Ooo I actually have a story about these, my dad was an engineer on one of these projects with one of the larger nuclear companies in the US. He was working on their new modular next-gen reactors before the project was axed. They actually had an almost functioning (no-fuel) prototype built for testing about a decade ago now. The idea was they could build it underground or stack them to save space. They also were planned to be fast-breeder reactors or could be transitioned to Thorium to save on fuel costs. Overall the project was super cool, but Fukushima absolutely destroyed it and the one that was sold and planned to be built in Tennessee was cancelled due to public outcry and the company completely pulled out of the nuclear industry and recently went bankrupt. :/
@@alessiofe India and China invested more in new renewable energy in 2020 than nuclear for all of the last decade. Maybe you can market nuclear on Mars, if they didn't see the Fukushima explosions.
Why is public outcry even listened to in for nuclear power. Chernobyl happened because safety was not a concern. Three Mile, again safety was not a concern. Only Fukushima was one where there were sufficient safety systems, but not a lot you can do without backup power.
Steel founderies and Aluminium smelters are high on the list for a small dedicated nuclear power plant. The need to run 24/7 and require copiouse ammounts of electricity. They are the foundation blocks of all engineering and thus of modern sociaty. Also, metals such as steel and aluminium are highly recyclable materials, saves on mining.
Im assuming t people behind this hav never heard of planning permission. No way this would fly, u will hav every nimby in a 20 mi radius comin out of t woodwork.
@@piouswhale Didn't Mr. Westinghouse build the first hydoelectric dam at Niagara / Buffalo ? When I was in the States in '93 we visited Niagara Falls. If I'm not mistaken, Bufallo NY was, and maybe still is, a center of industry.
6:08 I work a lot with silicon carbide (thin film deposition for nanotechnology applications) and I can confirm that SiC is a very stable material. Melting point of >1300C, high hardness (approaching diamond), very good thermal conductivity, but most importantly it’s very etch resistant (wet or dry) and even stable within biological environments. I’ve read papers that mentioned the influence of irradiating SiC with neutrons, might be related to this application. Cheers!
would it be possible to use it to 3D print small reactors? that’s something i’ve been very interested in, i think it has great promise for molten metal reactors
@@madisonbrigman8186 Maybe, but I don’t see how. I make it using plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition, which essentially coats an entire vacuum chamber in a thin film of SiC. So it’s not a very directional process. But perhaps you could design some kind of welding torch that uses silane and methane, which is an interesting thought.
@@theunitednation7672 there is enough thorium and uranium to last the world (running on 100% nuclear) at current power consumption for a little over 4 billion years. this is because uranium is soluble in seawater so as it weathers from rocks it dissolves in rivers. thorium on the other hand, is three times as abundant as uranium and can be found in lots of different rock types throughout the world. given this logic, and using other reactor types than thermal; nuclear fission fuels are just as long lasting as sunlight.
@@theunitednation7672 interesting! one thing i’ve been interested in is the possibility of phytomining sources of thorium. some plants hyper accumulate metals and there are a few that accumulate thorium. although they do this in amounts that are unfortunately uneconomical, with breeding and genetic modification - hopefully we can improve their abilities! it could bring down the cost dramatically over a long enough span of time because thorium is expensive to mine (although we have large enough quantities in rare earth tailings to last the US 100 years).
The fact that these SMR was easy to scale up for an fast source of clean energy, as it already been used for naval use for over 50 years that had the tech already.
Also the CSR of the design make it bigger impact on the environment cost of maintaining and lessen impact on the community it and will serve. For example people may be more for SMR as it take less of an area and has smaller exclusion safety zone.
@@gurumage9555 They will need massive government subsidies from day one to the very end... they will stay wildly uneconomic... and whatabout "modular waste disposal"?
SNR's are seen in submarines and aircraft carriers. They have a long history including "no fault" usage. Having fast burn helps reduce waste as more fuel is consumed. No pressure vessel needed.
@@CA_I Which is why Idaho was chosen for the first test reactor for the US Navy (the SAME reactor that has been powering the Los Angeles-class submamarines for decades). What it comes down to brass tacks - most folks want someone ELSE to make the first step - not them! Most folks are not merely conservative - they are CHICKEN!
@@PGHammer21A it's not about being "chicken"...there are practical reasons why you don't site nuke plants near large urban centers, not the least of which has to do with evacuation plans. When I lived in Kenosha, Wisconsin, our home was with the evacuation zone of the (then operating) Zion Nuclear Plant. While living "near" a nuke plant was not scary, Comm Ed was required to share plans for evacuating the area in case there was a problem at the plant. So every year, we would get a brochure in the mail describing how we would be informed, what to take and what to leave behind, and what roads to take to get out of Dodge. It's one thing to manage an evacuation or shelter-in-place order of a city like Kenosha or Waukegan...Chicago would be unmanageable.
You guys should do a video on the MCR project here in Canada. It’s a $13B refurbishment. Largest clean energy project in North America. Some pretty neat automation/robots are being used in the construction.
@ I think solar and wind power, oh and batteries. Lots and lots of batteries to allow wind and solar to be a viable 24/7/365 energy source for a city or industrial center, thus putting green power on parity with other low carbon tech they are supposed to be cheaper than. Then considering the lifespan of the machine, transmission losses, over building to compensate for seasonal and climatic variations, toxic waste disposal, the price for solar and wind just keeps climbing. But hey it is cheap now due to subsidies and tax breaks and it looks pretty in pictures so it's a better option, right?
I think incinerating trash can be an good alternative power source too. It gets rid of the pollution problem and because a lot of burning trash is burning plastic the toxic fumes have to be filtered out
Soo more nuclear wastes 🗑 ??? What's the point small nuclear power station ? Just made a problem worries . After 20 year's we have hundreds of nuclear wastes 🗑. My question where does the nuclear wastes go ??? Basement ,sea , underground, pointless answer more dangerous than coal
@@joyhouse4625 Nuclear waste is so minimal it's never really a problem outside of fearmongering by coal and oil companies, lol. Compare that to the waste said companies produce and it's like a drop in a bucket.
Thought this was a pretty good 10 minute summary overall, though I think it could’ve stood to have also had A) a mention that Chernobyl’s reactor type was considered dangerous and outdated even in the 80s; and that B) Fukushima was caused by a regulatory failure about its backup coolant power, and other power plant closer to the tsunami without that same failure actually avoided catastrophe. It’s true that SMRs can be passively safe which is even better, but the implication in this script is that the RBMK design was typical and that Fukushima was operating within design bounds, and neither are true. I also think it would’ve been worth mentioning at least the theory that mass-producing these reactors will bring the cost down at the end, although the guy you interviewed is correct that their per-kWh cost is even larger than large plant to begin with. But the idea was never to stay at that price point, it was to try to leverage a different economy of scale - large plant go for the scale of 1-4 large reactors and large turbines, while these hope to gain the scale of manufacturing thousands or millions instead of just dozens. Whether that pans-out is another matter and up for debate, but mentioning the theory would’ve been nice. But like I said, overall I think this is a good 10-minute summarisation of a complex topic.
And, Fukushima showed that it was safe. 3 reaktors burned, but the inclosures held tight, and nobody got hurt from radiation. And that was a dessign from the 1960´s, now we are 2 generations further ahead.
I had no idea that with Fukushima, there was another plant even closer to the tsunami. That should have been talked about more at the time, but I guess it wasn't profitable enough to mention.
I also would have liked a mention of how the increased nuclear energy consumption will affect uranium reserves. As of now, the reserves will only last for about 100 years if I am not mistaken. This, of course, decreases if we start consuming more.
@@alvatoredimarco yeah, most mainstream news sources acted (by omission) as if it was the nearest and first hit, and as if the failure mode Fukushima-2 experienced would’ve happened to any others in the region. But both are false. In fact, there was _more than one_ plant that was closer to the earthquake and the following tsunami - but they all had proper underground cabling running from the backup diesel generators, so their emergency cooling systems functioned perfectly for the duration of the blackout. The earthquake triggered the automatic emergency systems, and because the wires were buried, when the tsunami arrived a little later, nothing went wrong. Fukushima had a long driveshaft attached to the generators’ output which was exposed above the ground!! The tsunami snapped the shaft when it hit, and backup power failed. TEPCO had privately raised with Fukushima that they needed to replace the shaft with underground wiring just like all the other plant using the same design had been built, but they foolishly decided to keep the regulatory action private so as to “avoid causing a panic” among the populace. TEPCO repeatedly asked them to bring their backup power delivery into spec, but because they had already decided not to threaten with public shaming, the plant operator never did. This is part of why I find Fukushima so frustrating - really, that tsunami should’ve been a case study in how safe nuclear power can be when regulators do their job properly! Every other plant that was hit by the wave (IIRC there were, like, 5 or 6? Maybe 7? albeit not all were closer to the earthquake than Fukushima) engaged the countermeasures perfectly, and nothing went wrong with them. But due to TEPCO’s slightly spineless regulatory culture, and because Fukushima’s coolant failure became international news, it instead became a scaremongering flashpoint which led to Germany and Japan deciding to retire all their reactors. It could’ve been a teaching moment about how reliable emergency procedures are, SO LONG as they actually follow the rulebook. News media could’ve hammered home that Fukushima was caused by regulatory failure. But they didn’t, and that heavily influenced public opinion. Of course that’s not to downplay the effects of Fukushima - many workers who brought in emergency coolant water to prevent a Cherbobyl-esque explosion have thyroid problems due to radiation exposure, and were also abused as “equally responsible” by residents who had to evacuate (instead of blaming the management who kept kicking it under the rug). But it does bother me when people act like Another Fukushima is inevitable whenever there’s another earthquake - when in fact the events surrounding that tsunami already disprove it!
The US has been building "small" reactors for naval deployment for literally decades. I find it far more shocking that this experience has NOT been incorporated into small, modular power plants for domestic use than any news that it might finally be happening. About time.
We need these SMRs as soon as possible. Set up a production line right now. Rolls-Royce UK can build them cheaply - one or two for each town or City. Let’s get going with a production line assembly.
The problem with "domestic use" nuclear reactors is both safety and security. I would not want a nuclear meltdown in my literal back yard, because some neighbor decides to save some money on maintenance. And I would not want nuclear materials readily available for every guy with a beard that wants to make a dirty bomb. I would prefer small modular nuclear reactors, deep underground, with proper safety and security measures in place.
The naval core geometries and rod programing (and arrangement) are based on a very highly enriched fuel and restricted space, so refueling only has to be performed a few times over the lifetime of the vessel (more for the early ships and boats, and the cores on the new class of carriers are supposedly good till end of life of the ship). The cost of the fuel and the fact the enrichment is higher than that allowed in civilian plants is one of the biggest reasons the tech doesn't transfer bolt by bolt. Also the physical construction of the navy core fuel assemblies and cooling channels is just way over built for civilian use, think using a Humvee as a daily commuting appliance overbuilt. With the new SMRs the emphasis is really on "walk away" safety and factory production efficiency all while meeting all the industry experience gained in the past 50 or so years of civilian power plant operation. The navy core safety systems are based on the fact the plant is literally sitting in the largest pool of coolant in the world with a highly trained crew using rock solid casualty procedures, where the SMR designs have to consider possible deployment in places where coolant isn't as available and still shut and cool themselves down without operator action or external power sources.
All those coal fired power plants being closed in the US should be replaced with one or two of these. The existing power lines and transformers would be used and thus make it much cheaper and quicker to alter our power mix.
A fallout is impossible from a nuclear reactor.. The mechanism of a nuclear power plant and a nuclear bomb is different. A nuclear reactor is impossible to become similar to a bomb
That's because you're a uranium miner right? If not then maybe you're all for the Lakota indigenous reservation having their creek polluted by uranium mining. Environmental Racism is the only way the nukes have continued thus far, along with the US government "insuring" their safety.
Isn't even really any cheaper based on prices of actually recently built large scale solar and wind farms per produced TWh per year. Not penalizing intermittency, not counting shorter design lifetime (about half or third for windmills and solar panels compared to nuclear plants).
And recycling - what are we going to do with all the composite wings? Burn them 'safely'? Send them to ship-breakers in Bangladesh? I'm sure they will come up with a solar-recycling-tax...
There are currently 2 SMR's being built in Canada that I know of. One in Ontario and one east in New Brunswick, although I'm not 100% sure if they broke ground on the later yet. Regardless, I'm soo happy that the nuclear boogeyman is finally starting to get squashed. The amount of complete nonsense I see from people regarding nuclear sometimes is mind boggling. People actually think spent nuclear fuel is glowing green goo.. it's unreal.
I have never met anyone who thinks spent nuclear fuel is green goo. Since we have 75 years of nuclear reactors producing 10-30 tons of high-level radioactive waste and 50-70 tons of low-level and intermediate-level radioactive waste per year per reactor, we know a lot about it. It is laying around in our backyards, since no one has figured out how to get those boogeymen safely tucked away. We know that spent fuel is over 200 ionic radioactive isotopes with half-lives of less than a second to over a billion years that must be isolated from all life forms for longer than mankind has been in existence. Most of these ionic radioactive elements emitting alpha, beta and gamma radiation did not exist prior to 1940 and are thousands to millions of times more dangerous than any of the naturally occurring radioactive materials (primarily alpha emitters) that existed in our environment prior to nuclear fission. There. Now you have it! This is what we know about spent nuclear fuel. If you disagree with any of what I said, puuulleeeaaase! by all means respond. I will be happy to rub your nose in your unreal perspective on spent nuclear fuel. I am also ready to discuss the unrealistic expectations that you have that SMRs will save the nuclear industry from total collapse. By the way, if those nukies in Canada somehow twist the arms of any of those mine operators to set up one of these SMRs in the boonies, how are you gonna get one of those heavy SOBs in and 80 ton waste canisters out? Picture one of those monsters laying upside down at the bottom of a ravine after the one-lane gravel logging road leading into the mine collapsed under the load. Or will you do what Russia does with their waste and just dump it in the nearest stream, lake or ocean?
@@jackfanning7952 wow that was a whoollleee lotta fear mongering in one long ass paragraph. while I personally don't believe it's green goo, there are CERTAINLY people in less educated areas - even in the US, that do believe it. I've had to correct multiple people, that's what I was referring to. You can take your smug attitude, and shove it squarely up your ass. You aren't about to rub my nose into anything lmao. The fact that you think some isotopes are only 80 years old is cute, there are natural "reactors" all around the world. Africa had one going for millions of years, emitting all the same isotopes as our reactors release now. Also, the newest method of containing the waste involves deep well drilling - tech borrowed from the Oil and Gas industry. They haven't done it yet, but they essentially want to drill like 8 thousand feet deep, then a long way sideways, and fill the hole with spent rods. no 80t containment needed. (also I don't know where you got that arbitrary number from) The hole will take all spent fuel over the lifetime of a reactor, and then they cap the last couple thousand feet with concrete. it's LITERALLY no different than the natural reactors that have happened throughout history. as for the isotopes themselves, Alpha is the "scariest", as it can directly change our DNA, but is also the easiest to stop with it's rapid wavelengths. Just some sheet metal can stop it. Beta is also fairly easy to stop with only a few feet of concrete. Gamma is the hardest to stop, but even then, a few feet of concrete with lead liner and it's stopped also. The worst part of radiation is it's ability to transmute materials by changing it's neutrons or protons. but by burying it thousands of feet deep, it completely removes the risk for exposure. Also no need for containment facilities since it's all done on site of the reactor. granted, a lot of what I just said has NOTHING to do with SMR's, because most of them are self contained reactors that don't get refueled, the reactor itself gets swapped out. and they're fractional amount of nuclear material compared to full production reactors, don't need the kinds of waste solutions full reactors do. The fact of the matter is, nuclear is the future of earth's energy. Whether it still be fission, or we finally master fusion. Suck it up buttercup.
And if im not mistaken, Alberta might be trying to start developing some (one of the few decisions that Jason Kenney has made that is not complete stupidity)
If it wasn't for nuclear weapons, we wouldn't be so stuck with breeder reactors and their waste. Also, USA has had locations and designs for long term safe waste storage, blocked by shortsighted politicians and nimbys.
There’s one being built in Chalk River, Ontario, Canada, supposed to come online in the next few years.. Fun fact, Chalk River is the site of the worlds first nuclear reactor incident when it partially melted down back in 1952.
If areas zoned for industrial and commercial use got their power from SMR's, the burden on the main grid would be significantly reduced. Over time, the success of the SMR's in industrial/commercial parks would then make its way into the residential areas.
Heavy industry needs to consider these. Like I get that these can't be used to fire steel foundry crucibles. But what about the rest of what runs on electricity? Like hydraulics, administrative areas, etc. etc. Let gas melt the metal, but I'm pretty sure a whole bunch of other stuff can run on this. We need to replace the worst polluting power plants, the last of the coil-burners.
Or start building shipping container size passive radiation reactors that have already develop and working. For instance one Russian village bough one from Russian military, buried it on the corner of the field to amp up radiation barriers and it powers whole village with some excess power being produced. Its entirely self contained and adjusted unit that only needs to dug up every 20 years to refuel. Only down side is that it needs to have some load on it constantly, but that is easy enough to solve by pumping excess into grid and having safety load case grid connection is cut by storm etc. Also it might need little extra radiation shielding since soviet engineering, but it works, sadly average person is not allowed to be energy independent around here, that would remove people from grasp of the government.
And after 20 years, it malfunctions, is abandoned, forgotten & left to deteriorate in a cornfield somewhere until it starts leaking radioactive products.
Building 5 to 10mw small nukes would be in runs at a factory which would reduce costs. Plus they can be built in groups of 2 or 4 for larger requirement loads.
@@bradvansteinburg2962 Designs for small modular nuclear reactors have been around since the 1960's. Unless the factory is really remote, connecting to the grid is always going to be far more economical.
By downscaling the size of the reactors, if there ever is a major problem, the aftermath with be smaller too. Unless there is a design flaw, many smaller reactors seems much safer than one big reactor, since the big ones tend to get too expensive to maintain.
Not really true. It's largely dependent on the type of (used) fuel/fission products and how far exactly such a hypothetical accident would go. The actual size of the reactor and amount of fuel says very little how much could be contaminated.
@@lennoxbaumbach390 Nuclear engineer here, this isn't true. More power = more fission = more fuel, a lot more can wrong when you're dealing with gigawatts of energy (especially in water reactors where pressure can be a problem). Specific fuel type doesn't matter if there's a Chernobyl type accident, a high power reactor will spit out more nuclear material and fission products than a smaller one. And that's without considering the safety mechanisms that a lot of these newer designs are using. Things like passive cooling and inherent reactivity feedback go a long way in keeping the fuel safe and sound. Plus designs like molten salt and metal reactors operate at essentially atmospheric pressure.
@pyropulse If they explode violently in a Chernobyl type accident with no containment they do, however the probability of such an accident happening with modern reactors is essentially impossible. That said, my original statement still holds true, a higher power reactor (especially one dealing with high pressures) is technically a greater risk than smaller reactors.
i cant wait to see these start coming out!! Too little people realize that our civilization will never evolve without the use of nuclear energy, and this could be a major start of a new nuclear era!
Cool, just ignore that the US gov (and others) tried all of this before and found it completely unfeasible beyond limited military application. Russia is still scattered with small reactors and their fuel cores delivering doses of murderous radiation to the unfortunate people who discover them and don't know what they are. We already have issues with radioactive materials from medical equipment being dumped in scrap yards or just abandoned in derelict facilities. The systems of control and monitoring something like this would need is ASTRONOMICAL and therefore expensive, which ultimately makes the entire concept completely impractical.
@@voidisyinyangvoidisyinyang885 Short sighted and please see all the data on previous nuclear disasters. Most are minor and Chernobyl was the worst. Old Soviet tech poor safety and communist poop . New tech like this is the future and nuclear energy is superior to all other forms . Solar and Wind are OK where you have natural gas to pick up the slack
I remember learning in high school that 90% (some high number) of the costs associated with building modern day nuclear reactors come from the concrete tower around it. Russia and China were able to pop reactors around the place due to having looser regulations and hence very thin concrete walls (i.e. they recognised that the concrete is obselete and hence only use a concrete facade to appease the public). If only governments had not neglected reactors in the past... None of these "safety concerns" would be in debate and we'd be lot greener for it
damaging, racist as it divides POC communities, and dangerous. We need more public and human based transportation, hell even publicly owned horses would be a better alternative.
Great to see Nuclear Power coming back. Many small are much better than a huge one. Modular makes them more convenient and flexible to operate. Would love to see micro/nano to power Rail Engines as well supply power to Railway grid. They are ideal for such things. Good to see the nuclear waste being used. Hope that the nuclear waste problem will get resolved in environmentally safe way without consuming too much space and at much less cost. Recycling as fuel would be the way but still after that some % needs to go to waste.
I love the smaller ones that look like they could almost fit in a container. I can see the smaller ones as being a safer way of providing electricity to small Northern California towns that are isolated, doing away with the need of long-distance power transmission lines that power companies don't seem to want to maintain anyway. The U.S. is lucky in that solar and wind power both make economic as well as environmental sense but the smaller ones seem viable. I can see Western militaries also using the smaller ones in the near term future. More power is required for the battlefield and if Brigade Combat Teams were set up with electric vehicles the SMRs would enable that process and reduce the Army's logistical tail.
What most people never consider is many countries have been building and using small modular reactors successfully for many decades on ships and boats.
Security is rarely talked about with these small reactors. At present there are 1500 working on guarding the U.K’s 7 nuclear sites - so about 200 per site!
We've had this all before, with the Canadian SLOWPOKE reactor (basement reactor) being proposed for district heating in the Northwest territories and when there was a misunderstanding between the US and Canada on how the US wanted the distant early warning radar stations to be powered, the Canadians designed a passively safe solid state pebble reactor sometimes called "The Nuclear Battery" which was later brought up by first nations representatives as a possible way to power remote communities. The problem is unauthorized access to nuclear materials as there will suddenly be a lot more locations to keep secure which will undoubtedly be remote locations. Such small reactors would benefit from being fabricated in factories and can take passively safe technologies such as molten salt reactors so they would be far safer than existing reactors but where they fail is that there could be a lot of them in locations difficult to secure so it would quickly become impossible to prevent nuclear materials to become available through unofficial means thereby making the risks of dirty bombs or even atomic bombs extremely available (though it can be argued that this risk already exists).
@@bighands69 Sigh, you don't understand math do you. It's a matter of probabilities, let's say there's a 1% chance that enough nuclear material would be stolen from a nuclear power plant (yes the probability should be much lower but this is just to show you the math), that would mean there is a 99% or rather 0.99 chance that there would not be such a loss, therefore for 100 nuclear power plants there would be 0.99^10 which is 90.4% chance that the material won't be stolen which is a 9.6% chance it will be stolen. Expand this to 100 plants and you have 0.99^100 which is a 36.6% chance the material won't be stolen or a 63.4% that the material would be stolen. Also the amount of fissionable material a small reactor may be small but it takes far less to make a dirty bomb, indeed you could probably make hundreds of dirty bombs from the amount of material needed for criticality. Expanding the number of nuclear reactors to thousands by having small reactors does mean the loss of a lot of fissionable material, we've already lost a lot of nuclear material including 17 war heads just with the US military alone, a lot more is believed to have been lost due to the fall of the Soviet Union and not just with weapons and nuclear reactors but the Soviets also used Strontium 90 RTG's to power remote light houses and weather stations and people have died from radiation exposure from trying to salvage metals from such RTG's, note that RTG's have far less nuclear material than even the smallest nuclear reactor and the material they have are not even fissionable as RTG's work by nuclear decay yet they would be plenty for a dirty bomb. The nuclear reactors may only have as little material as possible for criticality but that's plenty for hundreds of dirty bombs and they may have security but if there's even the slightest chance some material could be lost, with thousands of reactors you can be certain they will be lost and they have been lost even with the few reactors we have today, this is simply due to the math.
@@johnwang9914 The amounts of fuel being used is extremely small and removing the fuels from the reactors which have up to 50 year life cycles would be of such a complex nature that the cost would go through the roof. And to obtain enough fuel to then use as part of a thermonuclear detonation system would be very difficult to achieve. So that means shutting down several thousand reactors and then having teams painstakingly remove the materials without shutting down the mini reactors while nobody notices would be like trying to catch a bullet with chopsticks. While technically possible there is no known mathematical probability that could be use to compute such risk. I am afraid for dirty weapons systems nuclear material could be found from easier sources that already exist.
@@bighands69 Boy you're as dense as a doorknob. The amount of fuel needed for a nuclear reactor is greater than that needed for criticality, the amount needed for a dirty bomb is less than the amount needed for criticality therefore no matter how small the fuel for a reactor is, it's still more than enough for dirty bombs. We're also talking about having many much smaller inexpensive reactors instead of the few massive ones we have today. A vast difference in security as you increase the number of them and your point of them being expensive would be moot as the whole point is that they would be inexpensive.
@@bighands69 A nuclear reactor works by fission hence it requires at least critical mass period. A dirty bomb does not require fission as it's about spreading out dangerous radioactive materials broadly so it requires much less material than a nuclear reactor as it does not require a chain reaction. Regardless of how "little" nuclear material is in a nuclear reactor, by the very definition of a nuclear reactor, it would be many times more than needed for dirty bombs period. You are only demonstrating how ignorant you are by sticking with your "there is little nuclear material" argument as so long as it can maintain a fission chain reaction, by definition it is much more than needed for a dirty bomb . Sorry your ignorance does not trump physics.
Nuclear is the greatest gift. It is the energy of the gods. People, get tough and realize they can deliver the greatest in the end. Keep the faith. And stop the complication
It would appear that Nuclear engineering has made it past the majority of its growing pains and will now be our hope of producing clean energy as we move towards a new world, a healthier planet, and a unified people.
Gr8 update on SMR. You missed doubling of efficiency & hence cutting cost by half if waste heat is used. The latest 2 Siberian locations include District heating. All existing plants near population or industry could also produce District Heating... Also consider adding Canadian Pebble Reactor designs to your SMR List.
Nuclear is ideal for District heating, with very large volumes of low grade heat. Also, there is potential for desalination... I'm interested in fast breeders, but know they are proving to be tricky beasts
@@growtocycle6992 Thorium Reactors look really interesting Th233+n 》 Pa233 》U233 not only using cheap abundant Thorium & Waste Spent conventional Reactor fuel but fail safe. The reaction is no self sustainable meaning soon as external Xray source removed reactor passively powers down. CANDU & others can easily be converted to Th Reactors. Another major waste is Cd, the major metal in Cladding of fuel bundles. It can be used 50% dilution once then it's too Frisbee & weak. It should be all used as cathodes in shipping countainer sized NiCad batteries on-site at existing Nuclear Plants. The low radiation would be blocked by the Ni Anodes.
As a first responder that has a area of response for nuclear waste. The are response is very limited but if you had these smr the areas would become greater. Leading to more cost, adding to the expense of smr.
Nuclear subs cost $3.5bn - $7bn. The world's largest container ship costs $190m. Whilst they are different beasts, the nuclear reactor cost is a large compoenent of the total.
Modular reactors would be cheaper than the reactors powering current warships and subs, which shouldn't compare with container ships, since warships and subs are armed to the teeth with very expensive weapon systems. Besides, with diesel and coal off the table with climate change legislation, what else are going to power these ships? Where would you put sails or solar panels atop a container ship?
Just realized this channel is the same company of the B1M!!! Your channels are incredible and inspire me to start a you tube channel. Thank you B1M people. 😊
The last dude that claims that nuclear reactors cost much more than "renewables" can offer any numbers? I mean, the plant itself, sure: it would cost more than some solar panels, but would the cost per kWh produced also be less? I sincerely doubt less.
Very good reporting. Excellent video. I don't subscribe to anthropogenic global warming, but is nice to see a small, decentralized power source like this. Would be good for military bases overseas, for example. All good wishes.
I think security is still an issue. They can make them safer from malfunction, but what about sabotage? It’s easier to defend 1 large plant than numerous small plants spread out over the country.
Exactly what I was thinking. I'm favorable to nuclear energy, and some of the most recent stuff is interesting (thorium reactors, or those that reuse nuclear waste...), but I'm skeptical about the security issues for those small reactors. If I was a terrorist, that would be my first target...
Actually, attacking a nuclear power plant is not very feasible for a terrorist. These reactors are all built to withstand earthquakes, even bombing, etc. It's highly doubtful that a terrorist can actually get a bomb in and even then have a bomb that is big enough to cause a meltdown. What you should really worry about is where we store spent fuel. These places are more vulnerable and it is also easier to cause contamination of the environment because the storage vessels themselves have thinner protection. However, this will remain the same as with bigger reactors as we can store the waste of multiple smaller reactors in one facility, equivalent to one facility per large reactor. On top of that, it is also still possible to build multiple of these smaller reactors on one site, thus requiring the same amount of security as a large reactor, with the added safety in terms of malfunction. You should also keep in mind that if you spread out these reactors, the distance between them and where the electricity is used is lower, reducing power line losses and gaining overall efficiency + a more robust grid, that is less vulnerable to power line cuts.
@@schijtnaam Putin laughs at your tiny, weak terrorists. Putin has already successfully attacked two nuclear power plants (although it appears in one case his soldiers may not have realized they were shelling a nuclear facility... of course, Orcs are naturally dimwitted).
ThorCon’s concept is a little bit different than this. instead of building modular, they build decently large plants in shipyards and then float them to their destination from there. it’s a genius concept because shipbuilding is an extravagantly efficient process!
To date, Thorcon has produced nothing, except the world's most expensive PowerPoint presentation. No prototype, no proof of concept. Thorcon has zero expertise in building anything
I read that France has so many Nuclear Reactors that electricity is so cheap they don't have an off peak price for electricity. And at the same time it is going reduce the number for more renewable energy. Britain is trying to build five new reactors as a stop gap until it get more renewables into commission. What I would like to know is has France had any Nuclear incidents. ?
None that I'm aware of. Germany also shut down their reactors sadly. A LOT of that is still coming from fear over Fukashima, as well as newer fears that reactors could be used against them in times of war..... cause like.. Ukraine. But yeah. France has a large amount of reactors, I wish other countries adopted it earlier.
@@Fenthule Very glad they are closing the German ones. One famous news website asked large companies about extending the lives of the reactors... and all of them said NO... wasn't worth it.
@@1968Christiaan Maybe too soon, that's the issue. They could have kept them running during the renewable transition. Of course, without the Russian escalation we might not be having this discussion as Natural Gas was supposed to be the stop gap.
So excited for the future of nuclear. It is a great source of power and it's sad that so many people are unreasonably scared of it. We've learned great deals from the meltdowns of Chernobyl and have made nuclear incredibly safe. We just need to be mindful of where we place the plants so they are not in the way of natural disasters like Fukushima which there are plenty of locations that are not touched by natural disasters.
Even despite those horrible accidents nuclear is by far the safest form of energy. Fossil fuels have killed 100 *MILLION* people since 1950 alone. And coal power plants produce 300x more waste per year than all nuclear waste ever produced. Not only that but nuclear waste isn’t just haphazardly dumped in these yellow glowing barrels like you think it is, it’s put in glass and ceramic and put into large practically indestructible coffins. And with deep storage projects on the way it will only be even safer.
Except that their concept proposes to place them EVERYWHERE. And if they become cheap, companies could purchase them on their own, and make stupid decisions.
@@k1ll3rcz27 in the 1970's they were saying fusion power is only 10-20 years away. Every decade since they say 10-20 years away, until recently. Now I have heard some scientists saying 20-50 years away. I don't think we will have fusion power plants in our lifetimes.
@@michaelbrininstool4515 And look at what world achieved in those 50 years, scientific and technical progress is fast, so I believe what I said :D But you have good point, in 40 years we can meet here again and one of us says: "See, I told you" :D
@@k1ll3rcz27 Would love them to solve it tomorrow. What has happened in the last 50 years, is they keep finding that they don't have to ability to do it and they try it different ways. They have learned so much about what they don't have the ability to do or don't know. I am very skeptical that it will be solved soon, but would love to be wrong. I was just trying to correct your expectations so you won't be disappointed when/if it takes more than 20 years. I will not be around in 40 years.
Rolls Royce and John Brown Engineering were touting something similar in the mid to late 80’s. A Chinese delegation toured the UK and even a had reception with Michael Hessletine (a minister in Margaret Thatcher’s government) in order to promote the project.
Like the professor pointed out, even if these SMR's become a working reality, they are still going to be too expensive on a per-kilowatt-hour basis compared to larger reactors or even compared to renewables. So even if we overcome the engineering challenges and the public acceptance challenge (both of which are not insignificant), we'll still have a solution that's very costly. But hopefully these SMR's and the lessons learned with them will lead the way to further innovations that bring down the cost while improving safety and portability. But there's also one other really huge concern about these that the video didn't even mention -- what dangers or risks do these pose when in the hands of bad actors? These are still fission reactors after all, and fissile material can be used to make a bomb, including a dirty one. So I guess the ownership and operation of these SMR's would still have to be very heavily controlled (in other words, I doubt we'll see these as countertop appliances in homes like you see in the movies).
There is some loss of efficiency, but reduced cost of manufacturing from serial production and using simpler types of reactors. Also, there are much simpler ways to mass death than trying to crack on of these open to grab the fuel to take it off somewhere secret for tons of processing.
there are radioactive sources in virtually every hospital in america, and some of the worst radiological accidents in foreign nations came from “orphan sources” - or medical equipment that got unaccounted for. the biggest determining factor would have to be its danger in dealing with. radiation makes it hard for terrorists to manipulate the stuff, said radiation of which is the same source of its current costs. thorium reactors produce even higher levels of gamma radiation - making it even harder for bad actors to get their hands on it. overall it’s just not worth it for bad actors, there are much more efficient ways to kill en masse.
nothing necessarily wrong with being more expensive. Depends how they’re factored into the overall energy production mix. Filling in the bumps in renewables is critical - excess renewables you could put into hydrogen or other energy storage, and have nuclear to provide necessary baseload when renewables/storage can’t supply (and run stable state to also produce stored energy/hydrogen continuously). If you had eg 20% of your capacity from SMRs even if they’re more expensive, the overall cost of generation can be low enough when combined with cheaper renewables
Nuclear construction costs only impact the cost of nuclear powered energy until the loans are paid off. No energy source other than hydro has ever been able to produce energy cheaper then a 20 year old nuclear power plant, and nuclear power power plants have useful lifespans of at least 60 years. The "professor" is a known wind and solar industry shill who's made a career out of his ideological opposition to clean nuclear energy. If you attempt to build a 77, 300, 470 MW reactor using the same manufacturing techniques as SMR then yes, the general industry consensus is that costs per MW will be far more expensive. But SMR aren't just designed to be smaller, they're designed to have significantly simpler and more robust cooling systems, will be built in a controlled factory setting, and will be built in a series, which is the best way to bring down costs. Building out at least 1.5-2x the capacity factor plus weeks of storage will have to be replaced multiple times throughout a nuclear reactors 60-100 year lifespan will never be cheaper, which is why costs are skyrocketing in California and Germany.
This prof is ignorant of the basic fact that apples and oranges can't be compared. Solar and wind projects are meant for just 25 years. And that too their efficiency starts decreasing after 10-12 into operation. Their capacity factor is 15-25%. Nuclear plants are meant for more than 60 years (new design are for 100 years and beyond that). The capacity factor of nuclear is 4.5 times more than that of solar. Considering it, nuclear costing 10.8 times more than solar on per MW basis is still cheaper than solar. PS: solar would become even more costly if the cost of battery storage required to make solar a round the clock source is included.
True but it’s not just capacity factor that gives the advantage. Nuclear is scheduled, one can choose when it shuts down for days weeks months for refueling, by the individual reactor. That schedule is not set by the weather, day/night, winter/summer. Solar by contrast flips off over an entire hemisphere of the planet, every day. Wind too, over a large area, for days or a week, all wind power gone. In this way Nuclear is infinitely better, not 4x better.
I Totally want one B1M!!! 😎💪👍😀👌 Great great video again, you guys are always on point. Could you please do a story on the Red Bull F1's new engine development complex? Kind regards Ben from NZ 😉😎💪
Can modular reactor design be extended to chemical processes? For example, can a modular plant system be installed near a wellhead that would be typically out of range from conventional pipeline systems in the oil and gas industry?
I wish to god himself we get way more nuclear energy. its safe if handled carefully and it has a VAST sorts and areas of configurations. from Huge reactors supplying whole countrys to little reactors to supply a complete house. or Town I hope the EU/USA/Asia will push this through and destroys the opposition and critics!
Over its lifetime nuclear is actually pretty cheap, and these are going to drive the cost down further. Currently, reactors are built bespoke. SMRs are intended to be mass produced dropping the costs significantly
@@armorclasshero2103 Tell the navy their reactors haven’t been tested, and the first civilian design is a PWR with a site that should be operational in 2-3 years. Other designs are further out. However, none of that really matters to how they’re going to be built
The thing that I find iffy with these are the risk of much worse inspections and checks. Nuclear should have rigid and impartial oversight. Accidents in reactors comes from cutting corners/costs.
@@kokofan50 huh? We're probably not from the same country so what do you mean/how are the current regulations about nuclear reactors "over the top". Just look at the last big accedent, Fukoshima. They had been getting faults on their preparidness and they didn't fix it(their backup generators in the cellar) even though regulators had issue with that. I do want to be clear that I'm well aware that nuclear reactors isn't near as "scary" as many believe, it's really a boon for mankind and we'll most likely need it for as long as we figure fusion reactors out. But it's not something to take lightly either. That's why there's need to be rigid regulation for it.
Do these reactors provide reliable power in war, natural disasters or terrorist attacks, or would they make potential targets or add to the impact of disaster ? What if a production facility or pipeline gets struck or the earth by a major solar-flare, crashing electronics ? Same goes for a hydrogen power-infrastructure by the way, and H2 is a greenhouse gas as well as explosive. All in the spirit of positive thinking 🙂
Reliable power in war or terrorism: Yes, more so than renewables which require large amounts of transmission and have many fail points. Also, generally nation to nation warfare avoids population centers, whereas fields of power generation with low population are reasonable targets. Production facility: There are no pipe lines. Production facility is a low concern. Uranium enrichment facilities are a risk of having material stolen but materials are never piled in critical configuration, so they will never propegate a reaction. But more importantly, many of these designs (both thorium and Uranium) produce fuel from Natural Uranium within the generator by breeding more fissionable isotopes. Solar flares are like giant radio waves, which means the size of your antenna is very important. In previous MCEs, teleagram wires caught fire and people on recievers were shocked. Renewables = large amount of transmission, which means massive amounts of wires and more antenna. Overall the renewable infrastructure is more susceptible. Solar pannels in particular might be hit hard by back current. I wouldn't worry about H2 as a great house gas, it will oxidize very quickly to water.
Nuclear is typically the last power source to shut down. Reactors are refueled once every so many years, and they’re inside massive containment buildings that protect them from everything but a nuclear warhead.
To be fair we have explosive chemical / oil plants all over the place; there are already pre-established procedures in place for explosive plants. Besides, I would honestly argue that a small modular nuclear plant melting down can be dealt with so much more easily compared to the a bigger plant. The amount of fission material available is smaller, you can more easily access and remove the module compared to cooling down something like Fukushima.
Oil and hydro are also abysmal in the face of military action (and this has been demonstrated in real life). From this perspective, distributing power generation rather than centralising it will almost certainly be a good plan, though I have to say that once people have decided that their _goal_ is to kill people and destroy the environment, you have a problem any way you slice it. I'm not sure I understand your point about hydrogen, though. It burns well (to produce water), but it's not explosive in itself. If I had to make a list of chemicals I don't want to live with, hydrogen is not high on the list at all.
@@stephenspackman5573 Hydrogen is highly explosive and prone to leaking and damaging it's storage vessels. It's the most energy dense chemical by mass. I agree with everything else you said, although I think a mix of centralized and easy to protect and decentralized and easy to lose is the best overall format.
While SMR seem like a good idea, I have not seen any real world numbers that say the are economically feasible compared to the alternatives. The best use may be to build enough SMRs of the type that can be use the waist material from conventional large reactors. At least that way you get some power and get rid of the most troublesome nuclear waist.
@@CA_I A lot of new SMRs and MSR designs can use the waist from today's reactors and the resulting waist has a much shorter half life. Those that look at the data would recognize this as a potential solution to nuclear waist. All you really want is for it to decay to the level of radiation that the original fuel had then it is easy to deal with.
@@armorclasshero2103 NO, that is what the current reactors do. The new generation of small reactors is supposed to be able to take the waist from current reactors (including the stuff that you use to make bombs), use it as fuel and produce a less radioactive waist. The basis of the design for the reactors that have been used for the past 50 years was selected (over a thorium reactor) because the by product of the waist was plutonium, which was wanted for bomb making in the 1950's and 1960's.
@@davesutherland1864 newer reactors recycle waste by enriching that waste. just like when you recycle bottles or cans you have to input some new so-called "virgin" material to bring up the overall reactivity of the fuel. that's just how entropy works. that is by definition creating new bomb-making material.
How often has that happened? How many people have died from reactor problems since the first plant was built? Less than 10,000. How many people have died from fossil fuels since the 1800s? Tens of millions or more.
First thing to comes in my mind when i hear nuclear power is: cheap, clean and safe energy. Ramana saying about costs, that SMR are much more expensive than traditional reactors. This is a new technology, it's always much more expensive at the beginning. Anyone remembers the costs of normal solar panel about a 10-15 years ago? They were cost a small fortune. Now, they are really cheap, but still not as effective as nuclear power. Nuclear power, and nuclear fusion are the future, not wind or sun.
There's one being built here in Canada already with another planned. Likely still need a bit more time for things to catch on, but they are certainly improving.
First SMRs are getting built in Romania in partnership with the US company. The government has already found (and I think approved) the location where they will be built.
Sounds like a great backup when there is not enough wind or solar for a few days. Sure wind and solar are low cost when they work but we also need a backup for those days to maybe even weeks where we don't have enough. I would argue you'd need to compare this to alternative storage like batteries and hydrogen (in places where pumped hydro isn't an option). Either we need way more solar and wind so that we can store that on the good days or we need these. Or do we just create enough grid interconnects that we can distribute energy over entire continents, making local fluctuations less relevant?
I think your question frames to many things as dichotomies. Wide scale transmission is really essential to renewables, particularly wind where you can't be sure of much more then averages and you need to diversify your source for averages to work. Solar is either on a roof, where it makes sense to have on site storage to provide greater energy security, or is located far away from the user in a desert or on a reservoir and so transmission is needed. And in any case, longer term storage, and enough to cope with power lines being damaged, is needed. Renewables will likely come in with cheaper electrical costs in some places, but in many cases Nuclear will be the lower cost if we allow an industry to form. And some process, like industrial heat and steam, are much more suitable for nuclear. A strong system shouldn't choose between one but allow the development of the lowest cost energy source.
A huge amount of effort has been put into the PBMR (Pebble Bed Modular Reactor) concept by the Germans and South Africans. Maybe worth a look and consulting for gaining IP?
Mini reactors but the complex looks equally as big. Wave technology is by far one of the best technologies to boost constant power & predictable & reliable & EASY to construct unlike wind.
If the entire planet used SMRs, there would only be a few tons of waste created annually, compared to gigatons from fossil fuels, and many of the designs can burn our stock of spent fuel.
Not if you stop mining uranium first! You do mine uranium correct - along with the madman who created this vid? Or if you don't both mine uranium then maybe you all can stop making strange speculations about the nuclear waste.
The SSRW is LFTR. Designed in the 60s for nuclear powered aircraft. It uses a Thorium fuel cycle but can burn waste fuel. This is what everyone should have invested in decades ago instead of renewables. Not just for earth, but it would revolutionize space travel.
Just my opinion. I think the only way we see this stuff in the United States is political. We need to increase the size of the nuclear regulatory agency and get our politicians on board with revamping nuclear regulatory policies and law. It doesn't matter how safe they make these things, if they can't clear the red tape it's vaporware.
I think your biggest obstacle is money, not red tape or politics. They are too expensive and affect a whole series of markets. Would you rather try to sell a house with a turbine / solar farm 1 KM away or a nuclear reactor. What protection do citizens or investors have if one of them leaks into the water table... if the company who buys it goes insolvent, who has to look after your modular reactor ?
@@1968Christiaan going by the history, there is zero protection from water leakage. the United States won't even acknowledge that nuclear leakage is a source of cancer for the leaks that have already happened.
An exciting direction on power generation. I just can't help to think about the Undecided channel because they already talked about it in detail and the background music.
Canada too. And for similar reasons, smaller communities FARR away from others. We'd use them up north, you guys would probably use em in the central area of that giant landmass of yours lol
An area of nuclear power which could be useful for reactors this size is to create the high level of energy for desalination plants to create fresh water. As this will be a critical resource as temperature spikes etc in the future which could lead to water shortages. It would also be good to store and be an export for countries with famine or similar issues.
I was talking with a Georgia Power engineer and inquired about the big delay and cost overrun and apparently it was due to the large concrete pad being poured and set out of spec. It was
Your skeptic at around 9:00 doesn't seem to be taking into account of economies of scale from production volume. Plus, the production process can include a centralized certification and quality assurance process at the end. Again with the failsafe contingencies: each scenario posed and question solved is solved across all units of that design. Building these guys in a factory has the potential to drop the the capital expenditures by a significant amount, I think.
First, in nuclear, everything has to be built according to spec.. If not, then it will not meet the safety requirements. Second, I think your Georgia Power engineer is blowing Smoke up your u no what. Here is his CEO explaining the latest delays from 6 months ago. Below is the Vogtle Project Management's answer for the latest delays: Southern Co. yesterday announced another delay for its long-troubled nuclear construction project in Georgia, edging its costs closer to the $30 billion mark. The setback could now push the startup date for Plant Vogtle’s first reactor until early 2023 and move the date for the second one to later that year. Plant Vogtle’s latest move highlights the nuclear industry’s chief troubles with building large, baseload reactors: safety and cost. To be clear, Southern executives have blamed this new hiccup on paperwork, saying that workers were gathering it to send to federal safety regulators and noticed critical inspection records were missing or incomplete. The pile of missing or incomplete documents added up to a delay of three to six months, Southern said. That additional time is costing $920 million. “We’re a little frustrated with the latest developments,” Southern Co. CEO Tom Fanning talked of “great momentum” at the construction site since November. But workers realized “tens of thousands” of critical documents were missing, leading to a three-month backlog. “We’re fixing that part of the ‘paper’ process,” he told E&E News. The people I know say he is lying. They were supposed to x-ray critical welds and perform performance tests of critical equipment and they just did not do it. Sure its missing n=because you did not do it. And this guy is the CEO of a $30 billion dollar project.
@@louishermann7676 Yes I understand that but Southern Company has built and operated nuclear power plants since the 1970s. and I call BS on the < 1/32 too thin excuse. You may want to ask him about "losing" thousands of build records. I know many people that work there and they say it is an out of control zoo. What people don't understand is that you are not building a Walmart or Amazon warehouse. If a nuclear plant is to be safe, it must be built as designed. No just close, not sorta, not does it really matter, but EXACTLY as designed. Example: At the MOX Facility, they contracted with a U.S. steel mill for rebar for a critical concrete pour. The purchase spec on the rebar was specific since it was part of a safety system and they paid a premium ($$) for the specific steel. When the rebar arrived, and the workers were installing it they found that the rebars were brittle and snapped when bent for installation. Hell, rebar I buy at home depo can be bent without breaking. That steel mill just sent them some crap they had laying around and pocketed the $$$. The facility did not have time to fight the mill and just paid them and had another mil produce the rebar but this time they inspected it at the mill before they would approve the shipment. That is an example why nuclear cost so much and takes so long. It is the site project management, suppliers and construction craft that are the problem. But some people like to blame the greenies, liberals, the media, politicians, or the NRC and because of that, nothing will ever change.
Thats debatable, I think a lot of the hype is just that the technology is newer. They do appear to be promising, particularly in a country like India with limited access to Uranium, but Uranium breeders can reach just as high an efficiency and the technology is better understood.
Thorium reactors are pretty much the same as MSRs, just using different fuel and processes. I do love the idea of using Thorium, but it's still got some kinks. the part of it I love most is the potential for creating nuclear medicine. I've heard them theorized as smartbombs for cancer. attach it to something that seeks out the cancer cells, so the concentrated radiation blasts the tumor, then decays and is no longer radioactive. But again, we're not ready for that tech yet - and the public outcry over sticking radioactive material into the body would be pretty strong I imagine still lol
Thorium has a lot of buzz, but I think they don’t have a lot of advantages over uranium reactors. Molten salt reactors in general (including Uranium ones) have a lot of potential and I hope their development continues
The SMRs are the nuclear equivalent of what CPV is doing with NG and gray-water-cooled steam reactors. CPV uses natural gas and treated wastewater - traditional steam power plants (low-draw or even no-draw steam generation - the latter means no touching local aquifers at all) Think of a baby reactor that uses gray-water for steam from wastewater to generate steam in a no-draw process - this is possible now.
The US army experimented with pop up reactors. The 3 scientists working on one of the first ones were all brutlaly killed when it exploded, one was even pinned into the celing by a control rod, his body was beyond unrecognizable as a stain, the person next to him wasnt much better, the last one was a bit farther away and died shortly after the surrounding troops entered to see what happened. All that damage within the span of about 0.1 seconds
What else? There’s only one such incident in US military history, none in commercial power. Yet coal gas oil accidents kill, burn, explode, incinerate people all the time . Oil train in Quebec burns down an entire town. Should I talk here about the burned dead bodies? No, ghoul is not my thing. Fireball from Connecticut gas plant explosion goes a mile in the air. On and on. Then there’s the billion tons of crap oil gas coal toss in the air each year. But oh no, your job is to talk about the *3* guys tragically killed 60 years ago in a military accident.
Another way to look at this, spreading power generation/supply _out_ and having the ability to make that output either more or less dense as the population or industry requires makes the grid a lot more resilient. In case of disaster, only those generators in affected zones will go offline - the rest of 'the grid' wouldn't be affected. 'The grid' wouldn't exist any more if these were installed all over as needed and that may turn out to be their biggest hurdle. It would be a lot more difficult for a government to turn off everyone's power in one go.
When has a government ever intentionally turned off everyone's power, rather than examples like Texas where a capitalist obsession had built a system that punishes the last generator standing and results in producers not producing at times of high demand and also cripplingly large debts for low-income households who couldn't avoid using electricity during incidents due to inadequate home insulation.
SMR cost per kWH is high, yes but that's only at the beginning of development that it is like all new Nuclear Reactor Tech. Once you stream line and have production lines of SMRs the price drops significantly which is the fundamental point of doing SMRs in the first place.
Simple answer without any facts. Nuclear has NEVER in the last 70 years become less expensive as we build more....NEVER! This is from the Des Moines Register an ultra conservative newspaper concerning the only Small Modular Reactor (SMR) project in the U.S. today. In 2013, the Wall Street firm Lazard estimated that the cost of generating electricity at a new nuclear plant in the United States will be between $86 and $122 per megawatt-hour. Last November, Lazard estimated that the corresponding cost will be between $131 and $204 per megawatt-hour based upon the 4 recent new nuclear projects in the U.S. . During the same eight years, renewables have plummeted in cost, and the 2021 estimates of electricity from newly constructed utility-scale solar and wind plants range between $26 and $50 per megawatt-hour. Nuclear power is simply not economically competitive. SMRs will be even less competitive. Building and operating SMRs will cost more than large reactors for each unit (megawatt) of generation capacity. A reactor that generates five times as much power will not require five times as much concrete or five times as many workers. This makes electricity from small reactors more expensive; many of the original small reactors built in the United States were financially uncompetitive and shut down early. The estimated cost of constructing a plant with 600 megawatts of electricity from NuScale SMRs, arguably the design closest to deployment in the United States, was originally advertised as costing $1 billion but upon requesting actual bids from engineering firms, increased to $6.1 billion in 2020. Given inflation and other cost constraints that cost today can only be expected to be significantly higher. The cost was so high that ten members of Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems canceled their contracts. NuScale then changed its proposed plant configuration to 6 fewer reactors but increased each reactor output from 50 Mw to 77 Mw costing at total of $5.3 billion. The NRC just last week approved the construction of the 50 Mw design but now will have to start the review process all over given the switch to a 77 Mw design. For each kilowatt of electrical generation capacity, that estimate is around 80% more than the per-kilowatt cost of the Vogtle project in Georgia - before its cost exploded from $14 billion to over $30 billion. Based on the historical experience with nuclear reactor construction, SMRs are very likely to cost much more than initially expected. And they now have delayed the project start until 2025 in an attempt to find more backers. All this before the inevitable setbacks that will occur once construction starts.
Ooo I actually have a story about these, my dad was an engineer on one of these projects with one of the larger nuclear companies in the US. He was working on their new modular next-gen reactors before the project was axed. They actually had an almost functioning (no-fuel) prototype built for testing about a decade ago now. The idea was they could build it underground or stack them to save space. They also were planned to be fast-breeder reactors or could be transitioned to Thorium to save on fuel costs. Overall the project was super cool, but Fukushima absolutely destroyed it and the one that was sold and planned to be built in Tennessee was cancelled due to public outcry and the company completely pulled out of the nuclear industry and recently went bankrupt. :/
Should have tried to sell it in a different market like India or China.
I hope we come around to except them until we figure out fusion.
@@alessiofe India and China invested more in new renewable energy in 2020 than nuclear for all of the last decade. Maybe you can market nuclear on Mars, if they didn't see the Fukushima explosions.
America will fall behind the rest of the world with these luddites and ignorant government leaders. ITS OVER
Why is public outcry even listened to in for nuclear power. Chernobyl happened because safety was not a concern. Three Mile, again safety was not a concern. Only Fukushima was one where there were sufficient safety systems, but not a lot you can do without backup power.
Steel founderies and Aluminium smelters are high on the list for a small dedicated nuclear power plant. The need to run 24/7 and require copiouse ammounts of electricity. They are the foundation blocks of all engineering and thus of modern sociaty. Also, metals such as steel and aluminium are highly recyclable materials, saves on mining.
Im assuming t people behind this hav never heard of planning permission. No way this would fly, u will hav every nimby in a 20 mi radius comin out of t woodwork.
Yep. You can only smelt Auminum properly when electricity is below a certain price. There was a refinery in Niagara Falls. Unsure if its still there.
Aluminum*
@@piouswhale Didn't Mr. Westinghouse build the first hydoelectric dam at Niagara / Buffalo ?
When I was in the States in '93 we visited Niagara Falls. If I'm not mistaken, Bufallo NY was, and maybe still is, a center of industry.
@@piouswhale Don't be a prick*
6:08 I work a lot with silicon carbide (thin film deposition for nanotechnology applications) and I can confirm that SiC is a very stable material. Melting point of >1300C, high hardness (approaching diamond), very good thermal conductivity, but most importantly it’s very etch resistant (wet or dry) and even stable within biological environments. I’ve read papers that mentioned the influence of irradiating SiC with neutrons, might be related to this application. Cheers!
would it be possible to use it to 3D print small reactors? that’s something i’ve been very interested in, i think it has great promise for molten metal reactors
@@madisonbrigman8186 Maybe, but I don’t see how. I make it using plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition, which essentially coats an entire vacuum chamber in a thin film of SiC. So it’s not a very directional process. But perhaps you could design some kind of welding torch that uses silane and methane, which is an interesting thought.
@@theunitednation7672 think there is more than 100 years worth and then there is also thorium too.
@@theunitednation7672 there is enough thorium and uranium to last the world (running on 100% nuclear) at current power consumption for a little over 4 billion years. this is because uranium is soluble in seawater so as it weathers from rocks it dissolves in rivers. thorium on the other hand, is three times as abundant as uranium and can be found in lots of different rock types throughout the world. given this logic, and using other reactor types than thermal; nuclear fission fuels are just as long lasting as sunlight.
@@theunitednation7672 interesting! one thing i’ve been interested in is the possibility of phytomining sources of thorium. some plants hyper accumulate metals and there are a few that accumulate thorium. although they do this in amounts that are unfortunately uneconomical, with breeding and genetic modification - hopefully we can improve their abilities! it could bring down the cost dramatically over a long enough span of time because thorium is expensive to mine (although we have large enough quantities in rare earth tailings to last the US 100 years).
The fact that these SMR was easy to scale up for an fast source of clean energy, as it already been used for naval use for over 50 years that had the tech already.
But they are still more expensive then other energy and still not in production
@@paxundpeace9970 let's give it time, they'll be more widespread soon.
Also the CSR of the design make it bigger impact on the environment cost of maintaining and lessen impact on the community it and will serve. For example people may be more for SMR as it take less of an area and has smaller exclusion safety zone.
@@gurumage9555 They will need massive government subsidies from day one to the very end... they will stay wildly uneconomic... and whatabout "modular waste disposal"?
Getting away from fast breeders and towards e.g. Thorium cycle reactors would help with both the waste problem and the weapons proliferation problem.
It's always great watching a tomorrow's build video while having lunch.
Why do i feel like the events from Fallout start to show up in the real world
yes sir
Next to the electric transformers around town we need these 😂 .
" oops a transformer blew, guess that part of town isnt useful anymore ! " .
though i was the only one to see there videos while having launch
SNR's are seen in submarines and aircraft carriers. They have a long history including "no fault" usage. Having fast burn helps reduce waste as more fuel is consumed. No pressure vessel needed.
Yes, but they require highly enriched fuel don't they, who in their right mind would put any nuclear reactor in an urban area.
@@CA_I Which is why Idaho was chosen for the first test reactor for the US Navy (the SAME reactor that has been powering the Los Angeles-class submamarines for decades). What it comes down to brass tacks - most folks want someone ELSE to make the first step - not them! Most folks are not merely conservative - they are CHICKEN!
@@PGHammer21A it's not about being "chicken"...there are practical reasons why you don't site nuke plants near large urban centers, not the least of which has to do with evacuation plans.
When I lived in Kenosha, Wisconsin, our home was with the evacuation zone of the (then operating) Zion Nuclear Plant. While living "near" a nuke plant was not scary, Comm Ed was required to share plans for evacuating the area in case there was a problem at the plant.
So every year, we would get a brochure in the mail describing how we would be informed, what to take and what to leave behind, and what roads to take to get out of Dodge.
It's one thing to manage an evacuation or shelter-in-place order of a city like Kenosha or Waukegan...Chicago would be unmanageable.
@@CA_I That still means they are not doing their jobs. If you're unable to do your job, don't take it.
@@MikeB3542 The largest nuclear power plant in the USA is in one of the largest metropolitan cities in the USA. Palo Verde, just outside Phoenix.
You guys should do a video on the MCR project here in Canada. It’s a $13B refurbishment. Largest clean energy project in North America. Some pretty neat automation/robots are being used in the construction.
Nuclear energy has never been MORE critically important than it is now!
Countries need to start on these projects immediately!
@ Because it is the most expensive generation of electricity and there are better options now.
@ I think solar and wind power, oh and batteries. Lots and lots of batteries to allow wind and solar to be a viable 24/7/365 energy source for a city or industrial center, thus putting green power on parity with other low carbon tech they are supposed to be cheaper than. Then considering the lifespan of the machine, transmission losses, over building to compensate for seasonal and climatic variations, toxic waste disposal, the price for solar and wind just keeps climbing. But hey it is cheap now due to subsidies and tax breaks and it looks pretty in pictures so it's a better option, right?
@@anydaynow01 even discounting subsidies, nuclear plants are over 20x more expensive both in terms of carbon footprint and finances cradle to grave.
Always keen on optional power sources we can use.
I think incinerating trash can be an good alternative power source too. It gets rid of the pollution problem and because a lot of burning trash is burning plastic the toxic fumes have to be filtered out
nuclear is the way to go for most power.
People dream of having 1 under da f bed.
Soo more nuclear wastes 🗑 ??? What's the point small nuclear power station ? Just made a problem worries . After 20 year's we have hundreds of nuclear wastes 🗑. My question where does the nuclear wastes go ??? Basement ,sea , underground, pointless answer more dangerous than coal
@@joyhouse4625 Nuclear waste is so minimal it's never really a problem outside of fearmongering by coal and oil companies, lol. Compare that to the waste said companies produce and it's like a drop in a bucket.
Thought this was a pretty good 10 minute summary overall, though I think it could’ve stood to have also had A) a mention that Chernobyl’s reactor type was considered dangerous and outdated even in the 80s; and that B) Fukushima was caused by a regulatory failure about its backup coolant power, and other power plant closer to the tsunami without that same failure actually avoided catastrophe.
It’s true that SMRs can be passively safe which is even better, but the implication in this script is that the RBMK design was typical and that Fukushima was operating within design bounds, and neither are true.
I also think it would’ve been worth mentioning at least the theory that mass-producing these reactors will bring the cost down at the end, although the guy you interviewed is correct that their per-kWh cost is even larger than large plant to begin with. But the idea was never to stay at that price point, it was to try to leverage a different economy of scale - large plant go for the scale of 1-4 large reactors and large turbines, while these hope to gain the scale of manufacturing thousands or millions instead of just dozens. Whether that pans-out is another matter and up for debate, but mentioning the theory would’ve been nice.
But like I said, overall I think this is a good 10-minute summarisation of a complex topic.
And, Fukushima showed that it was safe. 3 reaktors burned, but the inclosures held tight, and nobody got hurt from radiation. And that was a dessign from the 1960´s, now we are 2 generations further ahead.
@@noahwail2444 true
I had no idea that with Fukushima, there was another plant even closer to the tsunami. That should have been talked about more at the time, but I guess it wasn't profitable enough to mention.
I also would have liked a mention of how the increased nuclear energy consumption will affect uranium reserves. As of now, the reserves will only last for about 100 years if I am not mistaken. This, of course, decreases if we start consuming more.
@@alvatoredimarco yeah, most mainstream news sources acted (by omission) as if it was the nearest and first hit, and as if the failure mode Fukushima-2 experienced would’ve happened to any others in the region. But both are false.
In fact, there was _more than one_ plant that was closer to the earthquake and the following tsunami - but they all had proper underground cabling running from the backup diesel generators, so their emergency cooling systems functioned perfectly for the duration of the blackout. The earthquake triggered the automatic emergency systems, and because the wires were buried, when the tsunami arrived a little later, nothing went wrong.
Fukushima had a long driveshaft attached to the generators’ output which was exposed above the ground!! The tsunami snapped the shaft when it hit, and backup power failed.
TEPCO had privately raised with Fukushima that they needed to replace the shaft with underground wiring just like all the other plant using the same design had been built, but they foolishly decided to keep the regulatory action private so as to “avoid causing a panic” among the populace. TEPCO repeatedly asked them to bring their backup power delivery into spec, but because they had already decided not to threaten with public shaming, the plant operator never did.
This is part of why I find Fukushima so frustrating - really, that tsunami should’ve been a case study in how safe nuclear power can be when regulators do their job properly! Every other plant that was hit by the wave (IIRC there were, like, 5 or 6? Maybe 7? albeit not all were closer to the earthquake than Fukushima) engaged the countermeasures perfectly, and nothing went wrong with them.
But due to TEPCO’s slightly spineless regulatory culture, and because Fukushima’s coolant failure became international news, it instead became a scaremongering flashpoint which led to Germany and Japan deciding to retire all their reactors. It could’ve been a teaching moment about how reliable emergency procedures are, SO LONG as they actually follow the rulebook. News media could’ve hammered home that Fukushima was caused by regulatory failure. But they didn’t, and that heavily influenced public opinion.
Of course that’s not to downplay the effects of Fukushima - many workers who brought in emergency coolant water to prevent a Cherbobyl-esque explosion have thyroid problems due to radiation exposure, and were also abused as “equally responsible” by residents who had to evacuate (instead of blaming the management who kept kicking it under the rug). But it does bother me when people act like Another Fukushima is inevitable whenever there’s another earthquake - when in fact the events surrounding that tsunami already disprove it!
The US has been building "small" reactors for naval deployment for literally decades. I find it far more shocking that this experience has NOT been incorporated into small, modular power plants for domestic use than any news that it might finally be happening. About time.
For military use, cost per megawatt is not a concern.
Much of the tech is classified for national security reasons.
We need these SMRs as soon as possible. Set up a production line right now. Rolls-Royce UK can build them cheaply - one or two for each town or City. Let’s get going with a production line assembly.
The problem with "domestic use" nuclear reactors is both safety and security. I would not want a nuclear meltdown in my literal back yard, because some neighbor decides to save some money on maintenance. And I would not want nuclear materials readily available for every guy with a beard that wants to make a dirty bomb.
I would prefer small modular nuclear reactors, deep underground, with proper safety and security measures in place.
The naval core geometries and rod programing (and arrangement) are based on a very highly enriched fuel and restricted space, so refueling only has to be performed a few times over the lifetime of the vessel (more for the early ships and boats, and the cores on the new class of carriers are supposedly good till end of life of the ship). The cost of the fuel and the fact the enrichment is higher than that allowed in civilian plants is one of the biggest reasons the tech doesn't transfer bolt by bolt. Also the physical construction of the navy core fuel assemblies and cooling channels is just way over built for civilian use, think using a Humvee as a daily commuting appliance overbuilt.
With the new SMRs the emphasis is really on "walk away" safety and factory production efficiency all while meeting all the industry experience gained in the past 50 or so years of civilian power plant operation. The navy core safety systems are based on the fact the plant is literally sitting in the largest pool of coolant in the world with a highly trained crew using rock solid casualty procedures, where the SMR designs have to consider possible deployment in places where coolant isn't as available and still shut and cool themselves down without operator action or external power sources.
Big fan of what Nuscale is developing.
All those coal fired power plants being closed in the US should be replaced with one or two of these. The existing power lines and transformers would be used and thus make it much cheaper and quicker to alter our power mix.
I'm all for the Atompunk/Nuclearpunk Future, minus the nukes and possible fallout of course
A fallout is impossible from a nuclear reactor..
The mechanism of a nuclear power plant and a nuclear bomb is different.
A nuclear reactor is impossible to become similar to a bomb
gotta get rid of nukes first but russia/usa never will
That's because you're a uranium miner right? If not then maybe you're all for the Lakota indigenous reservation having their creek polluted by uranium mining. Environmental Racism is the only way the nukes have continued thus far, along with the US government "insuring" their safety.
@@cheating_lemon exactly, it's so annoying that people think nuclear bombs and nuclear power work in the same way
@@cheating_lemon yeh but the by-products of nuclear reactors can be used to create bombs
8:35 Wind and solar are only theoretically cheaper than nuclear because one is not considering the cost of energy storage or backup power plants.
Isn't even really any cheaper based on prices of actually recently built large scale solar and wind farms per produced TWh per year. Not penalizing intermittency, not counting shorter design lifetime (about half or third for windmills and solar panels compared to nuclear plants).
I have a theoretical degree in physics
@@lv1543
Let us know when you have practical experience as well.
And recycling - what are we going to do with all the composite wings? Burn them 'safely'? Send them to ship-breakers in Bangladesh? I'm sure they will come up with a solar-recycling-tax...
Also they do include federal subsidies which makes them appear conpetitive
South Africa needs this😭😭😭
There are currently 2 SMR's being built in Canada that I know of. One in Ontario and one east in New Brunswick, although I'm not 100% sure if they broke ground on the later yet. Regardless, I'm soo happy that the nuclear boogeyman is finally starting to get squashed. The amount of complete nonsense I see from people regarding nuclear sometimes is mind boggling. People actually think spent nuclear fuel is glowing green goo.. it's unreal.
I have never met anyone who thinks spent nuclear fuel is green goo. Since we have 75 years of nuclear reactors producing 10-30 tons of high-level radioactive waste and 50-70 tons of low-level and intermediate-level radioactive waste per year per reactor, we know a lot about it. It is laying around in our backyards, since no one has figured out how to get those boogeymen safely tucked away. We know that spent fuel is over 200 ionic radioactive isotopes with half-lives of less than a second to over a billion years that must be isolated from all life forms for longer than mankind has been in existence. Most of these ionic radioactive elements emitting alpha, beta and gamma radiation did not exist prior to 1940 and are thousands to millions of times more dangerous than any of the naturally occurring radioactive materials (primarily alpha emitters) that existed in our environment prior to nuclear fission. There. Now you have it! This is what we know about spent nuclear fuel. If you disagree with any of what I said, puuulleeeaaase! by all means respond. I will be happy to rub your nose in your unreal perspective on spent nuclear fuel. I am also ready to discuss the unrealistic expectations that you have that SMRs will save the nuclear industry from total collapse.
By the way, if those nukies in Canada somehow twist the arms of any of those mine operators to set up one of these SMRs in the boonies, how are you gonna get one of those heavy SOBs in and 80 ton waste canisters out? Picture one of those monsters laying upside down at the bottom of a ravine after the one-lane gravel logging road leading into the mine collapsed under the load. Or will you do what Russia does with their waste and just dump it in the nearest stream, lake or ocean?
@@jackfanning7952 wow that was a whoollleee lotta fear mongering in one long ass paragraph. while I personally don't believe it's green goo, there are CERTAINLY people in less educated areas - even in the US, that do believe it. I've had to correct multiple people, that's what I was referring to.
You can take your smug attitude, and shove it squarely up your ass. You aren't about to rub my nose into anything lmao. The fact that you think some isotopes are only 80 years old is cute, there are natural "reactors" all around the world. Africa had one going for millions of years, emitting all the same isotopes as our reactors release now.
Also, the newest method of containing the waste involves deep well drilling - tech borrowed from the Oil and Gas industry. They haven't done it yet, but they essentially want to drill like 8 thousand feet deep, then a long way sideways, and fill the hole with spent rods. no 80t containment needed. (also I don't know where you got that arbitrary number from) The hole will take all spent fuel over the lifetime of a reactor, and then they cap the last couple thousand feet with concrete. it's LITERALLY no different than the natural reactors that have happened throughout history.
as for the isotopes themselves, Alpha is the "scariest", as it can directly change our DNA, but is also the easiest to stop with it's rapid wavelengths. Just some sheet metal can stop it. Beta is also fairly easy to stop with only a few feet of concrete. Gamma is the hardest to stop, but even then, a few feet of concrete with lead liner and it's stopped also. The worst part of radiation is it's ability to transmute materials by changing it's neutrons or protons. but by burying it thousands of feet deep, it completely removes the risk for exposure. Also no need for containment facilities since it's all done on site of the reactor.
granted, a lot of what I just said has NOTHING to do with SMR's, because most of them are self contained reactors that don't get refueled, the reactor itself gets swapped out. and they're fractional amount of nuclear material compared to full production reactors, don't need the kinds of waste solutions full reactors do.
The fact of the matter is, nuclear is the future of earth's energy. Whether it still be fission, or we finally master fusion. Suck it up buttercup.
And if im not mistaken, Alberta might be trying to start developing some (one of the few decisions that Jason Kenney has made that is not complete stupidity)
If it wasn't for nuclear weapons, we wouldn't be so stuck with breeder reactors and their waste. Also, USA has had locations and designs for long term safe waste storage, blocked by shortsighted politicians and nimbys.
@@jackfanning7952 ok big gas and oil shill ahahaha 🤡
There’s one being built in Chalk River, Ontario, Canada, supposed to come online in the next few years.. Fun fact, Chalk River is the site of the worlds first nuclear reactor incident when it partially melted down back in 1952.
The probability of a meltdown is 1 in 100 000 years.
Jimmy Carter remediated Chalk River, he got his full lifetime dose there
I could listen to Fred Mills all day, the man was made to narrate.
If areas zoned for industrial and commercial use got their power from SMR's, the burden on the main grid would be significantly reduced. Over time, the success of the SMR's in industrial/commercial parks would then make its way into the residential areas.
Heavy industry needs to consider these. Like I get that these can't be used to fire steel foundry crucibles. But what about the rest of what runs on electricity? Like hydraulics, administrative areas, etc. etc. Let gas melt the metal, but I'm pretty sure a whole bunch of other stuff can run on this. We need to replace the worst polluting power plants, the last of the coil-burners.
Or start building shipping container size passive radiation reactors that have already develop and working. For instance one Russian village bough one from Russian military, buried it on the corner of the field to amp up radiation barriers and it powers whole village with some excess power being produced. Its entirely self contained and adjusted unit that only needs to dug up every 20 years to refuel. Only down side is that it needs to have some load on it constantly, but that is easy enough to solve by pumping excess into grid and having safety load case grid connection is cut by storm etc. Also it might need little extra radiation shielding since soviet engineering, but it works, sadly average person is not allowed to be energy independent around here, that would remove people from grasp of the government.
You forgot the other downside: It's *not* cost effective (unless you're in some remote isolated part of the earth).
And after 20 years, it malfunctions, is abandoned, forgotten & left to deteriorate in a cornfield somewhere until it starts leaking radioactive products.
Building 5 to 10mw small nukes would be in runs at a factory which would reduce costs. Plus they can be built in groups of 2 or 4 for larger requirement loads.
@@bradvansteinburg2962 Designs for small modular nuclear reactors have been around since the 1960's. Unless the factory is really remote, connecting to the grid is always going to be far more economical.
You're "not allowed" to be energy independent because there is no such thing. Claims otherwise are illusionary.
By downscaling the size of the reactors, if there ever is a major problem, the aftermath with be smaller too. Unless there is a design flaw, many smaller reactors seems much safer than one big reactor, since the big ones tend to get too expensive to maintain.
Not really true. It's largely dependent on the type of (used) fuel/fission products and how far exactly such a hypothetical accident would go. The actual size of the reactor and amount of fuel says very little how much could be contaminated.
@@lennoxbaumbach390 Nuclear engineer here, this isn't true. More power = more fission = more fuel, a lot more can wrong when you're dealing with gigawatts of energy (especially in water reactors where pressure can be a problem). Specific fuel type doesn't matter if there's a Chernobyl type accident, a high power reactor will spit out more nuclear material and fission products than a smaller one. And that's without considering the safety mechanisms that a lot of these newer designs are using. Things like passive cooling and inherent reactivity feedback go a long way in keeping the fuel safe and sound. Plus designs like molten salt and metal reactors operate at essentially atmospheric pressure.
@pyropulse If they explode violently in a Chernobyl type accident with no containment they do, however the probability of such an accident happening with modern reactors is essentially impossible. That said, my original statement still holds true, a higher power reactor (especially one dealing with high pressures) is technically a greater risk than smaller reactors.
@@lennoxbaumbach390
You are talking crap.
i cant wait to see these start coming out!! Too little people realize that our civilization will never evolve without the use of nuclear energy, and this could be a major start of a new nuclear era!
Cool, just ignore that the US gov (and others) tried all of this before and found it completely unfeasible beyond limited military application. Russia is still scattered with small reactors and their fuel cores delivering doses of murderous radiation to the unfortunate people who discover them and don't know what they are. We already have issues with radioactive materials from medical equipment being dumped in scrap yards or just abandoned in derelict facilities. The systems of control and monitoring something like this would need is ASTRONOMICAL and therefore expensive, which ultimately makes the entire concept completely impractical.
Interesting concept covered by the amazing team at Tomorrow's Build once again!
Thank you so much!! Hoping this video goes nuclear 🙌
Not as interesting as Two-headed babies from depleted uranium! Make a vid on that please. thanks - and also include that up-beat techno noise.
@@voidisyinyangvoidisyinyang885 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡
@@voidisyinyangvoidisyinyang885 Short sighted and please see all the data on previous nuclear disasters.
Most are minor and Chernobyl was the worst.
Old Soviet tech poor safety and communist poop .
New tech like this is the future and nuclear energy is superior to all other forms . Solar and Wind are OK where you have natural gas to pick up the slack
@@Junglebtc Short sighted? Is that referring to your two-headed depleted uranium baby?
Stop showing nuclear waste as 55 gallon drums.
It basically is no matter, what you do. No pun intended. 😂😂😂😂
I remember learning in high school that 90% (some high number) of the costs associated with building modern day nuclear reactors come from the concrete tower around it. Russia and China were able to pop reactors around the place due to having looser regulations and hence very thin concrete walls (i.e. they recognised that the concrete is obselete and hence only use a concrete facade to appease the public). If only governments had not neglected reactors in the past... None of these "safety concerns" would be in debate and we'd be lot greener for it
sounds like making faster cars by having no airbag.
damaging, racist as it divides POC communities, and dangerous. We need more public and human based transportation, hell even publicly owned horses would be a better alternative.
@@therealspeedwagon1451 Racist? Weally?
@@therealspeedwagon1451 least schizophrenic greenpeace supporter
@@therealspeedwagon1451 Everything is racist these days. Freeways I understand, but nuclear plants? Seriously?
Great to see Nuclear Power coming back. Many small are much better than a huge one. Modular makes them more convenient and flexible to operate. Would love to see micro/nano to power Rail Engines as well supply power to Railway grid. They are ideal for such things.
Good to see the nuclear waste being used. Hope that the nuclear waste problem will get resolved in environmentally safe way without consuming too much space and at much less cost. Recycling as fuel would be the way but still after that some % needs to go to waste.
I love the smaller ones that look like they could almost fit in a container. I can see the smaller ones as being a safer way of providing electricity to small Northern California towns that are isolated, doing away with the need of long-distance power transmission lines that power companies don't seem to want to maintain anyway. The U.S. is lucky in that solar and wind power both make economic as well as environmental sense but the smaller ones seem viable. I can see Western militaries also using the smaller ones in the near term future. More power is required for the battlefield and if Brigade Combat Teams were set up with electric vehicles the SMRs would enable that process and reduce the Army's logistical tail.
What most people never consider is many countries have been building and using small modular reactors successfully for many decades on ships and boats.
0:00 The first thing I think when I hear the term nuclear power is clean, reliable and safe energy.
I hear Chernobyl and Fukushima
Security is rarely talked about with these small reactors. At present there are 1500 working on guarding the U.K’s 7 nuclear sites - so about 200 per site!
1500 PEOPLE? GUARDS?1500 of what, exactly?
@@eric2500 Yes, guards.
We've had this all before, with the Canadian SLOWPOKE reactor (basement reactor) being proposed for district heating in the Northwest territories and when there was a misunderstanding between the US and Canada on how the US wanted the distant early warning radar stations to be powered, the Canadians designed a passively safe solid state pebble reactor sometimes called "The Nuclear Battery" which was later brought up by first nations representatives as a possible way to power remote communities. The problem is unauthorized access to nuclear materials as there will suddenly be a lot more locations to keep secure which will undoubtedly be remote locations. Such small reactors would benefit from being fabricated in factories and can take passively safe technologies such as molten salt reactors so they would be far safer than existing reactors but where they fail is that there could be a lot of them in locations difficult to secure so it would quickly become impossible to prevent nuclear materials to become available through unofficial means thereby making the risks of dirty bombs or even atomic bombs extremely available (though it can be argued that this risk already exists).
The amounts of nuclear fuels being used would be small and it would be notice if the fuel was stolen.
@@bighands69 Sigh, you don't understand math do you. It's a matter of probabilities, let's say there's a 1% chance that enough nuclear material would be stolen from a nuclear power plant (yes the probability should be much lower but this is just to show you the math), that would mean there is a 99% or rather 0.99 chance that there would not be such a loss, therefore for 100 nuclear power plants there would be 0.99^10 which is 90.4% chance that the material won't be stolen which is a 9.6% chance it will be stolen. Expand this to 100 plants and you have 0.99^100 which is a 36.6% chance the material won't be stolen or a 63.4% that the material would be stolen. Also the amount of fissionable material a small reactor may be small but it takes far less to make a dirty bomb, indeed you could probably make hundreds of dirty bombs from the amount of material needed for criticality. Expanding the number of nuclear reactors to thousands by having small reactors does mean the loss of a lot of fissionable material, we've already lost a lot of nuclear material including 17 war heads just with the US military alone, a lot more is believed to have been lost due to the fall of the Soviet Union and not just with weapons and nuclear reactors but the Soviets also used Strontium 90 RTG's to power remote light houses and weather stations and people have died from radiation exposure from trying to salvage metals from such RTG's, note that RTG's have far less nuclear material than even the smallest nuclear reactor and the material they have are not even fissionable as RTG's work by nuclear decay yet they would be plenty for a dirty bomb. The nuclear reactors may only have as little material as possible for criticality but that's plenty for hundreds of dirty bombs and they may have security but if there's even the slightest chance some material could be lost, with thousands of reactors you can be certain they will be lost and they have been lost even with the few reactors we have today, this is simply due to the math.
@@johnwang9914
The amounts of fuel being used is extremely small and removing the fuels from the reactors which have up to 50 year life cycles would be of such a complex nature that the cost would go through the roof.
And to obtain enough fuel to then use as part of a thermonuclear detonation system would be very difficult to achieve.
So that means shutting down several thousand reactors and then having teams painstakingly remove the materials without shutting down the mini reactors while nobody notices would be like trying to catch a bullet with chopsticks. While technically possible there is no known mathematical probability that could be use to compute such risk.
I am afraid for dirty weapons systems nuclear material could be found from easier sources that already exist.
@@bighands69 Boy you're as dense as a doorknob. The amount of fuel needed for a nuclear reactor is greater than that needed for criticality, the amount needed for a dirty bomb is less than the amount needed for criticality therefore no matter how small the fuel for a reactor is, it's still more than enough for dirty bombs.
We're also talking about having many much smaller inexpensive reactors instead of the few massive ones we have today. A vast difference in security as you increase the number of them and your point of them being expensive would be moot as the whole point is that they would be inexpensive.
@@bighands69 A nuclear reactor works by fission hence it requires at least critical mass period. A dirty bomb does not require fission as it's about spreading out dangerous radioactive materials broadly so it requires much less material than a nuclear reactor as it does not require a chain reaction. Regardless of how "little" nuclear material is in a nuclear reactor, by the very definition of a nuclear reactor, it would be many times more than needed for dirty bombs period. You are only demonstrating how ignorant you are by sticking with your "there is little nuclear material" argument as so long as it can maintain a fission chain reaction, by definition it is much more than needed for a dirty bomb . Sorry your ignorance does not trump physics.
Nuclear is the greatest gift. It is the energy of the gods. People, get tough and realize they can deliver the greatest in the end. Keep the faith. And stop the complication
It would appear that Nuclear engineering has made it past the majority of its growing pains and will now be our hope of producing clean energy as we move towards a new world, a healthier planet, and a unified people.
"clean"
Natural gas, oil and coal will still play their part.
I want one of these in my basement. That would be better than free TV! Remember, Clean Energy starts with responsible voting.
Love your topic choices! It's hard to say if we have an energy problem - but tons of cheap power? is a solution.
What an honour and pride for Argentina making his way in this list.!!!!
Gr8 update on SMR. You missed doubling of efficiency & hence cutting cost by half if waste heat is used. The latest 2 Siberian locations include District heating. All existing plants near population or industry could also produce District Heating... Also consider adding Canadian Pebble Reactor designs to your SMR List.
Nuclear is ideal for District heating, with very large volumes of low grade heat. Also, there is potential for desalination...
I'm interested in fast breeders, but know they are proving to be tricky beasts
@@growtocycle6992 Thorium Reactors look really interesting Th233+n 》 Pa233 》U233 not only using cheap abundant Thorium & Waste Spent conventional Reactor fuel but fail safe. The reaction is no self sustainable meaning soon as external Xray source removed reactor passively powers down. CANDU & others can easily be converted to Th Reactors. Another major waste is Cd, the major metal in Cladding of fuel bundles. It can be used 50% dilution once then it's too Frisbee & weak. It should be all used as cathodes in shipping countainer sized NiCad batteries on-site at existing Nuclear Plants. The low radiation would be blocked by the Ni Anodes.
As a first responder that has a area of response for nuclear waste. The are response is very limited but if you had these smr the areas would become greater. Leading to more cost, adding to the expense of smr.
Another use of modular reactors could be as a power plant for large container ships and the like.
Nuclear subs cost $3.5bn - $7bn. The world's largest container ship costs $190m. Whilst they are different beasts, the nuclear reactor cost is a large compoenent of the total.
Modular reactors would be cheaper than the reactors powering current warships and subs, which shouldn't compare with container ships, since warships and subs are armed to the teeth with very expensive weapon systems. Besides, with diesel and coal off the table with climate change legislation, what else are going to power these ships? Where would you put sails or solar panels atop a container ship?
@@PockyFiend - On the same fairytales politicians think can power countries?
Just realized this channel is the same company of the B1M!!! Your channels are incredible and inspire me to start a you tube channel. Thank you B1M people. 😊
I live in Argentina and am just now finding out that we're building an SMR hehe but sounds greatA
lo unico bueno que hicieron los peronistas
The last dude that claims that nuclear reactors cost much more than "renewables" can offer any numbers? I mean, the plant itself, sure: it would cost more than some solar panels, but would the cost per kWh produced also be less? I sincerely doubt less.
Very good reporting. Excellent video. I don't subscribe to anthropogenic global warming, but is nice to see a small, decentralized power source like this. Would be good for military bases overseas, for example. All good wishes.
I think security is still an issue. They can make them safer from malfunction, but what about sabotage? It’s easier to defend 1 large plant than numerous small plants spread out over the country.
I just had a chat with Putin, and he said not to worry as he'd be happy to secure the nuclear facilities.
@@DemPilafian oh, we’re good then! Putin is savings us from Nazis so no problem. 😉
Exactly what I was thinking. I'm favorable to nuclear energy, and some of the most recent stuff is interesting (thorium reactors, or those that reuse nuclear waste...), but I'm skeptical about the security issues for those small reactors. If I was a terrorist, that would be my first target...
Actually, attacking a nuclear power plant is not very feasible for a terrorist. These reactors are all built to withstand earthquakes, even bombing, etc. It's highly doubtful that a terrorist can actually get a bomb in and even then have a bomb that is big enough to cause a meltdown. What you should really worry about is where we store spent fuel. These places are more vulnerable and it is also easier to cause contamination of the environment because the storage vessels themselves have thinner protection. However, this will remain the same as with bigger reactors as we can store the waste of multiple smaller reactors in one facility, equivalent to one facility per large reactor. On top of that, it is also still possible to build multiple of these smaller reactors on one site, thus requiring the same amount of security as a large reactor, with the added safety in terms of malfunction. You should also keep in mind that if you spread out these reactors, the distance between them and where the electricity is used is lower, reducing power line losses and gaining overall efficiency + a more robust grid, that is less vulnerable to power line cuts.
@@schijtnaam Putin laughs at your tiny, weak terrorists. Putin has already successfully attacked two nuclear power plants (although it appears in one case his soldiers may not have realized they were shelling a nuclear facility... of course, Orcs are naturally dimwitted).
ThorCon’s concept is a little bit different than this. instead of building modular, they build decently large plants in shipyards and then float them to their destination from there. it’s a genius concept because shipbuilding is an extravagantly efficient process!
@bhakta_joe this is very true, i wish they are successful in their endeavors as it could be a substantial source of energy (i.e. indonesia)
To date, Thorcon has produced nothing, except the world's most expensive PowerPoint presentation. No prototype, no proof of concept. Thorcon has zero expertise in building anything
@@darkgalaxy5548 That's how we know ThorCon is a scam. Has been from the beginning.
Nice video.
I read that France has so many Nuclear Reactors that electricity is so cheap they don't have an off peak price for electricity.
And at the same time it is going reduce the number for more renewable energy.
Britain is trying to build five new reactors as a stop gap until it get more renewables into commission.
What I would like to know is has France had any Nuclear incidents. ?
None that I'm aware of. Germany also shut down their reactors sadly. A LOT of that is still coming from fear over Fukashima, as well as newer fears that reactors could be used against them in times of war..... cause like.. Ukraine. But yeah. France has a large amount of reactors, I wish other countries adopted it earlier.
In france just for a heater and fridge and some lights it comes to 150+ euros monthly, extremely expensive
@@yarmgl1613 I guess power costs are even higher in Germany.
@@Fenthule Very glad they are closing the German ones. One famous news website asked large companies about extending the lives of the reactors... and all of them said NO... wasn't worth it.
@@1968Christiaan Maybe too soon, that's the issue. They could have kept them running during the renewable transition. Of course, without the Russian escalation we might not be having this discussion as Natural Gas was supposed to be the stop gap.
Video said that smrs could be backup for renewables but that's not true, nuclear plants run continuously except for maintenance and refuelling etc
They’re not for sale yet.
So excited for the future of nuclear. It is a great source of power and it's sad that so many people are unreasonably scared of it. We've learned great deals from the meltdowns of Chernobyl and have made nuclear incredibly safe. We just need to be mindful of where we place the plants so they are not in the way of natural disasters like Fukushima which there are plenty of locations that are not touched by natural disasters.
Even despite those horrible accidents nuclear is by far the safest form of energy. Fossil fuels have killed 100 *MILLION* people since 1950 alone. And coal power plants produce 300x more waste per year than all nuclear waste ever produced. Not only that but nuclear waste isn’t just haphazardly dumped in these yellow glowing barrels like you think it is, it’s put in glass and ceramic and put into large practically indestructible coffins. And with deep storage projects on the way it will only be even safer.
Except that their concept proposes to place them EVERYWHERE.
And if they become cheap, companies could purchase them on their own, and make stupid decisions.
@@AntonioNoack then we should bar companies from using them. In fact we should minimize companies as much as possible to only small local companies.
very nice point, good job
What do I think of when I hear "Nuclear power" Is Homer Simpson making a fist and whispering "nuclear power"
Well, things tend to go smaller and more compact with age, but I'm still more fan of a fusion energy :D
Certainly cleaner, but so far no one has successfully made one that produces more energy than what is input to start the reaction.
@@michaelbrininstool4515 Yes indeed, but it's only a matter of time, a few decades I think, and we will have this nearly infinite clean energy.
@@k1ll3rcz27 in the 1970's they were saying fusion power is only 10-20 years away. Every decade since they say 10-20 years away, until recently. Now I have heard some scientists saying 20-50 years away. I don't think we will have fusion power plants in our lifetimes.
@@michaelbrininstool4515 And look at what world achieved in those 50 years, scientific and technical progress is fast, so I believe what I said :D But you have good point, in 40 years we can meet here again and one of us says: "See, I told you" :D
@@k1ll3rcz27 Would love them to solve it tomorrow. What has happened in the last 50 years, is they keep finding that they don't have to ability to do it and they try it different ways. They have learned so much about what they don't have the ability to do or don't know. I am very skeptical that it will be solved soon, but would love to be wrong. I was just trying to correct your expectations so you won't be disappointed when/if it takes more than 20 years. I will not be around in 40 years.
Rolls Royce and John Brown Engineering were touting something similar in the mid to late 80’s. A Chinese delegation toured the UK and even a had reception with Michael Hessletine (a minister in Margaret Thatcher’s government) in order to promote the project.
Like the professor pointed out, even if these SMR's become a working reality, they are still going to be too expensive on a per-kilowatt-hour basis compared to larger reactors or even compared to renewables. So even if we overcome the engineering challenges and the public acceptance challenge (both of which are not insignificant), we'll still have a solution that's very costly. But hopefully these SMR's and the lessons learned with them will lead the way to further innovations that bring down the cost while improving safety and portability. But there's also one other really huge concern about these that the video didn't even mention -- what dangers or risks do these pose when in the hands of bad actors? These are still fission reactors after all, and fissile material can be used to make a bomb, including a dirty one. So I guess the ownership and operation of these SMR's would still have to be very heavily controlled (in other words, I doubt we'll see these as countertop appliances in homes like you see in the movies).
There is some loss of efficiency, but reduced cost of manufacturing from serial production and using simpler types of reactors. Also, there are much simpler ways to mass death than trying to crack on of these open to grab the fuel to take it off somewhere secret for tons of processing.
there are radioactive sources in virtually every hospital in america, and some of the worst radiological accidents in foreign nations came from “orphan sources” - or medical equipment that got unaccounted for. the biggest determining factor would have to be its danger in dealing with. radiation makes it hard for terrorists to manipulate the stuff, said radiation of which is the same source of its current costs. thorium reactors produce even higher levels of gamma radiation - making it even harder for bad actors to get their hands on it. overall it’s just not worth it for bad actors, there are much more efficient ways to kill en masse.
nothing necessarily wrong with being more expensive. Depends how they’re factored into the overall energy production mix. Filling in the bumps in renewables is critical - excess renewables you could put into hydrogen or other energy storage, and have nuclear to provide necessary baseload when renewables/storage can’t supply (and run stable state to also produce stored energy/hydrogen continuously). If you had eg 20% of your capacity from SMRs even if they’re more expensive, the overall cost of generation can be low enough when combined with cheaper renewables
@@madisonbrigman8186 efficient killing? MIC.
Nuclear construction costs only impact the cost of nuclear powered energy until the loans are paid off. No energy source other than hydro has ever been able to produce energy cheaper then a 20 year old nuclear power plant, and nuclear power power plants have useful lifespans of at least 60 years. The "professor" is a known wind and solar industry shill who's made a career out of his ideological opposition to clean nuclear energy. If you attempt to build a 77, 300, 470 MW reactor using the same manufacturing techniques as SMR then yes, the general industry consensus is that costs per MW will be far more expensive. But SMR aren't just designed to be smaller, they're designed to have significantly simpler and more robust cooling systems, will be built in a controlled factory setting, and will be built in a series, which is the best way to bring down costs. Building out at least 1.5-2x the capacity factor plus weeks of storage will have to be replaced multiple times throughout a nuclear reactors 60-100 year lifespan will never be cheaper, which is why costs are skyrocketing in California and Germany.
This prof is ignorant of the basic fact that apples and oranges can't be compared. Solar and wind projects are meant for just 25 years. And that too their efficiency starts decreasing after 10-12 into operation. Their capacity factor is 15-25%. Nuclear plants are meant for more than 60 years (new design are for 100 years and beyond that). The capacity factor of nuclear is 4.5 times more than that of solar. Considering it, nuclear costing 10.8 times more than solar on per MW basis is still cheaper than solar.
PS: solar would become even more costly if the cost of battery storage required to make solar a round the clock source is included.
True but it’s not just capacity factor that gives the advantage. Nuclear is scheduled, one can choose when it shuts down for days weeks months for refueling, by the individual reactor. That schedule is not set by the weather, day/night, winter/summer. Solar by contrast flips off over an entire hemisphere of the planet, every day. Wind too, over a large area, for days or a week, all wind power gone. In this way Nuclear is infinitely better, not 4x better.
I Totally want one B1M!!! 😎💪👍😀👌 Great great video again, you guys are always on point. Could you please do a story on the Red Bull F1's new engine development complex? Kind regards Ben from NZ 😉😎💪
B1M?
The thumbnail is actually one of the concepts a university near me is planning on building, I went to their proposal really cool!
Can modular reactor design be extended to chemical processes? For example, can a modular plant system be installed near a wellhead that would be typically out of range from conventional pipeline systems in the oil and gas industry?
What about the thorium reactors. They sounded like a great solution. If they ever came on line I would install one in my house.
I wish to god himself we get way more nuclear energy. its safe if handled carefully and it has a VAST sorts and areas of configurations. from Huge reactors supplying whole countrys to little reactors to supply a complete house. or Town
I hope the EU/USA/Asia will push this through and destroys the opposition and critics!
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission: You can't use this in US until we say it's safe.
NuScale Power: OK, we'll test it in Romania, is it far enough?
Only problem of nuclear is its expensive. It might be just the one problem halting mass production
SMRs address this problem. Using modular and standardised parts lowers costs, while still allowing high levels of quality control.
Over its lifetime nuclear is actually pretty cheap, and these are going to drive the cost down further. Currently, reactors are built bespoke. SMRs are intended to be mass produced dropping the costs significantly
@@kokofan50 not a single one of these has ever been tested at scale. we are still at least 5-10 years from large scale manufacture
@@armorclasshero2103 Tell the navy their reactors haven’t been tested, and the first civilian design is a PWR with a site that should be operational in 2-3 years. Other designs are further out. However, none of that really matters to how they’re going to be built
@@kokofan50 the navy is exept from many regulations that are far more restrictive in civilian use
"what if it melts down"
"well you see, it cant"
SOUTH AFRICA COULD GO IN FOR USING NUCLEAR REACTORS FITTED ON BARGES OR SHIPS.
Yes, but only brics bank is willing to find this not IMF
The thing that I find iffy with these are the risk of much worse inspections and checks.
Nuclear should have rigid and impartial oversight.
Accidents in reactors comes from cutting corners/costs.
An impartial regulator would be a huge improvement from the actively hostile ones now
@@kokofan50 huh? We're probably not from the same country so what do you mean/how are the current regulations about nuclear reactors "over the top".
Just look at the last big accedent, Fukoshima.
They had been getting faults on their preparidness and they didn't fix it(their backup generators in the cellar) even though regulators had issue with that.
I do want to be clear that I'm well aware that nuclear reactors isn't near as "scary" as many believe, it's really a boon for mankind and we'll most likely need it for as long as we figure fusion reactors out.
But it's not something to take lightly either.
That's why there's need to be rigid regulation for it.
Do these reactors provide reliable power in war, natural disasters or terrorist attacks, or would they make potential targets or add to the impact of disaster ?
What if a production facility or pipeline gets struck or the earth by a major solar-flare, crashing electronics ?
Same goes for a hydrogen power-infrastructure by the way, and H2 is a greenhouse gas as well as explosive.
All in the spirit of positive thinking 🙂
Reliable power in war or terrorism: Yes, more so than renewables which require large amounts of transmission and have many fail points. Also, generally nation to nation warfare avoids population centers, whereas fields of power generation with low population are reasonable targets.
Production facility: There are no pipe lines. Production facility is a low concern. Uranium enrichment facilities are a risk of having material stolen but materials are never piled in critical configuration, so they will never propegate a reaction. But more importantly, many of these designs (both thorium and Uranium) produce fuel from Natural Uranium within the generator by breeding more fissionable isotopes.
Solar flares are like giant radio waves, which means the size of your antenna is very important. In previous MCEs, teleagram wires caught fire and people on recievers were shocked. Renewables = large amount of transmission, which means massive amounts of wires and more antenna. Overall the renewable infrastructure is more susceptible. Solar pannels in particular might be hit hard by back current.
I wouldn't worry about H2 as a great house gas, it will oxidize very quickly to water.
Nuclear is typically the last power source to shut down. Reactors are refueled once every so many years, and they’re inside massive containment buildings that protect them from everything but a nuclear warhead.
To be fair we have explosive chemical / oil plants all over the place; there are already pre-established procedures in place for explosive plants.
Besides, I would honestly argue that a small modular nuclear plant melting down can be dealt with so much more easily compared to the a bigger plant. The amount of fission material available is smaller, you can more easily access and remove the module compared to cooling down something like Fukushima.
Oil and hydro are also abysmal in the face of military action (and this has been demonstrated in real life). From this perspective, distributing power generation rather than centralising it will almost certainly be a good plan, though I have to say that once people have decided that their _goal_ is to kill people and destroy the environment, you have a problem any way you slice it.
I'm not sure I understand your point about hydrogen, though. It burns well (to produce water), but it's not explosive in itself. If I had to make a list of chemicals I don't want to live with, hydrogen is not high on the list at all.
@@stephenspackman5573 Hydrogen is highly explosive and prone to leaking and damaging it's storage vessels. It's the most energy dense chemical by mass.
I agree with everything else you said, although I think a mix of centralized and easy to protect and decentralized and easy to lose is the best overall format.
You guys should do a video on the interstate bridge replacement between Vancouver, Washington, USA and Portland, Oregon, USA
If you're deathly afraid of nuclear energy, then you should have insomnia from the fear of fossil energy.
hahaha funny guy
*Fun fact:* NuScale is headquartered in my home state!
Go Oregon! 🤙
While SMR seem like a good idea, I have not seen any real world numbers that say the are economically feasible compared to the alternatives. The best use may be to build enough SMRs of the type that can be use the waist material from conventional large reactors. At least that way you get some power and get rid of the most troublesome nuclear waist.
Theyve got no solution how to deal with the existing WASTE, let alone what these will add.
@@CA_I A lot of new SMRs and MSR designs can use the waist from today's reactors and the resulting waist has a much shorter half life. Those that look at the data would recognize this as a potential solution to nuclear waist. All you really want is for it to decay to the level of radiation that the original fuel had then it is easy to deal with.
They consume the waste by enriching it into bomb making material.
@@armorclasshero2103 NO, that is what the current reactors do. The new generation of small reactors is supposed to be able to take the waist from current reactors (including the stuff that you use to make bombs), use it as fuel and produce a less radioactive waist. The basis of the design for the reactors that have been used for the past 50 years was selected (over a thorium reactor) because the by product of the waist was plutonium, which was wanted for bomb making in the 1950's and 1960's.
@@davesutherland1864 newer reactors recycle waste by enriching that waste. just like when you recycle bottles or cans you have to input some new so-called "virgin" material to bring up the overall reactivity of the fuel. that's just how entropy works. that is by definition creating new bomb-making material.
That also means that they can _leak_ anywhere too. But nobody seems to think that far ahead anymore
How often has that happened? How many people have died from reactor problems since the first plant was built? Less than 10,000.
How many people have died from fossil fuels since the 1800s? Tens of millions or more.
What is Mark Zuckerberg doing with those wires at 8:14?
First thing to comes in my mind when i hear nuclear power is: cheap, clean and safe energy. Ramana saying about costs, that SMR are much more expensive than traditional reactors. This is a new technology, it's always much more expensive at the beginning. Anyone remembers the costs of normal solar panel about a 10-15 years ago? They were cost a small fortune. Now, they are really cheap, but still not as effective as nuclear power. Nuclear power, and nuclear fusion are the future, not wind or sun.
Hope some company actually gets one in serial production soon.
There's one being built here in Canada already with another planned. Likely still need a bit more time for things to catch on, but they are certainly improving.
Its taken over 20 years to get this far. Don't expect it to go any faster.
First SMRs are getting built in Romania in partnership with the US company. The government has already found (and I think approved) the location where they will be built.
Sounds like a great backup when there is not enough wind or solar for a few days. Sure wind and solar are low cost when they work but we also need a backup for those days to maybe even weeks where we don't have enough. I would argue you'd need to compare this to alternative storage like batteries and hydrogen (in places where pumped hydro isn't an option). Either we need way more solar and wind so that we can store that on the good days or we need these. Or do we just create enough grid interconnects that we can distribute energy over entire continents, making local fluctuations less relevant?
Or we can just skip the trouble of trying to make an inherently unreliable energy source reliable and use the inherently reliable on all the time.
I think your question frames to many things as dichotomies. Wide scale transmission is really essential to renewables, particularly wind where you can't be sure of much more then averages and you need to diversify your source for averages to work.
Solar is either on a roof, where it makes sense to have on site storage to provide greater energy security, or is located far away from the user in a desert or on a reservoir and so transmission is needed. And in any case, longer term storage, and enough to cope with power lines being damaged, is needed.
Renewables will likely come in with cheaper electrical costs in some places, but in many cases Nuclear will be the lower cost if we allow an industry to form. And some process, like industrial heat and steam, are much more suitable for nuclear. A strong system shouldn't choose between one but allow the development of the lowest cost energy source.
I'm in Alaska and the state is looking at using these for power generation in remote native villages.
Sounds like a scenario for a Fallout reboot.
Let’s hope this helps moves us away from carbon
A huge amount of effort has been put into the PBMR (Pebble Bed Modular Reactor) concept by the Germans and South Africans. Maybe worth a look and consulting for gaining IP?
Environmentalists set that PBMR project in South Africa back by decades.
I'm pro nuclear and we need it now more than ever
Mini reactors but the complex looks equally as big.
Wave technology is by far one of the best technologies to boost constant power & predictable & reliable & EASY to construct unlike wind.
Won't it create more nuclear waste?
If the entire planet used SMRs, there would only be a few tons of waste created annually, compared to gigatons from fossil fuels, and many of the designs can burn our stock of spent fuel.
Not if you stop mining uranium first! You do mine uranium correct - along with the madman who created this vid? Or if you don't both mine uranium then maybe you all can stop making strange speculations about the nuclear waste.
So what?
@@voidisyinyangvoidisyinyang885 Wait, What?
@@randallhext8057 I want to thank you for mining uranium. If I'm wrong, please correct me.
The SSRW is LFTR. Designed in the 60s for nuclear powered aircraft. It uses a Thorium fuel cycle but can burn waste fuel. This is what everyone should have invested in decades ago instead of renewables. Not just for earth, but it would revolutionize space travel.
Just my opinion. I think the only way we see this stuff in the United States is political. We need to increase the size of the nuclear regulatory agency and get our politicians on board with revamping nuclear regulatory policies and law. It doesn't matter how safe they make these things, if they can't clear the red tape it's vaporware.
I think your biggest obstacle is money, not red tape or politics. They are too expensive and affect a whole series of markets. Would you rather try to sell a house with a turbine / solar farm 1 KM away or a nuclear reactor. What protection do citizens or investors have if one of them leaks into the water table... if the company who buys it goes insolvent, who has to look after your modular reactor ?
The NRC isn’t built to regulate nuclear; its built to regulate it out of existence.
@@1968Christiaan going by the history, there is zero protection from water leakage. the United States won't even acknowledge that nuclear leakage is a source of cancer for the leaks that have already happened.
An exciting direction on power generation. I just can't help to think about the Undecided channel because they already talked about it in detail and the background music.
Intro for next fallout game
True
I love it. Dictor - nuclear power, picture - cooling tower.
That would be so good in Australia
Canada too. And for similar reasons, smaller communities FARR away from others. We'd use them up north, you guys would probably use em in the central area of that giant landmass of yours lol
An area of nuclear power which could be useful for reactors this size is to create the high level of energy for desalination plants to create fresh water. As this will be a critical resource as temperature spikes etc in the future which could lead to water shortages. It would also be good to store and be an export for countries with famine or similar issues.
US doesn't need such an approach as it has lots of water already. Other countries could end up using it.
Unless they can get their costs below $10/MWh they will never compete with renewable in 7-8 years.
I was talking with a Georgia Power engineer and inquired about the big delay and cost overrun and apparently it was due to the large concrete pad being poured and set out of spec. It was
Your skeptic at around 9:00 doesn't seem to be taking into account of economies of scale from production volume. Plus, the production process can include a centralized certification and quality assurance process at the end. Again with the failsafe contingencies: each scenario posed and question solved is solved across all units of that design.
Building these guys in a factory has the potential to drop the the capital expenditures by a significant amount, I think.
First, in nuclear, everything has to be built according to spec.. If not, then it will not meet the safety requirements. Second, I think your Georgia Power engineer is blowing Smoke up your u no what. Here is his CEO explaining the latest delays from 6 months ago.
Below is the Vogtle Project Management's answer for the latest delays:
Southern Co. yesterday announced another delay for its long-troubled nuclear construction project in Georgia, edging its costs closer to the $30 billion mark.
The setback could now push the startup date for Plant Vogtle’s first reactor until early 2023 and move the date for the second one to later that year.
Plant Vogtle’s latest move highlights the nuclear industry’s chief troubles with building large, baseload reactors: safety and cost. To be clear, Southern executives have blamed this new hiccup on paperwork, saying that workers were gathering it to send to federal safety regulators and noticed critical inspection records were missing or incomplete. The pile of missing or incomplete documents added up to a delay of three to six months, Southern said. That additional time is costing $920 million.
“We’re a little frustrated with the latest developments,” Southern Co. CEO Tom
Fanning talked of “great momentum” at the construction site since November.
But workers realized “tens of thousands” of critical documents were missing, leading to a three-month backlog.
“We’re fixing that part of the ‘paper’ process,” he told E&E News.
The people I know say he is lying. They were supposed to x-ray critical welds and perform performance tests of critical equipment and they just did not do it. Sure its missing n=because you did not do it. And this guy is the CEO of a $30 billion dollar project.
@@clarkkent9080 I don't think he was referring to the latest delays since the conversation took place in 2021.
@@louishermann7676 Yes I understand that but Southern Company has built and operated nuclear power plants since the 1970s. and I call BS on the < 1/32 too thin excuse. You may want to ask him about "losing" thousands of build records. I know many people that work there and they say it is an out of control zoo.
What people don't understand is that you are not building a Walmart or Amazon warehouse. If a nuclear plant is to be safe, it must be built as designed. No just close, not sorta, not does it really matter, but EXACTLY as designed.
Example: At the MOX Facility, they contracted with a U.S. steel mill for rebar for a critical concrete pour. The purchase spec on the rebar was specific since it was part of a safety system and they paid a premium ($$) for the specific steel. When the rebar arrived, and the workers were installing it they found that the rebars were brittle and snapped when bent for installation.
Hell, rebar I buy at home depo can be bent without breaking. That steel mill just sent them some crap they had laying around and pocketed the $$$. The facility did not have time to fight the mill and just paid them and had another mil produce the rebar but this time they inspected it at the mill before they would approve the shipment. That is an example why nuclear cost so much and takes so long. It is the site project management, suppliers and construction craft that are the problem. But some people like to blame the greenies, liberals, the media, politicians, or the NRC and because of that, nothing will ever change.
Thorium reactors are apparently a better option.. more efficient by using much more of the fuel and unable to melt down.
graduate from sam o nella university over here
Thats debatable, I think a lot of the hype is just that the technology is newer. They do appear to be promising, particularly in a country like India with limited access to Uranium, but Uranium breeders can reach just as high an efficiency and the technology is better understood.
Thorium reactors are pretty much the same as MSRs, just using different fuel and processes. I do love the idea of using Thorium, but it's still got some kinks. the part of it I love most is the potential for creating nuclear medicine. I've heard them theorized as smartbombs for cancer. attach it to something that seeks out the cancer cells, so the concentrated radiation blasts the tumor, then decays and is no longer radioactive. But again, we're not ready for that tech yet - and the public outcry over sticking radioactive material into the body would be pretty strong I imagine still lol
Thorium has a lot of buzz, but I think they don’t have a lot of advantages over uranium reactors. Molten salt reactors in general (including Uranium ones) have a lot of potential and I hope their development continues
I honestly don't care what technology succeeds here because it's only going to be a stepping stone/stop-gap until Fusion power is here.
Loved the explosive logo transition there
Regular news makes you hate the world ..
But this channel makes you excited for our fantastic progression and development as a species!!😍👏
Thank you!!
The SMRs are the nuclear equivalent of what CPV is doing with NG and gray-water-cooled steam reactors. CPV uses natural gas and treated wastewater - traditional steam power plants (low-draw or even no-draw steam generation - the latter means no touching local aquifers at all) Think of a baby reactor that uses gray-water for steam from wastewater to generate steam in a no-draw process - this is possible now.
The US army experimented with pop up reactors. The 3 scientists working on one of the first ones were all brutlaly killed when it exploded, one was even pinned into the celing by a control rod, his body was beyond unrecognizable as a stain, the person next to him wasnt much better, the last one was a bit farther away and died shortly after the surrounding troops entered to see what happened. All that damage within the span of about 0.1 seconds
What else? There’s only one such incident in US military history, none in commercial power.
Yet coal gas oil accidents kill, burn, explode, incinerate people all the time . Oil train in Quebec burns down an entire town. Should I talk here about the burned dead bodies? No, ghoul is not my thing. Fireball from Connecticut gas plant explosion goes a mile in the air. On and on. Then there’s the billion tons of crap oil gas coal toss in the air each year. But oh no, your job is to talk about the *3* guys tragically killed 60 years ago in a military accident.
Another way to look at this, spreading power generation/supply _out_ and having the ability to make that output either more or less dense as the population or industry requires makes the grid a lot more resilient. In case of disaster, only those generators in affected zones will go offline - the rest of 'the grid' wouldn't be affected. 'The grid' wouldn't exist any more if these were installed all over as needed and that may turn out to be their biggest hurdle. It would be a lot more difficult for a government to turn off everyone's power in one go.
When has a government ever intentionally turned off everyone's power, rather than examples like Texas where a capitalist obsession had built a system that punishes the last generator standing and results in producers not producing at times of high demand and also cripplingly large debts for low-income households who couldn't avoid using electricity during incidents due to inadequate home insulation.
That would be best achieved with renewables on a "energy mesh" network. Not nuclear plants.
I participated in building of water based power plant with two 35megawatt reactors. Its now working in Arctic zone.
SMR cost per kWH is high, yes but that's only at the beginning of development that it is like all new Nuclear Reactor Tech. Once you stream line and have production lines of SMRs the price drops significantly which is the fundamental point of doing SMRs in the first place.
Simple answer without any facts. Nuclear has NEVER in the last 70 years become less expensive as we build more....NEVER!
This is from the Des Moines Register an ultra conservative newspaper concerning the only Small Modular Reactor (SMR) project in the U.S. today.
In 2013, the Wall Street firm Lazard estimated that the cost of generating electricity at a new nuclear plant in the United States will be between $86 and $122 per megawatt-hour. Last November, Lazard estimated that the corresponding cost will be between $131 and $204 per megawatt-hour based upon the 4 recent new nuclear projects in the U.S. . During the same eight years, renewables have plummeted in cost, and the 2021 estimates of electricity from newly constructed utility-scale solar and wind plants range between $26 and $50 per megawatt-hour. Nuclear power is simply not economically competitive.
SMRs will be even less competitive. Building and operating SMRs will cost more than large reactors for each unit (megawatt) of generation capacity. A reactor that generates five times as much power will not require five times as much concrete or five times as many workers. This makes electricity from small reactors more expensive; many of the original small reactors built in the United States were financially uncompetitive and shut down early.
The estimated cost of constructing a plant with 600 megawatts of electricity from NuScale SMRs, arguably the design closest to deployment in the United States, was originally advertised as costing $1 billion but upon requesting actual bids from engineering firms, increased to $6.1 billion in 2020. Given inflation and other cost constraints that cost today can only be expected to be significantly higher.
The cost was so high that ten members of Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems canceled their contracts. NuScale then changed its proposed plant configuration to 6 fewer reactors but increased each reactor output from 50 Mw to 77 Mw costing at total of $5.3 billion. The NRC just last week approved the construction of the 50 Mw design but now will have to start the review process all over given the switch to a 77 Mw design. For each kilowatt of electrical generation capacity, that estimate is around 80% more than the per-kilowatt cost of the Vogtle project in Georgia - before its cost exploded from $14 billion to over $30 billion. Based on the historical experience with nuclear reactor construction, SMRs are very likely to cost much more than initially expected. And they now have delayed the project start until 2025 in an attempt to find more backers. All this before the inevitable setbacks that will occur once construction starts.