Of course they dont include themselves in the "there are too many people" argument. its the other, lesser humans that are the problem. Funny how that is...
Thanks Robert Zubrin. It's rare to see someone bringing forth good factual information regarding nuclear energy. Usually the words radiation or nuclear brings out fear mongering stupidity.
Don't worry, Long Island electricity ratepayers paid the entire 6 billion dollar bill with a 3% surcharge on every electricity bill. Complete insanity.
0:49 he mentions the co2 case. Zubrin has always recognized, correctly that plants suffer, with one exception, from co2 starvation .Everyone refers to the concentration of 0.039% of the co2 in the atmosphere. Forgetting that it is the number of co2 molecules, around the stomata, that enter into the leaves, not the relative content in the air, in other words the density of the co2 molecuĺes, that matters, this density is reduced with the altitude or elevation of the terrain, ànd the temperature of the surrounding air, for example in Colorado, that is over 6000 feet elevation the density is about 75% of the one at lower elevation, like Kansas .The effect is that the plant growth is considerably slower, at 45% it stops altogether, (oxygen poisoning, paŕtially). That is the reason for the lack of vegetation at higher elevations, like the passes crossing the Rockies I-70. Much worse is the case of the highlands in South America, where despite copious rainfall , the temperature is high and thus the density is low and the only fungus like lichen live. The trees exist only in the much lower tropical forest across the eastern Andes mountain range. Except corn (the exception), no productive cultivation can economically be done on the wide planes (Nazca plain, Altiplano, 14900 ft , ouside LaPaz, reaching to and around the vast Titicaca lake.) The shore of the widè Desaguadero river flowing from the lake is completely devoid of vegetation. To adequately feed the future population there , a reduction, REDUCTION, of co2 is catastrophic, This trend towards emmission free energy is completely the wrong approach. There is no way to safely and economically introduce Nuclear Power in that region, No qualified, expensive operators. The presend hydraulic generation is saturated. Imported fuel is used ,which is the only practical way to generate power with the highly efficient Combined cycle systems, operating now at 62% efficiency with the potential of significant improvement, when existing aeronautical technology is to be adapted to this systems. (GE aeroderivatives) That is 3 - 4 times less fuel required, compared to simple steam powerplants, when all vast auxiliary power is considered. Third world nations living in higher elevations must be considered.
@@arturoeugster2377 It would be nice to see the demand side of atmospheric carbon be taken into account in the science journals, but then that's probably not the type of question which government grants are made of.
@@DrMackSplackem Yes, I think that it is the inadequate education of general biology and geography that causes missunderstanding of the needs of people living in other countries.
Ed Pheil of Elysium Industries would be a great guest on the show. He spent several decades designing naval reactors and is now working on an extremely interesting molten salt reactor.
Making electricity is only one of the hundreds of industrial processes that this and other high-temperature MSRs can be used for. This fact is the most overlooked advantage of Gen. IV nuclear. In fact, I think making electricity should only be mentioned as an aside, as in "oh, yeah and it also makes really reliable, cheap electricity as well."
There is one overriding reason for next-generation nuclear power plants is simply output temperature. 750c of a MSR has hundreds of industrial process applications that LWRs can not do.
There's also a potential for lower capital costs through a simpler reactor design, higher efficiency turbines, no fuel fabrication and higher capacity factor operation (no refueling shutdowns are needed).
@@freetrade8830 All of this is true, and people tout these advantages all the time, but it's the high industrial heat that truly sets them apart from LWRs.
@@chapter4travels That could indeed turn out to be their most revolutionary feature. Ed Pheil of Elysium suggested a combined power and synfuel plant on the ocean collecting hydrogen and carbon dioxide from seawater and turning it into hydrocarbon fuel.
@@chapter4travels A LWR can do it with electric heating but that's obviously far less efficient. Los Alamos National Laboratory did a study which figured you could produce synthetic fuel with a PWR at a cost lower than European gasoline prices at the pump (including taxes). So it would still be more expensive than fossil fuels, but not orders of magnitude more so.
You should get Marc Nelson on the show. Not only does he have a very impressive mustache - he is also well grounded in reality and knows what he is talking about when it comes to energy and the energy marketplace.
A lot of these problems/delays are true of any kind of large industrial construction project. It takes much longer to build now than it used to. Its regulation, bureaucracy, the design process is overly complex and lengthy, too many meetings, reviews, etc.
Yes, Nuclear Plant "life extensions" are RIDICULOUSLY lucrative. All of the permitting is done, the large majority of the concrete and buildings are there, etc. There's almost zero reason to legitimately decommission a nuclear power plant, even if you have to completely redo the reactor.
Greetings from Namie, Fukushima, I live just a few miles from the crippled nuclear reactor. I can say not one person died from the nuke accident. But the unnecessary evacuation caused untold misery. Anyway, they installed many acres of solar farms, but many no longer work and are taking up valuable farmland.
I am receptive to the idea of nuclear power, detesting huge acreage solar and wind farms as I do. Even with modern plants there must be some waste which may last longer than the stability of governments. Where does it go? I am half way through this talk so hope to find out.
I suggest watching one of several presentations given by Elysium Industries here on YT. Their reactor design can consume all high-level nuclear waste as fuel. The tiny bit remaining (2% of the original)after 80 years of running the reactor has to be stored for about 300 years to be the same as dirt and 80 years to be the same as many naturally occurring locations.
As Robert and others have explained, nuclear waste has never hurt anyone. It's literally the best waste on the planet because it's fully contained and takes up very little space. For the foreseeable future, we can just keep storing it.
Why not grind it up and put it back where it came from? The issue with that approach is that it cost more money to put it back than it is to store it indefinitely. My argument is that radiation is a natural part of the earth. It all comes from raw elements that are naturally present in the environment. It's not creation of radio active waste, it's a compacting and placing of radiation in one place where it was once spread out in small bits.
Nuclear waste is small, is encased in glass and totally safe. Compared with the huge acreage needed to bury the tonnage of ‘renewable’ rubbish which inevitably degrades and leaches into groundwater and aquifers.
Besides what I consider to be a pure fantasy - bureaucracy being dismantled - there is a rather important technical difference between military submarine nuclear reactors and civilian nuclear reactors. Military reactors uses very highly enriched U - and that allows them to be built more compact - something that's very important in submarines. HEU is forbidden to use in civilian applications, for very good reasons, namely nuclear bombs. And, no, I'm not talking about high assay LEU here. Also, the operating costs are also an order of magnitude higher for all military reactors - which in general makes the cost of the electricity they produce higher than the civilian counterparts. I love nuclear power just as much as the next guy, but I'm getting really tired of preachers of the latest technology fad by now, be it thorium or SMRs or whatever... We need old, boring, reliable LWRs to be built NOW! And if the future gives us some great new technology, so much better when it happens...
HALEU with up to 20% enrichment is an option if a higher power density core is an advantage. Regarding what to build/do now, we need to start a process of de-criminalizing fossil fuels as well as nuclear and eliminating renewables mandates and subsidies. Robert is absolutely right: As long as we maintain these artificial limits on energy production, we risk war started by the limited resources people.
@@freetrade8830 Many of the startup companies in the nuclear market, such as thorcon and Kairos power targets HALEU as fuel for their reactors. They have all ran into the issue of a non existing supply chain of HALEU for large volume production power plants, the only thing available today is traditional LEU and most of the startups have had to go back to LEU as the initial fuel option. I have no issues with blaming the anti nuclear establishment for introducing this artificial limit on the nuclear power industry. But the limitations still exists, and LEU is the only option available to us here and now. If we want more nuclear power plants to be built right now we are still stuck with the old, boring and reliable LWRs. And btw, it would be great if we didn't shut down any more fully functional and operating nuclear power plants such as Indian point or Diablo canyon... No matter what extraordinary and fabulous technologies the future may have In store for us.
I think one of the great advantages of submarine reactors is that the vessel is surrounded by an unlimited supply of coolant. No need to add cooling towers.
@@Shozb0t The exact argument you make was indeed used for the first PWRs built for submarines. But let us not forget that water is an excellent coolant for nuclear reactors and it has served us exceptionally well for decades. There may be other alternatives that has advantages, such as led, molten salt or sodium - but none of those are production ready here and now. Let's start by not shutting down working reactors, quickly build more LWRs and later use whatever new technological progress that is available to us in the future.
I think the US is a lost cause, unfortunately. The best two generation - IV reactor start-ups are Thorcon power and Elysium Industries. Thorcon has already left the country and developing its power plant in Indonesia. It's only a matter of time for Elysium to leave as well.
@@chapter4travels Yeah, the US will be left with massive rolling blackouts and exorbitant energy prices in a world of renewables when fossil fuel is phased out.
@@danadurnfordkevinblanchdebunk and china will be lecturing the us about being enviromental terrorist while sitting back and running on its electrified society and transport networks on 150 new nuclear reactors. The US needs to get a move on. Chinese supplied solar panels with short life spans are not the answer.
I want to see someone write an environmental impact statement for a nuclear power plant arguing that in case of meltdown or explosion the plant and an exclusion zone 20 miles radius from the plant will be permanently evacuated of all humans and industry returning that large area to nature and reducing human impact to zero.
Done. Ask Mr Google to show you, "For The First Time, World Learns Truth About Risk Of Nuclear" and quit spreading nonsense you heard some fear monger tell you.
People argue Chernobyl or Three Mile Island....as the reason nuclear power failed to proliferate. 1: Economics.............. more importantly "Economics of Scale"Like the dinosaur analogy, system dynamics reach the conclusive evolutionary end at their grandest size before extinction. Once their ecological niche collapses. History shows evolution favors the little guy. Nuclear uses massive machines ALL of which have to be fabricated or forged from scratch in specialized facilities. Steam turbines in nuclear plants don't run at high Temperatures. Thus counterproductive so the turbines have to be MASSIVE surface area. Custom made hardware. Coal plants have turbines that are smaller because they run at higher Temps. Understand why the nuclear industry's inability to modernize and stay financially responsible in face of new energy and economic challenges. The fact is... the climate catastrophe is over-exaggerated rendering nuclear's biggest advantage of CO2 free power, not much of an advantage anymore. Natural gas thanks to fracking has made intermittent and peak load electricity via gas cleaner for the air and ridiculously cheaper than investing billions in Base load power plants that take a MORE than a decade to construct. In a time frame from 2000-2020 gas installed nearly 100,000 MW capacity, 1989-2015 the nuclear industry installed ......Nothing. ONE US plant; Finished in 2016.....at the cost of 22 Billion dollars and 15 years of construction, 10 billion over budget and 11 years behind schedule. All the current reactors they offer cost billions. The fourth generation reactors they preach about only exist on paper. The industry still has no real plans for how to deal with the thousands of tons of spent fuel. While they could reprocess it the govt has prohibited that. Small nuclear reactors are the only real way to get the industry back. Efficiency and ease of use improves when technology shrinks. Despite their advancement; nuclear reactors are largely made using 19th century manufacturing techniques; Giant forging and casting and lathe trimming. MASSIVE, difficult to transport items all one of a kind; a time consuming, expensive and detail oriented and inspection laden process that from approval to first watt delivered takes well over a decade and all the parts are sole sourced, break it, you have to fabricate new ones from scratch. When you scale down the design of the reactor, you scale down the design of everything else, the pumps, the valves, the pipes, the fittings, the vessels; even permitting off the shelf components such as steam turbines from say a ship or pre-existing units offered by GE or Siemens. Suddenly the resources and manufacturing time decrease enormously because you can do the work in a factory or assembly line. Since the industry doesn't make any money on reactor sale, they make it on sustained fuel supply contracts. Modern manufacturing techniques like CNC, small casting or and having off the shelf parts compatible with the design. Turning a decades long process into a few years. And the overall volume of construction shrinks.Nuclear industry ran on a "Razor and Blade" business model which one item is sold at a low price (Reactor) in order to increase sales of a complementary good, such as consumable supplies (Fuel) Costs mounted and nuclear once thought of as a turn key operation.......and would enjoy virtual monopoly; industry thought by 70s; Fears of fossil fuel depletion and Environmental harm would force nations to buy nuclear reactors in huge quantities. That never happened......... Fossil fuels got cleaner They got cheaper They got more efficient in thermodynamic outputs They Reduced labor costs Government decided renewables were better route...And spent 2-3 Trillion in global capital to change energy portfolio by a mere 2% 2: Physics Energy physics, shows efficiency is relative to use.....Only 12% of Global energy consumption is Electricity. Because heat energy and chemical or mechanical power is more efficient; Given thermodynamic energy losses generating power; and transmission transitioning from conventional energy to renewables means building 16-24 times more powerplants than present and 20-50 times grid expansion. Nuclear plays little role in energy market. A nuclear transition only impacts electricity supply....72% of the worlds energy is thermal based because it’s efficient to convert thermal energy directly into work without having to convert it to electricity. You convert to electricity you lose half to 2/3rds of the energy as waste heat. The carbon emissions from changing electric sources wont matter much since 75% of all GHG emissions come from non electric sources. Comparisons sake, US consumed 108 Exajoules of energy in 2019. transportation consumes 29% of it and 91% of that demand is met by petroleum; 28.6 Exajoules or 7.945 Trillion kilowatt hours.....or 7.945 Billion Megawatt hours..... divided by 8766 hours in a year would have to be sustained needing 906,000 Megawatts of generation capacity daily...or 900 Nuclear reactors. Factor in energy transmission losses, 1.8 Million Megawatts of power would be needed.
Need to drop carbon tax ,build mod thorium nuke plants convert coal to natural gas stop wind farms and develope new refinery's pipelines and oil fields to get inflation down and economy booming Carbon is not a problem climate alarmists are ,!
Three Mile Island didn’t hurt anyone, neither did Fukushima directly. Nuclear is the safest form of power generation bar none, Chernobyl didnt harm the civilian population and was a total man mad event. This is all in the talk, listen to it to the end Alex and please stop frightening yourself 😉
@@drstrangelove4998 I am not scared. I lived near 3 Mile Island. Nuclear IS one excellent way to generate electricity…yes…but reactors are very $$$ to build and IF there are issues…they can be catastrophic. Building on a fault line isn't great…Japan. We'll see what ensues…
Yes I had to scroll down and just listen, ha. There ought to be a tutorial for webcam interviews...at least clean up your background area. I also want to know why he has three copies of the same book on his bookshelf with one on a different shelf. But I guess those are "me" problems. On closer inspection I think its "The Case for Space" so extra copies of his book. Great discussion nonetheless!
Great answer, explanation and some solutions to the problem of nuclear waste disposal by Robert Zubrin with a sly put down of fossil fuels. You need these Right Wing donors.
"We are not threatened by there being too many people. We are threatened by people who think there are too many people."
-- Robert Zubrin
The movie 12 Monkeys has that theme.
Millions have died needlessly because of those people. Malthusian ideas are cancerous ones.
Boom 🤯
Of course they dont include themselves in the "there are too many people" argument. its the other, lesser humans that are the problem. Funny how that is...
❤️💚💜
Thank you Robert and Alex for the honest look at the current state of nuclear power
Thanks Robert Zubrin. It's rare to see someone bringing forth good factual information regarding nuclear energy. Usually the words radiation or nuclear brings out fear mongering stupidity.
Wow. A governor can just destroy a 10Bn power plant, when its already been built!?
And such crimes are legal!?
The immense bureaucratic machine can easily accomplish such evil things. Don’t be surprised.
Don't worry, Long Island electricity ratepayers paid the entire 6 billion dollar bill with a 3% surcharge on every electricity bill. Complete insanity.
Of course they are.... If you say you're doing it to protect people.
Robert Zubrin is always engaging to listen to. He speaks so much sense on so many different topics.
0:49 he mentions the co2 case.
Zubrin has always recognized, correctly that plants suffer, with one exception, from co2 starvation .Everyone refers to the concentration of 0.039% of the co2 in the atmosphere.
Forgetting that it is the number of co2 molecules, around the stomata, that enter into the leaves, not the relative content in the air, in other words the density of the co2 molecuĺes, that matters, this density is reduced with the altitude or elevation of the terrain, ànd the temperature of the surrounding air, for example in Colorado, that is over 6000 feet elevation the density is about 75% of the one at lower elevation, like Kansas .The effect is that the plant growth is considerably slower, at 45% it stops altogether, (oxygen poisoning, paŕtially). That is the reason for the lack of vegetation at higher elevations, like the passes crossing the Rockies I-70. Much worse is the case of the highlands in South America, where despite copious rainfall , the temperature is high and thus the density is low and the only fungus like lichen live.
The trees exist only in the much lower tropical forest across the eastern Andes mountain range. Except corn (the exception), no productive cultivation can economically be done on the wide planes (Nazca plain, Altiplano, 14900 ft , ouside LaPaz, reaching to and around the vast Titicaca lake.) The shore of the widè Desaguadero river flowing from the lake is completely devoid of vegetation.
To adequately feed the future population there , a reduction, REDUCTION, of co2 is catastrophic, This trend towards emmission free energy is completely the wrong approach. There is no way to safely and economically introduce Nuclear Power in that region, No qualified, expensive operators. The presend hydraulic generation is saturated. Imported fuel is used ,which is the only practical way to generate power with the highly efficient Combined cycle systems, operating now at 62% efficiency with the potential of significant improvement, when existing aeronautical technology is to be adapted to this systems. (GE aeroderivatives) That is 3 - 4 times less fuel required, compared to simple steam powerplants, when all vast auxiliary power is considered.
Third world nations living in higher elevations must be considered.
@@arturoeugster2377 It would be nice to see the demand side of atmospheric carbon be taken into account in the science journals, but then that's probably not the type of question which government grants are made of.
@@DrMackSplackem
Yes, I think that it is the inadequate education of general biology and geography that causes missunderstanding of the needs of people living in other countries.
Ed Pheil of Elysium Industries would be a great guest on the show. He spent several decades designing naval reactors and is now working on an extremely interesting molten salt reactor.
Making electricity is only one of the hundreds of industrial processes that this and other high-temperature MSRs can be used for. This fact is the most overlooked advantage of Gen. IV nuclear. In fact, I think making electricity should only be mentioned as an aside, as in "oh, yeah and it also makes really reliable, cheap electricity as well."
Robert Zubrin is THE excellent scientist. We need more people like him. I admire him greatly.
And a whole lot less of those like the evil elf that infested the CDC....
Fascinating Alex, and a brilliant guest. I’m so looking forward to the book on case for nukes👍🏻
Lol, Zubrin has got imperial march as his ring tone!
There is one overriding reason for next-generation nuclear power plants is simply output temperature. 750c of a MSR has hundreds of industrial process applications that LWRs can not do.
There's also a potential for lower capital costs through a simpler reactor design, higher efficiency turbines, no fuel fabrication and higher capacity factor operation (no refueling shutdowns are needed).
@@freetrade8830 All of this is true, and people tout these advantages all the time, but it's the high industrial heat that truly sets them apart from LWRs.
@@chapter4travels That could indeed turn out to be their most revolutionary feature. Ed Pheil of Elysium suggested a combined power and synfuel plant on the ocean collecting hydrogen and carbon dioxide from seawater and turning it into hydrocarbon fuel.
@@freetrade8830 Exactly! A LWR can't do that.
@@chapter4travels A LWR can do it with electric heating but that's obviously far less efficient. Los Alamos National Laboratory did a study which figured you could produce synthetic fuel with a PWR at a cost lower than European gasoline prices at the pump (including taxes). So it would still be more expensive than fossil fuels, but not orders of magnitude more so.
You should get Marc Nelson on the show.
Not only does he have a very impressive mustache - he is also well grounded in reality and knows what he is talking about when it comes to energy and the energy marketplace.
Yes Mark is fantastic, very knowledgeable and engaging. He’s a must watch guest.
Love Robert Zubrin. He also has great interviews on Even Horizon by Jean Michael Godier too!
Great discussion - is there an ETA on Zubrin's book?
two of my favorite thinkers, great podcast
Excellent, really worth watching.
Nuclear "waste" should be be put somewhere as reachable as possible. We'll use it later. To good effect.
Great talk. Subscribed.
Any word when Robert Zubrin will publish his book, "The Case for Nukes"?
Alex,
Have you considered contacting the Institute for Justice about filing lawsuits removing controls against nuclear power!?!?
Institute of Justice is FILLED with Socialist and will do nothing. Best let time consume them - Wanna make God laugh? Tell him yuor plans.
@@EddieVBlueIsland Not at all. IJ was founded by Objectivists.
A lot of these problems/delays are true of any kind of large industrial construction project. It takes much longer to build now than it used to. Its regulation, bureaucracy, the design process is overly complex and lengthy, too many meetings, reviews, etc.
*Theme of the Empire plays in the background*
I'd like to hear more about what happens to decomissioned plants at the end of their operating life.
Can the site be used for another plant after?
Yes, Nuclear Plant "life extensions" are RIDICULOUSLY lucrative. All of the permitting is done, the large majority of the concrete and buildings are there, etc. There's almost zero reason to legitimately decommission a nuclear power plant, even if you have to completely redo the reactor.
VT and Maine decommissioned their reactors….and after Fukushima, the nail biting situation in Ukraine….cannot see the US returning to nuclear…sadly
@@alexandrawhitelock6195 Nuclear reactors that are mobile like the proposed ones in containers hauled by freight trains/trucks ?
Do the cost figures for nuclear factor in the cost of decommissioning nuclear plants?
Yes, a fee is added to the cost of electricity produced that over the life of the reactor pays for decommissioning.
3000 views. 79 comments. Lol there’s very little hope.
The irony is we need to reverse green policy to help the enviroment and actually get away from coal in a meaningful way.
Greetings from Namie, Fukushima, I live just a few miles from the crippled nuclear reactor. I can say not one person died from the nuke accident. But the unnecessary evacuation caused untold misery. Anyway, they installed many acres of solar farms, but many no longer work and are taking up valuable farmland.
I am receptive to the idea of nuclear power, detesting huge acreage solar and wind farms as I do.
Even with modern plants there must be some waste which may last longer than the stability of governments.
Where does it go?
I am half way through this talk so hope to find out.
I suggest watching one of several presentations given by Elysium Industries here on YT. Their reactor design can consume all high-level nuclear waste as fuel. The tiny bit remaining (2% of the original)after 80 years of running the reactor has to be stored for about 300 years to be the same as dirt and 80 years to be the same as many naturally occurring locations.
As Robert and others have explained, nuclear waste has never hurt anyone. It's literally the best waste on the planet because it's fully contained and takes up very little space. For the foreseeable future, we can just keep storing it.
Why not grind it up and put it back where it came from? The issue with that approach is that it cost more money to put it back than it is to store it indefinitely. My argument is that radiation is a natural part of the earth. It all comes from raw elements that are naturally present in the environment. It's not creation of radio active waste, it's a compacting and placing of radiation in one place where it was once spread out in small bits.
Nuclear waste is small, is encased in glass and totally safe. Compared with the huge acreage needed to bury the tonnage of ‘renewable’ rubbish which inevitably degrades and leaches into groundwater and aquifers.
@@freetrade8830 well said ✌🏻
We always say on X(Twitter) that if you are truly worried about CO2 you would be pro-nuclear
Besides what I consider to be a pure fantasy - bureaucracy being dismantled - there is a rather important technical difference between military submarine nuclear reactors and civilian nuclear reactors.
Military reactors uses very highly enriched U - and that allows them to be built more compact - something that's very important in submarines.
HEU is forbidden to use in civilian applications, for very good reasons, namely nuclear bombs. And, no, I'm not talking about high assay LEU here.
Also, the operating costs are also an order of magnitude higher for all military reactors - which in general makes the cost of the electricity they produce higher than the civilian counterparts.
I love nuclear power just as much as the next guy, but I'm getting really tired of preachers of the latest technology fad by now, be it thorium or SMRs or whatever...
We need old, boring, reliable LWRs to be built NOW!
And if the future gives us some great new technology, so much better when it happens...
HALEU with up to 20% enrichment is an option if a higher power density core is an advantage.
Regarding what to build/do now, we need to start a process of de-criminalizing fossil fuels as well as nuclear and eliminating renewables mandates and subsidies. Robert is absolutely right: As long as we maintain these artificial limits on energy production, we risk war started by the limited resources people.
@@freetrade8830 Many of the startup companies in the nuclear market, such as thorcon and Kairos power targets HALEU as fuel for their reactors.
They have all ran into the issue of a non existing supply chain of HALEU for large volume production power plants, the only thing available today is traditional LEU and most of the startups have had to go back to LEU as the initial fuel option.
I have no issues with blaming the anti nuclear establishment for introducing this artificial limit on the nuclear power industry.
But the limitations still exists, and LEU is the only option available to us here and now.
If we want more nuclear power plants to be built right now we are still stuck with the old, boring and reliable LWRs.
And btw, it would be great if we didn't shut down any more fully functional and operating nuclear power plants such as Indian point or Diablo canyon...
No matter what extraordinary and fabulous technologies the future may have In store for us.
@@freetrade8830 And yes, more available energy is the most important factor to the well being of our civilization.
Fossil fuel is also a great option.
I think one of the great advantages of submarine reactors is that the vessel is surrounded by an unlimited supply of coolant. No need to add cooling towers.
@@Shozb0t The exact argument you make was indeed used for the first PWRs built for submarines.
But let us not forget that water is an excellent coolant for nuclear reactors and it has served us exceptionally well for decades.
There may be other alternatives that has advantages, such as led, molten salt or sodium - but none of those are production ready here and now.
Let's start by not shutting down working reactors, quickly build more LWRs and later use whatever new technological progress that is available to us in the future.
I think the US is a lost cause, unfortunately. The best two generation - IV reactor start-ups are Thorcon power and Elysium Industries. Thorcon has already left the country and developing its power plant in Indonesia. It's only a matter of time for Elysium to leave as well.
Natrium being built in Wyoming, with molten salt storage increasing capacity by 50%.
@@danadurnfordkevinblanchdebunk It's a step in the right direction, just not a very good design in my opinion.
@@chapter4travels Yeah, the US will be left with massive rolling blackouts and exorbitant energy prices in a world of renewables when fossil fuel is phased out.
@@danadurnfordkevinblanchdebunk and china will be lecturing the us about being enviromental terrorist while sitting back and running on its electrified society and transport networks on 150 new nuclear reactors. The US needs to get a move on. Chinese supplied solar panels with short life spans are not the answer.
I want to see someone write an environmental impact statement for a nuclear power plant arguing that in case of meltdown or explosion the plant and an exclusion zone 20 miles radius from the plant will be permanently evacuated of all humans and industry returning that large area to nature and reducing human impact to zero.
Done. Ask Mr Google to show you, "For The First Time, World Learns Truth About Risk Of Nuclear" and quit spreading nonsense you heard some fear monger tell you.
BTW, Swedish diesel electric submarines of the Gotland class can stay underwater for weeks, not 48 hours...
Sterling engines FTW!
11:41 $500M/GW ($500/kW)
You can thank Green Peace (which is neither green nor peaceful) for the demise of nuclear.
By now the regulators have all the data from the past to know what the environmental impact of a nuclear plant is going to be.
Alex, please send a copy if Fossil Future to Boris Johnson, he’s a Net Zero zealot!!
The Prophets of Chaos enter Ecstasy with the Eminence of the End of the World ❤️💚💜
In the 60s in California, Democrats allowed the building of nuclear power plants.
People argue Chernobyl or Three Mile Island....as the reason nuclear power failed to proliferate.
1: Economics..............
more importantly "Economics of Scale"Like the dinosaur analogy, system dynamics reach the conclusive evolutionary end at their grandest size before extinction. Once their ecological niche collapses. History shows evolution favors the little guy. Nuclear uses massive machines ALL of which have to be fabricated or forged from scratch in specialized facilities. Steam turbines in nuclear plants don't run at high Temperatures. Thus counterproductive so the turbines have to be MASSIVE surface area. Custom made hardware. Coal plants have turbines that are smaller because they run at higher Temps.
Understand why the nuclear industry's inability to modernize and stay financially responsible in face of new energy and economic challenges. The fact is...
the climate catastrophe is over-exaggerated rendering nuclear's biggest advantage of CO2 free power, not much of an advantage anymore.
Natural gas thanks to fracking has made intermittent and peak load electricity via gas cleaner for the air and ridiculously cheaper than investing billions in Base load power plants that take a MORE than a decade to construct. In a time frame from 2000-2020 gas installed nearly 100,000 MW capacity, 1989-2015 the nuclear industry installed ......Nothing. ONE US plant; Finished in 2016.....at the cost of 22 Billion dollars and 15 years of construction, 10 billion over budget and 11 years behind schedule.
All the current reactors they offer cost billions.
The fourth generation reactors they preach about only exist on paper.
The industry still has no real plans for how to deal with the thousands of tons of spent fuel. While they could reprocess it the govt has prohibited that.
Small nuclear reactors are the only real way to get the industry back. Efficiency and ease of use improves when technology shrinks. Despite their advancement; nuclear reactors are largely made using 19th century manufacturing techniques; Giant forging and casting and lathe trimming. MASSIVE, difficult to transport items all one of a kind; a time consuming, expensive and detail oriented and inspection laden process that from approval to first watt delivered takes well over a decade and all the parts are sole sourced, break it, you have to fabricate new ones from scratch. When you scale down the design of the reactor, you scale down the design of everything else, the pumps, the valves, the pipes, the fittings, the vessels; even permitting off the shelf components such as steam turbines from say a ship or pre-existing units offered by GE or Siemens. Suddenly the resources and manufacturing time decrease enormously because you can do the work in a factory or assembly line. Since the industry doesn't make any money on reactor sale, they make it on sustained fuel supply contracts. Modern manufacturing techniques like CNC, small casting or and having off the shelf parts compatible with the design. Turning a decades long process into a few years. And the overall volume of construction shrinks.Nuclear industry ran on a "Razor and Blade" business model which one item is sold at a low price (Reactor) in order to increase sales of a complementary good, such as consumable supplies (Fuel) Costs mounted and nuclear once thought of as a turn key operation.......and would enjoy virtual monopoly; industry thought by 70s; Fears of fossil fuel depletion and Environmental harm would force nations to buy nuclear reactors in huge quantities. That never happened.........
Fossil fuels got cleaner
They got cheaper
They got more efficient in thermodynamic outputs
They Reduced labor costs
Government decided renewables were better route...And spent 2-3 Trillion in global capital to change energy portfolio by a mere 2%
2: Physics
Energy physics, shows efficiency is relative to use.....Only 12% of Global energy consumption is Electricity. Because heat energy and chemical or mechanical power is more efficient; Given thermodynamic energy losses generating power; and transmission transitioning from conventional energy to renewables means building 16-24 times more powerplants than present and 20-50 times grid expansion. Nuclear plays little role in energy market. A nuclear transition only impacts electricity supply....72% of the worlds energy is thermal based because it’s efficient to convert thermal energy directly into work without having to convert it to electricity. You convert to electricity you lose half to 2/3rds of the energy as waste heat. The carbon emissions from changing electric sources wont matter much since 75% of all GHG emissions come from non electric sources.
Comparisons sake, US consumed 108 Exajoules of energy in 2019. transportation consumes 29% of it and 91% of that demand is met by petroleum; 28.6 Exajoules or 7.945 Trillion kilowatt hours.....or 7.945 Billion Megawatt hours..... divided by 8766 hours in a year would have to be sustained needing 906,000 Megawatts of generation capacity daily...or 900 Nuclear reactors. Factor in energy transmission losses, 1.8 Million Megawatts of power would be needed.
Need to drop carbon tax ,build mod thorium nuke plants convert coal to natural gas stop wind farms and develope new refinery's pipelines and oil fields to get inflation down and economy booming Carbon is not a problem climate alarmists are ,!
There have been horrific meltdowns….and scares (3 Mile Island). Not really safe…
Three Mile Island didn’t hurt anyone, neither did Fukushima directly. Nuclear is the safest form of power generation bar none, Chernobyl didnt harm the civilian population and was a total man mad event. This is all in the talk, listen to it to the end Alex and please stop frightening yourself 😉
@@drstrangelove4998 I am not scared. I lived near 3 Mile Island. Nuclear IS one excellent way to generate electricity…yes…but reactors are very $$$ to build and IF there are issues…they can be catastrophic. Building on a fault line isn't great…Japan.
We'll see what ensues…
The background behind the guest has my ADHD on turbo. I can’t even hear him because I’ll looking at empties and white helmets
So just listen vs watching…🤷♀️
Yes I had to scroll down and just listen, ha. There ought to be a tutorial for webcam interviews...at least clean up your background area. I also want to know why he has three copies of the same book on his bookshelf with one on a different shelf. But I guess those are "me" problems. On closer inspection I think its "The Case for Space" so extra copies of his book. Great discussion nonetheless!
Great answer, explanation and some solutions to the problem of nuclear waste disposal by Robert Zubrin with a sly put down of fossil fuels. You need these Right Wing donors.