what the substantial arguments are that seem to be moving this issue the hardest, from whatever direction, and focused on explaining who had that view, rather than assigning "good" vs "bad" labels to things. I wasn't told how to feel about it and I'm left not knowing how to feel about it. I think mostly this wasn't new to me, since I follow energy news a lot, but it was almost out-of-body-experience feeling to see something so neutral about an American issue of public debate.
Still never trust VOX
@@chrisgoose3788 me neither but this video is good. Great job Cleo
I love it when people are looking at a solution for clean energy, but when you bring up part of the solution, Nuclear Energy, they turn their heads and say no.
It wouldn't matter if you could make money with nuclear power plants, but you can't. It's more expensive than coal per kwh. As for building new ones, you tie your capital up for a decade, and then the plants doesn't pay you back. It makes no financial sense using market economics.
Really, the only way to utilize nuclear as a significant contributor to the climate solution would be to publicly subsidize it, as they did in France.
Thats why I'm mad at people who bash japan when they tried to dump nuclear wastes from this plants to sea. Nuclear is green and its the future.
@@operator6438 Nuclear, solar and wind all emit 15-30 times less CO2 per kWh than fossil fuels. They are all low Carbon, clean ways of getting electricity.
Nuclear energy ain't "clean". Sure, it doesn't emit much greenhouse gases, but its nuclear waste is definitely not clean, and must be dealt with. Something that this video did not touch upon..
@@pablonetx I agree, that's why it's only part of the solution. Dealing with nuclear waste is still something that has not been tackled and needs to be researched further.
As a CBRNe specialist I'd rather have a NPP near my city rather than a fossil fuel/natural gas power plant.
I cannot afford wearing a gasmask for my entire life just because i do not want to breath the waste from fossil fuels which are released in the air.
Ha. I literally lived right next door to a gas & oil fossil-fuel power plant once. The view from my apartment window was dominated by the giant smokestack.
@@jonathantan2469 the beauty of smog
Short story: people have irrational fears and are extremely uninformed
*misinformed
Ugh, the shear misconception of Nuclear Energy is astounding with people. It is one of the cleanest source of energy if done right.
So lets not ignore the elephant in the room here, was the dog able to go up the ramp with its stick?
No 😭
@@CleoAbram great job on the piece! I’m actually a engineer working in the energy sector, and even to me nuclear is scary. I enjoyed your video very much!
@@CleoAbram rip
Being concerned that a nuclear power plant is gonna melt down is like being concerned that the plane your flying is gonna crash. Nuclear power plants are handled by professionals and rarely meltdown only to carelessness.
not to mention that modern reactors can't even have meltdown - they need positive control to keep the reaction running, not the other way around anymore
Unless you have Homer Simpson in there.
And faults in design (aka Chernobyl) which modern designs fix it
And even that comparacent is not giving the credit to nuclear. There are hundreds if nuclear plants running for millions of hours by now, and there was... What 2 meltdowns?
@@stefanoviczeljkors alot more than 2 (about 99 that cause damage from 5000usd+ and/or cause deaths)
But that is 3 or 4 times less than how many nukes the world lauched on ships and islands
Here are some rocks that will provide unlimited power world wide. People,
“no thanks.”
Not unlimited in today’s consumption U 235 will run out in 80 years. If you increased the number of nuclear plants so the world went 100% nuclear we would run out in just 5 years.
@@Mike-kr5dn the answer to that problem is build thorium reactors, they are safer, more efficient and thorium is much easier to mine and find compared to Uranium. we use that until Fusion reactors become a thing
Very interesting overview, thank you!
Anti-nuclear movement was particularly strong in Germany. Today, Germany is one of largest coal power plant operators in Europe.
Meanwhile France is doing way better thanks to nuclear energy
In Europe*
As it was in the past. And the share of electrical energy from coal plants is decreasing. Coal has something to do with the opposition of nuclear energy, but it is too easy to say that coal has replaced nuclear.
@@jurgenparkour9337 unfortunately Macron has pledged to bring France’s nuclear to below 50% of their energy mix… I have no idea why they’re doing that and shutting down the plants since nuclear has clearly been such a great benefit to France and they have had one of the cleanest grids in the world for decades
@@ailaya5127 even if coal hasn't directly "replaced" nuclear, shutting down nuclear plants indeed keeps coal around longer than it should be (because they, well, still need to use something in place of nuclear since other sources can't fill that void)
on the other and, coal could've totally been phased out today - not just "decreasing" - with just the same amount of nuclear Germany had in the 90s
and if they keep building it, German electricity sector should very well be carbon neutral by this point
A plant is being closed by taking advices from the local people who necessarily doesn't have any idea of Science especially behind clean energy..!! What a great Nation... The opinions of that Scientist is less valuable to that boatman.. xD
could be worse, Germany is shutting down all their plants making them the most pollutant country in Europe
And now we have a major oil spill in California coast. The US will continue burning fossil fuel & I wont be surprise it will increase as the population grows. Yes, solar energy & windmills - which eat up a lot of land - will provide energy, but fossil fuel is here to stay.
Which is why Socrates didn’t like democracy, ignorant mobs wind up influencing decisions they don’t understand and are to lazy to research in earnest to find the truth.
@@OverlordShamala you could always ask your local representatives what they think about Nuclear power and choose the one who supports it in future elections. Dem or GOP support the person who will let us build plants that can stop climate change today, not in somebody, but today. thats what I do
As someone who lives in the area, it is not as widely supported as you would think. If anything I think Cuomo was honestly pressured to do it by media and did it for PR. It seems like its in support of clean energy but we're (my town and the area around it) not ready to support all the lost energy right now!
surprisingly objective look from Vox!
Another example for why loudest doesn't equate to smartest, not even close to it!
If only people would stop protesting against nuclear energy and allow researchers to make it safer.
true.
its already safer. all you need is competent engineers and technicians to build and run it. chernobyl was incompetent, while fukushima had design issues for a problem that was unlikely to happen a lot (twin disaster of earthquake+ tsunami at same time)
Safety isn't so much the issue for many. Large concern is the nuclear waste and the risk of storing it safely for ten if not hundred thousand of years to come.
@@pfefferle74 thats not our problem but the impending climate disaster is
@@pfefferle74 yep compared to a rapid climate change which will create more violent ecosystems changes is safer
The Reputation of Nuclear Power plants was ruined by Chernobyl
And three mile island and fukushima
As sad as that event was, I think we should pursue nuclear power.
3 Incidents Ruined the Reputation of Nuclear PowerPlants
The problem is that nuclear power is too expensive, at least for post-industrial countries that don't need much energy to produce. There are more cost-effective alternatives. Chernobyl is not to blame. You may check the costs overruns for Olkiluoto, Flamanville, Vogtle, VC Summer and compare them with solar power costs for example.
The same was in 80s and 90s when oil was cheap. Countries started to cancel existing plans for nuclear power back then.
Moreover, nuclear power is not good to work with variable rewewables in the grid.
Did a good job of hushing up Fukushima
that concrete dome is several feet thick and continually poured... it's designed to stand up to an attack.
one that Chernobyl did not have
@@williamhaynes7089 chernobyl wasn't attacked, it was a failed experiment... one that could have potentially saved future disasters had it succeeded, but sadly it did not. it wasn't a good call.
This is an amazingly well done video
God I hate listening to anti-nuclear power people argue. They never seem to get the facts right and/or just respond to pathos.
For me the biggest problem with nuclear is the waste. We in Germany started phasing out of nuclear after Fukushima in 2011. And still we haven't found a place where the nuclear waste can be finally stored. For millennials to come it will cause radiation and therefore continue to be a security thread. But I agree shutting down coal must be a priority.
@@DJYStarTV Agreed re: coal must go. However, I do not lose sleep over waste storage. Future humanity might not thank us for lumbering them with it, but at least they will be alive to do it, if nuclear now helps avert the worst effects of climate change.
Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima officials didn't get their facts straight either.
@@alanthompson8515 90% of the waste needs months to get less radioactive, and newer plants nowadays reuse some of the waste. You can get a chunk of desert, throw it under there and have space for decades of nuclear waste.
@@pablocejas01 So true. The NW "problem" has been hyped by interested parties. I wonder who they might be?
"Terrorist attacks"
Reactors are both designed in mind with that, and theres like 3 meters of concrete in the containment building, and the whole core is housed in a multi tonne steel vessel. You just can't "attack" one of these things
The nuclear power station ten miles from my house staged a terrorist attack to test their preparations. Despite being informed of the date for the attack, the four man squad was able to attach a simulated bomb directly to the reactor vessel. Go figure..entered the containment structure through an unlocked door! Feel secure?!
@@davidharris453 yes, thats what they were supposed to do. As a) they would have had access to the actual floorplan and codes to get in (don't want to actually blow up doors) and B) like companies hiring hackers/people to break in to see what routes/methods they would use to actually gwt in so they could patch them up
Ransomware
@@paulborneo7535 possible, but stupidly hard. Those kinds of attacks are state on state level cyber warfare.
@@davidharris453 itd need to be a shaped charge to get through the reactor vessel. The likelihood of terrorists getting there hands on one of those is very low. Like they'd have an easier time killing more people blowing up a gas line. There is risk everywhere.
"Rivers have their own rights"? It is a kind of statement i would expect to be said when someone wants to assert their opinion but have ran out of ideas to base it on. The massacre of water organisms due to it was the most trivial reason of all for it could've been reduced, if not solved completely, in a no. of ways and just required to put pressure on Holtec Int.. Lastly, the safety concern was legit. Any thing with such potential must not be anywhere near a human settlement of any sorts. I am supportive of the replacement of Fossil fuel energy by Nuclear energy, at any cost but lives. They should start establishing Nuclear plants at every single far-off place possible because we don't have much time left, if left at all. As regards renewable ones, they are impractical. I can say with some confidence- they won't turn out anywhere near as good as people expect them to be.
Very well put. You've managed to summarize the bigger questions briefly, with clarity and in an engaging way. My only question: Do the safety statistics for wind and solar include the carbon produced during their manufacturing processes?
Riverkeeper got paid half of a $15 million dollar “environmental fund” for their work on this. Gosh, I wonder why they fought so hard to shut it down.
true, Im sick of greentards being hypocrities.
@@somedude0921 while I kinda agree with you, why'd ya have to use a slur, I mean, come on, there are ways to get your point across without using an ableist slur
@@L83467 because people are fed up with explaining stuff, to someone who has already made up their mind
I really appreciate how you interviewed people with various perspectives. People nowadays often choose to listen to only viewpoints that support their perspective which further creates the societal divides that are so prominent, especially in the US.
It was actually a great way of showing that nuclear opponents consistently and universally don't know a thing about how the energy economy works.
Ye
This is a great point to draw attention to. Public education could be the greatest obstacle for many of our current environmental disasters.
I think a video about those other clean and firm energy sources would be really interesting too, I would like to know how geothermal because so economically viable in such a short amount of time.
Bro they canceling nuclear power plants now? Bruh
I understand Chernobyl and Fukushima happened, but that was bad design and incompetence. Nuclear power plants can be built safely and is clean energy.
Chernobyl yes it's bad design but Fukushima was mother nature releasing an earthquake that could easily level a medium sized coastal city.
The issue is that even if we consider the impacts of these horrible events nuclear is WAY SAFER than fossil fuels. The reason people think nuclear is unsafe is because it's a big event that's dramatic instead of just slowly killing people.
@@Gigi-zr6hp Bad site choice for starters, Fukushima 5 & 6 where build on higher ground than the 1 - 4 reactors that got flooded and damaged. 5 & 6 had no damage due to being out of reach of the tsunami. Chernobyl site wise is pretty much in the safest location regarding wide spreading of radiation in an accident due to no ocean/river/etc. near by that can wash away/spread the debris from an accident. And even then the damage is ongoing untill this day.
Fukushima happened because of a powerful typhoon
@@hillockfarm8404 chernobyl was 60 miles from Kiev, and 100 miles from Minsk, both massive cities with over a million inhabitants. That’s not very safe.
The lack of the ability to transport power is the U.S.’s biggest issue with power, there’s plenty of safe places to put nuclear and increase solar, we just don’t have good ways of transporting it from those locations yet.
It's not like the technology does not exist, it's just a lack of infrastructure. We need improved methods for storing power, sure, but that's a separate issue.
@@Bayplaces isn't the 1 trillion dollar bill abt this?? i hope it passes
The lack of storage is a much bigger issue.
By building Integral Fast Reactors, we can fuel them with the used fuel pellets [nuclear waste] from commercial light water reactors & weapons-grade plutonium [from decommissioned thermonuclear weapons]. The waste product from this type of reactor is low-level nuclear waste that can be safely stored in the New Mexico salt deposits along with used radiological medical equipment, scrap contaminated with radioactive lead [from coal-fired powerlants], etc. as it has a short half-life...
@@epochal1224 Well not really. The bill does provide funds for transmission, but SIGNIFICANTLY LOWER than what’s required.
For comparison Biden is allocating $73 billion, whereas EPRI, IEEE, MITEI, NREL, ASCE and DOE estimate the cost to repair and upgrade the US Electrical Grid is between $1.5-$2.5 trillion.
Great video. True journalism. There is both sides of the party for and against nuclear. Not opinionated.
We need more of this!
These videos are why I subscribed to yall
Quality reporting - balanced, fair, and with clear information that shows both sides of the debate and allows to draw our own personal conclusions. Thank you Cleo and team
essentially for most nuclear energy is a great option, until the plant is within 30km of where they live
NIMBY
As if living near any industrial complex were what people wanted
The not in my backyard mindset :/
I wouldn't mind living one block from a nuclear power plant. Sure it is technically a risk but so was driving over the speed limit with my car heading to the ER and I do not regret doing that one bit. Sometimes you just gotta make a choice.
Also, I would much MUCH rather live next to a nuclear power plant than a coal/gas plant, any day of the week.
Pretty much. Same with renewables- amazing but not in my backyard.
Nuclear Power Plants are the cleanest form of energy we have
There's not even a comparison, it's an astronomical difference.
@@tissuepaper9962 Nuclear PowerPlants Produce around 30g of Carbon Monoxide and kills 90 people per year
@@memazov6601 yeah I'm with you, I was agreeing.
@UC4EL7D6VEXwwb0CiOy3SM_A There Contained in the PowerPlant the Radiation
@@tissuepaper9962 Politics Ruin everything right
whats funny is nuclear accidents are so rare the last one in 2011 that was a earth quake and a tsunami I have no clue how it lasted so long and their could be different nuclear reactors like thorium being way safer
I'm curious where Vox got the data showing that Nuclear has a higher death rate than water/hydro. All the data I've seen has shown far more fatalities due to hydro accidents, but perhaps that was just raw numbers and didn't account for just how much more hydro is in use?
Nuclear is the airplane of energy production. Safer per unit of energy, least expensive (see France energy costs compared to Germany), and a natural evolution towards energy dense means of production
I thought you were going to point out how there's just less tolerance for risk from nuclear power and air travel. Accidents are extremely rare, but disastrous when they do happen, hence, risks that don't absolutely have to be taken, won't be taken.
@@takatamiyagawa5688 Yeah I thought the same
@@takatamiyagawa5688 Yeah, I thought it was to say that the average person has a more irrational fear of flying... a safer mode of transport than something they are familiar with that actually has a higher injury and death rate from accidents: driving.
Funny thing is Germany buys tons of power from france as well from there nuclear power plants.
Actual energy costs of German renewables are lower than French energy costs.
Not even including the prices for nuclear storages which have not even been built yet.
German energy prices for the population are very high due to taxes, not because of actual high energy cost.
Deadly Nuclear Bombs 📈 *stonks*
Clean Nuclear Energy📉 “no thanks!”
@6:34 what is the 3rd choice? How quickly can we implement it? And how much of the fossil fuel generation capacity will it replace?
@@sandal_thong8631 You won't be satisfied until we have burned all the coal in Aus and China,we have a cheap clean energy source, you propose more coal.
MRI scan, which is used all the time in hospitals and labs, used to be called NMRI - Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging. They had to drop that "N" because people would associate that with all the bad things with nuclear power.
It's just like how the video talked about it. You can give these people the stats that nuclear power is actually safer than fossil fuel, yet just the word "nuclear" will strike fear in all of them, despite it's probably one of the safest thing to use due to how heavily regulated it is.
It's very much a possiblity that of all it was a ploy by the coal companies to make people believe that nuclear energy is bad. And through social continuity, that idea stuck and now "nuclear" is synonymous to "dangerous"
We need MORE nuclear power, NOT less to have a greener power grid
Did you even look into it? The cost of producing a certain amount of renewable wind/solar power is already cheaper than nuclear. Especially Hydro is much cheaper. There is literally no point at all to be constucting NEW nuclear power plants when renewables can be constructed for even cheaper (for the same amount of power supply).
@@MsFallenPrime Look at the UK, they understand that nuclear is part of the overall solution and are constructing new plants at Hinkley Point. Despite the UK having a lot of wind resources, there might not be ideal conditions for producing wind and that's where nuclear comes in. Hydro is very damaging to watercourses, the Colorado doesn't even reach the sea anymore due to the number of dams on it.
@@MsFallenPrime is solar and wind reliable? look at what happened in texas, renewables comprised of a huge percentage of the total power supply but when last year it went down to below 1% levels. Thats what lead to the massive power outage in texas. Nuclear, Fossil fuels are reliable.
@@MsFallenPrime okay, so where's all the solar and wind now? That's right, there isn't any, and again like described in the video wind and solar are not reliable enough to replace all fossil fuel power
@@sidv4615 It by far doesn't need to be as realiable, as you can see (which you probably can't - Nuclear is already 3-4x as expensive per power output.) Even if it isn't up 100% of the time one can even put up a 200% capacity for cheaper. Not even taking into account storage. Also there's a thing between export and import. Wheras here in Europe electricity is sold around. One time this country has a surplus, the next time the other, overal it is fairly reliable. @Enormhi - where's all the nuclear now? Exactly, (almost) nothing being developed. While wind/solar is already pumped up to 10-20% of national needs in just a few years.
Nuclear is literally the only way we have to transition between fossil fuel and renewable energies. Period.
Is just that politics ruin everything
@@memazov6601 And in some places it's even worse than how the video puts it. The US is a HUGE country, but some other economies like Japan simply do not have any space where to build renewable plants at all... at least not enough to sustain their economy.
Agreed.
Specifically Fusion right? I doubt we still be using Fission Power Plants.
@@Oropher420 I used the present tense. Fusion doesn't exist yet and won't exist for many years. So no, I'm not talking about fusion
Interesting, it will be great to see a video done on Project Salus 2021
Simply speaking:
Renewable energies > nuclear power> Coal/oil power
I used to be entirely against nuclear power but after listening to some scientists explain more about it, I’m in favour. While I love the idea of renewable energy, I think it’s too inconsistent right now to rely on it. Especially since people want to shut down the nuclear plants without a better solution right now.
If you want to charge your electric car or insure your You Tube servers work support nuclear.
😂 Renewable energy supply is constantly increasing. While existing nuclear plants may be used for some time, there is no reason to support opening up of new ones.
@@yashagrawal88 There's also no reason to close the existing ones when it means we're just going back to fossil fuels because renewables haven't reached the level to support us yet, and won't for several years.
@@yashagrawal88 Wrong. I have 20 solar panels, i have an electric car. And from my own experience is that it just does not work properly.(Daytime i go to work, therefore the solar panels can't charge my car. And at night my solar panels do not generate anything and my car get charged with coal and gas powered plants.) I am for building many new generation nuclear power plants. They can deliver safe, and clearn energy when there is no wind and solar.
Thank you for being open minded and actually doing research, this is how we change the world
I’m doing my master’s thesis project in architecture on building small modular nuclear reactors (SMR’s) in an urban setting. Nuclear power is so efficient and should definitely be considered in the discussion of future energy production.
Yeah, even I knew since middle school physics that nuclear energy was the best solution of dense urban areas. It generates a lot of power for a “small” footprint.
It's dangerous and impractical to proliferate nuclear to 200 countries in 10-30 years, which makes it a non starter for 90% of countries in the world. solar energy is compatible and safe with urban settings and can be used today in every country
How many municipal power providers in Utah have pulled out of the SMR project in ID due to costs?
Has one publically trade utility signed on with this?
@@kenhunt5153 The NUscale SMR has received approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and is being built at the Idaho National laboratory with a built date of 2027 (will be extended as are all construction projects). Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems will be the owner of the plant. GE Hitachi SMR is well on its way to getting approval and just hit another milestone in the approval process. They are already thinking of building one in Poland if all goes well. Rolls Royce has published a few iterations of an SMR there trying to build in the UK. They are still in the process of developing it but it has backing of its own. Some scientists believe this is the future of nuclear energy. For my thesis, it's not my job to prove that SMR's are 100% going to be built but that there is enough of a probability that it deserves consideration. Is there enough probability? 100% considering there are even more companies trying to produce SMR's that I didn't even list.
@@jessierabbit please read original post with facts I brought up.
great colouring on this video!
Amazing animations!
4:22 that's a very polite way of saying "they just choose to disregard the numbers because they completely break their arguments apart"
"The numbers are beside the point" for people whose position is not supported by those numbers.
They don't have an argument. None of their counter points make any sense which makes me think their group is bankrolled by Exxon.
@@ichijofestival2576 Theres a reason why nuclear reactors aren't build in places in risk of a tsunami and/or both.
I'm making this reply copying from another reply I saw from a user named Gary Ermann
Gary Ermann • 15 hours ago Trained engineer who works in safety management for a government agency here. While what he is saying is inelegant, he is touching on a reasonable point. You can't rely on historical data to measure the risk posed by ultra-low frequency, high consequence events. If, for instance, you have something that is expected to have a high casualty event once every 100 years, you can't just point to the past 60 years of data and conclude its a completely safe activity just because that high casualty event hasn't happened yet. This is especially true once you start taking into account other engineering concerns, such as the increasing challenges associated with maintaining and repairing aging infrastructure that conflict with incentives to operate that infrastructure as long as possible before decommissioning it.
I can save tax payers millions of dollars by closing a road to a town. Everyone in the town will just move to the city.
Everyone in the town will say "The number's don't matter, you are killing the town"
I live in Toronto Canada and it's essentially powered by nuclear energy.
And have one of the cleanest grids in the world.
Many major cities have some atleast some of its power coming from nuclear or gas.
and uranium has already been underground, so technically we are just putting it back
Nuclear waste is still a better alternative to coal and oil and the impact it has on the environment is way less have you seen Chernobyl while the radiation is harmful to life the plant life has flourished
well, in case anyone wants to hear an update, New York state just did a massive deal ($20 billion) with the province of Quebec to buy 10.4 terawatt-hours of electricity over 25 years. Quebec's energy is 95% hydroelectric (there's a LOT of water in the north of the province). they'll have to build a line to supply the power the NY, which should be completed by 2023. also, it's worth noting that all of Quebec's power is produced and distributed by Hydro Quebec, which is a public company whose prices are extremely cheap so this will benefit the population of the province rather than a private company - as well as the residents of the state of NY. looks to me like they found a replacement for the Indian Point plant.
yeah but you cant always depend on someone on the outside
South west USA we need water. You can keep your electricity; Thank You very much! But if you want to pipeline (transport by any means planes trains boats aqueduct or canal) your water; WE WILL TAKE ALL YOU CAN SHIP!
Almost forgot... I am pretty sure if you sail an ice berg into LA Harbor we would buy that too! We will just have to figure out how to handle its melt on the fly.
The Champlain Hudson Power Express is only planned to be 1,250 MW. Indian point's two reactors were about 2,200 MW. The rest is currently being made up by new natural gas plants or refurbished older ones - CPV valley energy center (680 MW), cricket valley energy center (1,100 MW) just to name a few.
Also, hilariously, the 'environmental' group featured in this video (Riverkeeper) is also against the transmission line project since it is going to be buried under the hudson riverbed.
Here's a NIMBY solution: buy electrical energy from Canada; let them build nuclear plants.
8:30
hydropower is also pretty stable, and can be used as you want to, when u want to
just has a max use per day/week/month/year...
bcs its jusst important to not overuse the source
Bro, unless it's a naturally occurring elevation, dams can be disastrous to the ecosystem (not to mention down right expensive) and seeing as its nyc, I don't expect any kind of elevation.