Portable Nuclear Power
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- Опубликовано: 27 сен 2024
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NUCLEAR POWER
Of all the power sources available to man, none has been as extraordinary in energy yield as nuclear fission. In fact, a single gram of fissile nuclear fuel, in theory, contains as much free energy as the gasoline contained within a small fuel tanker truck. By the early 2000s, concerns over carbon dioxide emissions would bring about a renewed interest in nuclear power. And with this, came a myriad of developments that aimed at improving the safety and sustainability of large scale reactors. However, in recent years, a new paradigm in how nuclear fission reactors are created and utilized is starting to gain momentum.
NUCLEAR FISSION
To date, almost all nuclear power reactors extract energy from the process of nuclear fission. In this process, a fissile nuclear fuel is bombarded with neutrons. As the nucleus of the fuel’s atoms captures a neutron by the strong nuclear force, it begins to deform resulting in the nucleus fragments exceeding the distances at which the strong nuclear force can hold the two groups of charged nucleons together. This tug of war between the strong nuclear force and the electromagnetic force ends with the two fragments separating by their repulsive charge.
Because fission reactions are primarily driven by bombardment, establishing and regulating a sustained fission chain reaction becomes feasible through controlling the free neutron movement within a reactor. This characteristic allows for fission reactions to be "throttled", making it well suited for electric power generation.
FIRST REACTORS
The first practical nuclear reactor was developed during the early 1950s by the U. Known as the S1W reactor, it would see its first deployment on the USS Nautilus in January 1954. The S1W was a relatively simple and compact design known as a pressurized water reactor. The fission chain reaction can also be throttled by introducing neutron absorbers into the reactor core.
IMPROVEMENTS ON REACTOR DESIGN
Within a decade, the two circuit designs of pressurized water reactors would be reduced to a single loop configuration with the introduction of boiling water reactors. Designed primarily with civilian power generation in mind, a boiling water reactor directly produces steam by heating cooling water with the reactor core. This steam is then directly used to drive a turbine, after which it is cooled in a condenser and converted back to liquid water, and pumped back into the reactor core. Boiling water reactors still utilized water as the neutron moderator and chain reaction throttling via control rods or blades was also retained.
GAS REACTORS
In gas cooled reactors, an inert gas is used to transfer heat from the reactor core to a heat exchanger, where steam is generated and sent to turbines. Neutron moderation is accomplished by encasing the nuclear fuel in either graphite or heavy water. The effectiveness of how they moderate neutrons also permits the use of less-enriched uranium, with some reactors being able operate purely on natural uranium.
PEBBLE-BED REACTORS
These thin, solid layers are are composed of a 10 micron porous inner carbon layer that contains the fission reaction products, a neutron moderating, and protective 40 micron pyrolytic carbon inner-layer, a 35 micron silicon carbide ceramic layer to contain high temperature fission products and add structure to the particle, and another protective 40 micron pyrolytic carbon outer later. TRISO fuel is incredibly robust and resilient. They can survive extreme thermal swings without cracking as well as the high pressures and temperatures of fission cooling systems.
Gas cooled reactors work especially well with TRISO fuel because of their ability to operate at high temperatures while remaining chemically inert. When combined with TRISO fuel, they also offer incomparable levels of nuclear containment.
SMRs
SMRs are nuclear reactors of relatively small power generation capacity, generally no larger than 300 MW. They can be installed in multi-reactor banks to increase plant capacity and they offer the benefit of lower investment costs and increased safety through containment.
PROJECT PEELE
Called Project Peele, the program is planned around a two year design-maturation period where a generation IV reactor design will be adapted to small scale, mobile use. X-Energy, in particular, has promoted TRISO pebble bed technology as the ideal choice for such a rugged reactor design.
In addition, the full-scale deployment of Fourth Generation nuclear reactor technologies will have significant geopolitical implications for the United States while reducing the Nation’s carbon emissions.
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Yes next time the US military runs from men in dresses on flip flops? Taliban will also get a couple of sea containersize ... nuclear reactors? Dude nothing against nuclear energy from me but. Any idea how many bad things I could do with just one of those things? Terrorists are even worse then me.
@@MrFlatage °
@@christopherkriaris1306 ?
@@MrFlatage You couldn’t squire one and would not be able to access the fuel in a lifetime.
@@paulbedichek2679 How do you 'squire' something as you claim? How do you even know what I am capable of?
I was expecting a bit more information about portable reactors. 15 min intro and then few words the subject itself. Overall interesting video and the title is good (clickable) but left with a feeling of unfinished video.
I literally skipped most of it.
Want to make one, Ahmed? :P
That’s how they make money... deceptions.
Thank you for saving me time
Wellp. I'll just switch to another video.
"Portable Nuclear Power"
*only touches on the subject for the last 2 minutes of the 20 minute video*
Probably could have used a better title there, buddy.
Thanks for the heads up. Project pele.
true !
thanks
A lot of the cost associated with building fission plants is in multiple redundancies and material necessities such as the nearly complete absence of cobalt in the metals used in the plumbing it's easy not to add Cobalt but it's decently hard to make sure there is absolutely none
It's also in large part due to the mountain of regulations and burocracy that has to be meticulously and properly followed.
It’s mind boggling that nukes would have a load of regulations while O&G, coal + gas plants would have far less regulation but cause more deaths than nukes
@@malekzin4788 If I'm understanding you correctly, you are comparing the cumulative damage caused by all the fossil fuel power stations in the world/country with the potential damage of a single reactor going south?
I'm pretty happy that reactors are tightly regulated
@@richardbrook4545 I totally agree, not to mention the long term storage and waste disposal solution which is not available anywhere in the world and adds an astronomical cost usually not factored or included in comparisons. Imagine our descendants continuing to pay in many ways, every generation for many just for our current and ongoing energy use.
@@richardbrook4545 fossil fuel power station as a whole is more damaging than nuclear power station as a whole. i am happy w/ the regulation but find it that is so much easier to build a fossil fuel that bring more environmental damage than nuclear plants
I work as an engineer for both BWRs and PWRs. In my opinion the BWR designs simplicity makes it a much better option, especially when considering GEHs latest paper designs. The ESBWRs are the safest gen 3+ design and could easily operate for 80 years if not longer. They also reduce the components which reduces maintenance and failure points.
BWRs are also much easier to control during an emergency since it is easier to diagnose and mitigate failures and accidents.
An a nuclear engineer I wonder what your position is about the SMR designs as proposed by NuScale (and others). The repeatability and off-site fabrication of standard units is a great advantage in my mind as the nuclear component doesn't require as much individual certification and inspection on site. Mistakes are corrected in factory and the design is continuously improved. The units get returned after a short time (10 years?) and any design flaws can be corrected if needed. This allows for a much tighter and more controlled safety standards as I'm concerned.
I also personally like the inhered passive safety features of NuScale like the "ice plug" that melts if the active systems shut down, dumping the fuel into a bath of graphite if I'm not mistaken. These passive safety features are really easy to add on to smaller scale reactors. Need more power? Add more units. Just a minor inspection and you're done. The secondary systems like steam turbines can be treated like any other powerplant. Even if a meltdown would occur, only one small unit would be damaged, taking away 200-300MW of energy production. The remaining units can be put into service after an inspection.
The biggest problem with current reactors that are being built like the Olkiluoto reactor in Finland is the certification proces and continuous changing safety standards. It's currently taking 15+ years to construct, whilst it should realistically should only take 8 to 10 years. SMR's could take a lot of that safety aspect and delays away.
What happens when a SMR meets a beyond design basis situation? Same thing as any other reactor, I bet. Confusion, denial, scrambling, guessing, evading, denying, and then getting cheap wage labour to bag and move the remains, am I right? "INHERENT SAFTEY" is simply not something you or anyone can say, unfortunately. Elevators may be safer with passive breaking systems, for example, but they are still not "inherently" safe. What you wrote sounds a lot like some PR work to me.
@@CarlDidur sounds like you already have it all figured out. But for those that realize that there have been advances in Nuclear Engineering between the 1950s and now, their has been a specific focus on passive safety features. Passive safety features allow for easier mitigation on BDBA accidents. Nothing is full proof but modern designs are a of a lot safer in BDBA accidents than the current fleet.
Oddly enough many very early reactors were passively safe but there was a desire to massively upscale the unit outputs and the larger you make the reactor the harder it is to design passive systems. With that said the ESBWR is the best overall design, in my opinion and can be scaled for modular use or up to 1500MWe, which is massive.
The SMRs allow for economic deployment and that is what the bean counters really care about. In my opinion I would rather build the massive modern designs but I am looking at it from a technical approach and not with a business case in mind. If the economy of scales take off for these SMR designs it could be a game changer that provides an extremely safe source of carbon free power. Some SMRs even burn used fuel which was explored in the 60s and 70s but abandon because uranium was so cheap. Buringin the used fuel reduces the long live nucleotides as well and allows for faster decay overall.
@@mikeall7012 Well, I am not paid to have my opinion, so I can figure it out as I see fit.
In the middle of the above pitch you at least admitted that the inherent safety you originally lauded is in fact a best case scenario, as "Nothing is full proof".
You do say that smaller reactors can be made passively safe - which GE et al knew when they pushed their MUCH LARGER and less safe designs in the 60s and 70s - which led to multiple accidents due to the much larger residual decay heat of the larger cores being capable of destroying ALL of the safety mechanisms in a beyond-design-basis LOCA situation. Forgive me if I am wrong, but this is part of what happened at Fukushima, for example.
Myself, and many others who do not have a vested interest in promoting nuclear are naturally hesitant of governments throwing more and more money into "future gen" solutions to Nuclear when the ORIGINAL nuclear problems are nowhere near being addressed.
Also, isn't it true that burning used fuel leaves you with a smaller amount of much hotter waste? It just makes the storage problem slightly different in details but does not address the real problems with accumulating casks of waste being stored for what amounts to an eternity by governments that can't manage even short-term problems.
@@CarlDidur listen, burning coal emits radiation into the air. These chronic releases have caused way more damage than our old 1st gen nuclear plants (which i don't think have ever released radiation in the US). Why aren't you complaining about radiation from coal?
Can you please give us a single example that backs your claim about safety?
I have no vested interest (other than my research and humanity) you've been misinformed by the fossil industry which had a big vested interest against nuclear. Also you say Original, we're on like the 4th gen for new reactors so it would actually be much safer to replace the existing old reactors we still operate in the US.
Personally i prefer LFTR to uranium reactors,
although that technology is less mature.
3:15 Fun fact; that person is wearing gloves not to protect themselves from the nuclear fuel, but the nuclear full from them. Its perfectly save to hold that fuel in your bare hands. You probably wouldn't want to do so for a few hundred thousand years (and you certainly wouldn't want to swallow it), but holding it even for a few hours of even days isn't going to hurt you in the slightest.
Uranium has the same chemical toxicity as lead, and the alpha radiation can irradiate your skin. However, the activity of U-235 is usually so low that gloves shouldn't be needed for short-term contact.
This is true for unused fuel. Spent fuel…. Not so much.
Fun fact: U-235 is alpha radiation that will not penetrate your skin. Put it through fission and it turns into hundreds of the deadliest elements in the history of mankind for longer than mankind has been in existence. My what fun that is, eh?
When it comes to putting radiation into your body I always get a kick out the banana as the perfect food commercials. Some of the potassium atoms in the banana are naturally radioactive.
@@mpetersen6 By that same fact your muscles (and bones to a lesser degree), also have radioactive potassium in small amounts. Sleeping next to someone exposes you to radiation! It's a real risk but a bogeyman to the uninformed.
I really want to see fission power and renewables take the lead in my lifetime. As much as I'd love to see fusion make a breakthrough, I fear it'll be 20 years away for my grandchildren as well.
I agree on both fronts. I would love to see it happen, but because of political reasons (major gas companies funding politicians being one example), I honestly think that the general public will have to push it to happen. And due to regulations imposed by those politics, it will end up being extremely expensive, if it's even possible to get it off the ground. I don't say this out of resenentment, simply an understanding of how the political world works.
But, I sincerely hope that people are able to push it through, because it would change the world for the better.
Digital_Jedi, fusion is closer today than it was 20 years ago. I'm sure ITER will run at a +Q reaction cycle but I have serious doubts that ITER will pave the way for commercial reactors. The MIT proposal is a better bet IMO as far as Tokamak type reactors go. For several reason. It's designed to test maintenance issues for one. Second it is taking advantage of material sciences work that has led to the commercial production of higher temperature superconductors that can be used in the magnets that generate the containment fields. Plus the MIT design is reasonably small. But at the same time I would like to see some of my tax dollars used to fund some of the start-ups looking at more unconventional designs. Given the size of the US budget two or three billion is small change. Maybe they wouldn't work. But if they did the payoff is huge.
every year one step closer
@Josh Skipka considering how many people died on oil rigs, how dangerous lithium is, and how many people have died due to massive flooding from broken dams, this is actually one of the safer forms of electricity generation, mainly because it is one of the most regulated.
It will forever be 20 years away.
Small modular reactors (SMRs), depending on their power-to-mass ratios, would be perfect for manned space exploration. They could be used on spaceships, base power for settlements on the moon and Mars, and for asteroid mining.
First we'll use TRISO for propulsion and power and heat,NASA has already been doing this for years.
SMR is such a generic term.
@@drmosfet Space systems are not SMA, they’d be micro reactors, NASA wants a 40KW reactor.
Smr
@@paulbedichek2679
The video covered many types of fission reactor types that could be made into a Small Modular Reactor, even a fusion reactor if it ever happens, might someday be built in a SMR form factor it only 5 to 10 years away 🤣, not sure how my statement is incorrect 🤔
Imagine the anxiety the invention of nuclear energy caused in people making money out of fossil fuels.
Perhaps the same amount of anxiety that pizzeria owners felt when frozen pizzas became available.
The majority people who make money on fossil fuels are laughing all the way to the bank making money of government subsides on finding green energy solutions.
The minority are making these plants.
There's little to no anxiety.
They are more afraid that everybody will have solar panel on the roof than switching their fortunes from a coal driver energy plant to a uranium one.
Be careful about researching Thorium because the uranium suppliers will start resembling the fossil fuels folks your talking about.
Well,they worked very hard and found close freinds in left wing groups worldwide who always supported Russia China and coal miners, dems in the US were a critical group along with Hollywood,to keep the world on track for our eventual destruction.
So the US Military wants a portable Nuclear Reactor to install in conflict zones? Makes total sense, I'm sure nothing will ever ever ever go wrong in that scenario. We all know that conflict zones are the most stable and predictable environments in the world right?
Thats precisely one of the reasons they want it. Its hard to run operations in unstable war zones when you cant rely on any local power grids, so you bring your own reliable power with you that doesnt require a constant vulnerable stream of diesel tankers refueling generators.
BTW, the navy manages to safely use reactors on war vessels and has done so for half a century now with a much more basic reactor design
@@JD-ub5ic The Taliban owns US$85billion worth of US Military equipment. Next time US goes to war, will they leave behind a nuclear power generator while retreating? Nuclear subs/carriers are different. They are unlikely to get stolen or sabotaged by enemy, if accident happens in the middle of the ocean, it would be a limited catastrophe.
@@teoengchin
So what if the taliban got hold of a mini nuclear reactor. Clearly you not understand the concept and you hearing the word nuclear has frightened you.
The whole point of small nuclear reactor designs is that they are stable and cant take direct hits in field without them being a risk.
Tell us since you brought up nuclear accidents happening in the middle of the ocean what it actually means?
@@bighands69 Nuclear fuel materials can be very dangerous and easily weaponized
@@teoengchin
Not all nuclear fuel can be easily weaponized.
Comments about to go nuclear
I need to moderate your entuziasm :D
You missed the Canadian invention of the Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor. Some of the stories of how they were built around the world are fascinating.
As a youngster, I remember listening to Paul Harvey on the radio one morning in the late 80s .... I remember him saying something about a nuclear device the size of a gum packet being invented to power an electric car for many many years.
Cars and aircraft may not be the best place for mini nuclear plants as both are prone to Kinect accidents.
So is there any design that could withstand a 150 miles per hour impact with another car or could withstand an aircraft plunging from 25000 feet.
Plutonium 238 would be an ideal nuclear fuel, if we had enough of it. A LFTR makes it in its waste; about 75 pounds out of a ton of U233 radioactive waste.
This is a very hot alpha radiation emitter. A piece of paper, or even clothing, would block it. A infrared gun would allow you to pick up the pieces after a crash.
It would produce heat from which we could make electricity for 300 years. It is the only technology which which would make an electric car viable.
I laid out elsewhere in this thread how a nuclear/ electric hybrid car would work. A 20 to 30 Hp gas turbine generator run off of PU238 would provide steady travel at highway speeds. Batteries and motors in the wheels would provide good acceleration. When you get where you are going, the generator recharges the batteries since it is running all the time. Plug the generator into your house to charge it's batteries.
Paul Harvey was always full of shit
@@bighands69 Yes. One using Plutonium 238 if we had any.
In fact, a case could be made for a constantly running 25 to 35 hp turbo generator to recharge batteries. The batteries would be a third the size of a Tesla's and provide good acceleration. 25 to 35 hp is sufficient to maintain highway speeds and then recharge the vehicle while you are at work or home. It could supply power to your house battery system so you would rarely need to take power from the grid.
Given that we don't have Thorium Molten Salt Reactors to supply us with Pu238, a gasoline or diesel equivalent turbo generator would be applicable.
But, Environmentalists would block this because they oppose even safe nuclear power and fossil fuel. Renewable power means that we freeze, starving in the dark like Germany will be doing this and next winter. Cheers!
@@bighands69 Ask the people who build the aircraft data and cockpit voice recorders.
3:24
uranium is not used as fuel because it was easily accesible, it was used cuz you could make bombs out of it, thorium is found all over the world and is an excellent fuel, cant go into meltdown, has much less radioactive waste and the waste it does have has a much shorter lifespan than waste from uranium, and you cant make bombs out of it, excactly the reason they didnt start using it until very recently.
Thorium-232 can be used to make U-233, which has been demonstrated capable of being used in weapons. You may not be able to make a bomb from the thorium, but you can from uranium made from the thorium.
Pure conspiracy theory nonsense.
Thorium is nearly as bad as solar freakin roads.
@@gizmophoto3577 it is just a longer strenuous process that can just be skipped though.
@@alexzanderroberts995, it can certainly be skipped, but it is nonetheless a potential pathway to a weapon. I'm not an expert in that area, by any means (spent my career dealing with light water reactors), but it isn't easy to enrich uranium or breed and extract plutonium, either.
@@gizmophoto3577 hmmm, you are entirely correct. But, if a civilization is advanced enough to make a breeder reactor, and enrich uranium for bombs. After they steal our reactors. I think they could have made these bombs anyways.
Personally I'm far more interested in nuclear reactors for large cargo vessels. They're basically the perfect test vehicles for smaller modular reactors using non-weaponizable nuclear fuels, which would allow for high density distributed base load power generation.
Take a ship like the Emma Mærsk. That uses an 80 MW main motor, which is enough to power around 30,000 US households. Once we can build reactors that can fit in that envelope (the motor itself is 26 x 13 meters) we'll be well on the way towards a far cleaner world.
Great question, any idea why they havnt done it?
@@nicklindhorst9708 Politics.
Things like thorium reactors aren't politically acceptable; if you're okay with nuclear power you'll likely want to be able to use it for weaponry, and if you aren't okay with nuclear power the details of non-weaponizable nuclear power doesn't change that.
That makes non-weaponizable nuclear reactors far less likely to be commercially developed, as they won't get government support.
But let's suppose that tomorrow GE announced that it was now selling 100 MW thorium reactors that were drop-in replacements for the power plants and fuel tanks that are currently in any cargo ship larger than 100 meters in length and wider than 10 meters (numbers pulled from my ass).
Putting that into cargo ships still wouldn't be acceptable from a political standpoint.
What if it gets hijacked by pirates or terrorists? What if it sinks? What if it gets rammed next to a busy tourist beach of a rich country?
We are generally far too scared of "what's the absolute worst case scenario of this thing that could vastly improve our world".
Even when we ask "what's the absolute worst case scenario of this current technology" and come up with "we'll kill hundreds of millions of people in the next couple of decades", any replacement option somehow has to be perfect beyond measure.
You don't even have to go to nuclear power for that. Look at solar power. "OMG SOLAR POWER DOESN'T WORK AT NIGHT!!!1!11!" is constantly brought up as some kind of argument against ever using solar power. The people who use those types of arguments could have unfiltered chimney smoke from brown coal power plants piped straight into their house, and they'd still refuse to use solar power, because it's not perfect.
@@MrMartinSchou
I know I'm not opposed to Solar. But I do recognize that for baseload power there needs to be serious overcapacity built in order to accommodate the day night cycle. So far the only two Solar based power generation methods I know of are hydro and Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion. Hydro depends on rain and snow that originates as solar driven evaporation. OTEC and it's related OTMEC depend on the temperature differential between cold deep water and warm surface water. For solar (whatever type) and wind* we need ways of storing the required power needed for those times when one or the other isn't producing any power. Fortunately there are storage systems out there. And some of them do not require the large investment in battery farms. The first is pumped hydro. This is currently in place in a few locations. Excess power is used to pump water to a reservoir and the water is released to spin turbines. Enclose the system and you can keep evaporation to a minimum. We should be able to do the same thing with heavy weight raised to a height and allowed to fall at a controlled rate. The cable system that raises the weights does double duty as a generator set. And no I'm thinking of the stupid proposal the uses large numbers of weights that need to be lowered to mate precisely with the previous one. Build a tower with x number of lifting shafts in its core. In the shafts have a large steel container. Fill the container with sand, rock, gravel whatever. But don't use concrete. The goal is cut CO2 production after all. The lifting/generator system is at ground level. This makes any servicing easier. Then around the outside wrap the tower with residential apartments, office space etc. The building does double duty. How much energy could be generated by 1 MT falling 1 meter. Of course it's not going to be 100% efficient. Nothing really is. Raising the weights are going to take more energy than the system can put out. But then so does pumped hydro. A third method for large Solar Thermal facilities is to concentrate the sunlight to melt a heat sink. Molten salt. The molten salt as it cools it heat is used to vaporize a working fluid or gas to spin a turbine. A forth type would use large flywheels spinning in a vacuum chamber supported in magnetic bearings. Musk likes to promote the battery solution. Small wonder. He's in the battery production business.
When it comes to small scale energy storage hopefully the iron/air batteries will reach the market. One estimate I've seen is that one battery the size of an average washing machine could store enough juice to run the average home for up to three days. Longer if you cut power usage. But not everybody who owns a home can afford to install Solar. Also what about renters? You think that property owners are going to install solar out of the goodness of their hearts. They're in business to make a profit.
In reality we do not have a shortage of energy. We have a shortage of public and political will. For large wind farms I think we should be looking harder at the vertical axis machines. For several reasons. I know they are not as efficient as the conventional machines. But 1) While not as efficient they can be spaced closer together. 2) By they're very nature they allow the generator set to be placed on ground level on a solid foundation. Not up at the top of tower. The only mechanical system you should really need at the top is the rotor bearing 3) Being at ground level and mounted to a foundation you eliminate the requirement to rotate the turbine into the best orientation. 4) The generator set being at ground level is easier to service. 5) Without the loads placed on the tower by mounting the generator set at the top of the tower the tower should be able to be built lighter. 6) The tower being lighter and needing to withstand less wind loading the foundation should be smaller. Just how big of a foundation does the average commercial wind turbine need?
@@nicklindhorst9708 idk if your still interested but mustard did a video on just that question. Turns out shipping ports in different countries don’t want the liability and security as well as the question of the shipping lines insurance in the case something does go wrong. The US had a cargo/passenger ship hybrid for a while as well as Japan and I think Germany. All were converted back to conventional fuel. Russia still runs some nuclear ice breakers and I think one cargo ship but it stays in Russian ports and only hauls military cargo. It’s feasible and practical in my opinion. Look at the United States running a nuclear navy. The biggest hurdle will always be public opinion and politics. Nuclear still sounds dirty, dangerous, and scary to the majority of the masses.
@@nicklindhorst9708 No,we haven't progressed far enough,for commercial ships a molten chloride fast reactor would be ideal, we are only now building a test reactor, you hav to run it a few years and improve it, a TRISO fueled with higher enrichments say 19%,would also work on ships, but we have to have insurance and agreements for all the ports it would go to,the US put up money to study this.
We should see nuclear commercial ship power in about 15 years, or we could also make H2 cheaply with nuclear and use that in giant fuel cells.
Aren't thorium reactors technically the most "green" source of energy
Thorium struggles to maintain a chain reaction, it is still in development phase. Uranium we understand.
I have also heard some talk about a new generation of Thorium portable reactors. They are supposed to be able to burn the spent fuel almost completely.
@@luke4916 That's why Thorium are inherently safer. Take away the neutron source and reaction stops. The Neutron source can be electrical or old nuke waste.
@@luke4916 That’s strange, never heard of this happening when they successfully proved out molten salt reactors back in the sixties.
Thorium reactors don't produce materials that can make nuclear weapons, so they're sidelined in favor of reactors that can make such materials.
I would give anything to watch the Cherenkov glow of initial startup of a full size reactor. It could be because I'm an engineer or it could be because it looks like magic.
It's really one of the very few things I want to witness more than anything else possible along with other more out of reach things like seeing the earth from far orbit or grabbing a private sample of moon sand with a single handful.
The only realistic thing I think I'll ever be able to do is to toss various rock samples into fresh lava flow. But I would absolutely love to to watch a nuclear reactor start up and glow so badly.
Even if that will be the last thing you will see in your live?
I think this should be possible my dude, you just need to time your vacation corrrectly with some of the test reactors
@@jacekpiterow900 A window into a reactor would not let out radiation
@@TheSonic10160 OK, then finally now we can just start ramping up the reactor production all over the planet! And all it took is just one guy wanting to see blue light... personally I think that way LEDs are creating photons is way more interesting. Sorry, I could not stop myself Sam.
Have you seen the auroras up close?
As a layman in the field of nuclear power this video was very informative since I had no idea how the reactors worked or even the different systems they used. For my limited knowledge this was a great introduction. Thanks.
Are you saying there were no practical reactors before the S1W? We had the NRX running until 1993 and it went critical in 1947.
Power station not reactor.
I thought Thorium was better and safer for fissile plants, but U/ Pu was used instead due to their use in weapons as well
thorium itself is not fissile, it is breedable to U-233 though, which is fissile. it must be used in breeder reactors
Not really.
To bad nobody told china, what should they do with their Thorium Molten Salt Reactor prototype, just turn it off and go home I guess.
Myth
12.
Need one to power my house for 6 weeks every time a hurricane knocks out our power infrastructure
The really silly part about those "high profile accidents" is that barely anyone died either in the actual incident or as a direct result thereof. Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. These 3 incidents combined resulted in the deaths of 31 people. And when I say "these 3 incidents" I really mean just Chernobyl, because NOBODY died during the other 2 incidents. In terms of mortality rate vs energy output, nuclear is literally the safest energy source on the planet, by a huge margin.
Our rejection of Nuclear power was a massive mistake, and the environment has payed dearly for it as we continue to rely on fossil fuels for our electricity
fossil fuels a natual element, nuclear is not.
@@viperdemonz-jenkins uranium literally occurs naturally
@@Jim54_ so is oil and does not cause radiation sickness.
@@Jim54_ literally does not make you right
@@viperdemonz-jenkins so go inhale some diesel exhaust and you'll feel better.
Excellent video! I really liked how careful you were in explaining fission.
Can't wait until they scale them down to micro size, that's what I call home back up or off grid power
This is a really well done video, I love the visuals and the narration is, as always, superb. Thank you!
I remember that they've made Small nuclear reactors made to be self sustained for supposedly up to a hundreds years or more if they've been built well and don't break down. If so, I could imagine the world could be powered for at least 10,000 to 100,000 years easily over the years, and any waste transformed into resources as well. In that kind of time, it should be possible to also figure out what would be next to follow after. Assuming I'm remembering right about how that works. I could be wrong, but It should still be a power source that would be useful for as long as that at least.
I'd be interested to see one made small enough to power a single house. Maybe use as a backup during power outages. Would be cool to see a tiny reactor implemented into electric cars. I'd imagine it would be a lot more efficient then lithium batteries and probably cheaper to make then lithium batteries as well. Y'know once the technology is perfected.
If we get to the point where we are able to harness that much energy, the scale of the things we will be using energy for will increase exponentially (computers, vehicles, infrastructure, etc)
7.
TRISO stands for TRi-structural ISOtropic particle fuel. In the industry, we pronounce it TRI-SO. The same TRI pronunciation used in TRIangle.
Small Modular Reactors using Pebble technology is my favor. They can not melt down. They self shut down when things get wild. Waist pebbles are sealed in Glass and can be stored under ground causing ZERO threats.
Putting them deep underground makes them very safe. They can be put into special materials that will last thousands of years.
If space launches get as cheap as people predict there is the opportunity to get the material and send it towards saturn to be disposed off.
There is currently 400,000 tons of nuclear spent fuels that could easily be sent to saturn with about 4000 launches.
Saw a shorter article about the school bus size reactor that used salt’s for heat exchange in Popular Mechanics, your in depth video does a better job of explaining how we got to this point.
Manufacture of solid nuclear fuel is very high technology process. Manufacture of salt based nuclear fuel is much easier and therefore lower cost. It’s also intrinsically safe in operation and as it’s a liquid the fuel can be almost completely burnt. That results in a small fraction of the high grade waste thrown out by pressurised water reactors.
If one wants nukes to flourish, do something really effective with they never being able to overheat or release, and a fix for rad waste. I read articles all the time about nuclear fission's return, and never see any real developments that directly address these issues. I read proposals all the time for helium moderated reactors, or Molten Salt, but it seems never to get to the test reactor phase.
costs kill off any project in nuclear energy. it's a dead technology at this point.
@@NaumRusomarov This is why, recently, I have become more focused on rapid change with solar, wind power, and storage tech. I'd re-look at nukes even in the path of beta-voltaics (micro-micro) just for cost's sake!
@@mortimerhasbeengud2834 storage is kinda cool, I have to say. It pretty much fixes all of the problems with intermittency of renewables on a long-term basis so that we don't have to use gas plants for when wind and solar are underproducing.
@@NaumRusomarov Storage seems essential. There's now a big effort in windpower at sea, and the farther out, the better constant wind flow. Seen as a replacement for failed fission and never here, fusion. For solar, there's a study by Columbia +Imperial universities, indicating we can power ourselves 4.5 over using current PV's at 50% roof top power, globally.
@@mortimerhasbeengud2834 Solar/wind is a dead end technology. The amount of land you would need as well as the dependency on the weather makes any large scale project non viable. Before anything I need to mention that the next big thing for our civilization is space. It's basically the New World of our time. When you need to power space factories , star bases , large space ships, etc you woouldn't want to use solar panels that would need hundreds of times more space than a nuclear reactor. Not to mention the cost of making them if you exported them from Earth. Although solar/wind generate "green" energy they are way too situational in order to base your whole future civilization wide plan of energy production on. You should also remember that nuclear technology has a way higher ceiling of development compared to solar/wind. Wind turbines can only improve overall only if their construction cost lowers (which has a limit). Solar panels are capped due to various reasons. One is that they rely on the availability of the sun and the need to occupy large amounts of land in order to capture sunlight. Second most of the "easier" and biggest improvements in efficiency have already be completed. Any future improvements in efficiency will be slower and less frequent compared to the previous rate. Nuclear reactors haven't recieved so far any major benefits due to economics of scale. Moreover the overall investments compared to "renewable" has been less than expected for a technology that promises zero C02 emissions as well as having the safest track record of all major energy production methods. Overall in my belief solar/wind is nothing more than wishfull thinking and a romantisim idea.
Wow this is the most accurate and informed video about nuclear power I've seen
Fissile is NOT pronounced fizzle.
The models in this video were absolutely incredible!! I can't even imagine how long it took to make them. Great video! P.S. As an avid Godzilla fan, I feel qualified to comment on the models quality.
I'm genuinely interested in where the footage for these is from and how much is generated from scratch. Would love to know the source!
ruclips.net/video/nVsDjGwFImc/видео.html
@@pwinsor777 Thank you for the link, I had no idea that this technology existed. I will definitely be looking it it more.
Two words: Tilt Shift
His overuse of tilt shift, made me hate tilt shit.
It looks cool, but ffs, it doesn't need to be used all the time.
Your music level is too high. I can't pay attention to your dialog.
Superb research and reporting. your graphics are excellent. This is hyper-interesting stuff. I'm excited about the use of portable reactors on the Moon and Mars. I subscribed immediately.
Nuclear reactors are great for space because for their weight they produce an amazing amount of energy,Th moon has two week nights so we are working hard on reactors for the moon, all the acronyms were based on Simpson references so we had KRUSTY,and others, Kilo Power put out 10KW it used heat pipes and you gt rid of rejected heat with umbrella type radiators.
@@paulbedichek2679 and any disaster would be inconsequential as there is no environment to ruin as it is a radiation battered wasteland already.
THANK YOU !!!! Finally. Not BS about how we need Fusion to do nuclear.
I'm confused? The us has been using mobile nuclear reactors for decades? The CIA even lost one in the Himalayas. What do you think powers nuclear submarines? How are these different?
The one the us lost is more akin to the reactor on a spacecraft. It's quick and dirty and throws off a lot of radiation in its local area. Totally not viable for regular or widespread use. Also submarine reactors are still huge. The reactor chamber is small, but you need a lot more than that...
Heard about idiots playing cold war games? Here you go.
We can't let others use our military reactors, besides they cost too much for anyone but us, and you could take it apart and have bomb material, new reactors will cost a hundredth of what powers our new carriers.
Check out Kirk Sorensen’s *thorium* talks - the molten salt reactor, high temperature efficiency and no need for complex fuel fabrication. _Game changer_ 💡
Thorium is not something that is even present right now as an energy source and new physical fuel mediums are already up and running and very safe and offer some really innovative designs such as ultra small nuclear generators. Thorium may have its place but it will not become dominant.
Advanced gas cooled reactors do not need the expensive forging of the reaction chamber like the standard pwrs. They get by with reactor vessels made from reinforced concrete.
Unfortunately, Britain had lost its pioneering spirit by the 1990s, and commissioned its first pwr at Sizewell, based on US designs of the time.
Never mind because the whole concept of the pwr is a mess. We now know the technology for getting all the benefits of nuclear power with none of the PWR's drawbacks is the Moten salt reactor.
Unfortunately, while there is plenty of money to mitigate the disadvantages of pwrs, there is never enough to develop the safe alternative, the msr.
Nevertheless the British company MOLTEX has a variant called the Stable salt reactor, and is actually building its first full scale reactor in New Brunswick. About one hundred mw if my memory serves me.
The media in the UK have terrified the public on everything. Even fracking has been turned into the mythical monster that causes earthquakes because very sensitive equipment can pick up small tremors and they have used that to convince the public of earthquakes caused by fracking.
The use of natural gas, nuclear and renewable could make the UK produce far more energy that it needs and could use that as the basis of a new industrial revolution that is far cleaner and more advanced than anything before it.
@@bighands69
I agree with you. But the cherry on the cake is the molten salt reactor.
By contrast, the pwr has done immense damage to the reputation of nuclear power.
@@paulsutton5896
MSR maybe the future but they would need development along with a few other types of technologies.
It would be interesting to see what MSR could achieve with today's engineering and maybe engineering in 20 years time.
@@bighands69
Yes. But in New Brunswick, Canada, Moltex is building a reactor to connect to the grid (of about 300 mega watts). It behoves the rest of us to keep an eye on it - NOW. The MSR is inherently safer than the horrible PWRs which are more like jacks-in-the box.
I told everyone the future won't run on Batteries,. Use sound to make Heat and Light.Sound to make Electricity.Now that's brilliant.
Next Question ❓
Fascinating video with very good description of the different types of reactor systems. I formerly worked on CO2 gas-cooled reactors, but I feel that the use of helium as a coolant gas is not the way to go as it is not that abundant and is prone to leakage with its low molecular weight.
What advantage does He have over CO2?
@@Gomlmon99 Helium is absolutely non-corrosive, whereas CO2 does oxidise steel- this led to the temperature downrating of some reactors in UK following the identification of corroded components. (It was found that the corrosion between certain steel nuts, bolts and washers built up until the bolts were sheared off due to the stressing of the steel).
It also has a higher specific heat capacity than CO2 meaning that it takes less gas and thus less energy to transfer heat from the reactor to the boilers.
Unfortunately, it is extremely expensive, supplies are limited and it leaks rapidly through the smallest porosity or gap, so I do not think it is really viable.
"lowest fatality rate"
not counting all the animals that died at Fukushima when the residents were suddenly evacuated leaving their pets and livestock to starve.
The future lies in Molten Salt Reactors, not "conventional" fission reactors.
Cleaner, much safer (impossible to "melt down"), produces far less (90%+ less) waste and can even "burn" existing waste from old reactors. And they were proven to work decades ago!
The only barrier to their usage is political interests and meddling by regulators who have financial interests in old designs only.
Water reactors will always be the bread and butter of the nuclear field. The broad field of engineering knowledge around them, the simplicity of their construction, and the simplicity of the materials needed to build them.
Molten salt reactors will absolutely have their place, as breeders and burner reactors, probably in massive fuel reprocessing facilities and other nuclear powered agglomerations of industry that need the constant high heat output of molten salt and gas reactors.
The limitations on MSRs currently, while stemming from all the facets of political interest, fossil lobbyists, overburdening regulations, and poor public perception (not helped by the nuclear industry itself, nor the fossil-funded environmentalists constantly banging the chernobyl, fukushima drum), is mostly down to materials science. Because of the antagonism against nuclear energy, development and regulatory adoption of metal alloys designed to survive the intense environments of a MSR has been greatly slowed if not halted entirely.
That is the main reason there aren't more MSRs, we don't have the materials to make them as guaranteed safe as a PWR or BWR.
Bringing morality back into the culture of living will be the only solution to gaining common sense living. All other reasons for government become a deterrent to seeing the lives of the poor getting any better.
I am familiar with MSR design concepts and challenges from my work at NRC. It is incorrect to say the regulators have any financial interest in any particular design. In fact, it would be an illegal, as we were reminded regularly. We could not own stock in a utility that operated uncle plants, for example. I agree MSRs have great potential, and hope to see one design or another deployed in years to come. The challenges they face are in areas like developing materials that can withstand high temperature and neutron bombardment, or developing means to conduct maintenance remotely in extreme radiation fields.
I like the thorium ones.
Great video! So glad more and more people are covering this topic and helping to dispel myths about nuclear fission as a viable energy source.
You are cringe
What if a criminal desires to blow up your nuclear fission car and now a small portion of a city gets decimated.
Impossible to happen. Nuclear reactors don't explode because that's not how they work.
Nothing here about a nuclear powered car, friend.
I think something almost everyone in the public overlooks is "automatic containment" and "automatic shutdown" and "negative feedback" DON'T mean "safety". A lot of nuclear incidents (Fukushima coming to mind) aren't caused by runaway fission. They're caused by the unstable fission daughter products (spent fuel) continuing to release heat regardless of any control mechanism. If your coolant mechanism fails (like it did in Fukushima, the fission control worked fine) your reactor fuel heats up and will eventually cause a meltdown.
Criticality excursions (quick runaway nuclear fission) are rare compared to coolant failures but criticality safety is being marketed as the key safety feature of a lot of these new reactor designs.
Large scale plants such as fukushima are older designs but also have large volumes of centralized materials.
@@bighands69 Every reactor has "large volumes of centralized materials".
Keep in mind Fukushima Daiichi is a 10GW thermal power plant.
If I remember what this video is about, these "portable" designs are 250 to 500MW thermal designs. You'd have to have 20 of them to replace a plant like Fukushima.
You still have to have more than a critical mass of fissile fuel in each one, now you just have 5 to 10 times the moving parts that can go wrong.
not it's not. Did you not watch the video? 22.
@@nathanwahl9224 useless comment is useless.
A portable reactor was such a small part of this video
👽 Everything sucks at first and is a miracle in the end.👽
Beautiful mindset, I'll integrate it
Just like coal and oil or fascism and communism? Few examples will be nice...
👽Life hates change but life only happens where change happens.👽
This is not a nuclear power plant:
The power plant shown @9:23 is burning wood pellets and straw to generate district heating and electric power.
Owned by Oersted a/s, it is placed in Avedoere south of Copenhagen.
/JD
Many plants have cooling towers; yes, most of them aren't nukes. But people are idiots, so......
our video creator likes to toss in random pics of things that have nothing to do with the actual subject. I saw one photo that was a heat exchanger and he was describing as a pebble bed reactor. Then it was tennis ball sized pebbles in the narrative, but the actual size was smaller than marbles in the photo.
exciting times, we will never get off fossil fuels without nuclear
"We will never be able to fly" - some dude
@@eSKAone-
Why not use nuclear to make synthetic
@@randomuser5443 although E=mc^2, there is no direct convertion from energy to physical mass
Yes, we will, no need for Gates inventions.
@@charlesbenca5357
As in, take chemicals and make it into synthetic fuels for aviation. You know, like what 99.999% of people who say synthetic fuel actually are talking about
Two journalists are sitting in a sauna on a nuclear icebreaker. One tells the other.
- Do you know that steam enters the sauna from the first circuit..?
Those tilt-shift effects were awesome to watch.
Thank you for such an interesting video!
Special Russian RBMK style reactors have been important because they can use natural uranium with the ability to boil water in the core. This makes them highly cost effective, but they aren't very safe. I think developing the RBMK reactor to make it a lot safer would be one of the best course of actions right now for nuclear power.
Is the outer layer of the pellet porous or pyrolytic?
who in his right mind would use anything chemical inert layer ?
it's a carbide compound, chermicaly inert while being non porous.
@@louismechler4338 I was just pointing out that the narration and the image subtitle were different.
I'm not sure of anything about pellet bed reactors.
I know that it didn't work out well for early catalytic converters.
Portable Nuclear Power. Sounds like the Spartan Program is going to happen.
Yes it I s soartysn halo state rwal life
I really enjoyed watching this video; for a long while fission has had a stigma that mostly dissipates, here, the more I watch. Standing on your shoulders, I have studied nuclear science enough to realize that the potential for humanity has largely gone closed off from society due to ignorance, naivety, news and politics. Statistically, we are closer to portable fission in suburbanite areas than fusion will ever be, a thing, in the next 80 years; I have been a supporter of this for decades. One day we will live harmoniously, and energy will be our morning tea. Enlightening stuff, mate!
Nailed it! Nuclear power is it's own worst enemy.
Not many people can pull off narrating well. Great job you got my subscription.
One of the best short videos out there, supporting common sense analysis.
This video is kinda disappointing. you are literally just spotlighting the fringe upsides of these technologies without going into the significant downsides at all.
I do think that a short- to mid term expansion of nuclear power generation would be a good idea to speed up the coal power phaseout but Gen2/3 reactors are just way better at that than the concepts you highlighted in this video.
The first problem with small nuclear reactors in general is that its just not a good idea for civilian use. Civilian power generation really doesnt need the capability to be relocated because the point at which the power is fed into the network is not very important. on the backside, the security issues get way more problematic the smaller the reactor gets as the size you were talking about gets into the zone where its realistically possible to steal the entire reactor. This gets even worse as smaller reactors generally require more enriched fuel to run, so the fuel for a reactor that size may need to be weapons grade for the reactor to work. The security problem with having hundreds of small reactors full of weapons grade fissile material instead of one big powerplant should be obvious to everyone.
More one the pebble reactor in particular:
It produces way more radioactive waste than traditional reactors because after the fuel is consumed, all of those shells are radioactive waste as well.
It is extremely hard to monitor because the exact geometry of the reactor is not known.
Its a nuclear proliferation risk because it allows for the short term irradiation of Uranium needed to produce weapons grade Plutonium.
It never actually reaches those extremely high temperatures needed for the efficiency benefits
overall, this video should have had a significant portion of its runtime devoted to why none of these technologies are actually getting used.
You have a good point, maybe he should make a second part talking about all of that
if people could only be trusted and use it in good ways for long lasting energy. thats the real reason why its not in our homes and under our vehicle hoods.
31.
Judging by how the US dumps its equipment after it leaves a war zone, I'd advise against giving any of these to them.
That was just Biden,but our fault for electing him,I'm glad we left but incredible anyone could be so moronic to do it in such a fashion.You can imagine what our allies think.
@@paulbedichek2679 hahaha just biden? Really? What a fool you are.
Your military has been burning toxic waste in usa itself very irresponsibly, such as the AFFF. And you military bases worldwide, including in usa itself are badly polluted itself. And abandoned toxic ammo and other pollutant have been the legacy of usa in almost all the battlefield it was involved in.
And you blame biden, especially when trump was even worse?
Idiocy needs to know some limit
The United States Navy has been (and currently is) building and running "portable" reactors since the 1950s, full stop. Just because it isn't civilian doesn't mean it doesn't count.
180 atmospheres may not sound like a lot, but it's equivalent to 2645.271 pounds per square inch
The hydraulic fluid on a tractor can get that high.
@@nathanwahl9224 Hydraulic fluid isn't radioactive.
19:02 the man to right looking up from the ladder is Hyman Rickover, father of the nuclear navy. Quite a character in history and worth looking up.
Not to be too pedantic, but nuclear plants are not created, they are engineered, designed, and built.
Ah hell yeah, we're about to get the fusion core update.
I am a chemical engineering student in my senior year and had brought up this topic to my professor. Talking with him, he described that the last nuclear wnginweeing student. (At my school bothe Chem E and Nuke E were in the same building until the last Nuke W graduate was booed at his graduation. Very sad. There is a few reminders of the nuclear reactor we had on campus. I personally am a big fan of the technology.
It's a good idea for space exploration. In places where we cannot get energy otherwise. It is really sad that this research has been abandoned. But don't worry too much. They will come back if we take space seriously. This skill should not be forgotten. Nuclear energy must be used properly. Perhaps it's not time yet.
Georgia Tech's nuclear reactor is no longer shown on the campus maps, nor is it identifiable from the street. This occurred in the wake of 9/11.
Face it, wnginweers are hated by all.
In general, people are idiots, even engineers. I'm glad you're figuring it out at a young age.
The pressurized water is where all the failures occur. When a valve or pump fails the reactor can’t be controlled and explosions happen.
29.
man, all my life I thought nuclear power plants generate electricity straight out of its nuclear reaction, not steam and turbine...
this is like 2nd santa reveal to me but the more you know
Mechanically generated electricity is one of the most natural physical means of creating electricity.
Those mechanical forces are used to create electromagnetic fields and there are no real alternatives to that unless a whole new field of engineering and physics pops up.
Nano technology does offer a glimpse into a new way through very weird characteristics of materials. Such as a single material being an insulator and conductor at the same time.
Welcome to a somewhat rare club! For 98% of the people, 95% of everything they "know" about nuclear power is wrong.
Amazing as it is, I find it amusing that for all our technology, we're still pretty much stuck in the steam age(or other heat transmission). Spinning magnets around copper coils seems to be the best form of power production. Solar and thermal conductive devices (peltier effect) have very poor rates of energy capture in comparison. I can just see it now, ships relying on fusion reactors in space to push steam engines for power production. And yes, I know it's an oversimplified view of the technology.
With thermal levels so high in Gen 4 reactors it will be possible to use Super Critical C02 gas generators to generate power. It is way more efficient than steam generators.
@@NinetooNine Same basic concept though. Using thermal expansion to spin magnets around conductive wire. Just don't pull the lever to blow the whistle on the steam spaceship, you'll incinerate yourself.
Jeez battlefield-deployable mini-nuclear reactors, surely there's no way this can go wrong!
Tell us how.
Nicked vebge.
You sir definitely earned my subscription. This video was put together so well. I applaud you.
Pebble bed fuel at first glance appears to be a good solution, but when
looked at more closely it is terrible. The pebbles are very hard to make
and IMPOSSIBLE to break down and recycle with current technology. There
are a number of fundamental problems of any solid fueled nuclear
reactor. Nuclear fuel ALWAYS swells due to the intense radiation,
reaction byproducts quickly contaminate the reaction and cannot be
remove from the solid fuel, unless the fuel is recycled. Also it only
allows utilization of a very small portion of the energy in the nuclear
fuel (about 1-3%), requiring fuel bundle replacement in about 18 months.
When the core is decommissioned you still need to store the highly
radioactive waste for thousands of years. Spent fuel MUST be
continuously covered in highly purified water for at least centuries to
keep the fuel bundles below melting temperature. The continuous heat
from the fuel, evaporates the water quickly (hundreds of gallons in a
short period of time) ALL spent fuel is currently stored in pools, on
site at the nuclear plant and there are no plans to recycle it as it is
expensive and hard to do conventionally. Uranium is somewhat water
soluble (Thorium is not), so there is a groundwater contamination
concern.
I used to oppose nuclear energy, mainly due to high
pressure steam explosions (3 times so far) and long term storage of
highly radioactive fuel for 10k+ years. I have changed my mind, but only
if we build Thorium liquid fueled, Molten Salt reactors (such as LFTR)
instead of the VERY expensive, large boiling water conventional reactors we have now.
Currently Thorium is a waste product of a number of mining operations,
is orders of magnitude more plentiful than uranium and is basically as
safe as dirt (it needs conversion inside the reactor to become useful
fuel, conversion takes 30 days and is free). Molten salt solves ALL of
the fundamental problems of boiling water reactors, as part of their
nature. They also cheaply and easily burn current stocks of used fuel
rods leaving only a small residue that is safe in about 300 years. They
effectively use about 95+% of the nuclear energy in the fuel. No
expensive explosion proof containment structure needed, as it cannot
explode (it operates at ambient air pressure). They are walk away safe
(Oak Ridge Tennessee ran a molten salt reactor safely for 6,000 hours
and performed walk away safe tests on it at full power in the 1960's).
In fact they shut it down every weekend because no one wanted to stay.
They are well suited to the SMR form factor and easily allow continuous
removal of very valuable medical isotopes on an ongoing basis. These
medical isotopes are impossible to remove from boiling water reactors.
They also provide high temperature waste heat that can be used in many
high temperature processes now, such as steel, fertilizer or concrete
making, just to name a few. Desalinization of sea water on a huge scale
is easy and cheap.
The only remaining hurdles are some slight
metals compatibility proving needed. Chemical separation is a far
superior and cheaper process. The inventor of the nuclear tea kettle
reactor (Alvin Weinberg) said it was fine for military use but was a
very poor choice for commercial reactors, as we have seen 3 times. For
many years he strongly promoted the Thorium, liquid fueled reactor as a
far superior choice. Thorium is useless for making bombs which is one of
the main reasons they used uranium instead back in the 1950’s. See
Thorium Alliance you tube videos for a good overview. An excellent
boiling water reactor problems review is a 1hr You Tube video:
Nuclear
Disasters & Coolants
ruclips.net/video/8Pyq8kCeiYs/видео.html
The fact that TRISO is close to indestructible is a selling point, they stay in this form until they storage area they are placed in after use, journeys deep under the Earth where heat, time and pressure, render it safe when it reemerges. Yes we can manufacture TRISO in great quantities with no defects .
*boy if this kid only knew what universe level technology we have really tucked away, anti gravity, anti matter reactors, if only he knew, watch bob lazar doc.*
Buy eltrc rr I c k
Regarding the statement "while no SMR plants are currently in operation" at 14:22
"On 12 September 2021, the first of two reactors achieved criticality, becoming the first 4th generation nuclear reactor in the world to do so, and is scheduled to be connected to the electricity grid before the end of 2021.[7][8]On 11 November 2021, reactor two achieved first criticality. [9]
Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTR-PM
wikipedia is not a source
Yes. lol because a wiki concerning China, is totally legit. We all know China doesn’t lie about anything
@@spg3331 oh please, the source of the quote was that wikipedia URL.
Send your complaints to Cygnus X-1
Maybe by in operation he meant doing their job of putting power into the grid. Achieving criticality here means the first time it ran at all, including test runs, and might only be a short run at a fraction of designed power output.
The Russians have had two reactors on a barge powering a small city in Siberia for some time now.
Great video! I learned so much! I had no idea how many types of reactor designs there are!
What most never comprehend is that nuclear science and technology is completely driven by American military interests. Uranium, not Thorium, has been the focus with an eye on the byproducts for reprocessing into thermonuclear weaponry. Our nuclear power plants feed the power grid but what gets missed is that the spent fuel is a vital resource for feeding our nuclear weapons industry.
Absolute rubbish! All US weapons grade plutonium has been produced in special build reactors at the Hanford & Savannah River sites. No commercial reactor grade plutonium is used in America's nuclear arsenal.
@@rhynosouris710 OK I'll bite. So these special build reactors... what is fed into them? Raw uranium? Pixie dust? Yeah, I know it's a little classified, but if my earlier assertion is "absolute rubbish" then you should easily be able to show absolutely no material connection between the commercial reactors and the special build ones. Right? Please enlighten me.
@@NakedProphet You need to take a physics 101 class. Commercial spent fuel is useless for nuclear weapons production because of Pu240 contamination. All enriched uranium and weapons grade plutonium production in the US falls under the US Department of Energy, not the US Military. Saying that nuclear science & technology is completely driven by US military interests is like saying the world aviation industry is also completely driven by the American military because Boeing sells aircraft to the USN & USAF.
Further, about 32 countries operate nuclear power plants, but outside India, none have shown any serious interest in Thorium, and even India has put its Thorium developement on the back burner.
But if it makes you feel better to spread your tinfoil hat conspiracy theories, go right ahead & enjoy. You might enjoy spreading the news that all birds are NSA spy drones as well.
30.
5:10 that Cloud chamber video is More interesting than simulated Graphical screensaver or animation videos.
Consider being considerate in the comment section.
no
No
nO YoU
This is RUclips. Get fucked.
this would really ruin the fun of a comment section, one of the last battlefields of flame wars :P
Quite deep, but very well explained type of fission reactors.
Feels like we’re using nuclear power in the most basic way
As long as we don't have to deal with the waste for several thousand years I'm fine with nuclear power...
18.
So much of the holdback of adoption of things like this are likely due to the generals public lack of understanding of how they work as well as how they have been told windscale, three mile island, etc had been so safe and fool proof.
But really, even with accidents, not big deal.
Airplanes crash, but people use them everyday.
Boeing let a 2nd plane crash after the software flaw was obvious just a couple years ago.
It should have grounded them. look it up.
@@superchuck3259 Just move to Chernobyl, no big deal. May try also Fukushima for summer residence.
@@jacekpiterow900 Funny that living in some cities gives higher exposure to higher levels of background radiation than both Chernobil or Fukuhima. People imagine nuclear wastelands before making 10 mins of research in the internet.
@@vipondiu I did: Chernobyl, town Pripiat tour 3.14uSv/h at the forest, the plant is over 5uSv/h in NYC you have 0.06uSv/h. Uranium miners max exposure level is 10mSv a year... If my calculations right one year in the forest of Chernobyl is about 3 times Uranium miner maximum exposure. What did you find out?
WHY does that thumbnail makes me want to take a coffee break?
the last thing you need is to drop mini reactors into combat zones and heave them end up in the wrong hands, particularly given the usa's dismal record in all the pointless wars they start.
they'll spend billions for war research, but if it was for a humanitarian cause, you won't see a cent drop from their wallets
@@Ubya_ More like Trillions sadly, so even if they are sending billions every years to help some poor countries, it's insignificant. Same with the green effort, even if they spend billions dollars every month, it will never repair the damage they've done to become the wealthiest. It's just to put up a good front.
We will have reactors for military bases and for forward bases in foreign countries, you could easily have them in a combat zone,The withdrawal was ill concieved from Afganistan but only Joe Biden could misuse the military like that, the armor for tanks and the material used in TRISO is the same Silicon Carbide extremely tough.
The US has hasn't had positions overrun since the early days of WW2,even in Korea there were disciplined withdrawals.McCarthur surrendered thousands in the Phillipenes is the last I can think of, the same idiot that had us in the mountains of N Korea,anyway a reactor would be a great energy source on the battlefield saving millions of gallons of diesel,and lives.
Wribg ti m e tre a ce go cacjk tine g et th e m b ack
Just like my feelings personification.... A meltdown in my pocket
and they STILL haven't worked out what to do with the waste.
Just throw the waste in the garbage can, you don’t need to overcomplicate it
We have perfectly safe ways to store the waste, it's just the ultimate disposal places that aren't there yet. That means we can currently store it safely as long as civilization exists, however ultimate disposal places would be nice to have some time in the far future in case civilization collapses and no one is there to maintain storage, although we would have other issues at that point.
Thorium reactors.
Actually thay do, its just nobody wants to fund more research into reactors that can run on the waste product
The waste is small
thank you for noticing brilliant light power!
Pistols will no longer be necesarry, in the street combat fights, anymore! You could build portable Nuclear Bomb with that!
In all seriousness, nuclear reactors don't explode, they simply can't.
@@LuchtLeiderNederland I know. I mean old fella good days, in which man killed another man with sweet combat guns age, will work no longer anymore. You will be able to vaporize the entire street with bombs as same height as the size of your fist. The cops will have to wear special suits and will need to clear the area from the radiation, before proceeding the legal issues.
Thank you for this nice overview of the nuclear development. Its hopeful.
Interesting concepts being built. But................................a little clickbait going on too ??
Oh yeah transmute my isotopes baby.
You should have specified, the stagnation was only in America, thank you Jimmy Carter.
I've thought the same thing! I would love a portable SMR for large energy output for household.
These 1.2 fegwatrs uf ergy house yes deooran ime teavel
Maybe 2 months ago I saw a study from a prestigious university (Cambridge?). it said that modular reactors have very low efficiency. But I don't know the tech they were measuring.
Nuclear energy is worth the risk. But it's wrong to discard fossil fuels. We still need them and we don't have viable alternative.
And zero carbon is a myth, too. It's needed like a zero calorie diet! Just have to keep levels where Mother Nature can absorb what's produced.
Ik the title was a bit of clickbait but I was not at all dissapointed with the video, I learned a lot I didn't know and wanted to learn. And I get that the portable title was a lot more interesting for the initial click. But still, I wish the RUclips culture didn't revolve around exaggeration or half truths to get their clicks
Dropping an SMR into a War Zone sounds incredibly bad. How many small countries would cause such a war for the sole purpose of capturing such technology to sell on Black Tech Markets?
Yeah but who the hell leaves behind a multi-million dollar nuclear reactor in the middle of nowhere