The professor teaching me nuclear physics at uni actually was part of the student force piling up that reactor. Gives you the weird feeling of *almost* having been present.
The thing I love about Scishow is that it is almost a history of scientific experiences at times. A part I find to be super interesting and almost completely removed from my Science education. Super awesome! Keep it up.
I showed my Physics teacher this and he used it in class.... He is now known throughout the school as not really teaching anymore and just leaving it to Hank! I'm happy because Hank is a far better teacher
My favorite story is that at one point during the operation of the pile, one of the students was apparently doing all of the rod insertion and removal and had dozed off on his feet, touching the pile with one of the rods in his hands, which then started the chain reaction until people started screaming at him to wake up and shove the rod in and stop the reaction. Grad students have not changed much in 70 years. :)
On june 23th 1942 Robert Döpel already had a nuclear reaktor running in Leipzig, Germany. It was dubbed Uranmaschine and only had a tiny flaw. It began to burn and it took the fire brigade two days to extinguish the fire.
Hank! The first self sustaining nuclear reactor was in Tanzania millenia ago when a uranium deposit heated water from an inlet that just happened to have the perfect timing for the water from the previous tide to be mostly evaporated when the next tide would bring more water in.
Yes, what you said about heat and pressure is sometimes true in Fusion technology. Yes, there are inactive fusion reactors, also you could also make your own fusion device if you wanted. This is done with fusing Hydrogen and some metal I forgot about, it was calculated that this device could create 250MW, it's been created and it extremely small, smaller than the regular gaming desktop computer. All I can remember for now is that the metal used in cold fusion is cheap and not very dangerous.
Several things: 1. it has to give off more energy by being split than it took to split it. This rules out all small atoms like carbon or helium. 2. it has to break down rapidly and in a way that can make a chain reaction (a couple of big pieces plus a few small pieces shot out at the right speed to split the next atom) 3. we have to be able to get enough of it to be useful. (either not super rare, or else we can make it) There are only a handful of elements that meet all three.
2a: at least part of that breakdown has to be delayed, attenuating the reaction of the reactor to control inputs. If all neutrons feeding the chain reaction are immediate, the pile can not be controlled reliably. About 7% of all neutrons released by uranium fission are delayed. They make the reaction controllable, but also mean that a reactor still gives off about 7% heat after a rapid shutdown. This make emergency cooling extremely important. 7% does not sound like a lot, but 7% of a gigawatt is still enough to melt a core.
what i meant was that some theory says that the universe is instead of expanding/moving away from each other, that objects are instead gaining mass and may well not be moving at all, as gaining mass would create the redshift. I'm no scientist, but just read an article proposing the theory and wondered if scishow could look closer into it.
Stars run on fusion energy, the core of the planet runs on fission energy, and it's fission that is talked about when discussing nuclear reactors, since there have only been a little over 30 people to create safe fusion reactors, and those required higher energy inputs than the energy output.
And the first time a usable amount of electrical power was generated by a fission reaction was in 1951 at the Experimental Breeder Reactor-I (EBR-I) in Idaho.
They're similar. The ones used to convert U238 to plutonium were essentially the same, except the uranium fuel could be pushed in one end and fall into a pool at the other (most of these are being dismantled today). Today's power plant reactors have changed quite a lot, for safety, size and efficiency reasons, but still work on the same principle.
Fusion, uses smaller atoms to combine together to make larger atoms. Currently the issue is that for this system you cant use the conventional kettle way to produce electricity. It is correct the waste from fuel will be less but the other waste you get through contamination still exists for fusion. Now I personally haven't looked into how ITER is going but i would recommend googling ITER and checking their "The Science" section.
Of course there's always the possibility that we're overlooking something really obvious, but E=mc^2 isn't one of them. The only possibility left that I *could* think of is that antimatter is hiding in some place we didn't look because we didn't even know it was there (think: string theorist's extra dimensions). We certainly can't produce the stuff at a net energy gain (much like you can't electrolyse water to make hydrogen, to run power plants to electrolyse more water).
I went to University of Chicago for grad school, and it always surprised me that they had torn down the squash court & football stadium. Then again, it was UoC, and what are sports and a moment in national history to expanding their library...(Yes, they tore it down to expand their library. UoC is...different).
I actually knew this. In fact I learned this in ... PUBLIC SCHOOL. Then again, I am 54' and back in the 60s and 70s, we were still proud of nuclear energy. That was the "Atoms For Peace" scene, with a Cold War backdrop.
Yes. The same that, during the atomic bomb tests in Los Alamos dropped paper strips just when the shockwave was about to hit them and, based on the distance the paper was blown and the distance he was from the detonation, estimated the explosion energy and was off by less than 10%.
Self-sustaining reactions are reactions that once complete produce enough energy to restart the process again without the addition of an external energy supply. also know as the Critical Mass limit
That, William, is essentially the difference between a nuclear weapon and a nuclear reactor. Hank could easily spend 10 min explaining in detail (hint, hint), but basically, in a weapon the device is designed so that the nuclei split and react rapidly, and you have a large amount of energy created before the whole thing blows itself apart. In a reactor, the rate of the reaction is carefully controlled so that you have a steady number of nuclei reacting at any given time over months or years.
I've heard about thorium reactors being clean but don't know much about it yet so you may be right. But on the idea of storing waste Bill Gates did a TED talk a while ago and one of the subjects was a project where he is donating pretty big amounts of money to, that seems to currently be able to build mini reactors that use previously stored waste as fuel and should be able to make full scale reactors in about a decade (theoretically the energy production should also be cheaper than normal ones)
Enrico Fermi, yes. He also has Fermium named after him, the Fermilab at the Fermi National Accelerator is named after him, same Fermi that won the Noble Prize in Physics in 1938, same person fermions are named after, same Fermi the RA-1 reactor in Argentina is named for, same Fermi the gamma ray telescope is named for, same Fermi the nuclear powerplants Fermi 1 and Fermi 2 are named for in Newport Michigan, same Fermi that ran at the head of his track pack when he was a teenager in Rome, Italy.
As a student at the University of Chicago, I walk past the site of the reaction every time I go to the library. It's marked by a strange/terrifying sculpture that is supposed to look like both a skull and a mushroom cloud.
Mr. Hank Green, as a science enthusiast, I'd love to see Scishow's take on the ever growing fad of e-cigarettes. I am a former smoker, though I've yet to beat nicotine's awful grip. The research I've done into the product doesn't seem to indicate as of yet that this would impact my health in a negative way, at least not in such a dramatic way as traditional cigarettes. Also, your manner of speech makes my ears happy, and your videos are top notch. Please keep up the good work.
I did not say it wasn't radio active, though I wasn't clear, what I meant is that there is no nuclear fission or fusion going on, there is however radioactive decay which has the same effect as fission but is caused by the nucleus being fat and throwing bits of itself (nuclear decay) to feel better rather than being beaten (fission) up and losing neutrons.
Correction - Fermi and others conducted neutron bombardments experiments on all sorts of elements, however, when they reached Thorium and Uranium they discovered strange reactions that lead them to believe they had created new elements which they called hesperium and ausonium. Ausonium, I like the sound of that. Almost sounds like an element of Awesomeness.
Radioactive decay is a form of fission... Obviously it's not the same, but the energy in the reactors comes from the place as the energy generated by decay in the core. I don't want to look up the actual number, but somewhere between 30 and 40 people are credited with successfully creating fusion generators, of course, that doesn't mean that only 30-40 people have been involved, just that everyone else had a less major role in that particular project.
As you know Fission reactors are what we use today. As a very very basic way to put it a fission reactor is basically a very large kettle. The fission reaction (splitting a large atom into some smaller atoms) causes the fuel to heat up and the heat is extracted by water/air, the heat from the water/air then heats up an external water supply which turns to steam and turns the turbines and wala.. ELECTRICITY :D.
Could you do a video about the differences between fission and fusion reactors, the benefits of fusion reactors compared to current fission reactors, such as reduction in waste, and maybe what it would take to start using fusion reactors?
Have to amend that - no secretaries, but many who worked on the pile but weren't present for the culminating experiment. Also missing from the paper signing were Slotin, Arnold and Wattenberg.
I'm familiar with Wilson's design and I think that the safety benefits absolutely outweigh the slightly greater inefficiency of his particular solution. I'm looking forward to innovation in this field, but that innovation can't occur if the field is abandoned in it's early beginnings, such as people would have, due to "safety concerns." The three big freak accidents we've had with nuclear reactors are part of the growing up/learning process that will make nuclear a 100% safe energy option.
I get to talk about this historic event and its impact on the world we live in everyday when I give tours at UChicago. Thanks for the additional information, SciShow Team!
The problem is that solar panels are really not all that efficient. You really would need to cover an entire desert to get the amount of power generated by a nuclear plant. One of the biggest other issue is where to store the power during the day so that you still have some at night. When you are getting into that scale of energy, simple batteries don't really cut it anymore.
The term world has many interpretations, whether it means Earth or Universe is up to the interpreter. I will also say that unstable elements cause nuclear fission in the mantle, which contributes to much of the Earth's thermal energy. I will give credit for you saying that the Core is heated from pressure, but fission does occur in the core.
Look up "vendobiota". They were a class of early life which went completely extinct, but they seem to have had all the qualifications of later animals.
Be nice to trolls.... Science is trying out new things and taking risks. Science isn't hating on people, but working with them. It involves sharing ideas, testing, researching, troubleshooting and so much more. It is more exciting than proving anything wrong/right... It is finding something that opens up new options, new possibilites etc... It is expanding our world... It is simply amazing.
dear hank, as you were talking about nuclear reactors n this video could you explain the differences between the superphenix in france and other regular reactor ? i never really get it but i'd be happy to understand as you always explain things very well.
Don't forget Thorium, it was used in the "Manhattan" Project in Chicago. Thorium is a great way to have nuclear energy without nuclear weapons. It's three to four times more abundant than uranium and abundant in monazite which found it's way into a Minecraft addon, Voltz.
My father was one of those 49 people who was there when it worked. That was in '42...In 62 they went to meet President Kennedy. My dad kept his papers from that time. My dad passed away last year at 94. He was the last remaining person who was present when they did that.
If you're still curious about this, there are billions of naturally made nuclear reactor in the universe. They're called stars, and just like our sun they use nuclear fission and output massive amounts of energy
... Sort of. In a nuclear reactor, things are designed so that a controlled number of nuclei are reacting at any time. In both a bomb and a reactor, only a small fraction of the uranium (and/or plutonium) nuclei present actually split. In a reactor, its somewhere in the ballpark of 3 or 5%... over several years. You are right that "self sustained" means the reaction keeps going on its own. We also don't have to "start" it. It starts on its own if you put enough U235 in the same place.
"Sustain a chain reaction" Hank! I'm sure i'm not the only one but I do not understand this and would like further elaboration please! How is a chain reaction "sustained' if it is a...well chain reaction? If the nuclei are splitting and reacting rapidly than how does it makes sense that it is "sustained?" would it all just react and split and that'd be the end of it?
Hank please do a episode about sleep! Like why we need to sleep and why we loose conscious when doing so... I mean, sleep is dangerous because your not aware of your environment yet it is so universal?
For further commentation: In order to cause a meltdown you'd actually have to totally destroy the reactor, which would require heavy bombarding, thus being near to impossible as several agencies would kick in to prevent that. Nuclear power may not seem all too nice, but so far it is more efficient, save and sustainable than everything else (except fusion) Sciences requires taking risks and being open to new things and not being paranoid about every possible event.
I like your avatar. "...I care because you do" was one of my favorite albums by RDJ. My absolute favorite still being the self titled RDJ album released the following year with goon gumpos, logon-rock witch and milkman.
based on the relative abundance of radioactive isotopes, the fact that the heavier elements sink to the center of any sufficiently large astronomical body during formation and and the fact that the earth is sufficiently large for this to occur. there is inevitably fission in the center of the Earth.
Antimatter isn't a power source. There's none of it around to just collect and use as a fuel source, so whatever you annihilate in a hypothetical matter-antimatter reactor, you've already had to produce at (necessarily) higher energy expense. Unless there are reasonably large oodles of antimatter just floating in space within our reasonable reach, don't look toward it as an energy source. At best it's an energy storage medium.
It was dismantled, reassembled on a military base in Virginia (I think), and used intermittently during the war as a test object for the piles designed for Hanford, for converting U-238 to plutonium.
Reactors do not explode, Although hydrogen build ups can cause them.fission reactors melt down.This means the reaction has gone out of control and the amount of neutrons produced causes the chain reaction to grow exponentially until the fuel pellets melt.
Your right, both the Earth's core and the naturally occurring reactors in Gabon (a country in Africa) in some of their uranium deposits (probably from meteorites/asteroids at some point).
If anyone is interested, there is a really great book on the race of making the first Atomic Bomb called Bomb by Steve Sheiniken or Sheinkin (I forget)
Despite the fact that he is incorrect, nuclear power plants do present certain dangers (although a new pressure-less one in development avoids these problems). Nuclear plants can have meltdowns, and due to the pressure within, radioactive matter can be ejected and cause lots of damage. Earthquakes can damage the reactor and leak radioactive material into the environment. (Taylor Wilson proposed a reactor which is not based on steam and turbines which would be at atmo pressure and underground.)
There are two ways we can get energy from a nuclear reaction, either through fusion, or fission. Mostly, we use fission. Basically, making an atom break apart into smaller atoms (completely different elements), which reacts in such a way that it releases a shit ton of energy, radiation(light and such), and heat. In power plants, we're more concerned with the heat part and we control (or limit) the rate of the reaction. With bombs, we like the energy and radiation, and we let that shit go wild.
The earths core does not run on any nuclear chain reaction. The earths core is heated by natural radioactive decay (and pressure, and a few other things). As for fusion reactors, there's a lot more than 30 people involved.
first of all even if you suck a bunch a tnt in the nuclear core of a nuclear power plant all you would get is an explosion followed by a meltdown, not a nuke. It's really hard to make a nuclear explosion happen and the materials they use in power plant are not only in a place where you could not really make the bomb but are incapable of exploding in a nuclear fusion without further refinement. Also those places are basically big bunkers so you would need a hell of a bomb to really brake it.
This is a suggestion why don’t you make a video about the alternative theories on RUclips? There are many theories on RUclips that are not part of the mainstream of science it would be nice to know what you think of them as part of mainstream science!
I would highly recommend searching for those topics, since there are a lot of good videos about this on youtube. But in a nutshell, fission is what you and I consider "nuclear" or "atomic" energy - all those reactors are this kind. It's (simplified) splitting an atom in smaller parts (thereby producing energy) thus creating new atoms of different elements which are mostly radioactive themselves -> waste [to be continued]
You're right, the title should be amended to the 'First nuclear reactor built by man that was publicly announced' as we don't really know, any state could have built one before, and there would be no way of finding out if they had built one.
Hank frequently starts chain reactions of awesomeness. When the goodness particles emitted by the hanknium 235 bombard the retinas of the observer, it has the effect of re-transmitting itself in a self sustained propagation of awesomy goodness from viewer to viewer, thus contributing to the brain enlargement of the human species.
It was a "racquets" court not a squash court. Th old squash court is too small for the room. A racquets court is much bigger, as can be seen in the photos. If this is too picky, call it a tennis court, much more common that people know. The area was torn down after the project.
The professor teaching me nuclear physics at uni actually was part of the student force piling up that reactor. Gives you the weird feeling of *almost* having been present.
How old is he?
Seeing as how this happened 70 years ago, he's gotta be in his 90s now..
FieryWingedAngel I took that course some thirty-odd years ago. Him being in his late fifties, early sixties then feels about right.
HotelPapa100
Oh, I see
Imagine being taught nuclear physics from a person that created the first nuclear reaction
The thing I love about Scishow is that it is almost a history of scientific experiences at times. A part I find to be super interesting and almost completely removed from my Science education. Super awesome! Keep it up.
I think that Enrico Fermi deserves an episode of "Great Minds" :)
>57 layers
Shrek would be proud
shrek is love, shrek is life
XD
I showed my Physics teacher this and he used it in class.... He is now known throughout the school as not really teaching anymore and just leaving it to Hank! I'm happy because Hank is a far better teacher
Lmao
My favorite story is that at one point during the operation of the pile, one of the students was apparently doing all of the rod insertion and removal and had dozed off on his feet, touching the pile with one of the rods in his hands, which then started the chain reaction until people started screaming at him to wake up and shove the rod in and stop the reaction. Grad students have not changed much in 70 years. :)
On june 23th 1942 Robert Döpel already had a nuclear reaktor running in Leipzig, Germany. It was dubbed Uranmaschine and only had a tiny flaw. It began to burn and it took the fire brigade two days to extinguish the fire.
the adjusting of of hanks glasses is part of his greatness.
The 1/2 W output is astonishingly low considering the potential.
Quite a nice design and control.
Hank! The first self sustaining nuclear reactor was in Tanzania millenia ago when a uranium deposit heated water from an inlet that just happened to have the perfect timing for the water from the previous tide to be mostly evaporated when the next tide would bring more water in.
Yes, what you said about heat and pressure is sometimes true in Fusion technology. Yes, there are inactive fusion reactors, also you could also make your own fusion device if you wanted. This is done with fusing Hydrogen and some metal I forgot about, it was calculated that this device could create 250MW, it's been created and it extremely small, smaller than the regular gaming desktop computer. All I can remember for now is that the metal used in cold fusion is cheap and not very dangerous.
Several things:
1. it has to give off more energy by being split than it took to split it. This rules out all small atoms like carbon or helium.
2. it has to break down rapidly and in a way that can make a chain reaction (a couple of big pieces plus a few small pieces shot out at the right speed to split the next atom)
3. we have to be able to get enough of it to be useful. (either not super rare, or else we can make it)
There are only a handful of elements that meet all three.
2a: at least part of that breakdown has to be delayed, attenuating the reaction of the reactor to control inputs. If all neutrons feeding the chain reaction are immediate, the pile can not be controlled reliably.
About 7% of all neutrons released by uranium fission are delayed. They make the reaction controllable, but also mean that a reactor still gives off about 7% heat after a rapid shutdown. This make emergency cooling extremely important. 7% does not sound like a lot, but 7% of a gigawatt is still enough to melt a core.
what i meant was that some theory says that the universe is instead of expanding/moving away from each other, that objects are instead gaining mass and may well not be moving at all, as gaining mass would create the redshift. I'm no scientist, but just read an article proposing the theory and wondered if scishow could look closer into it.
Stars run on fusion energy, the core of the planet runs on fission energy, and it's fission that is talked about when discussing nuclear reactors, since there have only been a little over 30 people to create safe fusion reactors, and those required higher energy inputs than the energy output.
And the first time a usable amount of electrical power was generated by a fission reaction was in 1951 at the Experimental Breeder Reactor-I (EBR-I) in Idaho.
They're similar. The ones used to convert U238 to plutonium were essentially the same, except the uranium fuel could be pushed in one end and fall into a pool at the other (most of these are being dismantled today). Today's power plant reactors have changed quite a lot, for safety, size and efficiency reasons, but still work on the same principle.
Fusion, uses smaller atoms to combine together to make larger atoms. Currently the issue is that for this system you cant use the conventional kettle way to produce electricity. It is correct the waste from fuel will be less but the other waste you get through contamination still exists for fusion. Now I personally haven't looked into how ITER is going but i would recommend googling ITER and checking their "The Science" section.
Of course there's always the possibility that we're overlooking something really obvious, but E=mc^2 isn't one of them. The only possibility left that I *could* think of is that antimatter is hiding in some place we didn't look because we didn't even know it was there (think: string theorist's extra dimensions). We certainly can't produce the stuff at a net energy gain (much like you can't electrolyse water to make hydrogen, to run power plants to electrolyse more water).
I went to University of Chicago for grad school, and it always surprised me that they had torn down the squash court & football stadium. Then again, it was UoC, and what are sports and a moment in national history to expanding their library...(Yes, they tore it down to expand their library. UoC is...different).
I actually knew this. In fact I learned this in ... PUBLIC SCHOOL. Then again, I am 54' and back in the 60s and 70s, we were still proud of nuclear energy. That was the "Atoms For Peace" scene, with a Cold War backdrop.
Yes. The same that, during the atomic bomb tests in Los Alamos dropped paper strips just when the shockwave was about to hit them and, based on the distance the paper was blown and the distance he was from the detonation, estimated the explosion energy and was off by less than 10%.
That's freakin' neat. SciShow needs to do a video about this one.
Self-sustaining reactions are reactions that once complete produce enough energy to restart the process again without the addition of an external energy supply. also know as the Critical Mass limit
That, William, is essentially the difference between a nuclear weapon and a nuclear reactor. Hank could easily spend 10 min explaining in detail (hint, hint), but basically, in a weapon the device is designed so that the nuclei split and react rapidly, and you have a large amount of energy created before the whole thing blows itself apart. In a reactor, the rate of the reaction is carefully controlled so that you have a steady number of nuclei reacting at any given time over months or years.
Thanks for uploading this episode of Sci show
I've heard about thorium reactors being clean but don't know much about it yet so you may be right. But on the idea of storing waste Bill Gates did a TED talk a while ago and one of the subjects was a project where he is donating pretty big amounts of money to, that seems to currently be able to build mini reactors that use previously stored waste as fuel and should be able to make full scale reactors in about a decade (theoretically the energy production should also be cheaper than normal ones)
Enrico Fermi, yes. He also has Fermium named after him, the Fermilab at the Fermi National Accelerator is named after him, same Fermi that won the Noble Prize in Physics in 1938, same person fermions are named after, same Fermi the RA-1 reactor in Argentina is named for, same Fermi the gamma ray telescope is named for, same Fermi the nuclear powerplants Fermi 1 and Fermi 2 are named for in Newport Michigan, same Fermi that ran at the head of his track pack when he was a teenager in Rome, Italy.
As a student at the University of Chicago, I walk past the site of the reaction every time I go to the library. It's marked by a strange/terrifying sculpture that is supposed to look like both a skull and a mushroom cloud.
Mr. Hank Green, as a science enthusiast, I'd love to see Scishow's take on the ever growing fad of e-cigarettes. I am a former smoker, though I've yet to beat nicotine's awful grip. The research I've done into the product doesn't seem to indicate as of yet that this would impact my health in a negative way, at least not in such a dramatic way as traditional cigarettes.
Also, your manner of speech makes my ears happy, and your videos are top notch. Please keep up the good work.
Italian here, your pronunce of Enrico Fermi is correct, well done dude
I did not say it wasn't radio active, though I wasn't clear, what I meant is that there is no nuclear fission or fusion going on, there is however radioactive decay which has the same effect as fission but is caused by the nucleus being fat and throwing bits of itself (nuclear decay) to feel better rather than being beaten (fission) up and losing neutrons.
Correction - Fermi and others conducted neutron bombardments experiments on all sorts of elements, however, when they reached Thorium and Uranium they discovered strange reactions that lead them to believe they had created new elements which they called hesperium and ausonium.
Ausonium, I like the sound of that. Almost sounds like an element of Awesomeness.
Radioactive decay is a form of fission... Obviously it's not the same, but the energy in the reactors comes from the place as the energy generated by decay in the core.
I don't want to look up the actual number, but somewhere between 30 and 40 people are credited with successfully creating fusion generators, of course, that doesn't mean that only 30-40 people have been involved, just that everyone else had a less major role in that particular project.
You should do an interview with Taylor Wilson, he is working on a fission reactor that's small.
As you know Fission reactors are what we use today. As a very very basic way to put it a fission reactor is basically a very large kettle. The fission reaction (splitting a large atom into some smaller atoms) causes the fuel to heat up and the heat is extracted by water/air, the heat from the water/air then heats up an external water supply which turns to steam and turns the turbines and wala.. ELECTRICITY :D.
Could you do a video about the differences between fission and fusion reactors, the benefits of fusion reactors compared to current fission reactors, such as reduction in waste, and maybe what it would take to start using fusion reactors?
Do one on passing out. Please include anything about orthostatic hypotension.
Have to amend that - no secretaries, but many who worked on the pile but weren't present for the culminating experiment. Also missing from the paper signing were Slotin, Arnold and Wattenberg.
I'm familiar with Wilson's design and I think that the safety benefits absolutely outweigh the slightly greater inefficiency of his particular solution. I'm looking forward to innovation in this field, but that innovation can't occur if the field is abandoned in it's early beginnings, such as people would have, due to "safety concerns." The three big freak accidents we've had with nuclear reactors are part of the growing up/learning process that will make nuclear a 100% safe energy option.
I get to talk about this historic event and its impact on the world we live in everyday when I give tours at UChicago. Thanks for the additional information, SciShow Team!
The problem is that solar panels are really not all that efficient. You really would need to cover an entire desert to get the amount of power generated by a nuclear plant. One of the biggest other issue is where to store the power during the day so that you still have some at night. When you are getting into that scale of energy, simple batteries don't really cut it anymore.
The term world has many interpretations, whether it means Earth or Universe is up to the interpreter. I will also say that unstable elements cause nuclear fission in the mantle, which contributes to much of the Earth's thermal energy. I will give credit for you saying that the Core is heated from pressure, but fission does occur in the core.
Look up "vendobiota". They were a class of early life which went completely extinct, but they seem to have had all the qualifications of later animals.
Can you explain Calcium deposits? Like why do they happen, and what do they actually do?
lol in a squash court. FUCK YEAH! I'm sure those guys did not like the jocks that normally use these facilities. XD
Have you done anything on Stem cells? If not I'd love to see something on it.
Be nice to trolls....
Science is trying out new things and taking risks.
Science isn't hating on people, but working with them.
It involves sharing ideas, testing, researching, troubleshooting and so much more. It is more exciting than proving anything wrong/right... It is finding something that opens up new options, new possibilites etc... It is expanding our world... It is simply amazing.
I did an entire research paper over nuclear energy and I did not know that stuff! Cool!
fission is any splitting of the nucleus so if something is releasing alpha particles then it is undergoing nuclear fission. fission is nuclear decay.
I think the emergency off switch for it was quite interesting, can't remember the details of it though.
That is really cool! I am going to be in Chicago this weekend!
Hank, you should explain how energy comes from the mass defect using the equation E=mc^2. I find it interesting and I think other people will too!
man I love SciShow.
dear hank, as you were talking about nuclear reactors n this video could you explain the differences between the superphenix in france and other regular reactor ? i never really get it but i'd be happy to understand as you always explain things very well.
Don't forget Thorium, it was used in the "Manhattan" Project in Chicago. Thorium is a great way to have nuclear energy without nuclear weapons. It's three to four times more abundant than uranium and abundant in monazite which found it's way into a Minecraft addon, Voltz.
This is my favorite science channel by far!
Thx 4 d awesum content :D :D :D
You could also talk about the natural nuclear fission reactor in Gabon, Africa
My father was one of those 49 people who was there when it worked. That was in '42...In 62 they went to meet President Kennedy. My dad kept his papers from that time. My dad passed away last year at 94. He was the last remaining person who was present when they did that.
I totally find the idea that there might well have been naturally made nuclear reactors of a kind amazing and would love to find out more from you.
If you're still curious about this, there are billions of naturally made nuclear reactor in the universe. They're called stars, and just like our sun they use nuclear fission and output massive amounts of energy
... Sort of. In a nuclear reactor, things are designed so that a controlled number of nuclei are reacting at any time. In both a bomb and a reactor, only a small fraction of the uranium (and/or plutonium) nuclei present actually split. In a reactor, its somewhere in the ballpark of 3 or 5%... over several years.
You are right that "self sustained" means the reaction keeps going on its own. We also don't have to "start" it. It starts on its own if you put enough U235 in the same place.
This is what surprises me: If you asked that comment on a Minecraft/ various game video, you would get raged on incredibly. I love this place.
"Sustain a chain reaction" Hank! I'm sure i'm not the only one but I do not understand this and would like further elaboration please! How is a chain reaction "sustained' if it is a...well chain reaction? If the nuclei are splitting and reacting rapidly than how does it makes sense that it is "sustained?" would it all just react and split and that'd be the end of it?
Hank please do a episode about sleep! Like why we need to sleep and why we loose conscious when doing so... I mean, sleep is dangerous because your not aware of your environment yet it is so universal?
Check out the description. Naturally occuring reactors were found in Gabon. Pretty remarkable stuff.
@Scishow, could you do an episode on Schrödinger's time-(in)dependent equations? That would be awesome!
Your explanation made my day.
You should make a video about why we sometimes forget what we were going to say. Maybe just about the human brain and memory in general.
Hey Hank, can you tell me why we experience emotional pain as physical pain? For example heartache or gut-wrenching nervousness
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In order to cause a meltdown you'd actually have to totally destroy the reactor, which would require heavy bombarding, thus being near to impossible as several agencies would kick in to prevent that.
Nuclear power may not seem all too nice, but so far it is more efficient, save and sustainable than everything else (except fusion)
Sciences requires taking risks and being open to new things and not being paranoid about every possible event.
do an episode on thorium as a nuclear fuel, preferably about how much better LFTR can be that anything argonne labs offers
yes, but how many did die from cancer?
ok thanks for informing me. all i knew is that it happened but i had no idea the time frame. thanks :)
I like your avatar. "...I care because you do" was one of my favorite albums by RDJ. My absolute favorite still being the self titled RDJ album released the following year with goon gumpos, logon-rock witch and milkman.
based on the relative abundance of radioactive isotopes, the fact that the heavier elements sink to the center of any sufficiently large astronomical body during formation and and the fact that the earth is sufficiently large for this to occur. there is inevitably fission in the center of the Earth.
Hank, SciShow definitely needs a video on the ITER reactor in France!
You should do a video about HeLa cells, they seem pretty cool :)
Antimatter isn't a power source. There's none of it around to just collect and use as a fuel source, so whatever you annihilate in a hypothetical matter-antimatter reactor, you've already had to produce at (necessarily) higher energy expense. Unless there are reasonably large oodles of antimatter just floating in space within our reasonable reach, don't look toward it as an energy source. At best it's an energy storage medium.
It was dismantled, reassembled on a military base in Virginia (I think), and used intermittently during the war as a test object for the piles designed for Hanford, for converting U-238 to plutonium.
Reactors do not explode, Although hydrogen build ups can cause them.fission reactors melt down.This means the reaction has gone out of control and the amount of neutrons produced causes the chain reaction to grow exponentially until the fuel pellets melt.
Your right, both the Earth's core and the naturally occurring reactors in Gabon (a country in Africa) in some of their uranium deposits (probably from meteorites/asteroids at some point).
If anyone is interested, there is a really great book on the race of making the first Atomic Bomb called Bomb by Steve Sheiniken or Sheinkin (I forget)
Despite the fact that he is incorrect, nuclear power plants do present certain dangers (although a new pressure-less one in development avoids these problems). Nuclear plants can have meltdowns, and due to the pressure within, radioactive matter can be ejected and cause lots of damage. Earthquakes can damage the reactor and leak radioactive material into the environment.
(Taylor Wilson proposed a reactor which is not based on steam and turbines which would be at atmo pressure and underground.)
There are two ways we can get energy from a nuclear reaction, either through fusion, or fission. Mostly, we use fission. Basically, making an atom break apart into smaller atoms (completely different elements), which reacts in such a way that it releases a shit ton of energy, radiation(light and such), and heat. In power plants, we're more concerned with the heat part and we control (or limit) the rate of the reaction. With bombs, we like the energy and radiation, and we let that shit go wild.
I'm enlightened. Gracias, Hank!
The earths core does not run on any nuclear chain reaction. The earths core is heated by natural radioactive decay (and pressure, and a few other things). As for fusion reactors, there's a lot more than 30 people involved.
first of all even if you suck a bunch a tnt in the nuclear core of a nuclear power plant all you would get is an explosion followed by a meltdown, not a nuke. It's really hard to make a nuclear explosion happen and the materials they use in power plant are not only in a place where you could not really make the bomb but are incapable of exploding in a nuclear fusion without further refinement. Also those places are basically big bunkers so you would need a hell of a bomb to really brake it.
also hank said "at least two" a few of the students' names were lost in the years since this happened so we have no clue if they are still alive
speak something about thermonuclear power plants and tokamak reactors too, ITER perhaps
i think he was referring to the "at least" part. that peaked my curiosity too.
Can you guys do an episode on nuclear fusion reactors like ITER?
This is a suggestion why don’t you make a video about the alternative theories on RUclips?
There are many theories on RUclips that are not part of the mainstream of science it would be nice to know what you think of them as part of mainstream science!
I love this channel, keep up the good work!
I would highly recommend searching for those topics, since there are a lot of good videos about this on youtube.
But in a nutshell, fission is what you and I consider "nuclear" or "atomic" energy - all those reactors are this kind. It's (simplified) splitting an atom in smaller parts (thereby producing energy) thus creating new atoms of different elements which are mostly radioactive themselves -> waste
[to be continued]
You're right, the title should be amended to the 'First nuclear reactor built by man that was publicly announced' as we don't really know, any state could have built one before, and there would be no way of finding out if they had built one.
I would like to see Enrico Fermi in great minds.
I thought this was going to be about the natural reactor found at Oklo mine in Gabon. Still a good watch, though
Hank frequently starts chain reactions of awesomeness. When the goodness particles emitted by the hanknium 235 bombard the retinas of the observer, it has the effect of re-transmitting itself in a self sustained propagation of awesomy goodness from viewer to viewer, thus contributing to the brain enlargement of the human species.
They've done one. RUclips comments won't let me post the link, but search Scishow thorium. It'll come up.
Do a video on the standard model if you don't have one
It was a "racquets" court not a squash court. Th old squash court is too small for the room. A racquets court is much bigger, as can be seen in the photos. If this is too picky, call it a tennis court, much more common that people know. The area was torn down after the project.