I'm an I&C Engineer at a nuclear plant. You covered things very well (as I would expect from you!). There are a couple points that weren't covered. 1) Nuclear plants can only run as long as they have the "social capital" required. If the population decided they are uncomfortable with nuclear, the plant will end up shutting down. 2) Instead of spending money on fuel (possibly imported), a Nuclear plant spends it on salaries for well paid professionals. That money stays in the community. Purely commercial plants don't fully take this into account, but government owned/supported plants recognize the benefits.
Everywhere the nuclear plants require almost a city worth of skilled personnel, even if they are using a Soviet design. Everybody takes the plants seriously
Welp whe now know the energy market, so maybe whe can do something(or maybe not)
4 роки тому+51
Well, I think nuclear power will make much more sense on developing infrastructure on the moon, though. That, and extensive solar power will be what powers space development.
@@legolegs87 Build a nuke plant on time and within budget and get back to me. Especially look at nuclear construction debacles like Plant Vogtle in Georgia, USA. The assumptions made by the authors regarding costs are, up to now, a joke. Whatever the projected costs and time-frames,are double them. That's what informed voters/ratepayers around here understand. Better to hold your breath and wait for fusion,,,,,, OH WAIT! ..... Meanwhile, I went off-grid solar 20 years ago and have been doing great,,,, and I'm a retired nuke engineer.
@Boris-Smiff Bullshit! The problem is Republicans' greed and their search for big short-term profit. The belief that profit outweighs everything is why everything is made to be disposable and the world is on fucking fire. Liberals are the only ones willing to make necessary, lasting change.
@@wirelesmike73 I think you're thinking the same thing but saying it differently. Neoliberalism allows for short term gains and republicans love that philosophy. I agree it's bullshit. Absolute bullshit. I hope one day the reps realize that
Most politicians care about their constituents, truth is those constituents just end up being 65 year olds who could give less of a fuck about the issues addressed above. Voter turnouts amongst young people are really fucking bad, especially the US.
was about to write exactly this. frustratingly, democracy, by its very nature, creates huge conflicts of interest for the elected politicians in that they care less about doing what's right and more about doing what's popular. in my humble opinion, experts and scientists should be the one making the big decisions because they conclude by analyzing facts, not what you and i happen to be into this year.
@@Ytrearneindre Well the issue with that is when the experts and scientists get the donations from the oil & gas lobbyists. Its much better for them to give us the information, than allow us to vote. New Zealand has a complete anti nuclear policy that is hopelessly out of date...
If politicians can do something that will benefit their party's popularity *now* , they will choose that instead of choosing something that might benefit the world later. It's way easier to flaunt a windmill park built in a year than a nuclear power plant which takes many more years to construct.
Watch the video that he based this on, it makes much more sense in that context. This video is little more than a direct copy of it, just with added stock footage
I THINK it was MSNBC, that recieved complaints for using a bizzare concentric circle/bullseye type graph, that was difficult to understand, and not suitable for the data represented. So...I've seen worse !
@@Lixn1337 Its a little shorter and easier to understand, which can be useful for people without enough time to watch the whole lecture. I still enjoyed the lecture though.
13:20 Keep in mind that variable renewables produce additional costs due to the necessity of building up overcapacity, backup, introduction of smart grids, and so on. While it is quite cheap to produce a unit of energy using renewables, it is much more expensive to provide an average unit of energy to a consumer, that, depending on the time of the day and the weather, may come from a cheap renewable source, or from an expensive backup like hydrogen or batteries.
Yup. Renewable energy LCOE always conveniently excludes the immense additional costs required to actually use renewable energies at the grid level. I read somewhere an estimation that if you include just 4-6 hours of energy storage to a solar plant, the LCOE shoots up to 80-100$. And realistically, you'd need at least 14 hours of storage to account for winter and dark days.
@@ebehdzikraa3855 not in the same way though. Nuclear plants have to constantly produce a consistent amount of energy, and they need storage if/when the demand dips below their production. Solar and wind need to produce energy in excess of demand in order to generate stored electricity at all. The excess energy from nuclear can be channeled toward useful ends such as hydrogen production, desalination, etc.. However, you just have to build more and more wind, solar, and storage capacity to even be able to have storage to buttress against their inherent issues of intermittency. This is part of the reason why a grid dominated by renewables isn't a great idea. Renewables are great for a lot of things, and we should scale them up as much as we can afford, but grids need to be reliable and cost-effective. Factoring in the required storage buildouts and excess capacity required to even equate a single nuclear plant is staggering and only has about half the lifetime, over which solar panels and lithium batteries in particular degrade quite drastically. There may be days where solar and wind outshine nuclear (pun intended), but they are well outside the norm and that is a huge deal. There are very few places on earth that consistently have very clear and sunny days with lots of wind, and for obvious reasons not a lot of people would want to live there.
The additional costs of storage are hardly so dire as all that. In Australia the AEMO and CSIRO found that renewables *including* storage were still the best option. Battery storage is one of the most expensive storage options, and was still competitive. Pumped Hydro is the cheapest option for bulk storage and of course quite viable all on it's own. Even nuclear plant benefit from storage to buffer the daily variation in demand.
Fossil gas is not _as_ horrifyingly dirty & polluting (in the non-greenhouse gas sense) as coal or oil, so it's popular as a stopgap to fill peaks in demand that current renewables infrastructure can't handle. Might also be more efficient. But ofc it's still finite & makes climate change worse. Plus, it might be easier to sequester CO2 from the air for storage (or car fuel) and turn it into gas, compared to petrol? Not sure how important that is.
Because the industries about producing natural gas, including upstream oil & gas industry and midstream oil & gas industry are insanely profitable and have been heavily invested.
It's the only way that solar and wind can claim to be profitable. This is why a lot of "environmentalist" organizations look the other way when natural gas plants are being produced, claiming "it's okay because it'll only be temporary".
About 1-2 billion people use wood for energy in this world, those people need coal, natural gas and nuclear, then renewable if there is enough resources
In a sense it is once the rest of our power ecosystem gets to that point. Obviously it isn't today and we pull substantially all of our natural gas out of the ground. But long term it can become an energy storage solution when we use renewable energy to make methane (natural gas == mehtane with contaminants) out of atmospheric CO2 and water. Renewable only requires that you "close the loop" so to speak; you can still burn stuff if that's what ends up being convienient, you just can't be pulling it out of the ground. This would all fall under "carbon capture" which is still not ready for prime time. I doubt this would be ever be a winner for storage on the scale of hours or days, but if you need longer term reserves natural gas/methane is cheap and easy to store (and 100% efficent if you use it for heating).
Awesome to see you referring to the Illinois Energy Professor. His videos are really good, and taught me loads about energy production and the economics thereof.
Hope these smaller, modular nuclear reactors from startups pull through. That’ll make it competitive. Nuclear is still better for the environment than natural gas.
its also statistically safer than basically every alternative already, and that's in spite of the decades of advancements that have been made since most of the active reactors were built :P
@@nuarius statistics doesnt Help you when a npp blows up in a dense populated area for example in central europe you will have a damage Worth of 2000 billion Euros. Who is going to pay that?
@@nuarius And yet most of the world still can't be bothered to build proper waste storage or even waste processing facilities. Both of which have been fully workable on paper for decades. Human logistics can't be overlooked.
Trollsama With MSR molton salt reactor types, this won’t be the case.Copenhagen Atomics expects to have one ready for production by 2028. Thise you can have close to cities, no sweat.
Still waiting for the nuclear scaremongers in the comments... In the meantime, reminder that with modern technology the nuclear waste is *recyclable* (and IS being recycled on industrial scale at least in Russia and France) and most modern reactors are designed in a way *they won't explode* (like Chernobyl) even in the event of a total meltdown.
I've never seen nuclear scaremongerer's. On the other hand, i have seen plenty of die hard nuclear fanatics screaming on every renewable video why they are wrong and only nuclear is the worthy renewable.
The only issue I had with his lecture were the numbers. The nuclear power plants in Europe and US were supposed to be 3 to 6 bn and are now 15 to 28bn and the construction time jumped from 6 to over 15 years. Those real numbers should have been included to show the financial risk.
The nuclear industry is misleading people into believing that all radioactive, ultra-hazardous nuclear fuel is burned in the fuel rods. Huge amounts of it remain in spent fuel rods. As to plutonium, read about it being used in fuel rods in Fukushima. Not all of it is burned and it is very, very difficult to separate the most dangerous isotopes from the waste. It is the most dangerous substance ever created. See greentumble.com/7-reasons-why-nuclear-waste-is-dangerous/ Nuclear power is the one mistake that you can make today that all of your children and descendants, down to your great, great, grand-children, will still hate you for having made, if they know that you are the cause of their problems. (Given the 24100 year half-life of Plutonium 239 most of it will delay in 100,000 years but if you have a kilo of it in one barrel, enough will remain AFTER 100,000 years, to kill thousands.) Thorium and reprocessing so far are a dream. Fusion will probably arrive first. It makes no sense to allow the nuclear industry to make billions while they create nuclear waste that the government will then have to pay to store for hundreds of thousands of years. You will need guards for that whole time: nuclear waste may not make good nuclear bombs, but if you are a terrorist and put an explosive inside of a barrel of nuclear waste (which process will probably kill you but they do not seem to care about their lives), you can contaminate an entire city by blowing that barrel of nuclear waste up in the middle of a large city. Most inhabitants will either then move out or die or suffer hideous cancer. Fukushima ALMOST resulted in that occurring in Tokyo. I sure hope that Thorium is developed and actually works as advertised, but for now, the nuclear industry which I assume employs you, wants to create extremely dangerous and very hard to store hazardous, nuclear waste due to GREED and then have the government bear the cost of storing it for hundreds of thousands of years! That is OUTRAGEOUS! You, nuclear industry people, are as bad as the parasitic banksters that want to gamble with the banks' money and then have the government bail them out when their bets wind up losing money, while they keep the profits when their bets pay off. We had to pay $29 TRILLION due to the last bailout. See CNBC's "The Size of the Bank Bailout: $29 Trillion." How much will it cost in present value to store nuclear waste for OVER 100,000 YEARS! Because they want to GET all of the profits now through lies then have the government bear all of the costs for 100,000 years thereafter, so they are effectively PARASITES. We should pass laws making the nuclear industry people personally liable for those costs and personally liable if there is any harm from any nuclear accident whatsoever, then those parasites will stop urging irrational, nuclear power plants.
@@mim8312 Okay first off the banks across the world got a $29trillion bailout and not just the USA like you are somewhat implying. Should it have been on a loan basis? YES 100%. Was it? NO. I am one of the people that think the government should LET a business fail if it goes under. I also think the people that chose to invest in those establishments should also feel the loss. In 2008 (maybe 2009) the banks in the USA were bailed out to the tune of about $1trillion or so and the executives got multi-million dollar bonuses AFTER the bailouts. If you want to point fingers at ANYONE point them at politicians and not the banks. The USA and the rest of the western world has a serious issue with corrupt politicians and greed as a whole. Also on a side note: Thorium being a "dream" is a huge joke the Thorium hipsters don't understand that: Thorium is extremely unstable and only has 1 isotope that is "somewhat" unstable by any reasonable measure. It might not be AS radioactive as Uranium or Plutonium, but it is FAR more unstable which is the main reason thorium has not been used. Plus concentrated Thorium is radioactive so a meltdown or in this case an explosion would result in a huge area becoming radioactive.
@@mim8312 Don’t bother making an argument against Nuclear ever again. Especially since you brought up half life. Uranium has a half life of over 1 trillion years
@@fivade6534 Mathematics mistakes are a real part of real engineering. Everyone makes mistakes like that. NASA lost a spacecraft due to mixing up metric and imperial. American bridges have collapsed in recent times due to mathematics mistakes. He's simply trying to increase the authenticity of his real engineering videos to make them as real as possible. 😛
The arguments on both sides are complex and I feel that just by discussing them, it makes a difference. The conclusion that you have drawn may or may not be very accurate, but it makes us think and thats all that is needed. Just people being more aware of stuff affects their behaviour positively. Thank You for making these videos.
I agree with part of your presentation. The French proved the small reactor factory built concept in the 1960's when they built their very successful nuclear power station grid from this type of small reactor. You mentioned how well their system works then totally ignored their model and only analyzed the bloated; HUGE one off nuclear teakettle designs they have been building here and elsewhere. These designs are kind of like redesigning a jumbo jet from scratch every time you build one: REALLY STUPID. Small modular, factory built is WAY cheaper. Small modular reactors: Liquid Fueled Thorium Molten Salt is orders of magnitude better yet. There are a number of fundamental problems of any solid fueled nuclear reactor. Nuclear fuel ALWAYS swells due to the intense radiation, reaction byproducts quickly contaminate the reaction and cannot be remove from the solid fuel, unless the fuel is recycled. Also it only allows utilization of a very small portion of the energy in the nuclear fuel (about 1-3%), requiring fuel bundle replacement in about 18 months. When the core is decommissioned you still need to store the highly radioactive waste for thousands of years. Spent fuel MUST be continuously covered in highly purified water for at least centuries to keep the fuel bundles below melting temperature. The continuous heat from the fuel, evaporates the water quickly (hundreds of gallons in a short period of time) ALL spent fuel is currently stored in pools, on site at the nuclear plant and there are no plans to recycle it as it is expensive and hard to do conventionally. Uranium is somewhat water soluble (Thorium is not), so there is a groundwater contamination concern. I used to oppose nuclear energy, mainly due to high pressure steam explosions (3 times so far) and long term storage of highly radioactive fuel for 10k+ years. I have changed my mind, but only if we build Thorium liquid fueled, Molten Salt reactors (such as LFTR) instead of the boiling water conventional reactors we have now. Currently Thorium is a waste product of a number of mining operations, is orders of magnitude more plentiful than uranium and is basically as safe as dirt (it needs conversion inside the reactor to become useful fuel, conversion takes 30 days and is free). Molten salt solves ALL of the fundamental problems of boiling water reactors, as part of their nature. They also cheaply and easily burn current stocks of used fuel rods leaving only a small residue that is safe in about 300 years. They effectively use about 95+% of the nuclear energy in the fuel. No expensive explosion proof containment structure needed, as it cannot explode (it operates at ambient air pressure). They are walk away safe (Oak Ridge Tennessee ran a molten salt reactor safely for 6,000 hours and performed walk away safe tests on it at full power in the 1960's). In fact they shut it down every weekend because no one wanted to stay. They are well suited to the SMR form factor and easily allow continuous removal of very valuable medical isotopes on an ongoing basis. These medical isotopes are impossible to remove from boiling water reactors. They also provide high temperature waste heat that can be used in many high temperature processes now, such as steel, fertilizer or concrete making, just to name a few. Desalinization of sea water on a huge scale is easy and cheap. The only remaining hurdles are some slight metals compatibility proving needed. Chemical separation is a far superior and cheaper process. The inventor of the nuclear tea kettle reactor (Alvin Weinberg) said it was fine for military use but was a very poor choice for commercial reactors, as we have seen 3 times. For many years he strongly promoted the Thorium, liquid fueled reactor as a far superior choice. Thorium is useless for making bombs which is one of the main reasons they used uranium instead back in the 1950’s. See Thorium Alliance you tube videos for a good overview. An excellent boiling water reactor problems review is a 1hr You Tube video: Nuclear Disasters & Coolants ua-cam.com/video/8Pyq8kCeiYs/v-deo.html
@@TOleablemonk US stopped all rerseach in the 60 because it was deem as too dangerous. French stopped all reseach after catastrophic events in 2012. Canada stopped all reseach in 2010 because they can't even see a schedule for commercialisation. I heard of simulation in China but no experimental projects. I could say that unicorn urine is the futur of energy and start to rise funds and people on internet will lobby for unicorn urine...
Its worth looking into the total system emissions for thorium reactors when factoring in emissions during mining transportation etc. its questionable if its worth investing into when currently normal renewables become cheaper at fast rates and are currently much more useful to invest in than nuclear reactors.
As someone that works in the energy sector, I have a few comments. One thing missing in the natural gas turbine (CT's) calculation is what is referred to as "equivalent hours of loss of life". What this is, every time you shut a CT down, and then start it up again, it suffers severe loss of life due to the heating dynamic. After a certain amount of loss of life hours, these units need to be taken out of service for inspection, this is no small feat, as the turbine needs to be exposed and inspected. Also, renewables (which include biomass, literally burning trees, which is another matter altogether) only constitutes about 11% of all installed capacity with in North America. At any one time only about 2.5% of all energy produced in North America is renewable (DOE). in the video, they mention Fukushima and show a picture of Chernobyl, but what they don't mention is the thousands of reactors that have run without incident their entire life. Thorium reactors are now being developed and are far safer than current installations and have the ability to produce more energy. I love the environment, but, am a realist, until the ability to store energy, Solar (which takes up MASSIVE amounts of real estate, and is hugely subsidized, that is why the costs look so low) and Wind (same problems as solar, not to mention the resources required to make and install them) they are not feasible. So, if you like the dark and want to go back in time, the choice is yours.
the thing is, when a nuclear plant goes bad, the consequences reverberate through millennia, not merely decades or centuries. dealing with the waste is a big deal that lots of people seem willing to ignore (at least in these comments). hopefully research can start to provide results, as fossil fuels wont last forever and battery tech can't yet make wind and solar viable
@@berengerchristy6256 that's actually incorrect, for starters modern reactor design can literally not suffer the kinds of failures like Chernobyl, and the new thorium molten salt reactors could never even have an accident like Fukushima, they are literally 100% passively meltdown proof, literally every person on the planet could die and a molten salt reactor would just sit there and slowly cool down, never be a threat to the environment or anyone. If you mean the "waste" from operation again this is an area where the general public is greatly misinformed, modern reactors produce miniscule amounts of waste, and what little waste they do produce is easily handled, unlike coal and gas, or even solar (making solar panels produces a ton of dangerous industrial waste), these all dump a significant portion of their waste products into the environment. And the molten salt reactors which are far more efficient and produce far less and less dangerous waste products than modern reactors can actually have their fuels supplemented with the "waste" from modern plants.
@@berengerchristy6256 And yet even when fossil plants go 'good', we know that they are having impacts of the same or greater magnitude through global warming.
1:35 "Wind is intermittent...Needs to be propped up, and natural gas is the perfect solution for that." I disagree. Peaker plants are inefficient and very expensive. Battery storage is not only shown to be much cheaper, but the market shows it being more profitable this year in the U.S. The cost of battery storage fell to half cost this year, and is forecasted to again next year. 81% of new power generation in the U.S. is made of solar and battery storage.
@@Dotfo15 If it is wrong because it is outdated, it needs to be pulled or at least labeled outdated. Of course we had other storage even then, such as hydro.
For nuclear to be more economic it needs bigger economies of scale: smaller reactors, standardised design, and more of them. There are a variety of situations where solar wont work and wind is fickle.
The nuclear scare effectively shut down nuclear energy research for decades. Now that China is massively investing in it the west is starting to wake up, way too late.
@@michaelfleming6581 We had dozens of nuclear accidents, you only know of a handful and heavily dramatized by the media. I'd bet you never heard of gas plant accidents, they ain't a nice view either, blindly ignoring a technology because of propaganda is just dumb. It's also obvious that nuclear isn't the hammer to the nail problem, obviously, if available, you should use alternatives like hydro, but don't forget that they are not perfect either and requires a backup plant usually.
@@hmr1122 H MR I know about the others... Hanford, windscale, Mayak and many others.... there is no anti media coverage about Nuclear you dont even know what your talking about... nuclear is the hammer to nail problem... fukushima and radiation is heating up the oceans and Earth faster than ever before... We dont even hear anything about Fukushima anymore even though it is still a huge huge problem that can not be fixed with the technology we have... You should look up Dana Durnford on UA-cam he tells it straight
@@michaelfleming6581 Wait, wait, wait... Do you *actually* believe that Fukushima is having a measurable impact on the temperature of the PACIFIC OCEAN? Just... Wow.
When you look at costs you have to keep in mind where that money goes... Building and maintaining a nuclear power plant is mainly going to be done by the local population [EDIT: it was rightly pointed out below that this isn't really the case in many countries, my bad, I have a fairly frenco-centric POV on the subject], and therefore will directly benefit the local economy. Whereas for gas most of the cost comes from buying the gas, and if we're not talking about a big gas producing country that money will just leave the country, and negatively affect our commercial balance. Same thing for solar, where you get those cheap prices by buying from / relocating production to countries like china where the panels are much cheaper to produce. At 13:41 you say that the reactors should be dispatchable to fit in modern grids with lots of renewables. It's already the case in France where nuclear reactors can raise and lower their load to follow the electricity demands. However that also greatly diminishes nuclear's profitability, as you produce less electricity over the life of the reactor and therefore hurt it's ability to pay itself back. As you explained a nuclear plant costs a ton to build but the fuel is cheap, so unlike gas when you lower the load you don't "save" on fuel, ideally a nuclear reactor would always be running at 100%. Nuclear and solar / wind are not a good match.
this is a good consideration, but if you produce natural gas locally I think it just means that it wins out even further. It's highly unlikely you produce uranium locally, but I would like to see a comparison with this somehow taken into consideration.
you are correct. profitability is lessened but we still have the cheapest energy cost for the consumer than other rich Europeans countries. (and average cost within the 27). And the environmental benefit is massive.
Finland example: 80% of the 3800 construction workers where foreigners: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Criticism Most parts where imported too.
Nuclear engineering is a highly specialist role that involves signing off on a very large risk, so it is essentially not possible to compete as a small business, and the large multinationals with the capital to compete are unlikely to have high percentages of their fee reinvested locally.
While a nuclear power plant is in the load-following mode, it is providing ancillary services to the grid operator. It makes revenue doing this, so it doesn't necessarily diminish nuclear's profitability.
It wont be a fairy tale for the children, they are the ones that are going to have to deal with the waste and pay for it. Most boomers will be gone in about 30 years, along with the last stupid V8 and comically bad Harley bike, but the last 50 years of rapacious waste, and insane fuel ideas will blight humanity for generations.
Oscar Goldman Nuclear waste isn’t a problem at all. The volume of a high school gym is enough to store all (Yes I mean all, not annual) spent fuel from an entire country. The volume of all waste is slightly larger - perhaps an entire high school, not just the gym - but compare that to an average mountain. Besides, that would be a reason for Turkey not to build its first reactors. France Germany, the US etc. need to deal with the waste that is already there - and I have heard no rational argument why the waste from fifty years of nuclear power should be significantly easier to handle than from eighty years. On the other hand, it will appear that an accelerated reduction of fossile fuels does make a difference.
@@yaff1851 I humbly suggest that I think you'll get farther with people by saying something like "the waste is a lot less of a problem than you think" than that it's not a problem _at all_ . People are more likely to listen when their concerns are acknowledged than when their concerns are dismissed. I am assuming here that your goal is similar to mine; educating people about the realities of nuclear power.. adding the all-important context.. I'm aware that we have systems for managing the waste, but it does need to be _managed_ , i.e. stored securely. It's a manageable problem, unlike fossil fuel emissions which just go up into the atmosphere.. but it's still a problem. Saying "it's not a problem at all" to someone who is worried and _knows_ that it is in fact toxic and highly radioactive and will remain hazardous (if not stored securely) for decades or centuries.. that person is just going to stop listening.
@@yaff1851 Agreed: Nuclear waste is a monument to how little CO2 waste there is ... when you use an INTERNALIZED waste stream vs. the "magic" of putting it in to the atmosphere. Granted, climate science is unfalsifiable and offers no clear error margins ... but if you can eliminate CO2 and even generate carbon neutral fuels via nuclear reactors ...? Why check to see if the worst case is even remotely correct..? Why deal with all the ecological impact of dams..? Why invest in billion dollar gas plants when we know how much fissile material there is, but cannot know where we're at relative to the volume of gas or oil remaining...or when we reach the peak of either...
12:26 This previous Summer, CA Gov. Newsom mandated energy restrictions with respect to running air conditioners, charging electric vehicles, etc. It doesn't sound like those batteries provide a whole lot of excess (or even sufficient) energy when it's needed most.
This might be hard to include in the calculations, but you also have to take into account the environmental impact. It is great that nuclear is used closed-system water, but natural gas is far from being a closed system without side-effects to the open nature.
Well in theory you could close off the ventilation from a natural gas plant and store it. Over time it would turn into a tar like sludge that in theory could be burned again. It's a net neutral system. But right now the country gives no subsidies on top of them for using this and cost to implement is higher so nobody does it right now. Gotta love humans am I right?
@@Skylancer727 I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how combustion works. If something has been burnt, it has been burnt. You cannot collect the exhaust gases and burn them again. Closed cycle gas turbines are highly efficient, there is virtually nothing combustible in the exhaust. I think perhaps you are confusing with carbon capture which is a way to reduce CO2 emissions.
Luke Rieman can you use the carbon catching method on natural gas plants? Aka filter out the co2 or some of it out of the exhaust? (No clue what carbon catching is nor how natural gas plants work btw tell me if what I’m saying makes no sense)
@@blanco7726 technically yes you can, but as of right now there are no incentives to do so and because of that, nobody does. In theory you could just store all of it in a cave under ground or a steel container. If you did it would slowly turn into a sludge of carbon which may be reusable as fuel or could be recycled into the tar used on the road. But unless politicians subsidize this nobody will do it. It's more expensive to recycle this tar then make fresh stuff so it would only be done if they could get a deal to do so. Right now the only talks were on the cave idea but this may have ecological issues as it may contaminate ground water. Since the alternative is more expensive, nobody wants to do it. It is an option, but unless you vote for politicians that specifically support this, it's just not gonna happen.
@@Skylancer727 Carbon dioxide will not "slowly turn into a sludge of carbon". Carbon dioxide is stable over geological time periods. Converting it into a "carbon sludge" requires chemically reducing the carbon dioxide which will cost considerable energy (more than was produced from burning natural gas to produce the carbon dioxide).
12:32 "That's because California is producing so much excess solar energy that buying it and storing it in batteries to sell later makes economic sense" California just got hit with a huge round of blackouts because the power grid wasn't able to meet peak demand. Evidently whatever they're doing isn't making enough economic sense to keep the power on for everyone at all times...
California had a few hours of blackouts recently because three gas-fired power plants quit working, two on the Friday and a third on the Saturday. The blackouts occurred after sunset when solar power was no longer being produced. The state needs more batteries, and it needs a bunch of floating wind turbines up and down the coast in the ocean where it tends to be windy after sunset.
take note here. California is wery sunny desert area, it makes more sence then in Germany (u using agricultural areas to make el. power instead, also less sun in year, long no sun periods) and far more sence than doing it on Iceland,... Renewables economics are wery location dependant,... Nuclear power plants are far less location dependat than that, they need certain amount of water for finishing of cooling but thats it, some reactors of Gen 4 may not need even that. Also they may be other uses then making electricity only,.. Desalination of sea watter or making heat for houses in cold areas (for example) may change overral situaion when picking up specific power source,.. Btw about Batteries, some hydroplant are used as peak producer and overcurrend spender(they just pump water up)
@@marianmarkovic5881 Just under half of Germany's electric supply is from renewables, so they are doing relatively well compared to the US. They do need some more solar power, and they have a lot of roofs that don't have solar panels on them yet. Germany also needs a lot more wind power because they are so far north where it's windier. They also might try buying some solar power from France, Italy, or Greece but that would be dependent on arranging lines to transmit the power north. Batteries will become more common as their prices continue to fall.
@@gravygravyjosh Batteries are actually quite efficient, there just aren't enough of them yet because until recently batteries were too expensive so it was cheaper to waste the excess solar power in the daytime and supply the evening peak with gas. Now battery prices have fallen into a range that makes them marginally affordable. Battery prices are still falling so they will become more common every year.
Because renewables rely on storage + base load partners, the best economic comparison would be the cost of the whole electricity grid. Compare: 80% Nuclear 10% Renewables 10% Natural Gas Vs 80% Renewables 10% Nuclear 10% Natural gas & include cost of power storage. Vs Current system I think the Nuke heavy mix would be much cheaper than renewable heavy. Therefore more economically feasible.
The storage costs are not ready to compete in common regulation, just on peak plants. But because renewable and storage advance so fast, you won't find a investors for so big investment that it can even be non competitive in the long run because the changes in renewables and storage.
Exactly, system costs are an important consideration. While renewables have very impressive plant-level costs, they require more expensive support from other parts of the grid, like batteries and deployable peaker plants. I read this fascinating report from the OECD a few months ago; it goes into much more detail on the system-wide costs of various grid compositions. www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/pubs/2019/7335-system-costs-es.pdf
Did you miss a part of the video? He stated nuclear isn't fighting renewables, its fighting other base loads alternatives of which gas is the most popular option. Which he compared.
@@musicat3330 oh that's interesting. On page 10 it shows estimated $/MWh for renewables: $38/MWh at 10% of grid. $65/MWh at 75% of grid. I love renewables but as video says there is no one-tech solution. I'll have to read the whole thing, thx.
Although you make some good points in the video and do a nice cost analysis you add a lot of unfounded bias against nuclear. e.g. - You just compared Natural Gas with Nuclear without mentioning the CO2 produced by natural gas or the future carbon cost associated with that. - You used a very selective decommissioning example (i.e. plant in an active seismic zone). Better question: Why is Germany decommissioning nuclear while France increases it? - Finally, you use LCOE as a metric for comparing the price of renewables which ignores externalities and the variability of wind and solar. Use something more representative like VALCOE.
Prism Reactor from GE/Hatachi seems a good way forward, it is small uses reprocessed Nuclear waste or reprocessed weapons grade nuclear material for fuel. Good safety systems and a relatively modern design. But try and have a conversation with some greenpeace activists about it; they can't see past the first word , same problem with golden rice.
The state of California purposely added more retrofit requirements than were needed to force PG&E to draw the conclusion not to reinvest in Diablo facility. This was a political decision not a fiscal one 😉
Great video! One minor correction: it is unfeasible to construct a 1GW natural gas fired TPP in 24 months. The three latgest technology providers (SIEMENS, GE and Mitsubishi) have lead-times of approximately ~20 months, and erection and commissioning timeframes take another 12 to 18 months at an absolute minimum.
Nice to find a site discussing nuclear that isn't just pedaling propaganda for the nuclear power industry. You didn't mention that Diablo Canyon is being abandoned because it would not be profitable even though the taxpayer is assuming all costs associated with the waste problem.
the point is that if it already isn't a feasible competitor to alternatives, then taking to account something that will make it even more unappealing isn't needed.
@@wadss There is a matter of energy security. Now actually, the assumptions may even be worse (I am not sure there is really any good benchmark at this point), but that is because you have an industry - Nuclear energy - experienced significant regulatory ratcheting, political attitudes/activists willing to work to undermine the industry (trip them up), along with not insignificant destruction of IP, experience, knowledge base with constructing nuclear plants. Natural gas has experienced the reverse, in terms of frequent construction, lack of opposition, good experience being developed out, if not even regulatory support in places. But what if the market gets out of whack in the future? Now the big fad in nuclear seems to be innovating small reactors that would take less time to deploy. Who knows if that approach will work, but will be interesting to see.
Easy, adjusted for inflation, the oldest nuclear power plants still operating in the US were 10 times cheaper than the quoted capital cost figure. You can check on "list of nuclear reactors", go to the individual pages, costs in 2007 dollars are listed.
The anti-nuclear bias adds significantly to the risk of investing in a decade long nuclear project, making it an even worse investment. There I did it.
Got 3 points to make. But I am really proud that you've made a nuclear energy video :):):) 1. In the beginning electricity map which you used for co2 per kWh only shows real-time data and never averages over time.. dunno why they don't but I don't run it. While France does stay between 20-70 grams. Germany and California tend to pinwheel between 120-350 depending on the time of day. 2nd point. Most levelized cost analysis miss a lot of variables or make broad beneficial assumptions for wind and solar. There is a reason why wherever wind and solar are built in mass, electricity prices rise. Germany has the most expensive in the EU. While France has the cheapest. There are a lot of external costs such as the infrastructure but also reduced revenue for conventional energy generation resulting in higher prices etc. Because wind and solar need backup energy to be usable. The cost of maintaining those back up generators factors in. And 3. Nuclear power does need to be load following for the sake of 100% nuclear power. Not to work in conjunction with wind and solar. If you have enough nuclear energy capacity to back up wind and solar when the sun don't shine and the wind doesn't blow. Then you simply do not need the wind or solar when nuclear can provide energy 24/7. Also the best way to modulate nuclear energy output is simply to reduce steam to turbines or divert the energy elsewhere such as to desalination efforts. If one is concerned about emmisions alone. The best course of action is 100% nuclear energy to replace both renewables and fossil fuels.
Most LCOE analysis actually make broad assumptions that are not beneficial i.e. to solar like 20 year life time, while most plants are projected to run over 32 years, meaning LCOE might be overstated by 60%, possibly even over 100%. Backup costs and system costs are overstated, because of widely exaggerated need assumptions.
@@maruti1mon1 projected or potential lifespan is always best case scenario. A reactor can last, best case, over a century. Will that happen? No probably not. And no the costs of integration are not overstated. They are not included in lcoe's at all. The problem with wind and solar is your not paying for them instead of coal and gas. Your paying for them on top of coal and gas and all the extra neccesary infrastructure. Everywhere renewables have been mandated. Electricity prices have risen. E v e r y w h e r e. Cali prices rose 25%. German prices rose 40-50%. Denmark prices rose 100%. And the more and more renewables you add to a grid the more expensive and less valuable they become. Economics seems to be the only foot pro-renewable people think they have to stand on. How little they know.
The video CLEARLY states it is about the Economics of Nuclear Energy, not a debate about climate impact comparisons. I feel like it handled that fairly well. They even brought up the point that these figures are based on old technology and that many more promising ones are in the pipe.
If you watch the original Illinois professor video you see that the bulk of the upfront capital costs are from gigantic environmental reviews and public engagements... So it's a lot that the fear of nuclear is the reason nuclear isn't more economic. SMRs though are smaller (and even safer) so the economics should be vastly better.
I mean at the least the Finnish were smart enough to realise the issues you'd encounter when trying to commission a new generation of reactor. They got a fixed price contract and so it is not the Finnish people picking up the cost overruns, which is nice (sucks to be the French taxpayer that will ultimately pick up AREVA's cost). It's not even like the Olkiluoto delays are unique to that location (despite issues encountered being in the middle of nowhere - at least by the rest of Europe's standards of rural), the Flammenville sister reactor is also years behind schedule with its own myriad of issues.
@@doovders It was a new design when they started building the nuclear reactors of Olkiluoto and Flamanville. The Chinese benfited from all the feedback on the various fuck-ups and managed to build two reactors (Taishan 1 and 2) for the cost of Flamanville. And I wouldn't be surprised that the Hinkley Point project will be completed before Flamanville. The history of the French nuclear industry is quite telling : when you build reactors en masse, you get lower costs and reliable schedules...that used to be the case from the 1970s up to the 1990s...
I came to this video because AsapSCIENCE mentioned it, and linked to it in their "The Biggest Lie About Nuclear Energy" video. I thought you might like to know that, as well as the fact that I am now also subscribed to your channel, and about to binge-watch every video you've posted in the past one year.
@@clarkhowell8267 Molten Salt reactors have been a thing before. The technology is already there but it's not really needed. Thorium isn't going to be a fuel of the future because in reality it creates design issues that are not simple to overcome, such as isolating material so it doesn't get neutron bombardment while it's undergoing beta decay.
I think the problem with the levalised cost diagram (love the artwork though btw) is that it only shows one way of looking at the problem. Every other form of power generation there (other than natural gas, so the renewables) either requires specific geological features (a thin crust for geothermal, or somewhere either damable or with a large amount of tidal flow for hydroelectric), or else are entirely dependent on the weather, be it sun or wind, making them unpredictable (as well as region dependant) so you have to massively over-build your system. Batteries are not going to cut it for regulating supply if most generation is irregular and needs regulating. They're also bad for the environment to manufactre, and degrade with charge cycles so need periodic replacement. Then you'll still need fossil fuels to fill the gaps which pollute. Hydro is regular and awesome, BUT there are relatively few places where this can be done efficiently. Tidal can't be usually be used where there is marine traffic, and dams envolve flooding huge areas and have a massive impact on the environment. And can collapse... According to wikipedia (if you exclude the Banqiao dam collapse in China) 19,633 people have died from dam collapses (and the list is scarily long), however the Banqiao dam collapse in one go killed 171,000 people, bringing the total to 190,633 fatalities. Compare that to "dangerous" nuclear power (even when you're including the cancers which we can't know were caused by the accidents, bearing in mind 50% of us are predicted to get cancer regardless) is only 522, if you only enclude direct deaths, that falls to 48, of which most seem to be workers killed in steam accidents etc, basically nothing to do with radiation. Then compare that to how many people have had their cancer treated BECAUSE of radioisotopes acquired from nuclear reactors... I'm going to bet it's more than 522... The excess power at night can be used to charge electric cars, run heavy industry, charge pump-storage reservoirs etc (any thing but try to use batteries...*facepalm*)
okay, but now what about nuclear waste? this wasn't mentioned in the video whatsoever, and I haven't seen anyone in the comments talking about it yet either. No one wants the waste on their land, and you have to protect it for thousands of years, which costs a lot of money...
@@ThunderDraws Nuclear waste is a non issue for the plant operator. The waste topic is in essentially all cases dealt with by government funded organisations. The recently required stricter safety regulation by the greenies is the big issue for nuclear. Making nuclear the only form of energy with a negative cost curve. > Nuclear got more expensive.
Thunder Draws Waste is hardly important, put very simply, it's already been in rocks for billions of years, put it back in the rocks and problem solved, especially when half lives are high and in the millions to billions of years.
@Sorcize well, yes for the meltdown and no for the environmental impact of a meltdown. I simply miss the evidence that thousands of people get killed by a meltdown. A few do, but the majority of the population will not notice an impact. Maybe some will die earlier due to effects associated with higher radiation. But that's it. The environment (nature) has and will always adapt. But can we humans?
"Most politicians aren't going to think about long-term energy strategy." This is one of the biggest problems facing humanity as a whole. We need government structure that incentivizes plans that benefit the entire population long-term, which includes as much effort as needed to stop (or even reverse) global warming. Because what we have now only incentivizes short-term greed.
@@demosiac8036 or just reshape energy policy. There are ways like incentivizing energy sector bureaucrats or j generally accepting a policy that encourages nuclear energy that doesnt defeat democracy
@IstasPumaNevada - "... as much effort as needed to stop (or even reverse) global warming." There is no global warming, just fudging of temperature data.
Good point but it is overshadowed by the biggest problem humanity faces. Inherently we find it easier to be corrupt than honest and noble. We have a big enough problem with politicians who know their terms may only be 3-5 years. When we look at governments in which you can be in office for a lifetime we start to see oppression and police states. The solution may be for politicians to do a better job at selling the idea to their constituents properly, and to set and publish their 20 year goals. It’s risky to do this, leaving them open to criticism, but it makes politicians think more about long term policy instead of knee jerk reactions and filling their campaigns with the current buzz words and jargon.
China is doing that. They have invested in several long term solutions to promote growth. Sadly that isnt feasible in most democracies due to votes being equally weighted independent of intelligence and know-how
also ''renewable'' is largely misleading , Hydro is a source of energy that no one contests , it's great all around , and is providing with the large majority of the renewable energy It needs to be separated from Solar and Wind
Out of the 46% of the renewable energy of Germany, 1% is solar plant, 1% is by wind. The rest is mainly biomass, which is... cutting tress and burn them. Very polluting solution, but still classified as green energy. Wind and solar dont produce enough on average. Problematic as we still cannot store electricity at a big scale. Gas generates Co2, so I dont see the point in this video. Also, they dont seem to take into account all the factors. Solar & wind plants have a short life, need a lot of maintenance, and are very polluting to make. Nuclear isnt sure or infinite, but it does not produce Co2, and runs far longer than the current solar and wind installations. This topic should be cover in its integrality, so people dont think solar panel is the easiest solution.
I worked on Hanford #2. It was finished and promptly mothballed. My Russian co-worker told me, "in Russia, you want power? don't tell us how to built it". I also saw the waste involved in building a nuke. Regulations though critical for making it safe, made it cost prohibitive. Every process had the same criterion, whether it was critical to operation or not.
Excellent presentation, clear and easy to follow. However, you left out one of the largest costs associated with nuclear power generation. Namely the cost of safe storage and security for the spent fuel rods and contaminated building materials when it comes time to decommission the station. This alone is always more than the income brought in from the sale of the electricity generated by the station. So for that factor only, it is never going to be a viable solution to use nuclear over a combination of renewables. In New Zealand we use Solar, Wind, and Hydro for more than 86% of our electricity needs. It could eventually be done on a world wide scale if countries with excess generation could export to neighbouring countries.
While well researched and great production (as pretty much always) - I would love it if this could also look at advanced Small Modular Reactors (SMR). I don't think the mega-plants is the future. Several smaller (and much safer) could easily solve this?
fission power plant are alredy the safest energy plant, if we take the ratio between dead and energy produced of every sources, the nuclear one is safer than solar and eolic
@@Tuneman-iy8og they do, and have since the cold War - problem is ensuring safety, and the question of whether having sources of fissile materials all over the place might not equate to a wet dream for the aspiring pariah state/terrorist. Lotta bugs and safety/political concerns to iron out
A very important fact that is forgotten here is indeed: the electricity market. When capacities (gas, nuclear, coal, wind) have been built, the plants that can produce electricity against the lowest marginal costs will actually supply to the grid. Currently, due to the low fuel costs of nuclear it has the lowest marginal costs. But wind and solar have almost no marginal costs (no fuel or other variable costs), so this means that when the sun shines or wind blows (=in most countries often) nuclear plants will be outcompeted in electricity mixes with high penetration of solar and wind (which a lot of countries have planned in the future) and their revenues (based on running hours) will be way lower than in this video and payback period around 40-60 years. Thats why no commercial party wants to invest in those plants, only governments themselves could. Further: - interest rate of 3% is very low for such riskful investments (which has a lot of impact on such a long payback period, thats why building plants is only possible with large help of the government) - after the lifetime of the plant a lot of costs are involved to dismantle the plant
The Investment analysis is extremely simplistic. It does not state what type of Gas Plant is installed. Open Cycle or Closed Cycle. More importantly it places no value on the 60 to 80 year life time of a nuclear plant. It does not tell us the lifetime emissions of CO2 from both plants. This is very important.
This is a fairly good generalization, however, a key figures has been left out. One of these figures is capacity factor. A nuclear power plant's capacity factor is around 93.5-96%. Solar power has an abysmal capacity factor of 24% and wind has a little better CF of 34%. If you wanted to substitute a 1000 MW nuclear power plant, you must build a solar farm with a capacity of 3900 MW or a wind farm with a 2800 MW capacity. "Wind turbines deliver (over the course of a year) between about 20% and 40% of their nameplate production capacity (depending on location). Therefore, the backup power plants will have to deliver the remaining 60% to 80% of the energy. This means that wind turbines would be more reasonably characterized as fuel-saving technologies for combustion power plants rather than stand-alone generators of electrical energy. [--] Renewable energy sources (primarily wind and solar) will not be able to supply the needed large quantities of energy sustainably, economically and reliably. In addition, renewable energy sources with fossil-fired backup power will in many cases not contribute towards reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions. Distorting the market with subsidies and by legislation to attract intermittent energy technologies into applications for which they are not well suited is economically wasteful." [1] The next large problems with renewable energy sources come from land requirements and energy storage. Batteries are ineffective and expensive; pump storage requires vast amounts of land and a huge initial investment. The vast land requirements will cause problems, for example, with biodiversity conservation. This and other immeasurable factors are generally disregarded by many experts. "Based on an objective and transparent analysis of our sustainable energy choices, we have come to the evidence‐based conclusion that nuclear energy is a good option for biodiversity conservation (and society in general) and that other alternatives to fossil fuels should be subjected to the same cost-benefit analyses (in terms of biodiversity and climate outcomes, as well as sociopolitical imperatives) before accepting or dismissing them." [2] The argument that uranium stores will be depleted within a few decades is also untrue. 4300*10^6 tonnes of uranium is dissolved in ocean water, compared to 5.9*10^6 tonnes on land. The uranium in seawater is also being replenished by a constant pseudo-equilibrium reaction with uranium containing rocks. [3] References: [1] Brook, B. W., Alonso, A., Meneley, D. A., Misak, J., Blees, T., & van Erp, J. B. (2014). Why nuclear energy is sustainable and has to be part of the energy mix. Sustainable Materials and Technologies, 1-2, 8-16. doi:doi.org/10.1016/j.susmat.2014.11.001 [2] Brook, B. W., & Bradshaw, C. J. A. (2015). Key role for nuclear energy in global biodiversity conservation. Conservation Biology, 29(3), 702-712. doi:10.1111/cobi.12433 [3] Diallo, Mamadou S., Madhusudhana Rao Kotte, ja Manki Cho. "Mining Critical Metals and Elements From Seawater: Opportunities and Challenges." Environmental Science & Technology 49, no. 16 (2015): 9390.
The problem with waste storage is that the cost are over a. Of thousands of years of containment we don't even have technology yet that actually can 100% guarantee that it's safe
Guy Johnson that’s not true. In Canada the OPG has successfully found solutions to safely store nuclear waste. Majority of the problems surrounding nuclear are politically motivated and largely propaganda bs
Excellent video. Either CO2 emissions matter or not. If they do, governments need to support nuclear, since private firms cannot justify the costs. Politics! The Canadians do think so; see the Bruce plant on Lake Huron, which is being re-furbished.
Until I read your comment, I actually kind of thought this was a Wendover video, even after watching the whole thing. I halfway expected comments about there being no planes.
A great use for excess nuclear power when a lot of solar/wind is available to the grid is the production of hydrogen. This will help further decarbonise transportation and other industries.
but it requires high temp reactors (high enough to disassociate hydrogen from oxygen) so that getting the hydrogen is a natural byproduct and not a wasteful electricity dump (electrolysis)
Producing hydrogen for transportation is just about the worst way to use excess power just after dumping it in dump loads: from energy in to hydrogen in a car's tank there's like an 85% energy loss - and then you still need to turn it back into electricity with super expensive fuel cells. You're much better off charging batteries, pumping water up basins, or running carbon capture plants to make synthethic hydrocarbon fuels (like Carbon Engineering is doing with their proof of concept plant). If you're making the hydrogen for use as a chemical feedstock right at the chemical plant then it's a good use of power, but as an energy vector it's absolutely horrible and has no place except maybe extremely select applications like long haul trucking in super remote areas.
@@demoniack81 for land-based transportation, I agree. However for aircrafts, batteries aren't an option because of the weight-to-energy ratio (covered in another video on this channel). It's wasteful, but it's the only realistic way of flying planes without releasing CO2 with our current technology.
@@Stardustnib We can make carbon-free synthethic liquid fuels by pulling CO2 out of the air. Carbon Engineering is already doing it in their pilot plant and it works, it's just a matter of scaling it up and making it cheaper. Also compressed hydrogen wouldn't be dense enough either, and I'm not sure liquid hydrogen would be a great idea for aircraft, it's way too dangerous in case of a leak and you'd probably suffer a lot of boiloff over a course of a multi-hour flight.
wind and solar are the forms of energy pushed by big oil and gas because with the inconsistencies, when there's not enough renewables, you have to use peaker plants, which use a lot of coal and oil.
nuclear waste is 99% non radioactive, and the 1% loses radiation in 40-50 years "stored in concrete underground in areas that ain't getting any development anytime soon"
If your talking about uranium the amount of energy you can extract per amount of uranium compared to coal or oil or basically anything else that is not nuclear is insane. Also nuclear waste can be dealt with pretty easily now.
@@JabbarTV1 False and false. The 94% (!) is considered low-level radioactive waste and usually safe, but has to be stored and double-checked regardless. The 6% high-level waste will have greatly reduced radiation levels after 50 years (Cesium-137 and strontium-90 have half-lives of approximately 30 years) but other isotopes have half-lives of tens of thousands of years. There's a reason that governments all over are looking into long-term stable geological depositing in places like salt mines and clay deposits.
The waste problem is indeed out of scope (as someone already mentioned). But when taking wast into account, that would definitely tip the scale in favour favour of nuclear compared to coal or gas. When comparing the waste of renewables compared to the waste of nuclear plants,.. my guess is that renewables win, but not very convincingly and it will probably depend a lot on the regulations with regards to the use of heavy metals and stuff like that.
What about different models of nuclear power plants than the conventional? They might be more risky but despite that, if it’s more economical viable and can still reap major benefits, it’s worth investing and trying it out.
Atomic waste? For americans no Problem, put in ammunition, declare a country evil and dump it there. Thats the way they then get their fair share of Uncle Sams democracy.
If you tack on about an extra 1-2 billion (on average, some old and enrichment reactors for weapons are really expensive like Sellafield) you get a good estimate of decommissioning. Though this cost does not contribute to the initial debt because it's obviously paid from a fund from lifetime profits. And the longer the plant runs, the less decommissioning increases LCOE.
@@wikingandersson2561 Toxic waste stored in drums is far safer than the fossil fuel pollution that is melting our ice caps, accidifying our oceans and killing thousands from inhalation every year.
When calculating the profit of nuclear energy I think it is misleading to not also include the cost for storing the nuclear waste. I expected this factor to be the crippling cost of nuclear energy, especially since permanent storage facilities barely exist today, indicating that they are very expensive to do right. The video is still very interesting though, and I am looking forward to the next ones on nuclear energy.
9:40 ahhhh... makes me sad to see that our only nuclear power plant in my country was shut down and never used years ago. The fackin situation with our electricity and such would be in the more positive rn I bet if they used it.
Even the IAEA claims that fission power won´t exceed the up to 10% of electricity produced worldwide of righ now. Renewables make up for about 30% of produced electricty worldwide. Nuclear power plants become more expensive and more expensive and take more and more years to be build. Uranium gets more expensive, too. Not to mention the cost of storage of the waste and the cost for decommissioning of the plant at some point, which is paid by the society, not by the plant operators. Renewables get cheaper and cheaper and with a proper energy storage system it provides stable and cheap power.
To really discuss the economics of Nuclear Energy, you would have to follow the entire lifetime of the plant, cost/profit of upgrade, risk and cost of unscheduled maintenance/failure, resale value of facilities, etc. This is just the economics of break-even startup with a hand wave of "and then nuclear enjoys significant advantages over natural gas forevermore". To be clear, I'm criticizing the comprehensiveness of the analysis in the video vis a vis the scope claimed in the title, not the conclusion or nuclear energy in general.
Natural gas, has no way to link resource with Nuclear, but Solar and wind/water Mills can synconize shared labore task of power, this way Nuculear can be very mini or minimum in size, yet amp with the other 2 power source.
Indeed. It would also be interesting to see some projections about future uranium prices, especially if nuclear becomes even more prevantly used - not to compare it with gas plants, nuclear clearly wins here, but instead to compare it with renewables+battery storage
What you're leaving out here is insurance cost. Insurance for gas and renewables is cheap as there's not much risk involved. Insurance cost for nuclear power is literally too high for any single company to pay for it. So there is no insurance and the public is shouldering all the risks.
@@Gnefitisis Source: m.manager-magazin.de/finanzen/versicherungen/a-761954.html It's german because that's the case that concerns me. But in essence it says that Fukushima for example costs at least 86Bn, a big part of which is payed for by the Japanese government.
California is producing excess energy... I doubt that. Have you looked at power grid levels lately? California regularly buys thousands of megawatt hours from neighboring grids, daily. It is regularly buying an average of 2000 megawatt hours of power from the NW power grid daily, and another 2000 from the SW grid. *Maybe* in the winter it produces enough solar to be able to sell some of it, but it is *not* regularly supporting itself.
Thank you for the exciting question and the good video. Unfortunately, you did not sufficently take into account the dismantling and disposal of the power plants (only in the last graph). Of course, dismantling wind power and gas power plants is also expenssive. However, the costs are very low compared to nuclear energy. Based on concrete case studies from Germany and Switzerland, there are the following cost estimates: Averaged over different reactor types, costs of 2.9 billion euros for dismantling and final storage. The dismantling takes about 15 years until everything on the site has been dismantled, cleaned and decontaminated. Result: Realistically speaking, nuclear energy can only be operated if the financial risks are taken by the society.
Nuclear power seems to work best with strong centralization & planning - long-term investment, fuel procurement, operational safety, fuel cycle infrastructure, final storage, security, ... - which is a big reason I loathe the idea of politicians subsidizing private, for-profit energy giants to build new nuclear plants (and after their term is over, probably landing a cushy job there). It also puts a damper on the prospect of small, decentralized nuclear plants - no matter how cool the engineering of next-gen reactors is.
@@nibblrrr7124 Unfortunately, no one seems to take into account the vast amount of energy that is lost in electrical transmission, almost 70% in the United States. It is therefore better to decentralize electricity production and produce it as near as possible to where it is consumed. Who would want a nuclear power plant in their back yard?
@@TheGuyThatEveryoneIgnores Let’s do the math. 1MWh powers 100 homes for an hour. Nuclear reactors are built to produce an estimated 1,000MWh of electricity every hour. Now let’s consider the reliability of the reactors. How accurate the estimate is. Nuclear reactors are about 93% reliable. So they’ll end up producing 930MWh every hour which powers 93,000 homes every hour. A single Nuclear reactor will power most cities and take up less spots and end up more profitable and produce cleaner energy and are safer than any other power source and you get the idea
There is an increasing amount of attention being put towards LFTRs (Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactors), a molten salt design that uses Thorium-232; as opposed to current PWRs that use Uranium-235. I hope it gets enough attention so that the distinction is made in the global discussion.
Unlike conventional reactors, thorium fueled reactors produce nuclear waste that only must be buried for hundreds of years -- as opposed to hundreds of thousands of years for nuclear waste from current reactors.
Invest anywhere you like. It's the subsides that Big Oil *and* the nuclear industry get that should be eliminated. If they're viable businesses they shouldn't need subsides at this point. Nuclear has been around 75+ years and oil for over 100. They're not startups anymore!
@@therealctoo4183 The joke bait that fossil fuel subsidies entertain is that it helps to maintain domestic jobs and keep the retail prices low at the pump - both incredibly political topics.
And what about a Dyson sphere? He didn't cover that either. The technology was thought of a long time ago and there is no technology around that can come even close to its energy output and efficiency, but somehow everyone ignores it.
Jakob Schulze we can’t get a nuclear plant built in a timely manner due to regulation. What makes you think that a galactic scale construction operation such as covering an entire star with energy harvesting magic (because the technology isn’t there yet) and then beaming it back to earth (another technological hurdle) is feasible? We can barely get people into low earth orbit let alone close enough to the sun. A Dyson sphere requires us to be an interplanetary species already before we could attempt something like that due to the resources required alone.
13:42 as a physicist I can tell you that a nuclear reactor can't be made "diespatchable" except if it uses a totally different kind of nuclear technology, based on a different kind of fuel than what is used in all modern reactors. The reason for this is that the reason why nuclear reactor can't be quickly turned on and off is not engineering but basic physics of Uranium fission. Thorium might be promising but if a Thorium reactor will ever work and be commercially viable, it will be definitely too late to avoid the climate apocalypse if we don't massively reduce CO2 emissions before.
You forgot to factor in nuclear power plant average operating lifetime is between 20 and 40 years. Add onto that the years of deconstruction, sanitation and the money that needs to be put into that.
Nah. That's how older plants were theorised to last but they've been shown to be operable for much longer so long as they're maintained well. Newer designs are even better, having an initial estimation of 40-60 years. Your knowledge of nuclear is stuck in the cold war era. Join the modern day with the rest of us.
There have been many mass public delusions over history. Currently in the USA the public is absolutely terrified of nukes. Compare and contrast with a French citizen, who shows none of the panic. Their country is largely powered by nukes, and the power plants just sit there, quietly creating electricity and not a smidge of CO2. Who would have thought the French would be so logical? At the end the video becomes a commercial for solar. Wait, what?
A Spanish reactor was decommissioned in 2006 (Zorita) and a documentary showed all the people in the region sad to see it go because of the employment it gave.
Having worked with Energy systems and with the nuclear energy industry I believe its very important to remember that not a single - not one single - nuclear power plant on the face of Earth carries its own full running costs. Also, it uses enormous amounts of water compared to solar and wind. I do believe that nuclear can play a positive role in the world's energy mix, but it will always be a marginal factor for lots of reasons. The US electricity market is a good measure of how difficult it is to run a nuclear plant with profit. They not only run very high building costs but also run far, far below projected outputs in the real world. There are no nuclear plants anywhere that are "insanely" profitable.
@Randomerz as I said, I have worked with the industry and I have specifically also worked with EDF. For starters their electricity is no longer cheap - even if they rely on substantial government subsidies. I am even uncertain if they pay for the water they use. But it is a fact that their use of water is creating problems in certain parts of France. To me the verdict is out on the long term viability of France' reactors. They were a good response to the energy crisis and they have delivered huge amounts of electricity - and at times for a good price. Would I build them today? Probably not. But that's an involved calculation and domestic policy concern played a critical role originally which can never be discounted. This is also why it will be difficult for France to give up on nuclear apart from the bet that it can remain a viable export industry. Also, Germany is not producing anywhere near the amount of renewable energy it needs. If they did electricity would be a lot cheaper than in France - and I do suggest you look these things up yourself as you seem interested in the facts.
@Randomerz Germany is not an example of anything renewable and cannot be compared with countries that have a purpose built renewable infrastructure. And no matter what: nuclear is not price competitive with renewable by a long shot. Yes, renewables cannot be used cost effectively everywhere, neither can nuclear, coal, gas, oil etc.
@Randomerz US Energy Agency, IEA and IRENA all have the numbers. Nuclear - even with its government subsidies - cannot compete with renewables when it comes to electricity prices. Maybe new tech can change this, however, the cost of renewables continues to drop at an astounding rate. Please inform yourself. I'll stop here. The facts are easily available from renowed and reputable energy organisations. And just for the record: German energy policies are deeply flawed and are totally irrelevant to the discussion of the merits of nuclear vs renewables.
@Randomerz the prices given by the agencies I mentioned are comparing new builds nuclear/renewable/coal/oil etc. power stations - not old ones. As for reliability all systems have challenges. You can ask the Japanese what they think about the reliability of nuclear plants following their one-year long industrial brown-outs after the Fukushima disaster (a situation I specifically had warned the Japanese Government about during the previous year's global Nuclear Industry meeting, which was held in Japan). You can also consider figuring out why the UAE Government (tip: they are not telling) why they deliberately waited almost 2 years after their new reactor was ready before starting it. Energy systems are complicated and there are no one-size-fits-all. Renewables will take over the majority of global electricity production within the next 20-30 years. Will nuclear see a renaissance? Maybe. I personally hope so. But if this happens the time line is most likely 40-50 years from now and it will for many reasons remain a niche energy source on a global scale for much longer. As for the reliability of renewables they also have challenges. But there is no evidence that countries with a very high degree of renewable electricity have lower quality electricity (uptime) than those that do not - actually to the contrary - countries that have expanded their renewable inputs a lot tend to do better. A main reason is probably that these Government make more careful energy planning and invest in better distributed energy systems (the mistake they had done in Japan with their nuclear plants and which led to the very long brown-outs just because a single plant went off-line).
@Randomerz He is right in fact nuclear is a lot worse than what he says. Actually just at this moment france has 17 reactors shut down due to safety concerns and their MWH price is at 1000€ when it normally should be 40-80€. Plus nuclear pollutes in decomissioning and mining so its far from green and even though reactors improve, their costs only increase and the efficiency drops when looking at the uranium ore problem, ore quality decreases.. so uranium has no future and would soon have to be considered less "green" than coal due to that uranium mining problem.
I'm an I&C Engineer at a nuclear plant. You covered things very well (as I would expect from you!). There are a couple points that weren't covered.
1) Nuclear plants can only run as long as they have the "social capital" required. If the population decided they are uncomfortable with nuclear, the plant will end up shutting down.
2) Instead of spending money on fuel (possibly imported), a Nuclear plant spends it on salaries for well paid professionals. That money stays in the community. Purely commercial plants don't fully take this into account, but government owned/supported plants recognize the benefits.
I imagine the more places you go outside the USA, the less true what you wrote becomes
@@ArruVision Interesting. How many countries have you gone to to visit their nuke plants?
@@bigfish92672 remains fairly true for Canada, but I cannot comment on other nations.
Everywhere the nuclear plants require almost a city worth of skilled personnel, even if they are using a Soviet design. Everybody takes the plants seriously
And with nuclear plants more energy independence is achieved.
"requires voters who understand the energy market..."
Well shoot, there goes the future.
Voters don't give a shit about literally anything.
Welp whe now know the energy market, so maybe whe can do something(or maybe not)
Well, I think nuclear power will make much more sense on developing infrastructure on the moon, though. That, and extensive solar power will be what powers space development.
@ nuclear power can generate way more energy then a solar panel also we have to use to save us some time on earth
@@legolegs87 Build a nuke plant on time and within budget and get back to me. Especially look at nuclear construction debacles like Plant Vogtle in Georgia, USA. The assumptions made by the authors regarding costs are, up to now, a joke.
Whatever the projected costs and time-frames,are double them. That's what informed voters/ratepayers around here understand. Better to hold your breath and wait for fusion,,,,,, OH WAIT! .....
Meanwhile, I went off-grid solar 20 years ago and have been doing great,,,, and I'm a retired nuke engineer.
Short term thinking is what got us here in the first place.
The sctual problem are republicans
@Boris-Smiff Bullshit! The problem is Republicans' greed and their search for big short-term profit. The belief that profit outweighs everything is why everything is made to be disposable and the world is on fucking fire. Liberals are the only ones willing to make necessary, lasting change.
You said it exactly how I was thinkin'
@Boris-Smiff *neoliberalism
@@wirelesmike73 I think you're thinking the same thing but saying it differently. Neoliberalism allows for short term gains and republicans love that philosophy. I agree it's bullshit. Absolute bullshit. I hope one day the reps realize that
10:05 That's a saddening truth. Politicians only think in 5 years, as it's about them not us
Most politicians care about their constituents, truth is those constituents just end up being 65 year olds who could give less of a fuck about the issues addressed above. Voter turnouts amongst young people are really fucking bad, especially the US.
was about to write exactly this. frustratingly, democracy, by its very nature, creates huge conflicts of interest for the elected politicians in that they care less about doing what's right and more about doing what's popular. in my humble opinion, experts and scientists should be the one making the big decisions because they conclude by analyzing facts, not what you and i happen to be into this year.
@@Ytrearneindre Well the issue with that is when the experts and scientists get the donations from the oil & gas lobbyists. Its much better for them to give us the information, than allow us to vote. New Zealand has a complete anti nuclear policy that is hopelessly out of date...
If politicians can do something that will benefit their party's popularity *now* , they will choose that instead of choosing something that might benefit the world later. It's way easier to flaunt a windmill park built in a year than a nuclear power plant which takes many more years to construct.
@@a1r592 its because unfortunately, everyone is short term focused and vote for those who are quote; sweet shop owners
feels like a line graph with profit/loss on the y axis and years in the x axis is easier to read.
Watch the video that he based this on, it makes much more sense in that context. This video is little more than a direct copy of it, just with added stock footage
yeah, the blocks kinda confused me tbh
Yes
I THINK it was MSNBC, that recieved complaints for using a bizzare concentric circle/bullseye type graph, that was difficult to understand, and not suitable for the data represented. So...I've seen worse !
@@Lixn1337 Its a little shorter and easier to understand, which can be useful for people without enough time to watch the whole lecture. I still enjoyed the lecture though.
"... Requires a Voter to understand..." - Oh sh***t
When TPTB have been spending decades dumbing the people down in order to better control them...
Made my day
13:20 Keep in mind that variable renewables produce additional costs due to the necessity of building up overcapacity, backup, introduction of smart grids, and so on. While it is quite cheap to produce a unit of energy using renewables, it is much more expensive to provide an average unit of energy to a consumer, that, depending on the time of the day and the weather, may come from a cheap renewable source, or from an expensive backup like hydrogen or batteries.
Yup. Renewable energy LCOE always conveniently excludes the immense additional costs required to actually use renewable energies at the grid level. I read somewhere an estimation that if you include just 4-6 hours of energy storage to a solar plant, the LCOE shoots up to 80-100$. And realistically, you'd need at least 14 hours of storage to account for winter and dark days.
nuclear also needs load follower / peakers / fast energy storage
@@ebehdzikraa3855 not in the same way though. Nuclear plants have to constantly produce a consistent amount of energy, and they need storage if/when the demand dips below their production. Solar and wind need to produce energy in excess of demand in order to generate stored electricity at all. The excess energy from nuclear can be channeled toward useful ends such as hydrogen production, desalination, etc.. However, you just have to build more and more wind, solar, and storage capacity to even be able to have storage to buttress against their inherent issues of intermittency. This is part of the reason why a grid dominated by renewables isn't a great idea. Renewables are great for a lot of things, and we should scale them up as much as we can afford, but grids need to be reliable and cost-effective. Factoring in the required storage buildouts and excess capacity required to even equate a single nuclear plant is staggering and only has about half the lifetime, over which solar panels and lithium batteries in particular degrade quite drastically. There may be days where solar and wind outshine nuclear (pun intended), but they are well outside the norm and that is a huge deal. There are very few places on earth that consistently have very clear and sunny days with lots of wind, and for obvious reasons not a lot of people would want to live there.
Exactly.
The additional costs of storage are hardly so dire as all that.
In Australia the AEMO and CSIRO found that renewables *including* storage were still the best option.
Battery storage is one of the most expensive storage options, and was still competitive. Pumped Hydro is the cheapest option for bulk storage and of course quite viable all on it's own.
Even nuclear plant benefit from storage to buffer the daily variation in demand.
Why do people often talk about natural gas like its a renewable source of energy?
I thought the plan was to rid the world of all nonrenewable energy.
Fossil gas is not _as_ horrifyingly dirty & polluting (in the non-greenhouse gas sense) as coal or oil, so it's popular as a stopgap to fill peaks in demand that current renewables infrastructure can't handle. Might also be more efficient. But ofc it's still finite & makes climate change worse.
Plus, it might be easier to sequester CO2 from the air for storage (or car fuel) and turn it into gas, compared to petrol? Not sure how important that is.
Because the industries about producing natural gas, including upstream oil & gas industry and midstream oil & gas industry are insanely profitable and have been heavily invested.
It's the only way that solar and wind can claim to be profitable. This is why a lot of "environmentalist" organizations look the other way when natural gas plants are being produced, claiming "it's okay because it'll only be temporary".
About 1-2 billion people use wood for energy in this world, those people need coal, natural gas and nuclear, then renewable if there is enough resources
In a sense it is once the rest of our power ecosystem gets to that point. Obviously it isn't today and we pull substantially all of our natural gas out of the ground. But long term it can become an energy storage solution when we use renewable energy to make methane (natural gas == mehtane with contaminants) out of atmospheric CO2 and water. Renewable only requires that you "close the loop" so to speak; you can still burn stuff if that's what ends up being convienient, you just can't be pulling it out of the ground. This would all fall under "carbon capture" which is still not ready for prime time. I doubt this would be ever be a winner for storage on the scale of hours or days, but if you need longer term reserves natural gas/methane is cheap and easy to store (and 100% efficent if you use it for heating).
Awesome to see you referring to the Illinois Energy Professor. His videos are really good, and taught me loads about energy production and the economics thereof.
Same, I’m now a nuke soldier, fighting for the future lol
Hope these smaller, modular nuclear reactors from startups pull through. That’ll make it competitive. Nuclear is still better for the environment than natural gas.
its also statistically safer than basically every alternative already, and that's in spite of the decades of advancements that have been made since most of the active reactors were built :P
@@nuarius statistics doesnt Help you when a npp blows up in a dense populated area for example in central europe you will have a damage Worth of 2000 billion Euros. Who is going to pay that?
@@nuarius And yet most of the world still can't be bothered to build proper waste storage or even waste processing facilities. Both of which have been fully workable on paper for decades. Human logistics can't be overlooked.
Nuclear is better for the environment than literally any other currently available energy source.
Trollsama With MSR molton salt reactor types, this won’t be the case.Copenhagen Atomics expects to have one ready for production by 2028. Thise you can have close to cities, no sweat.
People fear what they don't understand.
Still waiting for the nuclear scaremongers in the comments...
In the meantime, reminder that with modern technology the nuclear waste is *recyclable* (and IS being recycled on industrial scale at least in Russia and France) and most modern reactors are designed in a way *they won't explode* (like Chernobyl) even in the event of a total meltdown.
If i recall correctly, French nuclear plants recycle something like 95% of the waste they produce.
I've never seen nuclear scaremongerer's. On the other hand, i have seen plenty of die hard nuclear fanatics screaming on every renewable video why they are wrong and only nuclear is the worthy renewable.
Kiréalta They aren’t wrong though.
Suggested read: environmentalprogress.org/the-complete-case-for-nuclear
I still find nuclear scaremongers.
Glad I didn't have to be the first to mention such things.
@@Kirealta nuclear isn't *THE* answer - though all-in-all it's one of the better ones.
I watched that professors lectures on the economics of nuclear energy some months ago and I’m glad that you mentioned him
The only issue I had with his lecture were the numbers.
The nuclear power plants in Europe and US were supposed to be 3 to 6 bn and are now 15 to 28bn and the construction time jumped from 6 to over 15 years.
Those real numbers should have been included to show the financial risk.
The nuclear industry is misleading people into believing that all radioactive, ultra-hazardous nuclear fuel is burned in the fuel rods. Huge amounts of it remain in spent fuel rods. As to plutonium, read about it being used in fuel rods in Fukushima. Not all of it is burned and it is very, very difficult to separate the most dangerous isotopes from the waste. It is the most dangerous substance ever created. See greentumble.com/7-reasons-why-nuclear-waste-is-dangerous/
Nuclear power is the one mistake that you can make today that all of your children and descendants, down to your great, great, grand-children, will still hate you for having made, if they know that you are the cause of their problems. (Given the 24100 year half-life of Plutonium 239 most of it will delay in 100,000 years but if you have a kilo of it in one barrel, enough will remain AFTER 100,000 years, to kill thousands.) Thorium and reprocessing so far are a dream. Fusion will probably arrive first.
It makes no sense to allow the nuclear industry to make billions while they create nuclear waste that the government will then have to pay to store for hundreds of thousands of years. You will need guards for that whole time: nuclear waste may not make good nuclear bombs, but if you are a terrorist and put an explosive inside of a barrel of nuclear waste (which process will probably kill you but they do not seem to care about their lives), you can contaminate an entire city by blowing that barrel of nuclear waste up in the middle of a large city.
Most inhabitants will either then move out or die or suffer hideous cancer. Fukushima ALMOST resulted in that occurring in Tokyo. I sure hope that Thorium is developed and actually works as advertised, but for now, the nuclear industry which I assume employs you, wants to create extremely dangerous and very hard to store hazardous, nuclear waste due to GREED and then have the government bear the cost of storing it for hundreds of thousands of years! That is OUTRAGEOUS!
You, nuclear industry people, are as bad as the parasitic banksters that want to gamble with the banks' money and then have the government bail them out when their bets wind up losing money, while they keep the profits when their bets pay off. We had to pay $29 TRILLION due to the last bailout. See CNBC's "The Size of the Bank Bailout: $29 Trillion."
How much will it cost in present value to store nuclear waste for OVER 100,000 YEARS! Because they want to GET all of the profits now through lies then have the government bear all of the costs for 100,000 years thereafter, so they are effectively PARASITES. We should pass laws making the nuclear industry people personally liable for those costs and personally liable if there is any harm from any nuclear accident whatsoever, then those parasites will stop urging irrational, nuclear power plants.
@@mim8312 Okay first off the banks across the world got a $29trillion bailout and not just the USA like you are somewhat implying. Should it have been on a loan basis? YES 100%. Was it? NO. I am one of the people that think the government should LET a business fail if it goes under. I also think the people that chose to invest in those establishments should also feel the loss.
In 2008 (maybe 2009) the banks in the USA were bailed out to the tune of about $1trillion or so and the executives got multi-million dollar bonuses AFTER the bailouts. If you want to point fingers at ANYONE point them at politicians and not the banks. The USA and the rest of the western world has a serious issue with corrupt politicians and greed as a whole.
Also on a side note: Thorium being a "dream" is a huge joke the Thorium hipsters don't understand that: Thorium is extremely unstable and only has 1 isotope that is "somewhat" unstable by any reasonable measure. It might not be AS radioactive as Uranium or Plutonium, but it is FAR more unstable which is the main reason thorium has not been used. Plus concentrated Thorium is radioactive so a meltdown or in this case an explosion would result in a huge area becoming radioactive.
@@mim8312 Don’t bother making an argument against Nuclear ever again. Especially since you brought up half life. Uranium has a half life of over 1 trillion years
Simple Solution: Clean, safe and reliable Moulton Salt Reactors!
China's spending billions perfecting the technology and we're doing almost NOTHING!!!
Hi found a small error, time 4:35 you dollar amount had an extra zero. Your block has $56,7000,000. Great video nonetheless.
Also, at 0:26 you say $2.3 trillion but the number in the video is missing 3 zeroes!
@@MrPatropolis55 lol
Kill me then.
and at 4:40 there is another 0 on the 56 million D:
@@fivade6534 Mathematics mistakes are a real part of real engineering. Everyone makes mistakes like that. NASA lost a spacecraft due to mixing up metric and imperial. American bridges have collapsed in recent times due to mathematics mistakes. He's simply trying to increase the authenticity of his real engineering videos to make them as real as possible. 😛
People: Nuclear bad, it makes radioactive waste.
Also people: setting the Earth on fire by putting a fat blanket of carbon dioxide around it.
Everytime again I'm impressed at how competent and with missing almost nothing or nothing important these display videos show data
The arguments on both sides are complex and I feel that just by discussing them, it makes a difference.
The conclusion that you have drawn may or may not be very accurate, but it makes us think and thats all that is needed. Just people being more aware of stuff affects their behaviour positively.
Thank You for making these videos.
I agree with part of your presentation. The French proved the small reactor factory built concept in the 1960's when they built their very successful nuclear power station grid from this type of small reactor. You mentioned how well their system works then totally ignored their model and only analyzed the bloated; HUGE one off nuclear teakettle designs they have been building here and elsewhere. These designs are kind of like redesigning a jumbo jet from scratch every time you build one: REALLY STUPID. Small modular, factory built is WAY cheaper. Small modular reactors: Liquid Fueled Thorium Molten Salt is orders of magnitude better yet.
There are a number of fundamental problems of any solid fueled nuclear reactor. Nuclear fuel ALWAYS swells due to the intense radiation, reaction byproducts quickly contaminate the reaction and cannot be remove from the solid fuel, unless the fuel is recycled. Also it only allows utilization of a very small portion of the energy in the nuclear fuel (about 1-3%), requiring fuel bundle replacement in about 18 months. When the core is decommissioned you still need to store the highly radioactive waste for thousands of years. Spent fuel MUST be continuously covered in highly purified water for at least centuries to keep the fuel bundles below melting temperature. The continuous heat from the fuel, evaporates the water quickly (hundreds of gallons in a short period of time) ALL spent fuel is currently stored in pools, on site at the nuclear plant and there are no plans to recycle it as it is expensive and hard to do conventionally. Uranium is somewhat water soluble (Thorium is not), so there is a groundwater contamination concern.
I used to oppose nuclear energy, mainly due to high pressure steam explosions (3 times so far) and long term storage of highly radioactive fuel for 10k+ years. I have changed my mind, but only if we build Thorium liquid fueled, Molten Salt reactors (such as LFTR) instead of the boiling water conventional reactors we have now. Currently Thorium is a waste product of a number of mining operations, is orders of magnitude more plentiful than uranium and is basically as safe as dirt (it needs conversion inside the reactor to become useful fuel, conversion takes 30 days and is free). Molten salt solves ALL of the fundamental problems of boiling water reactors, as part of their nature. They also cheaply and easily burn current stocks of used fuel rods leaving only a small residue that is safe in about 300 years. They effectively use about 95+% of the nuclear energy in the fuel. No expensive explosion proof containment structure needed, as it cannot explode (it operates at ambient air pressure). They are walk away safe (Oak Ridge Tennessee ran a molten salt reactor safely for 6,000 hours and performed walk away safe tests on it at full power in the 1960's). In fact they shut it down every weekend because no one wanted to stay. They are well suited to the SMR form factor and easily allow continuous removal of very valuable medical isotopes on an ongoing basis. These medical isotopes are impossible to remove from boiling water reactors. They also provide high temperature waste heat that can be used in many high temperature processes now, such as steel, fertilizer or concrete making, just to name a few. Desalinization of sea water on a huge scale is easy and cheap.
The only remaining hurdles are some slight metals compatibility proving needed. Chemical separation is a far superior and cheaper process. The inventor of the nuclear tea kettle reactor (Alvin Weinberg) said it was fine for military use but was a very poor choice for commercial reactors, as we have seen 3 times. For many years he strongly promoted the Thorium, liquid fueled reactor as a far superior choice. Thorium is useless for making bombs which is one of the main reasons they used uranium instead back in the 1950’s. See Thorium Alliance you tube videos for a good overview. An excellent boiling water reactor problems review is a 1hr You Tube video:
Nuclear Disasters & Coolants ua-cam.com/video/8Pyq8kCeiYs/v-deo.html
Always funny when someone invent history as he pleased. Enjoy your delusion! You should send your money on one of these start up :D
You can't estimate costs on a thorium reactor when none of them are actually producing commercial power...
@@TOleablemonk US stopped all rerseach in the 60 because it was deem as too dangerous. French stopped all reseach after catastrophic events in 2012. Canada stopped all reseach in 2010 because they can't even see a schedule for commercialisation. I heard of simulation in China but no experimental projects.
I could say that unicorn urine is the futur of energy and start to rise funds and people on internet will lobby for unicorn urine...
@@pierregravel-primeau702 hell no. he should send me the money. I'll build these reactors! Just watch me. :-D
Its worth looking into the total system emissions for thorium reactors when factoring in emissions during mining transportation etc. its questionable if its worth investing into when currently normal renewables become cheaper at fast rates and are currently much more useful to invest in than nuclear reactors.
I thought this was a Wendover video based off of the thumbnail.
Wendover and real engineering are my life blood
Interesting that if you're here you probably know Wendover and Kurtzgesagt
@@willcolman6948 don't forget mustard
Kuba Jackiewicz agreed, mustard puts out really high quality content
Wendover would have found a way to integrate planes into this video, tho. :D
As someone that works in the energy sector, I have a few comments. One thing missing in the natural gas turbine (CT's) calculation is what is referred to as "equivalent hours of loss of life". What this is, every time you shut a CT down, and then start it up again, it suffers severe loss of life due to the heating dynamic. After a certain amount of loss of life hours, these units need to be taken out of service for inspection, this is no small feat, as the turbine needs to be exposed and inspected. Also, renewables (which include biomass, literally burning trees, which is another matter altogether) only constitutes about 11% of all installed capacity with in North America. At any one time only about 2.5% of all energy produced in North America is renewable (DOE).
in the video, they mention Fukushima and show a picture of Chernobyl, but what they don't mention is the thousands of reactors that have run without incident their entire life. Thorium reactors are now being developed and are far safer than current installations and have the ability to produce more energy.
I love the environment, but, am a realist, until the ability to store energy, Solar (which takes up MASSIVE amounts of real estate, and is hugely subsidized, that is why the costs look so low) and Wind (same problems as solar, not to mention the resources required to make and install them) they are not feasible. So, if you like the dark and want to go back in time, the choice is yours.
Stop talking sense! Wind and solar are magic! Physics and the whole "energy density" thing are bullshit. :P
Oh don't get me started on biomass. Here in Europe some people think importing wood from South America and burning it is somehow green.
the thing is, when a nuclear plant goes bad, the consequences reverberate through millennia, not merely decades or centuries. dealing with the waste is a big deal that lots of people seem willing to ignore (at least in these comments). hopefully research can start to provide results, as fossil fuels wont last forever and battery tech can't yet make wind and solar viable
@@berengerchristy6256 that's actually incorrect, for starters modern reactor design can literally not suffer the kinds of failures like Chernobyl, and the new thorium molten salt reactors could never even have an accident like Fukushima, they are literally 100% passively meltdown proof, literally every person on the planet could die and a molten salt reactor would just sit there and slowly cool down, never be a threat to the environment or anyone.
If you mean the "waste" from operation again this is an area where the general public is greatly misinformed, modern reactors produce miniscule amounts of waste, and what little waste they do produce is easily handled, unlike coal and gas, or even solar (making solar panels produces a ton of dangerous industrial waste), these all dump a significant portion of their waste products into the environment. And the molten salt reactors which are far more efficient and produce far less and less dangerous waste products than modern reactors can actually have their fuels supplemented with the "waste" from modern plants.
@@berengerchristy6256 And yet even when fossil plants go 'good', we know that they are having impacts of the same or greater magnitude through global warming.
1:35 "Wind is intermittent...Needs to be propped up, and natural gas is the perfect solution for that." I disagree. Peaker plants are inefficient and very expensive. Battery storage is not only shown to be much cheaper, but the market shows it being more profitable this year in the U.S. The cost of battery storage fell to half cost this year, and is forecasted to again next year. 81% of new power generation in the U.S. is made of solar and battery storage.
(This video is already four years old. Battery tech has been wild in the last decade)
@@Dotfo15 If it is wrong because it is outdated, it needs to be pulled or at least labeled outdated. Of course we had other storage even then, such as hydro.
@@veritea9374 As I said... the video is older. And it's not like youtube is hiding the publishing date from you.
@@Dotfo15 Also doesn't seem the channel has done much on the storage options such as batteries. All I saw was flywheel???
For nuclear to be more economic it needs bigger economies of scale: smaller reactors, standardised design, and more of them. There are a variety of situations where solar wont work and wind is fickle.
The nuclear scare effectively shut down nuclear energy research for decades.
Now that China is massively investing in it the west is starting to wake up, way too late.
Nuclear is a disaster and extinction level event... here in New Zealand we have no problems with hydro and wind and solar...
@@michaelfleming6581 We had dozens of nuclear accidents, you only know of a handful and heavily dramatized by the media. I'd bet you never heard of gas plant accidents, they ain't a nice view either, blindly ignoring a technology because of propaganda is just dumb.
It's also obvious that nuclear isn't the hammer to the nail problem, obviously, if available, you should use alternatives like hydro, but don't forget that they are not perfect either and requires a backup plant usually.
@@hmr1122 H MR I know about the others... Hanford, windscale, Mayak and many others.... there is no anti media coverage about Nuclear you dont even know what your talking about... nuclear is the hammer to nail problem... fukushima and radiation is heating up the oceans and Earth faster than ever before... We dont even hear anything about Fukushima anymore even though it is still a huge huge problem that can not be fixed with the technology we have...
You should look up Dana Durnford on UA-cam he tells it straight
@@michaelfleming6581 Wait, wait, wait... Do you *actually* believe that Fukushima is having a measurable impact on the temperature of the PACIFIC OCEAN? Just... Wow.
When you look at costs you have to keep in mind where that money goes... Building and maintaining a nuclear power plant is mainly going to be done by the local population [EDIT: it was rightly pointed out below that this isn't really the case in many countries, my bad, I have a fairly frenco-centric POV on the subject], and therefore will directly benefit the local economy. Whereas for gas most of the cost comes from buying the gas, and if we're not talking about a big gas producing country that money will just leave the country, and negatively affect our commercial balance. Same thing for solar, where you get those cheap prices by buying from / relocating production to countries like china where the panels are much cheaper to produce.
At 13:41 you say that the reactors should be dispatchable to fit in modern grids with lots of renewables. It's already the case in France where nuclear reactors can raise and lower their load to follow the electricity demands. However that also greatly diminishes nuclear's profitability, as you produce less electricity over the life of the reactor and therefore hurt it's ability to pay itself back. As you explained a nuclear plant costs a ton to build but the fuel is cheap, so unlike gas when you lower the load you don't "save" on fuel, ideally a nuclear reactor would always be running at 100%. Nuclear and solar / wind are not a good match.
this is a good consideration, but if you produce natural gas locally I think it just means that it wins out even further. It's highly unlikely you produce uranium locally, but I would like to see a comparison with this somehow taken into consideration.
you are correct. profitability is lessened but we still have the cheapest energy cost for the consumer than other rich Europeans countries. (and average cost within the 27). And the environmental benefit is massive.
Finland example: 80% of the 3800 construction workers where foreigners: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Criticism Most parts where imported too.
Nuclear engineering is a highly specialist role that involves signing off on a very large risk, so it is essentially not possible to compete as a small business, and the large multinationals with the capital to compete are unlikely to have high percentages of their fee reinvested locally.
While a nuclear power plant is in the load-following mode, it is providing ancillary services to the grid operator. It makes revenue doing this, so it doesn't necessarily diminish nuclear's profitability.
When you realize how just how insanely complex the things that we take for granted are, and originally think is very simple
"A Clean Energy Future Without Nuclear, and Other Fairy Tales for Children"
Nuclear is by far the best option we currently have, followed by coal and natural gas. Politics sucks.
It wont be a fairy tale for the children, they are the ones that are going to have to deal with the waste and pay for it.
Most boomers will be gone in about 30 years, along with the last stupid V8 and comically bad Harley bike, but the last 50 years of rapacious waste, and insane fuel ideas will blight humanity for generations.
Oscar Goldman
Nuclear waste isn’t a problem at all. The volume of a high school gym is enough to store all (Yes I mean all, not annual) spent fuel from an entire country.
The volume of all waste is slightly larger - perhaps an entire high school, not just the gym - but compare that to an average mountain.
Besides, that would be a reason for Turkey not to build its first reactors. France Germany, the US etc. need to deal with the waste that is already there - and I have heard no rational argument why the waste from fifty years of nuclear power should be significantly easier to handle than from eighty years.
On the other hand, it will appear that an accelerated reduction of fossile fuels does make a difference.
@@yaff1851 I humbly suggest that I think you'll get farther with people by saying something like "the waste is a lot less of a problem than you think" than that it's not a problem _at all_ . People are more likely to listen when their concerns are acknowledged than when their concerns are dismissed. I am assuming here that your goal is similar to mine; educating people about the realities of nuclear power.. adding the all-important context..
I'm aware that we have systems for managing the waste, but it does need to be _managed_ , i.e. stored securely. It's a manageable problem, unlike fossil fuel emissions which just go up into the atmosphere.. but it's still a problem. Saying "it's not a problem at all" to someone who is worried and _knows_ that it is in fact toxic and highly radioactive and will remain hazardous (if not stored securely) for decades or centuries.. that person is just going to stop listening.
@@yaff1851 Agreed: Nuclear waste is a monument to how little CO2 waste there is ... when you use an INTERNALIZED waste stream vs. the "magic" of putting it in to the atmosphere. Granted, climate science is unfalsifiable and offers no clear error margins ... but if you can eliminate CO2 and even generate carbon neutral fuels via nuclear reactors ...? Why check to see if the worst case is even remotely correct..? Why deal with all the ecological impact of dams..? Why invest in billion dollar gas plants when we know how much fissile material there is, but cannot know where we're at relative to the volume of gas or oil remaining...or when we reach the peak of either...
0:59 This is because Germany wont stop using coal for energy production until 2038. Hopefully this will change in the next few years.
Help, I spilled some Economics Explained into my Real Engineering!
Please do a video that includes Thorium MSRs; there's been good activity in that sector for awhile
12:26 This previous Summer, CA Gov. Newsom mandated energy restrictions with respect to running air conditioners, charging electric vehicles, etc. It doesn't sound like those batteries provide a whole lot of excess (or even sufficient) energy when it's needed most.
This might be hard to include in the calculations, but you also have to take into account the environmental impact.
It is great that nuclear is used closed-system water, but natural gas is far from being a closed system without side-effects to the open nature.
Well in theory you could close off the ventilation from a natural gas plant and store it. Over time it would turn into a tar like sludge that in theory could be burned again. It's a net neutral system. But right now the country gives no subsidies on top of them for using this and cost to implement is higher so nobody does it right now. Gotta love humans am I right?
@@Skylancer727 I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how combustion works. If something has been burnt, it has been burnt. You cannot collect the exhaust gases and burn them again. Closed cycle gas turbines are highly efficient, there is virtually nothing combustible in the exhaust.
I think perhaps you are confusing with carbon capture which is a way to reduce CO2 emissions.
Luke Rieman can you use the carbon catching method on natural gas plants? Aka filter out the co2 or some of it out of the exhaust? (No clue what carbon catching is nor how natural gas plants work btw tell me if what I’m saying makes no sense)
@@blanco7726 technically yes you can, but as of right now there are no incentives to do so and because of that, nobody does. In theory you could just store all of it in a cave under ground or a steel container. If you did it would slowly turn into a sludge of carbon which may be reusable as fuel or could be recycled into the tar used on the road. But unless politicians subsidize this nobody will do it. It's more expensive to recycle this tar then make fresh stuff so it would only be done if they could get a deal to do so.
Right now the only talks were on the cave idea but this may have ecological issues as it may contaminate ground water. Since the alternative is more expensive, nobody wants to do it. It is an option, but unless you vote for politicians that specifically support this, it's just not gonna happen.
@@Skylancer727 Carbon dioxide will not "slowly turn into a sludge of carbon". Carbon dioxide is stable over geological time periods. Converting it into a "carbon sludge" requires chemically reducing the carbon dioxide which will cost considerable energy (more than was produced from burning natural gas to produce the carbon dioxide).
12:32 "That's because California is producing so much excess solar energy that buying it and storing it in batteries to sell later makes economic sense"
California just got hit with a huge round of blackouts because the power grid wasn't able to meet peak demand. Evidently whatever they're doing isn't making enough economic sense to keep the power on for everyone at all times...
Batteries are very inefficient, so I guess relying on them leads to scarcity
California had a few hours of blackouts recently because three gas-fired power plants quit working, two on the Friday and a third on the Saturday. The blackouts occurred after sunset when solar power was no longer being produced. The state needs more batteries, and it needs a bunch of floating wind turbines up and down the coast in the ocean where it tends to be windy after sunset.
take note here. California is wery sunny desert area, it makes more sence then in Germany (u using agricultural areas to make el. power instead, also less sun in year, long no sun periods) and far more sence than doing it on Iceland,... Renewables economics are wery location dependant,... Nuclear power plants are far less location dependat than that, they need certain amount of water for finishing of cooling but thats it, some reactors of Gen 4 may not need even that. Also they may be other uses then making electricity only,.. Desalination of sea watter or making heat for houses in cold areas (for example) may change overral situaion when picking up specific power source,..
Btw about Batteries, some hydroplant are used as peak producer and overcurrend spender(they just pump water up)
@@marianmarkovic5881 Just under half of Germany's electric supply is from renewables, so they are doing relatively well compared to the US. They do need some more solar power, and they have a lot of roofs that don't have solar panels on them yet. Germany also needs a lot more wind power because they are so far north where it's windier. They also might try buying some solar power from France, Italy, or Greece but that would be dependent on arranging lines to transmit the power north. Batteries will become more common as their prices continue to fall.
@@gravygravyjosh Batteries are actually quite efficient, there just aren't enough of them yet because until recently batteries were too expensive so it was cheaper to waste the excess solar power in the daytime and supply the evening peak with gas. Now battery prices have fallen into a range that makes them marginally affordable. Battery prices are still falling so they will become more common every year.
After the Megaprojects video, a video on why the Hyperloop is actually completely unfeasible would be awesome.
Because renewables rely on storage + base load partners, the best economic comparison would be the cost of the whole electricity grid. Compare:
80% Nuclear
10% Renewables
10% Natural Gas
Vs
80% Renewables
10% Nuclear
10% Natural gas
& include cost of power storage.
Vs
Current system
I think the Nuke heavy mix would be much cheaper than renewable heavy. Therefore more economically feasible.
The storage costs are not ready to compete in common regulation, just on peak plants.
But because renewable and storage advance so fast, you won't find a investors for so big investment that it can even be non competitive in the long run because the changes in renewables and storage.
Exactly, system costs are an important consideration. While renewables have very impressive plant-level costs, they require more expensive support from other parts of the grid, like batteries and deployable peaker plants.
I read this fascinating report from the OECD a few months ago; it goes into much more detail on the system-wide costs of various grid compositions.
www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/pubs/2019/7335-system-costs-es.pdf
Did you miss a part of the video? He stated nuclear isn't fighting renewables, its fighting other base loads alternatives of which gas is the most popular option. Which he compared.
Based on what data?
@@musicat3330 oh that's interesting. On page 10 it shows estimated $/MWh for renewables:
$38/MWh at 10% of grid.
$65/MWh at 75% of grid.
I love renewables but as video says there is no one-tech solution. I'll have to read the whole thing, thx.
Although you make some good points in the video and do a nice cost analysis you add a lot of unfounded bias against nuclear. e.g.
- You just compared Natural Gas with Nuclear without mentioning the CO2 produced by natural gas or the future carbon cost associated with that.
- You used a very selective decommissioning example (i.e. plant in an active seismic zone). Better question: Why is Germany decommissioning nuclear while France increases it?
- Finally, you use LCOE as a metric for comparing the price of renewables which ignores externalities and the variability of wind and solar. Use something more representative like VALCOE.
Prism Reactor from GE/Hatachi seems a good way forward, it is small uses reprocessed Nuclear waste or reprocessed weapons grade nuclear material for fuel. Good safety systems and a relatively modern design. But try and have a conversation with some greenpeace activists about it; they can't see past the first word , same problem with golden rice.
I thought I clicked on "The Economics of Nuclear War"
Lol. Nuclear war, coming to a world near you!! 2020 is not over yet
The economics of nuclear war is a pretty short math equation. ;-)
11:20 *pg&e balks at the cost of infrastructure modernization*
californians: _"hey, i've seen this one!"_
Aren’t private utilities a fantastic idea?? lol
Pg&e has been f**king up for a long time and it's finally catching up with them.
as someone who had their power shut off because of their wildfire risk, yes i have seen this one
Wind ganna be 5mph better do a public safety shut down cause our infrastructure is from the 70s
The state of California purposely added more retrofit requirements than were needed to force PG&E to draw the conclusion not to reinvest in Diablo facility. This was a political decision not a fiscal one 😉
every episode of real engineering is brought to you by Brilliant
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this feels more like a wendover prod topic than a real engineering topic
and he basically stole the other guys video, method and all. pretty terrible of him to do that, usually better than that. i guess he got lazy
I was wondering why I felt like I'd watched this video already...
@@bradhaines3142 No one is entitled to a style of video man.
@@microhistoria i mean all of the dudes math and everything, not the style, the actual research and science he just copied. thats just lazy
Great video! One minor correction: it is unfeasible to construct a 1GW natural gas fired TPP in 24 months. The three latgest technology providers (SIEMENS, GE and Mitsubishi) have lead-times of approximately ~20 months, and erection and commissioning timeframes take another 12 to 18 months at an absolute minimum.
Nice to find a site discussing nuclear that isn't just pedaling propaganda for the nuclear power industry. You didn't mention that Diablo Canyon is being abandoned because it would not be profitable even though the taxpayer is assuming all costs associated with the waste problem.
This comparison should also take into account the anti-nuclear bias that exists.
IF that is added, then so too must all of the other human logistics. Geopolitics in particular makes it nonviable as a global solution.
the point is that if it already isn't a feasible competitor to alternatives, then taking to account something that will make it even more unappealing isn't needed.
@@wadss There is a matter of energy security. Now actually, the assumptions may even be worse (I am not sure there is really any good benchmark at this point), but that is because you have an industry - Nuclear energy - experienced significant regulatory ratcheting, political attitudes/activists willing to work to undermine the industry (trip them up), along with not insignificant destruction of IP, experience, knowledge base with constructing nuclear plants.
Natural gas has experienced the reverse, in terms of frequent construction, lack of opposition, good experience being developed out, if not even regulatory support in places. But what if the market gets out of whack in the future?
Now the big fad in nuclear seems to be innovating small reactors that would take less time to deploy. Who knows if that approach will work, but will be interesting to see.
Easy, adjusted for inflation, the oldest nuclear power plants still operating in the US were 10 times cheaper than the quoted capital cost figure. You can check on "list of nuclear reactors", go to the individual pages, costs in 2007 dollars are listed.
The anti-nuclear bias adds significantly to the risk of investing in a decade long nuclear project, making it an even worse investment. There I did it.
Got 3 points to make. But I am really proud that you've made a nuclear energy video :):):)
1. In the beginning electricity map which you used for co2 per kWh only shows real-time data and never averages over time.. dunno why they don't but I don't run it. While France does stay between 20-70 grams. Germany and California tend to pinwheel between 120-350 depending on the time of day.
2nd point. Most levelized cost analysis miss a lot of variables or make broad beneficial assumptions for wind and solar. There is a reason why wherever wind and solar are built in mass, electricity prices rise. Germany has the most expensive in the EU. While France has the cheapest. There are a lot of external costs such as the infrastructure but also reduced revenue for conventional energy generation resulting in higher prices etc. Because wind and solar need backup energy to be usable. The cost of maintaining those back up generators factors in.
And 3. Nuclear power does need to be load following for the sake of 100% nuclear power. Not to work in conjunction with wind and solar. If you have enough nuclear energy capacity to back up wind and solar when the sun don't shine and the wind doesn't blow. Then you simply do not need the wind or solar when nuclear can provide energy 24/7. Also the best way to modulate nuclear energy output is simply to reduce steam to turbines or divert the energy elsewhere such as to desalination efforts. If one is concerned about emmisions alone. The best course of action is 100% nuclear energy to replace both renewables and fossil fuels.
Well said.
Most LCOE analysis actually make broad assumptions that are not beneficial i.e. to solar like 20 year life time, while most plants are projected to run over 32 years, meaning LCOE might be overstated by 60%, possibly even over 100%. Backup costs and system costs are overstated, because of widely exaggerated need assumptions.
@@maruti1mon1 projected or potential lifespan is always best case scenario. A reactor can last, best case, over a century. Will that happen? No probably not. And no the costs of integration are not overstated. They are not included in lcoe's at all. The problem with wind and solar is your not paying for them instead of coal and gas. Your paying for them on top of coal and gas and all the extra neccesary infrastructure. Everywhere renewables have been mandated. Electricity prices have risen. E v e r y w h e r e. Cali prices rose 25%. German prices rose 40-50%. Denmark prices rose 100%. And the more and more renewables you add to a grid the more expensive and less valuable they become. Economics seems to be the only foot pro-renewable people think they have to stand on. How little they know.
The video CLEARLY states it is about the Economics of Nuclear Energy, not a debate about climate impact comparisons. I feel like it handled that fairly well. They even brought up the point that these figures are based on old technology and that many more promising ones are in the pipe.
Read about Olkiluoto 3 reactor in Finland. Price estimate in year 2003, 3,2 mrd€. Now over 9mrd€ and could be ready in 2021
If you watch the original Illinois professor video you see that the bulk of the upfront capital costs are from gigantic environmental reviews and public engagements... So it's a lot that the fear of nuclear is the reason nuclear isn't more economic.
SMRs though are smaller (and even safer) so the economics should be vastly better.
A lot of that price can be explained with pure unwillingness to build it, investors pulling out and general politicians being shit.
I mean at the least the Finnish were smart enough to realise the issues you'd encounter when trying to commission a new generation of reactor. They got a fixed price contract and so it is not the Finnish people picking up the cost overruns, which is nice (sucks to be the French taxpayer that will ultimately pick up AREVA's cost). It's not even like the Olkiluoto delays are unique to that location (despite issues encountered being in the middle of nowhere - at least by the rest of Europe's standards of rural), the Flammenville sister reactor is also years behind schedule with its own myriad of issues.
@@doovders It was a new design when they started building the nuclear reactors of Olkiluoto and Flamanville.
The Chinese benfited from all the feedback on the various fuck-ups and managed to build two reactors (Taishan 1 and 2) for the cost of Flamanville.
And I wouldn't be surprised that the Hinkley Point project will be completed before Flamanville.
The history of the French nuclear industry is quite telling : when you build reactors en masse, you get lower costs and reliable schedules...that used to be the case from the 1970s up to the 1990s...
денис баженов “80% solar and wind with little storage” Enjoy blackouts and thousands of deaths every winter.
I came to this video because AsapSCIENCE mentioned it, and linked to it in their "The Biggest Lie About Nuclear Energy" video.
I thought you might like to know that, as well as the fact that I am now also subscribed to your channel, and about to binge-watch every video you've posted in the past one year.
Simple Solution: Clean, safe and reliable Moulton Salt Reactors!
China's spending billions perfecting the technology and we're doing almost NOTHING!!!
@@clarkhowell8267 Molten Salt reactors have been a thing before. The technology is already there but it's not really needed.
Thorium isn't going to be a fuel of the future because in reality it creates design issues that are not simple to overcome, such as isolating material so it doesn't get neutron bombardment while it's undergoing beta decay.
@@mikoi7472 So, what's next in Energy? Cause I KNOW it ain't Fusion.
Me listening to intro: Hmm this sounds like the comparison that Illinois Energy Prof did...
Video: 2:25
Me: :o!
I think the problem with the levalised cost diagram (love the artwork though btw) is that it only shows one way of looking at the problem.
Every other form of power generation there (other than natural gas, so the renewables) either requires specific geological features (a thin crust for geothermal, or somewhere either damable or with a large amount of tidal flow for hydroelectric), or else are entirely dependent on the weather, be it sun or wind, making them unpredictable (as well as region dependant) so you have to massively over-build your system.
Batteries are not going to cut it for regulating supply if most generation is irregular and needs regulating. They're also bad for the environment to manufactre, and degrade with charge cycles so need periodic replacement. Then you'll still need fossil fuels to fill the gaps which pollute.
Hydro is regular and awesome, BUT there are relatively few places where this can be done efficiently. Tidal can't be usually be used where there is marine traffic, and dams envolve flooding huge areas and have a massive impact on the environment. And can collapse... According to wikipedia (if you exclude the Banqiao dam collapse in China) 19,633 people have died from dam collapses (and the list is scarily long), however the Banqiao dam collapse in one go killed 171,000 people, bringing the total to 190,633 fatalities.
Compare that to "dangerous" nuclear power (even when you're including the cancers which we can't know were caused by the accidents, bearing in mind 50% of us are predicted to get cancer regardless) is only 522, if you only enclude direct deaths, that falls to 48, of which most seem to be workers killed in steam accidents etc, basically nothing to do with radiation. Then compare that to how many people have had their cancer treated BECAUSE of radioisotopes acquired from nuclear reactors... I'm going to bet it's more than 522...
The excess power at night can be used to charge electric cars, run heavy industry, charge pump-storage reservoirs etc (any thing but try to use batteries...*facepalm*)
okay, but now what about nuclear waste? this wasn't mentioned in the video whatsoever, and I haven't seen anyone in the comments talking about it yet either.
No one wants the waste on their land, and you have to protect it for thousands of years, which costs a lot of money...
@@ThunderDraws
Nuclear waste is a non issue for the plant operator.
The waste topic is in essentially all cases dealt with by government funded organisations.
The recently required stricter safety regulation by the greenies is the big issue for nuclear. Making nuclear the only form of energy with a negative cost curve. > Nuclear got more expensive.
Sorcize Is that why Chernobyl is already safe for life and to revisit, is that why people are living in Fukushima again?
Thunder Draws Waste is hardly important, put very simply, it's already been in rocks for billions of years, put it back in the rocks and problem solved, especially when half lives are high and in the millions to billions of years.
@Sorcize well, yes for the meltdown and no for the environmental impact of a meltdown. I simply miss the evidence that thousands of people get killed by a meltdown. A few do, but the majority of the population will not notice an impact. Maybe some will die earlier due to effects associated with higher radiation. But that's it.
The environment (nature) has and will always adapt. But can we humans?
"Most politicians aren't going to think about long-term energy strategy."
This is one of the biggest problems facing humanity as a whole.
We need government structure that incentivizes plans that benefit the entire population long-term, which includes as much effort as needed to stop (or even reverse) global warming. Because what we have now only incentivizes short-term greed.
You want to abolish democracy then? Because it's the only "guaranteed" way to pursue long term gain.
@@demosiac8036 or just reshape energy policy. There are ways like incentivizing energy sector bureaucrats or j generally accepting a policy that encourages nuclear energy that doesnt defeat democracy
@IstasPumaNevada - "... as much effort as needed to stop (or even reverse) global warming."
There is no global warming, just fudging of temperature data.
Good point but it is overshadowed by the biggest problem humanity faces. Inherently we find it easier to be corrupt than honest and noble. We have a big enough problem with politicians who know their terms may only be 3-5 years. When we look at governments in which you can be in office for a lifetime we start to see oppression and police states. The solution may be for politicians to do a better job at selling the idea to their constituents properly, and to set and publish their 20 year goals. It’s risky to do this, leaving them open to criticism, but it makes politicians think more about long term policy instead of knee jerk reactions and filling their campaigns with the current buzz words and jargon.
China is doing that. They have invested in several long term solutions to promote growth.
Sadly that isnt feasible in most democracies due to votes being equally weighted independent of intelligence and know-how
The question is why are we being taught that nuclear is a dangerous fuel source?
also ''renewable'' is largely misleading , Hydro is a source of energy that no one contests , it's great all around , and is providing with the large majority of the renewable energy
It needs to be separated from Solar and Wind
Out of the 46% of the renewable energy of Germany, 1% is solar plant, 1% is by wind. The rest is mainly biomass, which is... cutting tress and burn them. Very polluting solution, but still classified as green energy. Wind and solar dont produce enough on average. Problematic as we still cannot store electricity at a big scale.
Gas generates Co2, so I dont see the point in this video.
Also, they dont seem to take into account all the factors. Solar & wind plants have a short life, need a lot of maintenance, and are very polluting to make.
Nuclear isnt sure or infinite, but it does not produce Co2, and runs far longer than the current solar and wind installations.
This topic should be cover in its integrality, so people dont think solar panel is the easiest solution.
Satsop Nuclear Power Plant: You don't have to pay for fuel if you never start operating.
"Modern problems require modern solutions"
I worked on Hanford #2. It was finished and promptly mothballed. My Russian co-worker told me, "in Russia, you want power? don't tell us how to built it". I also saw the waste involved in building a nuke. Regulations though critical for making it safe, made it cost prohibitive. Every process had the same criterion, whether it was critical to operation or not.
Excellent presentation, clear and easy to follow.
However, you left out one of the largest costs associated with nuclear power generation. Namely the cost of safe storage and security for the spent fuel rods and contaminated building materials when it comes time to decommission the station.
This alone is always more than the income brought in from the sale of the electricity generated by the station. So for that factor only, it is never going to be a viable solution to use nuclear over a combination of renewables.
In New Zealand we use Solar, Wind, and Hydro for more than 86% of our electricity needs. It could eventually be done on a world wide scale if countries with excess generation could export to neighbouring countries.
What is a nuclear physicist's favorite food?
FissionChips
What is a Chinese physicist's favourite food?
Shrodingers Cat
Get...... OUT!!!!!!!
*Uranium pellets
Split peas
@@future62 Both of them! :D
While well researched and great production (as pretty much always) - I would love it if this could also look at advanced Small Modular Reactors (SMR). I don't think the mega-plants is the future. Several smaller (and much safer) could easily solve this?
fission power plant are alredy the safest energy plant, if we take the ratio between dead and energy produced of every sources, the nuclear one is safer than solar and eolic
The molten thorium salt reactor model in conjunction with thus would make it pretty safe too
They don't actually exist yet, do they?
@@Tuneman-iy8og they do, and have since the cold War - problem is ensuring safety, and the question of whether having sources of fissile materials all over the place might not equate to a wet dream for the aspiring pariah state/terrorist. Lotta bugs and safety/political concerns to iron out
@@Tuneman-iy8og like fission reactor-powered naval vessels (especially submarines)
A very important fact that is forgotten here is indeed: the electricity market. When capacities (gas, nuclear, coal, wind) have been built, the plants that can produce electricity against the lowest marginal costs will actually supply to the grid. Currently, due to the low fuel costs of nuclear it has the lowest marginal costs. But wind and solar have almost no marginal costs (no fuel or other variable costs), so this means that when the sun shines or wind blows (=in most countries often) nuclear plants will be outcompeted in electricity mixes with high penetration of solar and wind (which a lot of countries have planned in the future) and their revenues (based on running hours) will be way lower than in this video and payback period around 40-60 years. Thats why no commercial party wants to invest in those plants, only governments themselves could.
Further:
- interest rate of 3% is very low for such riskful investments (which has a lot of impact on such a long payback period, thats why building plants is only possible with large help of the government)
- after the lifetime of the plant a lot of costs are involved to dismantle the plant
very good arguments
The Investment analysis is extremely simplistic. It does not state what type of Gas Plant is installed. Open Cycle or Closed Cycle. More importantly it places no value on the 60 to 80 year life time of a nuclear plant. It does not tell us the lifetime emissions of CO2 from both plants. This is very important.
This is a fairly good generalization, however, a key figures has been left out. One of these figures is capacity factor. A nuclear power plant's capacity factor is around 93.5-96%. Solar power has an abysmal capacity factor of 24% and wind has a little better CF of 34%. If you wanted to substitute a 1000 MW nuclear power plant, you must build a solar farm with a capacity of 3900 MW or a wind farm with a 2800 MW capacity.
"Wind turbines deliver (over the course of a year) between about 20% and 40% of their nameplate production capacity (depending on location). Therefore, the backup power plants will have to deliver the remaining 60% to 80% of the energy. This means that wind turbines would be more reasonably characterized as fuel-saving technologies for combustion power plants rather than stand-alone generators of electrical energy.
[--]
Renewable energy sources (primarily wind and solar) will not be able to supply the needed large quantities of energy sustainably, economically and reliably. In addition, renewable energy sources with fossil-fired backup power will in many cases not contribute towards reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions. Distorting the market with subsidies and by legislation to attract intermittent energy technologies into applications for which they are not well suited is economically wasteful." [1]
The next large problems with renewable energy sources come from land requirements and energy storage. Batteries are ineffective and expensive; pump storage requires vast amounts of land and a huge initial investment.
The vast land requirements will cause problems, for example, with biodiversity conservation. This and other immeasurable factors are generally disregarded by many experts.
"Based on an objective and transparent analysis of our sustainable energy choices, we have come to the evidence‐based conclusion that nuclear energy is a good option for biodiversity conservation (and society in general) and that other alternatives to fossil fuels should be subjected to the same cost-benefit analyses (in terms of biodiversity and climate outcomes, as well as sociopolitical imperatives) before accepting or dismissing them." [2]
The argument that uranium stores will be depleted within a few decades is also untrue. 4300*10^6 tonnes of uranium is dissolved in ocean water, compared to 5.9*10^6 tonnes on land. The uranium in seawater is also being replenished by a constant pseudo-equilibrium reaction with uranium containing rocks. [3]
References:
[1] Brook, B. W., Alonso, A., Meneley, D. A., Misak, J., Blees, T., & van Erp, J. B. (2014). Why nuclear energy is sustainable and has to be part of the energy mix. Sustainable Materials and Technologies, 1-2, 8-16. doi:doi.org/10.1016/j.susmat.2014.11.001
[2] Brook, B. W., & Bradshaw, C. J. A. (2015). Key role for nuclear energy in global biodiversity conservation. Conservation Biology, 29(3), 702-712. doi:10.1111/cobi.12433
[3] Diallo, Mamadou S., Madhusudhana Rao Kotte, ja Manki Cho. "Mining Critical Metals and Elements From Seawater: Opportunities and Challenges." Environmental Science & Technology 49, no. 16 (2015): 9390.
whoa
Now that Real Engineering has done an economic explained video. I'm waiting for Real Science to do a Wendover Plane video
Wendover already did a CGP Grey video
I love your videos. But, as far as I know, a major issue with nuclear power is the waste storage and the costs involved with this problem.
The problem with waste storage is that the cost are over a. Of thousands of years of containment we don't even have technology yet that actually can 100% guarantee that it's safe
Guy Johnson that’s not true. In Canada the OPG has successfully found solutions to safely store nuclear waste. Majority of the problems surrounding nuclear are politically motivated and largely propaganda bs
Excellent video. Either CO2 emissions matter or not. If they do, governments need to support nuclear, since private firms cannot justify the costs. Politics! The Canadians do think so; see the Bruce plant on Lake Huron, which is being re-furbished.
the title literally made me think this was a wendover video, youre still a great channel too though lol
Until I read your comment, I actually kind of thought this was a Wendover video, even after watching the whole thing. I halfway expected comments about there being no planes.
A great use for excess nuclear power when a lot of solar/wind is available to the grid is the production of hydrogen. This will help further decarbonise transportation and other industries.
but it requires high temp reactors (high enough to disassociate hydrogen from oxygen) so that getting the hydrogen is a natural byproduct and not a wasteful electricity dump (electrolysis)
Producing hydrogen for transportation is just about the worst way to use excess power just after dumping it in dump loads: from energy in to hydrogen in a car's tank there's like an 85% energy loss - and then you still need to turn it back into electricity with super expensive fuel cells.
You're much better off charging batteries, pumping water up basins, or running carbon capture plants to make synthethic hydrocarbon fuels (like Carbon Engineering is doing with their proof of concept plant).
If you're making the hydrogen for use as a chemical feedstock right at the chemical plant then it's a good use of power, but as an energy vector it's absolutely horrible and has no place except maybe extremely select applications like long haul trucking in super remote areas.
@@Boosted98gsx I meant that the excess electricity could be used to power dedicated hydrogen production plants rather than as a direct by-product.
@@demoniack81 for land-based transportation, I agree. However for aircrafts, batteries aren't an option because of the weight-to-energy ratio (covered in another video on this channel). It's wasteful, but it's the only realistic way of flying planes without releasing CO2 with our current technology.
@@Stardustnib We can make carbon-free synthethic liquid fuels by pulling CO2 out of the air. Carbon Engineering is already doing it in their pilot plant and it works, it's just a matter of scaling it up and making it cheaper.
Also compressed hydrogen wouldn't be dense enough either, and I'm not sure liquid hydrogen would be a great idea for aircraft, it's way too dangerous in case of a leak and you'd probably suffer a lot of boiloff over a course of a multi-hour flight.
wind and solar are the forms of energy pushed by big oil and gas because with the inconsistencies, when there's not enough renewables, you have to use peaker plants, which use a lot of coal and oil.
Some people think nuclear physics is interesting
Well, in my opinion it's really Bohring
get in the C.
*Boring
and why wud u think that ? tbh i find it preddy cool
@@thesage1096 But bot interesting enough to get the joke.
@@thesage1096 he tried so hard to make that pun, he must be really dissapointed...
I tried to do a nuclear pun & just drew a planck, but I am still curieous
Keep in mind: That are just the Economics. The waste problem and the limited supply were not treated in this video
Uranium is pretty easy to come by on planet Earth. Unless you mean natural gas by limited supply?
nuclear waste is 99% non radioactive, and the 1% loses radiation in 40-50 years "stored in concrete underground in areas that ain't getting any development anytime soon"
If your talking about uranium the amount of energy you can extract per amount of uranium compared to coal or oil or basically anything else that is not nuclear is insane. Also nuclear waste can be dealt with pretty easily now.
@@JabbarTV1 False and false. The 94% (!) is considered low-level radioactive waste and usually safe, but has to be stored and double-checked regardless. The 6% high-level waste will have greatly reduced radiation levels after 50 years (Cesium-137 and strontium-90 have half-lives of approximately 30 years) but other isotopes have half-lives of tens of thousands of years. There's a reason that governments all over are looking into long-term stable geological depositing in places like salt mines and clay deposits.
The waste problem is indeed out of scope (as someone already mentioned). But when taking wast into account, that would definitely tip the scale in favour favour of nuclear compared to coal or gas. When comparing the waste of renewables compared to the waste of nuclear plants,.. my guess is that renewables win, but not very convincingly and it will probably depend a lot on the regulations with regards to the use of heavy metals and stuff like that.
imagine what the economics of nuclear fusion would look like and you quickly realize why it will remain a pipedream
When you've already seen the video source before the video :
Stonks!
what about thorium reactors?
It needs a lot of money for r&d, licensing. Lenders are unlikely to take a risk on something with nuclear in the title.
In India we already have a functional thorium power plant. We will make alot of thorium power plant before 2030.
@@jitendratiwari6886 I'm pretty sure gud food boi means the molten salt thorium reactors.
What about different models of nuclear power plants than the conventional? They might be more risky but despite that, if it’s more economical viable and can still reap major benefits, it’s worth investing and trying it out.
A very high cost of nuclear that I dont think was mentioned is decommissioning cost.
Atomic waste? For americans no Problem, put in ammunition, declare a country evil and dump it there. Thats the way they then get their fair share of Uncle Sams democracy.
If you tack on about an extra 1-2 billion (on average, some old and enrichment reactors for weapons are really expensive like Sellafield) you get a good estimate of decommissioning. Though this cost does not contribute to the initial debt because it's obviously paid from a fund from lifetime profits. And the longer the plant runs, the less decommissioning increases LCOE.
Nuclear is the safest energy system per unit of energy produced. Safer than fossil fuels, hydro, wind and solar.
Depends if you count toxic waste that lasts for many, many generations as "safe". 😉
Safe in the hands of who cares to control professionally and doesn't lie about it existing problems *cough cough* Russia..
@@wikingandersson2561 Toxic waste stored in drums is far safer than the fossil fuel pollution that is melting our ice caps, accidifying our oceans and killing thousands from inhalation every year.
Nuclear is an inevitable addition to the energy mix
When calculating the profit of nuclear energy I think it is misleading to not also include the cost for storing the nuclear waste. I expected this factor to be the crippling cost of nuclear energy, especially since permanent storage facilities barely exist today, indicating that they are very expensive to do right. The video is still very interesting though, and I am looking forward to the next ones on nuclear energy.
Why are you showing b roll of a refinery and a coal plant? Seems deceptive without considering 4Gen Nuclear.
U can consider Fusion plant too,.. oh wait, there are none there,...
@@marianmarkovic5881 Yeah. Making and keeping up with the power of a miniature sun isn’t easy
9:40 ahhhh... makes me sad to see that our only nuclear power plant in my country was shut down and never used years ago. The fackin situation with our electricity and such would be in the more positive rn I bet if they used it.
Bataan?
Zwentendorf?
Keep the videos coming
Even the IAEA claims that fission power won´t exceed the up to 10% of electricity produced worldwide of righ now.
Renewables make up for about 30% of produced electricty worldwide.
Nuclear power plants become more expensive and more expensive and take more and more years to be build.
Uranium gets more expensive, too. Not to mention the cost of storage of the waste and the cost for decommissioning of the plant at some point, which is paid by the society, not by the plant operators.
Renewables get cheaper and cheaper and with a proper energy storage system it provides stable and cheap power.
One word to make the planet better: Thorium.
To really discuss the economics of Nuclear Energy, you would have to follow the entire lifetime of the plant, cost/profit of upgrade, risk and cost of unscheduled maintenance/failure, resale value of facilities, etc. This is just the economics of break-even startup with a hand wave of "and then nuclear enjoys significant advantages over natural gas forevermore". To be clear, I'm criticizing the comprehensiveness of the analysis in the video vis a vis the scope claimed in the title, not the conclusion or nuclear energy in general.
LOL you know this is REAL engineering when we start rounding numbers up 3:22
π = 10.0
Natural gas, has no way to link resource with Nuclear, but Solar and wind/water Mills can synconize shared labore task of power, this way Nuculear can be very mini or minimum in size, yet amp with the other 2 power source.
So the French have to thank governments before the current one for their success.
What success?
@@Daniel-cy2ph The success of having low cost electricity, and a sovereign way to produce it.
@@Pyrrhus04000 All of this thanks to our visionnary and pragmatic Général de Gaulle
We need a fireside chat with Real Engineering and Kyle Hill
It would also be interesting to look at the difference in cost to break down the plant after it is taken out of service.
It's something that is easily overlooked in the public debate.
Indeed. It would also be interesting to see some projections about future uranium prices, especially if nuclear becomes even more prevantly used - not to compare it with gas plants, nuclear clearly wins here, but instead to compare it with renewables+battery storage
What you're leaving out here is insurance cost. Insurance for gas and renewables is cheap as there's not much risk involved. Insurance cost for nuclear power is literally too high for any single company to pay for it. So there is no insurance and the public is shouldering all the risks.
What's your proof?
@@Gnefitisis
Source: m.manager-magazin.de/finanzen/versicherungen/a-761954.html
It's german because that's the case that concerns me. But in essence it says that Fukushima for example costs at least 86Bn, a big part of which is payed for by the Japanese government.
California is producing excess energy... I doubt that. Have you looked at power grid levels lately? California regularly buys thousands of megawatt hours from neighboring grids, daily. It is regularly buying an average of 2000 megawatt hours of power from the NW power grid daily, and another 2000 from the SW grid. *Maybe* in the winter it produces enough solar to be able to sell some of it, but it is *not* regularly supporting itself.
Thank you for the exciting question and the good video. Unfortunately, you did not sufficently take into account the dismantling and disposal of the power plants (only in the last graph).
Of course, dismantling wind power and gas power plants is also expenssive. However, the costs are very low compared to nuclear energy.
Based on concrete case studies from Germany and Switzerland, there are the following cost estimates: Averaged over different reactor types, costs of 2.9 billion euros for dismantling and final storage. The dismantling takes about 15 years until everything on the site has been dismantled, cleaned and decontaminated.
Result: Realistically speaking, nuclear energy can only be operated if the financial risks are taken by the society.
Nuclear power seems to work best with strong centralization & planning - long-term investment, fuel procurement, operational safety, fuel cycle infrastructure, final storage, security, ... - which is a big reason I loathe the idea of politicians subsidizing private, for-profit energy giants to build new nuclear plants (and after their term is over, probably landing a cushy job there). It also puts a damper on the prospect of small, decentralized nuclear plants - no matter how cool the engineering of next-gen reactors is.
@@nibblrrr7124 Unfortunately, no one seems to take into account the vast amount of energy that is lost in electrical transmission, almost 70% in the United States. It is therefore better to decentralize electricity production and produce it as near as possible to where it is consumed. Who would want a nuclear power plant in their back yard?
@@TheGuyThatEveryoneIgnores Let’s do the math. 1MWh powers 100 homes for an hour. Nuclear reactors are built to produce an estimated 1,000MWh of electricity every hour. Now let’s consider the reliability of the reactors. How accurate the estimate is. Nuclear reactors are about 93% reliable. So they’ll end up producing 930MWh every hour which powers 93,000 homes every hour. A single Nuclear reactor will power most cities and take up less spots and end up more profitable and produce cleaner energy and are safer than any other power source and you get the idea
There is an increasing amount of attention being put towards LFTRs (Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactors), a molten salt design that uses Thorium-232; as opposed to current PWRs that use Uranium-235.
I hope it gets enough attention so that the distinction is made in the global discussion.
LFTRs use Uranium-233 as fuel
Unlike conventional reactors, thorium fueled reactors produce nuclear waste that only must be buried for hundreds of years -- as opposed to hundreds of thousands of years for nuclear waste from current reactors.
A good place to start is to stop investing in petrol
Petrol is almost as doomed as the nuclear industry. Fortunately crude can also be used to make plastics.
Invest anywhere you like. It's the subsides that Big Oil *and* the nuclear industry get that should be eliminated. If they're viable businesses they shouldn't need subsides at this point. Nuclear has been around 75+ years and oil for over 100. They're not startups anymore!
@@therealctoo4183 The joke bait that fossil fuel subsidies entertain is that it helps to maintain domestic jobs and keep the retail prices low at the pump - both incredibly political topics.
And what will replace it?
@@PistonAvatarGuy Are you living under a rock? Electricity generated by renewables and stored in batteries of various kinds!
Wait just a minute. Isn't a molten salt reactor cheaper to build, cheaper to operate and safer to boot? Where are the molten salt reactors?
No one at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission understood Salt Reactors, so they killed it.
@@trobinson14kc Or they were paid off. I think it's high time to raise a stink.
By the time we put forth the funding for research and development, it will be obsolete. It technically already is.
And what about a Dyson sphere?
He didn't cover that either.
The technology was thought of a long time ago and there is no technology around that can come even close to its energy output and efficiency, but somehow everyone ignores it.
Jakob Schulze we can’t get a nuclear plant built in a timely manner due to regulation. What makes you think that a galactic scale construction operation such as covering an entire star with energy harvesting magic (because the technology isn’t there yet) and then beaming it back to earth (another technological hurdle) is feasible? We can barely get people into low earth orbit let alone close enough to the sun. A Dyson sphere requires us to be an interplanetary species already before we could attempt something like that due to the resources required alone.
13:42 as a physicist I can tell you that a nuclear reactor can't be made "diespatchable" except if it uses a totally different kind of nuclear technology, based on a different kind of fuel than what is used in all modern reactors. The reason for this is that the reason why nuclear reactor can't be quickly turned on and off is not engineering but basic physics of Uranium fission. Thorium might be promising but if a Thorium reactor will ever work and be commercially viable, it will be definitely too late to avoid the climate apocalypse if we don't massively reduce CO2 emissions before.
Nuclear Energy and Economics? My favorite topics!
At night, everyone should be charging their electric cars so demand is always there somewhat
In a perfect world- yes. In reality the economic incentive of night tariff is not everywhere and varies greatly
You forgot to factor in nuclear power plant average operating lifetime is between 20 and 40 years.
Add onto that the years of deconstruction, sanitation and the money that needs to be put into that.
Nah. That's how older plants were theorised to last but they've been shown to be operable for much longer so long as they're maintained well. Newer designs are even better, having an initial estimation of 40-60 years.
Your knowledge of nuclear is stuck in the cold war era. Join the modern day with the rest of us.
Real Engineering: _Talks about Economics_
Me and MTF Bois: "He's breaking normalcy!"
Well, he's breaking Economics, too.
There have been many mass public delusions over history. Currently in the USA the public is absolutely terrified of nukes. Compare and contrast with a French citizen, who shows none of the panic. Their country is largely powered by nukes, and the power plants just sit there, quietly creating electricity and not a smidge of CO2.
Who would have thought the French would be so logical?
At the end the video becomes a commercial for solar. Wait, what?
A Spanish reactor was decommissioned in 2006 (Zorita) and a documentary showed all the people in the region sad to see it go because of the employment it gave.
Having worked with Energy systems and with the nuclear energy industry I believe its very important to remember that not a single - not one single - nuclear power plant on the face of Earth carries its own full running costs. Also, it uses enormous amounts of water compared to solar and wind. I do believe that nuclear can play a positive role in the world's energy mix, but it will always be a marginal factor for lots of reasons. The US electricity market is a good measure of how difficult it is to run a nuclear plant with profit. They not only run very high building costs but also run far, far below projected outputs in the real world. There are no nuclear plants anywhere that are "insanely" profitable.
@Randomerz as I said, I have worked with the industry and I have specifically also worked with EDF. For starters their electricity is no longer cheap - even if they rely on substantial government subsidies. I am even uncertain if they pay for the water they use. But it is a fact that their use of water is creating problems in certain parts of France. To me the verdict is out on the long term viability of France' reactors. They were a good response to the energy crisis and they have delivered huge amounts of electricity - and at times for a good price. Would I build them today? Probably not. But that's an involved calculation and domestic policy concern played a critical role originally which can never be discounted. This is also why it will be difficult for France to give up on nuclear apart from the bet that it can remain a viable export industry. Also, Germany is not producing anywhere near the amount of renewable energy it needs. If they did electricity would be a lot cheaper than in France - and I do suggest you look these things up yourself as you seem interested in the facts.
@Randomerz Germany is not an example of anything renewable and cannot be compared with countries that have a purpose built renewable infrastructure. And no matter what: nuclear is not price competitive with renewable by a long shot. Yes, renewables cannot be used cost effectively everywhere, neither can nuclear, coal, gas, oil etc.
@Randomerz US Energy Agency, IEA and IRENA all have the numbers. Nuclear - even with its government subsidies - cannot compete with renewables when it comes to electricity prices. Maybe new tech can change this, however, the cost of renewables continues to drop at an astounding rate. Please inform yourself. I'll stop here. The facts are easily available from renowed and reputable energy organisations. And just for the record: German energy policies are deeply flawed and are totally irrelevant to the discussion of the merits of nuclear vs renewables.
@Randomerz the prices given by the agencies I mentioned are comparing new builds nuclear/renewable/coal/oil etc. power stations - not old ones. As for reliability all systems have challenges. You can ask the Japanese what they think about the reliability of nuclear plants following their one-year long industrial brown-outs after the Fukushima disaster (a situation I specifically had warned the Japanese Government about during the previous year's global Nuclear Industry meeting, which was held in Japan). You can also consider figuring out why the UAE Government (tip: they are not telling) why they deliberately waited almost 2 years after their new reactor was ready before starting it. Energy systems are complicated and there are no one-size-fits-all. Renewables will take over the majority of global electricity production within the next 20-30 years. Will nuclear see a renaissance? Maybe. I personally hope so. But if this happens the time line is most likely 40-50 years from now and it will for many reasons remain a niche energy source on a global scale for much longer. As for the reliability of renewables they also have challenges. But there is no evidence that countries with a very high degree of renewable electricity have lower quality electricity (uptime) than those that do not - actually to the contrary - countries that have expanded their renewable inputs a lot tend to do better. A main reason is probably that these Government make more careful energy planning and invest in better distributed energy systems (the mistake they had done in Japan with their nuclear plants and which led to the very long brown-outs just because a single plant went off-line).
@Randomerz He is right in fact nuclear is a lot worse than what he says. Actually just at this moment france has 17 reactors shut down due to safety concerns and their MWH price is at 1000€ when it normally should be 40-80€. Plus nuclear pollutes in decomissioning and mining so its far from green and even though reactors improve, their costs only increase and the efficiency drops when looking at the uranium ore problem, ore quality decreases.. so uranium has no future and would soon have to be considered less "green" than coal due to that uranium mining problem.
“For nuclear to succeed, it needs to evolve” *china finishing a thorium reactor* hehe
"Gotta nuke somethin" - Nelson Muntz