Is Nuclear Power Good Or Bad?
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- Опубликовано: 14 июн 2024
- We used to think nuclear power would solve all of our energy problems. What happened? Why do we fear nuclear power and is our fear justified? What is nuclear power and does it still have a place in our energy future?
That cool Bill Nye video! bigthink.com/videos/views-on-f...
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Nuclear Power Plant, By Stefan Kühn (Own work) [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/b...) or CC BY-SA 2.5-2.0-1.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/b...)], via Wikimedia Commons, upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...
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Abandoned Nuclear Power Plant, By Brian Stansberry (Own work) [CC BY 3.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/b...)], via Wikimedia Commons, commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
Abandoned Nuclear Power Plant 2, By Tiia Monto [CC BY-SA 3.0 (creativecommons.org/licenses/b...)], via Wikimedia Commons, commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...
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"Then there was an explosion at the plant..."
Shows picture of a fire at a the Cosmo oil refinery. Brilliant.
We must scare people as much as possible. Lying is allowed if you are attempting to scare people into what you want them to believe.
@@mrwaltermathews steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/960859359391625160/CE3397A7F854D43BA22697051FC7CD4CADA284F4/?imw=1024&imh=662&ima=fit&impolicy=Letterbox&imcolor=%23000000&letterbox=true
@@mrwaltermathews By whom?
7:56 This video shows an image of burning oil refinery or storage facility. It is not a nuclear power plant. Why the image made into this video?
Because people have gone full retard and try to spread negative propaganda about nuclear energy.
Becausr that is one of the tanks outside the npp on fire not a refinery storage facility.
@@GottaGoBoom Nope, still the refinery at Chiba...
Because these guys are propagandists and have no idea what they're talking about
As someone working on a reactor that is over 50 years old - "the whole plant" does not become radioactive, only the reactor compartment - the heavily shielded place that houses the reactor. Also, Fukushima was a result of both being an old reactor (one that would have been replaced if not for the fears of the public preventing progress for nuclear power) and cutting corners in the construction. Chernobyl was both poor operating practices and a positive temperature coefficient of reactivity, meaning that the hotter the reactor got, the more fission would take place - reactors today have a negative temperature coefficient of reactivity, making an explosion literally impossible and a meltdown almost impossible.
+MonsterKat I am so glad someone brought up the coefficient of reactivity. It's so important, but not well known. I usually accept the intellectual responsibility for Chernobyl as if it were my own fault, but it does feel like trying to convince someone that a Toyota Corolla is safe even though a Dodge Minivan caught on fire once.
Seems legit.
Make all the excuses that you want, but no system is perfect and human error is always likely, so nuclear will always be a risky proposition. The Fukushima accident is going to cost $75 billion and you have a whole swath of land around it that will never be used again. When you have those kinds of risks, it simply isn't worth it, when there are alternatives that have much lower potential risks.
@@amosbatto3051 Never to be used again? Haven't you heard that animals are returning to disaster area
@@asandax6 ah, yes, famously smart and logical beings--wild animals. 🙄
Some pretty serious omissions here are that Fukushima was an old plant of similar vintage as the Chernobyl plant and had been meant to have been decomissioned decades ago. The people in charge of the plant repeatedly attempted to get it replaced but that was repeatedly blocked by the anti-nuclear movement. Just like Chernobyl it was mismanagement that resulted in the disaster, not something inherently wrong with nuclear power.
Also, alternatives to light water reactors weren't discussed at all. Like the LFTRs and their other counterparts. It's not that better forms of nuclear power don't exist, it's that the anti-nuke movement has actively blocked us from using better technologies.
i m just starting to get information about npps and it seems to me that misinformation is what is fueling the public opinion.
really stupid to have an easy solution to the biggest problem on the planet and we can't translate it into reality because of some ideologes. -.-
LiquidCookie Research Galen Windsor and the nuclear scare scam. 😎
You are spreading misinformation. The power companies that own the reactors are the ones who are trying to run the plants for longer. Most plants were designed for 40 years, but they have been extended to run for 60 years, which is unsafe because the strength of cement and steel degrades over time, and radiation makes them degrade faster. The unsafe GE Mark 1 reactor at Fukushima is also found in 22 nuclear reactors in the US, meaning that the US is also at risk of a Fukushima-style disaster. All the safer next generation reactors being constructed are way over budget and behind schedule. For example, Flamanville 3 started in Dec 2007 with a budget of 3.3 billion euros and was expected to open in 2012 (54 months of construction), but is now expected to open in 2022 at a cost of 12.4 billion euros. The next generation rectors under construction in Finland and S. Carolina have similar cost overruns and Hinkley Point in the UK will probably never be built. New nuclear energy costs 3-5 times as much as new solar and wind energy, so there is no reason to invest in it.
Never blame human being plz coz we are always like this and it can't be helped human can never be broken coz we are the only perfect creation of nature tech around them are broken and upgrade is needed petroleum and nuke will destroy our planet one day they need upgrade✌️
@@easter-nmgr4086 Every single engineering disaster has at it's basis human error.
Every year they say: "fusion is 10 years away" it seems like a running gag.
Fusion has been 10 years away for 50 years. Fission is a good stop-gap until we get fusion working.
Fussion may be impossible btw. It's hard. Really hard and under funded. The UK fusion research group has to buy parts from ebay sometimes
ik, i can tell you with certainty that fusion is x years away though, and 1 day it will be 10 years away.
politics is getting in the way. you can't have research with minimum funding, and right now Europe is focused on lobbying for renewable energy
Well yeah it has become a running joke, people have been saying that fusion is 30 years away for more than 60 years now. Honestly the issue is that we simply underestimated fusion, scientists in the 60s who had a blank check from the govt. to develop it thought it was much easier than it is and wasted a lot of time, money and patience. But now when we have it 90% figured out and pretty much all we need to do is scale up the prototype funding and enthusiasm for fusion is scarce and so it progresses slowly. Hopefully if ITER or some other or the new prototypes breaks even a new nuclear frenzy of development might occur.
I think one of the reasons people are afraid of nuclear energy is that the human mind has trouble calculating risk. People are afraid of dying from a nuclear accident, but the reality is you are far more likely to die in a car accident than a nuclear plant.. Or guns, or coal. Heck, even some renewable approaches have a higher death tolls than nuclear.
It's possibly an argument against throwing stuff into a landfill, rather than against solar panels. Nuclear waste is also thrown away into a landfill. Sorta.
pistol peiter
That's a nice dream but most nuclear waste is sitting at the power plant with no idea as to how to dispose of it
Frankly though, one disaster every 25 years doesn’t sound *that* bad. I mean compared to all the drawbacks of burning coal. It always seemed to me a little bit like fear of flights: sure, when a plane crashes a lot of people die at once but it’s still safer than driving a car.
+mina86 Exactly the point I made in my first video :D
***** That isn't necessarily a bad thing, it is just a bad thing in this case. Love is irrational as well :D
+mina86 since when doesnt humans always look at the dark side of things
+BeCurieus why is it irrational? It has evolved with the purpose to make people reproduce more
+mina86 Yes one disaster every 25 years isn't bad, especially when no one dies due to nuclear fallout from the disaster, but I think you guys are forgetting something. The area that was effected by the fallout becomes completely uninhabitable for hundreds of years, that's a long time to have to wait to start living in that area again, and its a pretty large area.
Chernobyl made an area of approximately 1,000 square miles uninhabitable for roughly 20,000 years, according to the wiki. Its just a huge dead zone, you can't grow crops, build homes, apartments, offices, or industrial buildings anywhere, because anyone working or living there is basically living on borrowed time. You could probably build 100% robotic industries, but then the people who have to maintain those industries are putting themselves in danger of some very nasty, and currently permanent, medical issues.
That is why some of the fear of nuclear power is justified. But in my opinion we should just do our best to eliminate those problems that caused these disasters and move on, we really should switch to nuclear power, because coal is killing us just as surely as a Chernobyl like disaster, just slower and worldwide. Ill take a relatively small chunk of uninhabitable land over 25-50 years, versus a completely uninhabitable planet in 200 years, possibly sooner.
Didn't address the difference of generation for the power plant. Every plant that has melted down was a second generation plant, we're now past the fourth generation which has way more safety measures. It was partly Japan's fault for leaving that outdated plant in service
I think most of the melt downs were BWRs ? Also you don't get hydrogen explosions from PWRs I think
+Jacob Hamblin Well Chernoble doesn't fit nicely into generations, as it was a plutonium breeder reactor that used light water and natural uranium...basically, one of the most unique of all reactor designs in terms of complexity of purpose and use case! As well, a generation 2 plant that was closer to the quake and Tsunami survived the event. Much of the problem is about one utility company taking safety culture more seriously than the other. And while new technology and stuff can help, eventually, everything comes down to safety culture.
+BeCurieus hey, wondering if new vids will be coming. would love to help if necessary.
+Jacob Hamblin We're currenly at third generation. Fourth generation designs are mostly theoretical and it will take a couple of decades to see any of those around. Generation V is science fiction at this point. So we'll just have to wait a bit.
raztubes
what about gen IV+???
I saw something about a Thorium reactor a while ago. It sounded like a much better kind of Atomic Power with better efficiency and no waste - it burns it up. What ever happened to that? (...he asked rather than googling it himself.)
+ProfessorPuppet It's never used because you can't make nuclear bombs out of the residues
+ProfessorPuppet Yeah, we'll have to address thorium in the comment response in the next video.
ProfessorPuppet
Thorium has two downsides: it's moderately harder to use, and, as +Gugu Le Hir said, you can't make weapons with it. (so the Thorium reactor that was running in (if I remember correctly) Colorado in the 1950s was shut down for lack of funding from the US government)
then there's the economics: places with a significant investment in civilian nuclear power have that investment in uranium-based plants. (so you get France recommending against the EU funding research into Thorium)
people always compare nuclear power with nuclear weapons, which is not at all accurate. but, unfortunately, the obsession with uranium means that there _is_ actually a connection. people are right to be afraid-but stupid for allowing themselves to remain ignorant and stay afraid. the people who are afraid of uranium power _should_ be calling for a switch to thorium.
I live in Japan, and one of my friends is French. when the Fukushima disaster first happened, he was pro-nuclear. then, his hippy wife nagged at him about how bad nuclear anything is, and he heard from a friend back home that there's some intentional mismanagement of radiation dose monitoring at nuclear plants in France. suddenly, he's anti-nuclear, and he hasn't done _any_ real research.
I'm fine calling the Fukushima disaster a disaster, but the people who compare it to Chernobyl are ignorant. where soooooo many people think that the lesson there is that that nuclear power is dangerous and we can't control it, the _Real_ lesson is that we can't trust Tokyo Electric. just like the French situation (which, to be fair, is hearsay), it's bureaucratic mismanagement. the Fukushima plant held up *_really_* well, despite being old, outdated, and not having been built for the scale of that earthquake.
+The Good Stuff +ProfessorPuppet Currently, there is some push by the nuclear engineering community to build new liquid fluoride thorium reactors. These reactors use fluoride instead of water to cool thorium rods. Such reactors are, on all measures but cost, tens to hundreds of times better than standard uranium reactors.
Government is as unwilling to build these as they are to build normal reactors. The private sector isn't interested because there's more profit in coal, or more subsidies in renewable.
There are no "better" atomic power sources. The costs come from the construction and containment of the plant and the on going control needed.
I have a lot of respect for Wheezy and Derek, but they're going about this discussion in totally the wrong way. They're comparing the risk of nuclear to zero, instead of comparing it to the risk of alternatives.
I mean, why even talk about whether nuclear is "dangerous" or not when coal power kills 10,000 people per year because of air pollution, just in the US? You don't even need an accident to kill people with coal power. Which is not to say they don't happen - coal mining is not at all safe, and even when nothing goes wrong miners still die from occupational diseases. Coal is by far the deadliest form of electricity in developed countries, and worldwide its lead is even greater.
Even solar and wind kill more people than nuclear relative to the energy generated. People fall off wind turbines and die, and they fall and die while installing rooftop solar panels. those are small risks, but they still outweigh the risks of nuclear power.
First clean up Fukushima site (and Chernobyl, for that matter, and Mayak fallout zone), then create long-term waste disposal THAT ACTUALLY WORKS, and we'll continue on the risks of nuclear power.
VasilyKiryanov - Current reactors use only about 3% of the energy a fuel rod has to offer before its considered spent. Different reactor designs could make use of the rest.
ReddwarfIV but not all of it. There still will be long-term waste. These designs are still mostly concepts, and they are not as risk-free as some would like them to appear. And fuel they consume needs considerable processing, which involves additional risks and INEVITABLE additional contamination. And, the point persists : FIRST clean up the mess that's already there, and talk future designs LATER.
VasilyKiryanov - Yes there will still be long-term waste, but there would be a lot less of it. Don't fall for the Nirvana fallacy. Just because something isn't absolutely perfect (and nothing is) doesn't mean we shouldn't do it.
Reprocessing is something we can already do. The reason we don't is because its more costly than digging up more uranium.
Fast breeder reactors are also an existing technology, we just don't use them because light water reactors were better at creating weapons grade fissionables.
The additional risks and inevitable contamination would be the price for avoiding the guaranteed requirement of storing spent fuel for thousands of years.
As for "FIRST clean up the mess that's already there, and talk future designs LATER." How exactly are you asking us to clean up the mess that's already there if you just dismiss the technology that would clean up the mess? You're like the people that say we should use the money spent of developing space to fix problems on Earth, without realising that developing space solves problems on Earth.
Nathaniel Capitano - Thorium is much more abundant than uranium, and thorium reactor designs are physically incapable of melting down. However, it requires the thorium be in a molten salt (hence Molten Salt Reactor) which means you need materials able to survive high temperatures and be corrosion resistant.
Since we haven't been developing MSRs much (despite building the first one at least half a century ago) we haven't needed materials like that until now, so we don't really have them.
We could develop them, its just worth noting that we don't currently have all the technology needed to have commercial thorium reactors.
The "relative" danger of nuclear energy is as always, completely overstated. The minute you know the numbers, you know this video has an unreasonable bias.
A propaganda about fear from nuclear bombs basically killed of what could be the game changer in carbon emission.
There must be a fun thing to pay electricity 50% in California now with all those nice renewable energy sources.
I'm early just to say Nuclear Power is good.
Nuclear Power turn into atomic battery, that's best
Nuclear energy is NOT good.
@@altelf7875
They you know nothing about energy
@@gojko1994 Clearly. Even with all this information available to you, you remain ignorant.
Butt there is working Nuclear power in the sky.
Should've mentioned LFTRs when talking about the future of nuclear.
+Lazhward Kirmess Don't get your hopes up to high on that one. Read the Disadvantages section here first.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor
+oscargordon Many of those seem like engineering problems, which might be able to be solved? I am no nuclear physicist or engineer however, and frankly none of those disadvantages tell me anything on how realistically solvable and/or expensive those issues actually are. Maybe they are practically unsolvable, maybe they can all be easily solved in 10 years; I really have no idea.
That being said, LFTRs are still a form of technology that is actively being looked at by people much smarter than me, so there are definitely others who think it's worth considering. Discussing (or at least mentioning) its advantages and disadvantages is still useful, even if the technology in its current state is far from being practical. I really only said they should've been mentioned since they are relevant to the topic, not that they are the be-all and end-all of nuclear power.
Lazhward Kirmist The problem with LFTRs is that the majority of people working on it seem to be similar and promote it in a similar way to perpetual motion machines and other free energy devices, which always raises a big flag for me.
One must assume that the actual physicists and engineers working on nuclear power are choosing what they think are the cheapest and safest methods to generate power. If that is LFTR then I would expect advances in it. The problem right now is that with the misinformation of the Koch brothers and the Republicans and the extremely low price of oil and coal, no one is going to decide they are willing to pay more for their energy no matter what happens to the environment..
Not to sound pessimistic, but the sea levels will be rising displacing hundreds of tines more people than are currently moving around from the Middle East and Africa. The chaos that will cause and the fact that oil and coal will still be cheap will allow our government to continue to say that we don't need to spend any time or money on researching alternative sources of fuel, only more money for the military. When nuclear is cheaper we will have nuclear. That is just the way the world works.
I wish it wasn't so, but there you have it.
+oscargordon There are people activiely working on reducing the cost of thorium power, It's already cheaper on paper due to the low/no pressure operation, so a metal tank that is anti-corrosive and with some shielding is enough, rather than a full blown pressure vessel with current nuclear power.
OnePercent Yes, LFTR is cheaper on paper, but then perpetual motion devices work on paper too. Look, I am not putting LFTR into the category of perpetual motion and "free energy" devices. Yes, thorium reactors have been studied since the 1960s. They are a real thing. It is just that for some reason, they also seem to bring out the nuttery all over the web. The world needs to be spending a whole lot more money on developing new energy technologies and that would include more work on LFTRs. However, it is going to have to be government funding, because no for-profit corporation is going to be putting much money into nuclear power research as long as fossil fuels are so incredibly cheap. When nuclear technology has been created that is cheaper than fossil fuel, we will have nuclear power, but not until then.
Molten Salt Thorium Reactors! Enough said.
The picture of the flames is not at the nuclear power plant in japan (7:55). Although it happened on the same day for the same reasons, it isnt related to the nuclear power plant
+DazzlinGDemos Good catch...that was my fault!
Thanks for the response. I often wonder if anyone sees my comments
+David Wolff Mind if you add a caption to that part of the video? :D
I just discovered "The Good Stuff" a few weeks ago, and I'm really loving the channel! I'm studying environmental law at the moment, and energy is such an important (but hugely overlooked) component of our lives (both current and future). Thanks for another excellent show!
Man, this sure is an Awakening Force..... eh? eh?... ;)
+Joshua Walters - nice.
+Joshua Walters mmMMmm! FUNNYYYYYY JOKE!
I feel like Fukashima could have been prevented by having the electrical systems and back up emergency systems ABOVE ground and not in the basement meters away from the sea.
jeptar007 Right there is a second plant at Fuashima it was shut down with no problem no melt down
The 'disaster itself' is not over yet. There are still cracked fuel rods in an a pool above ground in a damaged building. If they happen to be exposed to air they'll explode into flames, sending loads of rad. materials all over the atmosphere, and we'll see how many life and health will THAT claim.
Gary Lewis You’re right. None of the four reactors at Fukushima Daini ended up melting down.
Civilisation’s rejection of Nuclear power was a massive mistake, and the environment has payed dearly for it as we continue to rely on fossil fuels for our electricity
Surprised they didn't mention ITER. ITER is the name of the current largest fusion power experiment with the hopes of gaining more energy than it requires.
+Jeremy Johnson www.ITER.org for more info
+Jeremy Johnson we've got a long ways to go before we're running commercial fusion plants
+Jeremy Johnson The X7 is closer to be finished.
Guys. No one can tell you 100% sure WHEN someone will succeed in this field, or even IF they will succeed. Chill out.
You forgot to mention 3-mile island.
+warfjm The release of radiation at Three-mile island was insignificant compared to Russia and Japan. The main take-away here is that the deaths and illnesses (so far) from nuclear power is far less than that of carbon fuel. Thousands of workers die in China's coal mines every year, and that is just mining the coal.
+oscargordon Well... wouldn't you just replace the coal mines with uranium ones?
Niki Herl You are correct, but since people are currently mining uranium, I wonder what sort of health hazards and protection they use in the mining and manufacturing of the uranium fuel? Is there an increase of cancers or health issues for the people currently working in the industry?
+Niki Herl You wouldn't need as many mines though, as Uranium is so much more energy dense than coal
+oscargordon
No, radiation isn't something that your body just accumulates. Your body can easily heal a certain amount of radiation. It's the dose that makes the poison, this goes for radiation as well.
Meaning that workers probably need to be cycled, giving them enough time to recuperate without any problems with their health whatsoever. I'm quite sure gas leaks and fine dust are still way more problematic mining uranium
If fusion reactors get to work in “10 years” and they were used to boil water that moves a turbine… then that day it will be when I loose faith in humanity for good.
What's wrong with boiling water?
There is a device that generates energy from decelerating particles formed from collisions in a nearby accelerator. I heard it discussed on Gordon McDowell's Thorium channel. Can't remember the guys name though. The guy had a strong accent and was researching something else at CERN: Because the particles were plasma they had a magnetic field which directly induced electricity in the coil. Anyway much discussion has been into reactor designs that are hot enough to do chemical reactions like separate hydrogen and oxygen from water or crack petroleum, make alcohol from water and carbon dioxide. Some such things have been tested for solar heated molten salts. The energy thus used directly for industrial purposes. As far as turbines there are designs that use superheated gas like carbon dioxide to spin the turbine then reclaim the heat from the gas and recycle it through the turbine again. It does seem silly to use a warehouse sized laser and a magnetized plasma torus to heat deuterions to 100 million degrees only to run a steam turbine. Jumps the shark.
Here is someone to restore your faith. He is playing around with a fission reactor that has no moving parts. Mercury gas passing a magnetized shape generates the electricity: Here is the summary ruclips.net/video/xAOofCsOFvE/видео.html
A wise man would look more closely at Thorium molten salt reactors.
No mention of the safe and clean forms of nuclear; Molten Salt, Pebble Bead, Thorium Reactors. Its feasible to provide massive amounts of energy at much lower risks than standard high pressure uranium cycle formats.
Problem with solar, aside from the whole power storage issue, is that creating solar panels uses a lot of toxic materials. Nuclear is, if you look at the number of deaths easily the safest form of power generation. Fusion is a great idea, but it's been 20 years in the future for about the last 70 years, so won't hold out for that anytime soon.
+Toridan Could you give a reference to some of the toxic materials used? Are these toxins released into the environment, or are they safely locked away in the panels?
+Kyle Baldwin you require semi conductors, and those are not so clean, add to that that you need to house them in something, the cheapest generally being plastic ( and we all know that plastic is hard to recycle)
but solar is not bad by any means
+Kyle Baldwin Google "Solar power toxic waste in china" that's where all your "green" innovation is being dumped lol
+Kyle Baldwin There is a rundown on that here from a reputable source, IEEE. spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/solar-energy-isnt-always-as-green-as-you-think
Now, I still like solar and say we need more of it, but it surely doesn't get as much attention in the waste/sustainability department as it should.
+BeCurieus same stance myself, I believe solar can help but i'm against technological zealotry. No one solution shall rule all.
the Star Wars Jokes are so ... FORCED
best star wars joke I heard since ive been here
This should've just been a Veritasium video
How have i never watched your channel before? Cheers to Veritasium for bringing to you guys! Subscribed
I thought Derek would be better than this. More of the typical over reporting of the (quite manageable) negatives of nuclear power while downplaying the upsides and advancements made. When looking objectively at the pros and cons of nuclear power, the pros win every time. If you include 4th generation reactors (like thorium reactors) into that equation the pros become overwhelming.
I think nuclear power is a good idea, as long as emergency plans are created to prevent disasters. Chernobyl happened due to ignoring safety rules and many known flaws in the design of the reactor. If safety rules are obeyed and designs made as best as possible, it'll work!
Nuclear Power turn into atomic battery, that's best. atomic battery can use long time without recharge
short circuit that battery and...
Stephan Berns If Japan didn't succeed in 'safety rules are obeyed designs made as best as possible' - than who will? Given that we are talking about up-scaling nuclear power production BUG TIME?
knowledge is progress. Japan didn't succeed in 'safety rules are obeyed designs made as best as possible' but it doesn't represent that others country didn't succeed. The main problem is nuclear fuel that they used uranium. whatever succeed or unsucceed, it's relationship with nuclear fuel. If use heavy water that there is deuterium, that's safe cleaning nuclear fuel.
Not even saying about the fact, that automatic safety systems on the Chernobyl NPP were disengaged by operators in order to conduct this experiment. It literally required them to remove the safety on purpose for something like this to happen.
This channel makes such awesome videos, that I'm sometimes confused as to why the videos still have only an average of 30k views. Maybe it'll "explode" some day soon, and go viral. You go guys!! I hit the thumbs up button every time- for all the effort you guys put in :)
The good stuff together with Veritasium? This is already one of my favourite RUclips videos before even seeing it :)
Solar and Wind are unreliable and require vast tracts of land, Solar somewhat gets around this as it can be mounted on roofs, but on top of all that battery production is arguably worse for the environment than fossil fuels.
Hydro is reliable, but requires vast tracts of land, and has an unmistakable impact on the ecology of the area, by putting it underwater. However of the renewables, it is perhaps the best option.
Fossil fuels are reliable, but release a lot of pollutants, and are of course unsustainable.
Bio fuels are more sustainable as the pollutants they release were initially in the atmosphere to begin with, however it still pollutes, and of course bio fuel requires bio matter typically food grains to produce thus combing the problems of renewables with the problems of fossil fuels.
Cold Fusion is currently a pipe dream and energy sink.
Fission is strictly speaking unsustainable, but given how long lasting it is, it might as well be sustainable. And while accidents are unavoidable, the facts speak for themselves, less than 1% of energy related fatalities can be attributed to Fission, which makes it the safest by far.
fission from uranium can power us for 40 - 70 years depending on what reactors we use, once a streamlined thorium breeder LFTR is invented we can use the much more plentiful fuel for the next 1000 years. plenty of time an energy to try to get fusion to work, also nobody is trying cold fusion i don't know who told you that, all reactor designs so far are hot fusion.
the biggest problem with Solar is: what will we do with the pollution that is caused by the production of the panels, & that caused by the panels after they stop working? the same double-pollution issue is seen in batteries.
@@cageybee7221 My eternal question to anyone, who speaks about cold fusion for power source - even if it works, how do you harvest the energy from it? Hot fusion is very simple in this regard - just like with any other thermal power source.
Music's sorta loud, enjoying the episode though :)
I'm surprised you didn't mention Three Mile Island. It was a huge PR disaster for nuclear power, even though no one was ever really hurt.
It feels like he didn't put to much research into this video and that they just went with the standard view plus an evolved vocabulary and 3 guys talking to each other.
so you're not going to say that Chernobyl happened because the ambitions director wanted to impress the party by turning off the safeties and running the reactor to overload? no? okay.
Is there good evidence for that?
@@darrishawks6033
The accident is explained in this video.
ruclips.net/video/q3d3rzFTrLg/видео.html
@@quietackshon I'm asking if there is good evidence that he intentionally turned off the safety to impress the party. That sounds like anti-communist propaganda. I'm not saying it's false, it just raised my eyebrow so I'd like to know if there is good evidence that it's actually true.
@@darrishawks6033
_"A series of operator actions, including the disabling of automatic shutdown mechanisms, preceded the attempted test early on 26 April."_
www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/chernobyl-accident.aspx
@@quietackshon I believe the safety was off. I'm not sure *why* the safety was off. Like, did he say "I'm doing this to impress the party"? Or was it just inferred by people who don't like the USSR? I'll even accept it if USSR researchers say he did it for that reason. But if it's just American etc. people presuming that's why he did it, I'm extremely skeptical.
i hoped you would talk a bit about thorium reactors
but great episode that was
All the Star Wars references wasn't annoying at all it was very good ,i didn't expect them in the beginning it was awesome as it was the video by itself. GJ keep up the good work...
Thanks really helped me with my project
The video title should actually be: Is Nuclear Energy Good or Bad? *Featuring Star Wars references*
This topic sometimes infuriates me.
Yes, fission can be dangerous, but the risk in comparison to other energy, especially if you just measure it in human life lost pr GW of energy produced its relatively the safest of them all.
The example that was made in this vid by Veritasium about what nuclear energy is an extreme over simplification on how it works, there is sooooo much else that is possible and is currently under real development. Stopping simply at the 2nd or 3rd generation of fission power plants is like halting this story sometime in the 1980s.
Im not going to go into describing all of the AMAZING 4th gen pow.pl. that are currently in different stages of development but I name a few:
Very-high-temperature reactor (VHTR)
Molten-salt reactor (MSR) (LFTR being the most promising)
Supercritical-water-cooled reactor (SCWR)
Fast reactors:
Gas-cooled fast reactor (GFR)
Sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR)
Lead-cooled fast reactor (LFR)
(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor)
I agree with the assessment that we cant put the real fear of nuclear energy aside, but you really deal with fear like that by educating others that the fear is mostly unfounded.
Fusion is amazing, and the tech is promising. But its soooooo far down the road now for any real practical use that its just not a thing to look at to solve our current energy and climate change emergency. And NO solar is not going to be tha answer, it might help in the more modular sense of things, like supplementing your home energy and charging your car or what ever. But as an industrial solution for industry its simply not going to supply enough energy to meet our ever growing energy needs.
I actually made a small documentary my self about this here:
ruclips.net/video/UGf4dOlwXGw/видео.html
(sorry about the rant, i love what you are doing and also what veretasium is all about)
one love
Let’s not forget that nuclear is, based on the data, the safest form of power. The deaths per TWh in Nuclear is about 0.04 (this includes Chernobyl). The second safest energy source is hydroelectric at 0.10 deaths/TWh, but that ignores their deadliest disaster that resulted in over 100,000 people dying in China.
5:17 "...from a certain point of view." My favourite reference... loved them all!
You guys mentioned the nuclear accident on Chernobyl, the accident on Fukushima, but you forgot (?) the nuclear disaster on Three Mile Island (USA) on 1979.
NO ONE WAS HARMED OR WILL DIE FROM Three Mile Island (USA) on 1979 ACCIDENT. DISASTER==April 20, 2010, when the actual Deepwater Horizon was destroyed by an uncontrolled eruption of oil and gas. The explosion killed 11 crew members and set off the worst oil spill in U.S. history
rlocatellidigital==ANTI-SCIENCE FEAR MONGER CH4, RE, LOVER. rlocatellidigital==KILL Three Mile Island (USA) DOES NOT FEAR CH4 BURNING GLOBAL WARMING REPLACEMENT Anti Science and NO_NUKES === lets turn Earth into Venus. Trust Jane Fonda and LAWYERS
@@briancam_2000 3 mile island was notable not because of death toll, but because of the money investors lost. So 3 mile island actually hastened the death of nuclear power just as much as any other accident. 😊
If you split an atom apart, you get energy
If you combine atoms, you get energy
Someone explain???
+Davie1031 E=mc2
In both cases the resulting product(s), are lighter than the original materials. That loss in mass resulted in a massive power release cause c which is the speed of light is a really really big number.
K thx, i just searched it up, i got it now
:DDD
+Davie1031 Tldr not all atoms are created equal ;) You use small atoms for fusion but big ones for fission
***** I thought E=mc2 was pretty short already lol
+Davie1031 Basically there's a minimum in the energy stored per nucleon at the element iron. The reasons for this are complicated, but when pulling big atoms apart, as long as you don't end with elements smaller than iron you'll get energy out. When fusing atoms, as long as you don't get elements bigger than iron, you'll get energy out.
Interestingly, this is also what makes some massive stars explode. The extreme gravity of a star is sort of repelled by all that outward energy fusing Hydrogen is giving off. When all the Hydrogen is gone, it'll fuse Helium, and less energy will be given off... and so on and so on, until Iron is made, and then no energy is given off at all, and all that gravity cannot be held back any longer, and the core collapses. This counterinuitively sends the outer shells of the star off into space in a violent explosion, the incredible energy of which is what fuses some of the scattered atoms into all the elements bigger than iron.
The sun will never explode though, because it doesn't have enough gravity to get elements to fuse as big as iron, so it'll have a very different death scenario :)
Amazing video. Thank you.
it's DEFINITELY not getting cheap anytime soon, because people will try to monopolize it or create cartels to insanely inflate prices. the same applies to internet. internet speeds can be very very fast for very cheap, but they charge you to the moon and back because they can.
Regarding Germany shutting down it's nuclear power plants:
It wasn't approved by the people in general, only one party (the "greens", 10.7% in the parliament at that time) had it in their official program beforehand.
In the end it was what became to be known as a signature move of chancellor Merkel, this time in the wake of the Fukushima disaster (well knowing that tsunamis aren't exactly an issue in Germany).
+John T. DiFool And in Sweden we had a national referendum against, a majority of the population voted against, that was never acually executed. And for the past eight years the government has been trying very hard to expand and privetice the nuclear market, witch is hard precisly becaus there i no public support. So yah, it goes both ways.
+John T. DiFool That is not entirely true, the greens had this topic as their signature, but there a lot of other people also against it. For example it was already decided by the green/social democrat government before Merkel that the nuclear power plants are going to be shut down. Merkel was the one executing it and announcing the specifics, but it is just not true that only the greens and Merkel wanted this to hapen. It this was the case, they would never have stood a chance to get it through congress.
actually, this was approved by the people. What wasn't approved by the people was to extend operation times beyond what was previously determined. Hardly anybody in Germany wants nuclear power.
@@Workoft Oh the irony considering they now have to import power from France which is 80% nuclear power. As proven by the refugee crisis the CDU and Germany in general is filled with leftist morons
Make a bit about next generation Molten Salt reactors. Such as the research being done at the Idaho national lab. Reactors in use today are from 50 year old tech. Lets give new designs a chance to see what they can do.
Star wars references are on point and absolutely necessary for the narrative. Great job guys. Subscribed.
you guys deserve more subs and view ratio. damn you're awesome guys!!!
liquid thorium reactors is the next step
From Germany:
The problem with our politics and what people think here is that the whole decision is not fact-driven but emotionally driven
KzS Poseidon True, same here in sweden. They are going to close down one of the powerplant until year 2022 which means sweden will be importing even more german electricity through coal/oil plants. People are so scared and take emotions before facts. It’s like saying we need to build tunder-proof buildings for all 10 million swedes as there is a 0.000014% chance to get hit by a lightning strike 🤦🏻♂️
thank you for all this enformashon and making me learn
Great video. The constant Star Wars references cracked me up!
Of course the resistance against nuclear power is irrational. Any rational comparison with other energy sources proves that. You're way to lenient toward the anti-nuclear stand.
Clean up accidents sites first (at least three major ones), then solve the waste disposal problem, and talk rational comparison later.
Solid fuel reactors are dangerous because they operate at very high pressure and they onlus 2-3% of the nuclear fuel, the rest is waste that has to be safely stored for 10,000+ years - good luck with that. The boiling water reactor was meant to be a stepping stone but we have become ensnared by that technology becayse of business interests and blind stupifity of regulators whoe are in the pockets of those regulators.
If we went to liquid fueled molten salt reactors a few benefits are apparent. These operate at atmospheric pressure so you can do away with a lot of the safety requirement and expenses caused by that very high pressure. The fuel is already liquid so it can't melt down, if a leak did occur the salt would solidify and radioactive fuel would be trapped in that salt - it could not flow. No hydrogen production so nothing to explode. This type of reactor consumes 97% of the nuclear fuel so there is 30 plus times less waste and that waste only needfs to be watched for 300 years.
In short we should continue to work on fusion but the likylyhood of a fusion reactor in our lifetimes is very poor, better to build liquid fueled plantds for now that are much safer and efficient - stop building solid furled water cooled plants we know are prone to catastrophic failure.
The link to the Bill Nye video takes you to some site where the video that was mentioned isn't on. Maybe could you give a direct like to said video. Thanks.
I like that they showed the pros and cons rather than sticking to one biased point.
I just don't get it.
Why, since this is a 2016 release, wasn't the new generation, melt down proof and recycling of waste in Fast Breeder Reactors not mentioned or the proven Molten Salt Reactor Experiment of the 1960's that could eventually use Thorium in a liquid state and out of the ground with virtually no fuel production costs, 200 X more efficient and waste safe to handle in 15 years with geological isolation for 300?!
Modular designs would scale down building costs to that equivalent of coal fire plants and we could produce C02 neutral fuels, fertilizers and desalinate sea water not to mention cancer fighting drugs and propellents for space near free of charge.
Solar and Wind are Base Load centric to 80% Gas (Methane) power chains that pretty much negate the clean energy hopes with Fugitive methane leaks at all points.
Baseload energy is an outdated 20th century concept. Distributed decentralized grids are our future(and the present in many places.)
Nuclear is dying D D D D D DEAL with it
Nuclear gets a bad rap. Even Hiroshima, a city that was nuked, now has a population greater than before it was nuked. It took only ten years for it's population to recover from the bombing.
Wrong
Yes every city should be nuked now and again
There's some forms of fission reactors which work well.
Travelling wave reactors eliminate the need for U 235, instead relying on U-238 ( much more abundant). Or Using Molten Salt reactors which have a much lower risk of meltdown
LPPFusion's Focus Fusion Device (FF-1) is pretty amazing as it doesn't boil water to make steam to drive a turbine to make electricity. It will do it directly using a Dense Plasma Focus using Beryllium electrodes for the final test article and hope to output 5MW from a garage sized device. It will be produce no radioactive waste (Aneutronic) as it uses Hydrogen and Boron fuel and could become the cheapest way to generate electricity!
AAAHH!! ALL THE STAR WARS REFERENCES!!! oh yeah. liquid thorium reactors
There are economic issues not even tangentially broached here. Commitments to nuclear energy almost instantly create largely monopolistic entities that are "Too Big to Fail," which as we have seen can have very negative consequences. And while you did briefly touch on the problem of decommissioning plants, it was largely glossed over--which is generally what the electric companies like to do, until it's time for someone to pay the bill, at which time they like to slough it off onto the taxpayer. You also depicted the underground storage of spent waste as if it were a common and simple practice, when there are still enormous amounts of waste being "temporarily" stored in various sites because no one can come to an agreement on where to permanently dispose of it or even how to get it there if a site is agreed upon.
+juststeveschannel Nuclear power plants are actually paying for the decommissioning. Lot's of other industries are not. They don't have to be large. They are large now, because the insane amount of regulations drive the cost of single units way up. They have to be huge to offset the cost. Small, mass manufactured reactors are better in almost every way, but to make them practical, regulations have to be revised big time. There are several small startups trying to make this happen, but there are very powerful people who don't want nuclear power to succeed, because they make trillions of dollars on fossil fuels. Eventually these small companies give up and move to China (even Bill Gates's company had to).
Waste management is again a political problem. There are several solutions already developed, and abandoned for political reasons. Reprocessing, long term storage (Yucca Mountain), burning in fast breeders (Integral Fast Reactor project). And it is mostly an American issue, most other countries are already have working solutions. For example France and Russia are reprocessing their waste.
+juststeveschannel On the flip side, in the US, we have a decommissioning fund that utilities pay up front. Other industries, like renewables or gas and coal have no such progressive mandates in effect. And while massive regulatory hurdles make it so that large companies do tend to control current industry, new start-up are hoping to shakeup the regulatory model and allow for and introduce greater idea flow and competition into the reactor design world. It is an exciting time!
There's a slight difference in how decommissioning funds tends to work in theory and in reality: www.kpbs.org/news/2015/aug/03/counting-customer-costs-san-onofre-closure-95-bill/
juststeveschannel That is more a utility structure problem than the decommissioning problem. But point taken, but even so, at least nuclear is paying some of its external costs in advance. If other industries internalized costs the the level nuclear does, they couldn't complete cost wise. This is why a lack of a carbon tax is largely regarded as the biggest market failure of all time.
juststeveschannel
The plant was killed by an environmentalist group by abusing the regulations. Which is interesting, because nuclear energy has almost no negative impact on the environment. They are probably funded by the fossil fuel industry, who are replacing the lost generating capacity. And of course polluting a lot in the process. And the longer the plant operates, the more money it pays into its decommissioning fund. So people are forced to pay for an unnecessary decommissioning, and also get poisoned in the process.
I'd just add that E=mc2 applies to chemical bonds just as much as it applies to the nuclear bonds. When U-236 splits into Kr-92 + Ba-141 + 3 free neutrons, no protons or neutrons "disappear". It's just that the sum of the binding energies is less. This is the same for chemical reactions.
Not!
We are using lots of energy to build a powerplant, digging fuel up and get rid of the used fuel. Then we have to get rid of the old powerplant and last monitor the waist so nothing bad happen to that. The waist has to be encapsuled in something there also has to be mined. Not shure at the end we end with green numbers. If a neuclear powerplant should make it own energi to do that, will it be possible.?
+Mads Thorup There is study on this, I would look here: www.nrel.gov/analysis/sustain_lca_results.html
If you look at everything, including disposal and mining, nuclear ends up about the same as renewables.
Yes the Star Wars references are getting annoying.
I dunno! I shall consult this video
I grew up next to two Gen 1 rector's, oyster Creek and Indian Point. Oyster Creek had no accidents since it's opening in 1969, and Indian Point had a water leak in 2011 after a freak earthquake, in which they accidentally built a reactor onto a fault line. I love nuclear energy, not to mention a town over where I grew up was a nuclear water dumping site, no deaths, or cancer spikes.
Hey, have a look at the Molten Salt Reactors and make some comments about them y the next week video. That's an awesome kind of nuclear technology and probably the next step in the right direction.
A+ to you guys, nice channel you have. Many thanks, keep the good work and thanks to Veritasium too.
Have you heard the tragedy of dark Plaguise the Wise. Its a story jedi wouldnt tell you.
Fusion has been "25 years away" for a long time
+The Good Stuff I like how Cernobyl and Fukushima was mentioned but not 3 Mile Island. Murica always get left out when mentioning something bad.
I think I have that same telescope in the background of the shot with Derek Muller on the laptop. Is it an Orion Starblast?
you know, it COULD be our savior if we let it.
3.6 roentgen. Not great not terrible.
Hooterr it’s the equivalent of one chest x Ray
Finally, nuclear is not too expensive. Yes, it has a high up-front cost, but if it isn't shut down by fear, the plant lasts 60+ years. One of my favorite examples is Palo Verde in AZ. Look it up on Wikipedia. It costs about a penny per kWh to make power with this plant today, and it cost a few billion of 1980 dollars to build the 3 reactors and entire plant. It is still generating, and even more interesting - it uses EFFLUENT water for cooling - no wasting of ground water. It basically is using waste (grey) water.
I wish to see your next episode on Thorium based nuclear energy, Molten salt reactors and / or ADS reactors
You didn't even mention 3 mile Island?
+Let's Go Road Trippin TMI sucked, but it pails in comparison to Chernobyl and Fukushima, both in scope of impacts and loss of life. If you only have 13 min to talk about something, you have to bring up those 2, TMI, well, you can cut for time and still talk about nuclear risks well enough.
BeCurieus I understand. I was just thinking that it could have been mentioned, even in passing.
***** Perhaps so, perhaps would have helped people to do so as well.
*STOP WITH THE STAR WARS REFERENCES, YOU MUST*
You forgot to mention 3 mile island, which didn't actually blow... but came dangerously close right here in the USA.
What about Thorium reactors? They work on a different principle and are safe to use? why no mention?
we need molten salt reactors, they are just as energy effecient as wind power
Except far more reliable and dense
Citation needed
They need to look into (L)iquid (F)uelled (T)horium (R)eactors. The problem isn't with the radiation leaking from a plant, current plants are unstable and there are a whole lot of safety mechanisms that need to work to keep them safe, LFTR's on the other hand can't get out of control, they effectively shut down when the systems fail. Also LFTR's are 98% efficient compared to less than 1% efficient current LWR (light water reactors). Finally, the waste products from LWR's (that 99% left over) is dangerously radioactive for 1 million lifetimes where as the 2% left over from LFTR's is only dangerously radioactive for some 5000 years
sinnochi tan
Exactly, I only wish more regulators and nuclear industry leaders get it.
F stands for fluoride which is the salt that cools the reactor
Niklas Jarl
The L stands for liquid which is a very important part of the equation. That ensures the high efficiency
etmax1 exactly Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactor. It's a MSR type reactor with Flouride Salt and Thorium fuel.
+etmax1 Minus the Thorium bit ( which isn't all that important when push comes to shove ) Terrestrial Energy is looking into doing just this. They got a few million from the Canadian government to make a non-reactor prototype to test the salt loops and heat transfer and such.
Why can't we store the waste in the same mines we get the material from in the first place? Would it be too concentrated or something?
People get so freaked out about radiation protestors and lobbyists managed to stop waste from being transported off site for storage or reprocessing. The spent fuel was often kept in the power plant that used it. In the future they will burn up the waste in other reactor designs.
Any thoughts on thorium reactors and why is not promoted?
The Force is strong with nuclear fusion
Safety isn't really the issue I have with current nuclear power plants, what deters me is the fact that nuclear power isn't renewable, we have no idea what to do with the toxic waste, and most importantly a huge amount of hidden costs that only make such plants financeable with lots and lots of government funding.
It's far better than any fossil power but there are loads of alternatives that are also more profitable in the long run.
+Shriranga Wirth But most, or pretty much all renewable energies we have right all are geo/climate locked, meaning only countries with a specific climate or geo feature can use them. And some renewable energies come with MASSIVE disadvantages as well. Like dam building and maintenance (and the earthquakes dam induces), pouring water underground for geo-thermal, manufacturing solar panels is extremely polluting, etc. And renewable energies are usually much less reliable as well.
+Shriranga Wirth Well, cost-wise, Nuclear energy would be a better investment than most renewable sources. Secondly, there are plans to use a different material that would last us 60,000 years, instead of Uranium, which has a lifetime left of around ~250 years. Still, it's a much better option than pretty much everything else, when considering costs, versatility and emissions. As for toxic waste, we haven't actually got THAT much on Earth, and it's SOOO much better than the megatons of greenhouse gases.
Its not renewable, but its enough to give us time to figure out how to make fusion power plants. Especially if we switch from uranium to Thorium. But that's not about to happen, for BS political reasons. And we're never going to run out of hydrogen.
+Shriranga Wirth Nuclear power doesn't have hidden cost. At least in the US plants are required to pay for decommissioning, waste management (Nuclear Waste Policy Act), and have a special insurance (Price-Anderson Act). Subsidies are exists, they don't get more than their competitors.
Fossil fuel plants get way more subsidies in the form of relaxed regulations, which leads to massive pollution, and that is a huge hidden cost. Also war for oil is not just very expensive, but breeds terrorism.
Renewable energy gets so much subsidy, that it can bankrupt countries. Germany alone pays 26 billion dollars per year on renewable energy subsidies, which is enough for building at least 5GW of nuclear power. And that's just the direct cost. They are seriously distorting the energy market, and destabilize the entire European grid.
+András Bíró Well, I don't have any papers at hand, however a friend of mine, who works at the UN in Vienna and is currently working on his master thesis that has to do with alternative energy sources, said that in fact nuclear power plants receive far more subsidies, direct or indirect, than any renewable energy source. They need the money because with our energy prices so low the huge costs of constructing and maintaining a power plant vastly exceed any future revenue. Renewable power plants are usually more local and smaller in scale, so very often the running costs aren't that high.
Of course all this is easy for me to say, living in Austria with loads of rivers and forests, as gradually more and more provinces here become completely self sustaining, and all that with only renewables.
New technology is showing great promise in nuclear power. Thorium and liquid salts are options.
Thank you!
Waiting for episode about earthship :)
50 or so years of nuclear power , 10000 years of contaminating waste
+sleepup7931 I understand where you're coming from, but let me put it to you this way: do you know how long lived the other wastes you produce are? I suspect that much of your waste simply doesn't decay at all. It too will be around 10k years from now. Maybe a million years from now as well. What's your game plan?
"do you know how long lived the other wastes you produce are?" what?!......... a lot more money and research needs to be put into solar/wind than the nickles and dimes that they are doing
+sleepup7931 Agreed.
Solar is super inefficient and only works half the time.
"super inefficient" is a very strong word for using it without any context.
If you're talking about cost efficiency, you're wrong. The cost of solar has declined rapidly and will continue to do so. Conservative estimates put the cost of unsubsidized solar power in Germany at 0.02-0.03€/kWh by 2040, even now, solar power is already cheaper than coal in 68 countries, sometimes beating coal by as much as half and is expected to be cheaper in 80% of the world within the next couple of years. All of this is comparing unsubsidised solar to subsidised fossil and nuclear. That's right, fossil and nuclear are subsidized all around the world by externalizing the majority of their cost. Some of the cost is already paid by the public through environmental damage and the cost this creates, but most of it will be paid by future generations. Estimates to include external costs in the total price put coal at 0.17€/kWh and nuclear at 0.18€ to 67€ per kWh, due to the high unpredictability of the latter.
And if energy conversion ratio is what you're talking about, consider that all our energy except nuclear comes from the sun. Coal, oil, natural gas - all of that sunlight captured by plants and stored in the earth. Burning it it make electricity yields conversion efficiencies of far less than 1% - compared to >15% for photovoltaics.
That it only works half the time is true, but that's why we need to combine it with wind power (also cheaper than coal) and hydroelectric (far cheaper than coal) as well as geothermal. Also our consumption is highest throughout the day. In fact, the portion of electricity we consume beyond the base load is almost perfectly matched by the electricity generation profile of solar, avoiding the need of expensive peak load power plants (nuclear power plants have severe difficulty adjusting to load, coal power stations can adjust slowly at a cost, so gas fired power plants are used to meet peak demand), making the electricity generated by solar more valuable than other electricity *because* of the time it is generated yet. Nobody claimed we should *only* use solar. But anybody, after knowing all the facts, would agree that including *some* solar into our energy generation infrastructure is a wise choice, even if you think global warming is a hoax and nuclear is perfectly safe.
Last but not least consider that fossil fuels and also uranium won't last forever. Surely, we still have gigantic reserves left, but since we started tapping those that were easiest to tap, then moved on to the less cooperative ones, the cost of these fuels has increased and will continue to do so. Renewable energy, on the other hand, isn't dependent on any resources that will run out soon - as we increase production, we learn and the cost goes down. We have passed the point where renewable energy is cheaper than fossil fuels quite some time ago and the gap will continue to increase. *Replacing* working fossil fuel power plants by renewable power plants *does* result in economic losses at this point, but if you want to add new generating capacity to the grid, renewables are in fact cheaper - this is why developing countries with increasing demand are adding renewable generating capacity faster than most developed countries with flat demand. Fossil fuel power plants are still being built, but only because the fossil fuel industry is powerful and is lobbying governments to keep the status quo. But a free market will go for renewable energy at this point.
Workoft Normally I take the time to completely read responses but this was way too long. As for inefficiency I was talking about energy efficiency as cost efficiency is something I don't know a lot aboht. On the point of coal and such I also agree that we need to go green not only for environmental effects but the fact that pretty much all green energy is renewable and "free" in a sense. The point I was trying out making is that solar just isn't enough, it takes up a lot of space for how little energy it produces. I'm in the nuclear energy wagon as it provides the greatest energy yeild when done properly and is 1000000% safe when also done properly. The waste produced by it is next to nothing.
I wish you were right about nuclear. Unfortunately, this isn't true. "Small" accidents happen all the time. As radioactivity is invisible, odourless and its effects in these doses are slow, these incidents wouldn't usually be reported in the mainstream media. And nuclear waste may not be much, but so far, we have no idea what to do with it and just push this problem to future generations. Last but not least, Uranium will run out as well, so why would we even argue about this? Don't try to make a point for thorium until we have working thorium reactors.
Despite what corporations are trying to tell you, nuclear isn't safe or cheap, most of it's cost is paid by the public, particularly by future generations.
About land use. Let's take Germany as an example. Germany is a rather densely populated country with high energy consumption and typically cloudy weather. Estimates put the total required installed PV capacity for Germany to become completely renewable powered (factoring in wind and other renewables as well as increased electricity consumption due to industries and transport switching to electric) at 300 GW, which would occupy about 3000 square kilometres, or less than 1% of the total area of the country. 50% of the country are used by agriculture (which, btw., can be combined with PV) and 7% to roads and settlements. About 18% of agricultural lands are already used to grow Biofuels. It is estimated that rooftops alone provide space for a total of 160 GW and then you can cover parking lots and other areas in PV as well.
If a country has some desert, there's more than enough land that isn't used in any other way and may just as well be covered in solar panels.
No, area is not an issue. Cost isn't an issue either. The environmental impact of solar is primarily due to the energy used in the process, which is mostly produced by fossil fuels.
Yes, solar alone is not enough. Wind, water, geothermal and storage are necessary as well.
Workoft I don't know how you know of these small incidents if they aren't reported but even if they do happen they are worth it in my opinion. As for the problems for future generations, the radioactive material left behind has a very slow rolling decay. The radioactivity is so minute that you can stand next to those barrels for an hour and barely get any dosage. I forget if this was already said but France uses like 80% nuclear energy and they have absolutely no problems with it. I'm not saying we shouldn't use solar and all those other sources, but they *PALE* in comparison to the energy we can get from nuclear. And in the inevitable switch from fossil to green if we don't figure this shit out there will be a very big hole left behind.
I said they're not reported on the mainstream media, but they are reported. You don't even need to dig very deep.
It's funny you're mentioning France, since the last nuclear power accident in France was just a couple of days ago in Flamanville. Earlier this year there were reports of power shortages in France, due to too many reactors being down for maintenance and increased electricity consumption for heating. For weeks, France was importing electricity from Germany. Quote from Wikipedia: "However France needs to import electricity during very cold or hot periods when demand routinely exceeds supply due to the lack of more flexible generating plants." So much for "absolutely no problems".
Small accidents like the one mentioned happen all the time, usually no radioactive material leaks, sometimes small amounts leak and every couple of decade there is a major disaster. For an incomplete list of nuclear power accidents check Wikipedia List_of_nuclear_power_accidents_by_country. I can think of two very recent accidents that aren't on the list and I'm not an expert on nuclear power accidents, I just read the news regularly.
What do you mean by PALE in comparison? Without facts, that is just an empty claim. I have explained to you why nuclear is neither cheap nor safe nor reliable, explain to me *why* I am wrong, don't just claim that I'm wrong.
Good video. Keep it up!
This video seems to be ignoring that the disasters were basically design failures rather than an indication how nuclear power is when implemented. Poor containment in both Chernobyl and in Fukushima is the main reason for radioactivity release. Implemented correctly and safely, you get a record like that of the US and Canada - no releases, no major emergencies in the last ~35+ years. TMI in the US had a small radioactive steam release, no other material. If you count TMI, the number of years passes 50. Look at the US and Canadian containment buildings and compare to the reactors that exploded.
You left out the effects of mining Uranium. The impacts from Uranium mining are extremely serious, just google Navajo Uranium.
+Charles Talhelm They also left out the effects of mining our paranoia and fear and scientific illiteracy for political capital, leading Germany for example to rely on fossil fuels instead of nuclear, instead of replacing fossil fuels with renewables first. This exacerbates global climate damage.
I see what you did there, using a pun to insert something fairly irrelevant to my own comment. You're right though, there really are some disengenuous demogogues of nuclear power, but the energy companies and mining companies sure know how to use P.R. firms and political money!
+Charles Talhelm Most mining these days is in situ leach mining. The sins of past generations are horrible, though. I am glad people pay attention to nuclear's draw backs, but wish they did the same to other energy sources, you should see some of the lakes of toxic naasties that exist for rare earth extraction for renewables in China, it is a disaster! Hopefully one day soon we can have a more reasonable talk about nuclear energy.
+Charles Talhelm We need a million times less uranium than coal, so the damage it causes should be about a million times smaller. Also since the cost of uranium is very small part of the operational cost of nuclear plants, we can easily afford to use more expensive, but more environmentally friendly mining techniques. For example it's possible to extract uranium from seawater. Also we can use thorium which is a by-product of rare earth metal mining. Or we could use our huge stockpile of U238 in fast breeders. That alone could power the whole world for several decades at least.
+András Bíró ''We need a million times less uranium than coal, so the damage it causes should be about a million times smaller.'' That make no sence.
'' Also since the cost of uranium is very small part of the operational cost of nuclear plants, we can easily afford to use more expensive, but more environmentally friendly mining techniques.'' That's a pretty good point.
'' For example it's possible to extract uranium from seawater.'' Thats.... what?
''Also we can use thorium which is a by-product of rare earth metal mining. Or we could use our huge stockpile of U238 in fast breeders.'' That's a pretty good point.
''That alone could power the whole world for several decades at least'' much more than that even, centuries is more like it.
So basically, with nuclear fusion, we're trying to create small suns to have energy? To keep up with the nerdy references, isn't it what Dr Octopus tried to do in Spider Man 2 and it went horribly wrong?! That sounds risky to me.
+Nicolas H. it might be worth it though
It's not really a small sun, but it's the same process that the gravity of the sun causes. we do it with lasers and magnets instead of gravity, but its actually not dangerous at all. meltdowns don't exist with fusion, as when the lasers/ magnets fail, the fusion stops
When a Fusion reactor goes wrong ( they did it intencionaly) the fusion cooled, nothing special happened.
+Nicolas H. Well, with great power comes great responsibility. Seriously though, it does seem to be way safer than fission. Unless your intent is to make a bomb.
+The Good Stuff good to know! But I'm still concerned about all this nuclear waste. That doesn't sound like a terrific idea to bury stuff that can stay radioactive for thousands of years deep in the ground, no matter how far away from people.
Love the Stars Wars quotes.
And let's not forget both Chernobyl and Fukashima were both 1st Generation Nuclear Power Stations. Today's 4th Generation Nuclear Power Station are extremely safe and have far more safety redundancies inbuilt.
Solar is expensive and what do you do with all the panels after 30yrs of use? It also costs more to build the panels in terms of resources and CO2 generation when making the panels.
Not good, not terrible.