If you happen to be in the area, the reactor is still open to the public, and the tour is very interesting and informative. I visited last summer (2017) when I was staying at the nearby Craters of the Moon national monument, and it was my favourite part of the trip. 10/10 would visit again.
My grandfather worked on these sodium cooled reactors. He worked in the USAF and I don't know what time he did work on them. I think it might have been as a contractor but nonetheless his stories always intrigued me. Why isn't this type of nuclear power being researched even more? You have a easy to find coolant and it produces more uranium then it needs to sustain itself. These things are the future! My grandfather recently passed of cancer but we don't think it was the reactors. Probably agent orange and Willy Pete
It never ceaces to amaze me how the nuclear death cult believes their own propaganda. Even after it had been proven as the most expensive and least profitable means to boil water, ever invented. Oh and not to mention the most harmful substances left behind aa waste, that cannot be approached for soke 200,000 years, that no one knows what to do with....
My grandfather worked on them too. He was there as a crane operator I believe. Nonetheless his stories about these reactors are just amazing! Ask your grandfather if he knew a James andreasean.
I have visited this place several times since its been a National Landmark. A very interesting place that you can go on your own self-guided tour, or with a group. You can also see the nuclear aircraft engines developed at the Idaho National Lab during that time frame. A must see if your in the area.
It's truly remarkable. Too bad we can't visit the hangar for the nuclear bomber up north, as it's used as a commercial facility. The shielded locomotive to have been used to "taxi" the nuke bomber is also at EBR-1.
CP-1, the reactor you refer too also had no cooling system. In Chernobyl the water boiled and that caused a steam explosion. When the coolant in a graphite moderated reactor is lost the reaction continues and continues producing very large amounts of heat, and is impossible to control or shutdown due to a high positive void coefficient. In a water moderated reactor when the water is boiled off, yes they melt down, but the reaction is slowed severely or stopped.
On November 29, 1955, the reactor at EBR-I suffered a partial meltdown during a coolant flow test. Almost a first Chernobyl. The Americans have always been lucky when it comes to nuclear accidents. EBR-I used uranium metal fuel and NaK primary coolant. It was in this identical to the initial configuration of the later Dounreay Fast Reactor which first went critical in 1959. Dounreay suffered some very serious accidents and is now costing billions to clean up.
There was a meltdown at a sodium cooled reactor in Santa Susanna, that contaminated the land where 460,000 homes were later built! The meltdown was completely concealed for well over 50 years! And homes were built on the contaminated land, during the concealment!
@@gregorymalchuk272 its interesting that they are considered as big deal nowadays,... lets be honest if rest of the thing works well it kills reactor, but not much more happends,...
The key in making these nuclear power plants safe Is making them small And only have enough material to run approximately five years The construction of the huge power plants is what makes these accidents so frightening. A small power plants something that would power up maybe a smaller community something that was easily take it off-line something that was easily made safe in the event of an accident is infinitely better than getting machines it’s suddenly melt down and cause havoc for thousands of people. There are hundreds of power plants working on battleships submarines aircraft carriers that are reliable easily maintained and these are under some of the most harsh conditions. They have proven to be indispensable and safe
fuku fukushima Then I had to guess you have to say no to the fucking sun. US military has 25 battleships aircraft carriers and submarines have never had a nuclear accident
Applying the aw shucks, seat of the pants, method to nuclear reactor development. What could go wrong? The small scale, and loose schedule of the project made this possible. The key word is ‘experimental.’
First off, this was a research reactor. Chernobyl was a full sized commercial power plant. There is no way this reactor could ever meltdown like Chernobyl just based on the number of fuel assemblies. Second, Chernobyl uses a completely different design (RBMKs aren't even breeders, they are just poorly designed run-of-the-mill LWRs, and the only reason they produced Pu is because the fuel was U-238, not U-235 like most LWRs).
Moderators slow the neutrons to increase the chance they get absorbed by the fuel element. While light water does adsorb some neutrons a reactor can't function with out a moderator. Also EBR-1 had a very tiny core, and only produced 1.4MW of heat, the RBMK reactor at Chernobyl produced 1000+ MW of heat and a core that you could park a couple trucks in. Very big difference.
RBMK 1000 reactor like 4 Chernobyl are good reactors, 4Chernobyl was operating outside of operating parameters when it had problems they are still in service until 2037, I would take a RBMK 1000 over a GE MK1 BWR any day.
@@gck82s False! The RBMK reactors have many flaws, and Chernobyl-4 should have been fine, even "operating outside of operating parameters", when the power excursion occurred. Many of these intrinsic faults have been rectified in the remaining RBMKs making them far safer. Also, I agree about the GE BWRs.
00: 50 ..."First peaceful use of atomic energy" - no - it was for producing plutonium only. The first nuclear power plant built for civil purposes was the AM-1 Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant, launched on 27 June 1954 in the Soviet Union. It produced around 5 MW.
From what I've seen, LFTR (Liquid Fluorine Thorium Reactor) appears to be something the US has pursue! And, much of the research was already carried out back in the '60's! Check out this website to learn more: energyfromthorium What seems to be the stumbling block to this technology are the carbon and uranium cycle "merchant" interests.
K4Fusion There are many technical stumbling blocks to ultra-high temp liquid salt cooling as well. Really significant ones in terms of material science. The cooling tubes are so deeply imbedded in the design of a reactor that they must last decades to be financially feasible. It is far simpler to replace the fuel itself than to replace or retrofit the tubes. Until now, we have not managed to make a tube that can withstand the intensely corrosive combination of heat and salt for the needed service life to make a feasible reactor.
A successful experiment is no accident unless someone wants it to be, Scientifically speaking. ***** Often wondered why the Engineers designed the piping to fail in a clean break shear, as well as a corrosion pinhole (?), but after seeing the consequence of ER=EPR shell-horizon envelope-shaping of shock wave modulation containment in resonances, the possibility is realistic and relevant because the Reaction operates at the Critical Point of Nuclear Resonance, Fusion-Fission of Neutronic boundaries, and that will include the composition of the constituent nuclei in the pipes etc. Conductivity of the materials subject to possible shear is required to be extensively tested?
Third, they would never get the green light to do this experiment if it was a water cooled reactor. They knew a meltdown was possible, but they also knew that the NaK would never contact water. Remember, the NaK is the coolant in this design, so water and NaK would never both be used to cool the same reactor, so what you are saying is impossible.
Not to mention i also worked at the INL and I could throw rock out of my window and hit the silver painted containment dome for EBR-II. so it seems like a pretty stable design to me, and it was notorious for the power fluctuations.
EBR-1 is open to the public in the summers, or was in 2006 when I visited. It is a great demonstration of man's ingenuity and the peaceful use of nuclear power. It is worth the drive. Make sure it is open the day you plan to visit, before you go out of your way.
It still open during the summer...I really want to go over there again, its been probably 15-20 years since I was over there, don't remember much about it, too young to pay attention then.
@@BobbyxZx, yes. EBR-1 was a broader reactor and the products could have been used for some early weapons or weapons testing and development. As we are still speaking English it was a good thing. But EBR-1’s contribution was in nuclear energy. It was the first commercial reactor to power a city. This included homes. It had no major releases of uncontrolled radiation and was decommissioned well. You can now go there and visit and play with the equipment.
@@eugenecbell the as we are still speaking english portion of your comment is non sensical. powering cities didn't win the cold war... i'm pretty sure i just watched a doc that showed the site did have some serious issues with exposure. the people that ran it certainly were playing with fire, you can tell from their interviews here that they didn't hold the proper respect to the danger... but perhaps i'm thinking of another sodium cooled breeder reactor. the problem with nuclear power is humanity's inability to handle it responsibly. still an issue to this day (fukushima)
They built a sodium reactor in Monju, Japan. It had a coolant leak, and they failed to design a method to remove the coolant! Radiation Brain Damage at fool speed ahead!
Do me a favor Chris. Show me a technically accurate, pear reviewed study demonstrating that over the course of the next 500 years, Humanity and actually, any vertebrate life on land will survive Fukushima! I'm not bragging that I know anything! I'm asking for information from those who do! I ask because (I may have missed it) have not heard anything indicating that survival is likely. I could be wrong! I am only a layman!
Chris ... From what we know now “They” the PHD’s back then really had NO CLUE what they were really doing!!!! Many many many many people dead and still dying from there lack of knowing very little BUT “They” your PHD’s were paid very WELL and gave NOT one “F” about the people it was killing.. PHD??? ( JOKES)
@@garyclouse7234 You mean *peer* reviewed. I don't think you understand how peer review works. And what makes you think "land vertebrates" (possibly all) won't survive due to Fukushima?
It is annoying that people who watch these documentaries believe they understand the direction nuclear power should take... but, the basics of nuclear power are actually relatively simple compared to power electronics, integrated circuit design, aerospace eng, radio frequency eng, synthetic chemistry, etc. Nuclear engineering isn't as hard to grasp or as reliant on high level math (stuff beyond basic calculus, diff eq, linear algebra, numerical methods). *mostly because the groundwork has already been done. The hardest part of designing a reactor isn't understanding the nuclear physics. It's the materials science, the mech e, etc.
Naw, they just are the best of the best, who fulfill a need when needed. It's the time they live in that determines if they must be called upon to serve.
I just wish we could find a way to safely handle nuclear materials the trouble is once u set up a nuclear reactor somewhere that place is now a nuclear waste site for an eternity. It's such a promising technology but we must find ways to safely work with it.
The expedition to the kingdom of the God. The experimental nuclear physics. Exporling the limitless possibilities and the unbelievable unimaginable power in the hand of man .
Look people we don't need any fossil fuels at all not for heat not for power generation and not for powering vehicle ,I have designed a machine that only needs a water source coupled with a water pump the water is brought into the kettle steam vessel which has an electric element like an ovens there are laser designator to keep water level above the electrical element the water is brought to a boil which treats and cleans water for cooking and washing and drinking the water after boiled is and a separate cooling tank and another tank for hot water separate from the boiling kettle so the boiling is always always quick water has to be brought in at a rate not too quick that put too much cold water at one time and the boiling point will take a long time to if water goes below element ,it will burn out right away ,this is all controlled by computer and after water is boiling the steam turbine generator makes power to charge a battery pack that would hold like a week's power and as it uses power the computer makes more just to keep batteries charged up . Make the house a real smart house sensor in each room like at Walmart it'll turn lights on and off as a person enters or leaves room and computer will put power where it's needed most first for heat for water for drinking so it's boiling water what's it's biggest by product ,heat it's heat so water sent into floor pipes that flow through a closed loop system and hot water goes through warming home up and as it travels the loop and cools it goes back into kettle to be reheated ,also water for toilets will be the waste water that is collected after it goes down drain or toilet it's cleaned treated separated and heated clean enough that is used for toilets only or yardwork , you don't need to be hooked up to town water or sewage or power lines and don't need a furnace or electric hot water tank and with a closed system we could make the separated feces incinerated by machines heat , it's totally green good for our planet and every bit of technology exists now , I've designed an electrically compressed jet engine that also has a hot gaseous thrust without any jet fuel or fossil fuel at all it flies on Earth atmospherically burning engines and it can turn fuel off land vertically on ocean and ballast to submerge then taking water through compressors then around combustion chamber and out the back as directional thrust water jet as propulsion and steering sideways no problem also be the fastest underwater craft then blow ballast resurface turn furl on empty water good relight take of vertically ,then using 767emptied only railgun equipment and power for launching my craft once into orbit on same Earth engines using that ballast tank filled with compressed oxygen close air intakes feed ballast air directly into compressors then the rest runs normally as jets do the thrust though is used to steer craft and propel craft so putting my craft on top of 767 but facing backwards so when he gets as high as can my craft intakes closed facing backwards the 767 goes into a dive so my craft is now on angle facing up towards orbit then railgun is launched to 5000mph at an already very high altitude ,then kick in the engines of craft for some extra thrust then wen returning get into air open intakes then relight then return home and land vertically this is some of the designs that could fix the planets climate change ,it all exists now every bit we could build the craft isn't flown by expensively trained pilot ,the computer flies craft using two pods on on top and another on the bottom each has a vertical laser designator and a horizontal laser designator moving back and forwards up and down very fast and they have a night vision camera a regular camera radar ,sonar ,heat vision flir ,also search for electrical signals all this info is fed updated constantly and fed into a hard drive that has a library of items weather mountians ,birds ,power lines other crafts ,stuff like that then it's reproduced on a computer screen constantly updated it won't matter if dark out or raining or snowing the computer can see through it all and make a clear picture of the outside as craft flies through air it has an iPod dock that is craft control unit it's loaded with mission info and wen plugged into dock the craft comes to life it takes off vertically doesn't have ailerons or flaps or tailfins for steering the craft no you put four engines two near front on either side in ncell housings they can move about 180 each then each engine has 360 degree thrust vectoring and the two out the back turn and pivot downwards like the f35 jet does then while pionted downwards they have the 360degrew thrust vectoring this four pillars is used to take off vertical and steer craft computer controlled that makes us system operator there's way more but I'll keep that to myself for now
youre quite silly breeders are something that is needed today but unavailable because of nuclear proliferation. If they could be built and used the fuel stocks for nuclear energy production will last much longer.
Fast reactors generally a metal for a moderator and coolant and experimental reactors they use NaK which cause the fuel rods to foam like shown in the video. and water will just boil to where there is no moderation and the reaction stops. So in no way could this ever have been like Chernobyl, ever. And considering it ran for over 10 years and by itself at night I would stay it was stable. Power fluctuations like that due happen sometimes, example EBR-II did the same thing it ran for 30 years.
And you to basic reactor physics. A class I have taken and you apparently have not.like USKilop said they would have never had tried that with a water cooled. Not mention at the INL they will purposefully melt down reactors all the time in the 60's thru late 90's. This is where all research regarding meltdowns come from. And there is no way any reactor in the US could be the same as Chernobyl. Chernobyl was graphite moderated, which will not shut down my itself in the event of a loss of coolant.
When you look at the level of height of building, sheer cost of design and R and D, All the Castings and Heaters and extra steam tanks and vents and suppression pools...this tech is not viable and never will be. It's dirtier and more expensive than coal. San Onofre put out so much heat that it warmed the ocean. Fishing boats used to fish at the edges, where the bass and mackerel were forced by the hot water from the plant. The ocean bottom was scoured clean from the heat, none of the animals survived. It was a disaster. Mass slaughter on the ocean floor off Los Angles. You could build 100 NG plants for the cost of this half-baked NP scheme.
Lead cooled reactors were used in Russia and still are if memory serves. You get a number of the same benefits with lead that you do with sodium. High heat tolerance, can be run at atmospheric (or near atmospheric) pressures, good heat transferability. Lead has an additional bonus in that it is essentially non-reactive with air and water, which makes maintenance easier, while sodium requires much greater care. Leaks of lead coolant don't pose the same hazard as leaks of sodium coolant. Sodium is a more efficient coolant and has some superior nuclear properties compared to lead. Neither will 'blow its top' though as neither is run under pressure. That's the whole reason for using liquid metals vs. water. To get sodium or lead to boil and form pressure, you need temps well in excess of what these reactors are likely to generate.
@@obsoleteoptics How would you get lead poisoning from molten lead coolant in a nuclear reactor? If you come into contact with molten lead in a reactor vessel, you got bigger more immediate problems.
Well it seemed like a good idea at the time. It wasn't and there were better answers already available. Today we have much much better ideas and technology than nuclear fission.
***** 0% of the energy I have ever used is nuclear. My country has no nuclear power stations. So no - you are so busy needing a nuclear reactor to make you a man you have missed reality.
***** That's interesting. So you are implying that the use of Nuclear is linked to being a military power? Hmmm… I thought it was about power generation not weapons?
The only reason to have a nuclear power program is to make nuclear weapons, it is the most expensive form of electricity generation there is. the stuff that comes out of a reactor the short life isotopes are infinitely more toxic than the u238 that goes in, they are not low carbon or carbon neutral construction mining enrichment shipment storage of waste and reprocessing. Reprocessing the nuclear fuel cycle yes you get back some u238 but the real resin is to separate pu240 from pu239 and u235 po210 and tritium for nuclear weapons you also get 1000 times more waste most of which is contaminated water that goes in to the environment discharged at sea with no regulation, nuclear power is a misdirection con job presented to a public that does not know any better or the real consequences. One last thing to consider, Regulatory lack of engineering understanding and installation cost and replacement cost, reactors lifespan 40 years it 40 years for a good reason Reactor pressure vessel embrittlement due to neutron flux BWR's operate at 600 psi PWR's at 900/1000 psi Reactor pressure vessel flex due to thermal expansion and contraction, reactor life extension is sort sited and dangerous yes it looks alright it has bean maintained regardless of cost, but the people giving the extensions do not understand the engineering implications.
Experimental nuclear physics and the dawn of space age and the forthcoming our space age cosmic heritage. Our NUCLEAR power to Atomic bomb. To the power of God. The power of the INFINITE. The supreme consciousness.
+quest 34667 Depends by what metric you are measuring. In terms of chemical toxicity plutonium is a heavy metal like lead, not good for you so don't lick it, but not a horrible deadly poison that will snuff out all life with the tiniest bit of exposure. As far as things that are worse than it in this regard the answer is 'lots of things', swallowing a 20 gram slug of plutonium is probably not going to kill you though it will be unpleasant coming out the other end while eating 20 grams of pure caffeine *WILL* kill your ass dead. If we're thinking of radio-toxicity things get a little fuzzier, there's multiple isotopes of plutonium some of which are more radioactive than others. If we're taking the case of plutonium 239 which is what people are usually referring to when they say 'plutonium' it has a half-life of ~24,000 years and when it decays it emits an alpha particle. In the aforementioned case of eating a slug of it alpha radiation is really only dangerous inside your body so that's a bad place for it to be, but a solid slug would not have much chance to dissolve and would be passed by the body. Getting back to the original question there are other radioactive substances that are much more concerning to be around such as cobalt 60, it has a half-life of ~5 years and is what they use to sterilize medical equipment and the like. Eating 20 grams of that would give you a bad case of 'killed by radiation poisoning' in a hurry. Finally in terms of being used as a weapon, yeah plutonium is pretty far up there being usable in nuclear bombs and all of that. If you say that a nuclear bomb has a kilogram of plutonium in it (a number I made up, it is probably more than that but this doesn't change my point) and that a nuclear bomb would kill x-hundreds of thousands of people if set off in an urban area than yeah plutonium sounds pretty damn dangerous on a gram-per-gram basis. But it's still not the worst thing I can think of, a little sample vial with some of hyper contagious super flu in it could easily end up killing tens of millions if released in the right place which again starts to make plutonium start to look like small potatoes.
Daniel Leca ,,, 70 Miles ??? As we “ALL” know now that’s not far enough !!!! History shows they were playing with something they didn’t understand and putting everyone’s life on the line and there’s no excuse for this this was and still is a complete disaster and should never be repeated.
Truck Mechanic Well, truck mechanic, don’t let it kill you. If you are indeed a truck mechanic of any quality, you must know that the machines you work on, poorly operated and maintained, are quite lethal. Yet, power generation is equally essential to our daily lives as is the delivery of freight, so it needs to be done, and no technology comes anywhere close to nuclear in terms of efficiency and sustainability. You also should be able to guess that a fission reactor is thousands of times more complex than even the most amazing heavy truck, so if you really want to understand, spend a few years reading before shouting nonsense about it. A few thousand more emoji and you could have read a book instead.
Bah, water cooled reactors suck. We only went with breeders because the defense industry wanted to make bombs out of the waste daughter products. Bring on the LFTR's already.
LFTRs hold great promise, but no one "went" with breeders at all. The only breeder reactors ever built are experimental or research reactors. It seems you're confusing water moderated reactors with breeder reactors (they are virtually the opposite of each other). Also, "daughter products" are lighter nuclides which result from the _decay_ of radionucides. The stuff nuclear weapons use (plutonium-239) is _heavier_ than the fertile nuclide from which it's made - within the fuel elements (usually a mix of fissile uranium-235 and fertile uranium-238).
ze d logging is safe, and trees can’t crush you, natural gas doesn’t explode, windmills aren’t high off the ground, silicon tetrachloride isn’t toxic, dams don’t flood land and water can’t kill you, finally coal doesn’t cause lung cancer. 🙃
If you happen to be in the area, the reactor is still open to the public, and the tour is very interesting and informative. I visited last summer (2017) when I was staying at the nearby Craters of the Moon national monument, and it was my favourite part of the trip. 10/10 would visit again.
It's closed temporarily now thanks to the pandemic. Drove by it on 7-25-2021.
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I went there today- it was rlly cool!
My grandfather was Earl J. Barrow and he was proud to work there. And my father, Robert Riordan, worked at the INL for 40 years.
Definitely visit EBR-1 if you can. It's a fascinating look at a unique piece of history.
Great historic video. We need more like this...
your insane dude
My grandfather worked on these sodium cooled reactors. He worked in the USAF and I don't know what time he did work on them. I think it might have been as a contractor but nonetheless his stories always intrigued me. Why isn't this type of nuclear power being researched even more? You have a easy to find coolant and it produces more uranium then it needs to sustain itself. These things are the future! My grandfather recently passed of cancer but we don't think it was the reactors. Probably agent orange and Willy Pete
Sorry for your loss! Also, thank you for keeping his memory alive. He must’ve had some great stories! Bless,
What sort of cancer?
The kind you get from playing with high energy highly radioactive hot particles, that rip appart mitochondrial DNA like hot knife through butter.
It never ceaces to amaze me how the nuclear death cult believes their own propaganda. Even after it had been proven as the most expensive and least profitable means to boil water, ever invented. Oh and not to mention the most harmful substances left behind aa waste, that cannot be approached for soke 200,000 years, that no one knows what to do with....
Thank you for the upload. Truly something everyone should see.
Do visit EBR-1 if you have a chance. Fascinating place in an other-worldly location.
We need more like this
These days you'll get fired for "practical engineering". :(
My grandfather was an engineer and was there watching as the tuned it on.
My grandfather worked on them too. He was there as a crane operator I believe. Nonetheless his stories about these reactors are just amazing! Ask your grandfather if he knew a James andreasean.
My grandfather was an engineer working on the reactor in the Chalk River, Canada, in the '50s :)
Same he helped patent the way to make the toxic waste into glass
I have visited this place several times since its been a National Landmark. A very interesting place that you can go on your own self-guided tour, or with a group. You can also see the nuclear aircraft engines developed at the Idaho National Lab during that time frame. A must see if your in the area.
It's truly remarkable. Too bad we can't visit the hangar for the nuclear bomber up north, as it's used as a commercial facility. The shielded locomotive to have been used to "taxi" the nuke bomber is also at EBR-1.
CP-1, the reactor you refer too also had no cooling system. In Chernobyl the water boiled and that caused a steam explosion. When the coolant in a graphite moderated reactor is lost the reaction continues and continues producing very large amounts of heat, and is impossible to control or shutdown due to a high positive void coefficient. In a water moderated reactor when the water is boiled off, yes they melt down, but the reaction is slowed severely or stopped.
On November 29, 1955, the reactor at EBR-I suffered a partial meltdown during a coolant flow test. Almost a first Chernobyl. The Americans have always been lucky when it comes to nuclear accidents.
EBR-I used uranium metal fuel and NaK primary coolant. It was in this identical to the initial configuration of the later Dounreay Fast Reactor which first went critical in 1959. Dounreay suffered some very serious accidents and is now costing billions to clean up.
There was a meltdown at a sodium cooled reactor in Santa Susanna, that contaminated the land where 460,000 homes were later built! The meltdown was completely concealed for well over 50 years! And homes were built on the contaminated land, during the concealment!
They failed to understand about Xenon-133 poisoning of the fuel rods!
I was born and raised in Idaho falls and I’m embarrassed to say I was 35 years old before I visited.
Hello neighbor
Nuclear physics and the fundamental research and development of frontiers of new era .
I never realized there was a partial meltdown at EBR-1.
@James B
It's sort of interesting how meltdowns were considered relatively minor in the past.
@@gregorymalchuk272 its interesting that they are considered as big deal nowadays,... lets be honest if rest of the thing works well it kills reactor, but not much more happends,...
dipshits cooled it with sodium... and had no idea what they were doing. they were fools
EBR1 & II should have been adopted as the standard design for nuclear energy
Its Still Leaking & Killing The Earth
Thanks Rickover
@@FixItStupid And what about all the damage fossil fuels do to the planet.
The key in making these nuclear power plants safe
Is making them small And only have enough material to run approximately five years The construction of the huge power plants is what makes these accidents so frightening. A small power plants something that would power up maybe a smaller community something that was easily take it off-line something that was easily made safe in the event of an accident is infinitely better than getting machines it’s suddenly melt down and cause havoc for thousands of people. There are hundreds of power plants working on battleships submarines aircraft carriers that are reliable easily maintained and these are under some of the most harsh conditions. They have proven to be indispensable and safe
no to fuicken nuclear energy full stop...
fuku fukushima Then I had to guess you have to say no to the fucking sun. US military has 25 battleships aircraft carriers and submarines have never had a nuclear accident
@@iron60bitch62 and how many more are at the bottom of the sea with their nuclear weapons and fuel still onboard?
@@iron60bitch62, and the Dozen Nuke Submarines docked at Devonport Dockyard jus rusting away... ???
Applying the aw shucks, seat of the pants, method to nuclear reactor development. What could go wrong?
The small scale, and loose schedule of the project made this possible. The key word is ‘experimental.’
Jeez Kirby Whitham sounds like a barrel of laughs...
First off, this was a research reactor. Chernobyl was a full sized commercial power plant. There is no way this reactor could ever meltdown like Chernobyl just based on the number of fuel assemblies. Second, Chernobyl uses a completely different design (RBMKs aren't even breeders, they are just poorly designed run-of-the-mill LWRs, and the only reason they produced Pu is because the fuel was U-238, not U-235 like most LWRs).
USKilop and we all have heard that be for!!! It can’t happen
Truck Mechanic You are aware of your username, right?
(layman) but didn't they intentionally keep the test reactor's wattage super low to make that risk pretty much 0
Rest in peace Shipmate Richard Legg.
Moderators slow the neutrons to increase the chance they get absorbed by the fuel element. While light water does adsorb some neutrons a reactor can't function with out a moderator. Also EBR-1 had a very tiny core, and only produced 1.4MW of heat, the RBMK reactor at Chernobyl produced 1000+ MW of heat and a core that you could park a couple trucks in. Very big difference.
RBMK 1000 reactor like 4 Chernobyl are good reactors, 4Chernobyl was operating outside of operating parameters when it had problems they are still in service until 2037, I would take a RBMK 1000 over a GE MK1 BWR any day.
@@gck82s False! The RBMK reactors have many flaws, and Chernobyl-4 should have been fine, even "operating outside of operating parameters", when the power excursion occurred. Many of these intrinsic faults have been rectified in the remaining RBMKs making them far safer. Also, I agree about the GE BWRs.
And to think, this pioneering effort has led to our current "electricity to cheap to meter"
00: 50 ..."First peaceful use of atomic energy" - no - it was for producing plutonium only. The first nuclear power plant built for civil purposes was the AM-1 Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant, launched on 27 June 1954 in the Soviet Union. It produced around 5 MW.
From what I've seen, LFTR (Liquid Fluorine Thorium Reactor) appears to be something the US has pursue! And, much of the research was already carried out back in the '60's! Check out this website to learn more: energyfromthorium
What seems to be the stumbling block to this technology are the carbon and uranium cycle "merchant" interests.
K4Fusion There are many technical stumbling blocks to ultra-high temp liquid salt cooling as well. Really significant ones in terms of material science. The cooling tubes are so deeply imbedded in the design of a reactor that they must last decades to be financially feasible. It is far simpler to replace the fuel itself than to replace or retrofit the tubes. Until now, we have not managed to make a tube that can withstand the intensely corrosive combination of heat and salt for the needed service life to make a feasible reactor.
There are many ways to build a MSR. The reactor itself is not the issue and it's cheap.
The problem is political.
A successful experiment is no accident unless someone wants it to be, Scientifically speaking.
*****
Often wondered why the Engineers designed the piping to fail in a clean break shear, as well as a corrosion pinhole (?), but after seeing the consequence of ER=EPR shell-horizon envelope-shaping of shock wave modulation containment in resonances, the possibility is realistic and relevant because the Reaction operates at the Critical Point of Nuclear Resonance, Fusion-Fission of Neutronic boundaries, and that will include the composition of the constituent nuclei in the pipes etc. Conductivity of the materials subject to possible shear is required to be extensively tested?
Third, they would never get the green light to do this experiment if it was a water cooled reactor. They knew a meltdown was possible, but they also knew that the NaK would never contact water. Remember, the NaK is the coolant in this design, so water and NaK would never both be used to cool the same reactor, so what you are saying is impossible.
Not to mention i also worked at the INL and I could throw rock out of my window and hit the silver painted containment dome for EBR-II. so it seems like a pretty stable design to me, and it was notorious for the power fluctuations.
EBR-1 is open to the public in the summers, or was in 2006 when I visited. It is a great demonstration of man's ingenuity and the peaceful use of nuclear power. It is worth the drive. Make sure it is open the day you plan to visit, before you go out of your way.
It is still open in the Summer. I live nearby and go there every now and then. Cool place to see
It still open during the summer...I really want to go over there again, its been probably 15-20 years since I was over there, don't remember much about it, too young to pay attention then.
peaceful use? didn't they use the fissile material they made to create bombs?
@@BobbyxZx, yes. EBR-1 was a broader reactor and the products could have been used for some early weapons or weapons testing and development. As we are still speaking English it was a good thing.
But EBR-1’s contribution was in nuclear energy. It was the first commercial reactor to power a city. This included homes. It had no major releases of uncontrolled radiation and was decommissioned well. You can now go there and visit and play with the equipment.
@@eugenecbell the as we are still speaking english portion of your comment is non sensical. powering cities didn't win the cold war... i'm pretty sure i just watched a doc that showed the site did have some serious issues with exposure. the people that ran it certainly were playing with fire, you can tell from their interviews here that they didn't hold the proper respect to the danger... but perhaps i'm thinking of another sodium cooled breeder reactor. the problem with nuclear power is humanity's inability to handle it responsibly. still an issue to this day (fukushima)
Yeah, but they purposefully caused it to melt down. Just to test it?
lets go Lance, power to knowledge
1:23:44 in the morning on April 26th 1986 the Chernobyl no 4 reactor was destroyed.
COINCIDENCE!?!?!?
yes.
Great minds
They built a sodium reactor in Monju, Japan. It had a coolant leak, and they failed to design a method to remove the coolant! Radiation Brain Damage at fool speed ahead!
70 mile round trip per day ! Holi Shit That would suck.
Dr Alvin Radkowsky
They... they kept bankers' hours?
Interesting video. Describes an important aspect of the history of our attempts to use nuclear energy for peaceful means.
+Bruce Knoll pandora was let loose.
this is awesome!
I love how everybody in the comments section has a PhD in nuclear engineering.
Do me a favor Chris. Show me a technically accurate, pear reviewed study demonstrating that over the course of the next 500 years, Humanity and actually, any vertebrate life on land will survive Fukushima! I'm not bragging that I know anything! I'm asking for information from those who do! I ask because (I may have missed it) have not heard anything indicating that survival is likely. I could be wrong! I am only a layman!
Chris ... From what we know now “They” the PHD’s back then really had NO CLUE what they were really doing!!!! Many many many many people dead and still dying from there lack of knowing very little BUT “They” your PHD’s were paid very WELL and gave NOT one “F” about the people it was killing.. PHD??? ( JOKES)
@@garyclouse7234 You mean *peer* reviewed. I don't think you understand how peer review works. And what makes you think "land vertebrates" (possibly all) won't survive due to Fukushima?
Ahh yes, nuclear, yes aha ☝☝ science! I am an expert.
It is annoying that people who watch these documentaries believe they understand the direction nuclear power should take... but, the basics of nuclear power are actually relatively simple compared to power electronics, integrated circuit design, aerospace eng, radio frequency eng, synthetic chemistry, etc. Nuclear engineering isn't as hard to grasp or as reliant on high level math (stuff beyond basic calculus, diff eq, linear algebra, numerical methods).
*mostly because the groundwork has already been done. The hardest part of designing a reactor isn't understanding the nuclear physics. It's the materials science, the mech e, etc.
+mohamed khorsheed what company is that with?
yes, very
FREAKING AMAZING.....are these humans from another planet and part of a super smart race???
Naw, they just are the best of the best, who fulfill a need when needed. It's the time they live in that determines if they must be called upon to serve.
Are you kidding?
The only thing they did was make a vessel to contain the reaction and radiation.
The fuel does everything itself.
Lonni you are the one who must be kidding
Quite the opposite, actually.
Wicked! How to get a job? I know lotta stuff on these atoms! For real!
I just wish we could find a way to safely handle nuclear materials the trouble is once u set up a nuclear reactor somewhere that place is now a nuclear waste site for an eternity. It's such a promising technology but we must find ways to safely work with it.
impossible to do... the greed of man is unimagineable
Awesome!
Scary, that the Chernobyl Reactor 4 exploded at 1:23 am in 1986. The EBR startet at 1:23 pm 1951
And stay out of the Woolworth!
Air cooled ones (plutonium breeders) are even worse :D
AKAtheA
*Windscale Flashbacks*
But they could use natural uranium for power!
The expedition to the kingdom of the God. The experimental nuclear physics. Exporling the limitless possibilities and the unbelievable unimaginable power in the hand of man .
lame
We should have used Geothermal. Enough said
Tf
Look people we don't need any fossil fuels at all not for heat not for power generation and not for powering vehicle ,I have designed a machine that only needs a water source coupled with a water pump the water is brought into the kettle steam vessel which has an electric element like an ovens there are laser designator to keep water level above the electrical element the water is brought to a boil which treats and cleans water for cooking and washing and drinking the water after boiled is and a separate cooling tank and another tank for hot water separate from the boiling kettle so the boiling is always always quick water has to be brought in at a rate not too quick that put too much cold water at one time and the boiling point will take a long time to if water goes below element ,it will burn out right away ,this is all controlled by computer and after water is boiling the steam turbine generator makes power to charge a battery pack that would hold like a week's power and as it uses power the computer makes more just to keep batteries charged up . Make the house a real smart house sensor in each room like at Walmart it'll turn lights on and off as a person enters or leaves room and computer will put power where it's needed most first for heat for water for drinking so it's boiling water what's it's biggest by product ,heat it's heat so water sent into floor pipes that flow through a closed loop system and hot water goes through warming home up and as it travels the loop and cools it goes back into kettle to be reheated ,also water for toilets will be the waste water that is collected after it goes down drain or toilet it's cleaned treated separated and heated clean enough that is used for toilets only or yardwork , you don't need to be hooked up to town water or sewage or power lines and don't need a furnace or electric hot water tank and with a closed system we could make the separated feces incinerated by machines heat , it's totally green good for our planet and every bit of technology exists now , I've designed an electrically compressed jet engine that also has a hot gaseous thrust without any jet fuel or fossil fuel at all it flies on Earth atmospherically burning engines and it can turn fuel off land vertically on ocean and ballast to submerge then taking water through compressors then around combustion chamber and out the back as directional thrust water jet as propulsion and steering sideways no problem also be the fastest underwater craft then blow ballast resurface turn furl on empty water good relight take of vertically ,then using 767emptied only railgun equipment and power for launching my craft once into orbit on same Earth engines using that ballast tank filled with compressed oxygen close air intakes feed ballast air directly into compressors then the rest runs normally as jets do the thrust though is used to steer craft and propel craft so putting my craft on top of 767 but facing backwards so when he gets as high as can my craft intakes closed facing backwards the 767 goes into a dive so my craft is now on angle facing up towards orbit then railgun is launched to 5000mph at an already very high altitude ,then kick in the engines of craft for some extra thrust then wen returning get into air open intakes then relight then return home and land vertically this is some of the designs that could fix the planets climate change ,it all exists now every bit we could build the craft isn't flown by expensively trained pilot ,the computer flies craft using two pods on on top and another on the bottom each has a vertical laser designator and a horizontal laser designator moving back and forwards up and down very fast and they have a night vision camera a regular camera radar ,sonar ,heat vision flir ,also search for electrical signals all this info is fed updated constantly and fed into a hard drive that has a library of items weather mountians ,birds ,power lines other crafts ,stuff like that then it's reproduced on a computer screen constantly updated it won't matter if dark out or raining or snowing the computer can see through it all and make a clear picture of the outside as craft flies through air it has an iPod dock that is craft control unit it's loaded with mission info and wen plugged into dock the craft comes to life it takes off vertically doesn't have ailerons or flaps or tailfins for steering the craft no you put four engines two near front on either side in ncell housings they can move about 180 each then each engine has 360 degree thrust vectoring and the two out the back turn and pivot downwards like the f35 jet does then while pionted downwards they have the 360degrew thrust vectoring this four pillars is used to take off vertical and steer craft computer controlled that makes us system operator there's way more but I'll keep that to myself for now
But they only lit 4 lightbulbs. Not very impressive for a POWER reactor.
pasoundman for the FIRST POWER reactor it was very impressive at its time
Experimental nuclear physics.
youre quite silly
breeders are something that is needed today but unavailable because of nuclear proliferation. If they could be built and used the fuel stocks for nuclear energy production will last much longer.
I love america because they preserve things very well. if this was in russia it would be derelict already
Fast reactors generally a metal for a moderator and coolant and experimental reactors they use NaK which cause the fuel rods to foam like shown in the video. and water will just boil to where there is no moderation and the reaction stops. So in no way could this ever have been like Chernobyl, ever. And considering it ran for over 10 years and by itself at night I would stay it was stable. Power fluctuations like that due happen sometimes, example EBR-II did the same thing it ran for 30 years.
Check up on Dounreay. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dounreay#Dounreay_settlement
It's an eye-opener.
I could make an ion chamber detector from the guts of a smoke detector. 🤓
And you to basic reactor physics. A class I have taken and you apparently have not.like USKilop said they would have never had tried that with a water cooled. Not mention at the INL they will purposefully melt down reactors all the time in the 60's thru late 90's. This is where all research regarding meltdowns come from. And there is no way any reactor in the US could be the same as Chernobyl. Chernobyl was graphite moderated, which will not shut down my itself in the event of a loss of coolant.
When you look at the level of height of building, sheer cost of design and R and D, All the Castings and Heaters and extra steam tanks and vents and suppression pools...this tech is not viable and never will be. It's dirtier and more expensive than coal. San Onofre put out so much heat that it warmed the ocean. Fishing boats used to fish at the edges, where the bass and mackerel were forced by the hot water from the plant. The ocean bottom was scoured clean from the heat, none of the animals survived. It was a disaster. Mass slaughter on the ocean floor off Los Angles. You could build 100 NG plants for the cost of this half-baked NP scheme.
I wonder how a lead cooled reactor would have reacted to such a meltdown. Defiantly wouldn't blow it's top.
Lead cooled reactors were used in Russia and still are if memory serves. You get a number of the same benefits with lead that you do with sodium. High heat tolerance, can be run at atmospheric (or near atmospheric) pressures, good heat transferability. Lead has an additional bonus in that it is essentially non-reactive with air and water, which makes maintenance easier, while sodium requires much greater care. Leaks of lead coolant don't pose the same hazard as leaks of sodium coolant. Sodium is a more efficient coolant and has some superior nuclear properties compared to lead. Neither will 'blow its top' though as neither is run under pressure. That's the whole reason for using liquid metals vs. water. To get sodium or lead to boil and form pressure, you need temps well in excess of what these reactors are likely to generate.
@@DriveCarToBar so lead poisoning no longer exists?
@@obsoleteoptics How would you get lead poisoning from molten lead coolant in a nuclear reactor?
If you come into contact with molten lead in a reactor vessel, you got bigger more immediate problems.
its the grandpa from up
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Well it seemed like a good idea at the time.
It wasn't and there were better answers already available.
Today we have much much better ideas and technology than nuclear fission.
***** 0% of the energy I have ever used is nuclear.
My country has no nuclear power stations.
So no - you are so busy needing a nuclear reactor to make you a man you have missed reality.
Yes thank you for illustrating your attitudes and prejudices.
Nothing to do with technology nor sense.
***** That's interesting.
So you are implying that the use of Nuclear is linked to being a military power?
Hmmm…
I thought it was about power generation not weapons?
Blood Beryl
Cries for poor nuclear energy. It coulda been head captain had it been allowed to go to a good school.
So where the hell is your country? I wish people would ID where they live so we would know what they`re talking about.
The only reason to have a nuclear power program is to make nuclear weapons, it is the most expensive form of electricity generation there is. the stuff that comes out of a reactor the short life isotopes are infinitely more toxic than the u238 that goes in, they are not low carbon or carbon neutral construction mining enrichment shipment storage of waste and reprocessing.
Reprocessing the nuclear fuel cycle yes you get back some u238 but the real resin is to separate pu240 from pu239 and u235 po210 and tritium for nuclear weapons you also get 1000 times more waste most of which is contaminated water that goes in to the environment discharged at sea with no regulation, nuclear power is a misdirection con job presented to a public that does not know any better or the real consequences.
One last thing to consider, Regulatory lack of engineering understanding and installation cost and replacement cost, reactors lifespan 40 years it 40 years for a good reason Reactor pressure vessel embrittlement due to neutron flux BWR's operate at 600 psi PWR's at 900/1000 psi Reactor pressure vessel flex due to thermal expansion and contraction, reactor life extension is sort sited and dangerous yes it looks alright it has bean maintained regardless of cost, but the people giving the extensions do not understand the engineering implications.
Experimental nuclear physics and the dawn of space age and the forthcoming our space age cosmic heritage. Our NUCLEAR power to Atomic bomb. To the power of God. The power of the INFINITE. The supreme consciousness.
Not nuclear pioneers; nuclear pirates.
isn't plutonium the most dangerous substance on the planet?
+quest 34667
No.
then what is.
+quest 34667
Depends by what metric you are measuring.
In terms of chemical toxicity plutonium is a heavy metal like lead, not good for you so don't lick it, but not a horrible deadly poison that will snuff out all life with the tiniest bit of exposure. As far as things that are worse than it in this regard the answer is 'lots of things', swallowing a 20 gram slug of plutonium is probably not going to kill you though it will be unpleasant coming out the other end while eating 20 grams of pure caffeine *WILL* kill your ass dead.
If we're thinking of radio-toxicity things get a little fuzzier, there's multiple isotopes of plutonium some of which are more radioactive than others. If we're taking the case of plutonium 239 which is what people are usually referring to when they say 'plutonium' it has a half-life of ~24,000 years and when it decays it emits an alpha particle. In the aforementioned case of eating a slug of it alpha radiation is really only dangerous inside your body so that's a bad place for it to be, but a solid slug would not have much chance to dissolve and would be passed by the body. Getting back to the original question there are other radioactive substances that are much more concerning to be around such as cobalt 60, it has a half-life of ~5 years and is what they use to sterilize medical equipment and the like. Eating 20 grams of that would give you a bad case of 'killed by radiation poisoning' in a hurry.
Finally in terms of being used as a weapon, yeah plutonium is pretty far up there being usable in nuclear bombs and all of that. If you say that a nuclear bomb has a kilogram of plutonium in it (a number I made up, it is probably more than that but this doesn't change my point) and that a nuclear bomb would kill x-hundreds of thousands of people if set off in an urban area than yeah plutonium sounds pretty damn dangerous on a gram-per-gram basis. But it's still not the worst thing I can think of, a little sample vial with some of hyper contagious super flu in it could easily end up killing tens of millions if released in the right place which again starts to make plutonium start to look like small potatoes.
thanks so much for that explanation. i enjoyed reading that. be well.
Botulism spores.
It still kills me how ANYONE can still think any of this was or still safe of any kind!!! 😳😳🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬
Daniel Leca ,,, 70 Miles ??? As we “ALL” know now that’s not far enough !!!! History shows they were playing with something they didn’t understand and putting everyone’s life on the line and there’s no excuse for this this was and still is a complete disaster and should never be repeated.
Truck Mechanic Well, truck mechanic, don’t let it kill you. If you are indeed a truck mechanic of any quality, you must know that the machines you work on, poorly operated and maintained, are quite lethal. Yet, power generation is equally essential to our daily lives as is the delivery of freight, so it needs to be done, and no technology comes anywhere close to nuclear in terms of efficiency and sustainability. You also should be able to guess that a fission reactor is thousands of times more complex than even the most amazing heavy truck, so if you really want to understand, spend a few years reading before shouting nonsense about it. A few thousand more emoji and you could have read a book instead.
@@artysanmobile, who paid you to type that ?
Bah, water cooled reactors suck. We only went with breeders because the defense industry wanted to make bombs out of the waste daughter products.
Bring on the LFTR's already.
LFTRs hold great promise, but no one "went" with breeders at all. The only breeder reactors ever built are experimental or research reactors. It seems you're confusing water moderated reactors with breeder reactors (they are virtually the opposite of each other). Also, "daughter products" are lighter nuclides which result from the _decay_ of radionucides. The stuff nuclear weapons use (plutonium-239) is _heavier_ than the fertile nuclide from which it's made - within the fuel elements (usually a mix of fissile uranium-235 and fertile uranium-238).
Nuclear is safe 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
ze d logging is safe, and trees can’t crush you, natural gas doesn’t explode, windmills aren’t high off the ground, silicon tetrachloride isn’t toxic, dams don’t flood land and water can’t kill you, finally coal doesn’t cause lung cancer. 🙃
Luckily this was a test reactor not a commercial reactor near human civilization
The people who worked in the reactor were all really creepy and strange people!
You should go to a traveling circus.