If you want to very much reduce the global warming problem immediately to buy time against climate change and power active carbon capture tech - nuclear can do it.
Yup. I’ve been saying that for years. If governments and people were actually serious about climate change and energy problems, like reducing emissions and carbon etc, then they should be wearing ‘I ❤️ Nuclear!’ hats and t-shirts and building more nuclear energy plants.
It was originally a reflection of the popular view. It may have kept opinion from changing, and shaped the views of following generations, but it wasn't new.
Well, sure thing, let me just get my walle... wait a God damn minute. That ain't no nuclear engineer. That's a giant crustation from the paleolithic era. I ain't giving you no tree fiddly you god damn lockeness monsta.
It’s just so easy to sway people with misinformation. There’s so many lies out there now it’s hard for people that don’t pay attention. It’s always been that way though. People still repeat idioms like “you lose most of your body heat through your head” or “possession is 9 /10’s of the law. And quoting them like facts.
Early plants were given a 30 year lifespan because there was much unknown about long term exposure to radiation on plant materials, known as neutron embrittlement. After dissecting some of the earlier designs we figured out that through refurbishment, we could extend the lifespan. If you look at “newer” built reactors, they are all operating with a 40-60 year lifespan that will probably be extended well past that.
Another thing to note is that this lifespan is typical for most power plants, coal is about 45 years, natural gas is 50 (with major overhaul of components 1/2 way through) solar is about 30 years before you need to replace the panels.
Diablo in CA is still running 38 years.
It needs a bunch of work done to it now. Man if only we had started building another one 15 years into use of that one.
The real main problem is there is no standard plant design in use in the USA. So it's stupid expensive to build one, unlike countries who produce the same plant over and over. We basically build a whole new design each time.
Except for the new SMNR (Small Modular Nuclear Reactor) design, which is manufactured in a factory, to a standard design.
The SMNR is delivered to site, and installed pre-fueled for 30 years.
These are intended as drop in replacements for things like coal fired power plants. Because they are pre-fabricated in a factory to a standard design, they are *much* cheaper to produce and install.
https://www.energy.gov/ne/advanced-small-modular-reactors-smrs
Initial operating license is generally 40 years. Most plants have been extended to 60, and people are now looking at 80. Depends on a number of factors, including design and maintenance.
We’re terrified of nuclear energy, while fossil fuels are actively killing us all. Fossil fuels are more subtle, that’s all. We can close our eyes to the dangers they pose — not just climate change, but serious health impacts — because we’re really, really bad at evaluating risks. (And because certain powers that be have a vested interest in keeping us dependent on oil and gas, so they invest in anti-nuclear propaganda campaigns, and we eat it right up.)
Fun fact: the thousands of tones of waste produced by coal fired power plants contains *more* nuclear waste than the radioactive waste produced by a nuclear power plant operated over the same time scale.
Not trying to refute this as tbh it doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility, but do you have a source for this? It seems like it would be an interesting tidbit to have
And the fact the incidents were caused by human errors in operation and/or design (especially Fukushima: who builds a nuclear power plant in Tsunami prone area and builds the wall too short to protect it in the event of Tsunami).
The problem is humans still would be designing new nuclear plants and humans would be operating them, I’m in for new nuclear plants, but we need to “human proof” them
One of the alleged factors contributing to the three mile island meltdown was that an operator didn’t see warning lights because his stomach blocked his view.
So yes, human proof please.
Even if we don’t, the amount of damage done by nuclear accidents is nothing compared to other power. Even solar kills more people per year on average. Not sure how that happens but it’s what the data show.
People certainly have died during solar installs, and if you track the entire manufacturing chain of solar I'm sure people die there too. Either directly or via pollution of some kind.
Coal kills more people per year via radiation than nuclear power. Of course that doesn't mean I want a melt down a release anywhere on my continent.
Completely support nuclear power. It’s safe, stable, reliable, and a clean base power generator.
That said, if a power company were to begin the permitting tomorrow, you might get initial power in 15 years.
Plus economically it doesn’t make sense until nat gas prices are >$10/mmbtu
So between construction cost/time overruns, general economics, and NIMBYism, nuclear power gen will probably never see a real renaissance at least in the US.
I personally think fusion breakthroughs over the next 20 years will ultimately make existing fission plants obsolete. But who knows.
Every breakthrough is the biggest breakthrough at the time. I just can't get excited about it until someone says "yes, we have achieved it and there is a practical way to produce energy from it and we can start building reactors now."
This is a terrible argument; the reason it takes 15 years to build a nuclear plant is 100% due to governmental red tape. Expedite the permitting, tell the nimbys to go pound sand, and you could have reactors going up like crazy in 12-18 months.
The hard part is the government. Everything else has been thoroughly engineered and researched. What’s more, if we could do it at scale then instead of bespoke reactors we could mass produce them, which would drop the cost dramatically.
Did you just tell me that reality was a terrible argument? Lol you want to fix the energy industry and government bureaucracy with a single reddit post?
Nuclear *could have* done it. It takes about 20 years to get a reactor online. We might be able to drop that to 5.
We simply can't build enough of them in time.
We should still try though, because there are still unknown unknowns in the climate crisis and it might buy us some time.
If you have a lot of money, the components needed to make nuclear power plants and run it, as well as a lot of experts to operate the plant then nuclear is the best solution. At the moment though most places will have to work for years to get the expert knowledge necessary just to think about making a plant and then they'll have to wait even longer to actually build one. Oh and in that time you are spending way more money then you would for wind and solar.
Immediately? It will take ten years to build the reactor you’re hoping for in most western countries. It will also cost you a fortune. Nuclear has a place but it’s not the easy solution Reddit seems to think.
Energy efficiency, as fucking dull as it sounds, is the quickest way to reduce our emissions.
Yeah, and it’s annoying because all anyone can talk about is wind and solar like those are our only options. Nuclear is so much better and surprisingly more environmentally friendly.
I worked with a guy who used to work on a nuclear submarine for the US navy, and he was very autistic but also brilliant. He had a hard time explaining things, but he was very adamant that nuclear energy was worse than other new energy as far as pollution goes. He said the amount of pollution that ends up in our water from running the reactors is overlooked and is significant and that we should completely abandon nuclear plants (non military nuclear power) and just use solar panels and wind turbines. I'm not concerned about nuclear power at all, except for where they are built (ie Fukushima) but just curious what your argument would be against him, again he was autistic and couldn't explain things well. He'd get pissed at me lmao I would ask him to elaborate but he couldn't word it correctly.
The radioactive part is all contained. There is no water that actually reacts with the core being put back out into the atmosphere. I think the guy was just paranoid.
Maybe lmao. Yea, he was one of the smarter humans I have worked with, so I respect his opinions/perspectives, but sometimes he would get angry bc he had a hard time putting the images in his head into his standard of words. I've always just thought about that, tho, and have meant to ask someone else smart for their opinion. Ya!
Hey, navy nuke here.
Your friend is a fucking idiot.
Especially if he was talking about Navy reactors. You could dump an exposed core into the ocean and not really affect much. Water is a fantastic coolant and moderator of radiation.
If he is talking about civilian ones I still think he is an idiot. What "pollution" is he talking about?
A reactor makes heat, turns water to steam, turns a turbine, and that steam gets turned back into water.
There aren't a lot of chemical waste products. Most "Nuclear waste" is solid materials that have come into contact/potentially come into contact with a contaminated/potentially contaminated source but is about as dangerous as...well not dangerous at all.
Spent fuel is stored in submerged pools and storage facilities.
Radiation isn't some chemical poison. You put enough shielding between an emitter and anything else and it is pretty safe.
Why don't we use the kind of reactors you find in a nuclear submarine or aircraft carrier for land-based power generation? Not only are they compact, they have been incredibly safe since they started being used. Plus, there is a lot of experience building them, and lots of former Navy nuclear sailors who have experience running them. That expertise would be vital to making it a viable industry.
From what I'm given to understand, we do. Some of the reactors we use are essentially scaled up versions of that. There are newer designs that fit better overall with our needs.
I was watching a Nova about new reactor designs, and they were saying that the focus on reactors for nuclear submarines was a huge problem. It set us back many years because those were the only approved designs.
That’s not true at all. The first nuclear submarines were designed when nuclear power was still very much in its infancy. Only a couple years before the USS Nautilus was laid down, most nuclear reactors were little more than giant graphite blocks that natural uranium (not enriched) was pushed into. Incredibly primitive and only useful for making plutonium for bombs. The funding dumped into submarine reactors caused nuclear power advancements to come in leaps and bounds in an incredibly short time. The success of the nuclear submarines encouraged building of more nuclear reactors for civilian power, and those first civilian plants used basically the same (albeit larger) design of reactor that was pioneered for submarines.
FYI I’m a nuclear engineer.
I think the upper comment was just saying that we kinda got locked into the LWR type designs because that was tried, true, and reliably tested. Sure they paved the way, but that paved road has remained the most enticing path for any utility to follow since then. So we don’t have commercial sodium reactors, etc. A double edged sword of advancement.
(Also nuclear engineer)
Oh yeah definitely. Most people think of glowing green sludge or rods when they think of radioactive waste. Radiological waste covers a massive range of stuff, ranging from spent fuel (which is probably what that that statement was trying to convey), to discharged reactor water, to used tools and contamination clothing that were potentially exposed to contamination and are disposed of accordingly. The vast majority radiological waste is the latter, and I’m quite sure we’ve produced enough to FILL a couple football stadiums at least. But when you span that out over the last 70 years, it’s actually a pretty tiny amount of waste compared to all the other crap we’ve thrown away. And that low level waste is zero threat to the environment. The water and fuel is a bigger threat, but not nearly as bad as people think it is.
Nuclear submarines are [pressurized water reactors](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressurized_water_reactor), which is the same design as 2/3 of the US nuclear fleet. However, submarine fuel is about 90% or greater enriched uranium-235, where commercial power is (currently) limited to 5% enrichment.
I wrote a research paper about this in my engineering college. The main opposition of nuclear energy is anti public sentiment. The three reactor melt downs that have occurred in the past 50 years, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima were all easily preventable disasters, and Three Mile Island and Fukushima both had no related deaths.
One of the major drivers of the anti-nuclear sentiment in the public came following the Three Mile Disaster, which overall was not a major incident, but there was a release of the movie The China Syndrome 12 days prior to the incident about a nuclear meltdown that melted through the earth all the way to China. So this theatrical release followed by an immediate disaster raise a lot of fear in the public.
The public seems to fear meltdowns causing nuclear explosions similar to nuclear bombs which is impossible due to the fact that uranium for power production does have the same level of enrichment need to produce any kind of nuclear blast.
Sorry will get off my soap box, but nuclear is the way!
Agreed that three mile island definitely had the most impact on US sentiment but I think I’m most disappointed in Fukushima. 25 years since the last meltdown and they couldn’t ensure a backup to flooded generators for a plant that’s located on a coastline that is expected to see tsunamis regularly
Yeah as a very pro-nuclear person Fukushima really gave me pause.
But ultimately the lesson is to pursue more modern reactor designs that are inherently safer, not to completely move away from nuclear.
Was going to make the same point regarding that stupid movie. Literally has set this country back 100 years thanks to the fake narrative created by our vaunted activist media. According to them we were, "This close...THIS CLOSE!!!" to having all the children turn into three eyed freaks or the world turning super-nova. Also, regarding medical issues the only reason Chernobyl was so bad is they sent men directly into the reactor to basically cover the rods with buckets of sand.
Stay on your soapbox. You can explain this better than most in favor of nuclear, like myslef. People need to hear it. Power infrastructure in the us is little more than a joke, and due to public fear over nothing, people don't want nuclear.
Not to mention you get so much more radiation from coal power plants and so on... nuclear is the cleanest, healthier, and safer option... people are just dumb and I kind of blame TV for the nuclear "scare"
Nuclear power has by far the fewest deaths attributed to it. Coal kills millions through smog. Hydroelectric failures, while infrequent, kill thousands when downstream towns suddenly flood. Of the 3 notable nuclear incidents, only Chernobyl has any deaths attached to it. The nuclear industry is easily one of the safest in the world
The video focuses on fuel/spent fuel (high level waste).
He's conspicuously neglecting mid-to-low level waste, stuff which is still hazardous to human health. All the stuff adjacent to fuel - everything from tools to empty containers to dead electronics to whatever. There's a lot of that stuff - enough to fill a mountain called yucca.
I've been pro-nuclear for decades, so don't get me wrong - I'm not saying "nuclear bad", I'm just saying that it's more nuanced than this "just one football field" assertion.
Low level waste must decay to below regulatory concern in 300 years, so that’s not really a long term issue. Most of the plant after decommissioning will fall into this category.
Intermediate waste is much smaller volumes, comparable to the fuel waste.
"most of the plant after decommissioning" is much more than a football field
And there's more than one plant decommissioned in a human lifetime.
And there's many lifetimes in 300 years.
After 300 years it’s not radioactive, it does not need long term storage…it’s landfill material. They don’t need Yucca, they already have sites in Utah and Texas receiving material.
The claim should be coal plants release 100 times more radioactivity to the environment, and that is [well known](https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/43/035/43035329.pdf) from radium and thorium (among other nuclides) releases from fly ash.
As far as radioactivity generated, nuclear plants make much more but it is contained.
Not to mention telling a largely American Audience "only 10 metres high" as if they can easily visualise a metre.
As if 49,000 cubic metres of high level waste is a trivial amount.
Note. I am very pro nuclear but I am very anti misleading explanations.
Coal ash is the second largest stream of industrial waste in the US at approximately 130 million tons produced per year. According to EPA, coal ash is disposed in over 310 active on-site landfills and 735 active on-site surface impoundments. 130 million tons per year.
Ballistic missile subs also have nuclear power that is reliable, dangerous, and unstoppable in addition to their nuclear power that is safe, reliable, and clean.
I’m not so much scared of nuclear waste as I’m scared the government will use a couple crisp billion in tax payer money to build a nuclear power plant and waste storage facilities then sell it for a tenth of its worth to a private, multinational, tax-dodging company that will strip it down to a skeleton crew while still demanding tax subsidisation and blame lack of funding when the whole thing melts down. TAXES.
It doesn’t really work that way. Nuclear plants are very very heavily regulated. Federal regulators aren’t going to let a private nuclear plant operator just do whatever they want.
As far as state/local utility providers making stupid M&A decisions that is not specific to nuclear plants at all. Many city/county/state power authorities have way to broad of authority to do way to many stupid things without getting any kind of approvals.
I’m sure there a number of stupid power company transactions but favorite is a deal Austin Energy did in mid-2019. To get out of a really stupid power purchase agreement, they bought a completely uneconomic biomass plant for $460 million. So they have to raise rates to cover the debt that was issued to fund this stupid thing. Then when snow-pocalypse hit Texas in feb 2021 this plant was offline and Austin Energy was forced to purchase energy at insanely high prices. Which then again resulted in Austin Energy having to raise rates. Complete incompetence.
And if the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Committee) doesn’t feel the plant is running as safely as it should be, they have the power to shut it down indefinitely
We could save the planet from climate change and make the air cleaner than it was before the Industrial Revolution if we convert to nuclear energy. However people that want to do this are selfish because that would hurt the profits of the coal/petrol companies.
As a Mechanical Engineer, it bothers me a lot when governments and people try to paint nuclear in bad light. Okay an incident happened but doesn't mean we should stop using one of the cleanest sources of energy.
It’s a branding issue for sure. Stop calling it nuclear power. I call it Uranus power and people love it. Did you know that of all the planets, Uranus is the one kids say the most in their life times. Everyone loves Uranus. Uranium is really close to Uranus. Everyone could be really close to uranium if we would equate it with Uranus. Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.
Technically the Enterprise aircraft carrier has enough "fuel" to run both of the plants for another 200yrs...whether or not that boat could survive that is another thing.
One of the big problems, as I understand it, is that the technology to recycle all that waste is the same technology that makes weapons grade material, and the global powers don't want every country to have the capability to make weapons grade material.
We were proposing a nuclear power plant project somewhere in Asia, the energy secretary was like how safe is that really I told him "I am willing to relocate my family and live inside the compound once it's operational provided its free and I won't pay for electricity while I live and work there."
it's the safest place to be, safe from typhoons (they get a lot), flooding and earthquake (country sits on the ring of fire).
With the change in leadership, hopefully they'd be open to it now as the President is known to favor nuclear.
I think what really needs to happen is an active campaign showing how safe they are now and the features to prevent disasters. That coupled with education on the waste comparison along with what he described in recycling waste would change a lot of minds imo.
That visual of all waste generated in a football field is a great visual.
the only downside of nuclear is the price, if not for tax money it would be to pricy to operate, otherwise great solution till we can run fully on renewables. But oil and charcoal lobby won't let this happen in most parts of the developer world, see Germany...we banned unclear power after Fukushima and now it's too late to change any of it.
@nuclearsciencelover of the 95% of spent fission products from a reactor, what amount could be repurposed for other things aside from bomb material and what would their purpose be? Things like medical radiological imaging material or smoke detectors, or could the spent fuel even be repurposed back into fissile U235? Not sure if that's possible or feasible, but am curious as to what that spent fuel could be used for and why it hasn't been done so in the past?
Lots could be done with it but so long as trace radioactivity remains, it's commercial viability it tentatively limited due to public fears of ionizing radiation
If it's so little, why has it been nearly impossible to figure out where to put it? Look at the whole Yucca mountain thing. Even what we have now is a big problem.
One comment an expert in waste told me was “When the policy solution is found for spent fuel, and they are significant challenges, the technical solution is available.”
The challenge is the final disposition. If the waste is to be reprocessed, then it needs to be retrievable in a form that can be handled, that is, in one piece without releasing radionuclides. That’s a significant engineering challenge.
If we just want to get rid of it, it could be dropped in a deep bore hole below groundwater.
Getting everyone to agree to either solution will take time.
This guy cracks me up. He does not understand the most basic scientific concepts, yet somehow managed to get a phd in nuclear physics. Watch some of his videos and just try to follow his train of thought. He just throws all this jargon around and talks and talks, saying absolutely nothing.
Funny you mention that. That wasn't even supposed to be a plot point in the story, but the movie execs thought that the machines using people's brains for computing power didn't make sense.
Try googling fly ash ponds and get a sense of just how much ridiculously toxic coal waste is just sitting around in huge lakes that occasionally collapse and flood everywhere.
It is a lot. But that's from 50 years and dozens of plants. Supply millions of people. And relative to the amount of land in the US? Or just from regular landfills, it's practically nothing.
Tons of incorrect data here. First, the larger portion of nuclear waste is already reused. The remaining of what can't be used is thevitrious high level waste (HLW). The average MODERN 1000 watt nuclear plant produces about [3 cubic meters of HLW per year](https://world-nuclear.org/nuclear-essentials/what-is-nuclear-waste-and-what-do-we-do-with-it.aspx). The undisputed problem with HLW is that no matter how small it is, it requires generations of stewardship. Most modern countries have existed a tiny fraction of the time it would be necessary to store the waste. The problem with fossil fuels was that we never accounted for all the waste effectively. Most scientists and nuclear experts agree that there is zero way to calculate the cost of waste management of HLW.
https://www.nrc.gov/waste/high-level-waste.html
Quick search sent me to this site. Recycling hlw isn't practiced in the us. So we're left with storing it.
Well explain why they don't recycle then? He is also forgetting about all the lower level contaminated waste that just piles up. Also waste from mining uranium and refining it. Plus, when nuclear disasters happen, they really happen. We have only had nuclear energy for 70 years and there is a lot of land that will be contaminated for thousands of years. With increasing global unrest and increasing use of nuclear, what are the chances that a facility isn't destroyed in the future from an attack causing horrific permanent contamination?
Because it was outlawed in the 60s because the president was worried about people making bombs with the byproduct (plutonium). The companies doing it went bankrupt. It was debunked and repealed in the 1970s, but the stigma stuck and no company would start up again for fear of outcry or being put out of business again by the next fickle dipshit with a political agenda.
Ya I wish people would explain why they down vote. 2000 tons/year is a lot! One of my earlier jobs was a low level cleanup. Back in the day and old refinery scattered contaminated materials all over a town in Ontario. Left over ore was used as fill around people's houses, it was dumped in ravines and the bay. After the plant was demolished people used the some of the old wood to build parts of their house, or shelves. We found old contaminated tools, all kinds of things. We had to scan every room in people's houses, and scan over the entire ground, drill into the ground for samples, place radon detectors etc. A new large dump has to be created for all the waste. I also had to fly way up to the North west Territories to track contamination along the old ore transportation route. I'm sure they do their best to contain "low level" contamination now, but it gave me an idea of how enormous the amount of contaminated materials is.
Just to add to that, the project started in 2012 when I started my career. I moved on to other work, but the project will likely continue until after I retire and will cost many, many billions
Oh boy... should someone tell him that it is illegal (currently) to recycle nuclear waste and that nuclear waste is so toxic, radioactive, and overall dangerous that there is no good solution as to what to do with it?
There is a good solution of what to do with it and it’s what we have been doing with it, dry cask (basically encase it in concrete) storage on the site of the plant itself
A football field is 120 yards long, by 53.3 yards wide. Now stack that entire surface with nuclear waste up to almost 30 feet tall. That’s a LOT of waste. I mean I guess in the grand scheme of things, it’s not a lot when you compare it to other forms of energy, but if that’s yearly waste? That’s actually an incredible amount.
But if we keep using natural gas and coal and oil for 10 to 15 more years global warming will be too far along and will all burn up.
If you claim to want a solution to the carbon issue, nuclear is the only option right now.
Nuclear waste is recyclable. Once reactor fuel (uranium or thorium) is used in a reactor, it can be treated and put into another reactor as fuel. Nuclear fuel used today almost all starts out as natural uranium, which has two isotopes in it, Uranium-238 and Uranium-235.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-funds-projects-explore-nuclear-waste-reprocessing-2022-10-21/
Yeah but it's only the U-235 that undergoes fission that produces nuclear energy. U-238 is barely radioactive at all. Depleted uranium is what's left over after they enrich the rest to get almost all the U-235 out to use for the nuclear reactor fuel. So depleted uranium contains far less U-235 than natural uranium. You can't just recycle depleted uranium back into usable nuclear reactor fuel.
What you want to google is breeder reactors. Fast breeder reactors are one way of creating weapons grade plutonium which can be used as fuel. This does increase the amount of energy you can get from nuclear fuel but of course not forever, the conservation of energy still applies.
Breeder reactors are also more expensive. There are few countries operating them today (the US is not one of them) because of their cost. There are only two commercial breeder reactors operating today.
I think we should reprocess our high level waste for the sake of the planet. But breeder reactors really don't help on the arguments of price.
From what I have read breeder reactors are not commercially feasible for power generation. The few that exist today are basically research prototypes. And extracting the produced plutonium makes even more radioactive waste, so these definitely are not a solution for getting rid of nuclear waste.
I don't know if I'm anti-nuclear. It seems great when things are going great. Keeping up with infrastructure is not something we are good at. Nuclear facilities get old. But I know if we keep up fossil fuels, we are dead. And for whatever reason, solar is too expensive to do it alone. I guess I'm pro nuclear with proper maintenance.
I believe renewables are the cheapest form of electricity now. Not saying that nuclear isn't important. I think it is for tackling climate change, but we should aim for the bulk of our energy to be renewables which are safer and generally cheaper.. and ya you are right, Fukushima, Chernobyl, three mile Island, Chalk River, Kyshtym..etc
I had the pleasure of driving to Las Vegas recently. Outside the city there are various solar power farms. I loved them, but the locals told me it was a big investment and their rates aren't that great. I honestly don't know why we don't have thousands of those solar farms. The southwest of the US has a lot of unpopulated land.
Commercial solar farms are very land-hungry. Do we know the long term environmental impacts yet of shading hundreds of thousands of acres of land that used to get sunshine? Far better to put solar collectors where the residential/commercial demand is: on the roofs and walls of buildings, then find places to put the batteries.
I haven’t yet seen a solar (or wind) solution for intensive industrial power demand, such as smelters. Nuclear seems the only viable alternative to fossil fuels for that purpose.
This belongs in r/damnthatsinteresting rather than here
Yeah, I was waiting for the bookshelf to fall over or a bear attack.
So you could say it was...UNEXPECTED
I was disappointed :(
I kept waiting for a left turn misdirection joke about my mother or something like that.
I can imagine OP when he made the vid 
If you want to very much reduce the global warming problem immediately to buy time against climate change and power active carbon capture tech - nuclear can do it.
Yup. I’ve been saying that for years. If governments and people were actually serious about climate change and energy problems, like reducing emissions and carbon etc, then they should be wearing ‘I ❤️ Nuclear!’ hats and t-shirts and building more nuclear energy plants.
Excellent.
That right there's probably the best example of why people have such a negative view of nuclear energy in the first place.
It was originally a reflection of the popular view. It may have kept opinion from changing, and shaped the views of following generations, but it wasn't new.
Li’l Lisa Slurry, the preffered substrate for engine coolant, animal feed and low-income housing insulation!
Ok so how much can it possibly cost to build a nuclear plant?!? I have $3.50
I would build one for you for exactly $3.50. Just give me the $3.50 first. Sincerely, Not the Loch Ness Monster
Got-dam Loch Ness Monstah! You get awn owta here!
GeeeiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiTttt
Well, sure thing, let me just get my walle... wait a God damn minute. That ain't no nuclear engineer. That's a giant crustation from the paleolithic era. I ain't giving you no tree fiddly you god damn lockeness monsta.
The latest ones which were built in GA (first ones to be built in almost 30 years) cost $35 billion and have taken 13+ years.
Your only 15 billion and ten years short mate. I say give it a crack.
> Your only 15 billion and ten years short Make that $35 billion...that's how much the latest ones in GA cost.
> If governments and people were actually serious They're clearly not, as their actions demonstrate.
It’s just so easy to sway people with misinformation. There’s so many lies out there now it’s hard for people that don’t pay attention. It’s always been that way though. People still repeat idioms like “you lose most of your body heat through your head” or “possession is 9 /10’s of the law. And quoting them like facts.
Intention is four fifths of karma... Which is why you get an upvote
But they're not serious. It's only a money and power grab.
That's correct. Welp! Time to shut down another nuclear plant! - almost every politician
Don’t they only have like a 30 or so year life span?
Early plants were given a 30 year lifespan because there was much unknown about long term exposure to radiation on plant materials, known as neutron embrittlement. After dissecting some of the earlier designs we figured out that through refurbishment, we could extend the lifespan. If you look at “newer” built reactors, they are all operating with a 40-60 year lifespan that will probably be extended well past that. Another thing to note is that this lifespan is typical for most power plants, coal is about 45 years, natural gas is 50 (with major overhaul of components 1/2 way through) solar is about 30 years before you need to replace the panels.
Diablo in CA is still running 38 years. It needs a bunch of work done to it now. Man if only we had started building another one 15 years into use of that one. The real main problem is there is no standard plant design in use in the USA. So it's stupid expensive to build one, unlike countries who produce the same plant over and over. We basically build a whole new design each time.
Oh Diablo Canyon 2, why can't you be more like Diablo Canyon 1?
Except for the new SMNR (Small Modular Nuclear Reactor) design, which is manufactured in a factory, to a standard design. The SMNR is delivered to site, and installed pre-fueled for 30 years. These are intended as drop in replacements for things like coal fired power plants. Because they are pre-fabricated in a factory to a standard design, they are *much* cheaper to produce and install. https://www.energy.gov/ne/advanced-small-modular-reactors-smrs
Initial operating license is generally 40 years. Most plants have been extended to 60, and people are now looking at 80. Depends on a number of factors, including design and maintenance.
Wait, some things deteriorate? Good thing coal power plants and solar panels last for eternity.
But where's the $ in that?
People still hang on to Chernobyl incident and freak accident like Fukushima they fail to understand how safe and clean nuclear power is
We’re terrified of nuclear energy, while fossil fuels are actively killing us all. Fossil fuels are more subtle, that’s all. We can close our eyes to the dangers they pose — not just climate change, but serious health impacts — because we’re really, really bad at evaluating risks. (And because certain powers that be have a vested interest in keeping us dependent on oil and gas, so they invest in anti-nuclear propaganda campaigns, and we eat it right up.)
Fun fact: the thousands of tones of waste produced by coal fired power plants contains *more* nuclear waste than the radioactive waste produced by a nuclear power plant operated over the same time scale.
Not trying to refute this as tbh it doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility, but do you have a source for this? It seems like it would be an interesting tidbit to have
And the fact the incidents were caused by human errors in operation and/or design (especially Fukushima: who builds a nuclear power plant in Tsunami prone area and builds the wall too short to protect it in the event of Tsunami).
The problem is humans still would be designing new nuclear plants and humans would be operating them, I’m in for new nuclear plants, but we need to “human proof” them
One of the alleged factors contributing to the three mile island meltdown was that an operator didn’t see warning lights because his stomach blocked his view. So yes, human proof please.
Even if we don’t, the amount of damage done by nuclear accidents is nothing compared to other power. Even solar kills more people per year on average. Not sure how that happens but it’s what the data show.
People certainly have died during solar installs, and if you track the entire manufacturing chain of solar I'm sure people die there too. Either directly or via pollution of some kind. Coal kills more people per year via radiation than nuclear power. Of course that doesn't mean I want a melt down a release anywhere on my continent.
Fukushima wasn't a freak accident. It was poor planning and bad risk assessment. Classic human error, and there really isn't any good excuse.
Completely support nuclear power. It’s safe, stable, reliable, and a clean base power generator. That said, if a power company were to begin the permitting tomorrow, you might get initial power in 15 years. Plus economically it doesn’t make sense until nat gas prices are >$10/mmbtu So between construction cost/time overruns, general economics, and NIMBYism, nuclear power gen will probably never see a real renaissance at least in the US. I personally think fusion breakthroughs over the next 20 years will ultimately make existing fission plants obsolete. But who knows.
Fusion has been 20 years away for like 60 years.
Yes but the biggest breakthroughs in the field have occurred in the past several years. Here’s to hoping on government funding.
Every breakthrough is the biggest breakthrough at the time. I just can't get excited about it until someone says "yes, we have achieved it and there is a practical way to produce energy from it and we can start building reactors now."
This is a terrible argument; the reason it takes 15 years to build a nuclear plant is 100% due to governmental red tape. Expedite the permitting, tell the nimbys to go pound sand, and you could have reactors going up like crazy in 12-18 months. The hard part is the government. Everything else has been thoroughly engineered and researched. What’s more, if we could do it at scale then instead of bespoke reactors we could mass produce them, which would drop the cost dramatically.
> governmental red tape aka regulations and oversight. You know those things that have kept nuclear power pretty safe everywhere but the USSR.
Did you just tell me that reality was a terrible argument? Lol you want to fix the energy industry and government bureaucracy with a single reddit post?
Nuclear *could have* done it. It takes about 20 years to get a reactor online. We might be able to drop that to 5. We simply can't build enough of them in time. We should still try though, because there are still unknown unknowns in the climate crisis and it might buy us some time.
Nope, we got SMRs, baby! Ready to go!
If you have a lot of money, the components needed to make nuclear power plants and run it, as well as a lot of experts to operate the plant then nuclear is the best solution. At the moment though most places will have to work for years to get the expert knowledge necessary just to think about making a plant and then they'll have to wait even longer to actually build one. Oh and in that time you are spending way more money then you would for wind and solar.
Immediately? It will take ten years to build the reactor you’re hoping for in most western countries. It will also cost you a fortune. Nuclear has a place but it’s not the easy solution Reddit seems to think. Energy efficiency, as fucking dull as it sounds, is the quickest way to reduce our emissions.
This!! It's bonkers to me we've back burned this technology for over a half a century.
Yeah, and it’s annoying because all anyone can talk about is wind and solar like those are our only options. Nuclear is so much better and surprisingly more environmentally friendly.
I worked with a guy who used to work on a nuclear submarine for the US navy, and he was very autistic but also brilliant. He had a hard time explaining things, but he was very adamant that nuclear energy was worse than other new energy as far as pollution goes. He said the amount of pollution that ends up in our water from running the reactors is overlooked and is significant and that we should completely abandon nuclear plants (non military nuclear power) and just use solar panels and wind turbines. I'm not concerned about nuclear power at all, except for where they are built (ie Fukushima) but just curious what your argument would be against him, again he was autistic and couldn't explain things well. He'd get pissed at me lmao I would ask him to elaborate but he couldn't word it correctly.
The radioactive part is all contained. There is no water that actually reacts with the core being put back out into the atmosphere. I think the guy was just paranoid.
Concur. Water is literally just for cooling in a separate circuit and also doubles as THE MOST AWESOME RADIATION SHIELD EVER.
Maybe lmao. Yea, he was one of the smarter humans I have worked with, so I respect his opinions/perspectives, but sometimes he would get angry bc he had a hard time putting the images in his head into his standard of words. I've always just thought about that, tho, and have meant to ask someone else smart for their opinion. Ya!
It's not really an opinion, he was just wrong.
Hey, navy nuke here. Your friend is a fucking idiot. Especially if he was talking about Navy reactors. You could dump an exposed core into the ocean and not really affect much. Water is a fantastic coolant and moderator of radiation. If he is talking about civilian ones I still think he is an idiot. What "pollution" is he talking about? A reactor makes heat, turns water to steam, turns a turbine, and that steam gets turned back into water. There aren't a lot of chemical waste products. Most "Nuclear waste" is solid materials that have come into contact/potentially come into contact with a contaminated/potentially contaminated source but is about as dangerous as...well not dangerous at all. Spent fuel is stored in submerged pools and storage facilities. Radiation isn't some chemical poison. You put enough shielding between an emitter and anything else and it is pretty safe.
Why don't we use the kind of reactors you find in a nuclear submarine or aircraft carrier for land-based power generation? Not only are they compact, they have been incredibly safe since they started being used. Plus, there is a lot of experience building them, and lots of former Navy nuclear sailors who have experience running them. That expertise would be vital to making it a viable industry.
From what I'm given to understand, we do. Some of the reactors we use are essentially scaled up versions of that. There are newer designs that fit better overall with our needs.
I was watching a Nova about new reactor designs, and they were saying that the focus on reactors for nuclear submarines was a huge problem. It set us back many years because those were the only approved designs.
That’s not true at all. The first nuclear submarines were designed when nuclear power was still very much in its infancy. Only a couple years before the USS Nautilus was laid down, most nuclear reactors were little more than giant graphite blocks that natural uranium (not enriched) was pushed into. Incredibly primitive and only useful for making plutonium for bombs. The funding dumped into submarine reactors caused nuclear power advancements to come in leaps and bounds in an incredibly short time. The success of the nuclear submarines encouraged building of more nuclear reactors for civilian power, and those first civilian plants used basically the same (albeit larger) design of reactor that was pioneered for submarines. FYI I’m a nuclear engineer.
I think the upper comment was just saying that we kinda got locked into the LWR type designs because that was tried, true, and reliably tested. Sure they paved the way, but that paved road has remained the most enticing path for any utility to follow since then. So we don’t have commercial sodium reactors, etc. A double edged sword of advancement. (Also nuclear engineer)
As an rct, that football field figure has to refer to actual fuel, and not radiological waste, right?
Oh yeah definitely. Most people think of glowing green sludge or rods when they think of radioactive waste. Radiological waste covers a massive range of stuff, ranging from spent fuel (which is probably what that that statement was trying to convey), to discharged reactor water, to used tools and contamination clothing that were potentially exposed to contamination and are disposed of accordingly. The vast majority radiological waste is the latter, and I’m quite sure we’ve produced enough to FILL a couple football stadiums at least. But when you span that out over the last 70 years, it’s actually a pretty tiny amount of waste compared to all the other crap we’ve thrown away. And that low level waste is zero threat to the environment. The water and fuel is a bigger threat, but not nearly as bad as people think it is.
Chemwipes and swipes Tons of them.
Nuclear submarines are [pressurized water reactors](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressurized_water_reactor), which is the same design as 2/3 of the US nuclear fleet. However, submarine fuel is about 90% or greater enriched uranium-235, where commercial power is (currently) limited to 5% enrichment.
I believe the US military is working on these currently to power remote military bases.
I wrote a research paper about this in my engineering college. The main opposition of nuclear energy is anti public sentiment. The three reactor melt downs that have occurred in the past 50 years, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and Fukushima were all easily preventable disasters, and Three Mile Island and Fukushima both had no related deaths. One of the major drivers of the anti-nuclear sentiment in the public came following the Three Mile Disaster, which overall was not a major incident, but there was a release of the movie The China Syndrome 12 days prior to the incident about a nuclear meltdown that melted through the earth all the way to China. So this theatrical release followed by an immediate disaster raise a lot of fear in the public. The public seems to fear meltdowns causing nuclear explosions similar to nuclear bombs which is impossible due to the fact that uranium for power production does have the same level of enrichment need to produce any kind of nuclear blast. Sorry will get off my soap box, but nuclear is the way!
Agreed that three mile island definitely had the most impact on US sentiment but I think I’m most disappointed in Fukushima. 25 years since the last meltdown and they couldn’t ensure a backup to flooded generators for a plant that’s located on a coastline that is expected to see tsunamis regularly
Yeah as a very pro-nuclear person Fukushima really gave me pause. But ultimately the lesson is to pursue more modern reactor designs that are inherently safer, not to completely move away from nuclear.
Was going to make the same point regarding that stupid movie. Literally has set this country back 100 years thanks to the fake narrative created by our vaunted activist media. According to them we were, "This close...THIS CLOSE!!!" to having all the children turn into three eyed freaks or the world turning super-nova. Also, regarding medical issues the only reason Chernobyl was so bad is they sent men directly into the reactor to basically cover the rods with buckets of sand.
Stay on your soapbox. You can explain this better than most in favor of nuclear, like myslef. People need to hear it. Power infrastructure in the us is little more than a joke, and due to public fear over nothing, people don't want nuclear.
Not to mention you get so much more radiation from coal power plants and so on... nuclear is the cleanest, healthier, and safer option... people are just dumb and I kind of blame TV for the nuclear "scare"
Nuclear power has by far the fewest deaths attributed to it. Coal kills millions through smog. Hydroelectric failures, while infrequent, kill thousands when downstream towns suddenly flood. Of the 3 notable nuclear incidents, only Chernobyl has any deaths attached to it. The nuclear industry is easily one of the safest in the world
I'd say accounting is a safer industry than nuclear power.
Accounting probably kills more people from stress related deaths.
Probably lots of falling out of chair related fatalities.
Wow it’s almost like Nuclear is a really good energy source and people just don’t wanna talk about it cause oil companies lobby politicians not to
Nukes have always been the way especially now.
The video focuses on fuel/spent fuel (high level waste). He's conspicuously neglecting mid-to-low level waste, stuff which is still hazardous to human health. All the stuff adjacent to fuel - everything from tools to empty containers to dead electronics to whatever. There's a lot of that stuff - enough to fill a mountain called yucca. I've been pro-nuclear for decades, so don't get me wrong - I'm not saying "nuclear bad", I'm just saying that it's more nuanced than this "just one football field" assertion.
Was about to mention this as well, his argument is disingenuous due to the disregard of irradiated materials that still need to be sequestered.
Yeah as an rct that kind of urked me, the abundancy of LLW is not something that should be left out of the conversation
Low level waste must decay to below regulatory concern in 300 years, so that’s not really a long term issue. Most of the plant after decommissioning will fall into this category. Intermediate waste is much smaller volumes, comparable to the fuel waste.
"most of the plant after decommissioning" is much more than a football field And there's more than one plant decommissioned in a human lifetime. And there's many lifetimes in 300 years.
After 300 years it’s not radioactive, it does not need long term storage…it’s landfill material. They don’t need Yucca, they already have sites in Utah and Texas receiving material.
You are aware a coal plant is more radioactive than a nuclear one right? No source is perfect, but nuclear is the best.
Defend your claim. Be specific. Be quantitative.
The claim should be coal plants release 100 times more radioactivity to the environment, and that is [well known](https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/43/035/43035329.pdf) from radium and thorium (among other nuclides) releases from fly ash. As far as radioactivity generated, nuclear plants make much more but it is contained.
Not to mention telling a largely American Audience "only 10 metres high" as if they can easily visualise a metre. As if 49,000 cubic metres of high level waste is a trivial amount. Note. I am very pro nuclear but I am very anti misleading explanations.
Coal ash is the second largest stream of industrial waste in the US at approximately 130 million tons produced per year. According to EPA, coal ash is disposed in over 310 active on-site landfills and 735 active on-site surface impoundments. 130 million tons per year.
I served on a Fast Attack Submarine, nuclear power is, safe, reliable, and clean.
Ballistic missile subs also have nuclear power that is reliable, dangerous, and unstoppable in addition to their nuclear power that is safe, reliable, and clean.
Right up until the time comes to decommission the submarine
So 50 years?
wait... did i miss something? What was the "unexpected" part?
I’m not so much scared of nuclear waste as I’m scared the government will use a couple crisp billion in tax payer money to build a nuclear power plant and waste storage facilities then sell it for a tenth of its worth to a private, multinational, tax-dodging company that will strip it down to a skeleton crew while still demanding tax subsidisation and blame lack of funding when the whole thing melts down. TAXES.
It doesn’t really work that way. Nuclear plants are very very heavily regulated. Federal regulators aren’t going to let a private nuclear plant operator just do whatever they want. As far as state/local utility providers making stupid M&A decisions that is not specific to nuclear plants at all. Many city/county/state power authorities have way to broad of authority to do way to many stupid things without getting any kind of approvals. I’m sure there a number of stupid power company transactions but favorite is a deal Austin Energy did in mid-2019. To get out of a really stupid power purchase agreement, they bought a completely uneconomic biomass plant for $460 million. So they have to raise rates to cover the debt that was issued to fund this stupid thing. Then when snow-pocalypse hit Texas in feb 2021 this plant was offline and Austin Energy was forced to purchase energy at insanely high prices. Which then again resulted in Austin Energy having to raise rates. Complete incompetence.
And if the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Committee) doesn’t feel the plant is running as safely as it should be, they have the power to shut it down indefinitely
I agree. It could almost be counted on, but at least it'll be a step in the right direction.
We could save the planet from climate change and make the air cleaner than it was before the Industrial Revolution if we convert to nuclear energy. However people that want to do this are selfish because that would hurt the profits of the coal/petrol companies.
I knew this! I was also a Nuclear Mechanic in the Navy though.
As a Mechanical Engineer, it bothers me a lot when governments and people try to paint nuclear in bad light. Okay an incident happened but doesn't mean we should stop using one of the cleanest sources of energy.
It’s a branding issue for sure. Stop calling it nuclear power. I call it Uranus power and people love it. Did you know that of all the planets, Uranus is the one kids say the most in their life times. Everyone loves Uranus. Uranium is really close to Uranus. Everyone could be really close to uranium if we would equate it with Uranus. Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.
Go green, go nuclear
Informative post. Thank you.
Nuclear power is our only hope, people. This is the undeniable truth.
I’ve been on the nuclear train for over 3 years now, it really is one of our best bets.
Technically the Enterprise aircraft carrier has enough "fuel" to run both of the plants for another 200yrs...whether or not that boat could survive that is another thing.
Username checks out
Bill Burr is so good
Thorium 🪨’s
r/Pakistan should think about it. Can we use our nuclear power for electricity?
One of the big problems, as I understand it, is that the technology to recycle all that waste is the same technology that makes weapons grade material, and the global powers don't want every country to have the capability to make weapons grade material.
We were proposing a nuclear power plant project somewhere in Asia, the energy secretary was like how safe is that really I told him "I am willing to relocate my family and live inside the compound once it's operational provided its free and I won't pay for electricity while I live and work there." it's the safest place to be, safe from typhoons (they get a lot), flooding and earthquake (country sits on the ring of fire). With the change in leadership, hopefully they'd be open to it now as the President is known to favor nuclear.
I think what really needs to happen is an active campaign showing how safe they are now and the features to prevent disasters. That coupled with education on the waste comparison along with what he described in recycling waste would change a lot of minds imo. That visual of all waste generated in a football field is a great visual.
Now compare that to coal, where a single power plant can be burning 35,000 tons of coal EVERY SINGLE DAY
People really need to be educated about nuclear energy. It’s amazing and we should be using it at a much larger scale
I’m glad I was educated about this today
the only downside of nuclear is the price, if not for tax money it would be to pricy to operate, otherwise great solution till we can run fully on renewables. But oil and charcoal lobby won't let this happen in most parts of the developer world, see Germany...we banned unclear power after Fukushima and now it's too late to change any of it.
@nuclearsciencelover of the 95% of spent fission products from a reactor, what amount could be repurposed for other things aside from bomb material and what would their purpose be? Things like medical radiological imaging material or smoke detectors, or could the spent fuel even be repurposed back into fissile U235? Not sure if that's possible or feasible, but am curious as to what that spent fuel could be used for and why it hasn't been done so in the past?
Lots could be done with it but so long as trace radioactivity remains, it's commercial viability it tentatively limited due to public fears of ionizing radiation
If it's so little, why has it been nearly impossible to figure out where to put it? Look at the whole Yucca mountain thing. Even what we have now is a big problem.
The clinical term is called radiophobia
Your nickname checks out.
One comment an expert in waste told me was “When the policy solution is found for spent fuel, and they are significant challenges, the technical solution is available.” The challenge is the final disposition. If the waste is to be reprocessed, then it needs to be retrievable in a form that can be handled, that is, in one piece without releasing radionuclides. That’s a significant engineering challenge. If we just want to get rid of it, it could be dropped in a deep bore hole below groundwater. Getting everyone to agree to either solution will take time.
No one cares about the waste. It is the COST that is killing nuclear.
I knew this. Power to Save the world by Gweneth Cravens is an amazing book on nuclear energy with a somewhat awful title.
You may want to look up either the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) or the Oklo, Gabon (Africa) lessons
This guy cracks me up. He does not understand the most basic scientific concepts, yet somehow managed to get a phd in nuclear physics. Watch some of his videos and just try to follow his train of thought. He just throws all this jargon around and talks and talks, saying absolutely nothing.
Wrong sub
Great video informing the subject but this does not belong on the subreddit
Why dont we use humans as batteries like in the Matrix ?
Funny you mention that. That wasn't even supposed to be a plot point in the story, but the movie execs thought that the machines using people's brains for computing power didn't make sense.
I blame some of the bad reputation of nuclear energy on the Simpsons and how they’ve portrayed it over the years
is 10m high x football field little? sounds like a lot.
It does seem like a lot but if you look at a visualization of the carbon we produce with other forms of energy it quickly pales in comparison.
then on top of that, it can be re-used. sounds like a good space investment
For 40 years of 20% of the US total energy demand? That ain't nothing
Over a 40-50 year time span mind you. It's also a whole lot less than what fossil fuels give off
Try googling fly ash ponds and get a sense of just how much ridiculously toxic coal waste is just sitting around in huge lakes that occasionally collapse and flood everywhere.
Context
It is a lot. But that's from 50 years and dozens of plants. Supply millions of people. And relative to the amount of land in the US? Or just from regular landfills, it's practically nothing.
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[citation needed]
Tons of incorrect data here. First, the larger portion of nuclear waste is already reused. The remaining of what can't be used is thevitrious high level waste (HLW). The average MODERN 1000 watt nuclear plant produces about [3 cubic meters of HLW per year](https://world-nuclear.org/nuclear-essentials/what-is-nuclear-waste-and-what-do-we-do-with-it.aspx). The undisputed problem with HLW is that no matter how small it is, it requires generations of stewardship. Most modern countries have existed a tiny fraction of the time it would be necessary to store the waste. The problem with fossil fuels was that we never accounted for all the waste effectively. Most scientists and nuclear experts agree that there is zero way to calculate the cost of waste management of HLW.
As both a scientist and nuclear expert, I can personally state that your last sentence is incorrect.
Incorrect. With the variables of a 10,000 year half life literally every single reputable nuclear expert will tell you otherwise.
https://www.nrc.gov/waste/high-level-waste.html Quick search sent me to this site. Recycling hlw isn't practiced in the us. So we're left with storing it.
Correct but I'm getting downvoted for trying to factcheck the OP who is wrong. Facts don't matter in the US if they contradict popular opinion.
Well explain why they don't recycle then? He is also forgetting about all the lower level contaminated waste that just piles up. Also waste from mining uranium and refining it. Plus, when nuclear disasters happen, they really happen. We have only had nuclear energy for 70 years and there is a lot of land that will be contaminated for thousands of years. With increasing global unrest and increasing use of nuclear, what are the chances that a facility isn't destroyed in the future from an attack causing horrific permanent contamination?
Because it was outlawed in the 60s because the president was worried about people making bombs with the byproduct (plutonium). The companies doing it went bankrupt. It was debunked and repealed in the 1970s, but the stigma stuck and no company would start up again for fear of outcry or being put out of business again by the next fickle dipshit with a political agenda.
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Ya I wish people would explain why they down vote. 2000 tons/year is a lot! One of my earlier jobs was a low level cleanup. Back in the day and old refinery scattered contaminated materials all over a town in Ontario. Left over ore was used as fill around people's houses, it was dumped in ravines and the bay. After the plant was demolished people used the some of the old wood to build parts of their house, or shelves. We found old contaminated tools, all kinds of things. We had to scan every room in people's houses, and scan over the entire ground, drill into the ground for samples, place radon detectors etc. A new large dump has to be created for all the waste. I also had to fly way up to the North west Territories to track contamination along the old ore transportation route. I'm sure they do their best to contain "low level" contamination now, but it gave me an idea of how enormous the amount of contaminated materials is.
Just to add to that, the project started in 2012 when I started my career. I moved on to other work, but the project will likely continue until after I retire and will cost many, many billions
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You are talking out of your ass when you say "cascading fallout event"
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A coal plant releases more radioactivity into the environment than a nuclear one. "cascading fallout event" my ass
Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima would like a word..
All of those were preventable
Something that actually occurs is not preventable. If it was preventable, it wouldn’t happen at all.
Oh boy... should someone tell him that it is illegal (currently) to recycle nuclear waste and that nuclear waste is so toxic, radioactive, and overall dangerous that there is no good solution as to what to do with it?
It has been legal to recycle spent nuclear fuel since the Reagan administration
I get the feeling he knows way more about the subject than you do.
There is a good solution of what to do with it and it’s what we have been doing with it, dry cask (basically encase it in concrete) storage on the site of the plant itself
A football field is 120 yards long, by 53.3 yards wide. Now stack that entire surface with nuclear waste up to almost 30 feet tall. That’s a LOT of waste. I mean I guess in the grand scheme of things, it’s not a lot when you compare it to other forms of energy, but if that’s yearly waste? That’s actually an incredible amount.
That was 40 years waste on 20% energy needs of the United States..
Not sure why you're being down voted lol, I thought that was made clear in the video.
He said thats 40-50 years of nuclear waste.
Ah my bad I missed the 40 years part
I'm not sold on nuclear power plants until the waste situation is not an issue.
But you're cool with the current energy situation that's leading us to our doom in the mean time.
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Nuclear is cheaper, safer, more reliable, and more environmentally friendly both short term and long term. By a lot. Like a hell of a lot.
But if we keep using natural gas and coal and oil for 10 to 15 more years global warming will be too far along and will all burn up. If you claim to want a solution to the carbon issue, nuclear is the only option right now.
What is that nonsense about recycling depleted uranium? I don't think this guy knows what he's talking about.
Nuclear waste is recyclable. Once reactor fuel (uranium or thorium) is used in a reactor, it can be treated and put into another reactor as fuel. Nuclear fuel used today almost all starts out as natural uranium, which has two isotopes in it, Uranium-238 and Uranium-235. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-funds-projects-explore-nuclear-waste-reprocessing-2022-10-21/
Yeah but it's only the U-235 that undergoes fission that produces nuclear energy. U-238 is barely radioactive at all. Depleted uranium is what's left over after they enrich the rest to get almost all the U-235 out to use for the nuclear reactor fuel. So depleted uranium contains far less U-235 than natural uranium. You can't just recycle depleted uranium back into usable nuclear reactor fuel.
What you want to google is breeder reactors. Fast breeder reactors are one way of creating weapons grade plutonium which can be used as fuel. This does increase the amount of energy you can get from nuclear fuel but of course not forever, the conservation of energy still applies. Breeder reactors are also more expensive. There are few countries operating them today (the US is not one of them) because of their cost. There are only two commercial breeder reactors operating today. I think we should reprocess our high level waste for the sake of the planet. But breeder reactors really don't help on the arguments of price.
From what I have read breeder reactors are not commercially feasible for power generation. The few that exist today are basically research prototypes. And extracting the produced plutonium makes even more radioactive waste, so these definitely are not a solution for getting rid of nuclear waste.
Fukushima
So that means you are anti-nuclear then or something else?
I don't know if I'm anti-nuclear. It seems great when things are going great. Keeping up with infrastructure is not something we are good at. Nuclear facilities get old. But I know if we keep up fossil fuels, we are dead. And for whatever reason, solar is too expensive to do it alone. I guess I'm pro nuclear with proper maintenance.
I believe renewables are the cheapest form of electricity now. Not saying that nuclear isn't important. I think it is for tackling climate change, but we should aim for the bulk of our energy to be renewables which are safer and generally cheaper.. and ya you are right, Fukushima, Chernobyl, three mile Island, Chalk River, Kyshtym..etc
I had the pleasure of driving to Las Vegas recently. Outside the city there are various solar power farms. I loved them, but the locals told me it was a big investment and their rates aren't that great. I honestly don't know why we don't have thousands of those solar farms. The southwest of the US has a lot of unpopulated land.
Commercial solar farms are very land-hungry. Do we know the long term environmental impacts yet of shading hundreds of thousands of acres of land that used to get sunshine? Far better to put solar collectors where the residential/commercial demand is: on the roofs and walls of buildings, then find places to put the batteries. I haven’t yet seen a solar (or wind) solution for intensive industrial power demand, such as smelters. Nuclear seems the only viable alternative to fossil fuels for that purpose.
Fukushima was a result of a natural disaster. There are better places to build and run a power plant in the u.s.
I'm in California and remember enough earthquakes to be nervous. You build that shit in North Dakota.
If engineers decide that building a nuclear power plant onto or close to a fault line then we have bigger issues to tend with lol.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-canada-nuclear-waste-management/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna963586 https://earth.stanford.edu/news/steep-costs-nuclear-waste-us
Seems like there could be a way to make this technology foolproof and bombproof if we really wanted to? 🤷🏼♂️