Thorium molten salt reactors (MSRs) can run on nuclear waste and so solve nuclear waste problem. China is going all out to build MSRs. We need to get going on it.
India is developing a Thorium Reactor right now and is way ahead of anyone in the research.. India has abundant supplies of Thorium but not of Uranium.. so,that's the incentive.. they say a working demo will be live by 2017.. they even have layout plans for these planned out for every major city so when it comes to Thorium Reactors.. i bet we'll see the first one in India!
Glad to see you guys either moved the camera or the mic so Julien's face wasn't obscured like it was in yesterday's vid. He's got a rather expressive face which helps relate his feelings and emotion on this topic.
Please do a whole episode on Thorium. I'm very happy you touched on it but I'm sure you agree that it's worthy of a full episode. You guys rock, I watch everyday! :-)
My physics teacher said that fusion is controversial, because if you encase hydrogen isotopes in a doughnut shaped magnet chamber you will have no way of putting in the hydrogen isotopes. If you try to add in hydrogen to an ongoing reaction you have to make a small opening to constantly add in new fuel, but at the same time it makes the reactor leak out the material from the inside.
Your physics teacher needs to take a good hard look at fusion reactor designs then. Because these reactors both add new fuel, and remove fusion products continuously.
You forgot to mention vitrification with thorium reactors. Basically, if the waste products are combined with sugar and hardened, it makes a very solid glass. It takes up much less space than liquid waste, it decays faster, and it's far safer since it can't leak out.
Other exciting facts about MSR, thorium & LFTR: - It's far cheaper to refine thorium than uranium, and theoretically a LFTR could produce electricity cheaper than that from coal. This is kind of REALLY important. - MSR runs at atmospheric pressure so it can't explode, and you guys did sort of explain this without using the term "melt down" but it can't melt down. - MSR produces far less waste by weight than LWR and PWR because it's able to fission larger proportions of the fuel, whereas LWR & PWR fission at most about 5% of their fuel. In addition, the waste from LFTR only has to be stored away from the biosphere for a few hundred years instead of tens of thousands of years. - LFTR can produce medical isotopes like 213-Bi for use in Targeted Alpha Therapy to help fight cancer. - As with other nuclear, the waste heat can be used to desalinate water or for other uses. *For those who don't know, LFTR is a type of molten salt reactor (MSR) which uses thorium.
J: " You don't ever get something for nothing in energy production. Every method, every alternative energy has some cost in there you are going to have to deal with, so what compromise are you most ok with making." I like that view on things. I guess its little steps until we get the big answer like fusion power where the compromise will not be so huge
Its quite refreshing to listen to people who are pro nuclear power. I live in the south where most of everyone is ignorant and claim nuclear power is unsafe. Thanks for the videos and keep them coming!
Actually there are thorium reactors, we have one in Norway, it is ofcourse in the state of research, but it is actually a thorium reactor. Look it up. So there is some good progress there
So funny we stack or arrange these Leggo blocks to release energy. But really we're arranging fields to coax bits of particles to unwind and give up their stored energy. A more direct way would be to find a better way of unwinding bits into usable energy.. like a entanglement field that coupled particles close to unwinding directly to particles in like a boiler.. like quantum entangling bits of the sun with steam boilers. That would be 'stealing fire from the gods'.
The one issue is that we cannot run a power grid on only fusion reactors. They are notorious for not being able to react to differences in power load requirements. They simply can not react fast enough to net fluctuations. They will however be the perfect solution for a base net load. We just need to find a way to deal with the fluctuations in the energy grid. I don't know if fission can fill that void, but if it can, perfect!
"They are notorious for not being able to react to differences in power load requirements." What. There *ARE* no fusion power plants yet. You're talking out of your ass.
I merely got two terms switched. Fission plants are what we have now and they are not very good for regulating power loads. English is not my native tongue. Thank you for pointing out my error.
Video discussions like this do a good job of systematically addressing the issues and problems of industrial energy supplies. It would be good to make a similar video discussion regarding the question of how much waste heat is produced as energy gets dissipated after being generated and used. Fission and fusion may offer much roomier limits of how much energy can be generated for human consumption, but what effects will all the dissipated waste heat have on climate? CO2 concerns focus on blanketing heat so it escapes slower, but what about simply increasing the amount of heat on the planet by generating energy that gets released as heat? Probably the simplest and wisest attitude toward energy is to conserve it as much as possible simply because the less we deviate from natural levels of energy in planetary climate cycles, the more security we have that nature will be able to mitigate the effects of human industry without radically changing biomes, eliminating species, and plaguing living organisms with increased competition for changing resources, such as evolving mosquito populations that spread like wildfire throughout the inhabited world.
What I really don't like about fission is that the radioactive waste isn't save for a really really long time. Therefore renewable energy sources are the best for now, in my opinion. When fusion comes up we'll reach a whole new level of energy production though.
What a delightful little nerd - I'm sure he'll go far in whatever he does. A nice discussion of the merits of nuclear without interjecting political mumbo-jumbo.
We already know that Nuclear will save the world but major oil corporations and people that will be at loss is paying tons of people to vote for the project not to happen.
Usually can not as states, companies and nuclear scientists want their god to remain untouched so they put regulations that are too restrictive for many companies and people. For widespread of nuclear power you need power plants that can be started and safely controlled by monkey, not something you have to have background checks, university degrees and years of training. Complexity and requirements on staff simply have to be comparable with any gas, coal or oil power plant. But that would require highly automated control system where "user" would not be able to do anything that would endanger plant. Especially for reactor loop. As well those plants have to have ability to run reactor at 100 % while turbine is only kept in synchronous speed without any power produced as step increase and decrease of reactor power put stress on critical elements of primary loop... No nuclear power plant currently being build have necessary features for transition form big complicated, mysterious and secretive device to ordinary system that could be build fast and operated by anybody. Nuclear and planes have same problem, they are getting more and more complicated and far from common people. Pretty everyone is perhaps able to fly Blériot, try do same with 747. That is great problem, we make systems more and more complicated and instead of using modern electronics and computers to simplify communication between man and machine they are used to make systems even more complicated. that is something wrong.
More like nuclear industry doing things so complicated and expensive so no one is willing to build them. And yes, people are afraid of those devices, but because of nature of nuclear industry in past, accidents and all stuff around it.
I remember a friend of mine talking about 'Liquid Crystal Florine Reactors' Could that be used in any way? If so, how efficient and how long can we use it?
Why not use two particle accelerators that cause particles to collide with each other. Or a particle that collides with another material that creates extra energy.
In the 1970s, Nixon was presented with 3 reactors: fast-breeder, thorium, and uranium. Two of the reactors used relatively common fuels with relatively short radioactive half life. The other used an isotope fuel rarer than platinum with a waste product that would take a millennia to decay, but was the only fuel that can be weaponized. And so Nixon chose uranium.
That doesn't add up. If we use the same amount of energy used create fission, and apply that to fusion, we should get back 4x the energy released from fission you're saying. But then why instead aren't we even getting back 1 times the input energy? Also if fission just takes a single neutron to start a chain reaction, wouldn't that use very little energy? You can just put a piece of californium near uranium. It will shoot neutrons onto the uranium, starting the chain reaction. Right?
Please correct me if I am wrong, but afaik fission reactors do not "smash things into other things" to produce power. The atoms decay on their own. The whole smashing part only comes into play when you've got a nuclear chain reaction, something I'd rather not see inside of a nuclear reactor.
+EACCyclonit Fission and decay are two different things. Fission is the splitting of an atom using another particle. Decay is the random splitting of an atom because of natural forces. In fission reactors atoms are split apart in a controlled chain reaction. In a nuclear warhead atoms are split in an uncontrolled reaction.
I would like to later hear about sustainability, growing population and depletion of our natural resources. I recently watched "Conspiracy: The Sustainability Secret", and I thought it was really fascinating how the narrator argued that methane from cow farts is the leading contribution to our greenhouse gases and question our sustainability, not just, on our consumption of energy, but the consumption of our natural resources like food and, most importantly, water.
Great stuff !! I'm still a bit confused as to how Hydrogen is supposedly so abundant, yet it seems to be a problem to get it in quantities to use in hydrogen fuel cells. I'm glad to hear some knowledgeable people speaking positively about nuclear energy!! I believe it's high time we put a few more nuclear reactors on line... in particular in California. We should have one or two nuclear plants dedicated to desalinization to solve the water crisis and to turn sea water into hydrogen to power fuel cells in automobiles.
+SciPunk215 The most common method of getting hydrogen is to split water using electrolysis. However, this uses vast amounts of energy. If fusion could be solved (which produces vast amounts of energy), then it would become economically viable to split the fuck out of as much water as you want. On a side note, conventional nuclear power plants are very expensive and hugely subsidized (at least here in the UK). There's no way one would be used just to make hydrogen (no H infrastructure/economy) or desalinate water (cheaper to import/cut down usage). I think nuclear is great. But it's not perfect. The waste remains toxic for 1000s of years and as of yet we have no long term storage facility ANYWHERE on earth. Most of the waste is just sitting at the plants themselves. Until we know how to deal with the waste, we should not invest in more nuclear.
+SciPunk215 The US hasn't had a new reactor built since the 70's. And thanks to bullshit laws in the sates that ban the construction of new reactors, you won't see any new ones until congress repels the bill. Given the events in Japan, I don't see anyone being able to convince congress to repel it anytime soon either...
Will you guys talk about drawing electricity from the earth that Tesla (I think it was him?) was interested in? Or is the topic too off field? I am interested in finding out more on it if you guys do include it :)
KagaiYami No, It has nothing to do with heat (that I know of). It was mentioned in an old documentary about Nikola Tesla taht I watched where he was trying to use the ground as a conductor to collect energy. I have been trying to find out more about it but there is not much info available or its not collected in one place and most of it goes over my head (hence why I asked about it). From what I gather he wanted to collect radiant energy which is present in space and goes through the air and earth. My search turned up a man called Tariel Kapanadze who seemly has had some success with it creating a 5kw generator, but most of the info on this is in Russian. The spectic in me wonders that, since there is not much info on this, if any of it is true as well. I am going to try find out more about it this eveing after work.
+FrozenEternity That's not how electricity works, you need 3 things to induce an electric current (aka electricity), a Magnetic Field, a Conductor, and Relative Motion. Here you have 2 of the requirements, where's your relative motion. +Bart Bols that wouldn't work either, the resistance from the magnetic field would cause your orbit to decay rapidly. I suppose you could put it on a torus and just propel it with a solar sail. But like you said the cost doesn't justify the meager results.
+FrozenEternity You would have to somehow convert low-quality thermal energy stemming from the earth's core into high-quality usable kinetic energy. Converting low-quality energy into high-quality energy is very, very hard, and you are going to lose most of the kinetic energy in the substances which you are drawing energy from (high temperature = high average kinetic energy of particles inside the substance). You would have to collect a LOT of heat for this to work.
I love that you brought up Thorium...thanks Trace;-) But it seemed almost as though you had a slight grimace while introducing it.......why? Just curious. I could be wrong..... A topic that's been brought to my attention, in the area of Global Greenhouse Gas effects, maybe you can investigate into the agriculture of the world and it's impact on the environment and the same Global warming you've referred to in the series. Great documentary that I've seen recently that shows a slew of controversial evidence in contrast to the normal CO2 story behind the Global warming, called Cowspiracy and you can actually find it on Netflix;-). It's also inclusive of a lot of other proof and data that is quite compelling, and sheds light on areas of simple process and production that's just begging for some attentiveness towards a betterment. Hopefully you'll find that topic worthy and important enough to possibly make a series on the issue based of the your findings. I know I would certainly love to know more about it , as well I'd like to see more public attention to the matter as wider audiences are informed. Thanks.
We breathe out carbon dioxide which plants take in and plants byproduct is oxygen which we take in. A truly symbiotic relationship can you imagine if we could create like that.
What about the water that flows through the nuclear reactor to cool down the core, absorbing the radiation, and therefore releasing radioactivity into the atmosphere around the plant via steam?
Ochoaj300 the water in a reactor is pressurised so it never becomes steam. The water coming out the cooling tower runs through a separate plumbing loop.
The problem with most fusion approaches is that they either will not work and/or they will be very very expensive (e.g tokamaks, laser confinement). Fission using molten salt reactors poses no risk to the general population (i.e. is accident proof, unlike the various pressurised water technologies) and should be cheaper than coal. In the longer term, the cheapest and safest method of generating industrial heat and electricity will be solar/batteries and nuclear fission from MSRs (either uranium burners or thorium breeders). The only fusion approach that I am aware of that is both plausible (i.e. it may be made to work) and affordable, is FocusFusion.
Tokamaks need to be rather large to work, but that doesn't make them non-viable. They'll be expensive to set up, yes, but more than pay off in the long run. Also, Stellarators can be smaller and more efficient than Tokamaks.
Apart from the obvious fact it is a physical impossibility to confine a fusion plasma with magnetic fields to the point of net energy, Tokamaks will always be super expensive, so exactly how will they pay off in the long run?. Yes, stellerators could be small, but also do not work. Fission via MSRs will always be cheaper and there are billions of years worth of uranium and thorium in the solar system. Solar and batteries are another cheap and straight forward option that makes monolithic hyper-expensive fusion generators pointless. In short, solar and fission will save the world and fusion research will continue to drain public funding that could be better spent elsewhere. (PS I will give Focus Fusion a pass for now, but even that may have insurmountable physical challenges.)
Michael V "Apart from the obvious fact it is a physical impossibility to confine a fusion plasma with magnetic fields to the point of net energy," That isn't a fact. In fact, it's a complete falsehood. "Tokamaks will always be super expensive, so exactly how will they pay off in the long run?." Fission reactors aren't cheap, either. And Fusion fuel is both more plentiful, and cheaper, than fission fuel. You also don't have to dispose of high level waste. "Yes, stellerators could be small, but also do not work." Another falsehood.
Can you point to a place in the universe where magnetic fields are "confine" the more powerful magnetic fields of a fusion plasma. In the case of NET positive energy, the confinement magnetic fields are, by definition, weaker than the magnetic fields of the fusion plasma - this is not a falsehood. In effect, tokamaks propose to confine magnetic fields with weaker magnetic fields. Are you also claiming that there are stellerators that are presently operating with net positive energy? - if not, then the statement that they do not work is not false. Confinement is the issue - nature does not confine fusion. It is widely accepted that MSR's will be cheaper than coal and there are no technological or scientific hurdles to overcome. Much of the hype over fusion is based on the myth of the cost of fuel - the cost of fuel for MSRs is about than 0.1 cents per KW (slightly more for thorium) - most of the cost of energy production (other than distribution) is in plant manufacture and half of that is the turbine island. Capital cost is by far the most important cost factor. Also, the cost of waste disposal is all but negligible - another myth derived from inefficient 50 year old pressurised water solid fuel designs.
Thanks for mentioning David Hahn testube. It's inspirational and sad at the same time to see a brilliant kid doing what he loves but not able to make a living off of it unlike other researchers just because of his mental illness
How about this; make a few fission reactors (which we already know how to do), use the power they generate to power the lasers or magnets needed to power a fusion reactor. See where that get us?
How come you mentioned china's 25 year plan for a thorium reactor but forgot to mention the ITER FUSION REACTOR which is being build for a few yaers now in europe and should be done by 2025?
About the Thorium Reactor thing corroding the metals inside the reactor, what if the internal bits are made out of something that's not a metal, like Quartz? You cant really corrode it, and its surprisingly heat resistant and not very porous at all. This is a question that i thought up near the end of the video, and i was wondering if that question was heavily flawed, can someone answer it?
The video mentioned 'breeding' a couple of times, which is a concept in nuclear physics/reactions I'm not familiar with. Does that mean intentionally creating usable materials from the initial fuel that can be recycled in the same reactor? Also, would it be possible to run a sort of 'compound' power plant that fused atoms up to the stage where they became conventionally fissile and then splitting them down again in a regular old fission reactor? I have the feeling I'm asking for too much and Newton would stop that sort of shenanigans dead in the water.
Everything I've read indicates that most of us will not even be alive by the time fusion reactors come into service which will be sometime around the close of the 21st Century. Many people confuse certain yet to be achieved milestones (i.e., creating a self sustaining fusion reaction) with the actual implementation of Fusion Reactors as a new source of Energy.
assuming that a fusion reactor can be built that works at ~2 billion kelvin and uses a few kilograms of mass at that temperature. what would be the damage if the magnetic containment field suddenly failed?
+richard reeves IDK, if were assuming they're using hydrogen and it found some oxygen a small explosion could result. The reaction would be in a near vacuum except for the fuel being used of course, so that amount of heat isolated to just a few kilograms would dissipate pretty quickly. And since the containment field is what drives the reaction, as soon as it failed the electron repulsion force would cause all the hydrogen to repel each other stopping the reaction. So the only damage you're looking at would be to the reactor itself, potentially the surrounding facility.
i meant the radiant heat primarily. I've heard everything from negligible effect to incinerating everything in a 100 mile radius. maybe nobody knows and they are all just guessing. i don't know the math necessary to figure it out for myself
richard reeves well who knows for sure, but we have generated heat that's hotter than the sun, and it didn't seem to affect anything nearby, I'm sure the reactor needed to be cooled extensively, but apparently it wasn't difficult.
+richard reeves well like he said, it would be conducted in a vacuum minus the hydrogen, there also would be massive amounts in the reactor at one time so you wouldnt end up with a Hindenburg style explosion. A good majority of the heat would likely dissipate and if its just the containment field it would likely stay contained inside of the reactor itself. I'll apologize for all the likely's but a lot of fusion is still theoretical. Based on the math thats been done the worst case scenario is destruction to the reactor itself and maybe the surrounding area. Most of the 100 mile radius stuff is over exaggerations due to the fear of the word nuclear. Fusion will be much safer because unlike fission it doesnt create insane amounts of radiation, it will be far more efficient and can be built anywhere. All that needs to be done is to get more money into the research of it.
Thank you for mentioning thorium. Till we fully harness fusion, or have very expensive infrastructure of thermal, tidal and solar, maybe it is the temporary solution. Love you guys, especially Julian, sorry Trace
From my understanding, building nuclear is very expensive. Very few power plants come in at budget, and nuclear plants are some of the worst at exceeding expected costs (which are much higher than comparable gas units). We know how to do it and do it safely, but how can it compete economically? All over the US, existing power plants are in the red having to compete with cheap gas.
+StuDaddy82 Nuclear doesn't have to be exspencive. The biggest reason why nuclear power is exspencive is that we don't mass produce reactors. I suggest you look up a video called thorium energy cheaper than coal.
Thanks for touching on thorium as a fission source. I still don't get it, though. Does the thorium itself chain-react to produce energy and degrade to lead, or does it somehow receive a couple of protons and become uranium, then fission like a standard reactor? Julian seemed to say both things, but you really only touched on it briefly. I'm confused! I also wish you'd put a little less emphasis on fission, (and fusion), and tell us more about the current state of other clean energy sources; suppressing infrasound from windmills, quantum dot photovoltaic cells that can absorb near infra-red and nanorectennas that can receive deep infra-red, the possibility of solar power satellites, wave and tidal hydroelectricity, high capacity batteries and other ways of storing energy and so on.
+D' Otter Oh, and I almost forgot about harvesting static; you just raise a wire into the air and it's surprising how much static it builds up, then ground it, (preferably through a motor or something), and you've got DC current. If there's a storm front passing, the amount of current you can get skyrockets! Granted, it takes quite a bit of wire at say 10,000ft to collect usable amounts, but there are no real party-stoppers to the technology.
Finnally people are talking about thorium reactors again!!!! Nice! Moltens Salt Nuclear Reactors are the next future thing which is odd since this technolgy is known for long long time!
"we can store nuclear waste safely" you might wanna regoogle that because the only completely safe option is too expensive to ever carry out. and current measures are on a "good enough for now basis.
+illyounotme exactly it's not hip and forward thinking to side with nuclear. a revival in its backing will come when we get a better understanding. current methods are absurd.
The two main problems that ppl have with (fission) nuclear reactors are: waste product, and accidents - which these days are most likely to come from natural disasters (ie earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, volcanoes, etc...). Burying the waste doesn't seem like much of a solution to most ppl - myself included. But the main concern, in my opinion, is whether or not the nuclear power plants are sufficiently fortified for natural disasters. Fukushima is an excellent example, particularly as that plant was about the same age as many of the reactors here in the US. As far as I know, no new nuclear power plants have been built in the US since 1986 or thereabouts. Of course technology has greatly advanced since then, but that was a little after we stopped seriously updating and improving our infrastructure. How many of those older plants are a ticking time bomb waiting to go off? And how many of those plants would meet today's safety standards, particularly in areas like California that's prone to earthquakes or the Gulf/East Coast that's prone to hurricanes? I'm not opposed to nuclear power, but I think we need to make sure our current plants are up to modern codes before considering building new ones. So, considering how much our government - federal and state - seem to be willing to spend on infrastructure lately... I'm glad there aren't any nuclear plants in my state.
Nuclear energy is somewhat safe but there's side effects to what's to do for the waste afterwards. Thorium is much much more safe than uranium. Back in the '50's and 60's the government had started a program that said this is more abundant than uranium and safer.
and thorium is less effective at producing weapons right? I think I remember readeing that somewhere? But it sounds like it still creates Uranium, am I right? So it could lead to clandestine weapon programs right?
+Kazak Brunstein Molten salt reactors (MSRs) as whole are much more proliferation resistant than current reactors, but if someone really, really, really, wanted to they could make a nuclear warhead. It's much easier to make large amount of chemical or bio weapons than to make nuclear weapons from MSRs, so wanting WMD would most likely pick the chemical or bio weapons first.
well think about it this way. earth absorbs sunlight from the tiny fraction of light generated by the sun that strikes the earth, and on top of that sunlight needs to penetrate through miles of atmosphere and its energy is mostly reflected. That miniscule percentage of energy is enough to power the weather, to heat the air, and provide energy to every living thing on earth. If we could create a fusion reaction...its literally creating a small star on the surface of out planet and we could harvest the energy thousands of times more efficiently. Solar power, while green, is far, far less efficient, and only a temporary relief to an ongoing problem to which harnessing fusion energy is the cure.
like the computer chip solar is growing exponentially, do you remember a 20MB hard drive in a computer (1984), well solar like that now. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics the world will be 100% solar in 15years even before fusion will work commercially. And everyone can make their own power unlike fusion. But your right the energy out put of fusion would be very high compare to solar. :D
+Christiaan Hunter the surface area of solar panels we would require to replace all our current energy output with solar would require manufacturing capabilities that would rival automobile companies making nothing but solar panels to have any hope of producing that much solar panels in the next 20 years. That doesn't even get into where are you putting all these solar panels. solar is awesome, but expecting to replace the energy output we currently have is unrealistic. you'd have to build solar farms out in space and transmit the energy down to earth. Nor does it take into account that our energy requirements in 20 years will be roughly double what we use now.
You guys truly have no idea what you are taking about. I have visited 2 nuclear waste storage facilities in EU. I also visited the -400(+) meter test mine in Belgium where they are testing the earth if it can store nuclear waste. I couldn't be more fearful from nuclear (fission) power. It really should be stopped today. Fission is at least 30-60 years away by the way.
According to advocates of TZM (The Zeitgesist Movement) and other so-called resource-based economies, they state that we have more than enough energy now. They claim the problem is that using these alternative energy sources are simply too expensive. So my question is this. If money was taken out of the equation (or imagine we had unlimited money) do we have enough energy sources to sustain first-world standards of living for everyone in the world without having to resort to pollution-producing energy sources like fossil fuels?
+Steven James DeBlasi The investors feel it's too expansive to research the technology necessary to make it efficient is what they are dodging. The us, canada and uk are front runners in todays world for pushing scientific research into making existing tech more profitable. While turning a blind eye to things like Einstein laying the ground work for cell phones, nuclear power plants, even tvs without ever knowing of the things to become of e=mc2. It's research into better unknown tech that may leave existing energy companies in the dust that keeps current research drivin towards more profits. Greed is the answer.
At 3:13 he said that even if the bombardment stop radioactivity will still happen for 50 - 100 years. Then according to what his saying the nuclear fusion is still as dangerous as fission nuclear in terms of radioactivity. Or maybe it's me that misunderstood what his saying ??
+Rachmat Awaludin Compared to fusion, fission's radiation last thousands of time longer. Nuclear material from a fission reactor can stay radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years.
heavylifter315 Oh thank you. I heard that the only solution for 100% free radiation fusion nuclear is through aneutronic nuclear fusion. It's just that aneutronic nuclear fusion are more hard to do than normal nuclear fusion.
+Rachmat Awaludin he was stating that the reactor shell (the metalic structure around the reactor) would be radioactive for 50 - 100 years. Outside the reactor nothing would be radioactive. (If the reactor is in use no one cares if it's radio active. If it isn't it can be buried without any real consequences). Compare that with something like Chernobyl where you have 30 miles of uninhabitable space due to a meltdown and fusion starts to look pretty awesome.
Genration Genration Yes chernobly are a huge disaster and also let's not forget fukushima. Aneutronic nuclear fusion are the only way for 100% free radioactive nuclear fusion. But aneutronic nuclear fusion are still a very far in the future (we didn't even reach the 1st generation nuclear fusion like what in the video mention).
+Rachmat Awaludin the best current shot I see of that is Focused Fusion which uses plasma instabilities to compress it for fusion. The aim of the Focus Fusion project is to achieve anuetronic break even
Hey guys, great vid. Can you maybe also talk some stats about how much money for research into Fusion and Fission is provided by governments or private companies? Because I feel like fusion research is massively underfunded and fission doesn't get any attention at all. Cheers.
+I BallisticRaptor I think he was meaning we need more research into better fission reactors. We only built a few new fission reactors in USA in the last 30 years. And, he may have been including thorium, that we aren't spending enough research money into it.
I disagree there is a better solution to Fission and that is Geothermal. At present we can only get Geothermal energy from areas that are already geologically active. However potentially if there was a drive to engineer better drills to dig a lot deeper then you could have it everywhere. The planets internals are already more than adequate to super heat water and unlike any other prospect there is almost no risk and no waste energy.
Once we finally develop fusion reactors, we can then invent a time machine to go back in the past so we can start using them 50 years ago so we can still control global warming.
i know that wind and solar is not the end game but at least its quite in reach of consumers. Here in the Netherlands you can partaly own a windmill to generate the power for you. The front investment is not that high and now i have relative cheap energy. its even worht noting that last yeari had between 8-16% profit due to the higher yield and price increase of energy costs.
Thorium molten salt reactors (MSRs) can run on nuclear waste and so solve nuclear waste problem. China is going all out to build MSRs. We need to get going on it.
Like soon or will they take forever
I got so hyped watching this video
Fuuuuuuuuushion! HAAA!
Fuuuuuuuuuture
+jimb0ismyname0 or just kamehameha. input: tiny senzu bean, output: enough energy to destroy planets
+jimb0ismyname0 DAMN, beat me to it :P
+hasen195 And let dr. gero absorb the kamehameha and put some jumper cables on his brain.
It's power level is OVER 9000!
India is developing a Thorium Reactor right now and is way ahead of anyone in the research.. India has abundant supplies of Thorium but not of Uranium.. so,that's the incentive..
they say a working demo will be live by 2017.. they even have layout plans for these planned out for every major city so when it comes to Thorium Reactors.. i bet we'll see the first one in India!
The first ones were built by the US in the 50s and 60s
+Varun Dewan still don't have toilets there. at least India has it's priorities straight......
Gotwired but the research was given up on favor of Uranium based ones..
they were prototypes and were never deployed..
Flintstoned no i have a toilet.. ur misinformed..
Varun Dewan as long as YOU have one, screw the millions who don't right?
Glad to see you guys either moved the camera or the mic so Julien's face wasn't obscured like it was in yesterday's vid. He's got a rather expressive face which helps relate his feelings and emotion on this topic.
Like his reaction @ 8:19 when Trace mentioned Thorium... Too cute
Please do a whole episode on Thorium. I'm very happy you touched on it but I'm sure you agree that it's worthy of a full episode. You guys rock, I watch everyday! :-)
ummm..........what about Thorium
+T-Ray Jones is bad
***** there is no nuclear power,
but thorium
***** If you misread the question I said why wouldn't Thorium do it
if you watch the video it explains why it wouldn't. the vid is debunking the car
^I Agree
My physics teacher said that fusion is controversial, because if you encase hydrogen isotopes in a doughnut shaped magnet chamber you will have no way of putting in the hydrogen isotopes. If you try to add in hydrogen to an ongoing reaction you have to make a small opening to constantly add in new fuel, but at the same time it makes the reactor leak out the material from the inside.
Your physics teacher needs to take a good hard look at fusion reactor designs then. Because these reactors both add new fuel, and remove fusion products continuously.
I am excited for a future video Titled Why Nuclear Fusion Has Saved The World
You forgot to mention vitrification with thorium reactors. Basically, if the waste products are combined with sugar and hardened, it makes a very solid glass. It takes up much less space than liquid waste, it decays faster, and it's far safer since it can't leak out.
Other exciting facts about MSR, thorium & LFTR:
- It's far cheaper to refine thorium than uranium, and theoretically a LFTR could produce electricity cheaper than that from coal. This is kind of REALLY important.
- MSR runs at atmospheric pressure so it can't explode, and you guys did sort of explain this without using the term "melt down" but it can't melt down.
- MSR produces far less waste by weight than LWR and PWR because it's able to fission larger proportions of the fuel, whereas LWR & PWR fission at most about 5% of their fuel. In addition, the waste from LFTR only has to be stored away from the biosphere for a few hundred years instead of tens of thousands of years.
- LFTR can produce medical isotopes like 213-Bi for use in Targeted Alpha Therapy to help fight cancer.
- As with other nuclear, the waste heat can be used to desalinate water or for other uses.
*For those who don't know, LFTR is a type of molten salt reactor (MSR) which uses thorium.
J: " You don't ever get something for nothing in energy production. Every method, every alternative energy has some cost in there you are going to have to deal with, so what compromise are you most ok with making."
I like that view on things. I guess its little steps until we get the big answer like fusion power where the compromise will not be so huge
LFTR is a better fission type from what I've seen of it. It's safer and more sustainable. I'm glad you mentioned it.
You heard it here first. Slipknot isn't heavy metal.
Its quite refreshing to listen to people who are pro nuclear power. I live in the south where most of everyone is ignorant and claim nuclear power is unsafe. Thanks for the videos and keep them coming!
Where did you guys get your shirts?
Actually there are thorium reactors, we have one in Norway, it is ofcourse in the state of research, but it is actually a thorium reactor. Look it up. So there is some good progress there
loving the energy episodes you should do more of them
So funny we stack or arrange these Leggo blocks to release energy. But really we're arranging fields to coax bits of particles to unwind and give up their stored energy. A more direct way would be to find a better way of unwinding bits into usable energy.. like a entanglement field that coupled particles close to unwinding directly to particles in like a boiler.. like quantum entangling bits of the sun with steam boilers. That would be 'stealing fire from the gods'.
The one issue is that we cannot run a power grid on only fusion reactors. They are notorious for not being able to react to differences in power load requirements. They simply can not react fast enough to net fluctuations. They will however be the perfect solution for a base net load. We just need to find a way to deal with the fluctuations in the energy grid. I don't know if fission can fill that void, but if it can, perfect!
"They are notorious for not being able to react to differences in power load requirements."
What. There *ARE* no fusion power plants yet. You're talking out of your ass.
I merely got two terms switched. Fission plants are what we have now and they are not very good for regulating power loads. English is not my native tongue. Thank you for pointing out my error.
I like how the host said that fusion is more efficient but a few minutes later Julian said that it takes more energy than gives out. :D
Video discussions like this do a good job of systematically addressing the issues and problems of industrial energy supplies. It would be good to make a similar video discussion regarding the question of how much waste heat is produced as energy gets dissipated after being generated and used. Fission and fusion may offer much roomier limits of how much energy can be generated for human consumption, but what effects will all the dissipated waste heat have on climate? CO2 concerns focus on blanketing heat so it escapes slower, but what about simply increasing the amount of heat on the planet by generating energy that gets released as heat?
Probably the simplest and wisest attitude toward energy is to conserve it as much as possible simply because the less we deviate from natural levels of energy in planetary climate cycles, the more security we have that nature will be able to mitigate the effects of human industry without radically changing biomes, eliminating species, and plaguing living organisms with increased competition for changing resources, such as evolving mosquito populations that spread like wildfire throughout the inhabited world.
Nuclear is the only way...THORIUM!!!
What I really don't like about fission is that the radioactive waste isn't save for a really really long time. Therefore renewable energy sources are the best for now, in my opinion. When fusion comes up we'll reach a whole new level of energy production though.
Thanks for a realistic alternative energy talk
what about the future of bio medical engineering, it would be awesome if you guys talked about it :B
Thanks guys ! Excellent topic !Cheers from Belgium.
they are extracting heat from beneath the surface in the mantle to power generators. Zero issues with it
What a delightful little nerd - I'm sure he'll go far in whatever he does. A nice discussion of the merits of nuclear without interjecting political mumbo-jumbo.
We already know that Nuclear will save the world but major oil corporations and people that will be at loss is paying tons of people to vote for the project not to happen.
They can work in nuclear power plants etc
Usually can not as states, companies and nuclear scientists want their god to remain untouched so they put regulations that are too restrictive for many companies and people. For widespread of nuclear power you need power plants that can be started and safely controlled by monkey, not something you have to have background checks, university degrees and years of training.
Complexity and requirements on staff simply have to be comparable with any gas, coal or oil power plant. But that would require highly automated control system where "user" would not be able to do anything that would endanger plant. Especially for reactor loop. As well those plants have to have ability to run reactor at 100 % while turbine is only kept in synchronous speed without any power produced as step increase and decrease of reactor power put stress on critical elements of primary loop...
No nuclear power plant currently being build have necessary features for transition form big complicated, mysterious and secretive device to ordinary system that could be build fast and operated by anybody. Nuclear and planes have same problem, they are getting more and more complicated and far from common people. Pretty everyone is perhaps able to fly Blériot, try do same with 747.
That is great problem, we make systems more and more complicated and instead of using modern electronics and computers to simplify communication between man and machine they are used to make systems even more complicated. that is something wrong.
More like nuclear industry doing things so complicated and expensive so no one is willing to build them.
And yes, people are afraid of those devices, but because of nature of nuclear industry in past, accidents and all stuff around it.
I remember a friend of mine talking about 'Liquid Crystal Florine Reactors'
Could that be used in any way? If so, how efficient and how long can we use it?
Why not use two particle accelerators that cause particles to collide with each other. Or a particle that collides with another material that creates extra energy.
+podcastbard cause that's not how a particle accelerator works.
+podcastbard Particles are smaller than atoms and smashing them together won't give you any sort of useful fusion reaction.
That's...sort of the idea behind Stellarators. Not exactly, but sort of.
If you could do this as a podcast so that I can listen to you while still doing my work
In the 1970s, Nixon was presented with 3 reactors: fast-breeder, thorium, and uranium. Two of the reactors used relatively common fuels with relatively short radioactive half life. The other used an isotope fuel rarer than platinum with a waste product that would take a millennia to decay, but was the only fuel that can be weaponized. And so Nixon chose uranium.
amazing knowledge brother it help me a lot in understanding of how we can end energy shortage
That doesn't add up. If we use the same amount of energy used create fission, and apply that to fusion, we should get back 4x the energy released from fission you're saying. But then why instead aren't we even getting back 1 times the input energy? Also if fission just takes a single neutron to start a chain reaction, wouldn't that use very little energy? You can just put a piece of californium near uranium. It will shoot neutrons onto the uranium, starting the chain reaction. Right?
it would be very efficient so let's make it happen
Please correct me if I am wrong, but afaik fission reactors do not "smash things into other things" to produce power. The atoms decay on their own. The whole smashing part only comes into play when you've got a nuclear chain reaction, something I'd rather not see inside of a nuclear reactor.
+EACCyclonit Fission and decay are two different things. Fission is the splitting of an atom using another particle. Decay is the random splitting of an atom because of natural forces. In fission reactors atoms are split apart in a controlled chain reaction. In a nuclear warhead atoms are split in an uncontrolled reaction.
If you want to help move thorium energy along, you can support the Thorium Energy Alliance.
I would like to later hear about sustainability, growing population and depletion of our natural resources. I recently watched "Conspiracy: The Sustainability Secret", and I thought it was really fascinating how the narrator argued that methane from cow farts is the leading contribution to our greenhouse gases and question our sustainability, not just, on our consumption of energy, but the consumption of our natural resources like food and, most importantly, water.
What if we pull salt out of salt water?
Great stuff !! I'm still a bit confused as to how Hydrogen is supposedly so abundant, yet it seems to be a problem to get it in quantities to use in hydrogen fuel cells.
I'm glad to hear some knowledgeable people speaking positively about nuclear energy!! I believe it's high time we put a few more nuclear reactors on line... in particular in California. We should have one or two nuclear plants dedicated to desalinization to solve the water crisis and to turn sea water into hydrogen to power fuel cells in automobiles.
+SciPunk215 The most common method of getting hydrogen is to split water using electrolysis. However, this uses vast amounts of energy. If fusion could be solved (which produces vast amounts of energy), then it would become economically viable to split the fuck out of as much water as you want.
On a side note, conventional nuclear power plants are very expensive and hugely subsidized (at least here in the UK). There's no way one would be used just to make hydrogen (no H infrastructure/economy) or desalinate water (cheaper to import/cut down usage).
I think nuclear is great. But it's not perfect. The waste remains toxic for 1000s of years and as of yet we have no long term storage facility ANYWHERE on earth. Most of the waste is just sitting at the plants themselves. Until we know how to deal with the waste, we should not invest in more nuclear.
+SciPunk215 The US hasn't had a new reactor built since the 70's. And thanks to bullshit laws in the sates that ban the construction of new reactors, you won't see any new ones until congress repels the bill. Given the events in Japan, I don't see anyone being able to convince congress to repel it anytime soon either...
+godaphi well lets not forget that should we be able to develop fusion the idea of radioactive waste will be a thing of the past.
Will you guys talk about drawing electricity from the earth that Tesla (I think it was him?) was interested in? Or is the topic too off field? I am interested in finding out more on it if you guys do include it :)
+FrozenEternity do you mean geothermal energy production?
KagaiYami
No, It has nothing to do with heat (that I know of). It was mentioned in an old documentary about Nikola Tesla taht I watched where he was trying to use the ground as a conductor to collect energy. I have been trying to find out more about it but there is not much info available or its not collected in one place and most of it goes over my head (hence why I asked about it). From what I gather he wanted to collect radiant energy which is present in space and goes through the air and earth. My search turned up a man called Tariel Kapanadze who seemly has had some success with it creating a 5kw generator, but most of the info on this is in Russian.
The spectic in me wonders that, since there is not much info on this, if any of it is true as well.
I am going to try find out more about it this eveing after work.
+FrozenEternity I've heard of something similar where a guy created a giant generator that collects energy from AM radio waves.
+FrozenEternity That's not how electricity works, you need 3 things to induce an electric current (aka electricity), a Magnetic Field, a Conductor, and Relative Motion. Here you have 2 of the requirements, where's your relative motion. +Bart Bols that wouldn't work either, the resistance from the magnetic field would cause your orbit to decay rapidly. I suppose you could put it on a torus and just propel it with a solar sail. But like you said the cost doesn't justify the meager results.
+FrozenEternity You would have to somehow convert low-quality thermal energy stemming from the earth's core into high-quality usable kinetic energy. Converting low-quality energy into high-quality energy is very, very hard, and you are going to lose most of the kinetic energy in the substances which you are drawing energy from (high temperature = high average kinetic energy of particles inside the substance). You would have to collect a LOT of heat for this to work.
I love that you brought up Thorium...thanks Trace;-) But it seemed almost as though you had a slight grimace while introducing it.......why? Just curious. I could be wrong.....
A topic that's been brought to my attention, in the area of Global Greenhouse Gas effects, maybe you can investigate into the agriculture of the world and it's impact on the environment and the same Global warming you've referred to in the series. Great documentary that I've seen recently that shows a slew of controversial evidence in contrast to the normal CO2 story behind the Global warming, called Cowspiracy and you can actually find it on Netflix;-). It's also inclusive of a lot of other proof and data that is quite compelling, and sheds light on areas of simple process and production that's just begging for some attentiveness towards a betterment. Hopefully you'll find that topic worthy and important enough to possibly make a series on the issue based of the your findings. I know I would certainly love to know more about it , as well I'd like to see more public attention to the matter as wider audiences are informed. Thanks.
We breathe out carbon dioxide which plants take in and plants byproduct is oxygen which we take in. A truly symbiotic relationship can you imagine if we could create like that.
there's a nuclear FUSION reactor being built in France now called the ITER project look up fusion for energy on youtube its a massive project
What about the water that flows through the nuclear reactor to cool down the core, absorbing the radiation, and therefore releasing radioactivity into the atmosphere around the plant via steam?
Ochoaj300 the water in a reactor is pressurised so it never becomes steam. The water coming out the cooling tower runs through a separate plumbing loop.
The problem with most fusion approaches is that they either will not work and/or they will be very very expensive (e.g tokamaks, laser confinement). Fission using molten salt reactors poses no risk to the general population (i.e. is accident proof, unlike the various pressurised water technologies) and should be cheaper than coal. In the longer term, the cheapest and safest method of generating industrial heat and electricity will be solar/batteries and nuclear fission from MSRs (either uranium burners or thorium breeders).
The only fusion approach that I am aware of that is both plausible (i.e. it may be made to work) and affordable, is FocusFusion.
Tokamaks need to be rather large to work, but that doesn't make them non-viable. They'll be expensive to set up, yes, but more than pay off in the long run.
Also, Stellarators can be smaller and more efficient than Tokamaks.
Apart from the obvious fact it is a physical impossibility to confine a fusion plasma with magnetic fields to the point of net energy, Tokamaks will always be super expensive, so exactly how will they pay off in the long run?. Yes, stellerators could be small, but also do not work. Fission via MSRs will always be cheaper and there are billions of years worth of uranium and thorium in the solar system. Solar and batteries are another cheap and straight forward option that makes monolithic hyper-expensive fusion generators pointless. In short, solar and fission will save the world and fusion research will continue to drain public funding that could be better spent elsewhere. (PS I will give Focus Fusion a pass for now, but even that may have insurmountable physical challenges.)
Michael V "Apart from the obvious fact it is a physical impossibility to confine a fusion plasma with magnetic fields to the point of net energy,"
That isn't a fact. In fact, it's a complete falsehood.
"Tokamaks will always be super expensive, so exactly how will they pay off in the long run?."
Fission reactors aren't cheap, either. And Fusion fuel is both more plentiful, and cheaper, than fission fuel. You also don't have to dispose of high level waste.
"Yes, stellerators could be small, but also do not work."
Another falsehood.
Can you point to a place in the universe where magnetic fields are "confine" the more powerful magnetic fields of a fusion plasma. In the case of NET positive energy, the confinement magnetic fields are, by definition, weaker than the magnetic fields of the fusion plasma - this is not a falsehood. In effect, tokamaks propose to confine magnetic fields with weaker magnetic fields.
Are you also claiming that there are stellerators that are presently operating with net positive energy? - if not, then the statement that they do not work is not false.
Confinement is the issue - nature does not confine fusion.
It is widely accepted that MSR's will be cheaper than coal and there are no technological or scientific hurdles to overcome. Much of the hype over fusion is based on the myth of the cost of fuel - the cost of fuel for MSRs is about than 0.1 cents per KW (slightly more for thorium) - most of the cost of energy production (other than distribution) is in plant manufacture and half of that is the turbine island. Capital cost is by far the most important cost factor. Also, the cost of waste disposal is all but negligible - another myth derived from inefficient 50 year old pressurised water solid fuel designs.
Thanks for mentioning David Hahn testube. It's inspirational and sad at the same time to see a brilliant kid doing what he loves but not able to make a living off of it unlike other researchers just because of his mental illness
How about this; make a few fission reactors (which we already know how to do), use the power they generate to power the lasers or magnets needed to power a fusion reactor. See where that get us?
How come you mentioned china's 25 year plan for a thorium reactor but forgot to mention the ITER FUSION REACTOR which is being build for a few yaers now in europe and should be done by 2025?
A good comparison to our curiosity of nuclear fusion is mankind's curiosity of fire that became a huge step in our evolution.
About the Thorium Reactor thing corroding the metals inside the reactor, what if the internal bits are made out of something that's not a metal, like Quartz? You cant really corrode it, and its surprisingly heat resistant and not very porous at all. This is a question that i thought up near the end of the video, and i was wondering if that question was heavily flawed, can someone answer it?
Thorium fission reactors are safer than most fission reactor. Fusion is a longer way off.
Great video, I enjoyed it very much. :D
Could we also solve our helium shortage by collecting the helium after it is produced in the reaction
The description for the video is a double positive.
The video mentioned 'breeding' a couple of times, which is a concept in nuclear physics/reactions I'm not familiar with. Does that mean intentionally creating usable materials from the initial fuel that can be recycled in the same reactor? Also, would it be possible to run a sort of 'compound' power plant that fused atoms up to the stage where they became conventionally fissile and then splitting them down again in a regular old fission reactor?
I have the feeling I'm asking for too much and Newton would stop that sort of shenanigans dead in the water.
Do "Energy from the vacuum" plz.
Everything I've read indicates that most of us will not even be alive by the time fusion reactors come into service which will be sometime around the close of the 21st Century. Many people confuse certain yet to be achieved milestones (i.e., creating a self sustaining fusion reaction) with the actual implementation of Fusion Reactors as a new source of Energy.
+RayB Where do you get your Fusion energy due date from?
I'm pro fission right now, still way better than fossil fuels.
15 years ago my science teacher was like if you can harness nuclear fusion you would be the richest muhfuka in the universe
assuming that a fusion reactor can be built that works at ~2 billion kelvin and uses a few kilograms of mass at that temperature. what would be the damage if the magnetic containment field suddenly failed?
+richard reeves IDK, if were assuming they're using hydrogen and it found some oxygen a small explosion could result. The reaction would be in a near vacuum except for the fuel being used of course, so that amount of heat isolated to just a few kilograms would dissipate pretty quickly. And since the containment field is what drives the reaction, as soon as it failed the electron repulsion force would cause all the hydrogen to repel each other stopping the reaction. So the only damage you're looking at would be to the reactor itself, potentially the surrounding facility.
i meant the radiant heat primarily. I've heard everything from negligible effect to incinerating everything in a 100 mile radius. maybe nobody knows and they are all just guessing. i don't know the math necessary to figure it out for myself
richard reeves
well who knows for sure, but we have generated heat that's hotter than the sun, and it didn't seem to affect anything nearby, I'm sure the reactor needed to be cooled extensively, but apparently it wasn't difficult.
+richard reeves well like he said, it would be conducted in a vacuum minus the hydrogen, there also would be massive amounts in the reactor at one time so you wouldnt end up with a Hindenburg style explosion. A good majority of the heat would likely dissipate and if its just the containment field it would likely stay contained inside of the reactor itself. I'll apologize for all the likely's but a lot of fusion is still theoretical. Based on the math thats been done the worst case scenario is destruction to the reactor itself and maybe the surrounding area. Most of the 100 mile radius stuff is over exaggerations due to the fear of the word nuclear. Fusion will be much safer because unlike fission it doesnt create insane amounts of radiation, it will be far more efficient and can be built anywhere. All that needs to be done is to get more money into the research of it.
Thank you for mentioning thorium. Till we fully harness fusion, or have very expensive infrastructure of thermal, tidal and solar, maybe it is the temporary solution. Love you guys, especially Julian, sorry Trace
From my understanding, building nuclear is very expensive. Very few power plants come in at budget, and nuclear plants are some of the worst at exceeding expected costs (which are much higher than comparable gas units). We know how to do it and do it safely, but how can it compete economically? All over the US, existing power plants are in the red having to compete with cheap gas.
+StuDaddy82 Nuclear doesn't have to be exspencive. The biggest reason why nuclear power is exspencive is that we don't mass produce reactors. I suggest you look up a video called thorium energy cheaper than coal.
"Help me Fusion, you're my only hope"
talk about LIFTR reactors. liquid salt molten fluoride thorium reactors.
They talked about in the video
+Montgomery Bermann yeah,I commented before then end.
+MrPhil360 dumbass
+Ricky Ricardo Ramirez Rocha *Passes The Salt*
Dixi Normus thank you. My steak tasted like shit
Thanks for touching on thorium as a fission source. I still don't get it, though. Does the thorium itself chain-react to produce energy and degrade to lead, or does it somehow receive a couple of protons and become uranium, then fission like a standard reactor? Julian seemed to say both things, but you really only touched on it briefly. I'm confused!
I also wish you'd put a little less emphasis on fission, (and fusion), and tell us more about the current state of other clean energy sources; suppressing infrasound from windmills, quantum dot photovoltaic cells that can absorb near infra-red and nanorectennas that can receive deep infra-red, the possibility of solar power satellites, wave and tidal hydroelectricity, high capacity batteries and other ways of storing energy and so on.
+D' Otter Oh, and I almost forgot about harvesting static; you just raise a wire into the air and it's surprising how much static it builds up, then ground it, (preferably through a motor or something), and you've got DC current. If there's a storm front passing, the amount of current you can get skyrockets! Granted, it takes quite a bit of wire at say 10,000ft to collect usable amounts, but there are no real party-stoppers to the technology.
Thorium, thorium is the answer until we've mastered fusion.
GRRRRRAAAAAR. i have my grade 9 education. and they are off the mark on so many topics.
Why cant you use this to go outer space once your in space
Finnally people are talking about thorium reactors again!!!! Nice! Moltens Salt Nuclear Reactors are the next future thing which is odd since this technolgy is known for long long time!
you should also include some pictures and illustrations in your videos.
"we can store nuclear waste safely" you might wanna regoogle that because the only completely safe option is too expensive to ever carry out. and current measures are on a "good enough for now basis.
+illyounotme exactly it's not hip and forward thinking to side with nuclear. a revival in its backing will come when we get a better understanding. current methods are absurd.
The two main problems that ppl have with (fission) nuclear reactors are: waste product, and accidents - which these days are most likely to come from natural disasters (ie earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, volcanoes, etc...). Burying the waste doesn't seem like much of a solution to most ppl - myself included. But the main concern, in my opinion, is whether or not the nuclear power plants are sufficiently fortified for natural disasters. Fukushima is an excellent example, particularly as that plant was about the same age as many of the reactors here in the US. As far as I know, no new nuclear power plants have been built in the US since 1986 or thereabouts. Of course technology has greatly advanced since then, but that was a little after we stopped seriously updating and improving our infrastructure. How many of those older plants are a ticking time bomb waiting to go off? And how many of those plants would meet today's safety standards, particularly in areas like California that's prone to earthquakes or the Gulf/East Coast that's prone to hurricanes? I'm not opposed to nuclear power, but I think we need to make sure our current plants are up to modern codes before considering building new ones. So, considering how much our government - federal and state - seem to be willing to spend on infrastructure lately... I'm glad there aren't any nuclear plants in my state.
Nuclear energy is somewhat safe but there's side effects to what's to do for the waste afterwards. Thorium is much much more safe than uranium. Back in the '50's and 60's the government had started a program that said this is more abundant than uranium and safer.
and thorium is less effective at producing weapons right? I think I remember readeing that somewhere? But it sounds like it still creates Uranium, am I right? So it could lead to clandestine weapon programs right?
+Kazak Brunstein Molten salt reactors (MSRs) as whole are much more proliferation resistant than current reactors, but if someone really, really, really, wanted to they could make a nuclear warhead. It's much easier to make large amount of chemical or bio weapons than to make nuclear weapons from MSRs, so wanting WMD would most likely pick the chemical or bio weapons first.
solar panels are probably the most inefficient way to harvest fusion energy.
+Francis Zhao but at the current rate of growth of solar energy in 15 years will be most of the energy of the world.
well think about it this way. earth absorbs sunlight from the tiny fraction of light generated by the sun that strikes the earth, and on top of that sunlight needs to penetrate through miles of atmosphere and its energy is mostly reflected. That miniscule percentage of energy is enough to power the weather, to heat the air, and provide energy to every living thing on earth. If we could create a fusion reaction...its literally creating a small star on the surface of out planet and we could harvest the energy thousands of times more efficiently. Solar power, while green, is far, far less efficient, and only a temporary relief to an ongoing problem to which harnessing fusion energy is the cure.
like the computer chip solar is growing exponentially, do you remember a 20MB hard drive in a computer (1984), well solar like that now.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics
the world will be 100% solar in 15years even before fusion will work commercially. And everyone can make their own power unlike fusion.
But your right the energy out put of fusion would be very high compare to solar. :D
+Christiaan Hunter Lol, not even close. Ground based solar is a fools errand.
+Christiaan Hunter the surface area of solar panels we would require to replace all our current energy output with solar would require manufacturing capabilities that would rival automobile companies making nothing but solar panels to have any hope of producing that much solar panels in the next 20 years. That doesn't even get into where are you putting all these solar panels. solar is awesome, but expecting to replace the energy output we currently have is unrealistic. you'd have to build solar farms out in space and transmit the energy down to earth. Nor does it take into account that our energy requirements in 20 years will be roughly double what we use now.
I say we create groin attachments for newly wed Italians and extract the energy from that.
What microphones do you guys use?
Uranium's half-life is so long that the radioactivity of it is not that damaging. So yes, it is still safe to a point
You guys truly have no idea what you are taking about.
I have visited 2 nuclear waste storage facilities in EU.
I also visited the -400(+) meter test mine in Belgium where they are testing the earth if it can store nuclear waste.
I couldn't be more fearful from nuclear (fission) power. It really should be stopped today.
Fission is at least 30-60 years away by the way.
According to advocates of TZM (The Zeitgesist Movement) and other so-called resource-based economies, they state that we have more than enough energy now. They claim the problem is that using these alternative energy sources are simply too expensive. So my question is this. If money was taken out of the equation (or imagine we had unlimited money) do we have enough energy sources to sustain first-world standards of living for everyone in the world without having to resort to pollution-producing energy sources like fossil fuels?
+Steven James DeBlasi The investors feel it's too expansive to research the technology necessary to make it efficient is what they are dodging. The us, canada and uk are front runners in todays world for pushing scientific research into making existing tech more profitable. While turning a blind eye to things like Einstein laying the ground work for cell phones, nuclear power plants, even tvs without ever knowing of the things to become of e=mc2. It's research into better unknown tech that may leave existing energy companies in the dust that keeps current research drivin towards more profits. Greed is the answer.
what happens if the oil mines stop producing oil?
I'm watching this on October 21st, 2015. My Mr. Fusion laughs at your primitive ideas of how nuclear power is harvested
At 3:13 he said that even if the bombardment stop radioactivity will still happen for 50 - 100 years. Then according to what his saying the nuclear fusion is still as dangerous as fission nuclear in terms of radioactivity.
Or maybe it's me that misunderstood what his saying ??
+Rachmat Awaludin Compared to fusion, fission's radiation last thousands of time longer. Nuclear material from a fission reactor can stay radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years.
heavylifter315 Oh thank you. I heard that the only solution for 100% free radiation fusion nuclear is through aneutronic nuclear fusion. It's just that aneutronic nuclear fusion are more hard to do than normal nuclear fusion.
+Rachmat Awaludin he was stating that the reactor shell (the metalic structure around the reactor) would be radioactive for 50 - 100 years. Outside the reactor nothing would be radioactive. (If the reactor is in use no one cares if it's radio active. If it isn't it can be buried without any real consequences). Compare that with something like Chernobyl where you have 30 miles of uninhabitable space due to a meltdown and fusion starts to look pretty awesome.
Genration Genration Yes chernobly are a huge disaster and also let's not forget fukushima.
Aneutronic nuclear fusion are the only way for 100% free radioactive nuclear fusion. But aneutronic nuclear fusion are still a very far in the future (we didn't even reach the 1st generation nuclear fusion like what in the video mention).
+Rachmat Awaludin the best current shot I see of that is Focused Fusion which uses plasma instabilities to compress it for fusion. The aim of the Focus Fusion project is to achieve anuetronic break even
Hey guys, great vid.
Can you maybe also talk some stats about how much money for research into Fusion and Fission is provided by governments or private companies?
Because I feel like fusion research is massively underfunded and fission doesn't get any attention at all.
Cheers.
fission is already available...
it is the nuclear reactor of today
+I BallisticRaptor I think he was meaning we need more research into better fission reactors. We only built a few new fission reactors in USA in the last 30 years. And, he may have been including thorium, that we aren't spending enough research money into it.
The 'I came here from *insert thing here*!' are a pretty lame set of comments.
But for crying out load, I came here from 'Okuu's Nuclear Fusion Dojo.'
I disagree there is a better solution to Fission and that is Geothermal. At present we can only get Geothermal energy from areas that are already geologically active. However potentially if there was a drive to engineer better drills to dig a lot deeper then you could have it everywhere. The planets internals are already more than adequate to super heat water and unlike any other prospect there is almost no risk and no waste energy.
Why doesnt anyone use fission to kick start fusion?
What about "LFTR Reactors", can you make a video about that? :)
+Philipp .S That's what a thorium based reactor is.
"Commercially-practical nuclear fusion" will be here in ten years. Of course, they've been telling us that since 1958, so I'm not holding my breath.
The best "renewable" energy source we have is geothermal, witch is technicaly mostly nuclear.
Once we finally develop fusion reactors, we can then invent a time machine to go back in the past so we can start using them 50 years ago so we can still control global warming.
I'm thinking of getting my bachelors in nuclear engineering. Do you think it will pay off? I hear a lot of bad things about the career.
+Omar Garcia Go for it, don't let people say bad things about it:)
What about antimatter annihilation?
Or a Dyson structure?
Or maybe black hole merging?
***** Still though. Imagine the efficiency.
Imagine the *science.*
One technological breakthrough at a time buddy.
The temperatures that you need to do it at are to high. For now
can u make some video on biogas or waste management like waste to energy??
So... Is it Americium or Curium around 5:30?
i know that wind and solar is not the end game but at least its quite in reach of consumers. Here in the Netherlands you can partaly own a windmill to generate the power for you. The front investment is not that high and now i have relative cheap energy. its even worht noting that last yeari had between 8-16% profit due to the higher yield and price increase of energy costs.