i find it amazing how few people die in nuclear disasters. I believe he covered this in another TED talk, but only ONE person died from the radiation from Fukishima, and he died of lung cancer years later.
Nuclear is not profitable. One accident wipes out all your profit. The people who built it and the lobbyist profit. Read Exposing the misinformation of Michael Shellenberger and 'Environmental Progress'.
@@yedidyah-jedshlomoh1533 Ilhan Omar - thanks for this information about the misinformation, it helped me make up my mind. Schellenberger is a gifted speaker but something about his arguments kept nagging me.
@@yedidyah-jedshlomoh1533 It's cheaper per kWh than renewables (after accounting for batteries), and provides skilled jobs to the population around the plants. Energy production isn't about being profitable. It's about getting the best value for money, while causing the least harm in the process. Nuclear does that. Is it perfect? No. Is anything better? Not right now, no.
I live about 1250 miles from Tsjernobyl and remeber wery well the nuclear disaster. What l remeber even more was the hysteria that was amplified by the media. But there was very little facts to support the hysteria, not even today.
most of it was due to Soviet mishandling of the situation though. And modern tech has advanced past Chernobyl power plant, making modern plants much safer.
Why doesn’t anyone talk about the safety record of the US Navy with their nuclear powered submarines and aircraft carriers? Why does anyone need to be scared about accidents if the processes and infrastructure are properly managed?
@@dinosaurdude5668 yes, I had a roommate who was ex US Navy - was an engineer who served on a nuclear sub. We spoke quite a bit about nuclear power and he convinced me of its utility, safety and lack of waste. He also said that reprocessing is now much better so more energy is created from less waste and what waste is generated is now being stored in way it can be accessed again when reprocessing has improved yet further.
@@jamesag4135 Several molten salt reactors are in R&D. Not everyone uses thorium. The molten salt reactor type (fluid fuel) is the potential improvement, not so much the fuel type. My money is on something like the Elysium Industries Molten Chloride Salt Fast Reactor. It can use just about any fuel and uses a very simple homogenous chloride based salt (table salt) reactor core without moderator elements or control rods.
@@uselessHxC The tech isn't difficult, the designs already exist, the supply exists, and they're walkaway safe designs. There's one simple reason why it won't happen any time soon. It's so efficient and so cheap it would ruin the profits around the energy industry.
For me, the most striking (and telling) part of this talk is at 8:04. People have all kinds of hidden agendas. Never follow blindly. ("Pandora's Promise" is also a great documentary on the subject.)
And Shellenberger's hidden agenda is the money he is paid by nuclear to lie. It's the most unpopular form of energy generation [actually it's release rather than generate] no one wants it except dim politicians who are always fooled by big anything.
@@oystla It just isn't possible, it does not work. It is also actually worse than nuclear in an environmental sense. Please just find proper scientific studies on how efficient clean and safe nuclear is. What you are saying simply won't work inside this century because we need better batteries and how long it takes to actually produce these so called renewable, I am sorry but that just is not fast enough we need answers now and nuclear can get us those answers in 20 years renewable's can not.
Daniel Morris listen, Regarding studies you may want to look at some studies yourself, on energy storage and solar growth. I did not mention the Word battery in my last reply. There are more than enough pumped Hydro storage sites to Solve all global needs. Batteries will be used for grid stability needs and hours of delivery. Pumped Hydro for seasonal storage. In 2019 the globe will add another 120 GW of solar installations. Yearly production from 120 GW solar equals some 25 nuclear plants. This means that the world must initiate 25 new Nuclear projects EACH year going forward JUST to keep up with the increase in electricity production from solar alone. And then I have not included the 70 GW of wind power Added globallly annually. So your own math do not add up. And please note that Shellenberger is an anthropologist, NOT an engineer. He is using OLD statistics in his arguments, and do not understand the force of exponential growth. He is a joke. Also note that the two ongoing European nuclear projects (in France and Finland) has been under construction for 15 years, and still not finished. SO IT IS NUCLEAR THAT JUST CANNOT Be Built fast enough to save the world.
hur duh dur, im a "enivronmentalist" and care more about appearing green then actually BEING green and refuse to look at the reality of the situation and which energy types have a worse effect on the environment- oystla
I worked in the nuclear industry for over 30 years. I’ve done everything from construction to managing the refueling of reactors. They are extremely robust and managed with the right culture, are the best bet for America’s power needs.
Hey Mr. Specialist...What do you suggest to do with hundreds of tons of nuclear waste produced worldwide and yearly? Nuclear energy is not cheap if you include the cost of storing the waste for a million years while trying to keep it from seeping into the ground water and keeping it out of the hands of terrorists...
@@secsec7260 Can you say for certain that between now and a million years, if there is a real problem with the waste, someone won't invest to solve it. Generating the energy through nuclear reactors was a problem to be solved, why do you assume waste isn't. The problem I see with early intevention critics is that they lack an imagination needed to produce something as necessary as nuclear power, yet have this omnipotent imagination that sees no hope for problems as they arise.
The problem with nuclear is that there is nothing for politicians to invest in. Solar and wind investments is new money. Good for politicians and lobbyists
I’m glad to read your comments and watch your videos. It seems that the damage that has been done, and continues to be done, by poor information and the lie’s from Hollywood, politicians, and others with platforms may be hard to overcome. We need more people like you presenting this information to Washington. Thanks again.
Okay, this was great. Thank you so much for all of your work and spreading the word. It seems that nuclear power could be the single most important thing to help with global warming and global climate change issues. Well done!
I'm appalled at what an utter scam the anti-nuclear movement was. I was a kid in the 70's, and I was duped by it. By the mid 80's I learned the facts. I'm still concerned about the lifetime amortized cost per kwh, based on construction costs and alleged sky high decomissioning costs. Are these not as bad as I've been lead to believe?
Future Hindsight, I don't think that's the right question. A better question is how long do we have to store the waste and how do we have to store it before the risk is similar to other risks that we consider acceptable? (Like driving a car.)
Future Hindsight the 4.5 billion years is bull. First, that is unused material, not waste. Second, that is for the low energy stuff that’s safe to hold in your hand. Last, they’ve developed reactors that actually use this partially spent fuel, produce energy, and reduce the size and radioactivity of the fuel to a tiny fraction of its size and radioactivity of its natural state (which is also radioactive in the ground).
@@incognitotorpedo42 There is a kind of reactor that if developed can process conventional nuclear waste into a form that is compact and dangerous for only three hundred years. Conventional waste is dangerous for 10,000 yrs.
@@winomaster One of the main things to remember with spent nuclear fuel, is this: It was already radioactive when we removed it from the ground. Spent fuel which has no further use, can now be turned into a glass, and simply buried again. The entire process is basically just to dig up radioactive materials, extract energy from them, recycle anything left over which can still be used (over 95% of what we call "waste"), then put radioactive material back into the ground. The people who argue "what do we do with the waste" seem to forget what exactly was buried in the ground before we dug it up. There's also not that much of it. A single coke can sized piece of uranium provides enough energy to power one person's entire energy usage for their entire life. One person's waste, is only what's left over from that. Compare that to any other form of energy. Even renewables. The impact on the planet, from spent nuclear fuel, is minimal. It hasn't caused a single death in history.
Michael is so wonderful, it is about time we get leaders that can think through complicated issues and stand up to the silly, manipulated masses. Nuclear energy is OBVIOUSLY the way to go !!
Peter Frorer, Nuclear is only obvious if you ignore the toxic waste products. According to the International Nuclear Energy Agency (2015), there are 253,700 tonnes of spent fuel stored above ground at various sites around the world, much of it in cooling ponds, and this is increasing at a rate of around 7,000 tonnes a year. Not a small problem . . .
LOL, I love that the negative responses to Peter's 100% truthful comment TOTALLY exemplify the anti-nuclear fear-mongering mentioned in the TED talk. Classic!
@@jamesneilsongrahamloveinth1301 The Gen IV molten salt reactors will burn nuclear waste as fuel. The actinides will be converted to less radioactive, lower atomic weight isotopes. The 10,000-year dangerous lifetime of waste will be reduced to 300 to 500 years.
RBMK is just a different type of reactor, with many safety problems. They didn't even have proper containment structures. One of the major contributing factors to the disaster was the "positive void coefficient" which means that if the coolant heats up too much and starts to boil (creating voids), the voids will further increase the power output which causes an escalating chain reaction i.e. a steam explosion i.e. the Chernobyl disaster. Western reactors have negative void coefficients which makes this impossible.
What happened at 3 mile Island was as bad as chernobyl in terms of damage to the reactor. The difference being the Western reactors have containment and design reduncey so that even if the worst dose happen you don't get an explosion.
The top of the core at TMI was damaged. It was not a full core destruction. The incident at TMI happened because there wasn’t instrumentation to accurately determine the volume of water in a pressurized water reactor. That incident led to a lot of plants installing the instruments.
The only problem is that its not fear that kills nuclear power. Its cost. Just ask any private investors, like the ones building UK Hinkley nuclear power plant. Electricity price twice the market price is pure insanity.
@@oystla Utilities have been trying to build out nuclear power for decades, and doing this knowing that they will get sued in court by environmental groups, have to deal with protesters hammering away at their construction sites, media crawling around looking for any hint of something they can report on, etc. etc. All these things add costs, delays, and they are even sometimes (unfortunately) successful at shutting down commercial nuclear power projects all in the name of 'safety' (fear), while allowing the planet to further descend into global warming chaos. Even with these known issues, the utilities are still willing to try to build out these plants because they understand the long term economics of 24/7/365 baseload GigaWatt power production. Plant Vogtle is a good example, and they should have their first new reactor up sometime around 2021-2022, and in the long run, they know it was worth all the added costs/delays.
@@ian5576 nuclear blaming Greens and media for Billions in overruns? Haha, that was a good one. Anyhow, the present Vogtle cost of 8 USD pr. Watt installed watt capacity is just as insane as Hinkley. Which means huge required subsidies are in the pipeline.
So here in Southern California we pay the highest rate for electricity from 5pm to 8pm more than 50C/kWh. Mid Day is the cheapest electricity. So the burden of this whole clean energy shifted from industry to the working people. Why are we OK with that?
And that's why CA is now trying to work back their failed tax incentives for encouraging too much solar. They want to start charging new solar hookups $8 per KW per month.
France has 56 nuclear power reactors which generate 71% of their power, the highest % in the world. Relative to the size of their nuclear industry and infrastructure, their number of accidents has been extremely low. The world can learn from France's approach.
@@ethanwhitehead2085 Yep. And even when there IS an accident, they have been shown to be far far less dangerous than all the hyperbole would lead you to believe. Take for instance the infamous Chernobyl disaster. It was literally a worst case scenario. An operating reactor, with no containment structure EXPLODED and what was left fully melted down! And yet the destruction is about 1/50th of what the public is led to believe. We need to start doing a better job telling the world the realities of nuclear power.
and what have the done to safely store the spent rods they produce with all that nuclear power? Nothing right? That's the biggest problem with all forms of energy other then Green Energy. THEY POLLUTE! POLLUTION KILLS!
@@troyturton8197 Don't be childish. The spent rods typically spend 20-40 years in a pool at the power plant where they decay into much less radioactive rods. From there they are reprocessed for the remaining fuel and the waste is stored in shielded caskets that are nigh invincible (look them up, there's even a video of one surviving being hit by a train!). Renewables are also not free of pollution due to the materials and processes used in their creation and disposal, and they have other impacts on the environment. They also require solutions to fix their unreliability, which are typically batteries and peaker plants. They are not as "green" as everyone makes them out to be.
This was a very interesting presentation. Quality information such as this backed with actual facts and figures should always underline the 'news' that is peddled to the masses but unfortunately it doesn't sell newspapers!
Tell us more about how safe a nuclear plant is during a war. Would you rather be close to a solar panel or to a nuclear plant when they start bombing your land? That´s what happening nowadays in Ucraine
College age students are more passionate and "certain" about their beliefs & bias's (many of them naïvely false) than at any other point in their life. At the same time, true humility is very low.
I'm not opposed to nuclear, I am opposed to pressurized light water reactors. I would very much like to see a large number of LFTR reactors built. Light water reactors are inefficient, recovering less than .5% of Uranium's energy potential and producing waste that lasts 100,000+ years, LFTR reactors are efficient recovering nearly 100% of fuels energy potential, can burn that existing long term waste and turn it into a 300 year problem instead of a 100,000+ year problem, and can burn Thorium as well as Uranium. And they are, unlike pressurized water reactors, inherently safe which means you can safely place supply near urban demand. And they don't require large amounts of water.
I was a navy nuke and ran a nuclear engineering company. I agree with you completely. While LWR's are safe, we have new gen technologies that are inherently safe. The problem in the US is that neither political party benefits from leading on this issue. It's really unfortunate.
The issue is that PWRs are a more established model, and it’s cheaper to make and operate with a lower risk of incident than molten salt reactors just because the coolant is hard to work with. The vast majority of PWR waste is safe in much less time, only the fuel and some other materials in the RPV last that long. The gen 4 model modular PWRs are the most exciting to me because they are relatively easy to operate and super safe, but molten salt reactors typically are harder to navigate. I’m all for trying all types of reactors, especially gen 4, but I wouldn’t rule out PWRs just because they are more appealing to utilities that build nuclear plants and anything nuclear is better than any other power plant
I grew up in Ontario Canada. I grew up watching on the news the building of a nuclear reactor facility. It took so long and the cost overruns were enormous. The same happened in Quebec. Such facilities are a prime target for extortion by construction companies. If it’s half built the government cannot back out. And the price price gets ratcheted up. Plus who wants to live near a nuclear reactor
I do! Living next to a well-designed and well-managed nuclear power plant is preferable to having many square miles of land covered with solar panels, and having smoke in the air on cloudy days!
No, we will just take them to Africa and tell them to shut their coal powered stations off😢. We are suffering here Africa just for Europe to enjoy. Almost 4 stations are decommissioned and by 2030 we will be having less then 8. We suffer loadshedding every day because of Europe and its bribes that bribed Cyril Ramaphosa
Nuclear is necessary, but there will be a big roll for fossil fuels until the day cars run on little nuclear reactors. Electric storage devices, known as batteries, require all sorts of elements that need to be mined, processed, transported, turned into batteries, then need to be disposed of at the end of the batteries lives. The battery cases will be made of plastic, which is a product of petroleum. Lithium is currently the most advantageous material used for creating high capacity batteries, but it presents environmental hazards of its own. Not to mention various other materials which pose their own problems. The truth is that climate changes irrespective of man’s input. Any effect we might have on the environment is dwarfed by natural causes, like cyclical solar activity, or any number of earth bound occurrences such as volcanoes, earth quakes, or even periodic marine phenomena which ultimately keep everything in balance, despite man’s arrogant attempts to influence something beyond anything we can control. As long as world society is influenced by the likes of idiots like Greta Thunberg, and Bill Nye the Science guy, the world is creating its own problems.
And it's old news too! My question is what is the current/absolute latest thinking/information with regard to long term viability and environmental impact of alternative tech versus nuclear power? John.
There was only a partial meltdown of TMI Unit 2 as a result of the loss-of-coolant accident that did take place, but molten fuel elements did not breach the reactor vessel itself, and a controlled release of pressure and built-up hydrogen from within that vessel prevented an explosion event. The TMI accident was brought back under control far more quickly and effectively than either Chernobyl or Fukushima. There was some release of radioactive material into the ambient environment but far less so than at Chernobyl. Yes, the full meltdown scenario and explosion could have happened had the engineers not jumped onto the reactor as swiftly as they had, and there was a degree of operator incompetence that led to the loss-of-coolant accident in the first place. But no, there was never a full meltdown of the reactor. The accident would have been far more serious if it had.
A generation of Americans were traumatized in the 1950s by Civil Defense people in their school classrooms describing how they were apt to be vaporized by nuclear weapons at any moment. Then they watched dozens of movies and read comic books about radiation creating monsters and superheroes. The word "nuclear" was made a trigger for fear. I think this accounts for their gullibility about the bogus "dangers" of nuclear reactors.
Many startups are working on gen 4 machines, mostly various flavors of molten salt. Some of them might well be a major improvement upon the state of the art. But existing gen 3 reactors are already a fantastic power source so there's no need to wait for gen 4 which could take a couple of decades until they're ready. All the "problems" anti-nuclear activists cite in regards to existing nuclear are just complete bs when you run the numbers.
@@phamnuwen9442 I am hopeful Canada will have a few Gen4 demonstrators running within 5yrs. A small high temp gas cooled by Global First Power (USNC), a molten salt by Terrestrial Energy and another molten salt by Moltex Energy.
Precisely, it's simply too expensive to keep all these nuclear engineers in well paid jobs, comfortably numb in their middle-class lifestyle. Renewables are dirt cheap and quick to install, if it ain't broke don't fix it, especially with an expensive fix that puts everyone in danger.
few issues with what is said here (mind you, I am probably wrong):1) I don't know if you all remember 1986 and what happened at Chernobil and the massive nuclear pollution it caused around Europe. Additionally, governements kept firm that there was no considerate pollution, while people could clearly measure the opposite, which leads to me wondering if the same happened over in the USA. 2) There is all the talk about the depleted uranium being the only waste of nuclear power plants, but how about the raditing lead construction material and the heavy water from the cooling system? 3) A big question towards the safety of these nuclear power plants is in maintenance, building location and the care of the people surrounding the site. I think a big concern lies in there: what will greed from owners do concerning maintenance (it is one of the things management likes to cut in)? What will pollititians decide on locations with NIMBY in effect (choose an isolated cheap and possibly unsafe location, near the sea with dangers of tsunamis?)? What about people who simply mean ill to everything in the name of some other thing? 4) What about the heat exhaust? Is it included in those diagrams? It is not a polluting element, but it is physical pollution. Just some thought, not an expert in any way though.
A great reason not to give so much weight to extreme activists. Facts and rational argument don't get them the results they're looking for, so they turn to the tried and true alternative: twisted data, celebrities and rock concerts. Their own fear doesn't allow them to slow down and consider they may not know everything. Decades later their main contribution is more particulates in the air. I hope these videos help us think rationally about this. I also hope the public at large stops being so moved by alarmism, but that won't happen.
it’s also amazing how ppl will think there’s nothing to fear, just b/c someone told you that there *is* something to fear. concern over radioactive pollution is not “irrational”. that concern would have protected chernobyl and fukashima.
I like this guy (Michael Shellenberger). He shares the good intent of the reasons for the Sierra and Greenpeace clubs before they were used more for destroying American life and no longer for the saving of our environment. New Gen III+ and IV Nuclear Power plants are passive safe, super simple and powerful enough to be used for two thirds of our energy, and solar can assist us from our rooftops without the destructive installations all across the Nevada, California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas wildernesses. Fossil fuels would only be used when the other sources, like wind, hydroelectric and batteries don't deliver, such as air travel.
With abundance of electricity(nuclear), you can scrub the co2 out of the air, and make fuel for planes. So they become co2 neutral. Its not worth it atm, because coal is a far worse polluter, so we need to end that first.
Solar makes more sense when using otherwise unused surfaces like roofs, but it's still not obvious that it would make economic sense if you already have access to nuclear (when scaled up and not held back by fearmongering environmentalists) from the grid. There are still costs in terms of cleaning and maintaining the panels that many homeowners might want to avoid. Long term fluctuations in solar output from changing seasons or weather is another potential issue since long term energy storage isnt economical which requires a backup energy source for periods of low production. If this backup source is nuclear chances are consumers with solar will have to pay more for the same amount of kilowatt hours if they only use it sporadically and therefore end up witg a higher total electricity bill which kills the economics of solar.
Lots of small state of the art nuclear plants are the answer. Easier to control an accident at a small plant (if it ever happens) and no need for giant power lines to bring in power from far away.
Utah is trying to build a lftr test reactor. The business world is mutually exclusive from the scientific and engineering world. The war department demonstrated the ability to produce power economically with fast breeder reactors because it could help them get their bombs. Business/finance only cares about proven to work models- which is why the rest of the world followed suit for so long.
Too late now. Fukushima Dai'ichi will cause an extinction level event during the next few decades - end of human civilization. Too late and no point in developing LFTR now.
The worst part is, that NZ banned offshore drilling which mean’t the Huntly power plant now gets over 85% of its power from coal instead of natural gas.
@@MuhammadAhmed-qh7ut Heat flow from Earth over the whole crust is just roughly 2 times the global energy demand. Geothermal is not a scaleable solution.
I wonder how much of the anti-nuclear power sentiment was related to the anti-nuclear weapons movements inability to make much progress, They couldn't force disarmament on the US or USSR (or anyone else really) but they could stop power plants from being built, a much softer target. In his essay "Power and the (European) anti-nuclear power movement" J.M. Korhonen argued that European anti-nuclear activism was driven in part by a sense pf powerlessness over their fate regarding nuclear weapons. They could not get the superpowers to disarm. "The people felt they had too little power over their lives and their future, and that they could feel more empowered if they opposed one concrete manifestation of the energy source that threatened their existence." Once confused, nuclear power and weapons became hard to separate. When people, including on these comment sections talk about the risks of nuclear power, they again and again describe the effects in apocalyptic terms. similar to those of nuclear weapons.
Ever since I've become a father, I've been scared shitless by climate change and while I think that renewables should be expanded quickly and forcefully, I don't see the numbers adding up for a future based solely on solar and wind energy. I guess you can count me in for "fathers for nuclear".
I love when people start talking about nuclear energy as the clean and cheap. People not understand that we need to stop using coil, we need to explain them that fear of nuclear power will lead us in more and more damage by C02, because 80% of electricity in the world, coming from coil. We need to explain people that Chernobyl disaster happens only because of safety violation rules. Right now in there still work couple reactors, only 4-th is not working. I was there BTW, walking near the cover. I was born in Dnepropetrovsk, and we with friends decided to go there. When you fly a plane, you receive more radiation then you stand near 4-th reactor in Chernobyl. Much, much more. People who understand the disaster of our century and fear of nuclear power, need to explain to people that their views on the world is ecxually killing us. We need to show people that there is a lot of progress in nuclear environment, that right now they can shut down them self's while cooling system is off, that the waste we can recycle, we even can use a nukes, lol. Sun and wind is good, but not enough. How can we look for more powerful and better source of power, if we fear nuclear power? How can we fly to space, if we afraid of radiation? People need to understand, that no meter where they are, they will receive a radiation in any ways. Radiation is a natural power, it's coming from space, it's inside of our planet core, It's everywhere. People watch that dumb news after fukusima and now believe in bullsh@t. People not understand that we now can build more safer nuclear power plants. No, I better will believe in tails and I better will die from C02, lack of food, wars and other stuff what can be triggered, then I will admit and overtake my fear of radiation. I saw the movie yesterday, it's about fallout and nuclear apocalypse, I am too afraid of it, I don't know how it's working, I do zero researching for this, I do nothing. Everyone telling me that it's bad and dangerous, so I will not gonna even google a simple rules of physics. We need to choose in the next 20-30 years the nuclear power as the alternative to the coil. We need to work and create a safer power plants, this is the only answer. Scientist need to start talking more about it. They need to find the way to explain this to people, even to hardcore believers of not believers of nuclear energy that it's much more safer, then even solar power. The population of planet earth will grow, more nergy, more food, more everything will needed to support that people. We can't burn so much coil, we don't have an infinity amount of it. In lack of Oil we can have a war, or something like that. People need to do something with it. Bye.
Actually, sun and wind are worthless, and environmentally expensive. A 400 MW "wind farm" needs 400 MW of gas turbines to back it up for when the wind is as little as a pleasant gentle breeze, and whatever level of MW you are actually receiving you'd better have that much idle but spinning reserve.
We need to explain that Chernobyl was caused by quite possibly the most worst nuclear power plant design in history. The RBMK has NO containment dome, was designed on the cheap, and safety was ... not even in the conversation. It was designed to produce a lot of electricity and that was it. EVEN then, they violated their own rules in the reactors operation. It blew up not because it was a ticking bomb but solely due to operator error. How many people died? Well, according to the United Nations, 26 from acute radiation and 15 people from thyroid cancer. How many people died because of the Fukushima meltdowns.. ZERO. The WORST and oldest designed western reactor faced an event WAY beyond it's designed specification and the containment dome worked. Consider as well that Fukushima would NEVER have happened had they just replaced those reactors with more modern generation 3 designs with passive cooling technologies.
Solar works well for peoples house, on their roof. My bro in australia , gets enough sun to power his house, car and gets a cheque from energy company, instead of a bill. Thats great. But on an industrial scale it falls short. Way short. So does wind. Nuclear is the way to go. Its within our power to make it as safe as possible as well.
People in the UK get enough from PV to make their bills free and to sell some back to the supplier. Have a look at Good Energy and the prices they pay their customers for PV power. On an industrial scale there are three wind farms [soon to be four] off the North Norfolk coast, they supply as much as a nuclear plant, and it's all energy that was going to add to the warming. Nuclear harnesse3s energy from atoms that would never have existed without it, and is thus extra to all that's already happening. It adds an increasing amount to an already heating planet. In no sense can that be considered part of the solution.
@@petersimmons3654 err but when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow (or blows too strongly) other sources are required. It’s no accident that Germany, with its large amount of solar & wind energy is a big importer of Russia oil & gas. It’s emissions have skyrocketed since it closed 14 of its nuclear power stations.
1:21 min. So, why doesn't California take the "other" energy off the grid to keep it from being overwhelmed and just use the solar~? A brief explanation would have been very helpful there. Anyone know~?
It's called "reactive power". Reactive circuit elements put power back on the grid. It doesn't come up when the load is purely resistive. As a homeowner none of this shows up on your bill. But large consumers of electricity like steel mills and such actually have to pay the power company for the power THEY put back on the grid bc the grid had to have that juice available. I don't think most people realize that grid management is more of an art than a science bc of how closely matched load needs to be with production.
Interesting pet peeve. I just counted 20 occurrences in this particular talk. For the sake of argument, I'll stipulate to under-counting by 20%, so let's agree on 24 occurrences. Further, I assert that Shellenberger's use of the word is essentially correct and justified within the contexts that it is used. So, is your comment about "most (other) Ted Talks speakers", or about this one specifically? And if so, define "overuse" as it applies here.
Have you ever played poker and the dealer only gave you bad cards ? Or you tried to play poker and some cards were missing but only the dealer knew, and the dealer knew what the missing cards were ? And the dealer controlled the town.
17:49 teaching people how to control the temperature of thier dwellings through well placed skylights and widows and using the cool of the night to cool the house by opening top floor windows at night, closing them in the morning. Closing shudders to keep sun out on hot days. Using a 99% efficient gas furnaces 98% efficient oil furnaces or even an 80% efficient coal furnace instead of electric heating coming in at 25-30% after line losses. The hydro maybe makes up for the line losses.
@@gunnarkaestle And in the end fuel that didnt go up, ended up melted. whitout cooling even after u stop chain reaction, just decay of fission products create enouth heat to melt fuel rods.
@@marianmarkovic5881 Yes, the heat produced only because of the decay after the chain reaction has stopped is a severe challenge for any station blackout, not only at Fukushima. By mere luck the station blackout at Forsmark in SE was avoided when at the end one of the faulty backup generators did start to power the cooling pumps.
@@justgivemethetruth TMi was a pressurized water reactor, Fukushima was a different desing: boiling water reactor that had less safty margins, as you can reach directly from the reactor to the turbine and condensor, which means any leak in the traditionell steam to electricity conversion building emits radioactivity. But Fukushima was different from TMI, although both were a meltdown. Fukushima was a station blackout, whereas TMI had power all the time - it was an operator error (and a bad design which made it hard to discover these operator's errors).
This is the most eloquent and pointed defense of nuclear energy I've seen yet. You did an amazing job with your presentation and research and it's entirely possible that this will be the beginning of the minds changing. It's beneficial for economic enthusiasts as well as environmentalists. Who can truly say they are going to lose from this change? Except possibly those who are benefiting from the power sources which are having all the net negative effects. Sometimes we have to stop feeling and start thinking and deciding why we feel the way we do. Only then can the most meaningful and necessary changes take place.
There's about a dozen gas stations within two miles of where I live. And I imagine the same is true for many other people. Yet nobody seems to be freaking out about living next a gas station, which poses some dangers, but everyone just accepts it. Both he Sun and the Earth are showering us daily with radiation but apparently every just accepts that too. It's just the word "nuclear" that people hate. Maybe the answer is to give nuclear power plants a new name, such as "Earth mineral power generators."
Civilization may have progressed enough to conquer the second law of thermodynamics. Civilization needs to strive for this goal with synergistic interdisciplinary teams.The outcome would be perpetually changeable never gained or lost energy. There would be no loss of energy as it changes form. For example the total quantity of thermal energy in an equal pair of two thermal energy reserves with ideal insulation would remain the same regardless of how heat is distributed between the two and how often the distribution of heat between the two is changed. For example in oe case one reserve could contain ice water while the other reserve contained hot water; in another case both reserves could contain tepid water. The redistribution of heat between members of pairs with the same total thermal energy would be free. Diversity, time, and energy are different atributes. Reversing disorder doesn't need time reversal just as using reverse gear in a car ɓacks it out without time reversal. The second law of thermodynamics had a distinct begining with Sir Isaac Newton's correct professional scientific observation that the heat of a fire in a fireplace always flows towards the cold room beyond. Victorian England became enchanted with steam engines and their cheap, reliable, and easy to position physical power. Rudolf Julius Emanuel Clausius, Lord Kelven, and, one source adds, Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot, formulated the Second law of thermodynamics and the concept of entropy using evidence from steam engine development. These men considered with acceptance [A+] Inefficiently harnessing the flow of heat from hot to cold or [B+] Using force to Inefficiently pump heat from cold to hot. They considered with rejection [A-] Waiting for random fluctuation to cause a large difference in temperature or pressure. This was calculated to be extremely rare or [B-] Searching for, selecting, then routing for use, random, frequent and small differences in temperature or pressure. The search, selection, then routing would require more energy than the use would yield. These accepted options, lead to the consequence that the universe will end in stagnant heat death. This became support for a theological trend of the time that placed God as the initiator of a degenerating universe. Please consider that God could also be supreme over an energy abundant civilization that can absorb heat and convert it into electricity without energy gain or loss in a sustained universe. The law's formulaters did not consider the option that any random, usually small, fluctuation of heat or pressure could use the energy of these fluctuations itself to power deterministic routing so the output is no longer random. Then the net power of many small fluctuations from many replicant parts can be aggregated into a large difference in temperature, pressure, or electricity's amperes and volts Heat exists as the randomly directed kinetic energy of gas molecules or mobile electrons. In gasses this is known as Brownian motion. In electronic systems this is carefully labeled Johnson Nyquist thermal electrical noise for AI readability. Hypothetically, diode depletion regions are practical sites for enabling mobile electrons energized into motion by thermal electrical noise to deterministically alter the electrical resistance of the depletion region according to the moment by moment direction they are carrying electricity. The thermal electrical noise is hypothetically beyond the exposed lattice charge / separation drift (diffusion) equlibrium thickness of the depletion region; thermal noise exists in a resistance path of one material. Consistantly oriented diodes in parallel hypothetically are successful electrical Maxwell's Demons or Smoluchowski's Trapdoors. The energy needed to shift the depletion region's deterministic role is paid as a burden on the moving electrons. There would therefore be usable net rectified power from each and every diode connected together into a consistantly oriented parallel group. The group would aggregate the net power of its members. Any diode efficiency at all produces some energy conversion from ambient heat, more efficiency yields higher performance. A diode array that is switched off has no energy conversion and no performance. The power from a single diode is poorly expressed. Several or more diodes in parallel are needed to overcome the effect of a load resistor's own thermal noise. A plurality of billions of high frequency capable diodes is needed for practical power aggregation. For reference, there are a billion (10^9) 1000 square nanometer cells per square millimeter. Modern nanofabrication can make simple identical diodes surrounded by insulation smaller than this in a slab as thick as the diodes are long. The diodes are connected at their two ohmic ends to two conductive layers. Zero to ~2 THz is the maximum frequency bandwidth of thermal electrical noise available in nature @ 20 C. THz=10^12 Hz. This is beyond the range of most diodes. Practicality requires this extreme bandwidth. The diodes are preferably in same orientation parallel at the primary level. Many primary level groups of diodes should be in series for practical voltage. Ever since the supposedly universal second law of thermodynamics was formulated, education has mass produced and spread the conventional wisdom throughout society that the second law of thermodynamics is absolute. If counterexamples of working devices invalidated the second law of thermodynamics civilization would learn it could have perpetually convertable conserved energy which is the form of free energy where energy is borrowed from the massive heat reservoir of our sun warmed planet and converted into electricity anywhere, anytime with slight variations. Electricity produces heat immediately when used by electric heaters, electric motors with the mechanisms they power, and electric ligts so the energy borrowed by these devices is promply returned without gain or loss. There is also the reverse effect where refrigeration produces electricity equivalent to the cooling, This effect is scientifically elegant. Cell phones wouldn't die or need power cords or batteries or become hot. They would cool when transmitting radio signal power. The phones could also be data relays and there could also be data relays without phone features with and without long haul links so the telecommunication network would be improved. Computers and integrated circuits would have their cooling and electrical needs supplied autonomously and simultaniously. Integrated circuits wouldn't need power pinouts. Refrigeration for superconductors would improve. Robots would have extreme mobility. Electronic minting would be energy cheap. Frozen food storage would be reliable and free or value positive. Storehouses, homes, and markets would have independent power to preserve and pŕepare food. Medical devices would work anywhere. Vehicles wouldn't need fuel or fueling stops. Elevators would be very reliable with independent power. Shielding and separation would provide EMP resistance. Water and sewage pumps could be installed anywhere along their pipes. Nomads could raise their material supports item by item carefully and groups of people could modify their settlements with great technical flexibility. Many devices would be very quiet, which is good for coexisting with nature and does not disturb people. Zone refining would involve little net power. Reducing Bauxite to Aluminum, Rutile to Titanium, and Magnideetite to Iron, would have a net cooling effect. With enough clean cheanetary minerals could be finely pulverized, and H2O, CO2, and other substance levels in the biosphere could be modified. A planetary agency needs to look over wide concerns. This could be a material revolution with spiritual ramifications. Everyone should contribute individual talents and fruits of different experiances and cultures to advance a cooperative, diverse, harmonious and unified civilization. It is possible to apply technlology wrong but social force should oppose this. I filed for a patent, us 3890161A, Diode Array, in 1973. It was granted in 1975. It became public domain technology in 1992. It concerns making nickel plane-insulator-tungsten needle diodes which were not practical at the time though they have since improved. the patent wasn't developed because I backed down from commercial exclusitivity. A better way for me would have been a public incorruptable archive that would secure attrbution for the original works of creators. Uncorrupted copies would be released on request. No further action would be taken by this institution. Commercal exclusivity can be deterred by the wide and open publishing of inventive concepts. Also the obvious is unpatentsable. Open sharing promotes mass knowlege and wisdom. Many financially and procedurally independent teams that pool developmental knowlege, and may be funded by many separate noncontrolling crowd sourced grants should convene themselves to develop proof-of-concept and initial-recipe-exploring prototypes to develop devices which coproduce the release of electrical energy and an equivalent absorbtion of stagnant ambient thermal energy. Diode arrays are not the only possible device of this sort. They are the easiest to explain here. These devices would probably become segmented commodities sold with minimal margin over supply cost. They would be manufactured by AI that does not need financial incentive. Applicable best practices would be adopted. Business details would be open public knowledge. Associated people should move as negotiated and freely and honestly talk. There is no need of wealth extracting top commanders. We do not need often token philanthropy from the wealthy if people simply can be more generous if consumer commodities are inexpensive. Aloha Charles M Brown lll Kilauea, Kauai, Hawaii 96754 1 808 651 📞📞📞📞
They will once the profit mountain in fossil fuels starts to subside. There's still a fortune to be made from coal and oil, they won't hand it over without a fight. There's also a fortune to be made from the 'management' of reactor 'waste'.
The way I see it, they would've already invested in it, if it weren't for the self-righteous environmentalists pushing public opinion away from it. I can't see how nuclear wouldn't be a profitable prospect that they'd want to pursue otherwise.
Hi Micheal Please, tell us one singolar place on planet Earth that is geologically safe to store nucleare waste. Cause mountains and hills are not stable. And any other place can be hit by earthquake, flood, tsunami. Rain can reach any place as well as dust or sand. Tell us how you keep those boxes with nuclear waste safe for 100.000 years. Thanks in advance.
I think we should be open to all energy science and skeptical of all. Since the "China Syndrome," we have not invested into nuclear research as we should have. I like the way he shows how misleading statistics can be and are. I see three ways forward. Hope for battery tech that will make wind and solar more viable, nuclear, and marginal gains. By marginal gains, mean better fuel econ, better windows, better building technique, better public trans, etc. I wish I could believe studies but every on seams to have an invested interest in the outcomes and bias the data.
Thorium is old defunct technology from the 1950's (Dr Alvin Weinberg et al.). Thorium is just a U233 fission reactor in disguise, with all its inherent risks and nuclear waste stream. Denmark has been very sensible to concentrate on renewables, wind energy in particular.
Hold the phone! He said 10% of California's usage of electricity was solar and yet we made too much to use of electricity? That doesn't make sense..? We couldn't diffuse it to other parts of the state? In another Michael talked about selling extra solar energy generated to other States why not send it to other parts of california? 🤔
Maybe some of the newer, scaled-down nuclear plants, and Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) might do the trick. But the Diablo Canyon nuclear facility sits in a crossfire of earthquake faults that have the potential to shake those reactors with more force than they were designed to withstand. I don't think a massive, aging installation like Diablo Canyon is the one to save.
Fukushima withstood the earthquake. It’s reactors did exactly what they were supposed it do. It was the tsunami that damaged the reactor and caused the explosion. It won’t have been difficult to plan in safety measures to ensure it remains safe should there be a tsunami
@@sookibeulah9331 - Sorry, the "if only" argument isn't valid. Fukushima did not withstand the earthquake if it succumbed to the ensuing tsunami--it's a packaged deal. That's like saying that the 'teeth are okay, but the gums gotta go.' Diablo canyon is situated on the shoreline, same as Fukushima, and therefore susceptible to the same one-two punch that took down Fukushima.
You would have improved your credentials if you had mentioned that melting through the earth would end up at the CENTER of the earth and NOT at the opposite side.
It is baffling to me how anyone concerned with the environment could support wind and solar energy. Wind and solar are devastating to the environment and destructive to animal and plant life. Wind and solar are unreliable, intermittent, and expensive.
1:31 CA emissions declined less than the national average * 4x faster 2001-2006 before climate legislation vs 2007-2014... 14:10 because in 2011 jane fonda and jerry brown closed a few nuclear plants. 19:11 mothers for nuclear. 19:45 nuclear is safest no emissions renewable. 20:10 closing diablo canyon could see 5000+ premature deaths/year.
While im entirely for nuclear power, and agree with much of the talk, you have to remember one of the issues is radioactive particles in the wild. Yes, the over all radioactive exposure is less than a chest x-ray, but if you swallow a actively emitting particle the inverse square law comes into play. All of that tissue around that particle is exposed to direct emissions. Should you be scared? meh...not really. Ive known people that refuse to use microwave ovens because of 'radiation' even though its not the kind of radiation you should be worried about. The core of all nuclear pushback comes from a lack of understanding when it comes to radioactivity.
Chernobyl suggests that this isn't a problem. If ingesting a hot particle indeed is comes with a high risk of cancer, the epidemiological data suggests that this isn't happening in real life to any significant degree. The actual known death toll from Chernobyl is microscopic in comparison to what the average person imagines. And you probably couldn't cause a worse disaster than Chernobyl with a power reactor even if you tried. The reactor was a type that no sane country would build and the operators did virtually everything wrong, and still the death toll is just 43 people so far with another 160 or so expected to die prematurely from thyroid cancer at some point.
Actually microwave IS the kind of radiation you should be concerned about. It's also used in mobile phones as well as ovens and radar stations and there's solid evidence it's causing cancers in heavy phone users, especially brain cancers. Microwave ovens are safe as they have shielding, but the phone pushes it through your brain every few seconds as it handshakes transmission towers. NEVER use a phone inside a car even if you are stationary, the car body keeps the RF radiation bouncing round and through you. Our hou8ses are now swamped with it, the router and every other wifi gadget is doing it constantly.
@@phamnuwen9442 I am pro nuclear, but it doesn't help anyone spreading false numbers about Chernobyl. The estimated death toll is 4000, from the official UN report. Less than 100 from acute radiation exposure syndrome, the rest are premature deaths from thyroid cancer (the report states that the exposure cause minimal risk of other kinds of cancer). But take into account that 8 million people died from heart and lung disease because of fossile fuels - in 2018 alone. The WORST serious estimate of Chernobyl is at 50,000 deaths, estimated by the anti-nuclear group "concerned scientists". Also, this is the same as the total of all nuclear power deaths, since all other disasters have had very low death counts. So for every 1 nuclear power death, from 70 years of operation, 160 people die every year. Or in other words, every time 11,000 people die from fossile fuel power, just 1 person dies from nuclear power - using the worst possible numbers for nuclear power.
Same ol story they've been telling since the 50s. Kind of like how if we just believed in government and let them tax us temporarily a little bit more everything will change for the better.
What? Are you for real? We can make electricity from the sun wind and rain, what's more 21st century than that? Nuclear was conceived in the 1950s, so last century, so deranged, so dangerous [they were dangerous times] so illogical, so ego-driven. They smoked in the 1950s. Even doctors.
There's a water desalination plant in the hills behind Diablo Canyon, which can pump fresh water into the reactors, in the event of an emergency. It doesn't rely on anything which might be below the water level. It's much more protected than Fukushima was. Even in Japan, Onagawa was much closer to the epicentre, and suffered higher waves, and it coped fine. There's no reason a Tsunami should pose any huge threat.
From Google: "The elevation of the Fukushima site is approximately 20 feet above sea level, while Diablo Canyon sits on a bluff 85 feet above sea level."
I disagree => I worked in nuclear power plants. I agree that when they are working perfectly, they are super-clean and just churn out consistent, good energy. However, the problem is when they have an accident... and obviously, they do have accidents. At one of the plants in which I worked, our accident plan was to evacuate all of Hartford, Conn for 30 years. Of course, that was worst-case. But that's my point. The worst-case scenario is so bad it just isn't worth it. Giving up Southern California for 30 years is not worth the price of this energy. So, sorry, I don't agree with the speaker.
Pretty much every accident has happened at plants that are designed based off designs from the 60s. We could've done thorium reactors but they were too expensive
XORBob I agree with you. The chances of human error is always there. And that is why I know there will be some smart person that , one day will be able to minimize that from the equation. But for now? No . And fossil fuels will probably be with us for a while. Not that anybody really wants it...🦖🦕
your head already exploded ... you think it is bad for Californians to harbor misgivings about nuclear power, but it's fine for you to harbor misgivings about all Californians ... one of the best educated and most productive states in the union and the world. grow up kiddie,
This is a distracting discussion so that fossil fuel industry can continue to drag out the continued profits from their investments. I am for profitable industry but also for all the facts.
Shellenberger is looking at nuclear power through rose-tinted spectacles. No-one has a clue what to do with the long-lasting nuclear waste. According to the International Nuclear Industry Agency (2015), there are 253,700 tonnes of spent fuel stored, mostly in cooling ponds, above ground at various locations worldwide and this is accumulating at a rate of around 7,000 tonnes per year. Even if deep storage eventually becomes a reality, the challenges (and costs) of designing and building a repository are considerable. Finland seems to be leading the way - most countries have barely got off the ground. And will it work? No-one knows. The timescales are vast, almost unimaginable. A sealed repository may be vulnerable to geological shifts. A monitored repository may be vulnerable to societal collapse . . .
Do you know something interesting? There is no such thing as nuclear waste, its a myth pure and simple, if a radioactive source is still emitting radiation it is ripe for energy production, and if the radioactive source is no longer emitting radiation its as safe as ash.
I quit the Sierra Club when it went from conservation and love of the outdoors into full environmental nuttitude.
They send me 50 pounds of paper every year, and I'm not even a member!
Liar, you were never in the Sierra Club, you copy his lies and others are supposed to just accept them?
@@petersimmons3654 Who are you saying lied?
@@writereducator
Lol. Yes, he’s talking about you. He has telepathic abilities, don’t ya know!
i find it amazing how few people die in nuclear disasters. I believe he covered this in another TED talk, but only ONE person died from the radiation from Fukishima, and he died of lung cancer years later.
Actually, nobody died from radiation at Fukishima. Everybody that died there died from the earthquake itself.
The Fear of Nuclear is very similar to the Fear of Flying. Air disasters get a lot of news, yet statistically it's the safest way of travelling!
Nuclear is not profitable. One accident wipes out all your profit. The people who built it and the lobbyist profit. Read Exposing the misinformation of Michael Shellenberger and 'Environmental Progress'.
Good analogy. The nuclear fear-mongers (thru ignorance) are as dangerous to our environment as the fossil fuel industries (thru greed)
@@yedidyah-jedshlomoh1533 Ilhan Omar - thanks for this information about the misinformation, it helped me make up my mind. Schellenberger is a gifted speaker but something about his arguments kept nagging me.
@@yedidyah-jedshlomoh1533 It's cheaper per kWh than renewables (after accounting for batteries), and provides skilled jobs to the population around the plants.
Energy production isn't about being profitable. It's about getting the best value for money, while causing the least harm in the process. Nuclear does that.
Is it perfect? No. Is anything better? Not right now, no.
@@eifelwalder2605 yw
I live about 1250 miles from Tsjernobyl and remeber wery well the nuclear disaster. What l remeber even more was the hysteria that was amplified by the media. But there was very little facts to support the hysteria, not even today.
LOL
Smartass MrViking seems to have a short memory.
most of it was due to Soviet mishandling of the situation though. And modern tech has advanced past Chernobyl power plant, making modern plants much safer.
Do tell..
Are you aware of the evolutionary effects
on the surviving animals?
@@kathrynjeanmarie6997 - Are you? Name one.
Why doesn’t anyone talk about the safety record of the US Navy with their nuclear powered submarines and aircraft carriers? Why does anyone need to be scared about accidents if the processes and infrastructure are properly managed?
Nuke Navy is the best. After they leave, most end up at commercial nuclear plants and do an amazing job.
@@dinosaurdude5668 yes, I had a roommate who was ex US Navy - was an engineer who served on a nuclear sub. We spoke quite a bit about nuclear power and he convinced me of its utility, safety and lack of waste. He also said that reprocessing is now much better so more energy is created from less waste and what waste is generated is now being stored in way it can be accessed again when reprocessing has improved yet further.
Once you mention nuclear subs and aircraft carriers, they have no answer
Great point Cad...I didn't think of that.
vote thorium
it's totally overhyped. maybe it'll work on day, just as fusion will. but that's the far future
We need more research on (Thorium) Molten Salt Nuclear reactors.
@@jamesag4135 Several molten salt reactors are in R&D. Not everyone uses thorium. The molten salt reactor type (fluid fuel) is the potential improvement, not so much the fuel type.
My money is on something like the Elysium Industries Molten Chloride Salt Fast Reactor. It can use just about any fuel and uses a very simple homogenous chloride based salt (table salt) reactor core without moderator elements or control rods.
@@uselessHxC Nope, even with 5 billion put into thorium by the feds over 5 years will probably allow us to fix problems with thorium
@@uselessHxC The tech isn't difficult, the designs already exist, the supply exists, and they're walkaway safe designs. There's one simple reason why it won't happen any time soon. It's so efficient and so cheap it would ruin the profits around the energy industry.
For me, the most striking (and telling) part of this talk is at 8:04. People have all kinds of hidden agendas. Never follow blindly.
("Pandora's Promise" is also a great documentary on the subject.)
And Shellenberger's hidden agenda is the money he is paid by nuclear to lie. It's the most unpopular form of energy generation [actually it's release rather than generate] no one wants it except dim politicians who are always fooled by big anything.
We cannot be serious about climate change without nuclear power. I'm talking to you, California.
Well, yes we can. Offshore windpower and solar and energy storage is the only systems needed.
@@oystla It just isn't possible, it does not work. It is also actually worse than nuclear in an environmental sense. Please just find proper scientific studies on how efficient clean and safe nuclear is. What you are saying simply won't work inside this century because we need better batteries and how long it takes to actually produce these so called renewable, I am sorry but that just is not fast enough we need answers now and nuclear can get us those answers in 20 years renewable's can not.
Daniel Morris listen, Regarding studies you may want to look at some studies yourself, on energy storage and solar growth. I did not mention the Word battery in my last reply. There are more than enough pumped Hydro storage sites to Solve all global needs. Batteries will be used for grid stability needs and hours of delivery. Pumped Hydro for seasonal storage.
In 2019 the globe will add another 120 GW of solar installations. Yearly production from 120 GW solar equals some 25 nuclear plants. This means that the world must initiate 25 new Nuclear projects EACH year going forward JUST to keep up with the increase in electricity production from solar alone. And then I have not included the 70 GW of wind power Added globallly annually.
So your own math do not add up. And please note that Shellenberger is an anthropologist, NOT an engineer. He is using OLD statistics in his arguments, and do not understand the force of exponential growth. He is a joke.
Also note that the two ongoing European nuclear projects (in France and Finland) has been under construction for 15 years, and still not finished. SO IT IS NUCLEAR THAT JUST CANNOT Be Built fast enough to save the world.
hur duh dur, im a "enivronmentalist" and care more about appearing green then actually BEING green and refuse to look at the reality of the situation and which energy types have a worse effect on the environment- oystla
@@WebbSM Pretty Much
I worked in the nuclear industry for over 30 years. I’ve done everything from construction to managing the refueling of reactors. They are extremely robust and managed with the right culture, are the best bet for America’s power needs.
Tell that to the engineer who said snorkels are not necessary fo the diesel generators at Fukushima
@@richardbennett9183 Yes and even as bad as that unforeseen situation was the industry learned and became stronger and better.
Hey Mr. Specialist...What do you suggest to do with hundreds of tons of nuclear waste produced worldwide and yearly? Nuclear energy is not cheap if you include the cost of storing the waste for a million years while trying to keep it from seeping into the ground water and keeping it out of the hands of terrorists...
@@secsec7260 Compared to what and what are the trade-offs?
@@secsec7260 Can you say for certain that between now and a million years, if there is a real problem with the waste, someone won't invest to solve it. Generating the energy through nuclear reactors was a problem to be solved, why do you assume waste isn't. The problem I see with early intevention critics is that they lack an imagination needed to produce something as necessary as nuclear power, yet have this omnipotent imagination that sees no hope for problems as they arise.
The problem with nuclear is that there is nothing for politicians to invest in. Solar and wind investments is new money. Good for politicians and lobbyists
I’m glad to read your comments and watch your videos. It seems that the damage that has been done, and continues to be done, by poor information and the lie’s from Hollywood, politicians, and others with platforms may be hard to overcome.
We need more people like you presenting this information to Washington. Thanks again.
Okay, this was great. Thank you so much for all of your work and spreading the word. It seems that nuclear power could be the single most important thing to help with global warming and global climate change issues. Well done!
I'm appalled at what an utter scam the anti-nuclear movement was. I was a kid in the 70's, and I was duped by it. By the mid 80's I learned the facts. I'm still concerned about the lifetime amortized cost per kwh, based on construction costs and alleged sky high decomissioning costs. Are these not as bad as I've been lead to believe?
Future Hindsight, I don't think that's the right question. A better question is how long do we have to store the waste and how do we have to store it before the risk is similar to other risks that we consider acceptable? (Like driving a car.)
Future Hindsight the 4.5 billion years is bull. First, that is unused material, not waste. Second, that is for the low energy stuff that’s safe to hold in your hand. Last, they’ve developed reactors that actually use this partially spent fuel, produce energy, and reduce the size and radioactivity of the fuel to a tiny fraction of its size and radioactivity of its natural state (which is also radioactive in the ground).
@@incognitotorpedo42 There is a kind of reactor that if developed can process conventional nuclear waste into a form that is compact and dangerous for only three hundred years. Conventional waste is dangerous for 10,000 yrs.
@@winomaster One of the main things to remember with spent nuclear fuel, is this:
It was already radioactive when we removed it from the ground.
Spent fuel which has no further use, can now be turned into a glass, and simply buried again. The entire process is basically just to dig up radioactive materials, extract energy from them, recycle anything left over which can still be used (over 95% of what we call "waste"), then put radioactive material back into the ground.
The people who argue "what do we do with the waste" seem to forget what exactly was buried in the ground before we dug it up.
There's also not that much of it. A single coke can sized piece of uranium provides enough energy to power one person's entire energy usage for their entire life. One person's waste, is only what's left over from that. Compare that to any other form of energy. Even renewables. The impact on the planet, from spent nuclear fuel, is minimal. It hasn't caused a single death in history.
@@DeletedScenes312 I believe I have read that decaying Thorium is the source of the heat that produces volcanic action releases.
The truth will set us free (those of us who care to listen). Thanks.
Agreed!
Very good presentation. Will the world listen though?
Michael is so wonderful, it is about time we get leaders that can think through complicated issues and stand up to the silly, manipulated masses. Nuclear energy is OBVIOUSLY the way to go !!
yeah, i bet you were most impressed with iron man, huh?
Peter Frorer, Nuclear is only obvious if you ignore the toxic waste products. According to the International Nuclear Energy Agency (2015), there are 253,700 tonnes of spent fuel stored above ground at various sites around the world, much of it in cooling ponds, and this is increasing at a rate of around 7,000 tonnes a year. Not a small problem . . .
Fukushima Dai'ichi is an extinction level event to human civilization during the next few decades. You OBVIOUSLY want to take the route to extinction.
LOL, I love that the negative responses to Peter's 100% truthful comment TOTALLY exemplify the anti-nuclear fear-mongering mentioned in the TED talk. Classic!
@@jamesneilsongrahamloveinth1301 The Gen IV molten salt reactors will burn nuclear waste as fuel. The actinides will be converted to less radioactive, lower atomic weight isotopes. The 10,000-year dangerous lifetime of waste will be reduced to 300 to 500 years.
But one important aspect is missing: Explain to people why something like Chernobyl is much more unlikely with modern reactors.
What happened in Chernobyl can not happen with modern reactors.
RBMK is just a different type of reactor, with many safety problems. They didn't even have proper containment structures.
One of the major contributing factors to the disaster was the "positive void coefficient" which means that if the coolant heats up too much and starts to boil (creating voids), the voids will further increase the power output which causes an escalating chain reaction i.e. a steam explosion i.e. the Chernobyl disaster.
Western reactors have negative void coefficients which makes this impossible.
Not even "modern" reactors...plain old PWRs and BWRs. RBMK ((Chernobyl Type) is graphite moderated, very different.
@@TimothyReeves I agree.
What happened at 3 mile Island was as bad as chernobyl in terms of damage to the reactor. The difference being the Western reactors have containment and design reduncey so that even if the worst dose happen you don't get an explosion.
The top of the core at TMI was damaged. It was not a full core destruction. The incident at TMI happened because there wasn’t instrumentation to accurately determine the volume of water in a pressurized water reactor. That incident led to a lot of plants installing the instruments.
If the world does not change to less CO2, it does not matter what California does.
Which force is more powerful than fear? The weak nuclear force.
The weak force would be LENR. The strong force is more Fission.
@@grumpystiltskin The only problem with LENR, is it isn't real.
The only problem is that its not fear that kills nuclear power. Its cost. Just ask any private investors, like the ones building UK Hinkley nuclear power plant. Electricity price twice the market price is pure insanity.
@@oystla Utilities have been trying to build out nuclear power for decades, and doing this knowing that they will get sued in court by environmental groups, have to deal with protesters hammering away at their construction sites, media crawling around looking for any hint of something they can report on, etc. etc.
All these things add costs, delays, and they are even sometimes (unfortunately) successful at shutting down commercial nuclear power projects all in the name of 'safety' (fear), while allowing the planet to further descend into global warming chaos.
Even with these known issues, the utilities are still willing to try to build out these plants because they understand the long term economics of 24/7/365 baseload GigaWatt power production. Plant Vogtle is a good example, and they should have their first new reactor up sometime around 2021-2022, and in the long run, they know it was worth all the added costs/delays.
@@ian5576 nuclear blaming Greens and media for Billions in overruns? Haha, that was a good one. Anyhow, the present Vogtle cost of 8 USD pr. Watt installed watt capacity is just as insane as Hinkley. Which means huge required subsidies are in the pipeline.
So here in Southern California we pay the highest rate for electricity from 5pm to 8pm more than 50C/kWh. Mid Day is the cheapest electricity. So the burden of this whole clean energy shifted from industry to the working people. Why are we OK with that?
And that's why CA is now trying to work back their failed tax incentives for encouraging too much solar. They want to start charging new solar hookups $8 per KW per month.
So, where are we today?
France has 56 nuclear power reactors which generate 71% of their power, the highest % in the world. Relative to the size of their nuclear industry and infrastructure, their number of accidents has been extremely low. The world can learn from France's approach.
The USN alone operates some 100 reactors with 20 year old operators. Never had an accident in 60+ years.
@@ethanwhitehead2085 Yep. And even when there IS an accident, they have been shown to be far far less dangerous than all the hyperbole would lead you to believe. Take for instance the infamous Chernobyl disaster. It was literally a worst case scenario. An operating reactor, with no containment structure EXPLODED and what was left fully melted down! And yet the destruction is about 1/50th of what the public is led to believe. We need to start doing a better job telling the world the realities of nuclear power.
and what have the done to safely store the spent rods they produce with all that nuclear power? Nothing right? That's the biggest problem with all forms of energy other then Green Energy. THEY POLLUTE! POLLUTION KILLS!
@@troyturton8197 Don't be childish. The spent rods typically spend 20-40 years in a pool at the power plant where they decay into much less radioactive rods. From there they are reprocessed for the remaining fuel and the waste is stored in shielded caskets that are nigh invincible (look them up, there's even a video of one surviving being hit by a train!).
Renewables are also not free of pollution due to the materials and processes used in their creation and disposal, and they have other impacts on the environment. They also require solutions to fix their unreliability, which are typically batteries and peaker plants. They are not as "green" as everyone makes them out to be.
Country could b gone 2moro
All USA insurance companies should be forced to provide cheap insurance to all nuclear power stations built in every country on the planet.
This was a very interesting presentation. Quality information such as this backed with actual facts and figures should always underline the 'news' that is peddled to the masses but unfortunately it doesn't sell newspapers!
Tell us more about how safe a nuclear plant is during a war.
Would you rather be close to a solar panel or to a nuclear plant when they start bombing your land?
That´s what happening nowadays in Ucraine
Thank you Michael
College age students are more passionate and "certain" about their beliefs & bias's (many of them naïvely false) than at any other point in their life. At the same time, true humility is very low.
We need clean nuclear energy. Without abundant affordable energy society can do nothing. Thanks to Michael and his message here.
I'm not opposed to nuclear, I am opposed to pressurized light water reactors. I would very much like to see a large number of LFTR reactors built. Light water reactors are inefficient, recovering less than .5% of Uranium's energy potential and producing waste that lasts 100,000+ years, LFTR reactors are efficient recovering nearly 100% of fuels energy potential, can burn that existing long term waste and turn it into a 300 year problem instead of a 100,000+ year problem, and can burn Thorium as well as Uranium. And they are, unlike pressurized water reactors, inherently safe which means you can safely place supply near urban demand. And they don't require large amounts of water.
Dude... I want to have your baby. I've been saying exactly this for 10 years.
PWR as a temporary measure, to be replaced with LFTR as soon as the technology is ready for scale production (5-10 years)
“Only a 300 year problem”. Still too dangerous.
I was a navy nuke and ran a nuclear engineering company. I agree with you completely. While LWR's are safe, we have new gen technologies that are inherently safe. The problem in the US is that neither political party benefits from leading on this issue. It's really unfortunate.
The issue is that PWRs are a more established model, and it’s cheaper to make and operate with a lower risk of incident than molten salt reactors just because the coolant is hard to work with. The vast majority of PWR waste is safe in much less time, only the fuel and some other materials in the RPV last that long. The gen 4 model modular PWRs are the most exciting to me because they are relatively easy to operate and super safe, but molten salt reactors typically are harder to navigate. I’m all for trying all types of reactors, especially gen 4, but I wouldn’t rule out PWRs just because they are more appealing to utilities that build nuclear plants and anything nuclear is better than any other power plant
I grew up in Ontario Canada. I grew up watching on the news the building of a nuclear reactor facility. It took so long and the cost overruns were enormous. The same happened in Quebec. Such facilities are a prime target for extortion by construction companies. If it’s half built the government cannot back out. And the price price gets ratcheted up. Plus who wants to live near a nuclear reactor
Wouldn't bother me
I do! Living next to a well-designed and well-managed nuclear power plant is preferable to having many square miles of land covered with solar panels, and having smoke in the air on cloudy days!
"Plus who wants to live near a nuclear reactor." I do, the security these days is fantastic!
No, we will just take them to Africa and tell them to shut their coal powered stations off😢. We are suffering here Africa just for Europe to enjoy. Almost 4 stations are decommissioned and by 2030 we will be having less then 8. We suffer loadshedding every day because of Europe and its bribes that bribed Cyril Ramaphosa
Nuclear is necessary, but there will be a big roll for fossil fuels until the day cars run on little nuclear reactors. Electric storage devices, known as batteries, require all sorts of elements that need to be mined, processed, transported, turned into batteries, then need to be disposed of at the end of the batteries lives. The battery cases will be made of plastic, which is a product of petroleum. Lithium is currently the most advantageous material used for creating high capacity batteries, but it presents environmental hazards of its own. Not to mention various other materials which pose their own problems.
The truth is that climate changes irrespective of man’s input. Any effect we might have on the environment is dwarfed by natural causes, like cyclical solar activity, or any number of earth bound occurrences such as volcanoes, earth quakes, or even periodic marine phenomena which ultimately keep everything in balance, despite man’s arrogant attempts to influence something beyond anything we can control.
As long as world society is influenced by the likes of idiots like Greta Thunberg, and Bill Nye the Science guy, the world is creating its own problems.
And it's old news too!
My question is what is the current/absolute latest thinking/information with regard to long term viability and environmental impact of alternative tech versus nuclear power?
John.
I'm surprised RUclips hasn't deleted this video yet.
They did bury it. I should have seen this clip years ago on my feed as I follow Shellenberger.
There was only a partial meltdown of TMI Unit 2 as a result of the loss-of-coolant accident that did take place, but molten fuel elements did not breach the reactor vessel itself, and a controlled release of pressure and built-up hydrogen from within that vessel prevented an explosion event. The TMI accident was brought back under control far more quickly and effectively than either Chernobyl or Fukushima. There was some release of radioactive material into the ambient environment but far less so than at Chernobyl. Yes, the full meltdown scenario and explosion could have happened had the engineers not jumped onto the reactor as swiftly as they had, and there was a degree of operator incompetence that led to the loss-of-coolant accident in the first place. But no, there was never a full meltdown of the reactor. The accident would have been far more serious if it had.
Nuclear Energy is the cleanest type
Living close to the Irish Sea I cannot agree fully.
A generation of Americans were traumatized in the 1950s by Civil Defense people in their school classrooms describing how they were apt to be vaporized by nuclear weapons at any moment. Then they watched dozens of movies and read comic books about radiation creating monsters and superheroes. The word "nuclear" was made a trigger for fear. I think this accounts for their gullibility about the bogus "dangers" of nuclear reactors.
molten salt thorium reactors. we built one in 60's. it ran for 5 years. we can totally do this. sheesh. wtf.
where is the money for this?
Many startups are working on gen 4 machines, mostly various flavors of molten salt. Some of them might well be a major improvement upon the state of the art.
But existing gen 3 reactors are already a fantastic power source so there's no need to wait for gen 4 which could take a couple of decades until they're ready.
All the "problems" anti-nuclear activists cite in regards to existing nuclear are just complete bs when you run the numbers.
@@phamnuwen9442 I am hopeful Canada will have a few Gen4 demonstrators running within 5yrs. A small high temp gas cooled by Global First Power (USNC), a molten salt by Terrestrial Energy and another molten salt by Moltex Energy.
Precisely, it's simply too expensive to keep all these nuclear engineers in well paid jobs, comfortably numb in their middle-class lifestyle. Renewables are dirt cheap and quick to install, if it ain't broke don't fix it, especially with an expensive fix that puts everyone in danger.
few issues with what is said here (mind you, I am probably wrong):1) I don't know if you all remember 1986 and what happened at Chernobil and the massive nuclear pollution it caused around Europe. Additionally, governements kept firm that there was no considerate pollution, while people could clearly measure the opposite, which leads to me wondering if the same happened over in the USA. 2) There is all the talk about the depleted uranium being the only waste of nuclear power plants, but how about the raditing lead construction material and the heavy water from the cooling system? 3) A big question towards the safety of these nuclear power plants is in maintenance, building location and the care of the people surrounding the site. I think a big concern lies in there: what will greed from owners do concerning maintenance (it is one of the things management likes to cut in)? What will pollititians decide on locations with NIMBY in effect (choose an isolated cheap and possibly unsafe location, near the sea with dangers of tsunamis?)? What about people who simply mean ill to everything in the name of some other thing? 4) What about the heat exhaust? Is it included in those diagrams? It is not a polluting element, but it is physical pollution. Just some thought, not an expert in any way though.
A great reason not to give so much weight to extreme activists. Facts and rational argument don't get them the results they're looking for, so they turn to the tried and true alternative: twisted data, celebrities and rock concerts. Their own fear doesn't allow them to slow down and consider they may not know everything. Decades later their main contribution is more particulates in the air.
I hope these videos help us think rationally about this. I also hope the public at large stops being so moved by alarmism, but that won't happen.
So good. Amazing to see how minds can be irrational changed based little to no logic. Fear is a powerful tool.
it’s also amazing how ppl will think there’s nothing to fear, just b/c someone told you that there *is* something to fear.
concern over radioactive pollution is not “irrational”. that concern would have protected chernobyl and fukashima.
I like this guy (Michael Shellenberger). He shares the good intent of the reasons for the Sierra and Greenpeace clubs before they were used more for destroying American life and no longer for the saving of our environment. New Gen III+ and IV Nuclear Power plants are passive safe, super simple and powerful enough to be used for two thirds of our energy, and solar can assist us from our rooftops without the destructive installations all across the Nevada, California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas wildernesses. Fossil fuels would only be used when the other sources, like wind, hydroelectric and batteries don't deliver, such as air travel.
With abundance of electricity(nuclear), you can scrub the co2 out of the air, and make fuel for planes. So they become co2 neutral. Its not worth it atm, because coal is a far worse polluter, so we need to end that first.
Are you making this up? Who dumps it in the ocean? Give me sources please.
Solar makes more sense when using otherwise unused surfaces like roofs, but it's still not obvious that it would make economic sense if you already have access to nuclear (when scaled up and not held back by fearmongering environmentalists) from the grid. There are still costs in terms of cleaning and maintaining the panels that many homeowners might want to avoid.
Long term fluctuations in solar output from changing seasons or weather is another potential issue since long term energy storage isnt economical which requires a backup energy source for periods of low production. If this backup source is nuclear chances are consumers with solar will have to pay more for the same amount of kilowatt hours if they only use it sporadically and therefore end up witg a higher total electricity bill which kills the economics of solar.
Lots of small state of the art nuclear plants are the answer. Easier to control an accident at a small plant (if it ever happens) and no need for giant power lines to bring in power from far away.
I highly recommend everyone watch the documentary call "Pandora's Promise" it came out in 2013. Great documentary.
If only Cali went for lftr instead of fast breeding reactors
Utah is trying to build a lftr test reactor. The business world is mutually exclusive from the scientific and engineering world. The war department demonstrated the ability to produce power economically with fast breeder reactors because it could help them get their bombs. Business/finance only cares about proven to work models- which is why the rest of the world followed suit for so long.
Too late now. Fukushima Dai'ichi will cause an extinction level event during the next few decades - end of human civilization. Too late and no point in developing LFTR now.
YT has been hiding this Ted Talk from me. I only stumbled on it while browsing anonymously. I follow Shellenberger and Ted talks?
Saddly, I think it will take rolling blackouts in NZ before people start to consider nuclear....
The worst part is, that NZ banned offshore drilling which mean’t the Huntly power plant now gets over 85% of its power from coal instead of natural gas.
@@MuhammadAhmed-qh7ut Because of subsidence, if you pull too much stem out the ground sinks, there is a finite amount of steam in any given place...
@@MuhammadAhmed-qh7ut Heat flow from Earth over the whole crust is just roughly 2 times the global energy demand. Geothermal is not a scaleable solution.
my problem with nuclear is that if something goes wrong, it renders a large swath of land uninhabitable for centuries. tell me if i'm wrong.
Very true
I wonder how much of the anti-nuclear power sentiment was related to the anti-nuclear weapons movements inability to make much progress, They couldn't force disarmament on the US or USSR (or anyone else really) but they could stop power plants from being built, a much softer target. In his essay "Power and the (European) anti-nuclear power movement" J.M. Korhonen argued that European anti-nuclear activism was driven in part by a sense pf powerlessness over their fate regarding nuclear weapons. They could not get the superpowers to disarm. "The people felt they had too little power over their lives and their future, and that they could feel more empowered if they opposed one concrete manifestation of the energy source that threatened their existence." Once confused, nuclear power and weapons became hard to separate. When people, including on these comment sections talk about the risks of nuclear power, they again and again describe the effects in apocalyptic terms. similar to those of nuclear weapons.
Ever since I've become a father, I've been scared shitless by climate change and while I think that renewables should be expanded quickly and forcefully, I don't see the numbers adding up for a future based solely on solar and wind energy. I guess you can count me in for "fathers for nuclear".
Relax man even the IPCC isn't talking about end of times catastrophe!
I love when people start talking about nuclear energy as the clean and cheap. People not understand that we need to stop using coil, we need to explain them that fear of nuclear power will lead us in more and more damage by C02, because 80% of electricity in the world, coming from coil. We need to explain people that Chernobyl disaster happens only because of safety violation rules. Right now in there still work couple reactors, only 4-th is not working. I was there BTW, walking near the cover. I was born in Dnepropetrovsk, and we with friends decided to go there. When you fly a plane, you receive more radiation then you stand near 4-th reactor in Chernobyl. Much, much more. People who understand the disaster of our century and fear of nuclear power, need to explain to people that their views on the world is ecxually killing us. We need to show people that there is a lot of progress in nuclear environment, that right now they can shut down them self's while cooling system is off, that the waste we can recycle, we even can use a nukes, lol. Sun and wind is good, but not enough. How can we look for more powerful and better source of power, if we fear nuclear power? How can we fly to space, if we afraid of radiation? People need to understand, that no meter where they are, they will receive a radiation in any ways. Radiation is a natural power, it's coming from space, it's inside of our planet core, It's everywhere. People watch that dumb news after fukusima and now believe in bullsh@t. People not understand that we now can build more safer nuclear power plants. No, I better will believe in tails and I better will die from C02, lack of food, wars and other stuff what can be triggered, then I will admit and overtake my fear of radiation. I saw the movie yesterday, it's about fallout and nuclear apocalypse, I am too afraid of it, I don't know how it's working, I do zero researching for this, I do nothing. Everyone telling me that it's bad and dangerous, so I will not gonna even google a simple rules of physics.
We need to choose in the next 20-30 years the nuclear power as the alternative to the coil. We need to work and create a safer power plants, this is the only answer. Scientist need to start talking more about it. They need to find the way to explain this to people, even to hardcore believers of not believers of nuclear energy that it's much more safer, then even solar power. The population of planet earth will grow, more nergy, more food, more everything will needed to support that people. We can't burn so much coil, we don't have an infinity amount of it. In lack of Oil we can have a war, or something like that. People need to do something with it. Bye.
Actually, sun and wind are worthless, and environmentally expensive. A 400 MW "wind farm" needs 400 MW of gas turbines to back it up for when the wind is as little as a pleasant gentle breeze, and whatever level of MW you are actually receiving you'd better have that much idle but spinning reserve.
Coil?
Coal
We need to explain that Chernobyl was caused by quite possibly the most worst nuclear power plant design in history. The RBMK has NO containment dome, was designed on the cheap, and safety was ... not even in the conversation. It was designed to produce a lot of electricity and that was it. EVEN then, they violated their own rules in the reactors operation. It blew up not because it was a ticking bomb but solely due to operator error. How many people died? Well, according to the United Nations, 26 from acute radiation and 15 people from thyroid cancer. How many people died because of the Fukushima meltdowns.. ZERO. The WORST and oldest designed western reactor faced an event WAY beyond it's designed specification and the containment dome worked. Consider as well that Fukushima would NEVER have happened had they just replaced those reactors with more modern generation 3 designs with passive cooling technologies.
(allmost) ALL electric energy comes from a COIL subjected to fluctuating magnetic field ;-)
Solar works well for peoples house, on their roof. My bro in australia , gets enough sun to power his house, car and gets a cheque from energy company, instead of a bill. Thats great. But on an industrial scale it falls short. Way short. So does wind. Nuclear is the way to go. Its within our power to make it as safe as possible as well.
People in the UK get enough from PV to make their bills free and to sell some back to the supplier. Have a look at Good Energy and the prices they pay their customers for PV power. On an industrial scale there are three wind farms [soon to be four] off the North Norfolk coast, they supply as much as a nuclear plant, and it's all energy that was going to add to the warming. Nuclear harnesse3s energy from atoms that would never have existed without it, and is thus extra to all that's already happening. It adds an increasing amount to an already heating planet. In no sense can that be considered part of the solution.
@@petersimmons3654 err but when the sun doesn’t shine or the wind doesn’t blow (or blows too strongly) other sources are required. It’s no accident that Germany, with its large amount of solar & wind energy is a big importer of Russia oil & gas.
It’s emissions have skyrocketed since it closed 14 of its nuclear power stations.
We expect engineers to supply us with electricity and yet we prefer to listen to PR con artists when it comes to how electricity has to be produced.
1:21 min. So, why doesn't California take the "other" energy off the grid to keep it from being overwhelmed and just use the solar~? A brief explanation would have been very helpful there. Anyone know~?
How the can anyone put too much energy back into the grid?
It's called "reactive power". Reactive circuit elements put power back on the grid. It doesn't come up when the load is purely resistive. As a homeowner none of this shows up on your bill. But large consumers of electricity like steel mills and such actually have to pay the power company for the power THEY put back on the grid bc the grid had to have that juice available. I don't think most people realize that grid management is more of an art than a science bc of how closely matched load needs to be with production.
@@throwaway692 Aaaaahhhh! Thanks!
Channel subscribers 10 million, one year old video has 6k views... What is this?! :D
YT buried it.
Most of Ted Talks speakers are overusing the word “actually”
Interesting pet peeve. I just counted 20 occurrences in this particular talk. For the sake of argument, I'll stipulate to under-counting by 20%, so let's agree on 24 occurrences. Further, I assert that Shellenberger's use of the word is essentially correct and justified within the contexts that it is used. So, is your comment about "most (other) Ted Talks speakers", or about this one specifically? And if so, define "overuse" as it applies here.
It means unsure of what they're saying.
Have you ever played poker and the dealer only gave you bad cards ?
Or you tried to play poker and some cards were missing but only the dealer knew, and the dealer knew what the missing cards were ?
And the dealer controlled the town.
18:09 i've never agreed to a -wood star's words in my life
The problem with solar heating is that there's money in windows and skylights and the energy is free.
17:49 teaching people how to control the temperature of thier dwellings through well placed skylights and widows and using the cool of the night to cool the house by opening top floor windows at night, closing them in the morning. Closing shudders to keep sun out on hot days. Using a 99% efficient gas furnaces 98% efficient oil furnaces or even an 80% efficient coal furnace instead of electric heating coming in at 25-30% after line losses. The hydro maybe makes up for the line losses.
Three Mile Island was not a full meltdown; Chernobyl was a full meltdown.
No, the Chernobyl accident was not a meltdown. It was a criticality incident, and the reactor blew up faster than the core could melt down.
@@gunnarkaestle And in the end fuel that didnt go up, ended up melted. whitout cooling even after u stop chain reaction, just decay of fission products create enouth heat to melt fuel rods.
TMI was a meltdown, but they contained it and cooled it. Fukushima was the same American design as other reactors in the US.
@@marianmarkovic5881 Yes, the heat produced only because of the decay after the chain reaction has stopped is a severe challenge for any station blackout, not only at Fukushima. By mere luck the station blackout at Forsmark in SE was avoided when at the end one of the faulty backup generators did start to power the cooling pumps.
@@justgivemethetruth TMi was a pressurized water reactor, Fukushima was a different desing: boiling water reactor that had less safty margins, as you can reach directly from the reactor to the turbine and condensor, which means any leak in the traditionell steam to electricity conversion building emits radioactivity. But Fukushima was different from TMI, although both were a meltdown. Fukushima was a station blackout, whereas TMI had power all the time - it was an operator error (and a bad design which made it hard to discover these operator's errors).
This is the most eloquent and pointed defense of nuclear energy I've seen yet. You did an amazing job with your presentation and research and it's entirely possible that this will be the beginning of the minds changing. It's beneficial for economic enthusiasts as well as environmentalists. Who can truly say they are going to lose from this change? Except possibly those who are benefiting from the power sources which are having all the net negative effects. Sometimes we have to stop feeling and start thinking and deciding why we feel the way we do. Only then can the most meaningful and necessary changes take place.
There's about a dozen gas stations within two miles of where I live. And I imagine the same is true for many other people. Yet nobody seems to be freaking out about living next a gas station, which poses some dangers, but everyone just accepts it. Both he Sun and the Earth are showering us daily with radiation but apparently every just accepts that too. It's just the word "nuclear" that people hate. Maybe the answer is to give nuclear power plants a new name, such as "Earth mineral power generators."
Thorium Fueled Reactors!!! Best bet for future energy.
Drinking game... take a shot every time he says “actually “.
Civilization may have progressed enough to conquer the second law of thermodynamics. Civilization needs to strive for this goal with synergistic interdisciplinary teams.The outcome would be perpetually changeable never gained or lost energy. There would be no loss of energy as it changes form. For example the total quantity of thermal energy in an equal pair of two thermal energy reserves with ideal insulation would remain the same regardless of how heat is distributed between the two and how often the distribution of heat between the two is changed. For example in oe case one reserve could contain ice water while the other reserve contained hot water; in another case both reserves could contain tepid water. The redistribution of heat between members of pairs with the same total thermal energy would be free. Diversity, time, and energy are different atributes. Reversing disorder doesn't need time reversal just as using reverse gear in a car ɓacks it out without time reversal.
The second law of thermodynamics had a distinct begining with Sir Isaac Newton's correct professional scientific observation that the heat of a fire in a fireplace always flows towards the cold room beyond.
Victorian England became enchanted with steam engines and their cheap, reliable, and easy to position physical power. Rudolf Julius Emanuel Clausius, Lord Kelven, and, one source adds, Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot, formulated the Second law of thermodynamics and the concept of entropy using evidence from steam engine development.
These men considered with acceptance [A+] Inefficiently harnessing the flow of heat from hot to cold or [B+] Using force to Inefficiently pump heat from cold to hot. They considered with rejection [A-] Waiting for random fluctuation to cause a large difference in temperature or pressure. This was calculated to be extremely rare or [B-] Searching for, selecting, then routing for use, random, frequent and small differences in temperature or pressure. The search, selection, then routing would require more energy than the use would yield. These accepted options, lead to the consequence that the universe will end in stagnant heat death. This became support for a theological trend of the time that placed God as the initiator of a degenerating universe. Please consider that God could also be supreme over an energy abundant civilization that can absorb heat and convert it into electricity without energy gain or loss in a sustained universe.
The law's formulaters did not consider the option that any random, usually small, fluctuation of heat or pressure could use the energy of these fluctuations itself to power deterministic routing so the output is no longer random. Then the net power of many small fluctuations from many replicant parts can be aggregated into a large difference in temperature, pressure, or electricity's amperes and volts
Heat exists as the randomly directed kinetic energy of gas molecules or mobile electrons. In gasses this is known as Brownian motion. In electronic systems this is carefully labeled Johnson Nyquist thermal electrical noise for AI readability. Hypothetically, diode depletion regions are practical sites for enabling mobile electrons energized into motion by thermal electrical noise to deterministically alter the electrical resistance of the depletion region according to the moment by moment direction they are carrying electricity. The thermal electrical noise is hypothetically beyond the exposed lattice charge / separation drift (diffusion) equlibrium thickness of the depletion region; thermal noise exists in a resistance path of one material.
Consistantly oriented diodes in parallel hypothetically are successful electrical Maxwell's Demons or Smoluchowski's Trapdoors. The energy needed to shift the depletion region's deterministic role is paid as a burden on the moving electrons. There would therefore be usable net rectified power from each and every diode connected together into a consistantly oriented parallel group. The group would aggregate the net power of its members. Any diode efficiency at all produces some energy conversion from ambient heat, more efficiency yields higher performance. A diode array that is switched off has no energy conversion and no performance.
The power from a single diode is poorly expressed. Several or more diodes in parallel are needed to overcome the effect of a load resistor's own thermal noise. A plurality of billions of high frequency capable diodes is needed for practical power aggregation. For reference, there are a billion (10^9) 1000 square nanometer cells per square millimeter.
Modern nanofabrication can make simple identical diodes surrounded by insulation smaller than this in a slab as thick as the diodes are long. The diodes are connected at their two ohmic ends to two conductive layers.
Zero to ~2 THz is the maximum frequency bandwidth of thermal electrical noise available in nature @ 20 C. THz=10^12 Hz. This is beyond the range of most diodes. Practicality requires this extreme bandwidth. The diodes are preferably in same orientation parallel at the primary level. Many primary level groups of diodes should be in series for practical voltage.
Ever since the supposedly universal second law of thermodynamics was formulated, education has mass produced and spread the conventional wisdom throughout society that the second law of thermodynamics is absolute.
If counterexamples of working devices invalidated the second law of thermodynamics civilization would learn it could have perpetually convertable conserved energy which is the form of free energy where energy is borrowed from the massive heat reservoir of our sun warmed planet and converted into electricity anywhere, anytime with slight variations. Electricity produces heat immediately when used by electric heaters, electric motors with the mechanisms they power, and electric ligts so the energy borrowed by these devices is promply returned without gain or loss. There is also the reverse effect where refrigeration produces electricity equivalent to the cooling, This effect is scientifically elegant.
Cell phones wouldn't die or need power cords or batteries or become hot. They would cool when transmitting radio signal power. The phones could also be data relays and there could also be data relays without phone features with and without long haul links so the telecommunication network would be improved. Computers and integrated circuits would have their cooling and electrical needs supplied autonomously and simultaniously. Integrated circuits wouldn't need power pinouts. Refrigeration for superconductors would improve. Robots would have extreme mobility. Electronic minting would be energy cheap.
Frozen food storage would be reliable and free or value positive. Storehouses, homes, and markets would have independent power to preserve and pŕepare food. Medical devices would work anywhere. Vehicles wouldn't need fuel or fueling stops. Elevators would be very reliable with independent power. Shielding and separation would provide EMP resistance. Water and sewage pumps could be installed anywhere along their pipes. Nomads could raise their material supports item by item carefully and groups of people could modify their settlements with great technical flexibility. Many devices would be very quiet, which is good for coexisting with nature and does not disturb people.
Zone refining would involve little net power. Reducing Bauxite to Aluminum, Rutile to Titanium, and Magnideetite to Iron, would have a net cooling effect. With enough clean cheanetary minerals could be finely pulverized, and H2O, CO2, and other substance levels in the biosphere could be modified. A planetary agency needs to look over wide concerns.
This could be a material revolution with spiritual ramifications. Everyone should contribute individual talents and fruits of different experiances and cultures to advance a cooperative, diverse, harmonious and unified civilization. It is possible to apply technlology wrong but social force should oppose this.
I filed for a patent, us 3890161A, Diode Array, in 1973. It was granted in 1975. It became public domain technology in 1992. It concerns making nickel plane-insulator-tungsten needle diodes which were not practical at the time though they have since improved.
the patent wasn't developed because I backed down from commercial exclusitivity. A better way for me would have been a public incorruptable archive that would secure attrbution for the original works of creators. Uncorrupted copies would be released on request. No further action would be taken by this institution.
Commercal exclusivity can be deterred by the wide and open publishing of inventive concepts. Also the obvious is unpatentsable. Open sharing promotes mass knowlege and wisdom.
Many financially and procedurally independent teams that pool developmental knowlege, and may be funded by many separate noncontrolling crowd sourced grants should convene themselves to develop proof-of-concept and initial-recipe-exploring prototypes to develop devices which coproduce the release of electrical energy and an equivalent absorbtion of stagnant ambient thermal energy. Diode arrays are not the only possible device of this sort. They are the easiest to explain here.
These devices would probably become segmented commodities sold with minimal margin over supply cost. They would be manufactured by AI that does not need financial incentive. Applicable best practices would be adopted. Business details would be open public knowledge. Associated people should move as negotiated and freely and honestly talk. There is no need of wealth extracting top commanders. We do not need often token philanthropy from the wealthy if people simply can be more generous if consumer commodities are inexpensive.
Aloha
Charles M Brown lll
Kilauea, Kauai, Hawaii 96754
1 808 651 📞📞📞📞
The word is starting to get out. These coal and oil barons better invest in Nuclear or they will mis the boat.
They will once the profit mountain in fossil fuels starts to subside. There's still a fortune to be made from coal and oil, they won't hand it over without a fight. There's also a fortune to be made from the 'management' of reactor 'waste'.
The way I see it, they would've already invested in it, if it weren't for the self-righteous environmentalists pushing public opinion away from it. I can't see how nuclear wouldn't be a profitable prospect that they'd want to pursue otherwise.
Brave man
Hi Micheal
Please, tell us one singolar place on planet Earth that is geologically safe to store nucleare waste.
Cause mountains and hills are not stable. And any other place can be hit by earthquake, flood, tsunami. Rain can reach any place as well as dust or sand.
Tell us how you keep those boxes with nuclear waste safe for 100.000 years.
Thanks in advance.
I think we should be open to all energy science and skeptical of all. Since the "China Syndrome," we have not invested into nuclear research as we should have. I like the way he shows how misleading statistics can be and are. I see three ways forward. Hope for battery tech that will make wind and solar more viable, nuclear, and marginal gains. By marginal gains, mean better fuel econ, better windows, better building technique, better public trans, etc. I wish I could believe studies but every on seams to have an invested interest in the outcomes and bias the data.
Lets get the thorium power plants - we need it.
Thorium is old defunct technology from the 1950's (Dr Alvin Weinberg et al.). Thorium is just a U233 fission reactor in disguise, with all its inherent risks and nuclear waste stream. Denmark has been very sensible to concentrate on renewables, wind energy in particular.
@@tommorris3688 And all nuclear is safer than all the others, and that pisses you off to no end.
Hold the phone! He said 10% of California's usage of electricity was solar and yet we made too much to use of electricity? That doesn't make sense..? We couldn't diffuse it to other parts of the state? In another Michael talked about selling extra solar energy generated to other States why not send it to other parts of california? 🤔
Maybe some of the newer, scaled-down nuclear plants, and Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) might do the trick. But the Diablo Canyon nuclear facility sits in a crossfire of earthquake faults that have the potential to shake those reactors with more force than they were designed to withstand. I don't think a massive, aging installation like Diablo Canyon is the one to save.
Fukushima withstood the earthquake. It’s reactors did exactly what they were supposed it do. It was the tsunami that damaged the reactor and caused the explosion. It won’t have been difficult to plan in safety measures to ensure it remains safe should there be a tsunami
@@sookibeulah9331 - Sorry, the "if only" argument isn't valid. Fukushima did not withstand the earthquake if it succumbed to the ensuing tsunami--it's a packaged deal. That's like saying that the 'teeth are okay, but the gums gotta go.' Diablo canyon is situated on the shoreline, same as Fukushima, and therefore susceptible to the same one-two punch that took down Fukushima.
The reason for not using Nuclear is no graft for the politicians.
You would have improved your credentials if you had mentioned that melting through the earth would end up at the CENTER of the earth and NOT at the opposite side.
nah, it would not make it to the center, because the center of the Earth is more dense than what makes up the reactor for the most part.
It is baffling to me how anyone concerned with the environment could support wind and solar energy. Wind and solar are devastating to the environment and destructive to animal and plant life. Wind and solar are unreliable, intermittent, and expensive.
Not everyone is logical or can do math. Voila: Sierra Club members
The environmentalist who said "we need fewer people" is what scares me most about greens and makes me skeptical of climate change doomsday scenarios.
1:31 CA emissions declined less than the national average * 4x faster 2001-2006 before climate legislation vs 2007-2014... 14:10 because in 2011 jane fonda and jerry brown closed a few nuclear plants. 19:11 mothers for nuclear. 19:45 nuclear is safest no emissions renewable. 20:10 closing diablo canyon could see 5000+ premature deaths/year.
While im entirely for nuclear power, and agree with much of the talk, you have to remember one of the issues is radioactive particles in the wild. Yes, the over all radioactive exposure is less than a chest x-ray, but if you swallow a actively emitting particle the inverse square law comes into play. All of that tissue around that particle is exposed to direct emissions. Should you be scared? meh...not really. Ive known people that refuse to use microwave ovens because of 'radiation' even though its not the kind of radiation you should be worried about. The core of all nuclear pushback comes from a lack of understanding when it comes to radioactivity.
Chernobyl suggests that this isn't a problem. If ingesting a hot particle indeed is comes with a high risk of cancer, the epidemiological data suggests that this isn't happening in real life to any significant degree. The actual known death toll from Chernobyl is microscopic in comparison to what the average person imagines.
And you probably couldn't cause a worse disaster than Chernobyl with a power reactor even if you tried. The reactor was a type that no sane country would build and the operators did virtually everything wrong, and still the death toll is just 43 people so far with another 160 or so expected to die prematurely from thyroid cancer at some point.
The "hot particle" meme! WTF Everything on the planet has a radioactive signature and has been that way since the beginning of time.
Actually microwave IS the kind of radiation you should be concerned about. It's also used in mobile phones as well as ovens and radar stations and there's solid evidence it's causing cancers in heavy phone users, especially brain cancers. Microwave ovens are safe as they have shielding, but the phone pushes it through your brain every few seconds as it handshakes transmission towers. NEVER use a phone inside a car even if you are stationary, the car body keeps the RF radiation bouncing round and through you. Our hou8ses are now swamped with it, the router and every other wifi gadget is doing it constantly.
@@petersimmons3654 Microwaves are not hot particles and are non-ionizing radiation. No one has been harmed by such exposure.
@@phamnuwen9442 I am pro nuclear, but it doesn't help anyone spreading false numbers about Chernobyl. The estimated death toll is 4000, from the official UN report. Less than 100 from acute radiation exposure syndrome, the rest are premature deaths from thyroid cancer (the report states that the exposure cause minimal risk of other kinds of cancer).
But take into account that 8 million people died from heart and lung disease because of fossile fuels - in 2018 alone. The WORST serious estimate of Chernobyl is at 50,000 deaths, estimated by the anti-nuclear group "concerned scientists". Also, this is the same as the total of all nuclear power deaths, since all other disasters have had very low death counts.
So for every 1 nuclear power death, from 70 years of operation, 160 people die every year.
Or in other words, every time 11,000 people die from fossile fuel power, just 1 person dies from nuclear power - using the worst possible numbers for nuclear power.
I think you should still be a badass Explorer to be on the board of Sierra Club
Same ol story they've been telling since the 50s. Kind of like how if we just believed in government and let them tax us temporarily a little bit more everything will change for the better.
we cannot be serious about our century without nuclear power
What? Are you for real? We can make electricity from the sun wind and rain, what's more 21st century than that? Nuclear was conceived in the 1950s, so last century, so deranged, so dangerous [they were dangerous times] so illogical, so ego-driven. They smoked in the 1950s. Even doctors.
@@petersimmons3654 OMG I thought that the sun the wind and the rain was even more ancient than nuclear power plants...
I can see that you will have a very great influence for the future of America you will bring America 2 under development
Where is the tsunami protection for Diablo Canyon?
There's a water desalination plant in the hills behind Diablo Canyon, which can pump fresh water into the reactors, in the event of an emergency. It doesn't rely on anything which might be below the water level. It's much more protected than Fukushima was.
Even in Japan, Onagawa was much closer to the epicentre, and suffered higher waves, and it coped fine. There's no reason a Tsunami should pose any huge threat.
From Google: "The elevation of the Fukushima site is approximately 20 feet above sea level, while Diablo Canyon sits on a bluff 85 feet above sea level."
I disagree => I worked in nuclear power plants. I agree that when they are working perfectly, they are super-clean and just churn out consistent, good energy. However, the problem is when they have an accident... and obviously, they do have accidents. At one of the plants in which I worked, our accident plan was to evacuate all of Hartford, Conn for 30 years. Of course, that was worst-case. But that's my point. The worst-case scenario is so bad it just isn't worth it. Giving up Southern California for 30 years is not worth the price of this energy. So, sorry, I don't agree with the speaker.
Pretty much every accident has happened at plants that are designed based off designs from the 60s. We could've done thorium reactors but they were too expensive
technology has advaced alot in the past few years. watch?v=TvXcoSdXYlk < the reactor in this video is far safer then any you've worked in.
thanks for a bit of balance in this overly goofy discussion.
XORBob I agree with you. The chances of human error is always there. And that is why I know there will be some smart person that , one day will be able to minimize that from the equation. But for now? No . And fossil fuels will probably be with us for a while. Not that anybody really wants it...🦖🦕
Absolutely brilliant
How about the opposite? No fear of Nuclear?
It is like betting against airplanes. Safest, bye far, mode of transport. But--one plane goes down.
i love this talk its amazing
Yes, it is amazing emotional whitewash.
How many heads exploded in this California audience?
your head already exploded ... you think it is bad for Californians to harbor misgivings about nuclear power, but it's fine for you to harbor misgivings about all Californians ... one of the best educated and most productive states in the union and the world. grow up kiddie,
@@justgivemethetruth productive state? PRODUCTIVE STATE?
@@justgivemethetruth California is for the super rich. That's it.
@@justgivemethetruth what is California's spending deficit compared to other states?
2:07 Ding ding ding!!!
This is a distracting discussion so that fossil fuel industry can continue to drag out the continued profits from their investments.
I am for profitable industry but also for all the facts.
So the Governor of California before Jerry Brown had it right
We need some different ways. Use less and different sources of energy.
and oil and coal are the only other way not to destroy environment for biomass...
Kids cause more damage to the tide pools than a nuclear power plant!
Nuclear, solar heating and waste heat.
NO FAKE NEWS!!!
Dude flow batteries last at least 100 years. 1 GW to each substation
Dude, doesn't exist. We get tired of your wet dreams.
Shellenberger is looking at nuclear power through rose-tinted spectacles. No-one has a clue what to do with the long-lasting nuclear waste. According to the International Nuclear Industry Agency (2015), there are 253,700 tonnes of spent fuel stored, mostly in cooling ponds, above ground at various locations worldwide and this is accumulating at a rate of around 7,000 tonnes per year. Even if deep storage eventually becomes a reality, the challenges (and costs) of designing and building a repository are considerable. Finland seems to be leading the way - most countries have barely got off the ground. And will it work? No-one knows. The timescales are vast, almost unimaginable. A sealed repository may be vulnerable to geological shifts. A monitored repository may be vulnerable to societal collapse . . .
Do you know something interesting? There is no such thing as nuclear waste, its a myth pure and simple, if a radioactive source is still emitting radiation it is ripe for energy production, and if the radioactive source is no longer emitting radiation its as safe as ash.
High-level nuclear waste is not a problem, it's an asset, worth a fortune in future energy production.
LOVE FRACKING.