It is not a question of competence but of perfection (avoiding any way for a cascade of incident to become a major accident), which "isn't of this world".
@@DCMAKER133 The gas industry might have nefarious and specific motives but those entertainers, activists, and politicians who decried nuclear energy are/were most definitely incompetent forcing their incompetence onto the world ultimately setting humanity and nuclear technology back decades.
@@DCMAKER133 The gas industry might have specific and nefarious goals but the entertainers, activists, and politicians forced their incompetence on the rest of us and have set humanity back decades. Edit: Typos
Ah, the hallowed champions of renewable energy, those stalwart defenders of the green frontier, tirelessly tilting at windmills, both literal and figurative in their quest to "save" the planet. They gather en masse, a devout congregation worshiping at the gleaming altars of wind turbines and solar panels, singing hymns of praise for the intermittent blessings bestowed by sun and air. Why, indeed, would they ever consider bowing to the unyielding might of the atom, that ancient power harnessed through the alchemy of nuclear fission, capable of providing a ceaseless torrent of clean, reliable energy? The faith of these eco-cultists is unshakeable, their beliefs rooted in a scripture that preaches salvation through renewables alone, casting nuclear energy into the abyss as an unholy relic of a bygone era. They conjure visions of a world powered by the gentle caress of the breeze and the benevolent gaze of the sun, conveniently glossing over the inconvenient truth that these celestial benefactors are as capricious as they are generous. Why bother with the atom's consistent pulse, a heartbeat of power that thunders unseen beneath the earth, when one can chase the ever-elusive kiss of sunlight, or the mercurial embrace of the wind? These are the divine tests of their faith, challenges to be overcome through sheer belief and the sacred marches of advocacy against the heretical atom. They erect their temples, the vast solar farms that sprawl with geometric precision across the land, the towering wind turbines that stand like modern-day totems to human ingenuity, monuments to their dedication and defiance of the practical. The land groans under the weight of their devotion, ecosystems bending and sometimes breaking, to accommodate their pursuit of purity, but these are merely the sacrifices required on the path to enlightenment. Never mind the shadows that stretch long into the evening, when solar panels sleep and wind turbines stand still, as if in silent vigil awaiting the return of their fickle gods. The darkness, they claim, can always be banished by the stored blessings of the day, though the alchemy of battery storage remains a riddle wrapped in a mystery, shrouded in the high priests' robes of future innovation. This is the creed of the modern environmental crusader, a narrative woven from ideals as volatile as the elements they worship. Nuclear energy, with its promise of abundant power, cleaved from the heart of the atom, remains an anathema, a path they refuse to tread, for it does not fit the prophecy foretold by their renewable revelations. Thus, they march onward, a procession of the faithful, their eyes fixed on the horizon, where the sun's golden halo promises a dawn forever just out of reach, their dreams powered by nothing more than the whisper of the wind and the hope that tomorrow, perhaps, it will blow in their favor.
Having worked with nuclear plants for years, another big issue that drives up overall costs is that any new regulations are retroactive. In one plant I worked a new regulation was issued that increased the size of the underground concrete retaining structure. This was 6 months before the plant was completed. Implementing the changes that the new retroactive regulations necessitated took an additional 3 years...and then the protesters started whining out that the nuclear plant took much longer than originally planned to finish construction.
@@senefelderWhen does it end? You can’t just add regulation and regulation forever and ever. Just because something is “more safer” doesn’t mean it’s worth it. Delaying a plant by 3 years, letting interest on those loans tick up, for a vanishingly small increase in safety is disastrous. That’s also 3 years of burning coal, 3 years of greenhouse gas emissions. Thousands of tons of concrete itself which releases greenhouse gasses as it cures.
@@FailuresWithJade regulations are in many situations are retroactive. For example in aviation or the pharmaceutical industry. That seems like a good idea to me.
@@senefeldersort of. If an incident happens and new understanding of the subject reveals that existing airplanes are a lot more dangerous, than previously thpught, then yes, retroactive regulation is issued and existing airplanes have to be updated. But even in aviation, practical considerations are given. If an airplane cannot be easily updated, a compromise is made, airlines are allowed to fly the non updated models for months or years, usually with some extra safety procedures to help mitigate that particular failure mode. New models in production need to be updated immediately ofcourse. However. If today nobody finds an existing flaw with current airplanes, instead someone merely discovers that some different type of fuel is slightly safer for an airplane, that doesn't mean that we'll ground every airplane on earth tomorrow until we rebuild all the engines to work with the new type of fuel. That would be insanity. There's a big difference between improving safety and using safety regulations to sabotage an industry.
Three mile island is called a partial meltdown because the heat and pressure rose really high, and it vented steam. Once they realized they had a problem, they tried to cool it down, screwed that up, but eventually cooled it all the way down and decommissioned the reactor. That is not a meltdown. A melt down is when the core of the reactor melts, and its so hot that it melts the reactor walls, and the uranium and subsequent reactant materials fall on the concrete below it. That is a meltdown, and its called an elephant foot. Three mile island vented some gas, the alarms went off, and then they shut down the reactor. There was no melting of the container. So it didn't melt, and it didn't go down, so it wasnt a meltdown.
And even if it had, had certainly not melted its way to China. Oh, hyperbole. Elephant's Foot was the specific form the Chernobyl melt took. Corium is the general term.
The reactor did partially melt. A meltdown does not mean that the reactor vessel is breached or that corium even ends up in the bottom of the vessel. A meltdown just means that part of the reactor assembly melts.
The definition of a melt down isn't the pressure vessel melting through - it's fuel assemblies melting either partially or fully. TMI was a meltdown, make no mistake. Even if it had breached the pressure vessel, the core material still would have been inside the containment building and there would have been next to no radiological release. It would have made clean up/decommissioning an absolute nightmare however if it had.
@@wheel-man5319 Nuclear power ,that almost free cheap clean energy with zero drawbacks. Must be the one fairy tale that the Grimm brothers didn't write about.
people forget that batteries are very toxic to the soil, France is a successful example of using nuclear energy without incident and with a healthy population
@@natmakaAnd more and more renewables and energy storage, makes you think if there are really silver bullet solutions for your and the worlds energy need. Does it?
@@deathgun3110 This is not about any silver bullet but about the best way. There is no 'Nirvana fallacy' here, just hard facts. We don't know anymore how to build a nuclear reactor quickly and at a realistic cost, while renewables are more and more quickly deployed and cheap. Both Western champions (Westinghouse and Areva) filled are bankrupt. Even China, sometimes touted as a nuclear champion, is in fact lagging. Nuclear produces about 5% of their electricity (renewables produces 5 times more) and their nuclear plan is way behind schedule, while renewables are booming (read Wikipedia's "Renewable energy in China" intro, difficult to believe but firmly sourced). Even if we could adequately build reactors there would be no point as (quoting Wikipedia's "Uranium mining" article about identified uranium reserves recoverable at current cost): "At the rate of consumption in 2017, these reserves are sufficient for slightly over 130 years of supply". Don't hope that new huge claims will appear, as a price bubble around 2007 already triggered massive prospection... with meek results (+15%). Optimistic investors may be willing to bet on uranium being available for the upcoming 4 centuries, by accepting to pay a high price. It means that they will be able to deploy about 4 times as much nuclear power as we currently have. Electricity now provides 22% of final energy consumption , and nuclear produces 10% of it (see Wikipedia's "World energy supply and consumption" article). Therefore nuclear produces about 2.2% of consumed energy. 4 times 2.2 isn't even 9%. Therefor nuclear just cannot be, alone, a solution. All experts (IEA, IPCC, McKinsey, Bloomberg...) see nuclear producing, by 2050 and after its potential renaissance, at most about 8% of electricity. A net effect is that renewables will produce most of our electricity (every expert says so), and for reasons exposed in another comment here the economic side of all this means that nuclear will disappear (short version: its load factor will be lower and lower, making it more and more expensive). As for batteries an article titled "The price of batteries has declined by 97% in the last three decades" published on Ourworldindata says it all.
I am supplied with power from Vogtle units 1,2,3,4 wit 3 and 4 being the only new nuclear plants built in the last 25 years. Because of Vogtle, my electric bill is now 25% higher and that is just the beginning as it is eventually expected to approach 50%
@@abboudashkar3804 You are 100% correct. Biden fought against republicans and got $30 billion to help keep old nuclear power plants running and his DOE has given out $4 billion to develop new nuclear. Trump oversaw the cancelation of the VC Summer nuclear project and killed Yucca mountain
That was the plan, all along. Keep voting the way you do, and in a few more years, you'll still be complaining about how your utility bill went up 100% since 2024.
Our local reactor just got a clean bill of health until 2045. It was then shut down, and the surrounding farms bought (I hope not just taken) for a large solar field.
@@alexmol6268It's a fake low cost, because of grants and other 'green' incentives that artificially reduce the cost at the point of consumption, but really the real, achingly high costs are hidden and shuffled around.
@@AndrooUK It is a very real low cost. Solar and wind are exceptionally cheaper than coal, gas or nuclear. Gas and Coal are subsidised considerably more around the world. Nuclear is great. Don't get me wrong. I'd prefer to have a number of reactors powering my country, but to build new ones now. It isn't cheap.
I've worked in many nuclear plants across the U.S. I worked at Indian Point during one of their last refueling outages. That was one of the cleanest and most well managed plants I've been to. And they shut it down over politics.
yes remember cuomo killed 10k seniors by forcing nursing homes to take covid patients because he didn't want to run out of room at the hospitals for " regular" new yorkers . he's as slimy as they get.
You may have worked there but you apparently don't read the news. The Indian Point nuclear plant, located in the most densely populated part of our country, presented a unique set of risks. For decades, the plant had one alarming incident after another, including missing and damaged bolts on the structures in both reactors that surround and are critical to cooling the nuclear fuel, a May 2015 transformer fire which sent thousands of gallons of oil into the Hudson River, radioactive spills and releases into the Hudson River and groundwater, failed accident drills, and inadequate disaster planning. The power plant’s two operating units lie within a mile of a significant seismic zone discovered after the plant was built in the 1960s, prompting the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to deem Indian Point one of the top ten facilities most in need of reevaluation for earthquake vulnerability. One of the 9/11 terrorists cited the plant as a potential target. Indian Point’s proximity to New York City and the rest of the densely populated tri-state area made the potential impacts of an accident severe.
@@clarkkent9080 Yeah, I wouldn't use a copy and pasted article from the NRDC as evidence of anything, considering they have massive financial interests in closing nuclear power plants.
@@Voxphyle Please point out any of those claims that are not true. Indian point is owned by Holtec International and they and they alone made the decision to shut it down. Your conspiracy theories are tin foil hat BS
You cant plop nuclear reactors on site of old coal plants without changes to regulations. Old coal plants are so radioactive that the systems used to monitor nuclear plants for radiation leaks would be giving false alarms all the time.
LOL... 100% FACTS!!! But seriously, tell that to the feds... ;-) I read their report, it's entirely feasible however you might want to wear a lead vest and full Ebola suits around the coal dust like you said since it's the most deadly carcinogen in our modern society besides maybe inhaled/burned tobacco and asbestos... Thank you PM 2.5 And of course the most radioactive substance that's been widely dispersed into the atmosphere for centuries... Even when compared to what was released via nuclear bomb testing in the past... Which is... ahem... disturbing... to say the least... However if they can clean up those lands with Superfund money but billed to corporations FIRST that would be great before they build some clean SMR's or even Gen III/IV reactors on the sites...
Nuclear and coal steam system operate at completely different temperatures, pressures and flow rates. The only usable thing at a coal plant that could be used for a nuclear unit is the switchyard
Coal plants are NOT any more radioactive that a lump of coal. However, coal ash ponds do concentrate the natural radioactive isotopes and would admit detectable radiation. Nuclear plants monitor their AIR stack and water emissions ONLY so a radioactive coal ask pile a thousand yards away would not cause a problem
@@clarkkent9080 The intermediate and low pressure turbines would be a match. And gas, liquid metal, and molten salt cooled reactos produce steam parameters the same as state of the art coal burning power stations.
"....In other news, dozens of Icebreakers, Aircraft Carriers and Submarines are powered with Nuclear Reactors every day...quietly getting on with the job, in close proximity to people..."
@@clarkkent9080I don’t see how that relates. The point he’s trying to make is that there hasn’t been an incident with nuclear power on ships and submarines.
@@pyre46168X It all depends on your definition of incidents. There have been many incidents on Soviet submarines that we know about and I am sure many that we don't know about. The loss of the U.S. Scorpion and Thresher submarines was directly due to the failure of the reactor that prevented them from powering to the surface. My point is that navy reactors are nothing like commercial reactors, are very inefficient, utilize 95% enriched uranium as opposed to 3-4% enriched in commercial units and do NOT have the redundant safety systems and containment of commercial.
@clarkkent9080 Wrong. The Thresher was lost due to water in pneumatic lines that froze, preventing it from emptying its ballasts properly. To say it was due to the reactor is like saying your flat tire was due to you not changing your oil. The Scorpion is thought to have suffered from a torpedo explosion. Neither of the reactor vessels were ever breached. There is no issue with their efficiency, they are designed differently because they are are for shipboard military used. The design of naval reactors was directly influenced by Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. When the Fukushima plant had its accident, the USN began updating more policies and looked to send its nuclear trained sailors to assist. Most are not near nuclear weapons. What a silly point to make. It's about as relevant as every murderer who's lived drinking water.
@@metallichurchThe Russians have had many reactor accidents. The reason for the loss of the Scorpion has never been determined. But sans an explosion, if the reactor is operational, you can power your way to the surface. There are two ways to surface a submarine, buoyancy by blowing the ballasts or powering to the surface using propulsion. Your initiating event on the Thresher is correct but the reactor tripped and could not be restarted thereby dooming the boat. I believe they were taking on some water and shorted out electrical systems and the reactor tripped. The event was being monitored by a vessel on the surface. Boats now have battle shorts that bypass all trip interlocks. That is like saying I had a tire blowout and would have been alright but the brakes failed. I doubt that a navy nuke could be of any assistance in either accident or at any commercial reactors as they are completely different. Not to offend by a commercial nuclear plant has more valves and components in the sewage waste system that in the entire nuclear submarine. Control room staff and most plant staff have to understand and operate all plant systems and are not specialized like in the navy. Not sure what your "nuclear weapons" comment means. I never mentioned nuclear weapons. If you had any idea of the design of a commercial nuclear power plant, you would know that navy nuclear plants do not have the same or even equivalent safety systems
President Carter used to serve on a nuclear-powered submarine, so he definitely wasn't ignorant of nuclear power. All he had to do was have the guts to explain clearly to the press that the TMI incident came down to a nothing burger.
He also signed the ban on fuel recycling. He knew better in both instances but chose to be antinuke. The only remaining question is how it personally profitted him.
I'm from PA, and the father of a friend of mine worked for TMI. He said Carter had fun touring the plant, shaking hands and signing autographs. He knew there was no danger. Then he went outside, put on his Grim Face, and told the TV cameras how there'd be a full investigation and more regulations. Because that's what people wanted to hear.
Most of the problems with nuclear power are lawfare. For various political reasons, the Green Blob opposes nuclear power, and cares vanishingly little about real effects. As Paul Ehrlich wrote, having cheap and abundant power would be “like giving an idiot child a machine gun”.
As Paul Ehrlich was a biologist, specifically an immunologist, of course he knew "the science". ;) (He got the Nobel prize 1909, but not for anyting related to energy…) _edit_ OH, there's another Paul Ehrlich. Well, I'll let my erroneous writing stand here.
The beginning of the end was when people started saying soon energy would be too cheap to meter. Since almost all power companies are just that... companies... the public perception that electricity could be nearly free was not tolerable.
This is why I call the Green Movement the Green Death Cult. The only methodology they approve of for reducing environmental impact is the reduction of the human population.
@@leechowning2712 I doubt so, as many successful companies sell on a form of "all you can eat" basis. The "Too cheap to meter" dates back the 1950's (the Wikipedia article is clear). The reason for metering is well-known: waste. Quoting WP: "Prior to 1985, water meters were not required in New York City; water and sewage fees were assessed based on building size and number of water fixtures; water metering was introduced as a conservation measure.". Cuba, among others, also experienced this problem (water supply: no tariff until 1997, but more and more wasting as tap water gained ground against tanker trucks).
The amount of radiation released at Three Mile Island was equivalent to the radiation released by the coal stockpile at a coal fire powerplant in one year. This is because Carbon 14 is a slightly radioactive isotope of Carbon and decays releasing measurable radiation. There are hundreds of Coal plants in the US and thousands if not tens of thousands world wide. And every single one of them releases that same amount of radiation year after year after year.
Even more interesting, the amount of deaths caused by Chernobyl is less than the amount of deaths from air pollution caused by a similar sized coal power plant working normally.
@@zolikoff That was before the use of pollution capture tech developed developed over the past 30+ years. Unless you are in China or similar who don't or can't afford to employ pollution controls hardly at all.
@@zolikoff True. The most cost effective, least polluting, kilowatt for kilowatt is nuclear energy. I doesn't need to take 20 years to build a plant or the multi-billions of dollars it does today. It does take 20 years to settle all the frivolous lawsuits green activists throw up. Half of the cost of a nuclear plant is in litigation by green activists and excessive regulation also put in place by green activism. Which hurts us all.
Instead of downplaying Three Mile Island we should just accept what happened. Everyone always talks about incompetence, but that not what happened in Three Mile Island; and nobody bothers to talk about what happpened after Three Mile Island. Its pretty stange considering the fact that following the Kemeny Report every single university, commerical nuclear reactor, laboratory nuclear reactor and the US Navy completely changed their operator training procedures. I have no idea why this video never talked about this, as the Kemeny Report is regarded as the 1st major use of safety root cause analysis in global history and one of the most significant tools to reduce overall risk of national safety and training of nuclear operations. How are you going to blame a plant operator for managing risk during a SCRAM event like hes on a nuclear submarine, when over 90% of all plant operators pre 1980 were trained exclusively by the US Navy for nuclear ships? Thats not incompetence - thats poor training, and instead of blaming the employee for being an idiot the safety analysis found that the nuclear industry had a much greater problem than just what occured at TMI. If the safety review took the approach that most people believe the operators were incompetent, then its very likely the US would have suffered future major nuclear disasters. This is why the truth of TMI should be talked about.
Look at VC Summer and Vogtle new nuclear projects that had 100% complete support and NO opposition yet were complete failures because of massive cost over runs and the AP1000 was 100% approved for construction and operation so the NRC was not the problem
@@clarkkent9080Vogtle 3 is on load producing 1,100 megawatts of clean, cheap nulcear energy. Their power prices are lower than people in the middle of shale gas boom country.
@@gregorymalchuk272 I live in the Vogtle grid. My electric rate increased 19% for 4 years, specifically for Vogtle, during the construction of Vogtle . They went up 6% when specifically because unit 3 came on line and will go up again now that unit 4 is on line and that is just the beginning. A 31% rate increase for Vogtle and more to follow. BTW, that is 1,100 Mw gross. The plant uses 100 Mw (hotel load) to operate all equipment so it is 1 Gw net. Our power prices are some of the highest in the country.
One of my favorite parts about nuclear is that you can reprocess nuclear waste multiple times, bringing the half life down thousands of years. If you reprocess the fuel multiple times, you can drop the time it’s radioactive to only a few hundred years instead of thousands
This imply an industrial breeder reactor, and there is no such thing. Many, many huge projects by many, many nations tried to obtain it for decades... to no avail. The most advanced one is the Russian BN-800, and it works so well that... there is no plan to pursue (by building another one or its successor the BN-1200) before 2035. Problems related to the fuel succeeded to leak-related challenges. And this not out of interest for breeding, as Russia now pursues another type (architecture) of such a reactor, with a small lab-reactor dubbed BREST-300.
@@ronblack7870 This is a limited reprocessing, leading (once) to uranium and to plutonium (part of it being processed to MOX, up to now thanks to Russia...). This is far from closing the fuel cycle, and France imports approx 5000 to 15000 metric tons of uranium per year (about 45% from Russia and its vassal Kazakhstan), and also digs its "CIGEO" deep geological repository project for huge amounts of spent (not recycled/recyclable!) fuel.
I love how influential people who didn't support nuclear suddenly changed their minds by educating themselves slightly. Of course, the damage was already done. It makes you wonder what else they are wrong about and if they will bother to educate themselves more or bumble on in ignorance.
Most politicians, in many nations, were willing to deploy nuclear reactors. Even in Germany (quoting Wikipedia "Nuclear power in Germany"): "the phase-out plan was initially delayed in late 2010, when during the chancellorship of centre-right Angela Merkel, the coalition conservative-liberal government decreed a 12-year delay of the schedule." A few month later something unpleasant happened in a nuclear plant at Fukushima, and a majority of citizens, not willing to take the risk, coerced her into either losing her political power or quickly phase out nuclear.
Truly none ignored people back in the 1970s would have been protesting against a poor inefficient unsafe fission reactors design’s. So not much has changed. Alvin Weinberg protested in a way and got himself fired.
If your politicians are taking advantage of and spreading miseducation, get new politicians, and a new education system. Someone's going to have to run the show. It's not actually optional. Take your own advice and figure out how yourself. It just looks like you're projecting your own inability to do so on everyone else.
I’ve always found it baffling that the same people that insist on reducing carbon emissions as much as possible are the same people insisting that we not use the most potent energy production method we have.
Because, thanks to renewables, there is no need to tolerate burdens associated to nuclear (fuel dependency, risk, waste, awful decommissioning...). Moreover even simply hoping for some 'cooperation' (nuclear + renewables) would be absurd because the cost of producing 'renewable' electricity is increasingly lower than that of nuclear power (in addition their operation does not consume fuel nor produce waste or induce any major risk). So when they produce they are and will be preferred (check 'merit order'). This will reduce the effective nuclear charge rate and therefore increase its production cost (it is not profitable than with a high charging rate), with a strong feedback (feedback loop). Moreover on a technical level and despite some progress, nuclear power cannot adjust its production with sufficiently little latency or frequently (this is why hydraulics and flame-fired power plants are necessary). This will promote the deployment of a renewable energy system based on a continental mix (wind, solar, etc.), smartgrid, clean backup (green hydrogen), storage, etc. This will reduce the variability of its production (effect of 'intermittency') therefore nuclear power will be less and less useful and more and more expensive... and therefore vanish. ruclips.net/video/udJJ7n_Ryjg/видео.html
@@natmaka google what happens to old wind turbine blades or solar panels. Renewable sources of energy are great if you don’t account for manufacturing, maintenance and decommissioning. And weather. But there’s a hope that at some point in the future we come up with a new technology for energy storage to account for the weather. Currently it doesn’t exist.
It makes so much sense that three accidents and two downsides related to nuclear overshadow the thousands of accidents and dozens of downsides related to coal, gas, and oil
While I agree we should tell OPEC to f off. Remember energy needs are not simply electrical there’s a lot of applications that still require oil and gas. Nuclear power cannot replace these. However a more liberalized energy sector would allow for more energy independence.
Yeah so about that in the US petroleum makes up 34% of energy usage, but only 0.1% of electrical generation. Nuclear really isnt going to replace petrochemicals or transport fuel anytime soon.
The workers probably have work boots and home boots that they switch at a designated point. Since the politicians dont have those they wore booties over their shoes to limit tracking stuff home.
WaaaHHHHH not three reactors ....35 miles from the city😱 oh wait we have that in phoenix. The largest producing facility in the country. Never give it a second thought
Another cool fact about Arizona's Palo Verde plant is that the cooling water is almost entirely recaptured waste water. Since potable water is such a precious resource to Arizona, it's amazing how much full process engineering went into making the full operational environmental impact as minimal as possible. It is also one of the only facilities in the USA that is able to run on MOX fuel, or mixed-oxides, which means the plant is capable of consuming the waste spent fuel from other reactors after some chemical reprocessing.
In sweden there is a village literaly on the gate of the largest nuclear power plant in the country. .it have one of the highest property prices for villages in the middle of nowhere.
Yes the first reactor had ropes holding the control rods out of the reactor and to shutdown the reactor a kid with an ax would cut the ropes. Safety Control Rod Ax Man (SCRAM) a term used to this day
God, what an awful argument. You can't complain about the building speed while also lauding the safety of modern nuclear powerplants. They go hand in hand.
@@zagreus5773 Today, we no longer have enough construction craft with the skill set to build a nuclear power plant. Wal Marts and Amazon warehouses yes but nuclear plants no
A big misconception of nuclear is that a meltdown is a nuclear bomb/explosion. That is as far from the truth as you can get. The fuel is not enriched enough to be able to be used in a nuclear bomb like reaction, as well as the safety features that prevent that from happening. The deadliest nuclear plant accident in history is chenobyl which was due to utter incompetence and disregard for safety, and it still killed less people than coal/gas kill every year.
The concern is a explosion be it a steam explosion or hydrogen explosion spreading highly radioactive material over a large area. TMI had a hydrogen buildup but it did not ignite, Fukushima had a hydrogen buildup and it did ignite and explode
They didn't take into account that a Tsunami that size would hit that location, despite historical evidence of that being the case. It's a big reason why regulators expect to licence holders to conduct extensive external hazard assessments as part of the licencing basis.
@@CaillouThePimp Every nuclear power plant MUST consider every possible natural and man made accident AND protect against every creditable event. This is not an exact science and that was the case of the unexpected size of the Tsunami at Fukushima. It was NOT expected based on historical evidence. But just like Fukushima, it is possible that some other nuclear plant may have underestimated a potential accident.
@@craighandley7535 The design had flaws but the biggest issue is that the workers at the plant operated outside of the plants standard operating procedure.
They have, in fact, gotten it right every single time. Ask yourself this. If you were the CEO of BP and you wanted to create a controlled opposition movement that supposedly works against you but in reality does everything in its power to benefit you, what would you do differently?
@@crazeelazee7524 Oh yea, like how all of the major scientific journals in the 1960s-1970s thought that the world would reach a new ice age by 2000. Or how one of the most influential books of the last century, Population Bomb made the idea that mass starvation would happen due to overpopulation by the 1990s. There’s now a lower percentage of the world population starving than ever before and now the scientists claim the ice age concerns were mislead, actually we are overheating. Shut the fk up.
@@crazeelazee7524Yeah but that’s not what these environmentalists thought, they believed they acted in their best interests, while being so idiotic that they got it completely wrong. So yes, they have never gotten it right
@@haruhisuzumiya6650 It probably happened, but there's no proof that this is really always the reason. The core issue is that environmentalists and green voters convinced themselves that nuclear is the big bad and they did so completely on their own. This is not an issue to blame any boogeyman with, the boogeyman are the people themselves who voted for that
Environmentalists are NOT stopping nuclear power, at least not in the U.S.. UTILITIES decide what type of power plant to build and new nuclear is the most expensive way to produce electrical power.
@@clarkkent9080 Jesus christ dude, I hope someone is paying you to respond to seemingly every nuclear-positive in this comment section. Cause if not, you're a truly sad human being.
@@clarkkent9080They literally are, globally. Here in Germany the green party was literally formed specifically against nuclear power, a party born out of an astroturfing campaign by oil companies and they don’t even realize it themselves
the concerns about nuclear power plants being risky just show how clueless people are about them, they take examples of catastrophes from the past, but nowadays the precautions we take are absolutely insane to the point they're actually one of the safest ways of energy generation
The energy itself is renewable, but the way we collect it isn't exactly a clean business. The thing is: both solar and wind can be manufactured in much cleaner ways, but that would cut into profit margins. Obviously nuclear has a lot of benefits activists hate to admit, they hyperfocus on "what ifs" while ignoring reality.
@@peterpan4038 What is even meant by “renewable?” Relative to conventional alternatives, Solar and wind require more resources, cost more (ie require more human effort), and are extremely unreliable. As such, the forced government subsidies for these inferior technologies waste material and human resources - and negatively impact our environment more significantly than conventional technologies. It isn’t a coincidence that “renewable” doesn’t have a clear meaning - it’s just a government funded marketing sham invented by lobbyists seeking government funding at our expense.
@@gregdaugherty6065 Huh? The term is actually super easy to understand. Renewable energy only means that the energy source itself isn't finite, and we really don't need to worry about sun or windy weather running out of energy any time soon. The same goes for hydropower, our rivers and oceans won't suddenly stop flowing either. Obviously renewable as a term doesn't mean the way we harvest that energy is clean, in fact it can even be really dirty if all the required manufacturing is taken into account. Hence it all boils down to conflicting interests. Some of those are political, others are financial, and some are very much strategic. Political issues are always the most troublesome. That's something pretty much everyone can agree on. Financial ones are obviously about the best possible return of investment. And finally strategical concerns are all about being independent from foreign suppliers of resources and fuel. And vice versa, supplying foreign nations with stuff THEY develope a dependance on is great for us. Environmental concerns have by their very nature no place in all of this, hence if we want to care about environmental issues we have to make a compromise in one or more of the fields pointed out above. Beats me what the best course of action is. The one thing i'm sure about: nuclear energy can tick of all the right boxes above, hence to me nuclear is a no-brainer.
Never ceases to amaze one about how so many fail to understand how nuclear power is supposed to work. Majority of radiological accidents have human factor/error as a big reason as to why they became such an issue. Three Mile was blown out of proportion because of inefficient control room ergonomics and an inbound phone call that ended up connecting to the control room instead of an actual spokesman. Chernobyl was a flawed reactor design that was tasked to perform a limit test using inexperienced night crew, and that was started and carried out between two shifts at that. Fukushima is probably one of the few I can actually criticize for any actual failure, if only because the idea of building a reactor on the coastline of a country infamous for tectonic activity was asking for much. Even then, that accident is more of a domino effect of back luck and circumstances.
Plus the sister plant at Fukushima suffered the same failures, but was saved by the plant operator's using car batteries to restore control power to the reactor control panel.
How us this an argument? Nuclear power plants are operated by humans. So human error is still a failure of the design, as a proper design would eliminate or at least limit the possibility of human error. You're basically saying that nuclear disasters will always happen, because human error and natural disasters cannot be avoided. That is basically the argument of the anti-nuclear lobby.
Fukushima plant building erased a somewhat safe soil it could've stood on. Chernobyl was built poorly, even without reactor melting down, block 3 could've fallen apart by itself because steam separators running was ruining the thing. Thank god the reactor didn't melted down earlier at Leningrad.
What's terrible is I can remember that old Captain Planet Cartoon and him mentioning how safe and reliable a well maintained Nuclear Power Plant can be. Unfortunately Captain Planet was defeated by lobbyists and politics, he's unemployed now living off of birds and whiskey.
Naval Nuclear Machinist's Mate here. Seeing first hand how safe, efficient, and clean nuclear energy can be when treated with the proper respect feels like this super obvious solution to such a gigantic problem. It's incredibly frustrating watching us continue to phase out the absolute cleanest solution we have for the next several decades at least. We've operated twin 550 MW reactors on moving, seagoing vessels with no major accidents in 50 years. I think the realization will come sooner or later, but it's honestly mind-blowing it's taken this long.
Try researching VC Summer unit 2 &3 and Vogtle unit 3 &4 and you have the real answer.....spoiler alert MASSIVE cost and 157 years to build a new nuclear plant. The Navy does not prioritize cost
Imagine how different the last four years would have been if the public at large thought about historical mishaps with vaccines the same way they thought about historical mishaps with nuclear power.
Two boys. upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/Allan_Warner%2C_photograph_of_two_boys_with_smallpox_%28Atlas_of_Clinical_Medicine%2C_Surgery%2C_and_Pathology%2C_1901%29_%28cropped%29.jpg
It is interesting that Miss Thunberg is criticizing Germany for closing down its nuclear reactors, especially as her own home country has shut down 6 of its 12 fully operational reactors.
Imagine how much we couldve slowed down climate change if it wasnt for the overblown public backlash against nuclear Its not too late yet, and people seem to understand now that nuclear risks were overblown
Michael Shellenberger is an excellent example of someone whose anti-nuclear views disappeared once he made an effort to actually understand the technology and its issues - imagine that, someone who fact-checked his own beliefs then discarded them when they lacked merit.
Its geniuenly upsetting how much slander nuclear energy has gotten and the fact so many people are ao against it for such outdated and misinformed opinions.
where do people get the idea that people or politicians decide what power plant to build. Utilities decide NOT politicians. In the U.S. today, Biden has $30 billion to give to investor owned utilities to bribe them to keep them running. $2 billion each was given to NuScale and Terrapower along with other perks to help them build new nuclear plants. VC Summer canceled their project in 2017 after spending billions with no end in sight. Vogtle completed their $35 billion new nuclear project and is now the most expensive (per MW capacity) power plant in the world. It is COST, COST, and COST that is keeping utilities away from new nuclear.
Most of those against nuclear power have no idea on how nuclear energy works or all the detail related to the known meltdowns or partial meltdowns in the world.
@@Scuba_Tim88 The last nuclear power plant Vogtle unit 3&4) to startup (2023 & 2024) cost $35 billion. The 3% loan on the construction cost has a yearly interest of over $1 billion and the labor cost and fuel cost adds ~ $100 million per year. Solar panels get washed once per year and wind turbines are checked once per year and how much do you think that costs?
@@clarkkent9080 you mean the wind turbine that are detrimental to migratory bird populations that are also supplemented with gas and take up huge amounts of land leading to more deforestation? Or what about the solar panels that also take up huge amounts of land leading to deforestation that don’t work when the sun doesn’t shine. Also you have to huge amounts of power output that nuclear puts out that wind and solar can’t even compete on. You’re arguing based solely on cost and not taking into consideration power production and land usage compared to wind and solar. You also have a lot of mining for the minerals necessary to constructing solar panels and forgetting wind turbine sometimes spontaneously combusting
@@Scuba_Tim88 Yes, I do mean those wind turbines spinning at 2-3 rpm just chopping up all those retarded birds. I guess you are against jets that suck up millions of birds every year. There are ~77, 000 wind turbines in the U.S. and a 100k more being built. When was the last time you actually saw anyone of those 77,000 wind turbines? Your excuses are ridiculous. Solar panels produce when the sun is up, the temperatures are high and people are using AC. They are the best load following system out there. Yea nuclear that requires no mining and is built from nothing. The last (2023 & 2024) nuclear plants (Vogtle) cost $35 BILLION. and will never be able to pay for it self. Right now, there are 11 nuclear power plants that the INVESTOR owned utilities want to shutdown. The only thing keeping them running is the massive tax breaks and taxpayer welfare bribes. Biden has $30 billion of taxpayer money to bribe them but almost 1/3 of that has already been committed and the rest won't last long. One simple question: WHY doe the owners of these plants want to shut them down if they are cost effective ? And BTW, in the U.S. there is ONLY ONE nuclear project (Terrapower) that could possibility be producing power by 2035 and there are NO OTHER projects even being considered. So cry all you want and make up stupid excuses but solar and wind turbines are being built all over and nuclear is NOT.
Former nuclear electrician in the Navy here. Now I’m a civilian working on a solar field right next to one of the biggest nuclear plants in the country. It blows my mind how much land the solar consumes to produce a fraction of the plants power.
Artists, (Actors, Musicians, etc) Influencers and activists leading politics is really insane, we need to listen to the experts on each subject, not to the tantrums of ill-informed famous people. Their popularity does not make up for the lack of knowledge on those specific subjects.
This video also failed to mention one of the largest benefits of nuclear power: Safety. Nuclear power is incredibly safe. It's often listed as second to solar, but I find that misleading. Often, that relies on counting things like Fukushima (which is often inflated by the death toll of the evacuations) and Chernobyl (an easily avoidable problem that is impossible in any reactor operating in the U.S., if not globally. I doubt solar includes all the deaths from installations of residential solar panels. The worst nuclear disaster in U.S. history claimed 0 lives. Nuclear power as a whole has caused very few deaths. And this includes many instances of situations that are not exclusive to nuclear power, such as falls, electrocutions, steam explosions, etc.
This is hotly debated. "approximately 50 deaths" is absurd, even ultra-pro nuclear scientists estimates are far beyond this. From which source did you fetch it?
@natmaka You're right in that it is debated, and upon looking again, I am under the impression I read it incorrectly. I'll edit that, and thank you for pointing that out to me. Regardless of that, the broader point is that nuclear has very, very low deaths per unit of electricity produced. The deaths that do occur are most often in scenarios that could be present at any power plant, and occur far less frequently in nuclear power generation.
@@Voxphyle @Voxphyle > nuclear has very, very low deaths per unit of electricity produced This is highly debated. Local experts (check their report, titled "Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment" concluded that the Chernobyl disaster will kill 960000 persons. Even fundamental principles such as an adequate way to deal with low 'doses' (case in point: Linear No-Threshold), real difference between external and internal contamination, complete (at term) effects of bioaccumulation of radioisotopes... are disputed. > The deaths that do occur are most often in scenarios that could be present at any power plant This is debatable, however the effect of a major nuclear accident has nearly no equivalent: pollution of vast geographical areas by a dust which travels with wind and rain, is highly dangerous even at a distance and for an extended period of time, and is extremely difficult to recover (check the Fukushima case, Wikipedia's article "Fukushima disaster cleanup" is full of sourced details: the amount and cost of efforts, by some judged grossly insufficient, are mind-boggling). > occur far less frequently in nuclear power generation. This is (up to now) true but only part of the equation.
@@natmaka Approximately 50 are the directly recorded deaths. You have to add the expectable thyroid cancer deaths downwind, which is also a documented effect attributable to the accident. So you end up with 100-200 deaths total. Whenever you see "thousands of deaths" estimates for Chernobyl, those are fantasy values arrived at by using LNT modeling on very low dose rates applied to continent wide populations. Those deaths do not exist.
Can you give one example where environmentalists had any effect on any U.S. nuclear project in the last 20 years? Just because some random person makes a YT video and says things does not mean it is real.
@@clarkkent9080 Why limit it to 20 years? But certainly! I assume you don't believe YT postings, but I am going to have to at least assume you trust the NRC. If you don't then I'll assume you just don't like facts to challenge your beliefs, which is also fine or fitting. So. Post 1970s era environmentalism and the subsequent public backlash, over 100 nuclear plant applications with the NRC were withdrawn. We can see this as fact, but we can also see this in total generation of power by source. Nuclear plants take a very long time to build and their charters are initially for 40 years. After the last of these that were in before the 80s were built generation was stagnant for nuclear power contribution. Does this mean that all other sources were as well? Of course not. Coal took that place. Coal that for much of that early time was laden with sulfur. Fossil fuel energy and especially coal fills the atmosphere with carcinogens and actual radioactivity. This is real harm, with real consequences. Hundreds of thousands of deaths or shortening of lives are attributed to this, and ALL that would have been less impacted or killed by the margin between where nuclear could be and where coal was instead is a death that can be laid at the feet of environmentalists that passionately fought for "no nukes" while not offering a solution. This is not so different than environmentalism in the deeper past either, in fact it appears to be a hallmark. Consider the malaria deaths suffered by the impoverished in struggling countries. Rachel Carson directly assisted in killing them as well. When you disregard science, ignore statistics, and attempt to discredit truth you're on the path to truly follow in these esteemed footsteps.
Why limit it to 20 years? But certainly! I assume you don't believe YT postings, but I am going to have to at least assume you trust the NRC. If you don't then I'll assume you just don't like facts to challenge your beliefs, which is also fine or fitting. So. Post 1970s era environmentalism and the subsequent public backlash, over 100 nuclear plant applications with the NRC were withdrawn. We can see this as fact, but we can also see this in total generation of power by source. Nuclear plants take a very long time to build and their charters are initially for 40 years. After the last of these that were in before the 80s were built generation was stagnant for nuclear power contribution. Does this mean that all other sources were as well? Of course not. Coal took that place. Coal that for much of that early time was laden with sulfur. Fossil fuel energy and especially coal fills the atmosphere with carcinogens and actual radioactivity. This is real harm, with real consequences. Hundreds of thousands of deaths or shortening of lives are attributed to this, and ALL that would have been less impacted or killed by the margin between where nuclear could be and where coal was instead is a death that can be laid at the feet of environmentalists that passionately fought for "no nukes" while not offering a solution. This is not so different than environmentalism in the deeper past either, in fact it appears to be a hallmark. Consider the malaria deaths suffered by the impoverished in struggling countries. Rachel Carson directly assisted in killing them as well. When you disregard science, ignore statistics, and attempt to discredit truth you're on the path to truly follow in these esteemed footsteps.
@@clarkkent9080 Why limit it to 20 years? But certainly! I assume you don't believe YT postings, but I am going to have to at least assume you trust the NRC. If you don't then I'll assume you just don't like facts to challenge your beliefs, which is also fine or fitting. So. Post 1970s era environmentalism and the subsequent public backlash, over 100 nuclear plant applications with the NRC were withdrawn. We can see this as fact, but we can also see this in total generation of power by source. Nuclear plants take a very long time to build and their charters are initially for 40 years. After the last of these that were in before the 80s were built generation was stagnant for nuclear power contribution. Does this mean that all other sources were as well? Of course not. Coal took that place. Coal that for much of that early time was laden with sulfur. Fossil fuel energy and especially coal fills the atmosphere with carcinogens and actual radioactivity. This is real harm, with real consequences. Hundreds of thousands of deaths or shortening of lives are attributed to this, and ALL that would have been less impacted or killed by the margin between where nuclear could be and where coal was instead is a death that can be laid at the feet of environmentalists that passionately fought for "no nukes" while not offering a solution. This is not so different than environmentalism in the deeper past either, in fact it appears to be a hallmark. Consider the malaria deaths suffered by the impoverished in struggling countries. Rachel Carson directly assisted in killing them as well. When you disregard science, ignore statistics, and attempt to discredit truth you're on the path to truly follow in these esteemed footsteps.
@@clarkkent9080Why limit it to 20 years? But certainly! I assume you don't believe YT postings, but I am going to have to at least assume you trust the NRC. If you don't then I'll assume you just don't like facts to challenge your beliefs, which is also fine or fitting. So. Post 1970s era environmentalism and the subsequent public backlash, over 100 nuclear plant applications with the NRC were withdrawn. We can see this as fact, but we can also see this in total generation of power by source. Nuclear plants take a very long time to build and their charters are initially for 40 years. After the last of these that were in before the 80s were built generation was stagnant for nuclear power contribution. Does this mean that all other sources were as well? Of course not. Coal took that place. Coal that for much of that early time was laden with sulfur. Fossil fuel energy and especially coal fills the atmosphere with carcinogens and actual radioactivity. This is real harm, with real consequences. Hundreds of thousands of deaths or shortening of lives are attributed to this, and ALL that would have been less impacted or killed by the margin between where nuclear could be and where coal was instead is a death that can be laid at the feet of environmentalists that passionately fought for "no nukes" while not offering a solution. So that's a few hundred examples, but I suppose you can include any of the coal pollution deaths related to it as well. Add in the effects on climate and it's been a majority factor in how we got here today.
Hopefully the US can become a nuclear power leader again. Canada and France did so by relying on their own industry to scale up to build nuclear power and it worked (and is working).
Building a solar power plant as a baseload power source costs, 12x more than a nuclear power plant. (calculated using Japan's actual measured nuclear construction costs) Many people forget to factor of battery costs.
How in the world have you built a baseline power plant that is only functional part of the time? That is conter to the whole idea of baseline power, unless you plan to ration it at night to allow batteries to serve? But that is only doable in deserts because weather can cut solar output to tenths.
Solar energy can be a cheap form of power, but it gets exponentially more expensive to manage with greater proportions on the grid, so it is best as a supplemental source to reduce fuel use rather than trying to turn it into base load. But since Intermittent power sources, like solar, can produce very cheap energy, finding non-grid consumers which can utilize and transform the cheap variable energy will be very useful. Pairing it with applications like making green fuels such as hydrogen and ammonia would not only allow the continued build out of solar power plants, but it would create the backup fuels needed to further decarbonize the grid and heavy industry.
17:56 "Finland created a bunker for storage 1500ft deep in bedrock." Sweden did too, in Oskarshamn. I visited it recently. We both have very stable bedrock.
A stable bedrock may not be sufficient, as plate tectonics can trigger earthquakes, and predicting such events in the pertinent upcoming timeframe (let's say 100000 years, the legal limit in most nations being 1000000 years?) is quite difficult. BTW plate tectonics is only widely accepted since the 1960's, our knowledge of all this if way more limited than sometimes touted.
It's part of the "unnecessarily complex and expensive solutions to small problems" issue of nuclear power as a whole. Not only are such deep repositories extremely overengineered for what they do, but it's also quite useless to build something stable for 100,000 years when the stuff you bury there will be dug up again in 100 because it's nuclear fuel.
@@zolikoff This opinion can be sustained, leading to a need for reversibility of such storage, however for such a thing to happen an industrial breeder reactor is needed, and after decades of very expensive R&D aiming at it... there is none.
@@natmakaScandinavia and Finland sit in the middle of a tectonic plate, which is why burying in bedrock is a safe method of nuclear waste disposal there. Sources of radiation that are still active after the timespans you mention are so because their activity is very low, mostly posing a lesser risk than the simple chemical toxicity of the waste, which is greatly reduced by encasing in bedrock, as opposed to leaving e. g. uranium ore in nature. Radioactive sources either decay fast, meaning high activity but short half life, or slow, meaning long half life but low activity. A source that is highly radioactive *and* long lived is physically impossible.
@@fooanonymous If you really can predict earthquakes at such a term please, by all means, publish. A Nobel Price may be in line. Even a not-so-highly active source can wreak havoc, for example if it falls into a water table.
Watching from New Zealand. During the 1980s, anti-nuclear groups led the NZ Government to ban nuclear weapons and energy from NZ territory. That affected defence ties with the US and also means that NZ doesn't have nuclear power plants. The anti-nuclear movement in my country conflated nuclear weapons with nuclear technology.
@@aaronkcmo that the use case for stopping nuclear power isn’t even an effective use case and we all bent the knee to these activist (and continue to do so) based on feelings and not actual facts/science… that these same folks will gladly weaponize when it works or can be twisted in their favor.
@@nothandmade9686 that doesn't say a whole lot. the remaining reactors at chernobyl stayed open for decades after that accident too. same with fukushima.
I like how the same people who caused the problem now changed costume, once the data is undeniable: “Oh, I never said that… go clean and nuclear!” to later keep on lecturing about other issues they don’t have any grasp either.
Thorium based, molten salt reactors can be modular and scalable with fail safe features that address meltdown risks. The USAF designed and demonstrated the technology back in the 1950s… we need to build them, other nations are accelerating the development into products to solve a wide variety of problems…
@@MattBuild4 The most difficulty is the bureaucratic red tape, something the Chinese 🇨🇳 government didn't inflict upon their people who built a Thorium Molten Salt Reactor In the gobi desert that's actually running right now. The next Chinese 🇨🇳 Thorium Molten Salt Reactor goes into a giant container ship🚢 while western countries are bureaucratically road blocking true nuclear energy advancement. Basically the space race is more important than the race for clean and actually safe Reactors that can't make radioactive ghost towns.
@@drmosfet Youre talking about the TMSR project developed by SINAP in china? Yeah so, you do realize that Oak Ridge National Lab and Argonne National Lab are literally partners with SINAP on that project? Meaning that the US government you despise so much are literally involved in that project......
@@MattBuild4 I know they handed over copy documents and throwing in a tour of the facility for the Chinese, are you saying that this reactor is not operational? Despise is the wrong word it's more like frustrated with the neglect of such an important technology.
@@natmaka now your talking shit, V2G has never gotten beyond the experimental stage. Car will at best be street by street buffers in a brown out. A large hydrogen commercial vehicle though…. But again nothing more than a brain fart.
@@Bob_Adkins Wind power generation (source: Ourworlindata): 2.6TWh in 1989, then 2,098TWh in 2022 (x800 times in 33 years). Nuclear: 1945 and 2632 (x1.35 times).
He is NOT anti nuclear. He says that if the new nuclear technology actually can do what people say it can he is a supporter but until it is proven he is a skeptic and I agree 1000%
@clarkkent9080 I actually agree with that. There are very good reactor designs which have been proven we should build one of those designs as quickly as safely possible. That doesn't mean that new designs shouldn't be worked on at national laboratories, because there seems to me to be a wide range of improvements which could be made in the nuclear power field.
There already were at least 2 attempts of a nuclear 'renaissance'. There is a bit of room for a last one, but hurry up as renewables are fast and accelerating.
@@natmaka "renewables" will NEVER have the energy density of nuclear power. Once people realize we'll have to dedicate half of earth's surface both land and sea to solar and wind farms just to break even they'll come around to nuclear power. When China beats us to a Mars colony because we don't have enough power and they do because they don't care they'll use the best power source available while we're stuck using solar panels because of muh feelings people will realize how stupid we've been.
The biggest mistake we made with nuclear was not going with a standardized plant design like France did. When Carter went to 3MI he got more radiayion exposure on the flight from DC to Harrisburg. When they had the Congressional hearings the AEC/NRA inspectors were asked how they measured the radiation. They had their Gieger Counters with them. When they measured yhe radiation levels in the hearing chamber it was far higher than the 3MI. Just from all the naturally radioactive stuff in the stone work of the hearing chamber.
@@mpetersen6 Sorry, I worked in the nuclear industry 40+ years and even started as a Radiation Control Technician and I never heard anyone refer to any of the instruments as a Geiger counter. The term comes from the inventor of the radiation detection instrument and is generic in nature. There are various portable detectors, detecting various types of radiation and they are usually refereed to by the manufacturer's ID (eg. HP-210, etc.). There are many sources of natural background radiation but even with that, one should never receive any more radiation exposure than absolutely necessary. I understand your point that the TMI-2 accident did not result in significant radiation releases. However, I would point out that TMI-2 was only 3 months old and had very little fission product decay heat. Had the exact accident occurred at TMI-1, the event would have been significantly different. Even with a low decay heat load, the hydrogen buildup in the containment was very dangerous. The destruction at Fukushima was caused by a hydrogen buildup and explosion. We were very very lucky with the events at TMI-2.
The only information I've ever heard about Jane Fonda is that she went to the side of Vietman we were fighting with, met with american POWs and when one handed her a note to take back to america she immediately handed it to the Vietnamese guards
@@LaikaTheG The source is the same people who say the 2020 election was stolen. The POWs who met with Jane Fonda in 1972 have confirmed that they never handed her slips, and the one man who routinely mentioned, that he did, never met Jane Fonda. It has been debunked as early as 1975. Damn Jane Fonda is almost 90. How long are these people gonna milk that old cow? The Gulf of Tonkin event that allowed Johnson to ask Congress to go to war with Vietnam occurred because the U.S. Navy supported S. Vietnam in attacking military bases in the Golf of Tonkin and the N. Vietnam responded and 60,000 Americans died because the Military Industrial complex wanted another war so they could make more money.
The "green" renewable energy being pushed isn't nearly as "green" as they claim. Consider the mining, shipping, and processing. Not so "green". Nuclear from small modular reactors makes more sense to me. The fear of melt downs is irrational. Many more people have died from air pollution than from melt downs. Not a good comparison of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. The problem of storing nuclear waste might be solved largely with SMRs. Some don't think it can be done but we have nuclear submarines. If we can do that we can do it on land.
I haven't heard anything about that. I've heard they produce less waste. Also they don't shut down all at once. If one goes down the rest stay on line. I've also heard they don't melt down. Something goes wrong they just shut down. I'll see if I can find anything about how much waste they produce. @@veronikakerman6536
As someone who has solar panels, they are ok for individual but can never work as a full community. In order to meet demand during winter where days are short and sunny days are less, you have to build 2-3 times the panels needed during summer. So costs will be 3x so you can handle winters but most panels will be useless in summer. The space needed would be huge. The cost huge. After having my own panels, it’s clear that they simply cannot work on a mass scale to provide the majority of power. Panels may get more efficient but I think it’s limited on physics and may only increase by 1-8%. Same problem with wind. You need dependable power which is why coal and LNG still are usdd
There is also the unmentioned problem of panel damage (e.g. via hail). This is a significant issue in parts of Australia, and recurrent panel insurance charges can be significant - in some cases approaching over 50% of your feed-in tariff. You get very little return on the "investment" these days, but you are entirely responsible for system upkeep and maintenance. Also, many insurers regard roof-mounted panels as an "additional risk", resulting in an increase in your normal household policy charges
It does not matter what people want. UTILITIES decide what power plant to build. This is not the 1970s with hippies and Jane Fonda is almost 90. With very few exceptions, people do not protest new nuclear.
If we continue on the ruinables path without nuclear we face a grim future of exorbitant electricity rates, energy rationing, and massive rolling blackouts.
@@clarkkent9080 Rates have gone up similarly in all energy sectors, in fact some areas with high ruinables have gone up substantially more than nuclear.
@@ForbiddTV facts are facts dude and that 25% increase was specifically for Vogtle unit 3 and now that Vogtle unit 4 is on line more rate increases are coming. So don't calim that rates will increase without nuclear when the opposite is true
@@clarkkent9080 Show anywhere I ever said nuclear rates can't rise. Nuclear is still cheaper than ruinables when real numbers are used, even when comparing to Vogtle.
@@ForbiddTV That must be why no U.S. utility is even remotely interested in the AP1000. NuScale just canceled their SMR reactor project after getting $2 billion in taxpayer welfare (and were asking for another $2 billion), have free government land on which to build, and were given hundreds of millions of taxpayer money for their NRC project review that they kept changing. Now they are being sued by their investors for fraud. The Terrapower project has been promising a new nuclear project since 2016 has yet to break ground, was also given $2 billion in taxpayer welfare, the U.S. is building them a fuel facility, and it is run by Bill Gates one of the richest men in the world. New nuclear can't happen even when the taxpayer gives their super rich owners and investors billions.
Im on the right, I've done a lot of research into nuclear power and I think that the reason that I am against it is because of how we do nuclear power now. The whole reason we do water cooled reactor comes from the navy using them in submarines. Tmi was not a small accident. There was a paper written that since the winds were low during the accident, all of the radioactive release stayed in a valley town for days. There was an increase of lung cancer by 10,000 over the next 30 years in this valley. There are ted talks about this subject. Nuclear power can run for 40 years but then have just one bad day and ruin a large area for hundreds of years. This is my opinion, don't hate.
But that’s not possible for radiation to be released. See, TMI was not a meltdown, it was partial meltdown. For a reactor to be considered as experiencing a meltdown the metal walls of the reactor must melt, releasing molten radioactive metals into a formation called an “elephant’s foot” (Chernobyl has one. Look it up). The foot is what releases radiation. TMI experienced a partial meltdown where superheated steam levels rose super high and the temperatures inside the reactor increased drastically before a technician noticed and safely shut everything down. So it’s literally impossible for TMI to have released radiation in any way, shape, or form. What probably happened is that Coal plants were created to make up for this lack of energy and that caused an increase in lung cancer (I don’t have proof it’s just a theory/thought I had). We’ve only had three major incidents with nuclear plants. One being TMI, one being Chernobyl (caused by sheer Russian incompetence and lack of empathy towards human safety), and Fukushima (a literal earthquake and tsunami hit the plant and only after the tsunami did the plant leak any sort of radiation). WCRs happen to be a very well made reactor design and there’s a reason the Navy and most reactors use this design
TMI was a small in incident, in the US, only 5 people have ever died as a result of radiation leaked from a nuclear power plant. All of which were employees.
"We have met the enemy and he is us." Walt Kelly We are our own worst enemy largely due to a failure to think, let alone think critically. We're freaking lazy. It shows. It is destroying the US. I was unfashionable to say this on my college campus in the mid 1960s; I remained unfashionable thoughout the 70. 80. 90. 00's, 10's; I remain unfashionable today. It's too easy to let somebody else do your thinking for you. And those doing the thinking for us do NOT have OUR interests in mind. They have their own short term interests. To them we do not matter except as Chinese Chives to be harvested and reharvested to fill their pockets. {o.o}
I disagree with this channel on most political issues, but you guys have definitely knocked it out of the park in this video. 100% renewable is not feasible and Germany stands as the case study. Thank you for bringing more attention to nuclear power and busting the myths behind it.
One interesting fact is that the french replaced 75% of its energy with nuclear energy in 30 years. They built on average 53 nuclear power plants every decade while now globally we are producing around 60 nuclear power plants per decade. It is insane that france had the current global nuclear energy production for 30 years.
They ran Columbia river water through the breeder reactor at Hanford and discharged it right back into the river for decades. No rise in cancers downstream.
Mhm. Just saw a comment from a new yorker saying their power bill went up 100 bucks. And the reason being is Indian point had paid off it's construction costs long ago and really was generating that cheap energy they promised back in the 50's. Had we really gone for nuclearization of the energy grid we'd be paying pennies on the dollar for electricity by now. People expected them to deliver that cheap power immediately without realizing it takes time to transition an entire power grid. Basically impatience and ignorance killed the nuclear dream.
@@killman369547well, the rulers of planet earth really, really don’t want the masses to prosper. they knew eventually there would be a nuclear accident and they would use that as justification to stall or kill all future construction, in tandem with scaring the public which is mostly ignorant about nuclear. they _could_ teach it in public schools but they won’t. they don’t want the masses to know too much. hard to control a well informed, educated populace. (see george carlin)
nuclear is not a solution. VC Summer canceled in 2017 after spending billions and bankrupting the utility. Vogtle completed unit 3 & 4 in 2023 & 2024 and now has the world's most expensive (per Mw capacity) in the world....and a $1 billion per year interest on the construction loan that they can never pay off. Rates have increased 35%....what a solution
How about real facts. LIE #1-“ A nuclear resurgence in the U.S. is being prevented by anti-nukes, politicians, the media, leftists, greenies, etc”.. TRUTH- This lie is told by people who ignore the recent new U.S. nuclear build If you live in the U.S. here is the reality for the last 4 “state of the art” Generation III Westinghouse AP1000 ADVANCED new nuclear power projects and spent fuel reprocessing in the U.S. over the last 20 years. The AP1000 is fully approved by the NRC for construction and operation. The only NRC requirement is that the plant be built per design documents…..seems simple.. The Southeastern U.S. is super pro-nuclear MAGA, has zero anti-nukes, and 100% media, local, and political support. The MOX facility (South Carolina) was a U.S. government nuclear reprocessing facility that was supposed to mix pure weapon grade Pu239 with U238 to make reactor fuel assemblies. It was canceled (2017) in the U.S. After spending $10 billion for a plant that was originally estimated to cost $1 billion and an independent report that estimated it would cost $100 billion to complete the plant and process all the Pu239, Trump canceled the project in 2017. VC Summer (South Carolina) new nuclear units 2&3 were canceled in 2017 after spending $17 billion on the project (original estimate of $14 billion and 2016 completion date) with no clear end in sight for costs or schedule. Four managers on the project were charged with 16 felony counts, including conspiracy, wire fraud, securities fraud, and causing a publicly traded company to keep a false record. The CEO of the project is serving 2 years in prison, another manager just got 15 months in prison, and the others are awaiting trial. Vogtle (Georgia) new nuclear units 3 & 4 at 125% over budget and schedule The third and fourth reactors were originally supposed to cost $14 billion, but ended up costing $31 billion. That doesn’t include $3.7 billion that original contractor Westinghouse paid to the owners to walk away from the project. That brings total spending to almost $35 billion. Vogtle is now the most expensive (per MW capacity) power plant in the world. That record may soon be broken as the UK’s Hinkley nuclear project cost is rapidly escalating. Please google any of this to confirm.failures and only want to talk about what is happening in other countries. They have no good facts relating to U.S. nuclear builds so they lay blame on these mysterious boogie men. How can any YT video on nuclear power simply IGNORE the 5 nuclear new build failures in the U.S. in the last 20 years??? If it doesn’t fit their narrative, they just ignore it? Please don’t assume that YT videos are factual.
It's really difficult to find how many people in the USA have died as a result of nuclear-specific energy production since the first commercial reactors came online in the late 1950s. I tried once, and I sifted through every incident I could find. There are people who have died from heavy equipment falling on them, or from electrocution, but that happens in any power plant. I eventually came to 5. Five people in 70 years died of radiation exposure from commercial nuclear power generation. All were plant employees, and three were involved in a single incident. Now try running those numbers for wind power. Or solar, and then coal, oil, and gas plants. The fact is, nuclear power stations are designed and run with extreme caution because the risks involved are magnified. The operators at 3-Mile Island made mistake after mistake and the design was so good, no one was even injured. And that's 1950s submarine technology!
I find our enemies' sudden interest in nuclear power alarming. Fonda has literally never seen an evil she didn't side with. Why are the people who hate America and all that is good in the world reversing their position on this one issue? What are they planning?
@CorrieMay-sl3tl mate, I worked in the nuclear industry for 40+ years at 5 different facilities, I am pro-nuclear and can address all the safety, spent fuel, etc. issues but I cannot defend the massive cost. New nuclear is 2-3 times as expensive as any generation method. It is all about the cost. Every country is different but in the U.S. we now have more solar and wind capacity awaiting approval to connect to the grid that we currently use from all generation sources. Solar is def. a limited source but it does provide power during the day light hours when most businesses are using the most power. Given the sun movement from east to west, and electricity can be transmitted over long distances, it can produce power for up to 12 hours. There are locations where wind blows 24/7 so that is not an issue. Electrical generation MUST equal electrical usage on a grid and this is accomplished in large part by spinning reserve. Electrical generators (usually natural gas turbines) are spinning and can be connected to the grid at a moment's notice as needed. Solar and wind turbines (feathered blades) make excellent spinning reserve sources. So a renewable grid will have to utilize significantly more spinning reserve that a natural gas supplied grid.
Don't molten salt reactors have the ability to run on nuclear waste and turn it into inert materials? Don't full cycle reactors also have this capability? Thought we solved these problems over a decade ago
It’s cheaper to just dump the waste somewhere then to process the fuel, so those once-through reactors were built instead. One goal of nuclear engineers should be to force corporations to adopt full fuel cycles through reactor design
MSRs can, but youre more likely talking about is just any reactor that utilizes nuclear burning. You dont really need a MSR for it - you need higher temperature that what you typically run in a BWR, but thats a lot of reactor types that enable you to run that high. Also nuclear burning doesnt necessarily transform nuclear waste into inert materials. Burning is the process of introducing free neutrons to nuclear material and changing the isotopic characteristics of the material. This is done to reduce the overall decay rate of the material. So for those concerned about long lived nuclear materials or medium lived nuclear materials this process could be done to significantly reduce the decay rate. However i should be noted that if you are changing the decay rate from a long amount of time to a short amount of time, that material will become considerably more radioactive as the material will emit energy faster per second of time - which is how radioactivity is measured.
Compare and contrast Nuclear in the USA and countries like Switzerland, Sweden, and Finland: those are some of the freest countries on the planet. United States: Largest Producer: The U.S. is the largest producer of nuclear power globally, generating a substantial portion of its electricity from nuclear reactors. Electricity Share: However, nuclear power accounts for only about 19.3% of the country’s electricity supply. Number of Reactors: The U.S. operates a significant number of reactors, with a net capacity of 772,221 GWh in 2022. Future Outlook: While the U.S. continues to operate existing reactors, there are discussions about expanding nuclear energy and investing in advanced reactor technologies. Switzerland: Nuclear Share: Switzerland has four operable nuclear reactors, contributing to 36.4% of its electricity generation in 2022. Geological Disposal: Switzerland is one of the countries actively moving forward with deep geological disposal for spent nuclear fuel. Decommissioning: The Swiss government has plans for the gradual phase-out of nuclear power, with the last reactor expected to be decommissioned by 2044. Sweden: Nuclear Share: Sweden generates 40.3% of its electricity from nuclear power. Phase-Out and Reversal: Sweden initially had a phase-out policy but has since moved away from it. The country now aims to maintain its existing reactors and possibly build new ones. Spent Fuel Management: Sweden is actively involved in researching and implementing safe methods for managing spent nuclear fuel. Finland: Nuclear Share: Finland relies on nuclear power for 32.4% of its electricity needs. Advanced Disposal: Finland is among the countries advancing in deep geological disposal of spent nuclear fuel. New Reactor: Finland is constructing the Olkiluoto 3 nuclear reactor, which will be one of the world’s largest once operational. In summary, while the U.S. leads in sheer nuclear capacity, countries like Switzerland, Sweden, and Finland prioritize safety, disposal, and sustainable energy production. Each nation’s approach reflects its unique energy policies and environmental considerations.
Switzerland: a law (May, 2017) establishes that nuclear will be progressively phased out and that renewables will replace it. Sweden: 1/ no new nuclear reactor since 1985, despite periodic declarations of intent, 2/ they "enjoyed" a near-miss at Forsmark in July 2006, 3/ hydro is the main source, 4/ wind is very quickly gaining traction.
U.S. no longer has the work ready capable workforce to build new nuclear generating stations or even maintain the existing fleet. NuScale was having components built in Korea. The last two outages I worked at Indian Point were increasingly manned with foreign workers and engineers. The delays at Vogtle were due to incompetent workforce.
In fairness to the anti-nuclear activists though: The reactor designs of the 1970s did seem inherently dangerous. They required constant management to avoid meltdown. Whereas reactors of recent decades are a lot more fail-safe.
Til they find yet another way this Cold War reactors design can go wrong, bug fixes are called generation this and that, they like to throw in other fission reactor design to confuse the issue, that way they can flabbergast you while correcting you, avoid import questions, the same kind of questions one might ask while shopping for a car and looking at the window sticker, horsepower, fuel efficiency, pollution etc.
@@YellowRambler I don't think that's true. Modern reactors are of a substantially different design. As far as I know, there have been no major accidents of a reactor built since 1980. And even minor accidents have been extremely rare. Our engineering knowledge of the technology is vastly superior to the 70s and 80s. And we clearly established the major flaws with those previous designs a long time ago, but they were ignored for political reasons.
@@andybrice2711 Modern fission reactor design are different? If it PWR you must mean the endless additions of safety features and safety systems to keep this tired design working. The only real modern fission reactor I know of is in a Desert in China 🇨🇳 the one based on Alvins Weinberg replacement reactor for the PWR.
@@YellowRambler But those safety features seem to have worked. I'm not aware of any major incidents involving PWRs built after 1980. That's a 40 year track record. Sure, innovation would be positive. But that would also bring new unknowns.
I do have some doubts with nuclear being emission free, there is a plant near my home off of the Minnesota river that I like to fish the plant pumps it’s spent water back into the river, the water is warm so the fish like to congregate around there, now that’s all fine. Until this past winter where the plant knew they dumped thousands of gallons of radioactive water into the river and kept it under wraps for over 2 months. I think it’s important to be rational and not write something off as one thing or another.
CORRECTION: no, you are right, all that radioactive water did leak. Want to know why we haven’t heard of this, as a global news story? Because the levels of radioactivity were so low, that it was statistically insignificant. You know what causes more damage? “Mild” leaks from coal or oil processing plants. Or how about the run off from lithium mines that give lithium to make the batteries that solar and wind need? Want to know why the water is warm? Is cooled steam. If you boil a pot of water and collect the steam, then touch the droplets, they are warm, are they not? The water is not warm because of radioactivity. If it was you would not be alive. That kind of radiation will take you out in a matter of minutes and give your horrific burns just by standing near it
@@bobsthea yeah, that’s what we’re trying to do, but people keep freaking out over an aircraft and bomb resistant multi-layered concrete cylinder stored half a km deep in geologically stable rocks
Kyle Hill KISSED an exposed nuclear waste casket. They are safe. When you bury these a couple km underground I promise you, you wouldn’t even know. Especially given the fact that most waste fuel from reactors can actually be used in specialized reactors whose waste decays in a couple hundred years instead. Raw uranium exists in the soil you use to plant your flowers in. It will be there for BILLIONS of years. The sun? Also radioactive. You are being exposed to radiation of the cosmos. But also from the ground. What is funny is with the waste we bury WONT expose you, or the environment.
Richard Nixon of all people had a plan to consistently keep building NPPs in serialized production in the US until the year 2000, which would have made the grid 100% carbon neutral and ensured independence from Saudi/Iranian oil, via the ability to synthesize hydrocarbons from the excess energy.
The U.S. produces vastly more oil than we use. After the oil crisis of the 1970s U.S. oil producers were not allow to export oil. The Big oil companies wanted to make more profit so in 2011 the U.S. started exporting our excess oil. If you want gasoline prices to drop, just prevent the oil companies from selling our oil to other countries and we won't need nuclear
@@clarkkent9080 The point is energy independence without having to utilize crude oil extraction. In medieval times, most forests were endangered due to how much people utilized them for fuel and construction. Once wood started to be replaced with coal as the primary fuel source, the forests started recovering. The lesson being that as civilization develops and consequently uses more energy, you have to step up to using more efficient and energy dense sources of energy. When do you realize an energy source from the early Edwardian era is no longer ideal for energy-intense civilization?
@@Waldemarvonanhalt We will always need oil. Tanks and jets cannot use batteries. Right now there is more solar and wind capacity awaiting approval to connect to the grid that what we use from all generation sources. Texas, oil country, has surpassed California in renewables. The issue is NOT generation source, it is grid availability
@@clarkkent9080 In which case you're arguing against the energy source with the highest capacity factor, highest reliability factor, smallest land footprint relative to the amount of energy it produces and is dispatchable unlike aforementioned wind and PV? Of course the internal combustion engine is too useful to phase out of use entirely, but using the argument that planes and tanks need fuel as your defense...you might as well be saying we should go back to using leaded fuel, because it's needed for aircraft and it produces more power output. www.youtube.com/@decouplemedia107/videos
Most people in the comments mention France but don’t forget Canada has a large renewable power grid. About 61% of power comes from Hydro and 14% comes from Nuclear. While in Ontario, the most populated province in Canada, 63% of the power comes from nuclear. Plus Canada’s hydroelectric dominance has comes from it geography and hydro while clean is far more impactful on the environment than nuclear it.
@@danadurnfordkevinblanchdebunk fair enough, I was trying to highlight the nuclear energy fact since my home province of Ontario is a powerhouse when it comes to nuclear but I got side tracked since I learned hydro in the biggest contributor to energy in Canada. But Canada has made several advancements in nuclear energy, like the CANDU reactor.
@@danadurnfordkevinblanchdebunk fair enough, I was trying to highlight the nuclear energy fact since my home province of Ontario is a powerhouse when it comes to nuclear but I got side tracked since I learned hydro in the biggest contributor to energy in Canada. But Canada has made several advancements in nuclear energy, like the CANDU reactor.
@@pierren___ Hydroelectric is a perfect match to nuclear. Nuclear is a great baseload and hydroelectric can meet peak demands if properly managed since all that stored water is essentially a battery.
I get the sense that anti-nuclear movements were one of the direct causes of prevalent poverty and environmental issues today. Also, nuclear is too good. You can’t keep making money on something this efficient. On the other hand, currently nuclear energy is too expensive because the investment necessary to optimize it was cut to nearly nothing since the 70s
I live around half an hour's drive from Indian Point. I remember when they shut it down. it was disgusting. I know it was old but it would have been cheaper to renovate it than to lose the power it generated for the entire area.
You should interview Jack Devanney co-founder of advanced nuclear company ThorConPower. They got so fed up with the state of nuclear regulations in the US, they sought out other countries to work on nuclear and are now focusing on a project in Indonesia, just for the prospect of accomplishing skmething before 2040. He has also written a great deal about nuclear regulations in the US, including a book called "Why nuclear power has been a flop"
ThorCon after over a decade in existence has never produced anything except the world's most expensive PowerPoint presentation. It has never broken any ground, poured any concrete, and never will.
@@darkgalaxy5548 That could be said about every advanced nuclear company. They are also working with Indonesia, a country with NO existing nuclear infrastructure - including regulatory. It says a lot about the US environment that they felt it was more likely to be successful to work with a country that had to build an entire nuclear and regulatory infrastructure rather than work in the US. It also doesn't mean Devanney wouldn't be a good interview.
@@AntiNeoFascist ThorCon is not an advanced nuclear company. They have never handled, nor processed any nuclear materials. They in fact have no manufacturing capabilities. In short, ThorCon is a scam.
@@ZnamTwojaMama101 Thorium Molten Salt Reactors are about as failsafe as a fission reactor can get, plus Thorcon is building it into a barge. But the Chinese are first in building and running a Thorium Molten Salt Reactor in the gobi desert, very few people can perceive the future possible geo politics repercussions of this event.
I completely agree; Videos like this can help educate the public. We tend to focus on the potential risks of nuclear, rather than using proven techniques that provide clean energy. This is crucial for saving our planet.
@@clarkkent9080 Then why do utilities lobby politicians? 2022-01-05 Virginia Mercury article: Republican Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin announced Trump EPA chief and former coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler as his pick for Virginia’s next secretary of natural and historic resources. Wheeler, who served as administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from 2019 until the end of President Donald Trump’s administration, was an outspoken proponent of environmental deregulation during his tenure, ruffling feathers even among his own agency scientists. The former coal lobbyist’s views on climate change have also troubled many environmentalists. While Wheeler during confirmation hearings for his EPA appointment said that “climate change is real” and “man has an impact on it,” he subsequently oversaw the unwinding of numerous regulations to reduce climate change-causing greenhouse gas emissions. Among the actions taken during his tenure were the rollback of President Barack Obama’s never-enacted Clean Power Plan to reduce emissions from coal plants as well as the Obama administration’s stricter fuel efficiency standards for automobiles. Current Democratic Attorney General Mark Herring sued Wheeler and his EPA at least six times over environmental issues. Since the end of his EPA term, Wheeler has slowly inched into Virginia politics. In September, he spoke out against a five-cent plastic bag tax during a hearing before Fairfax County’s Board of Supervisors. In November, following sweeping Republican victories in Virginia elections, he was appointed to Youngkin’s transition team.
@@CTimmerman Those laws are called REGULATIONS and they have been unchanged for decades. Why does an INVESTOR owned utility with stockholders, need subsidies???? Which by the way, Terrapower (headed by Bill Gates one of the world's richest men) and Nuscale (that just canceled their project each got $2 billion of taxpayer welfare and NuScale gat an additional $500 million.
I was in the First Grade at Bainbridge Elementary School about three miles downriver from the plant that morning. My Dad built the plant when he was a Journeyman Electrician with the IBEW Local. I could walk up the hill behind the house (that we moved into December of 78) and see the tops of the South Cooling Towers. I survived Three Mile Island.....
America must lead with removing the regulations and building new plants because Europe is hell-bent on closing every nuclear facility. Other than France, every European country has been actively trying to close existing plants.
![Quando Rondo - Grow Up [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/8zFnCg3BO4Q/mqdefault.jpg)
I'm so glad the environmentalists won in the 1970s, because now we get to have more coal and gas made energy!
This is sarcasm, by the way.
Was nothing to do with environmentalists. The Koch Bros let congress know where their best interests lay $$$$🎉🎉🎉🎉
Since the Koch brothers fund many conservatives, I believe you're trying to throw shade. Present facts and reasoned arguments.@@jimgraham6722
I thought maybe you were a coal miner and were happy to be employed over the last 50 years.
@@jimgraham6722It was both… the two aren’t mutually exclusive.
Imagine how further advanced nuclear energy creation, containment, and disposal would be had those incompetent people not advanced their incompetence?
It is not a question of competence but of perfection (avoiding any way for a cascade of incident to become a major accident), which "isn't of this world".
It was not incompetence! It was intentional for s very specific and nefarious reasons.
@@DCMAKER133 The gas industry might have nefarious and specific motives but those entertainers, activists, and politicians who decried nuclear energy are/were most definitely incompetent forcing their incompetence onto the world ultimately setting humanity and nuclear technology back decades.
@@DCMAKER133 The gas industry might have specific and nefarious goals but the entertainers, activists, and politicians forced their incompetence on the rest of us and have set humanity back decades.
Edit: Typos
Every small city in the US would have their own LFTR and our energy bills would be pennies on the dollar.
Aging celebrities make me sick. They spend decades fouling everything up, then when their influence wanes they talk sense.
Ah, the hallowed champions of renewable energy, those stalwart defenders of the green frontier, tirelessly tilting at windmills, both literal and figurative in their quest to "save" the planet. They gather en masse, a devout congregation worshiping at the gleaming altars of wind turbines and solar panels, singing hymns of praise for the intermittent blessings bestowed by sun and air. Why, indeed, would they ever consider bowing to the unyielding might of the atom, that ancient power harnessed through the alchemy of nuclear fission, capable of providing a ceaseless torrent of clean, reliable energy?
The faith of these eco-cultists is unshakeable, their beliefs rooted in a scripture that preaches salvation through renewables alone, casting nuclear energy into the abyss as an unholy relic of a bygone era. They conjure visions of a world powered by the gentle caress of the breeze and the benevolent gaze of the sun, conveniently glossing over the inconvenient truth that these celestial benefactors are as capricious as they are generous.
Why bother with the atom's consistent pulse, a heartbeat of power that thunders unseen beneath the earth, when one can chase the ever-elusive kiss of sunlight, or the mercurial embrace of the wind? These are the divine tests of their faith, challenges to be overcome through sheer belief and the sacred marches of advocacy against the heretical atom.
They erect their temples, the vast solar farms that sprawl with geometric precision across the land, the towering wind turbines that stand like modern-day totems to human ingenuity, monuments to their dedication and defiance of the practical. The land groans under the weight of their devotion, ecosystems bending and sometimes breaking, to accommodate their pursuit of purity, but these are merely the sacrifices required on the path to enlightenment.
Never mind the shadows that stretch long into the evening, when solar panels sleep and wind turbines stand still, as if in silent vigil awaiting the return of their fickle gods. The darkness, they claim, can always be banished by the stored blessings of the day, though the alchemy of battery storage remains a riddle wrapped in a mystery, shrouded in the high priests' robes of future innovation.
This is the creed of the modern environmental crusader, a narrative woven from ideals as volatile as the elements they worship. Nuclear energy, with its promise of abundant power, cleaved from the heart of the atom, remains an anathema, a path they refuse to tread, for it does not fit the prophecy foretold by their renewable revelations. Thus, they march onward, a procession of the faithful, their eyes fixed on the horizon, where the sun's golden halo promises a dawn forever just out of reach, their dreams powered by nothing more than the whisper of the wind and the hope that tomorrow, perhaps, it will blow in their favor.
@@ViIgaxthat is one heck of a statement and I like it.
@@ViIgax Umm… ditto!
@@ViIgax Lovely. I have saved this into a text document for posterity.
influencer nowadays are no better either
Having worked with nuclear plants for years, another big issue that drives up overall costs is that any new regulations are retroactive.
In one plant I worked a new regulation was issued that increased the size of the underground concrete retaining structure. This was 6 months before the plant was completed. Implementing the changes that the new retroactive regulations necessitated took an additional 3 years...and then the protesters started whining out that the nuclear plant took much longer than originally planned to finish construction.
All part of the plan I'd reckon. Absolutely infantile those people are.
That does not sound like a bad thing though
@@senefelderWhen does it end? You can’t just add regulation and regulation forever and ever. Just because something is “more safer” doesn’t mean it’s worth it.
Delaying a plant by 3 years, letting interest on those loans tick up, for a vanishingly small increase in safety is disastrous. That’s also 3 years of burning coal, 3 years of greenhouse gas emissions. Thousands of tons of concrete itself which releases greenhouse gasses as it cures.
@@FailuresWithJade regulations are in many situations are retroactive. For example in aviation or the pharmaceutical industry. That seems like a good idea to me.
@@senefeldersort of. If an incident happens and new understanding of the subject reveals that existing airplanes are a lot more dangerous, than previously thpught, then yes, retroactive regulation is issued and existing airplanes have to be updated.
But even in aviation, practical considerations are given. If an airplane cannot be easily updated, a compromise is made, airlines are allowed to fly the non updated models for months or years, usually with some extra safety procedures to help mitigate that particular failure mode. New models in production need to be updated immediately ofcourse.
However.
If today nobody finds an existing flaw with current airplanes, instead someone merely discovers that some different type of fuel is slightly safer for an airplane, that doesn't mean that we'll ground every airplane on earth tomorrow until we rebuild all the engines to work with the new type of fuel.
That would be insanity.
There's a big difference between improving safety and using safety regulations to sabotage an industry.
Three mile island is called a partial meltdown because the heat and pressure rose really high, and it vented steam. Once they realized they had a problem, they tried to cool it down, screwed that up, but eventually cooled it all the way down and decommissioned the reactor. That is not a meltdown. A melt down is when the core of the reactor melts, and its so hot that it melts the reactor walls, and the uranium and subsequent reactant materials fall on the concrete below it. That is a meltdown, and its called an elephant foot. Three mile island vented some gas, the alarms went off, and then they shut down the reactor. There was no melting of the container. So it didn't melt, and it didn't go down, so it wasnt a meltdown.
And even if it had, had certainly not melted its way to China. Oh, hyperbole.
Elephant's Foot was the specific form the Chernobyl melt took. Corium is the general term.
The reactor did partially melt. A meltdown does not mean that the reactor vessel is breached or that corium even ends up in the bottom of the vessel. A meltdown just means that part of the reactor assembly melts.
@@williambowling8211 OP literally said partial meltdown.
AFAIK the reason why the reactor vessel did not completely melt isn't clearly described. Luck is key!
The definition of a melt down isn't the pressure vessel melting through - it's fuel assemblies melting either partially or fully.
TMI was a meltdown, make no mistake.
Even if it had breached the pressure vessel, the core material still would have been inside the containment building and there would have been next to no radiological release. It would have made clean up/decommissioning an absolute nightmare however if it had.
It's honestly heart wrenching, seeing so many uninformed people manipulated into voting against their interests.
google germany some time
@@davidanalyst671 Wow. Good and precise advice…
Do things ever work out any other way?
@@markfernandes2467not usually.
@@wheel-man5319 Nuclear power ,that almost free cheap clean energy with zero drawbacks. Must be the one fairy tale that the Grimm brothers didn't write about.
people forget that batteries are very toxic to the soil, France is a successful example of using nuclear energy without incident and with a healthy population
There is less and less nuclear in France.
2 graphite-gas reactor accidents : 1969 Saint Laurent and 1980 Saint Laurent info on internet
Nuclear waste is, just as lead acid batteries, also very toxic if you let it sit in the open.
@@natmakaAnd more and more renewables and energy storage, makes you think if there are really silver bullet solutions for your and the worlds energy need.
Does it?
@@deathgun3110 This is not about any silver bullet but about the best way. There is no 'Nirvana fallacy' here, just hard facts.
We don't know anymore how to build a nuclear reactor quickly and at a realistic cost, while renewables are more and more quickly deployed and cheap. Both Western champions (Westinghouse and Areva) filled are bankrupt.
Even China, sometimes touted as a nuclear champion, is in fact lagging. Nuclear produces about 5% of their electricity (renewables produces 5 times more) and their nuclear plan is way behind schedule, while renewables are booming (read Wikipedia's "Renewable energy in China" intro, difficult to believe but firmly sourced).
Even if we could adequately build reactors there would be no point as (quoting Wikipedia's "Uranium mining" article about identified uranium reserves recoverable at current cost): "At the rate of consumption in 2017, these reserves are sufficient for slightly over 130 years of supply". Don't hope that new huge claims will appear, as a price bubble around 2007 already triggered massive prospection... with meek results (+15%).
Optimistic investors may be willing to bet on uranium being available for the upcoming 4 centuries, by accepting to pay a high price. It means that they will be able to deploy about 4 times as much nuclear power as we currently have.
Electricity now provides 22% of final energy consumption , and nuclear produces 10% of it (see Wikipedia's "World energy supply and consumption" article). Therefore nuclear produces about 2.2% of consumed energy.
4 times 2.2 isn't even 9%. Therefor nuclear just cannot be, alone, a solution. All experts (IEA, IPCC, McKinsey, Bloomberg...) see nuclear producing, by 2050 and after its potential renaissance, at most about 8% of electricity.
A net effect is that renewables will produce most of our electricity (every expert says so), and for reasons exposed in another comment here the economic side of all this means that nuclear will disappear (short version: its load factor will be lower and lower, making it more and more expensive).
As for batteries an article titled "The price of batteries has declined by 97% in the last three decades" published on Ourworldindata says it all.
These idiots are why my power bill here in NYC has gone up over 100%
Pretty much yeah. Vote accordingly.
I am supplied with power from Vogtle units 1,2,3,4 wit 3 and 4 being the only new nuclear plants built in the last 25 years. Because of Vogtle, my electric bill is now 25% higher and that is just the beginning as it is eventually expected to approach 50%
You get what you vote for 😂
@@abboudashkar3804 You are 100% correct. Biden fought against republicans and got $30 billion to help keep old nuclear power plants running and his DOE has given out $4 billion to develop new nuclear. Trump oversaw the cancelation of the VC Summer nuclear project and killed Yucca mountain
That was the plan, all along. Keep voting the way you do, and in a few more years, you'll still be complaining about how your utility bill went up 100% since 2024.
Giga-watts of low cost energy..incredibly safe and incredibly long lasting. But no, we have to deal with solar and wind.
Our local reactor just got a clean bill of health until 2045.
It was then shut down, and the surrounding farms bought (I hope not just taken) for a large solar field.
And fossil fuels.
Solar and wind are low cost now
@@alexmol6268It's a fake low cost, because of grants and other 'green' incentives that artificially reduce the cost at the point of consumption, but really the real, achingly high costs are hidden and shuffled around.
@@AndrooUK It is a very real low cost.
Solar and wind are exceptionally cheaper than coal, gas or nuclear.
Gas and Coal are subsidised considerably more around the world.
Nuclear is great. Don't get me wrong. I'd prefer to have a number of reactors powering my country, but to build new ones now. It isn't cheap.
I've worked in many nuclear plants across the U.S. I worked at Indian Point during one of their last refueling outages. That was one of the cleanest and most well managed plants I've been to. And they shut it down over politics.
yes remember cuomo killed 10k seniors by forcing nursing homes to take covid patients because he didn't want to run out of room at the hospitals for " regular" new yorkers . he's as slimy as they get.
You may have worked there but you apparently don't read the news. The Indian Point nuclear plant, located in the most densely populated part of our country, presented a unique set of risks. For decades, the plant had one alarming incident after another, including missing and damaged bolts on the structures in both reactors that surround and are critical to cooling the nuclear fuel, a May 2015 transformer fire which sent thousands of gallons of oil into the Hudson River, radioactive spills and releases into the Hudson River and groundwater, failed accident drills, and inadequate disaster planning. The power plant’s two operating units lie within a mile of a significant seismic zone discovered after the plant was built in the 1960s, prompting the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to deem Indian Point one of the top ten facilities most in need of reevaluation for earthquake vulnerability. One of the 9/11 terrorists cited the plant as a potential target. Indian Point’s proximity to New York City and the rest of the densely populated tri-state area made the potential impacts of an accident severe.
@@clarkkent9080 Yeah, I wouldn't use a copy and pasted article from the NRDC as evidence of anything, considering they have massive financial interests in closing nuclear power plants.
@@Voxphyle Please point out any of those claims that are not true. Indian point is owned by Holtec International and they and they alone made the decision to shut it down. Your conspiracy theories are tin foil hat BS
I used to live in the area served by Indian Point. From the day it opened, the anti-nuclear power mob was in a hysterical paroxysm of rage over it.
You cant plop nuclear reactors on site of old coal plants without changes to regulations. Old coal plants are so radioactive that the systems used to monitor nuclear plants for radiation leaks would be giving false alarms all the time.
LOL... 100% FACTS!!! But seriously, tell that to the feds... ;-) I read their report, it's entirely feasible however you might want to wear a lead vest and full Ebola suits around the coal dust like you said since it's the most deadly carcinogen in our modern society besides maybe inhaled/burned tobacco and asbestos... Thank you PM 2.5 And of course the most radioactive substance that's been widely dispersed into the atmosphere for centuries... Even when compared to what was released via nuclear bomb testing in the past... Which is... ahem... disturbing... to say the least...
However if they can clean up those lands with Superfund money but billed to corporations FIRST that would be great before they build some clean SMR's or even Gen III/IV reactors on the sites...
Nuclear and coal steam system operate at completely different temperatures, pressures and flow rates. The only usable thing at a coal plant that could be used for a nuclear unit is the switchyard
I did not know that about old coal plants - i will check that out ! ;)
Coal plants are NOT any more radioactive that a lump of coal. However, coal ash ponds do concentrate the natural radioactive isotopes and would admit detectable radiation. Nuclear plants monitor their AIR stack and water emissions ONLY so a radioactive coal ask pile a thousand yards away would not cause a problem
@@clarkkent9080 The intermediate and low pressure turbines would be a match. And gas, liquid metal, and molten salt cooled reactos produce steam parameters the same as state of the art coal burning power stations.
"....In other news, dozens of Icebreakers, Aircraft Carriers and Submarines are powered with Nuclear Reactors every day...quietly getting on with the job, in close proximity to people..."
They are also in close proximity to nuclear weapons so should we all have that too?
@@clarkkent9080I don’t see how that relates. The point he’s trying to make is that there hasn’t been an incident with nuclear power on ships and submarines.
@@pyre46168X It all depends on your definition of incidents. There have been many incidents on Soviet submarines that we know about and I am sure many that we don't know about. The loss of the U.S. Scorpion and Thresher submarines was directly due to the failure of the reactor that prevented them from powering to the surface.
My point is that navy reactors are nothing like commercial reactors, are very inefficient, utilize 95% enriched uranium as opposed to 3-4% enriched in commercial units and do NOT have the redundant safety systems and containment of commercial.
@clarkkent9080 Wrong. The Thresher was lost due to water in pneumatic lines that froze, preventing it from emptying its ballasts properly. To say it was due to the reactor is like saying your flat tire was due to you not changing your oil. The Scorpion is thought to have suffered from a torpedo explosion. Neither of the reactor vessels were ever breached. There is no issue with their efficiency, they are designed differently because they are are for shipboard military used.
The design of naval reactors was directly influenced by Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. When the Fukushima plant had its accident, the USN began updating more policies and looked to send its nuclear trained sailors to assist.
Most are not near nuclear weapons. What a silly point to make. It's about as relevant as every murderer who's lived drinking water.
@@metallichurchThe Russians have had many reactor accidents.
The reason for the loss of the Scorpion has never been determined. But sans an explosion, if the reactor is operational, you can power your way to the surface. There are two ways to surface a submarine, buoyancy by blowing the ballasts or powering to the surface using propulsion. Your initiating event on the Thresher is correct but the reactor tripped and could not be restarted thereby dooming the boat. I believe they were taking on some water and shorted out electrical systems and the reactor tripped. The event was being monitored by a vessel on the surface.
Boats now have battle shorts that bypass all trip interlocks.
That is like saying I had a tire blowout and would have been alright but the brakes failed.
I doubt that a navy nuke could be of any assistance in either accident or at any commercial reactors as they are completely different. Not to offend by a commercial nuclear plant has more valves and components in the sewage waste system that in the entire nuclear submarine. Control room staff and most plant staff have to understand and operate all plant systems and are not specialized like in the navy.
Not sure what your "nuclear weapons" comment means. I never mentioned nuclear weapons. If you had any idea of the design of a commercial nuclear power plant, you would know that navy nuclear plants do not have the same or even equivalent safety systems
President Carter used to serve on a nuclear-powered submarine, so he definitely wasn't ignorant of nuclear power. All he had to do was have the guts to explain clearly to the press that the TMI incident came down to a nothing burger.
He also signed the ban on fuel recycling. He knew better in both instances but chose to be antinuke. The only remaining question is how it personally profitted him.
I'm from PA, and the father of a friend of mine worked for TMI. He said Carter had fun touring the plant, shaking hands and signing autographs. He knew there was no danger. Then he went outside, put on his Grim Face, and told the TV cameras how there'd be a full investigation and more regulations. Because that's what people wanted to hear.
@@Yaivenov Some of the fuel recycling restrictions were part of treaties with the russians.
Yep. He has a lot to answer for.
@@Yaivenov Politialy profited him, not financially.
Most of the problems with nuclear power are lawfare. For various political reasons, the Green Blob opposes nuclear power, and cares vanishingly little about real effects.
As Paul Ehrlich wrote, having cheap and abundant power would be “like giving an idiot child a machine gun”.
As Paul Ehrlich was a biologist, specifically an immunologist, of course he knew "the science". ;)
(He got the Nobel prize 1909, but not for anyting related to energy…)
_edit_ OH, there's another Paul Ehrlich. Well, I'll let my erroneous writing stand here.
The beginning of the end was when people started saying soon energy would be too cheap to meter. Since almost all power companies are just that... companies... the public perception that electricity could be nearly free was not tolerable.
This is why I call the Green Movement the Green Death Cult. The only methodology they approve of for reducing environmental impact is the reduction of the human population.
Well, Paul Erlich has been proven wrong about almost everything, so quoting him is not exactly helping you win any arguments.
@@leechowning2712 I doubt so, as many successful companies sell on a form of "all you can eat" basis.
The "Too cheap to meter" dates back the 1950's (the Wikipedia article is clear).
The reason for metering is well-known: waste. Quoting WP: "Prior to 1985, water meters were not required in New York City; water and sewage fees were assessed based on building size and number of water fixtures; water metering was introduced as a conservation measure.".
Cuba, among others, also experienced this problem (water supply: no tariff until 1997, but more and more wasting as tap water gained ground against tanker trucks).
The amount of radiation released at Three Mile Island was equivalent to the radiation released by the coal stockpile at a coal fire powerplant in one year. This is because Carbon 14 is a slightly radioactive isotope of Carbon and decays releasing measurable radiation. There are hundreds of Coal plants in the US and thousands if not tens of thousands world wide. And every single one of them releases that same amount of radiation year after year after year.
Even more interesting, the amount of deaths caused by Chernobyl is less than the amount of deaths from air pollution caused by a similar sized coal power plant working normally.
@@zolikoff That was before the use of pollution capture tech developed developed over the past 30+ years. Unless you are in China or similar who don't or can't afford to employ pollution controls hardly at all.
@@patraic5241 Indeed, with modern emissions control even coal isn't so deadly anymore. But it does cost a lot.
@@zolikoff True. The most cost effective, least polluting, kilowatt for kilowatt is nuclear energy. I doesn't need to take 20 years to build a plant or the multi-billions of dollars it does today. It does take 20 years to settle all the frivolous lawsuits green activists throw up. Half of the cost of a nuclear plant is in litigation by green activists and excessive regulation also put in place by green activism. Which hurts us all.
Instead of downplaying Three Mile Island we should just accept what happened. Everyone always talks about incompetence, but that not what happened in Three Mile Island; and nobody bothers to talk about what happpened after Three Mile Island.
Its pretty stange considering the fact that following the Kemeny Report every single university, commerical nuclear reactor, laboratory nuclear reactor and the US Navy completely changed their operator training procedures. I have no idea why this video never talked about this, as the Kemeny Report is regarded as the 1st major use of safety root cause analysis in global history and one of the most significant tools to reduce overall risk of national safety and training of nuclear operations.
How are you going to blame a plant operator for managing risk during a SCRAM event like hes on a nuclear submarine, when over 90% of all plant operators pre 1980 were trained exclusively by the US Navy for nuclear ships? Thats not incompetence - thats poor training, and instead of blaming the employee for being an idiot the safety analysis found that the nuclear industry had a much greater problem than just what occured at TMI.
If the safety review took the approach that most people believe the operators were incompetent, then its very likely the US would have suffered future major nuclear disasters. This is why the truth of TMI should be talked about.
This is what happens when you let emotions rule.
Sort of. More like, those who rule weaponised the emotions of the ill-informed.
Look at VC Summer and Vogtle new nuclear projects that had 100% complete support and NO opposition yet were complete failures because of massive cost over runs and the AP1000 was 100% approved for construction and operation so the NRC was not the problem
@@clarkkent9080Vogtle 3 is on load producing 1,100 megawatts of clean, cheap nulcear energy. Their power prices are lower than people in the middle of shale gas boom country.
@@clarkkent9080
Almost as if a massive supply chain disruption that took years - and then more years to untangle - happened during construction.
@@gregorymalchuk272 I live in the Vogtle grid. My electric rate increased 19% for 4 years, specifically for Vogtle, during the construction of Vogtle . They went up 6% when specifically because unit 3 came on line and will go up again now that unit 4 is on line and that is just the beginning. A 31% rate increase for Vogtle and more to follow.
BTW, that is 1,100 Mw gross. The plant uses 100 Mw (hotel load) to operate all equipment so it is 1 Gw net. Our power prices are some of the highest in the country.
One of my favorite parts about nuclear is that you can reprocess nuclear waste multiple times, bringing the half life down thousands of years. If you reprocess the fuel multiple times, you can drop the time it’s radioactive to only a few hundred years instead of thousands
This imply an industrial breeder reactor, and there is no such thing. Many, many huge projects by many, many nations tried to obtain it for decades... to no avail.
The most advanced one is the Russian BN-800, and it works so well that... there is no plan to pursue (by building another one or its successor the BN-1200) before 2035. Problems related to the fuel succeeded to leak-related challenges.
And this not out of interest for breeding, as Russia now pursues another type (architecture) of such a reactor, with a small lab-reactor dubbed BREST-300.
@@natmakaho france reprocesses all their spent fuel so you speak of a different thing.
@@ronblack7870 This is a limited reprocessing, leading (once) to uranium and to plutonium (part of it being processed to MOX, up to now thanks to Russia...).
This is far from closing the fuel cycle, and France imports approx 5000 to 15000 metric tons of uranium per year (about 45% from Russia and its vassal Kazakhstan), and also digs its "CIGEO" deep geological repository project for huge amounts of spent (not recycled/recyclable!) fuel.
What you describe would be very very expensive. To keep nuclear energy competitive, it is cheaper to bury the nuclear waste.
@@senefelderaluminum was a precious metal at one point...
I love how influential people who didn't support nuclear suddenly changed their minds by educating themselves slightly. Of course, the damage was already done. It makes you wonder what else they are wrong about and if they will bother to educate themselves more or bumble on in ignorance.
Ignorant people are those that disagree with me
@@clarkkent9080 that is narcissitic as hell
The problems of ignorance and fear mongering. People really need to educate themselves and not let the politicians run the show
Unfortunately, those politicians make sure they don't get educated unless those people don't considered school as the only place to learn.
Most politicians, in many nations, were willing to deploy nuclear reactors. Even in Germany (quoting Wikipedia "Nuclear power in Germany"): "the phase-out plan was initially delayed in late 2010, when during the chancellorship of centre-right Angela Merkel, the coalition conservative-liberal government decreed a 12-year delay of the schedule."
A few month later something unpleasant happened in a nuclear plant at Fukushima, and a majority of citizens, not willing to take the risk, coerced her into either losing her political power or quickly phase out nuclear.
Truly none ignored people back in the 1970s would have been protesting against a poor inefficient unsafe fission reactors design’s.
So not much has changed.
Alvin Weinberg protested in a way and got himself fired.
If your politicians are taking advantage of and spreading miseducation, get new politicians, and a new education system.
Someone's going to have to run the show. It's not actually optional.
Take your own advice and figure out how yourself.
It just looks like you're projecting your own inability to do so on everyone else.
@@natmakaWhich is why democracy shouldn't exist. Only landholders should vote!
I’ve always found it baffling that the same people that insist on reducing carbon emissions as much as possible are the same people insisting that we not use the most potent energy production method we have.
Because, thanks to renewables, there is no need to tolerate burdens associated to nuclear (fuel dependency, risk, waste, awful decommissioning...).
Moreover even simply hoping for some 'cooperation' (nuclear + renewables) would be absurd because the cost of producing 'renewable' electricity is increasingly lower than that of nuclear power (in addition their operation does not consume fuel nor produce waste or induce any major risk). So when they produce they are and will be preferred (check 'merit order'). This will reduce the effective nuclear charge rate and therefore increase its production cost (it is not
profitable than with a high charging rate), with a strong feedback (feedback loop).
Moreover on a technical level and despite some progress, nuclear power cannot adjust its production with sufficiently little latency or frequently (this is why hydraulics and flame-fired power plants are necessary).
This will promote the deployment of a renewable energy system based on a continental mix (wind, solar, etc.), smartgrid, clean backup (green hydrogen), storage, etc. This will reduce the variability of its production (effect of 'intermittency') therefore nuclear power will be less and less useful and more and more expensive... and therefore vanish.
ruclips.net/video/udJJ7n_Ryjg/видео.html
@@natmakafantasies about renewables
@@natmaka yes, this is an absolute fantasy.
@@natmaka google what happens to old wind turbine blades or solar panels. Renewable sources of energy are great if you don’t account for manufacturing, maintenance and decommissioning. And weather. But there’s a hope that at some point in the future we come up with a new technology for energy storage to account for the weather. Currently it doesn’t exist.
That's because YOU are the carbon being reduced
It makes so much sense that three accidents and two downsides related to nuclear overshadow the thousands of accidents and dozens of downsides related to coal, gas, and oil
texas winter freese alone killed more than all nuclear accidents compined
Can you imagine how bad we could tell OPEC to just f*** off if we were as set up with nuclear as France?
While I agree we should tell OPEC to f off. Remember energy needs are not simply electrical there’s a lot of applications that still require oil and gas. Nuclear power cannot replace these. However a more liberalized energy sector would allow for more energy independence.
Yeah so about that in the US petroleum makes up 34% of energy usage, but only 0.1% of electrical generation. Nuclear really isnt going to replace petrochemicals or transport fuel anytime soon.
@@MattBuild4 -- That's a good point at the present, but it will change as our cars (etc.) become electrified.
@@mvmlego1212 then again electrification of evs has a lot of its own problems
It’s not that easy. France couldn’t run its nuclear power plants because of draught. They had to import electricity from Germany.
Why were all the politicians wearing bright yellow boots while the workers dressed normally?
Optics. Vote for the guy in dayglo.
Shoe coverings over civilian clothing, vs dedicated PPE.
They weren’t yellow boots… they pissed themselves.
They're politicians... Any other questions?
The workers probably have work boots and home boots that they switch at a designated point. Since the politicians dont have those they wore booties over their shoes to limit tracking stuff home.
No nuclear energy. No oil. No coal. No CNG. No hydroelectric.
No people.
Bill Gates et al. approve this message.
Don't you know that is the true goal?
@@quietackshon Who would buy his computers?
@@wheel-man5319 What no consumers?
Is that what you think he sells? @@amraceway
WaaaHHHHH not three reactors ....35 miles from the city😱 oh wait we have that in phoenix. The largest producing facility in the country. Never give it a second thought
Another cool fact about Arizona's Palo Verde plant is that the cooling water is almost entirely recaptured waste water. Since potable water is such a precious resource to Arizona, it's amazing how much full process engineering went into making the full operational environmental impact as minimal as possible.
It is also one of the only facilities in the USA that is able to run on MOX fuel, or mixed-oxides, which means the plant is capable of consuming the waste spent fuel from other reactors after some chemical reprocessing.
In sweden there is a village literaly on the gate of the largest nuclear power plant in the country.
.it have one of the highest property prices for villages in the middle of nowhere.
It's like a small city. I've only gotten as close as Baseline road to seeing it in person.
@gibster9624 same. I've only seen it from I-10 but very visible
I think it was Teller who said: the first nuclear reactor took 18 months to build, now they take 12 years, and that's progress?
Yes the first reactor had ropes holding the control rods out of the reactor and to shutdown the reactor a kid with an ax would cut the ropes. Safety Control Rod Ax Man (SCRAM) a term used to this day
God, what an awful argument. You can't complain about the building speed while also lauding the safety of modern nuclear powerplants. They go hand in hand.
Completely irrelevant.
Teller was an expert on explosions not constructions.
@@zagreus5773 Today, we no longer have enough construction craft with the skill set to build a nuclear power plant. Wal Marts and Amazon warehouses yes but nuclear plants no
tbh i think compromising a bit of safety would be ok for getting nuclear reactors up significantly faster, as long as the compromise made sense
A big misconception of nuclear is that a meltdown is a nuclear bomb/explosion. That is as far from the truth as you can get. The fuel is not enriched enough to be able to be used in a nuclear bomb like reaction, as well as the safety features that prevent that from happening. The deadliest nuclear plant accident in history is chenobyl which was due to utter incompetence and disregard for safety, and it still killed less people than coal/gas kill every year.
The concern is a explosion be it a steam explosion or hydrogen explosion spreading highly radioactive material over a large area. TMI had a hydrogen buildup but it did not ignite, Fukushima had a hydrogen buildup and it did ignite and explode
They didn't take into account that a Tsunami that size would hit that location, despite historical evidence of that being the case. It's a big reason why regulators expect to licence holders to conduct extensive external hazard assessments as part of the licencing basis.
@@CaillouThePimp Every nuclear power plant MUST consider every possible natural and man made accident AND protect against every creditable event. This is not an exact science and that was the case of the unexpected size of the Tsunami at Fukushima. It was NOT expected based on historical evidence.
But just like Fukushima, it is possible that some other nuclear plant may have underestimated a potential accident.
Chernobyl was largely the result of a fundamental design element of RBMK reactors that was identified as a risk before they built the first one.
@@craighandley7535 The design had flaws but the biggest issue is that the workers at the plant operated outside of the plants standard operating procedure.
The environmental activists have literally never gotten it right on a major issue. It’s embarrassing
They have, in fact, gotten it right every single time.
Ask yourself this. If you were the CEO of BP and you wanted to create a controlled opposition movement that supposedly works against you but in reality does everything in its power to benefit you, what would you do differently?
@@crazeelazee7524 Oh yea, like how all of the major scientific journals in the 1960s-1970s thought that the world would reach a new ice age by 2000. Or how one of the most influential books of the last century, Population Bomb made the idea that mass starvation would happen due to overpopulation by the 1990s. There’s now a lower percentage of the world population starving than ever before and now the scientists claim the ice age concerns were mislead, actually we are overheating.
Shut the fk up.
@@crazeelazee7524Yeah but that’s not what these environmentalists thought, they believed they acted in their best interests, while being so idiotic that they got it completely wrong. So yes, they have never gotten it right
@@Icetea-2000being led astray is a problem but lobbying for oil and gas are still to blame
@@haruhisuzumiya6650 It probably happened, but there's no proof that this is really always the reason. The core issue is that environmentalists and green voters convinced themselves that nuclear is the big bad and they did so completely on their own.
This is not an issue to blame any boogeyman with, the boogeyman are the people themselves who voted for that
Environmentalists need to realize no other green option can currently handle our entire power load
Environmentalists are NOT stopping nuclear power, at least not in the U.S.. UTILITIES decide what type of power plant to build and new nuclear is the most expensive way to produce electrical power.
@@clarkkent9080
Jesus christ dude, I hope someone is paying you to respond to seemingly every nuclear-positive in this comment section. Cause if not, you're a truly sad human being.
@@clarkkent9080They literally are, globally. Here in Germany the green party was literally formed specifically against nuclear power, a party born out of an astroturfing campaign by oil companies and they don’t even realize it themselves
Lay people need to realize that nuclear power generation isnt a "green" energy.
Dont fall for the psyop brothers
Lay people need to realize that nuclear power generation isnt a "green" energy.
I notice that the environmental activists always sing songs but rarely have sound arguments.
Because they're vapid bleeding hearts. They want to do the right thing but they have no idea how which leads to bad times for all.
They get paid to sing, not to argue.
@@killman369547 old proverbs would say "no good deed goes unpunished"
the concerns about nuclear power plants being risky just show how clueless people are about them, they take examples of catastrophes from the past, but nowadays the precautions we take are absolutely insane to the point they're actually one of the safest ways of energy generation
It is dishonest to refer to solar and wind as “renewable.”
They certainly are not renewable, nor really are they particularly environmentally friendly.
Extremely dishonest.
The energy itself is renewable, but the way we collect it isn't exactly a clean business.
The thing is: both solar and wind can be manufactured in much cleaner ways, but that would cut into profit margins.
Obviously nuclear has a lot of benefits activists hate to admit, they hyperfocus on "what ifs" while ignoring reality.
@@peterpan4038 What is even meant by “renewable?” Relative to conventional alternatives, Solar and wind require more resources, cost more (ie require more human effort), and are extremely unreliable. As such, the forced government subsidies for these inferior technologies waste material and human resources - and negatively impact our environment more significantly than conventional technologies. It isn’t a coincidence that “renewable” doesn’t have a clear meaning - it’s just a government funded marketing sham invented by lobbyists seeking government funding at our expense.
@@gregdaugherty6065 Huh?
The term is actually super easy to understand.
Renewable energy only means that the energy source itself isn't finite, and we really don't need to worry about sun or windy weather running out of energy any time soon.
The same goes for hydropower, our rivers and oceans won't suddenly stop flowing either.
Obviously renewable as a term doesn't mean the way we harvest that energy is clean, in fact it can even be really dirty if all the required manufacturing is taken into account.
Hence it all boils down to conflicting interests. Some of those are political, others are financial, and some are very much strategic.
Political issues are always the most troublesome. That's something pretty much everyone can agree on.
Financial ones are obviously about the best possible return of investment.
And finally strategical concerns are all about being independent from foreign suppliers of resources and fuel. And vice versa, supplying foreign nations with stuff THEY develope a dependance on is great for us.
Environmental concerns have by their very nature no place in all of this, hence if we want to care about environmental issues we have to make a compromise in one or more of the fields pointed out above.
Beats me what the best course of action is.
The one thing i'm sure about: nuclear energy can tick of all the right boxes above, hence to me nuclear is a no-brainer.
Never ceases to amaze one about how so many fail to understand how nuclear power is supposed to work.
Majority of radiological accidents have human factor/error as a big reason as to why they became such an issue. Three Mile was blown out of proportion because of inefficient control room ergonomics and an inbound phone call that ended up connecting to the control room instead of an actual spokesman. Chernobyl was a flawed reactor design that was tasked to perform a limit test using inexperienced night crew, and that was started and carried out between two shifts at that.
Fukushima is probably one of the few I can actually criticize for any actual failure, if only because the idea of building a reactor on the coastline of a country infamous for tectonic activity was asking for much. Even then, that accident is more of a domino effect of back luck and circumstances.
Plus the sister plant at Fukushima suffered the same failures, but was saved by the plant operator's using car batteries to restore control power to the reactor control panel.
@@Cowboycomando54I've never heard about this before. What a cool fact, someone should do a documentary about this and interview the guy.
How us this an argument? Nuclear power plants are operated by humans. So human error is still a failure of the design, as a proper design would eliminate or at least limit the possibility of human error.
You're basically saying that nuclear disasters will always happen, because human error and natural disasters cannot be avoided. That is basically the argument of the anti-nuclear lobby.
Fukushima plant building erased a somewhat safe soil it could've stood on. Chernobyl was built poorly, even without reactor melting down, block 3 could've fallen apart by itself because steam separators running was ruining the thing.
Thank god the reactor didn't melted down earlier at Leningrad.
What's terrible is I can remember that old Captain Planet Cartoon and him mentioning how safe and reliable a well maintained Nuclear Power Plant can be.
Unfortunately Captain Planet was defeated by lobbyists and politics, he's unemployed now living off of birds and whiskey.
Did he use the phrase "Too cheap to meter"?
Naval Nuclear Machinist's Mate here. Seeing first hand how safe, efficient, and clean nuclear energy can be when treated with the proper respect feels like this super obvious solution to such a gigantic problem. It's incredibly frustrating watching us continue to phase out the absolute cleanest solution we have for the next several decades at least. We've operated twin 550 MW reactors on moving, seagoing vessels with no major accidents in 50 years. I think the realization will come sooner or later, but it's honestly mind-blowing it's taken this long.
Try researching VC Summer unit 2 &3 and Vogtle unit 3 &4 and you have the real answer.....spoiler alert MASSIVE cost and 157 years to build a new nuclear plant. The Navy does not prioritize cost
@klerkcant Yet you know full well ruinables cost more than even Vogtle.
Imagine how different the last four years would have been if the public at large thought about historical mishaps with vaccines the same way they thought about historical mishaps with nuclear power.
LOL
Good point!
Wow. That's an excellent point.
Two boys.
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/Allan_Warner%2C_photograph_of_two_boys_with_smallpox_%28Atlas_of_Clinical_Medicine%2C_Surgery%2C_and_Pathology%2C_1901%29_%28cropped%29.jpg
Do we have a good alternative to vaccines like we do for nuclear with wind and solar?
@@zagreus5773 Inoculants?
I wish Australia had some political spine when it comes to Nuclear energy.
It is interesting that Miss Thunberg is criticizing Germany for closing down its nuclear reactors, especially as her own home country has shut down 6 of its 12 fully operational reactors.
Imagine how much we couldve slowed down climate change if it wasnt for the overblown public backlash against nuclear
Its not too late yet, and people seem to understand now that nuclear risks were overblown
Michael Shellenberger is an excellent example of someone whose anti-nuclear views disappeared once he made an effort to actually understand the technology and its issues - imagine that, someone who fact-checked his own beliefs then discarded them when they lacked merit.
Its geniuenly upsetting how much slander nuclear energy has gotten and the fact so many people are ao against it for such outdated and misinformed opinions.
where do people get the idea that people or politicians decide what power plant to build. Utilities decide NOT politicians. In the U.S. today, Biden has $30 billion to give to investor owned utilities to bribe them to keep them running. $2 billion each was given to NuScale and Terrapower along with other perks to help them build new nuclear plants. VC Summer canceled their project in 2017 after spending billions with no end in sight. Vogtle completed their $35 billion new nuclear project and is now the most expensive (per MW capacity) power plant in the world. It is COST, COST, and COST that is keeping utilities away from new nuclear.
Most of those against nuclear power have no idea on how nuclear energy works or all the detail related to the known meltdowns or partial meltdowns in the world.
Do you know it is the most expensive way to generate power by far????
@@clarkkent9080 to get it started up yes, but once you get the reactor going? No it isn’t
@@Scuba_Tim88 The last nuclear power plant Vogtle unit 3&4) to startup (2023 & 2024) cost $35 billion. The 3% loan on the construction cost has a yearly interest of over $1 billion and the labor cost and fuel cost adds ~ $100 million per year.
Solar panels get washed once per year and wind turbines are checked once per year and how much do you think that costs?
@@clarkkent9080 you mean the wind turbine that are detrimental to migratory bird populations that are also supplemented with gas and take up huge amounts of land leading to more deforestation? Or what about the solar panels that also take up huge amounts of land leading to deforestation that don’t work when the sun doesn’t shine. Also you have to huge amounts of power output that nuclear puts out that wind and solar can’t even compete on. You’re arguing based solely on cost and not taking into consideration power production and land usage compared to wind and solar. You also have a lot of mining for the minerals necessary to constructing solar panels and forgetting wind turbine sometimes spontaneously combusting
@@Scuba_Tim88 Yes, I do mean those wind turbines spinning at 2-3 rpm just chopping up all those retarded birds. I guess you are against jets that suck up millions of birds every year.
There are ~77, 000 wind turbines in the U.S. and a 100k more being built. When was the last time you actually saw anyone of those 77,000 wind turbines? Your excuses are ridiculous.
Solar panels produce when the sun is up, the temperatures are high and people are using AC. They are the best load following system out there.
Yea nuclear that requires no mining and is built from nothing. The last (2023 & 2024) nuclear plants (Vogtle) cost $35 BILLION. and will never be able to pay for it self. Right now, there are 11 nuclear power plants that the INVESTOR owned utilities want to shutdown. The only thing keeping them running is the massive tax breaks and taxpayer welfare bribes. Biden has $30 billion of taxpayer money to bribe them but almost 1/3 of that has already been committed and the rest won't last long.
One simple question: WHY doe the owners of these plants want to shut them down if they are cost effective ?
And BTW, in the U.S. there is ONLY ONE nuclear project (Terrapower) that could possibility be producing power by 2035 and there are NO OTHER projects even being considered. So cry all you want and make up stupid excuses but solar and wind turbines are being built all over and nuclear is NOT.
Nuclear Engineer here. Nuclear power is the ONLY solution to the impending energy crisis.
Former nuclear electrician in the Navy here. Now I’m a civilian working on a solar field right next to one of the biggest nuclear plants in the country. It blows my mind how much land the solar consumes to produce a fraction of the plants power.
Luckily with solar it is only your mind that blows and not the power plant.
@@zagreus5773 Don’t tell me you think it’s possible for a reactor to “blow up”
@@boatymcboatface45yearsago59 Don't tell me you don't know the difference between the plant and the reactor?
Artists, (Actors, Musicians, etc) Influencers and activists leading politics is really insane, we need to listen to the experts on each subject, not to the tantrums of ill-informed famous people. Their popularity does not make up for the lack of knowledge on those specific subjects.
This video also failed to mention one of the largest benefits of nuclear power: Safety. Nuclear power is incredibly safe. It's often listed as second to solar, but I find that misleading. Often, that relies on counting things like Fukushima (which is often inflated by the death toll of the evacuations) and Chernobyl (an easily avoidable problem that is impossible in any reactor operating in the U.S., if not globally. I doubt solar includes all the deaths from installations of residential solar panels.
The worst nuclear disaster in U.S. history claimed 0 lives. Nuclear power as a whole has caused very few deaths. And this includes many instances of situations that are not exclusive to nuclear power, such as falls, electrocutions, steam explosions, etc.
This is hotly debated. "approximately 50 deaths" is absurd, even ultra-pro nuclear scientists estimates are far beyond this. From which source did you fetch it?
@natmaka You're right in that it is debated, and upon looking again, I am under the impression I read it incorrectly. I'll edit that, and thank you for pointing that out to me.
Regardless of that, the broader point is that nuclear has very, very low deaths per unit of electricity produced. The deaths that do occur are most often in scenarios that could be present at any power plant, and occur far less frequently in nuclear power generation.
@@Voxphyle @Voxphyle > nuclear has very, very low deaths per unit of electricity produced
This is highly debated. Local experts (check their report, titled "Chernobyl: Consequences of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment" concluded that the Chernobyl disaster will kill 960000 persons.
Even fundamental principles such as an adequate way to deal with low 'doses' (case in point: Linear No-Threshold), real difference between external and internal contamination, complete (at term) effects of bioaccumulation of radioisotopes... are disputed.
> The deaths that do occur are most often in scenarios that could be present at any power plant
This is debatable, however the effect of a major nuclear accident has nearly no equivalent: pollution of vast geographical areas by a dust which travels with wind and rain, is highly dangerous even at a distance and for an extended period of time, and is extremely difficult to recover (check the Fukushima case, Wikipedia's article "Fukushima disaster cleanup" is full of sourced details: the amount and cost of efforts, by some judged grossly insufficient, are mind-boggling).
> occur far less frequently in nuclear power generation.
This is (up to now) true but only part of the equation.
Of course one of the few nuclear disaster's in history happened in a commie country.
@@natmaka Approximately 50 are the directly recorded deaths. You have to add the expectable thyroid cancer deaths downwind, which is also a documented effect attributable to the accident. So you end up with 100-200 deaths total.
Whenever you see "thousands of deaths" estimates for Chernobyl, those are fantasy values arrived at by using LNT modeling on very low dose rates applied to continent wide populations. Those deaths do not exist.
"Stopping Nuclear Energy is stopping Inflation!"
WTF?
Glad that environmentalists were proven to have the same impact on the planet as PETA has on animals.
Interesting commonalities there.
Can you give one example where environmentalists had any effect on any U.S. nuclear project in the last 20 years? Just because some random person makes a YT video and says things does not mean it is real.
@@clarkkent9080 Why limit it to 20 years? But certainly! I assume you don't believe YT postings, but I am going to have to at least assume you trust the NRC. If you don't then I'll assume you just don't like facts to challenge your beliefs, which is also fine or fitting.
So. Post 1970s era environmentalism and the subsequent public backlash, over 100 nuclear plant applications with the NRC were withdrawn. We can see this as fact, but we can also see this in total generation of power by source. Nuclear plants take a very long time to build and their charters are initially for 40 years. After the last of these that were in before the 80s were built generation was stagnant for nuclear power contribution. Does this mean that all other sources were as well? Of course not. Coal took that place. Coal that for much of that early time was laden with sulfur. Fossil fuel energy and especially coal fills the atmosphere with carcinogens and actual radioactivity. This is real harm, with real consequences. Hundreds of thousands of deaths or shortening of lives are attributed to this, and ALL that would have been less impacted or killed by the margin between where nuclear could be and where coal was instead is a death that can be laid at the feet of environmentalists that passionately fought for "no nukes" while not offering a solution.
This is not so different than environmentalism in the deeper past either, in fact it appears to be a hallmark. Consider the malaria deaths suffered by the impoverished in struggling countries. Rachel Carson directly assisted in killing them as well. When you disregard science, ignore statistics, and attempt to discredit truth you're on the path to truly follow in these esteemed footsteps.
Why limit it to 20 years? But certainly! I assume you don't believe YT postings, but I am going to have to at least assume you trust the NRC. If you don't then I'll assume you just don't like facts to challenge your beliefs, which is also fine or fitting.
So. Post 1970s era environmentalism and the subsequent public backlash, over 100 nuclear plant applications with the NRC were withdrawn. We can see this as fact, but we can also see this in total generation of power by source. Nuclear plants take a very long time to build and their charters are initially for 40 years. After the last of these that were in before the 80s were built generation was stagnant for nuclear power contribution. Does this mean that all other sources were as well? Of course not. Coal took that place. Coal that for much of that early time was laden with sulfur. Fossil fuel energy and especially coal fills the atmosphere with carcinogens and actual radioactivity. This is real harm, with real consequences. Hundreds of thousands of deaths or shortening of lives are attributed to this, and ALL that would have been less impacted or killed by the margin between where nuclear could be and where coal was instead is a death that can be laid at the feet of environmentalists that passionately fought for "no nukes" while not offering a solution.
This is not so different than environmentalism in the deeper past either, in fact it appears to be a hallmark. Consider the malaria deaths suffered by the impoverished in struggling countries. Rachel Carson directly assisted in killing them as well. When you disregard science, ignore statistics, and attempt to discredit truth you're on the path to truly follow in these esteemed footsteps.
@@clarkkent9080 Why limit it to 20 years? But certainly! I assume you don't believe YT postings, but I am going to have to at least assume you trust the NRC. If you don't then I'll assume you just don't like facts to challenge your beliefs, which is also fine or fitting. So. Post 1970s era environmentalism and the subsequent public backlash, over 100 nuclear plant applications with the NRC were withdrawn. We can see this as fact, but we can also see this in total generation of power by source. Nuclear plants take a very long time to build and their charters are initially for 40 years. After the last of these that were in before the 80s were built generation was stagnant for nuclear power contribution. Does this mean that all other sources were as well? Of course not. Coal took that place. Coal that for much of that early time was laden with sulfur. Fossil fuel energy and especially coal fills the atmosphere with carcinogens and actual radioactivity. This is real harm, with real consequences. Hundreds of thousands of deaths or shortening of lives are attributed to this, and ALL that would have been less impacted or killed by the margin between where nuclear could be and where coal was instead is a death that can be laid at the feet of environmentalists that passionately fought for "no nukes" while not offering a solution. This is not so different than environmentalism in the deeper past either, in fact it appears to be a hallmark. Consider the malaria deaths suffered by the impoverished in struggling countries. Rachel Carson directly assisted in killing them as well. When you disregard science, ignore statistics, and attempt to discredit truth you're on the path to truly follow in these esteemed footsteps.
@@clarkkent9080Why limit it to 20 years? But certainly! I assume you don't believe YT postings, but I am going to have to at least assume you trust the NRC. If you don't then I'll assume you just don't like facts to challenge your beliefs, which is also fine or fitting.
So. Post 1970s era environmentalism and the subsequent public backlash, over 100 nuclear plant applications with the NRC were withdrawn. We can see this as fact, but we can also see this in total generation of power by source. Nuclear plants take a very long time to build and their charters are initially for 40 years. After the last of these that were in before the 80s were built generation was stagnant for nuclear power contribution. Does this mean that all other sources were as well? Of course not. Coal took that place. Coal that for much of that early time was laden with sulfur. Fossil fuel energy and especially coal fills the atmosphere with carcinogens and actual radioactivity. This is real harm, with real consequences. Hundreds of thousands of deaths or shortening of lives are attributed to this, and ALL that would have been less impacted or killed by the margin between where nuclear could be and where coal was instead is a death that can be laid at the feet of environmentalists that passionately fought for "no nukes" while not offering a solution.
So that's a few hundred examples, but I suppose you can include any of the coal pollution deaths related to it as well. Add in the effects on climate and it's been a majority factor in how we got here today.
Hopefully the US can become a nuclear power leader again. Canada and France did so by relying on their own industry to scale up to build nuclear power and it worked (and is working).
Finally you guys are making documentaries again.
Building a solar power plant as a baseload power source costs, 12x more than a nuclear power plant. (calculated using Japan's actual measured nuclear construction costs)
Many people forget to factor of battery costs.
How in the world have you built a baseline power plant that is only functional part of the time? That is conter to the whole idea of baseline power, unless you plan to ration it at night to allow batteries to serve? But that is only doable in deserts because weather can cut solar output to tenths.
And solar causes more deaths per MWs generated than nuclear once you factor in the effects of all the inputs.
Solar never, ever provides baseload power.
The necessity of baseload was all due to technical limitations and becomes more and more obsolete. Read Michael Liebreich about it.
Solar energy can be a cheap form of power, but it gets exponentially more expensive to manage with greater proportions on the grid, so it is best as a supplemental source to reduce fuel use rather than trying to turn it into base load.
But since Intermittent power sources, like solar, can produce very cheap energy, finding non-grid consumers which can utilize and transform the cheap variable energy will be very useful. Pairing it with applications like making green fuels such as hydrogen and ammonia would not only allow the continued build out of solar power plants, but it would create the backup fuels needed to further decarbonize the grid and heavy industry.
17:56 "Finland created a bunker for storage 1500ft deep in bedrock." Sweden did too, in Oskarshamn. I visited it recently. We both have very stable bedrock.
A stable bedrock may not be sufficient, as plate tectonics can trigger earthquakes, and predicting such events in the pertinent upcoming timeframe (let's say 100000 years, the legal limit in most nations being 1000000 years?) is quite difficult.
BTW plate tectonics is only widely accepted since the 1960's, our knowledge of all this if way more limited than sometimes touted.
It's part of the "unnecessarily complex and expensive solutions to small problems" issue of nuclear power as a whole. Not only are such deep repositories extremely overengineered for what they do, but it's also quite useless to build something stable for 100,000 years when the stuff you bury there will be dug up again in 100 because it's nuclear fuel.
@@zolikoff This opinion can be sustained, leading to a need for reversibility of such storage, however for such a thing to happen an industrial breeder reactor is needed, and after decades of very expensive R&D aiming at it... there is none.
@@natmakaScandinavia and Finland sit in the middle of a tectonic plate, which is why burying in bedrock is a safe method of nuclear waste disposal there.
Sources of radiation that are still active after the timespans you mention are so because their activity is very low, mostly posing a lesser risk than the simple chemical toxicity of the waste, which is greatly reduced by encasing in bedrock, as opposed to leaving e. g. uranium ore in nature.
Radioactive sources either decay fast, meaning high activity but short half life, or slow, meaning long half life but low activity.
A source that is highly radioactive *and* long lived is physically impossible.
@@fooanonymous If you really can predict earthquakes at such a term please, by all means, publish. A Nobel Price may be in line.
Even a not-so-highly active source can wreak havoc, for example if it falls into a water table.
Watching from New Zealand. During the 1980s, anti-nuclear groups led the NZ Government to ban nuclear weapons and energy from NZ territory. That affected defence ties with the US and also means that NZ doesn't have nuclear power plants. The anti-nuclear movement in my country conflated nuclear weapons with nuclear technology.
And 3-mile island other reactors remained open for decades after.
your point being?
That it couldn't be that bad if so little damage was caused.
@@aaronkcmo that the use case for stopping nuclear power isn’t even an effective use case and we all bent the knee to these activist (and continue to do so) based on feelings and not actual facts/science… that these same folks will gladly weaponize when it works or can be twisted in their favor.
@@nothandmade9686 that doesn't say a whole lot. the remaining reactors at chernobyl stayed open for decades after that accident too. same with fukushima.
Meanwhile downstream in Delaware is the highest cancer rate in the country.
I like how the same people who caused the problem now changed costume, once the data is undeniable: “Oh, I never said that… go clean and nuclear!” to later keep on lecturing about other issues they don’t have any grasp either.
It's not the data that force policy makes to change there mind. It never is. Its people vote
Thorium based, molten salt reactors can be modular and scalable with fail safe features that address meltdown risks. The USAF designed and demonstrated the technology back in the 1950s… we need to build them, other nations are accelerating the development into products to solve a wide variety of problems…
yeah except its a lot more complicated and there are still a lot of challenges in dealing with molten salt
@@MattBuild4
The most difficulty is the bureaucratic red tape, something the Chinese 🇨🇳 government didn't inflict upon their people who built a Thorium Molten Salt Reactor In the gobi desert that's actually running right now. The next Chinese 🇨🇳 Thorium Molten Salt Reactor goes into a giant container ship🚢 while western countries are bureaucratically road blocking true nuclear energy advancement. Basically the space race is more important than the race for clean and actually safe Reactors that can't make radioactive ghost towns.
@@drmosfet Youre talking about the TMSR project developed by SINAP in china? Yeah so, you do realize that Oak Ridge National Lab and Argonne National Lab are literally partners with SINAP on that project? Meaning that the US government you despise so much are literally involved in that project......
@@MattBuild4
I know they handed over copy documents and throwing in a tour of the facility for the Chinese, are you saying that this reactor is not operational? Despise is the wrong word it's more like frustrated with the neglect of such an important technology.
The project was canceled due to UN-SOLVABLE technical issues. Don't believe everything you tink
dude with blue eyes forgot to say electric cars, where is all the juice for those sweet toys going to come from?
Coal states love electric cars.
From renewables, and those vehicles will help the grid through V2G.
They're harnessing unicorn farts, didn't you hear?
@@natmaka now your talking shit, V2G has never gotten beyond the experimental stage. Car will at best be street by street buffers in a brown out. A large hydrogen commercial vehicle though…. But again nothing more than a brain fart.
@@Bob_Adkins Wind power generation (source: Ourworlindata): 2.6TWh in 1989, then 2,098TWh in 2022 (x800 times in 33 years). Nuclear: 1945 and 2632 (x1.35 times).
Very disappointed to discover that RFK Jr. is such an opponent of nuclear power.
That was a given....
He is NOT anti nuclear. He says that if the new nuclear technology actually can do what people say it can he is a supporter but until it is proven he is a skeptic and I agree 1000%
@clarkkent9080 I actually agree with that. There are very good reactor designs which have been proven we should build one of those designs as quickly as safely possible. That doesn't mean that new designs shouldn't be worked on at national laboratories, because there seems to me to be a wide range of improvements which could be made in the nuclear power field.
I appreciate the optimism in the second half of this. Hopefully that is what prevails.
There already were at least 2 attempts of a nuclear 'renaissance'. There is a bit of room for a last one, but hurry up as renewables are fast and accelerating.
@@natmaka "renewables" will NEVER have the energy density of nuclear power. Once people realize we'll have to dedicate half of earth's surface both land and sea to solar and wind farms just to break even they'll come around to nuclear power. When China beats us to a Mars colony because we don't have enough power and they do because they don't care they'll use the best power source available while we're stuck using solar panels because of muh feelings people will realize how stupid we've been.
The biggest mistake we made with nuclear was not going with a standardized plant design like France did. When Carter went to 3MI he got more radiayion exposure on the flight from DC to Harrisburg. When they had the Congressional hearings the AEC/NRA inspectors were asked how they measured the radiation. They had their Gieger Counters with them. When they measured yhe radiation levels in the hearing chamber it was far higher than the 3MI. Just from all the naturally radioactive stuff in the stone work of the hearing chamber.
They don't call them Gieger counters. You only see that in the movies
@@clarkkent9080
OK Clark, the point was so that everyone would understand what they were using.
@@mpetersen6 Sorry, I worked in the nuclear industry 40+ years and even started as a Radiation Control Technician and I never heard anyone refer to any of the instruments as a Geiger counter. The term comes from the inventor of the radiation detection instrument and is generic in nature. There are various portable detectors, detecting various types of radiation and they are usually refereed to by the manufacturer's ID (eg. HP-210, etc.).
There are many sources of natural background radiation but even with that, one should never receive any more radiation exposure than absolutely necessary. I understand your point that the TMI-2 accident did not result in significant radiation releases. However, I would point out that TMI-2 was only 3 months old and had very little fission product decay heat. Had the exact accident occurred at TMI-1, the event would have been significantly different. Even with a low decay heat load, the hydrogen buildup in the containment was very dangerous. The destruction at Fukushima was caused by a hydrogen buildup and explosion. We were very very lucky with the events at TMI-2.
When I was separating from the Navy I interviewed at Indian Point. Luckily I went with Nine Mile Point instead. So sad that so many jobs were lost.
The only information I've ever heard about Jane Fonda is that she went to the side of Vietman we were fighting with, met with american POWs and when one handed her a note to take back to america she immediately handed it to the Vietnamese guards
And we are now friends with Vietnam and am paying them for the damage we caused
Holy Shit do you have a source? That’s crazy if it’s true!
@@LaikaTheG The source is the same people who say the 2020 election was stolen. The POWs who met with Jane Fonda in 1972 have confirmed that they never handed her slips, and the one man who routinely mentioned, that he did, never met Jane Fonda. It has been debunked as early as 1975.
Damn Jane Fonda is almost 90. How long are these people gonna milk that old cow?
The Gulf of Tonkin event that allowed Johnson to ask Congress to go to war with Vietnam occurred because the U.S. Navy supported S. Vietnam in attacking military bases in the Golf of Tonkin and the N. Vietnam responded and 60,000 Americans died because the Military Industrial complex wanted another war so they could make more money.
This was a great mini doc. Thank you for this!
The "green" renewable energy being pushed isn't nearly as "green" as they claim. Consider the mining, shipping, and processing. Not so "green". Nuclear from small modular reactors makes more sense to me. The fear of melt downs is irrational. Many more people have died from air pollution than from melt downs. Not a good comparison of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. The problem of storing nuclear waste might be solved largely with SMRs. Some don't think it can be done but we have nuclear submarines. If we can do that we can do it on land.
Don't small reactors produce more waste, because they can't get as high neutron flux and burn-up as bigger reactors due their size?
I haven't heard anything about that. I've heard they produce less waste. Also they don't shut down all at once. If one goes down the rest stay on line. I've also heard they don't melt down. Something goes wrong they just shut down. I'll see if I can find anything about how much waste they produce.
@@veronikakerman6536
*SMR = small modular reactor.
As someone who has solar panels, they are ok for individual but can never work as a full community. In order to meet demand during winter where days are short and sunny days are less, you have to build 2-3 times the panels needed during summer. So costs will be 3x so you can handle winters but most panels will be useless in summer. The space needed would be huge. The cost huge. After having my own panels, it’s clear that they simply cannot work on a mass scale to provide the majority of power. Panels may get more efficient but I think it’s limited on physics and may only increase by 1-8%. Same problem with wind. You need dependable power which is why coal and LNG still are usdd
There is also the unmentioned problem of panel damage (e.g. via hail). This is a significant issue in parts of Australia, and recurrent panel insurance charges can be significant - in some cases approaching over 50% of your feed-in tariff. You get very little return on the "investment" these days, but you are entirely responsible for system upkeep and maintenance. Also, many insurers regard roof-mounted panels as an "additional risk", resulting in an increase in your normal household policy charges
Have you had to replace your panels yet? They lose a lot of efficiency within a couple years
You're left to conclude that some people don't want reliable, abundant, cheap power. One can only speculate why that is...
It does not matter what people want. UTILITIES decide what power plant to build. This is not the 1970s with hippies and Jane Fonda is almost 90. With very few exceptions, people do not protest new nuclear.
If we continue on the ruinables path without nuclear we face a grim future of exorbitant electricity rates, energy rationing, and massive rolling blackouts.
I am on Vogtle power and my rates just went up 25% with more rate increases to follow. Don't believe everything you think
@@clarkkent9080 Rates have gone up similarly in all energy sectors, in fact some areas with high ruinables have gone up substantially more than nuclear.
@@ForbiddTV facts are facts dude and that 25% increase was specifically for Vogtle unit 3 and now that Vogtle unit 4 is on line more rate increases are coming. So don't calim that rates will increase without nuclear when the opposite is true
@@clarkkent9080 Show anywhere I ever said nuclear rates can't rise. Nuclear is still cheaper than ruinables when real numbers are used, even when comparing to Vogtle.
@@ForbiddTV That must be why no U.S. utility is even remotely interested in the AP1000.
NuScale just canceled their SMR reactor project after getting $2 billion in taxpayer welfare (and were asking for another $2 billion), have free government land on which to build, and were given hundreds of millions of taxpayer money for their NRC project review that they kept changing. Now they are being sued by their investors for fraud.
The Terrapower project has been promising a new nuclear project since 2016 has yet to break ground, was also given $2 billion in taxpayer welfare, the U.S. is building them a fuel facility, and it is run by Bill Gates one of the richest men in the world.
New nuclear can't happen even when the taxpayer gives their super rich owners and investors billions.
Im on the right, I've done a lot of research into nuclear power and I think that the reason that I am against it is because of how we do nuclear power now.
The whole reason we do water cooled reactor comes from the navy using them in submarines.
Tmi was not a small accident. There was a paper written that since the winds were low during the accident, all of the radioactive release stayed in a valley town for days. There was an increase of lung cancer by 10,000 over the next 30 years in this valley. There are ted talks about this subject.
Nuclear power can run for 40 years but then have just one bad day and ruin a large area for hundreds of years.
This is my opinion, don't hate.
But that’s not possible for radiation to be released. See, TMI was not a meltdown, it was partial meltdown. For a reactor to be considered as experiencing a meltdown the metal walls of the reactor must melt, releasing molten radioactive metals into a formation called an “elephant’s foot” (Chernobyl has one. Look it up). The foot is what releases radiation. TMI experienced a partial meltdown where superheated steam levels rose super high and the temperatures inside the reactor increased drastically before a technician noticed and safely shut everything down. So it’s literally impossible for TMI to have released radiation in any way, shape, or form. What probably happened is that Coal plants were created to make up for this lack of energy and that caused an increase in lung cancer (I don’t have proof it’s just a theory/thought I had).
We’ve only had three major incidents with nuclear plants. One being TMI, one being Chernobyl (caused by sheer Russian incompetence and lack of empathy towards human safety), and Fukushima (a literal earthquake and tsunami hit the plant and only after the tsunami did the plant leak any sort of radiation). WCRs happen to be a very well made reactor design and there’s a reason the Navy and most reactors use this design
TMI was a small in incident, in the US, only 5 people have ever died as a result of radiation leaked from a nuclear power plant. All of which were employees.
"We have met the enemy and he is us." Walt Kelly
We are our own worst enemy largely due to a failure to think, let alone think critically. We're freaking lazy. It shows. It is destroying the US. I was unfashionable to say this on my college campus in the mid 1960s; I remained unfashionable thoughout the 70. 80. 90. 00's, 10's; I remain unfashionable today. It's too easy to let somebody else do your thinking for you. And those doing the thinking for us do NOT have OUR interests in mind. They have their own short term interests. To them we do not matter except as Chinese Chives to be harvested and reharvested to fill their pockets.
{o.o}
I disagree with this channel on most political issues, but you guys have definitely knocked it out of the park in this video. 100% renewable is not feasible and Germany stands as the case study. Thank you for bringing more attention to nuclear power and busting the myths behind it.
One interesting fact is that the french replaced 75% of its energy with nuclear energy in 30 years. They built on average 53 nuclear power plants every decade while now globally we are producing around 60 nuclear power plants per decade. It is insane that france had the current global nuclear energy production for 30 years.
context: RFK jnr was not opposed to nuclear energy production but the dumping of toxic waste into the hudson....
I agree
They ran Columbia river water through the breeder reactor at Hanford and discharged it right back into the river for decades. No rise in cancers downstream.
Closing nuclear power stations is ''great'' ... until it affects you directly.
Mhm. Just saw a comment from a new yorker saying their power bill went up 100 bucks. And the reason being is Indian point had paid off it's construction costs long ago and really was generating that cheap energy they promised back in the 50's. Had we really gone for nuclearization of the energy grid we'd be paying pennies on the dollar for electricity by now. People expected them to deliver that cheap power immediately without realizing it takes time to transition an entire power grid. Basically impatience and ignorance killed the nuclear dream.
@@killman369547well, the rulers of planet earth really, really don’t want the masses to prosper. they knew eventually there would be a nuclear accident and they would use that as justification to stall or kill all future construction, in tandem with scaring the public which is mostly ignorant about nuclear. they _could_ teach it in public schools but they won’t. they don’t want the masses to know too much. hard to control a well informed, educated populace. (see george carlin)
Reason hits with a sledgehammer every time. Keep the insights coming.
They don't want a solution, they want to complain.
nuclear is not a solution. VC Summer canceled in 2017 after spending billions and bankrupting the utility. Vogtle completed unit 3 & 4 in 2023 & 2024 and now has the world's most expensive (per Mw capacity) in the world....and a $1 billion per year interest on the construction loan that they can never pay off. Rates have increased 35%....what a solution
Feelings over facts never add up.
How about real facts.
LIE #1-“ A nuclear resurgence in the U.S. is being prevented by anti-nukes, politicians, the media, leftists, greenies, etc”..
TRUTH- This lie is told by people who ignore the recent new U.S. nuclear build If you live in the U.S. here is the reality for the last 4 “state of the art” Generation III Westinghouse AP1000 ADVANCED new nuclear power projects and spent fuel reprocessing in the U.S. over the last 20 years. The AP1000 is fully approved by the NRC for construction and operation. The only NRC requirement is that the plant be built per design documents…..seems simple..
The Southeastern U.S. is super pro-nuclear MAGA, has zero anti-nukes, and 100% media, local, and political support.
The MOX facility (South Carolina) was a U.S. government nuclear reprocessing facility that was supposed to mix pure weapon grade Pu239 with U238 to make reactor fuel assemblies. It was canceled (2017) in the U.S. After spending $10 billion for a plant that was originally estimated to cost $1 billion and an independent report that estimated it would cost $100 billion to complete the plant and process all the Pu239, Trump canceled the project in 2017.
VC Summer (South Carolina) new nuclear units 2&3 were canceled in 2017 after spending $17 billion on the project (original estimate of $14 billion and 2016 completion date) with no clear end in sight for costs or schedule. Four managers on the project were charged with 16 felony counts, including conspiracy, wire fraud, securities fraud, and causing a publicly traded company to keep a false record. The CEO of the project is serving 2 years in prison, another manager just got 15 months in prison, and the others are awaiting trial.
Vogtle (Georgia) new nuclear units 3 & 4 at 125% over budget and schedule The third and fourth reactors were originally supposed to cost $14 billion, but ended up costing $31 billion. That doesn’t include $3.7 billion that original contractor Westinghouse paid to the owners to walk away from the project. That brings total spending to almost $35 billion.
Vogtle is now the most expensive (per MW capacity) power plant in the world. That record may soon be broken as the UK’s Hinkley nuclear project cost is rapidly escalating.
Please google any of this to confirm.failures and only want to talk about what is happening in other countries. They have no good facts relating to U.S. nuclear builds so they lay blame on these mysterious boogie men.
How can any YT video on nuclear power simply IGNORE the 5 nuclear new build failures in the U.S. in the last 20 years??? If it doesn’t fit their narrative, they just ignore it?
Please don’t assume that YT videos are factual.
Hell on earth!!
It's really difficult to find how many people in the USA have died as a result of nuclear-specific energy production since the first commercial reactors came online in the late 1950s. I tried once, and I sifted through every incident I could find. There are people who have died from heavy equipment falling on them, or from electrocution, but that happens in any power plant. I eventually came to 5. Five people in 70 years died of radiation exposure from commercial nuclear power generation. All were plant employees, and three were involved in a single incident. Now try running those numbers for wind power. Or solar, and then coal, oil, and gas plants. The fact is, nuclear power stations are designed and run with extreme caution because the risks involved are magnified. The operators at 3-Mile Island made mistake after mistake and the design was so good, no one was even injured. And that's 1950s submarine technology!
I find our enemies' sudden interest in nuclear power alarming. Fonda has literally never seen an evil she didn't side with.
Why are the people who hate America and all that is good in the world reversing their position on this one issue? What are they planning?
The majority of these reactors never failed and still work and here we are.
18:06 Finland had a game changing idea: dig a hole and put it in the hole.
A great segment. More of this.
Being anti-nuclear is the environmentalist equivalent of having TDS.
Being anti-wind and solar is just buying into all the lies
@CorrieMay-sl3tl mate, I worked in the nuclear industry for 40+ years at 5 different facilities, I am pro-nuclear and can address all the safety, spent fuel, etc. issues but I cannot defend the massive cost. New nuclear is 2-3 times as expensive as any generation method. It is all about the cost.
Every country is different but in the U.S. we now have more solar and wind capacity awaiting approval to connect to the grid that we currently use from all generation sources.
Solar is def. a limited source but it does provide power during the day light hours when most businesses are using the most power. Given the sun movement from east to west, and electricity can be transmitted over long distances, it can produce power for up to 12 hours. There are locations where wind blows 24/7 so that is not an issue.
Electrical generation MUST equal electrical usage on a grid and this is accomplished in large part by spinning reserve. Electrical generators (usually natural gas turbines) are spinning and can be connected to the grid at a moment's notice as needed. Solar and wind turbines (feathered blades) make excellent spinning reserve sources. So a renewable grid will have to utilize significantly more spinning reserve that a natural gas supplied grid.
What's with putting Greta Thunberg at the start? She was against closing German nuclear plants.
This video has a criminally low number of views. This is top-tier journalism and more people need to see it.
Don't molten salt reactors have the ability to run on nuclear waste and turn it into inert materials? Don't full cycle reactors also have this capability? Thought we solved these problems over a decade ago
It’s cheaper to just dump the waste somewhere then to process the fuel, so those once-through reactors were built instead. One goal of nuclear engineers should be to force corporations to adopt full fuel cycles through reactor design
MSRs can, but youre more likely talking about is just any reactor that utilizes nuclear burning. You dont really need a MSR for it - you need higher temperature that what you typically run in a BWR, but thats a lot of reactor types that enable you to run that high.
Also nuclear burning doesnt necessarily transform nuclear waste into inert materials. Burning is the process of introducing free neutrons to nuclear material and changing the isotopic characteristics of the material. This is done to reduce the overall decay rate of the material. So for those concerned about long lived nuclear materials or medium lived nuclear materials this process could be done to significantly reduce the decay rate.
However i should be noted that if you are changing the decay rate from a long amount of time to a short amount of time, that material will become considerably more radioactive as the material will emit energy faster per second of time - which is how radioactivity is measured.
Compare and contrast Nuclear in the USA and countries like Switzerland, Sweden, and Finland: those are some of the freest countries on the planet.
United States:
Largest Producer: The U.S. is the largest producer of nuclear power globally, generating a substantial portion of its electricity from nuclear reactors.
Electricity Share: However, nuclear power accounts for only about 19.3% of the country’s electricity supply.
Number of Reactors: The U.S. operates a significant number of reactors, with a net capacity of 772,221 GWh in 2022.
Future Outlook: While the U.S. continues to operate existing reactors, there are discussions about expanding nuclear energy and investing in advanced reactor technologies.
Switzerland:
Nuclear Share: Switzerland has four operable nuclear reactors, contributing to 36.4% of its electricity generation in 2022.
Geological Disposal: Switzerland is one of the countries actively moving forward with deep geological disposal for spent nuclear fuel.
Decommissioning: The Swiss government has plans for the gradual phase-out of nuclear power, with the last reactor expected to be decommissioned by 2044.
Sweden:
Nuclear Share: Sweden generates 40.3% of its electricity from nuclear power.
Phase-Out and Reversal: Sweden initially had a phase-out policy but has since moved away from it. The country now aims to maintain its existing reactors and possibly build new ones.
Spent Fuel Management: Sweden is actively involved in researching and implementing safe methods for managing spent nuclear fuel.
Finland:
Nuclear Share: Finland relies on nuclear power for 32.4% of its electricity needs.
Advanced Disposal: Finland is among the countries advancing in deep geological disposal of spent nuclear fuel.
New Reactor: Finland is constructing the Olkiluoto 3 nuclear reactor, which will be one of the world’s largest once operational.
In summary, while the U.S. leads in sheer nuclear capacity, countries like Switzerland, Sweden, and Finland prioritize safety, disposal, and sustainable energy production. Each nation’s approach reflects its unique energy policies and environmental considerations.
Switzerland: a law (May, 2017) establishes that nuclear will be progressively phased out and that renewables will replace it.
Sweden:
1/ no new nuclear reactor since 1985, despite periodic declarations of intent,
2/ they "enjoyed" a near-miss at Forsmark in July 2006,
3/ hydro is the main source,
4/ wind is very quickly gaining traction.
U.S. no longer has the work ready capable workforce to build new nuclear generating stations or even maintain the existing fleet. NuScale was having components built in Korea. The last two outages I worked at Indian Point were increasingly manned with foreign workers and engineers. The delays at Vogtle were due to incompetent workforce.
same in finland
Looking back at the environmentalists and the politicians shortsightedness is depressing in 2024 when we need the electricity more than ever.
In fairness to the anti-nuclear activists though: The reactor designs of the 1970s did seem inherently dangerous. They required constant management to avoid meltdown. Whereas reactors of recent decades are a lot more fail-safe.
Til they find yet another way this Cold War reactors design can go wrong, bug fixes are called generation this and that, they like to throw in other fission reactor design to confuse the issue, that way they can flabbergast you while correcting you, avoid import questions, the same kind of questions one might ask while shopping for a car and looking at the window sticker, horsepower, fuel efficiency, pollution etc.
@@YellowRambler I don't think that's true. Modern reactors are of a substantially different design. As far as I know, there have been no major accidents of a reactor built since 1980. And even minor accidents have been extremely rare.
Our engineering knowledge of the technology is vastly superior to the 70s and 80s. And we clearly established the major flaws with those previous designs a long time ago, but they were ignored for political reasons.
That is not true att all. All light water reactors are stable your statment is totaly false
@@andybrice2711
Modern fission reactor design are different? If it PWR you must mean the endless additions of safety features and safety systems to keep this tired design working. The only real modern fission reactor I know of is in a Desert in China 🇨🇳 the one based on Alvins Weinberg replacement reactor for the PWR.
@@YellowRambler But those safety features seem to have worked. I'm not aware of any major incidents involving PWRs built after 1980. That's a 40 year track record.
Sure, innovation would be positive. But that would also bring new unknowns.
I do have some doubts with nuclear being emission free, there is a plant near my home off of the Minnesota river that I like to fish the plant pumps it’s spent water back into the river, the water is warm so the fish like to congregate around there, now that’s all fine. Until this past winter where the plant knew they dumped thousands of gallons of radioactive water into the river and kept it under wraps for over 2 months. I think it’s important to be rational and not write something off as one thing or another.
CORRECTION: no, you are right, all that radioactive water did leak. Want to know why we haven’t heard of this, as a global news story? Because the levels of radioactivity were so low, that it was statistically insignificant.
You know what causes more damage? “Mild” leaks from coal or oil processing plants. Or how about the run off from lithium mines that give lithium to make the batteries that solar and wind need?
Want to know why the water is warm? Is cooled steam. If you boil a pot of water and collect the steam, then touch the droplets, they are warm, are they not?
The water is not warm because of radioactivity. If it was you would not be alive. That kind of radiation will take you out in a matter of minutes and give your horrific burns just by standing near it
whose in their right mind want to have thousands years nuclear waste on their backyards
Everyone with a backyard since dirt and rocks contain naturally occurring uranium and thorium
@@filipporiva1864 as long as it stay underground far from humanity hands
@@bobsthea yeah, that’s what we’re trying to do, but people keep freaking out over an aircraft and bomb resistant multi-layered concrete cylinder stored half a km deep in geologically stable rocks
Kyle Hill KISSED an exposed nuclear waste casket. They are safe. When you bury these a couple km underground I promise you, you wouldn’t even know. Especially given the fact that most waste fuel from reactors can actually be used in specialized reactors whose waste decays in a couple hundred years instead.
Raw uranium exists in the soil you use to plant your flowers in. It will be there for BILLIONS of years. The sun? Also radioactive.
You are being exposed to radiation of the cosmos. But also from the ground. What is funny is with the waste we bury WONT expose you, or the environment.
Richard Nixon of all people had a plan to consistently keep building NPPs in serialized production in the US until the year 2000, which would have made the grid 100% carbon neutral and ensured independence from Saudi/Iranian oil, via the ability to synthesize hydrocarbons from the excess energy.
The U.S. produces vastly more oil than we use. After the oil crisis of the 1970s U.S. oil producers were not allow to export oil. The Big oil companies wanted to make more profit so in 2011 the U.S. started exporting our excess oil. If you want gasoline prices to drop, just prevent the oil companies from selling our oil to other countries and we won't need nuclear
@@clarkkent9080 The point is energy independence without having to utilize crude oil extraction.
In medieval times, most forests were endangered due to how much people utilized them for fuel and construction. Once wood started to be replaced with coal as the primary fuel source, the forests started recovering.
The lesson being that as civilization develops and consequently uses more energy, you have to step up to using more efficient and energy dense sources of energy.
When do you realize an energy source from the early Edwardian era is no longer ideal for energy-intense civilization?
@@Waldemarvonanhalt We will always need oil. Tanks and jets cannot use batteries.
Right now there is more solar and wind capacity awaiting approval to connect to the grid that what we use from all generation sources. Texas, oil country, has surpassed California in renewables.
The issue is NOT generation source, it is grid availability
@@clarkkent9080 In which case you're arguing against the energy source with the highest capacity factor, highest reliability factor, smallest land footprint relative to the amount of energy it produces and is dispatchable unlike aforementioned wind and PV?
Of course the internal combustion engine is too useful to phase out of use entirely, but using the argument that planes and tanks need fuel as your defense...you might as well be saying we should go back to using leaded fuel, because it's needed for aircraft and it produces more power output.
www.youtube.com/@decouplemedia107/videos
Most people in the comments mention France but don’t forget Canada has a large renewable power grid. About 61% of power comes from Hydro and 14% comes from Nuclear. While in Ontario, the most populated province in Canada, 63% of the power comes from nuclear. Plus Canada’s hydroelectric dominance has comes from it geography and hydro while clean is far more impactful on the environment than nuclear it.
But most countries do not have that hydroelectric potential.
@@danadurnfordkevinblanchdebunk fair enough, I was trying to highlight the nuclear energy fact since my home province of Ontario is a powerhouse when it comes to nuclear but I got side tracked since I learned hydro in the biggest contributor to energy in Canada. But Canada has made several advancements in nuclear energy, like the CANDU reactor.
@@danadurnfordkevinblanchdebunk fair enough, I was trying to highlight the nuclear energy fact since my home province of Ontario is a powerhouse when it comes to nuclear but I got side tracked since I learned hydro in the biggest contributor to energy in Canada. But Canada has made several advancements in nuclear energy, like the CANDU reactor.
True. Hydro is the only serious contender. France used to have 50pcent hydro too.
@@pierren___ Hydroelectric is a perfect match to nuclear. Nuclear is a great baseload and hydroelectric can meet peak demands if properly managed since all that stored water is essentially a battery.
I get the sense that anti-nuclear movements were one of the direct causes of prevalent poverty and environmental issues today. Also, nuclear is too good. You can’t keep making money on something this efficient. On the other hand, currently nuclear energy is too expensive because the investment necessary to optimize it was cut to nearly nothing since the 70s
I live around half an hour's drive from Indian Point. I remember when they shut it down. it was disgusting. I know it was old but it would have been cheaper to renovate it than to lose the power it generated for the entire area.
How do you know it would be cheaper to renovate? That is like saying people driving new cars should have just renovated their 1970 Pinto
You should interview Jack Devanney co-founder of advanced nuclear company ThorConPower. They got so fed up with the state of nuclear regulations in the US, they sought out other countries to work on nuclear and are now focusing on a project in Indonesia, just for the prospect of accomplishing skmething before 2040. He has also written a great deal about nuclear regulations in the US, including a book called "Why nuclear power has been a flop"
ThorCon after over a decade in existence has never produced anything except the world's most expensive PowerPoint presentation. It has never broken any ground, poured any concrete, and never will.
@@darkgalaxy5548 That could be said about every advanced nuclear company. They are also working with Indonesia, a country with NO existing nuclear infrastructure - including regulatory. It says a lot about the US environment that they felt it was more likely to be successful to work with a country that had to build an entire nuclear and regulatory infrastructure rather than work in the US.
It also doesn't mean Devanney wouldn't be a good interview.
@@AntiNeoFascist ThorCon is not an advanced nuclear company. They have never handled, nor processed any nuclear materials. They in fact have no manufacturing capabilities. In short, ThorCon is a scam.
They better make sure to make their reactors more resilient. I'm not 100% sure but I think Indonesia is prone to earthquakes, typhoons and the like.
@@ZnamTwojaMama101
Thorium Molten Salt Reactors are about as failsafe as a fission reactor can get, plus Thorcon is building it into a barge. But the Chinese are first in building and running a Thorium Molten Salt Reactor in the gobi desert, very few people can perceive the future possible geo politics repercussions of this event.
I completely agree; Videos like this can help educate the public. We tend to focus on the potential risks of nuclear, rather than using proven techniques that provide clean energy. This is crucial for saving our planet.
It's time for a nuclear industry president instead of a fossil fuel one.
Politicians do NOT decide what type of power plant is built, UTILITIES do
@@clarkkent9080 Then why do utilities lobby politicians?
2022-01-05 Virginia Mercury article:
Republican Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin announced Trump EPA chief and former coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler as his pick for Virginia’s next secretary of natural and historic resources.
Wheeler, who served as administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from 2019 until the end of President Donald Trump’s administration, was an outspoken proponent of environmental deregulation during his tenure, ruffling feathers even among his own agency scientists.
The former coal lobbyist’s views on climate change have also troubled many environmentalists. While Wheeler during confirmation hearings for his EPA appointment said that “climate change is real” and “man has an impact on it,” he subsequently oversaw the unwinding of numerous regulations to reduce climate change-causing greenhouse gas emissions.
Among the actions taken during his tenure were the rollback of President Barack Obama’s never-enacted Clean Power Plan to reduce emissions from coal plants as well as the Obama administration’s stricter fuel efficiency standards for automobiles. Current Democratic Attorney General Mark Herring sued Wheeler and his EPA at least six times over environmental issues.
Since the end of his EPA term, Wheeler has slowly inched into Virginia politics. In September, he spoke out against a five-cent plastic bag tax during a hearing before Fairfax County’s Board of Supervisors. In November, following sweeping Republican victories in Virginia elections, he was appointed to Youngkin’s transition team.
@@clarkkent9080 Politicians permit power plants with laws and subsidies.
@@CTimmerman Those laws are called REGULATIONS and they have been unchanged for decades. Why does an INVESTOR owned utility with stockholders, need subsidies???? Which by the way, Terrapower (headed by Bill Gates one of the world's richest men) and Nuscale (that just canceled their project each got $2 billion of taxpayer welfare and NuScale gat an additional $500 million.
I was in the First Grade at Bainbridge Elementary School about three miles downriver from the plant that morning.
My Dad built the plant when he was a Journeyman Electrician with the IBEW Local.
I could walk up the hill behind the house (that we moved into December of 78) and see the tops of the South Cooling Towers.
I survived Three Mile Island.....
Congratulations, you survived a release of zero radioactive contamination. I too survive the chest xray at the doctor's office.
America must lead with removing the regulations and building new plants because Europe is hell-bent on closing every nuclear facility. Other than France, every European country has been actively trying to close existing plants.