You should reallly mention about coal when it is burned it releases heavy metal and radioactive materials as well iin the ash which is a major cause of death
I think Dolores Cannon said well, when Nuclear Energy invented it was for negative purpose (war) so it has bad negative Aura around it and this is resisting to become power source for good. (i know it's metaphysics but still it make sense at some level)
Nuclear energy is the most efficient and cleanest energy that we have to this day. Yes, the previous accidents are terrible, but I'm pretty sure that with recent technologies, these risks can be reduced to almost zero.
Another thing you could research on the subject is companies like Thor Energy, and the types of reactors like LFTR (Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor) and the people working on those ideas like Ron Sorenson.
As a nuclear physicist who deals with rad waste daily, I appreciate the thought put into dispelling common radiation fears, it only makes my job that little bit easier.
I know nothing about this, but is rad waste all solid? why was i udner the impression that even the water that the rods are submersed in essentially radiocative forever and we also need to take care of disposing it as well?
@@Element_J3 heavy water is not radioactive. Let me do a better explanation. Neutron activation is the process that causes stable elements to become radioactive. This is caused by free neutrons interacting with nuclei. When water is hit by neutrons, there are two atoms that can go through neutron activation (obviously) hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen gets hit and forms deuterium which is stable, though the deuterium can then get hit by a neutron and become tritium which is mildly radioactive. This is a very small amount of water as most of the water is still going to be regular hydrogen. Now oxygen has two heavier versions than the most common, Oxygen-16, and those heavier versions are oxygen 17 and 18. Both of which are stable. The only radioactive isotope of oxygen (that doesn’t decay almost instantly) is oxygen 15 which is less than 16 and cannot be formed from neutron activation. Thus water in a nuclear plant is not really radioactive at all. Water is only good at moving things that are radioactive which it doesn’t in a nuclear power plant.
@@Element_J3 I think there are trace amounts of material dissolved into the water (more if they melt), but fuel pellets have cladding specifically to prevent that (and corrosion). That gets filtered and the filters eventually end up as LSA rad waste (I think I followed a convoy for around 15 minutes on the highway, I noticed because it had a RAD III placard which is rare, and the LSA classification means that the high radioactivity comes from a lot of moderately radioactive waste (also it didn't list isotopes, so it was probably a mix). The neutrons do produce some tritium (much more in heavy water reactors like CANDU) but the typical policy for that is to ensure the water doesn't have significant organic material, dilute it, and release it into the water. Tritium is produced by cosmic rays and doesn't concentrate in the environment, so the release limits are surprisingly high. It just doesn't move the needle much. Also tritium has a 12 year half life, which is really annoying (too long for "decay in storage" to be the obvious choice, but short enough to have high specific activity and become less useful to work with over normal timescales). In an accident short lived isotopes like Iodine-131 can be released. Those are extremely dangerous because they have short half lives and correspondingly high activity. That's why you want to stay inside for weeks if a nuclear bomb goes off, and people are told to avoid dust, food, and drink which may be contaminated. In the case of Iodine you can take a large (actually somewhat toxic, so don't take it unless you think you're going to consume radioiodine in the near future) dose of regular iodine, the idea is to saturate your body so that the radioiodine gets excreted rather than retained in important organs (there are also some medical conditions which are treated with radioiodine because it targets specific organs, people tend to ignore biological half life and focus on the nuclear). The exclusion zones are mostly due to things like Sr-90 and Cs-137. They don't dilute nicely, have high specific activity, emit radiation which can penetrate skin, boil out of a reactor if it loses coolant, and have half lives of around 30 years. I think if you magically deleted those two isotopes the Chernobyl and Fukushima exclusion zones would be tiny to non-existent. The long lived isotopes aren't very radioactive, so they're pretty much toxic waste. Also note that spent fuel will probably be reused (if you separate out the components it can go back in a reactor, and the other isotopes have uses) so geological repositories should probably consider the safety of workers recovering the spent fuel in a century or so. The main reasons we (OK, at least one country does) don't reprocess currently is that it's expensive; we can already meet demand with mining, non-fuel neutron targets, particle accelerators, et cetera; and a reprocessing plant is a make way to get plutonium for nuclear weapons (US reprocessing was done by military contractors, and secrecy protected them from accountability with the notable exception of Operation Desert Glow, where the DOE was raided by the FBI and EPA).
Here in Ontario, Canada, we get around 60% of our electricity from nuclear energy. This allowed us to transition away from coal. This massively reduced the pollution we had in the Greater Toronto Area and southern ontario. When I was a kid, the smog in Toronto was WAY worse than it is now. I had terrible asthma as well. Now air quality has improved and my asthma symptoms have gotten much better over time. THANK YOU NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS!
It’s definitely important to note that a lot of people that don’t bother studying nuclear, usually in my experience just associate it with Fukushima, Chernobyl, and for some reason Hiroshima/Nagasaki. Which is extremely disheartening.
And the other way around. Most people that are pro nuclear only know that the energy source emits very little co2, without thinking about the long term in terms of waste, recycling and cost.
@@JonasSalen Waste? if its about safety they now bury them in deep isolation covered in concrete. It will literally outlast human civilization. Even then nuclear energy is the most efficient source of energy and the waste produced is little compared to other alternatives. Cost? it might be bit more costly to maintain but its way more practical for situations and if it was as heavily invested as renewables it can be better for cost. Recycling? Nuclear fuel's 90% can be recycled wdym? other can 10% is sent to the deep isolation no worries.
As a geologist, I've been to a nuclear waste storage site. It was created 300 meters below ground level, inside a granite block, which they surveyed so thoroughly, they know basically every cm³ of that formation. There were huge concrete covered halls created down there, the size of two football fields, so impressively huge. The waste is put in those huge halls or silos embedded in 3 ton concrete cubes, and when the halls fill up, they get filled with concrete to the ceiling... There was a several km long ROAD created underground to the storage site, and a large area around the entrance is secured by a private company, basically a smaller army. Getting inside was a diiiifficult thing.😀 If someone would walk up there, and didn't stop when asked, they would be shot immediately. So yeah. Nuclear waste is taken seriously. Way more seriously than anyone could guess. Being down there, next to the concrete crates, the radiation was less than normal background on the surface. And what is stored down there? Low activity nuclear waste: spanners used in the reactor, gloves, coats, lab glasses etc. So yeah. They take it seriously, the high activity storage site is not done yet, but I can't imagine how overengineered that will be. And it's not some fancy rich western country, this is in Hungary... Ps.: the guy there told us that the plans must ensure, that the storage site remains intact for the next 2 million years... Just mindblowing.
what about the dome in the pacific where the waste is literally sitting at surface level? I agree with everything you said but there are past issues that need to be dealt with. not all of it was disposed of properly.
Ok I mean nuclear power might be good in stable democratic country, but in country like Uganda or Taiwan there is too much risk to use nuclear energy. Nothing is better than coal and gas.
And I'm sure the structure governing it will *never* get corrupted and will always work exactly like you want it to forever Humans are infallible afterall
Imagine some future human civilization finds those stores years after an apocalypse and it starts poisoning them. The myths and legends that would stem from that place would be crazy
I literally submitted the draft version of my Bachelor's thesis on nuclear energy policies in Germany and France last Friday. And now this video comes out!!!
And to think, you could have just waited a week and deep-faked your face onto his, then submitted this instead! But seriously though, wishing you success with your thesis. 😊
Thank you for making this video. My dad is a retired nuclear engineer, and I have a masters degree in nuclear physics. I have been trying for years to convince people of exactly the things you explain in this video, so it is really heartening to see you using your platform for this purpose. People fear what they don't understand, and it's really easy for people to get caught up in worrying about mysterious radiation and a handful of flashy news stories about rare disasters. The main impediment to nuclear energy is the lack of public education on the topic, so thank you for helping to remove that impediment!
Let's be clear on one thing: if the existing electric companies aren't going to profit from it, it's not going to happen. Profit can mean many different things to a trillion dollar industry that has brainwashed an entire country into voting against their own self-interests in a historically unequalled propaganda program that has lasted over a century. You can be certain that if they wanted this they would be making it happen and nobody could stand in their way.
Instead of trying to get people to understand nuclear as U235 being used as fuel, you should be telling people how great Thorium is, how abundant it is, and how it has the least amount of waste. The chances of a meltdown or contamination event such as Three Mile Island would be highly improbable.
I feel like a breakthrough in solar would surpass nuclear, unless we could do safe localized fusion. Fission requires materials, infrastructure, grids, specialized maintenance.
From a technical view I really love NPPs. It was when I started digging into that subject that alternatives seemed way more attractive. The main reason being cost and humans: For me all arguments in this video are subsumed under "cost": Insurance cost to cover for accidents and cost for recycling/enrichment/other types of reactors to manage/store waste. Those should be factored in the $/kWh stats, which they mostly aren't (insurance is capped at very low levels and the cost for disposal of the waste is outsourced so that the public must come up for it in the end). The "human"-argument wasn't even mentioned: You can have a quite nicely engineered plant, but humans just are too dumb/egoistic/aggressive to operate it safely. Almost every accident showed a big human-factor like safety measures not implemented due to greed and neglect. For the aggression part: I'm quite curious about what happens to the Zaporizhzhia NPP, and NPPs seem to easy getting a bomb (even if it "just" is a dirty one). That's why I tend towards renewables + a high cost for CO2-certificates, so that externalities for energy production are (mostly) covered. For NPPs it seemed like even the insurance part would make them economically unviable (maybe it gets better for small reactors, but then we still didn't solve the waste problem).
I spent a period working at a uranium mine in Canada. LOTS of people asked me, "Don't you get a lot of radiation doing that?" The answer is actually "Yes". Working a "fly-in/fly-out" camp job increases your dosage significantly - although not nearly as much as say, working as a flight attendant. Working in a uranium mine itself? Not really.
Lol. Very funny. I'm okay with people being ignorant about uranium ore and radioactivity. I'm less okay with voters being uninformed and paranoid about nuclear energy.
people dont seem to understand the disconnect between ore and refined radioactive isotopes, when its in ore form its mixed with other ores that need to be displaced/removed to create the expected refined product that is actually used in reactors. the other one is that people dont understand that the components of radioactive materials are generally "safe" when handled correctly, its only when you force them together and a fissile reaction occurs is where a majority of the radioactivity comes from. follow the rules that have been created literally by people dying playing with this stuff and everything's fine. play god and think you know better and nature bitch slaps you back to the cave where you belong to die in a puddle of your own goo.
I love this channel and these creators so much. In an age where 6-second videos are the “perfect length” its great that I can watch a 30 minute video and enjoy every second
As an electrical engineering student I cannot stress enough how important videos like this are. Nuclear energy is an important part of our energy portfolio, and talking about the stigmas surrounding it helps people accept it. Very insightful and informative video as always, keep up your amazing work!
As an electrical engineering graduate I disagree. eg: solar doesn't use a fuel that operates in a critical runaway state that you are constantly trying to cool and keep from exploding.
@@michaelmurray2833 the same power source that isn't viable for some significant periods of time (after sunset)? Energy storage is a difficult problem to solve and one we haven't. Last time I checked molten salt reactors were runaway safe. We aren't spending enough time/money/effort on nuclear energy research and development.
@@michaelmurray2833 As a mechanical engineering grad I can tell you that you need to google the numerous reactor types out there, specifically CANDUS, that don't use the highly enriched uranium you're thinking of. Natural uranium reactors boost their fuel up into criticality as it will not go critical on its own and is therefore substantially safer at a cost of some efficiency. Old, fundamentally flawed designs have lead to alot of otherwise intelligent people to be afraid of the nuclear boogeyman despite it being hands down the most effective & safe power source humanity has by every important metric. The toxic waste from used solar panels is something else you should google more, though not many people care about that since we ship much of it to Africa anyway...
@@michaelmurray2833 I highly doubt you are because if you were you would know that solar is a very unreliable source of energy and needs other plants in tandem to compensite for its wild fluctuations. Nuclear is more a lot more comperable fossil power plants but a lot cleaner, and in fact it releases much less radiation to the atmosphere than the burnt fossil fuels do.
The scariness is the MAIN issue for a technology that's otherwise (mostly) great. Fun fact: there's a nuclear power plant in Austria/Europe, very close to our studio. It was built in the 1970s and 100% completed but never turned on. Replaced by a coal power plant, far worse for the environment. It's still there - so, in our video, we went there to find out wether we could turn it on today. As Cleo frames it perfectly: it's all a political problem, not a technological one.
@@kentozapater8972 no, but to build over a long period of time, in a place like Texas it would look costly. However, I don't really care, as I would enjoy the benefits.
@@liabe18 Yes, we're here in Vienna. We do produce TV Docs in German but all our TH-cam videos are in English. (we did try some EN dubbing on YT though!)
Nuclear has extreme regulations that the skeptics tend to ignore when their goal is just to fearmonger mostly. The real reason we don't have more nuclear is because of the immense amount of inspections and regulations that comes with nuclear energy which is understandable. However, this makes nuclear energy significantly more expensive for an investment than other forms of energy. And with low investment and no larger public option (yet!) in America, this leads to less nuclear energy. Another great video, Johnny Harris.
It's not regulation, it's cost of capital. NPP are inherently large projects, and investors need a larger return to justify financing the enormously expensive (and lengthy) construction period. More broadly, nuclear isn't competitive because each 1 billion in investment goes (roughly) into producing 1 GW of power, whereas the same investment in renewables yields a factory which produces a continuous supply of individual units in perpetuity. If we invest the same amount in nuclear and renewables year after year, nuclear will grow linearly, and renewables exponentially. This is what we are currently seeing.
^Why couldn't both regulation and investment cost be true? Nuclear energy isn't the only solution, but it's still a key technology to combat climate change. Even areas that can currently use renewables still need a diversified grid to reduce vulnerability to natural disasters, or are limited by space or other factors. It's within everyone's interest to make it as safe and cheap as possible.
@@bagfootbandit8745 Lookup Eash-Gates et al.'s 2020 article in Joule, it's easy to find. Safety regulation explains only about 1/3 of the construction cost increase, the rest is materials and labor productivity. All these factors contribute to larger construction costs, which are amplified by the cost of that capital. In other words, safety and labor add cost, but what makes those costs so punishing is the extra profit investors need from the energy to make those investments worth pursuing. You might be able to mitigate some of those costs by reducing safety standards (which is risky), but the real problem is construction time caused by lower labor productivity, which adds direct costs and increases the discount rate.
Yup. I'm all for nuclear yet it is expensive as hell, and the projects always go over the quoted amount by billions. It is all about cost per MW. Nuclear proponents talk about SMR and all these other technologies like they are already proven to be actually cheaper. Yet I see no evidence of this.
What's your point? So the regulations are the problem? The one's the soviet union ignored --> Chernobyl? Do you think the regulations have been put in place for fun? Guess why power plants haven't started blowing up in the west yet. Because we have regulations that make everything more expensive. Either you get expensive, regulated, but save nuclear power, like in the west, or you get cheaper, "turn a blind eye" regulated nuclear power like in the soviet union. This argument is so stupid. Like nuclear is dangerous as hell, so we have to be super careful, which makes it expensive, so now nuclear is super-safe and since nuclear is super safe, the problem is just that it is so expensive because there are so many stupid regulations, let's get rid of those. You get where your logic falls apart, do you?
This is well done - I'm a Radiation Safety Officer at a hospital and the biggest problem I face day-to-day is Risk versus Perception of Risk. However, some major points you didn't cover: uranium mining has a checkered past with ruining land, and medical imaging uses reactor byproducts that simply have no alternative.
There are several important points that weren't covered - for example environmental impact of fuel recycling facilities (spoiler: they leek a lot of radiation)
I think we should also talk about where the batteries and materials for wind and solar come from and how its waste is handled. I am not sure they are as safe or environment friendly
Where are conclusive medical findings reported that anything nuclear has even possibly medical benefits. Necessarily including any medical 'quality of life' loss risks, near instant deaths due to radiation etc. Asked AMA but no answers. Read medical journals but no proven benefit concluded, only possibly following surgical removal and combined with other natural health therapies.
@@idnwiw Still much more clean than any alternatives capable of outputting that much power. Also, leek =/= leak. Uranium mines are so much less invasive compared to our current amount of coal mines and oil drilling. Are they still invasive? Yes, but it's unquestionably the better of two evils when it comes to how much land is ruined for our power generation.
Nuclear has some big advantages that weren't touched on in the video. One of them is that nuclear uses way less land than renewables while the other is nuclear is a consistent amount of energy, unlike solar which stops producing power around the time where power usage peaks. To properly compare nuclear to renewables the cost of energy storage needs to be added to the cost.
Yes! The main draw of nuclear, is that reliable amounts of power are generated... with wind and solar - it tends to de-stabilize the power grid - too much or too little is often produced - during cloudy days, other weather events and we simply do not have the battery technology yet to store the power, at scale.
Solar and wind are potentially dangerous for power grid without energy storage. If you don't have enough conventional or nuclear power plants to support it, there is short way to shutting down some areas and even for blackouts.
(I'm not sure but) I think the TH-camrs name is Ordinal, he has a series on Nuclear all the pros and cons explained well he did an easy graphical representation of the renewable vs nuclear debate too, solar wind hydro pumped hydro (for storage) vs nuclear. Would be great for people who wanna do a deeper dive
Although you are correct about the land use, land is often not in short supply so it depends on the location. But you are wrong about the consistent output. Solar has a daily and seasonal cycle yes, but nuclear must be taken offline for maintenance from time to time. (I know full well as I live in South Africa where we get increased load shedding when the nuclear plant is on maintenance). Similarly our coal plants break down frequently. Every power plant has a capacity factor ie how much time it is actually running. Solar and wind on the other hand almost never have complete outages outside their daily /seasonal cycles. But I agree, to compare renewables to nuclear on cost you do need to know what balance of resources you are putting on the grid and whether or not you need storage/ over capacity etc. But to pretend that nuclear is never offline is just nonsense.
I think one thing about Chernobyl that played a very big role in why specifically Europe got really weary of nuclear power generation going forward is that eventho the amount of people that died was relatively speaking not that big, the toxic particles carried by the wind blew all over Europe, to the point that even here in the Netherlands, Iodine pills were distributed because of potential nuclear particles that fell out of the sky and onto farmer's crops. The idea that being literally thousand of miles away you could still be affected was absolutely terrifying to many people in my mother's generation.
And also to this day there regions in Europe, for example southern Germany with higher background radiation because of Chernobyl. You still cannot eat mushrooms from this region because they accumulate the radiation.
So what's the Alternative? You don't see the way fossil fuel pollution slowly kills people every day but Smog is real. Water contamination is real. Yes you usually have to live in a big city to actually visibly see the effects of politics but it still affects everybody today in a VERY negative way.
That's why I disagree with Cleo's point about comparing deaths relative to fossil fuels. It's such a different beast. Coal plants have a predictable risk, you can look at the past decade, plot a line and reliably estimate the next. With nuclear, the fear is not about the points already on the graph, it's about the magnitude of the outlier that is not there, but can't ever be completely dismissed.
@@Gundamguy-py3ir Yep, humans have gotten used to putting up with the more dangerous and abundant byproducts of coal and fossil fuel consumption. The nuclear scare simply stems from ignorance on the topic. Fossil fuels are harming you just as much from thousands of miles away. The average person just doesn't realize it.
A thing that's quite important but often overlooked is that even though a particular piece of material may remain radioactive for thousands or even millions of years that doesn't mean it will stay as dangerous for all that time. Radiation is dangerous when you get hit with many energetic particles but the type of particles that a source can emit will vary greatly over time. Typically the really dangerous stuff is really short lived so most of the danger won't be there anymore in a much much shorter time span. Another important thing is concentration, especially with fluids. If you can treat the material and dilute it it's simply not dangerous anymore
I know you touched on it just briefly, but I wanted to address to the concern about a "bad guy" getting into a nuclear power plant. I work in nuclear background investigations. If someone wishes to have unescorted access into a plant (meaning they can walk around without two armed military with them) they have to go through an extensive background check. We call everyone, your old jobs, your family, your references, references from your references, your schooling, all of it. My entire company and job is about keeping those bad guys out of those plants.
Even that vetting process is irrelevant. There are multiple layers of security between the outside and anything important. Even then, the only real mayhem anybody could do is deprive people of power by disabling the plant. Which isn't any different than disabling any kind of power plant. Nobody is carrying anything of significant danger away from a nuke plant. Dirty bombs are a fantasy; nothing is paradoxically both radiologically potent and stable enough to fashion into such a device. It takes weeks, if not months to shut down a reactor and let it cool enough to open up the core and remove fuel rods which, again, cannot really be used for anything nefarious. The same is true of spent fuel rods.
@@kizmiaz513 So what? Reactor containment buildings are bunkers, built strong enough to withstand anything short of literal bunker busting munitions. Then there are all the built-in safety measures inside the containment building. Another Chernobyl cannot happen anywhere because only the soviets were incompetent enough to design, build, and operate a reactor so poorly, and nobody has been dumb enough to do it again.
No one ever worries about bad actors igniting an oil rig and causing an eco disaster in the ocean. It's sad how much we misunderstand nuclear energy and the system in place for it.
Quick correction: casks aren't "good for just 40 years". They're licenced for that amount of time, meaning the manufacturer can prove it will hold up for that time. This doesn't mean that after that they will break, in fact, they are so over engineered they would probably be safe for a few centuries.
What's the difference between 40 years divided by a million, and 400 years divided by a million? 0.00004 vs 0.0004, in other words, on the scale of a million years, nothing.
Radioactive material which has a half life of a million years is actually the safest radioactive material. You're in more danger of cancer from ingesting potassium from a banana than you are if you ingested radioactive spent fuel with a million year half life.
@@Anttys_WeyTua_CTa_Eu986 they're not meant to be permanent, but having 100 years to get a permanent solution is far better than having 40 years for it.
@@diegosanchez894 except if you don't actually find a solution... because physics. What I'm saying is the science is tough on this one; it's better to find the solution first. And who's to say we couldn't if we diverted some real energy into it...
I m not the kind to think about youtubers more than just watch them , but the first time i was like "these two youtubers would fit extremely well if they made a video together " was you both , and oh man did you deliver
Thanks so much for this video. Growing up with a Nuclear Physicist as a father you heard amazing cool and completely confusing things every night, but the majority of the talk was over budgets being low. My dad has over 100 patents from developing Nuclear technology since 87. His job title of Health Physicist did not even exist until Churnobyl. The harsh truth is that the public is scared, the politicians are bribed, and the money is not in unlimited clean power. We live in a world where Fusion COULD have been, but may NEVER be.
Really? I was a Health Physics Technician in the Health Physics Department with Health Physicist as our manager at the Shippingport Atomic Power station in 1974. Maybe everything your dad told you is not true
Amazing how much impressions play a role in our perception. Nuclear went from being a promise of an energy savior to a societal terror. Getting over that negative bias isn't easy and one accident like Fukushima can cause public opinion to backslide. Great collab!
Lmao. They miss a lot of things. For example solar uses children mining in Africa who will definitely die and for Nuclear if something does happen a ton of people die over a long period of time. Nuclear is horrible and this idea that capitalism wont cause issues with maintenance you are fooling yourself. Nuclear meltdowns will happen and tons of land space will be lost
they left out two important factors in nuclear power that arte total game killers... the environmental damage it causes to mine Uranium ore (mostly in open mines like a lot of coal) and the limited supply of nuclear "fuel". You do not WANT to set everything on NPP only to have nothing to run them with in 100 years or less.
@@cupcakke1294 @Ugly_German_Truths And drilling and fracking for oil and natural gas not too mention coal is on a whole other level we just ignore. Isn't the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico still ongoing despite being the largest oil spill of all time in 2010?
Are you considering to work on Fusion, Small Modular Reactors (still fission but very scalable and safely self-contained), or traditional fission reactor sites?
One point I think y'all missed was just how energy dense nuclear is and how little waste it produces on an individual level compared to how much power it really yields.
Exactly. 50 gallon barrel of uranium can power a city for over 40 years. The only waste is 50 gallon barrel of depleted uranium, and steam. In a 40 year operation, the lunch room where the workers eat, would accumulate more waste than the actual nuclear reaction.
@@bradleysmith9431 precisely! I saw something one time that said you could store all the waste it would take to power everything you'd need or use your whole life, in a coffee can
@@collinherold8047 still a coffee can per person. And there are a lot of people. Also calculate the rent of storing that coffee can in a safe designated facility for 100000 years and you realize that you aren't paying for the entire cost of that energy. Kind of like fossil oil but less immediate.
My Dad (who works on refueling nuclear subs and aircraft carriers) and I always conversations about nuclear energy and the main thing he always mentions is how frustrated he is that nuclear has a dangerous stigma when in reality now days it’s crazy safe and reliable. He says that the new reactors have multiple computer and mechanical failsafes so if anything ever goes wrong it can automatically shut down in about 20 seconds. In the past all the incidents (besides Fukushima) have all been from human error. I don’t think back then we as a world were ready for nuclear but now that we have a much better understanding and technology we should give it another shot. (Plus electric cars would actually be carbon free)
"In the past all the incidents (besides Fukushima) have all been from human error." And that's why I'm no fan of nuclear power. All major accidents (including Fukushima in my opinion) and a fair few minor incidents, have been down to human error. Either related to the design or the operation. No matter how smart we design a nuclear power plant... No matter how many safety precautions we build into it... It's still designed, build, and operated by humans. And humans are flawed. In the immortal words of Terry Pratchett: “Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.”
Actually no, electric car isn't carbon free. All the body plastics are made of carbon, the steel for chassis and springs and engines are made of steel which is made by burning iron in coal. Wheels are made of a special plastic that is extremely toxic when disposed (burn, put in wheel dumps yards, etc,etc) And if you think about itthe majority of energy nowadays comes from fossil fuels. So the electricity that powers your car is just fossil fuels that instead of burning in your car engine, is burning in some thermal energy plant somewhere else. (Energy is constant, you can create more energy efficient vehicle, but energy's fuel and it's waste must always exist). The same logic applies to solar and wind energy. Except the waste and fuel isn't on Earth. It's on the Sun (the Sun create wind too btw). With Hydrogen being fuel and Helium being waste. Basically it's just proxy nuclear energy. A good comparision is having a nuclear plant, but instead of harvesting energy directly from the nuclear reaction, we put a solar panel and wind turbine behind a layer of lead protection and almost vacuum. And that's why solar and wind turbine is so inefficient, it's a proxy harvesting of energy of an energy we can already produce with more efficient method of harvesting.
Yes! I was disappointed he didn't mention this. We use nuclear in !@#$% submarines! If "living next to a nuclear plant" was dangerous, all our submariners would be dead. We use nuclear ALL the time and rarely, rarely have accidents.
Fukushima IS a human incident The French Atomic Energy and Alternative Energy Commission sent warning to Fukushima attendant about the fact that the central was not tsunami proof and that simple adaptation could easily solve the issue. They just decide to brush it off.
I was about to mention this until I saw your comment. This would probably be the most important thing to discuss if you want to convey confidence in nuclear energy.
It’s not just the risks but also the public trust in the government is decreasing. How can we trust that our government wouldn’t also mismanage, downplay, and lie about a nuclear catastrophe when they did exactly that during the pandemic (and other events)? Also how can we trust that they’ll build it well when our own roads are so easily damaged?
The images of Hiroshima & Nagasaki were also etched into the minds of Boomers and The Greatest Generation (their parents). These are the people who have ruled the world from the 50s through 2020. Seeing pictures of shadows on the wall where the blast darked the wall, leaving an outline of a vaporized human body, is very chilling. Godzilla and much of modern Japanese fiction is the direct result of being the only nation to be on the receiving end of a nuclear attack. The rise of Japan in the 1980s, and the introduction of Japanese culture into the US also had an effect.
Yeah, I hadn't considered the cultural effect of the bombs until my dad pointed out why all of their cartoons have overpowered humanoids that can launch energy beams/balls capable of causing massive destruction.
Great content! As a Japanese experienced the earthquake, the big push back for me is not the accident or trust in technology but it’s lack of trust towards monopolizing corporation and long history of doubtful government corruption nature.
Hey there. I know that feeling about corporations but from different experiences. However, I can't really blame 100% the company on that case as it was a huge earthquake that led to a tsunami which by itself alone killed tens of thousands of people. Deaths related directly to the accident at the plant (caused by water damage from the tsunami) were just two operators as far as I remember. Nonetheless I recognize the company's fault in not building a higher coast wall as it had been recommended to them to do years before the tragedy. Mostly the damage resulting from the accident was local contamination and according to numbers taken on the aftermath, it's not that bad in the sense that it wouldn't kill you and is highly unlikely to cause sickness. I'm sorry about rambling here in the comments but it just pisses me off that this accident has been blown out of proportion, that the real cause of the tragedy is forgotten and therefore the deaths disrespected, and that it has been weaponized to attack the field as a whole with terrible results;just look at Germany. I hope we see eye to eye.
@@kevinkarlwurzelgaruti458 Germany is truly awful. They dispose of nuclear reactors to buy nuclear generated power from france and burn coal and gas. Eco-friendliness, i guess.
Depends where you live though. I live right on the Ring of Fire close to active volcanoes (and home to some of the largest recorded eruptions in history) and reasonably frequent earthquakes. With that in mind, I would not feel comfortable with a nuclear power station nearby. If I lived in other parts of the world... I'd probably feel quite differently about it.
@@nzwj Modern nuclear reactors arent in danger of earthquakes, even the fukushima ones and the two nuclear plants next to it survived the earthquake with no damage, the problem was one plant had ignored the rules about their sea water wall and had damage due to that... and even still Japan is going big into nuclear now feeling safe with it.
Johnny and Cleo are amazing! Love your videos! Thanks for the information on nuclear, in Brazil we had an awful accident in Goiás because the government didn't took the security measures seriously.
i think its psychological . even with planes as they are so safe if any accidents occur it becomes a big news. but car and bus accidents are quite common so they don't become news . Its the same with energy
Except that it is permanent. A plane crash kills today only. Cherynobl is still killing people... Kiwajalien is still killing people... White Sands is still killing people... Fukashima is still killing people... Tsar Bomba is still killing people... Three Mile Island is still killing people... The list goes on. Also, air travel is safe, until it isn't. Espousing stats obscures reality. When a plane hits a mountain, it is almost always fatal to all passengers and crew, just like a nuclear meltdown. Whereas a bus hits a car, and very, very few people die burning and screaming in anguish before they are liquified. It is entirely different.
Johnny and Cleo in this video are like the cool young history teacher and the cool young science teacher getting together to teach a lesson in some underfunded high school.
As a 6th grader, I remember going to Maine Yankee, which was Maine's nuclear power plant in the 80's. I actually remember them showing us films, taking us on a tour, and giving us a nuclear pellet in plastic on a postcard type of paper. I wish I had kept it!
What they completely ignored is that nuclear is a stable source of base-load energy. While solar and wind can be highly variable, this requires some sort of large scale energy storage (which was not factored into the cost comparison)
Yea, renewables are great, but they aren't yet sufficient enough to rely on for world-scale energy needs. And honestly, probably wont ever be, as fusion(which is arguably a 'renewable' in a sense) will likely take over at some point and keep renewables as more of a supplementary and localized energy source.
When I was in middle school, our state opened a nuclear power plant. Before it went online, there were experts that came to our school to give us the pros and cons. One of the "it's safe" experts discussed how the plant was built to handle a head on collision from a jet crashing into it. That was the first thing I thought back to on 9/11
I've got the same briefing from the experts, that were on the payroll of the nuclear power plant. All those plants were build with safety in mind and they were all constructed to be safe at the current situation. So they thought also about Fukushima, which we now know it wasn't prepared for the higly unlikely event that occured. The problem is not that it's unsafe, the problem is that it will never be 100% safe.
@@JonasSalen remind me how many people died due to the nuclear accident at fukushima please. Oh and if you could remind me how many people die in coal mines each year that would be amazing.
@@crusader8102 Wiki says one died after the accident in 2018 from radiation. The tsunami (tidal wave)killed 15,500. Not that many people die in the mines in USA these recent years, but the black lung thing can get you later.
Apart from the awesome conversations and insights that the video give me, I couldn't take my eyes off of how well this video was made. It's so well shot, so well edited. It's brilliant.
I love that TH-camrs making explainers are using OHPs for explaining. It's just so nostalgic. My botany lecturer used these inorder to explain complex tissue structures and anatomy concepts in the most simplest manner. She used to have a whole box of them divided according to the topic and she used to use markers inorder colour them and highlight important things. I terribly miss them.😢
Another little tid bit I love about nuclear vs coal. A lot of coal power plants cannot be converted to nuclear because the coal power plant produced too much radiation for it to be in regulation once it is considered a nuclear power plant.
It never fails to astound me how little most people know about the facts of nuclear energy. I’m a nerd, I looked into this issue as a kid, so I’ve grown up knowing nuclear is a lot safer than most people think, I’m surprised Johnny didn’t know very much prior to doing this video though
It doesn't help that Fukushima happeend in Japan, a country people assume was running things as up to code as one could. "If it happened to them why wouldn't it happen to anyone else" is a thought i can see people having.
@@Pontif11 positive stereotype about a country being “up to code” in all aspects of society can be dangerous. IAEA investigators concluded japanese authorities were acting as both regulators and industry promoters, had suppressed any gov criticism out of a culture obsessed with “saving face”, and had not thoroughly examined earthquake/tsunami response plans…despite living on one of the worlds most active fault lines. It is worth noting Fukashima was an epic disaster not from verifiable radiation exposure (which scientists to this day still haven’t linked to negative population health effects), but from bureaucratic arrogance that thought relocating sick and elderly patients was a good idea, resulting in significantly more death, injury, and trauma than was probably warranted.
@@adamboey4132 The fact that the failures of nuclear are largely human failures is not terribly comforting, because we haven’t yet made a better human.
@@adamboey4132 you and I both know that FUKUSHIMA destroyed the ecology of the pacific… the reason the salmon don’t return, the fires, skyrocketing cancer rates… we know it’s your job to claim otherwise.
Their is so many things people cant carr about every fucking thing. Their are many youtuber check sabina hossenfelder , arvin ash, history of universe,vertasium, sean caroll, and many more
As a cancer survivor who used to get CT chest scans on the regular, I'm surprised my pee doesn't glow in the dark by now. After my all-clear, my doctor eventually said, "The CTs are probably doing more damage than any potential for the reemergence of your particular cancer."
@@Simboiss because it was medically necessary. Sometimes life only lets you choose between bad and catastrophic, doctors have to make decisions like this all the time; the point you’re trying to make is inane at best
The one and only reason why the West is abolishing its nuclear powerplats and that is POLITICS. Russia produces most of the Uranium, most of the nuclear reactors and the West rather shoots itself in both legs just to cut away from Russia. The leadership is so screwed they are waling the Europe into a massive energy crisis, stealing all of the savings from majority of its citizens in order to cover high energy costs.. This is a hit job on the highest scale, thats how corrupt or demented the politicians are..
@@metamodern409 "The CTs are probably doing more damage than any potential for the reemergence of your particular cancer." Maybe you can't read. This sentence means the CT scans do more harm than good.
amazing video, they way you break down difficult difficult concepts is just perfect. I definitely learned a lot. question tho; have you heard of powerpoint?
I had to look into the morality behind the usage of Nuclear energy in junior year of high school (last year) for an hour presentation and 15 page paper. I pretty much used all the same sources and got to a similar conclusion haha, glad to see i didn't do horrible at least lol.
Nuclear Energy is actually a good alternative to Coal power plants, obviously ideally 100% energy generation should be green in future, but we can get rid of coal quick with relatively less polluting nuclear energy.
The collab we didnt deserve, but needed 10:53 its crazy to think when you hear nuclear, you generally think of danger and the graph shows its safe energy source
The problem I have with this graph is that it only counts deaths. Yet low-dose radiation is rather unlikely to kill a person, but will negatively impact their lives in a severe way, for instance through poisoning the thyroid (Thats why people get iodine pills after nuclear accidents). I have searched and not found a research paper that evaluates the amount of people impacted, and severity of impacts of nuclear energy on human health. My motivation for this inquiry is, that many people in Germany, 1500km away from Chernobyl, many people got thyroid cancer, directly correlating to the accident, yet these people are not accounted for when talking about the safety of nuclear. Now don't get me wrong, I am not trying to say that nuclear is as bad or worse of a health risk than fossil energy, but I feel the equivalence to renewables being a bit too nice.
@@tedzards509 Very well said A very nuanced way of looking at this material that it’s not black/white but people should consider health risks as I think you mentioned especially if food and water is contaminated or health risks pregnant women would face
It's like a plane crash. Everyone remembers the most horrible plane crashes and some people are scared to take a plane because of them while no one talks about car crashes that happen all the time and most people aren't scared of cars while they cause more deaths per year than planes
@@ouroboros6666 Cancer in general has many causes, thats why I specifically noted thyroid cancer as it is caused by the ionization through radiation of iodine, which the thyroid needs to function. And the ionized iodine doesnt work as it should (Im no medical professional so the mechanism could be completely wrong, but there is a correlation). But thyroid cancer is not the only impact that higher radiation has on the human body.
I certainly don’t want to “scaremonger” anyone. We just need to be frank and honest about this discussion. I grew up in southern Nevada near the Nuclear Weapons Test Site and, as a boy, I was enthusiastic about nuclear energy. I knew people whose parents worked at the site and I went on tours of the Nuclear Rocket Development Station there. I was steeped in the propaganda being distributed by the nuclear industry and looked towards a future of planes that could fly for months without landing, suitcase-sized nuclear generators that could be taken on camping trips, interplanetary and even stellar travel, and much more. The promises were abundant and often absurd as we look back. Eventually I learned that the nuclear industry was, to say the least, not being truthful. They would consistently paint any cautions about nuclear energy as a product of pure ignorance. Anyone who did not work in the nuclear industry was, in their view, unqualified to even talk about the magic of nuclear energy. The public was, in their view, hopelessly uninformed and stupid. The nuclear industry has evolved and changed somewhat over the years but one thing is absolutely still the case: The nuclear industry is NOT in the business of making energy to fuel our society. That is a lie. The nuclear industry is actually in the business of making profits, lots of profits. And those profits are channeled almost entirely into the pockets of the top decision-makers in the company. And those decision-makers are deeply steeped in the industry’s own propaganda. Just something to keep in mind as you produce content about nuclear power. The nuclear profiteers are, of course, delighted to see content like this video because it distracts the public from the most important aspect of climate change. The profiteers want the public to think about how to solve our “energy problem” by using nuclear energy. The really important questions, however like: How much energy do we really need? What are we doing with the energy we already produce? How can we reduce our energy consumption?…must NEVER be discussed! The fact is that by conserving energy we could make the “energy transition” in a much shorter time, much less expensively, and with much fewer hazards and pollutants. The energy profiteers are absolutely terrified of a public discussion about these questions. These are the questions you should make your next video about.
What i find interesting is how you explain why radiation sounds scary. Its very similar to the fear of those who wont use microwaves because microwaves (the actual waves) can be terrifying. Like radiation, microwaves are invisible, and like radiation, microwaves can kill us in horrifying ways. Yet almost everyone living in a 1st world country have microwave ovens in their kitchen, but we're all afraid of even living remotely close to a nuclear power plant.
I think a better example would be with transportation. Airplanes are the safest way of transportation but if a plane crash happens it will be all over the news and the whole world will know aboit it. Compare that to car/road accidents which are the leading cause of deaths and injuries from transportation and technically the most dangerous, but is still the most accepted and normalized. People know car accidents happen but there is something that makes a plane crash way scarier than a road accident because it touches that primal fear of heights and hopelessness if something happens to a plane mid air and cause it to crash. Even tho the microwave thing is still valid point in a way, I think it's much less of a problem for people and more like a conspiracy amoung some rather than a direct parallel with Nuclear. But I'm glad Nuclear energy gets attention recently and clearing a lot of misconceptions and myths about how dangerous it is. I applaud France for actually sticking with Nuclear when almost every other country tries to get away from it.
Well microwave ovens make use of radiation but that's a different kind of radiation, non-ionising, RF. With every microwave quarter cycle, the inherent dipoles of water molecules in the food flip orietation and generate what could be inaccurately described as frictive heating. But by and large i don't see what's terrifying about that at all. Other than if you had a hole in the shielding larger than 30mm, the microwaves would start falling out and heat you, they need a correctly built containment device. I mean obviously people should be cognisant of normal causes of death. Heart attack, pneumonia, stroke, car crash, an odd suicide, cancer and diabetes thrown in. That's pretty much it. That's a laundry list of problems you can't put enough effort into solving isn't it. But politically solving fake problems that don't affect anybody is THAT much more convenient isn't it, because you can "solve" them by doing nothing. 100% success rate.
I lived a couple miles away from one in Florida, never bothered me especially hearing that coal plants release more radiation than nuclear in normal operation. Now I'm living a 10-minute drive from a particle accelerator in Illinois 😅
I worked in a hotel restaurant kitchen that had a cheap microwave for the wait staff to heat desserts in, When cleaning it I found 2 small holes burnt through the door. Thrown out immediatly but how long was it shooting out waves at staff.
my place/house hasn't had a working microwave in 5+ years and im happy without it, at first it broke down/accident but after awhile its something i/90's-millennial-generation found i prefer to live with out one for now
As a nuclear engineer, I really appreciated this video. I was taught this information at university and I think Johhny and Cleo have done an excellent job. I believe that the US should absolutely move to a closed fuel cycle. Humanity must build far more reactors to replace fossil fuels faster than we could using wind and solar alone.
Just because nobody died from nuclear wastes accidents doesn't mean it's safe if accidents like "humans affected from radiation" and "moving out from vicinity" aren't taken into account (which are contributing factor that was caused from powerplants that is extremely difficult to calculate), that means that's one less town or geographical area we can't use because of the radiation surrounding it (which is sad) and that's also apart of the problem EVEN if Nuclear powerplant is safer in amounts of "death accidents" compared to other energy sources. What we should be focused on is how can we make nuclear powerplants safer and how efficient are the safety repercussions if all of the things inside the power plants fails which of course is VERY COSTLY but OVERLOOKED and needs some attention.
The Japanese nuclear incident leaves very clear that the only things nuclear energy cannot solve are negligence and covering glaring faults (on a country where earthquakes and large tsunamis are a thing) rather that fixing them to save face/reputation.
Exactly. I’m fully on board with the idea of nuclear energy. We have the tech to make it safe and byproducts seem negligible when compared to other sources. My main concern with it is the human aspect of it. Unfortunately, the decision makers are often the least qualified and know nothing of the subject. For this reason, I still can’t trust this energy source 100%.
The local atomic plant here in southern ohio shut down decades ago. There is still hundreds of people working there dealing with the waste. The nearest school literally shut down because of insane rates of cancer within staff and students. Ive been offered more than double what I make to work there mutiple times. But 100% of everyone I know that has worked there has had cancer. You cant pay me enough to go get that cancer.
The glaring faults you mentioned were record breaking and weren't even the primary causes. If it wasn't for the design flaw of putting the backup generators in the basement, the disaster would've been avoided.
@@JayPkneehonestly event with a serious accident nuclear energy as a much better impact on the environment than the simple use of fossil fuels and renewable
This is a really impressive video and I think it settled a new standard in how videos about any topic should be approached. That's what we need, facts, context and easy to understand visualizations. All that backed by scientific papers.
I think something not taken seriously here is the influence of human error in nuclear accidents, which ends up having more deterministic 'power' in these situations than failsafes put in place to prevent meltdowns. Humans will always make mistakes, cut corners, skimp on funding, etc, and that cannot be completely engineered away with technology advances and security measures. These accidents were all supposed to be impossible before they happened.
The the use of a transparency projector in this discussion is brilliant. It really ties the shots of Johnny and Cleo speaking with the digital slides of data together very well
Johnny, you and Cleo and your respective teams are all global treasures. Thank you so much for putting so much time into these important subjects and providing your sources. We need more of this.
Great video but I am kind of upset that you did not mention the radiation burning coal set free. The effects of using coal are really scary if you just choose to look into them
@@Mtl-zf9om well most of them are build near rivers for water access for their secondary cooling loop. Citiies are unfortunately build close to rivers too
I came to this video because of Cleo's video that she did on the subject. I think it's amazing if the 2 of you have done these together because it's important to know what's the cause of your fears if you want to overcome them and her addition to the story of how it could be even better if so amazing
I think why the public are more worried about nuclear danger, is because when there is a death or accident, it could effect them, where as if wind/solar has an accident it really only effects people working there. You don't have to worry about wind or water carrying radiation further. Nuclear has a much larger splash damage if you will, and much harder to clean up after.
Potential splash damage, even the worst estimate of death caused by Chernobyl are in the thousand (3k) because of radiation, Fulushima only killed because of the quarantine enforced and stress it caused. Now compare those possible deaths to accidents to the very real millions of people that die each year from pollutions. Add it to the thousand that die to get those fossil fuels. Nuclear is safe and extremely regulated
thats a good point i feel like most people have a "out of site out of mind" mentality when it comes to things like this. if there is no chance that a death or accident could/would directly effect them. nuclear power can likely directly effect the life's of people who have nothing to do with it so thats what can make it scary
Thank you for addressing this Johnny. As a high schooler who has been fully invested in nuclear for a few years now, I'm glad somebody is finally openly giving nuclear power a fair chance. I even made a Breakthrough Junior Challenge video myself about nuclear power, because its just something I truly believe should be invested more in. If people/politicians really cared about deaths and/or the planet, nuclear would be significantly larger. Cheers! 🥂
Regarding Chernobyl. I am from the region and so is my wife. Lots of birth defects and cancers in that area have devastating consequences that no one talk about.
I really enjoyed the format of having a casual conversation with Cleo and both presenting different perspectives. What a great collaboration! Now to go watch her video.
Not much of a different perspective. He just rolls out the field for her to make her arguements. Would have been much preferable to have someone actually critical of nuclear energy on the other side of the conversation. Instead of such a fake conversation.
@@scaredyfish the dynamic between those two was very highschool. Dorky guy agreeing with hot girl - over-acknowledging her opinion, not venturing his own thoughts because he wants it to go really well. Girl enjoying guy hanging on her every word. Johnny's wife is probably pissed about how this came off. It didn't seem like Johnny wanted to take on this issue with his usual zeal. I'd prefer not to see them collaborate again.
Besides many other things that I love about this video, one of them is how the information is represented! The projector slides have that Johnny Harris, "somewhere between very modern and old-school analog" aesthetic. The conversation is personal but focused. Great production values here! Oh right, and also please god let us save the planet. Almost forgot about that but ... yes.
The way I see it, the problem is NOT with concept of nuclear and the technology behind it, the problem IS us, humans. If nuclear is properly/safely maintained, we continue to further R&D, and we make sure money is never an issue - then nuclear is a no brainer. A lot of problems we experience with nuclear (and essentially all forms of energy) is that we get cheap and try to cut corners where we shouldn't. The benefits to nuclear are absolutely insanely high and ultimately cheaper in the long run than any non renewable (and renewables until we can scale what we have with those) especially now that it's not just fission but there is a foreseeable future with fusion, we are stupid not to harness it. Almost every problem we've had with nuclear was due to cost cutting, aging infrastructure, lack of R&D, and dumb decisions we made that were totally preventable. Thanks for the video!
But is humanity going to change and become totally reliable? Not trying to save a penny, not starting wars, not getting bored by routine, not making stupid mistakes? Sorry, can't see it. As long as you do not completely trust any country or government or cooperation... nuclear is not safe, even if it is in theory.
Very sensible take, I agree, I dont trust companies to not eventually cut costs at these facilities, thus creating unsafe working conditions for the the staff or somehow reduce the safety measures of the nuclear plants
Thanks god people base decisions on economic sense. Wind and solar generated energy is far cheaper than any other technology out there. The only reason countries are so keen on having nuclear reactors is: they want to have atomic bombs.
Yes. My high school science teacher frequently said if we put the money and resources that we did into the Manhattan project and applied them to dealing with the waste issue, it would be solved by now.
Fusion is a whole different ballgame than fission. I dont see much fearmongering over fusion cuz it's still seen as a sort of far off 'sci fi' concept(which to be fair, isn't an invalid perception in many ways), and I think once fusion does arrive, it's going to pass through skepticism a bit better once it's made quite clear that there's little fear of 'meltdowns' or anything like that and it doesn't produce the same kinds of waste and everything. Fusion is genuinely the holy grail of energy, and will be the thing that opens the door to civilization becoming something that will be totally unrecognizable from today.
1. The video never addressed that nuclear energy is finite and it requires mining, which will bring similar environmental issues as coal. 2. It is not mainly political that we are not storing the waste in Yucca Mt. We also don't have ways to transport the waste safely from the rest of the county to NV, a state that doesn't really generate its own nuclear waste. The risk of nefarious people attacking us during transport is much easier than within the nuclear power plant onsite storage. 3. The historical concentrating and refining process of nuclear fuel also showed that it contaminates a large area, usually to people who are disenfranchised, like the indigenous Americans. 4. We have ways to decontaminate many of the pollution, but we currently still don't have a way to decontaminate radiation polluted area.
I really hope Nuclear energy makes a proper comeback. Or significant improvements in cold fusion, because I have always believed that because of the irrational fear of many people, the world has been strangled of a great source of energy
Cold fusion is practically an impossibly. It would require elements to undergo nuclear fusion at room temperature as opposed to the high temperatures of stars.
Not fear. Profit. How much it would cost too produce and to maintain and what the big fish elites could get out of it. They gain very little so why would they do this
@@Dark_Magnus Look into muon catalyzed fusion. It's basically cold fusion, it's just not energy positive right now. So it uses more energy than it produces right now
Nuclear energy IS the future for humanity. Pound for pound, nuclear produces the most, highest quality energy than any other source we have right now, and propably will ever have. I love how you covered this, diving deep into the safety of energy and showing how nuclear is actually one of the safest forms of energy we have. I urge people to do their own research and find out more about this amazing feat of physics and engineering that we as humans have accomplished. If only more people knew the benefits of nuclear compared to its downsides a couple of decades ago, we'd most likely already be at the point where nuclear waste just isn't a problem whatsoever. But unfortunately, like many other things, It comes down to politics.
@@CharliMorganMusic The least amount of risk is a false statement. What is the risk of solar or wind power? The risk of nuclear power is a second fukushima or tschernobyl.
All this time I thought Nuclear waste was liquid. Not to mention you can recycle such radioactive waste. Great presentation Johnny and Cleo, more power for the both of you and God Bless. Looking forward to learn more as we look into the future.
I would have liked to hear more about current issues some countries face with their nuclear power plants. France for example is using mostly nuclear energy, but last year a lot of their power plants were not in active operation because of maintenance and lack of cooling water in the dry summer, so they had to rely on their neighbours who provided electricity from other sources.
Well, in 2022 France had to make some ordinary maintenance that was postponed because of the pandemic. Furthermore they are trying to extend the commercial life of some of their reactors (that on average are 35-40 years old, close to the end of their life): in order to do so they have to be carefully inspected in every single part and some components have to be replaced, in order to lengthen their life up to 60 years.
Yes. There is also to mention that states don't subsidies nuclear reactors that much anymore, because they always turned out to be way more cost and time intensive than initially planned. I'm talking about the newest ones build. Apart from that, it doesn't seem they are considering energy cost itself, which is the highest with nuclear energy. If we are talking about nuclear, it would make more sense to invest in nuclear fission, it's a topic for the future anyway, since even if we invest in nuclear reactors today, it would take around 15 years until they are build and produce energy, as we have seen from the latest ones build, and that isn't fast enough to fight climate change. It's time so seriously consider efficiency and post-growth scenarios for now, focusing on human wellbeing and sustainability instead of growth for it's own sake.
When talking about electricity production in France, we also have to mention that, unlike Germany or Italy for example, they have been running on a low carbon source since the 80s and that this was the first year in decades in which they were a net energy importer (for a 4% of their year consumption), while normally they are a big net exporter of electricity. Here in Italy have been importing ~10/20% of our electricity consumption from France for decades.
@@jbmp1390 First off, I'm not American. Secondly, this was in regards to the statistics nuclear radiation poses. Thrid, people usually know a lot about certain fields over others, this video was made to inform about the "others" in *my* case at least. You can either cry about being "ignorant on purpose" or just be happy with the spread of information. Good day :)
@@jbmp1390 Around 20% of US energy is produced by nuclear power. If anyone is ignorant about these issues, it’s countries like Germany and Japan that are too afraid of nuclear accidents to implement nuclear power. The French bail out the Germans every winter because are they’ve relied far too much on solar plants and Russian oil. Why you felt the need to lash out at Americans is beyond me
Thank you so much for this rational conversation about nuclear's most feared aspects. I hope it gets one of yours most viewed videos! I also hope that people understand that a world powered up with 100% renewable energy isn't viable with the technologies we have today (we can't store such huge amounts of energy for months), that's why nuclear has to play an important role for still many decade: the role that fossil fuels played until today (with the effects we all know). Thanks again!
Agreed. A lot of nuclear critics also don't realize that many reactors now have the ability to adjust their output based on demand. This makes them a lot more viable as a base load.
As someone who grew up nearby the nuclear reactors in Finland and always heard about the safe plan to just put all the waste underground, it's a fun game to play bingo with these videos and see how often it gets mentioned lol. Because of this I never experienced any fear of nuclear power either tbh.
Sadly Finland is the only country that has even started building storage. I do not think any other country has even been able to agree on a place where to build. If you do not have a problem, can we send our stuff over, please?
@@Caesar91 Not yet. Really expensive and then there is always the risk of sth. going wrong and the whole thing exploding while still in the atmosphere. Also international agreements would probably be necessary... good luck with that. Oh, and the carbon footprint of those rockets!! We were trying to avoid that!
@@Caesar91 im not recommend it to send to space since space itself already have much radioactive wave, but..... If you wanted to make expeditionary space craft, sure it's probably gonna need it, but then again, sending materials to space is expensive at the start.
@@cringe_lord5762 indeed expensive. But as explained we could have years of waste in a reasonable volume. So potentially we could send a rocket per year of waste. A rocket per year adding on the cost of the energy is nothing... I dont wanna fuel any conspiracy theory... but nuclear power related accidents appears more often in the media compared with the VW Dieselgate (for example) :)))
The argument in Australia (the country with the worlds largest uranium reserves) is that the cost of nuclear power on the consumer would be more than building the equivalent amount of power generation through solar, wind and battery.
As a former submariner and nuclear operator. We receive less exposure in the middle of the ocean, than we would on land. Water makes a heck of a shield
The safety factor between nuclear and coal, oil, etc. made me think of airplanes vs cars. There are exponentially more car deaths than airplane deaths but psychologically, airplanes seem to be much bigger in scale. P.S. I think we can also consider the long-term effects of radiation exposure though after nuclear accidents..
In regards to transport tho, the perception is actually closer to what I'd consider the actual safety factor. Planes are considered safe because the stats being used is the death per km/miles, which is skewed in favor of that transportation that goes at 1000km/h and is used for long distance. If you care about the danger of dying each time you enter a plan, then it is about the same as each time you take a car (which factors in drunk-drivers btw). And way way higher than other transports, especially trains
my dad works in asia's oldest commercial plant. according to him nuclear power is at least a stepping stone if not an important reform required to reach the stage where all of the world is powered by green energy great video explaining the curious backstory of modern day power plants.
Coming from someone who is heavily invested in fossil fuels and has solar power on his house: nuclear is an amazing energy source. Yes it has its problems like any other fuel source. But if we are trying to go carbon free, nuclear is the key.
I’ve lived next to a nuclear power plant my whole life. The only concern I’ve ever had is that a tornado might hit it. Other than that, it brings in soo much money. I don’t ever even think about it.
The control room might suffer slight damage, causing the reactors to shut down automatically. The reactors themselves are encased in a pressure vessel and contained in a concrete containment building that is designed to resist things like explosions and tsunamis. Fukushima blew up not because of the earthquake or tsunami destroying the reactor, but because the emergency cooling systems had failed, which eventually led to the meltdowns in the following days.
How come nobody addresses the real issue here: What a brilliant usage of this old overhead projector as "special effect" to create an atmosphere of detective flick, suspenseful lighting on the peoples faces and a nice way to seemingly naturally build in the (animated!) content from the slides. Bravo!
Thank you to everyone involved in producing, editing and developing the content of this informative video, congratulations... Johnny and Cleo Abram, you are brave to put your face in a world where big oil and gas companies still play a not so clean role 🧡🕸
My two favourite journalists working together, I love it! Its always great to see Cleo getting excited about being able to nerd out about a subject. Love the dialogue format as well!
Not gonna lie…it’s gonna take me multiple viewings of both of you guys’ videos in order to understand the enormous quality of this densely beneficial information.😄💡
Great vid, as always. I grew up (in the 90s and early 2000s - I'm 35) in a town along the Susquehanna River in PA literally right in sight of Three Mile Island. I went over a bridge nearly every day to school with the steam rising from the towers, always thinking how crazy it was. We'd get iodine pills every year from the Health Department, and our schools would have them in stock plus escape routes and plans for if the reactor went critical - a further reminder about this whole "fear". It got to the point where it was "normal" to us. But nuclear energy is one of the ways forward...we need to stop closing them down. We have the tech to make it safe - but do we have the political will? PS I was SO HAPPY to see both these vids pop up in my subs right next to each other! This is how I know I am subscribed to the right peeps!
Side note on solar, cost of solar must always be calculated as solar + storage since we need energy by night and during winter. And most of the time the cost of storage is ignored.
@@jonathantan2469 that's why it's better to do solar on individual homes instead of big solar farms. During the night you use the grid and transportation related costs are reduced.
Calculating the cost of solar and wind, including storage, also brings up the cost of lithium mining, which produces radioactive earth dumps, poisoned groundwater, and displaced indigenous and rural populations, and long term toxicity and death to miners. This mostly happens in Chile, China, and countries in Africa such as Congo. Because we don't see it, it's less scary.
@@PhillipMelanchthon Thank you for bringing the lithium problems! There is an island in my country that is being used right now as a lithium production facility and lithium mine because it is one of the largest reserve in the country. The health of the local population is decreased hundreds of percent, their foods (they're mostly fisherman) are becoming poisonous, etc and more importantly they don't get any compensation from either the government or the company that use their island to mine and process lithium. When raised this problem, most people from the 1st world country that benefits solar energy the most (like the USA) doesn't care and choose to blame it on the indigenous and local populations
I think that you put so much emphasis about the number of people that would die per energy unit for different sources, but you didn't mention how these were calculated. I know that some data sources in case of e.g. deal not only with accidents, but also pollution-related deaths. It would be good to know what you were touching on with your research!
I wish you guys were in charge of the media. Imagine how informed people would actually be. Our mainstream media is a mess. You guys make things SOOO much clearer and balanced.
Thank you for watching! You’ll be amazed at what you can do with GrammarlyGO. Sign up at grammarly.com/johnnyharris and get 20% off Grammarly Premium.
Thank you for the very enlightening video.
You should reallly mention about coal when it is burned it releases heavy metal and radioactive materials as well iin the ash which is a major cause of death
I think Dolores Cannon said well, when Nuclear Energy invented it was for negative purpose (war) so it has bad negative Aura around it and this is resisting to become power source for good. (i know it's metaphysics but still it make sense at some level)
Nuclear energy is the most efficient and cleanest energy that we have to this day. Yes, the previous accidents are terrible, but I'm pretty sure that with recent technologies, these risks can be reduced to almost zero.
Another thing you could research on the subject is companies like Thor Energy, and the types of reactors like LFTR (Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor) and the people working on those ideas like Ron Sorenson.
As a nuclear physicist who deals with rad waste daily, I appreciate the thought put into dispelling common radiation fears, it only makes my job that little bit easier.
I know nothing about this, but is rad waste all solid? why was i udner the impression that even the water that the rods are submersed in essentially radiocative forever and we also need to take care of disposing it as well?
@@Element_J3 heavy water is not radioactive.
Let me do a better explanation. Neutron activation is the process that causes stable elements to become radioactive. This is caused by free neutrons interacting with nuclei. When water is hit by neutrons, there are two atoms that can go through neutron activation (obviously) hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen gets hit and forms deuterium which is stable, though the deuterium can then get hit by a neutron and become tritium which is mildly radioactive. This is a very small amount of water as most of the water is still going to be regular hydrogen. Now oxygen has two heavier versions than the most common, Oxygen-16, and those heavier versions are oxygen 17 and 18. Both of which are stable. The only radioactive isotope of oxygen (that doesn’t decay almost instantly) is oxygen 15 which is less than 16 and cannot be formed from neutron activation. Thus water in a nuclear plant is not really radioactive at all. Water is only good at moving things that are radioactive which it doesn’t in a nuclear power plant.
@@Element_J3 I think there are trace amounts of material dissolved into the water (more if they melt), but fuel pellets have cladding specifically to prevent that (and corrosion). That gets filtered and the filters eventually end up as LSA rad waste (I think I followed a convoy for around 15 minutes on the highway, I noticed because it had a RAD III placard which is rare, and the LSA classification means that the high radioactivity comes from a lot of moderately radioactive waste (also it didn't list isotopes, so it was probably a mix).
The neutrons do produce some tritium (much more in heavy water reactors like CANDU) but the typical policy for that is to ensure the water doesn't have significant organic material, dilute it, and release it into the water. Tritium is produced by cosmic rays and doesn't concentrate in the environment, so the release limits are surprisingly high. It just doesn't move the needle much. Also tritium has a 12 year half life, which is really annoying (too long for "decay in storage" to be the obvious choice, but short enough to have high specific activity and become less useful to work with over normal timescales).
In an accident short lived isotopes like Iodine-131 can be released. Those are extremely dangerous because they have short half lives and correspondingly high activity. That's why you want to stay inside for weeks if a nuclear bomb goes off, and people are told to avoid dust, food, and drink which may be contaminated. In the case of Iodine you can take a large (actually somewhat toxic, so don't take it unless you think you're going to consume radioiodine in the near future) dose of regular iodine, the idea is to saturate your body so that the radioiodine gets excreted rather than retained in important organs (there are also some medical conditions which are treated with radioiodine because it targets specific organs, people tend to ignore biological half life and focus on the nuclear).
The exclusion zones are mostly due to things like Sr-90 and Cs-137. They don't dilute nicely, have high specific activity, emit radiation which can penetrate skin, boil out of a reactor if it loses coolant, and have half lives of around 30 years. I think if you magically deleted those two isotopes the Chernobyl and Fukushima exclusion zones would be tiny to non-existent.
The long lived isotopes aren't very radioactive, so they're pretty much toxic waste. Also note that spent fuel will probably be reused (if you separate out the components it can go back in a reactor, and the other isotopes have uses) so geological repositories should probably consider the safety of workers recovering the spent fuel in a century or so. The main reasons we (OK, at least one country does) don't reprocess currently is that it's expensive; we can already meet demand with mining, non-fuel neutron targets, particle accelerators, et cetera; and a reprocessing plant is a make way to get plutonium for nuclear weapons (US reprocessing was done by military contractors, and secrecy protected them from accountability with the notable exception of Operation Desert Glow, where the DOE was raided by the FBI and EPA).
@Divisiblebyzero Radioactive Wasteland Thank You 😊
I used to say rad in the 90s, didn’t know I was referring to radiation 😂
Here in Ontario, Canada, we get around 60% of our electricity from nuclear energy. This allowed us to transition away from coal. This massively reduced the pollution we had in the Greater Toronto Area and southern ontario. When I was a kid, the smog in Toronto was WAY worse than it is now. I had terrible asthma as well. Now air quality has improved and my asthma symptoms have gotten much better over time. THANK YOU NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS!
You actually get 59% of your energy from hydro and 15% from nuclear butt still better than most countries.
He's talking about Ontario, not Canada as a whole.
@@TheManbeastmike That's all of Canada, in Ontario it's 60% nuclear
@Connor McIntyre ahh I see I stand corrected
@@TheManbeastmike Hydro is like a cheat code for electricity so no doubt we would try to benefit from it, that and we got lots of water ya know?
It’s definitely important to note that a lot of people that don’t bother studying nuclear, usually in my experience just associate it with Fukushima, Chernobyl, and for some reason Hiroshima/Nagasaki. Which is extremely disheartening.
Mainly Americans do this because they're so proudly ignorant.
People who think Little boy and Fat man are the same as nuclear power should lose their breathing license.
And the other way around. Most people that are pro nuclear only know that the energy source emits very little co2, without thinking about the long term in terms of waste, recycling and cost.
@@JonasSalen add in the fact that everyone works to their own level of incompetence
@@JonasSalen Waste? if its about safety they now bury them in deep isolation covered in concrete. It will literally outlast human civilization. Even then nuclear energy is the most efficient source of energy and the waste produced is little compared to other alternatives. Cost? it might be bit more costly to maintain but its way more practical for situations and if it was as heavily invested as renewables it can be better for cost. Recycling? Nuclear fuel's 90% can be recycled wdym? other can 10% is sent to the deep isolation no worries.
As a geologist, I've been to a nuclear waste storage site. It was created 300 meters below ground level, inside a granite block, which they surveyed so thoroughly, they know basically every cm³ of that formation. There were huge concrete covered halls created down there, the size of two football fields, so impressively huge. The waste is put in those huge halls or silos embedded in 3 ton concrete cubes, and when the halls fill up, they get filled with concrete to the ceiling... There was a several km long ROAD created underground to the storage site, and a large area around the entrance is secured by a private company, basically a smaller army. Getting inside was a diiiifficult thing.😀 If someone would walk up there, and didn't stop when asked, they would be shot immediately.
So yeah. Nuclear waste is taken seriously. Way more seriously than anyone could guess. Being down there, next to the concrete crates, the radiation was less than normal background on the surface. And what is stored down there? Low activity nuclear waste: spanners used in the reactor, gloves, coats, lab glasses etc. So yeah. They take it seriously, the high activity storage site is not done yet, but I can't imagine how overengineered that will be. And it's not some fancy rich western country, this is in Hungary...
Ps.: the guy there told us that the plans must ensure, that the storage site remains intact for the next 2 million years... Just mindblowing.
what about the dome in the pacific where the waste is literally sitting at surface level? I agree with everything you said but there are past issues that need to be dealt with. not all of it was disposed of properly.
Ok I mean nuclear power might be good in stable democratic country, but in country like Uganda or Taiwan there is too much risk to use nuclear energy. Nothing is better than coal and gas.
And I'm sure the structure governing it will *never* get corrupted and will always work exactly like you want it to forever
Humans are infallible afterall
Imagine some future human civilization finds those stores years after an apocalypse and it starts poisoning them. The myths and legends that would stem from that place would be crazy
It's so powerful though the people that would want to get it would spend enough time to be hired en masse there
I literally submitted the draft version of my Bachelor's thesis on nuclear energy policies in Germany and France last Friday. And now this video comes out!!!
Can you share it with us?
And to think, you could have just waited a week and deep-faked your face onto his, then submitted this instead!
But seriously though, wishing you success with your thesis. 😊
@@BokoMoko65
+1
Hope you emphasized how stupid my countries (germany) nuclear policies are.
Hey, I wanna read your Bachelor Thesis! It sounds incredibly interesting! Lets connect!
Thank you for making this video. My dad is a retired nuclear engineer, and I have a masters degree in nuclear physics. I have been trying for years to convince people of exactly the things you explain in this video, so it is really heartening to see you using your platform for this purpose. People fear what they don't understand, and it's really easy for people to get caught up in worrying about mysterious radiation and a handful of flashy news stories about rare disasters. The main impediment to nuclear energy is the lack of public education on the topic, so thank you for helping to remove that impediment!
Let's be clear on one thing: if the existing electric companies aren't going to profit from it, it's not going to happen. Profit can mean many different things to a trillion dollar industry that has brainwashed an entire country into voting against their own self-interests in a historically unequalled propaganda program that has lasted over a century. You can be certain that if they wanted this they would be making it happen and nobody could stand in their way.
Instead of trying to get people to understand nuclear as U235 being used as fuel, you should be telling people how great Thorium is, how abundant it is, and how it has the least amount of waste. The chances of a meltdown or contamination event such as Three Mile Island would be highly improbable.
Misrepresenting realities = anything nuclear. Nuclear foe example is legislatively not accountable.
I feel like a breakthrough in solar would surpass nuclear, unless we could do safe localized fusion. Fission requires materials, infrastructure, grids, specialized maintenance.
From a technical view I really love NPPs. It was when I started digging into that subject that alternatives seemed way more attractive. The main reason being cost and humans: For me all arguments in this video are subsumed under "cost": Insurance cost to cover for accidents and cost for recycling/enrichment/other types of reactors to manage/store waste. Those should be factored in the $/kWh stats, which they mostly aren't (insurance is capped at very low levels and the cost for disposal of the waste is outsourced so that the public must come up for it in the end).
The "human"-argument wasn't even mentioned: You can have a quite nicely engineered plant, but humans just are too dumb/egoistic/aggressive to operate it safely. Almost every accident showed a big human-factor like safety measures not implemented due to greed and neglect. For the aggression part: I'm quite curious about what happens to the Zaporizhzhia NPP, and NPPs seem to easy getting a bomb (even if it "just" is a dirty one).
That's why I tend towards renewables + a high cost for CO2-certificates, so that externalities for energy production are (mostly) covered.
For NPPs it seemed like even the insurance part would make them economically unviable (maybe it gets better for small reactors, but then we still didn't solve the waste problem).
I spent a period working at a uranium mine in Canada. LOTS of people asked me, "Don't you get a lot of radiation doing that?" The answer is actually "Yes". Working a "fly-in/fly-out" camp job increases your dosage significantly - although not nearly as much as say, working as a flight attendant. Working in a uranium mine itself? Not really.
Because it is invisable, it is hard to get a good understanding.
That's hilariously unexpected
Lol. Very funny.
I'm okay with people being ignorant about uranium ore and radioactivity. I'm less okay with voters being uninformed and paranoid about nuclear energy.
Northern Sask?
people dont seem to understand the disconnect between ore and refined radioactive isotopes, when its in ore form its mixed with other ores that need to be displaced/removed to create the expected refined product that is actually used in reactors. the other one is that people dont understand that the components of radioactive materials are generally "safe" when handled correctly, its only when you force them together and a fissile reaction occurs is where a majority of the radioactivity comes from.
follow the rules that have been created literally by people dying playing with this stuff and everything's fine. play god and think you know better and nature bitch slaps you back to the cave where you belong to die in a puddle of your own goo.
I love this channel and these creators so much. In an age where 6-second videos are the “perfect length” its great that I can watch a 30 minute video and enjoy every second
This video actually couldn't have come out at a more perfect point. I'm literally writing a text at school about why we don't have more nuclear power.
yes
i agree
yes, i also agree
*_After deliberating briefly, I realised that yes, i also agree_*
💯
As an electrical engineering student I cannot stress enough how important videos like this are. Nuclear energy is an important part of our energy portfolio, and talking about the stigmas surrounding it helps people accept it. Very insightful and informative video as always, keep up your amazing work!
As an electrical engineering graduate I disagree.
eg: solar doesn't use a fuel that operates in a critical runaway state that you are constantly trying to cool and keep from exploding.
@@michaelmurray2833 the same power source that isn't viable for some significant periods of time (after sunset)? Energy storage is a difficult problem to solve and one we haven't.
Last time I checked molten salt reactors were runaway safe. We aren't spending enough time/money/effort on nuclear energy research and development.
@@michaelmurray2833 As a mechanical engineering grad I can tell you that you need to google the numerous reactor types out there, specifically CANDUS, that don't use the highly enriched uranium you're thinking of. Natural uranium reactors boost their fuel up into criticality as it will not go critical on its own and is therefore substantially safer at a cost of some efficiency. Old, fundamentally flawed designs have lead to alot of otherwise intelligent people to be afraid of the nuclear boogeyman despite it being hands down the most effective & safe power source humanity has by every important metric. The toxic waste from used solar panels is something else you should google more, though not many people care about that since we ship much of it to Africa anyway...
@@michaelmurray2833 I highly doubt you are because if you were you would know that solar is a very unreliable source of energy and needs other plants in tandem to compensite for its wild fluctuations. Nuclear is more a lot more comperable fossil power plants but a lot cleaner, and in fact it releases much less radiation to the atmosphere than the burnt fossil fuels do.
The scariness is the MAIN issue for a technology that's otherwise (mostly) great. Fun fact: there's a nuclear power plant in Austria/Europe, very close to our studio. It was built in the 1970s and 100% completed but never turned on. Replaced by a coal power plant, far worse for the environment. It's still there - so, in our video, we went there to find out wether we could turn it on today. As Cleo frames it perfectly: it's all a political problem, not a technological one.
I didn't know you were based in Austria-do you ever produce videos in German?
or cost
@@HTV-2_Hypersonic_Glide_Vehicle nuclear isn't expensive to operate
@@kentozapater8972 no, but to build over a long period of time, in a place like Texas it would look costly. However, I don't really care, as I would enjoy the benefits.
@@liabe18 Yes, we're here in Vienna. We do produce TV Docs in German but all our TH-cam videos are in English. (we did try some EN dubbing on YT though!)
Nuclear has extreme regulations that the skeptics tend to ignore when their goal is just to fearmonger mostly. The real reason we don't have more nuclear is because of the immense amount of inspections and regulations that comes with nuclear energy which is understandable. However, this makes nuclear energy significantly more expensive for an investment than other forms of energy. And with low investment and no larger public option (yet!) in America, this leads to less nuclear energy. Another great video, Johnny Harris.
It's not regulation, it's cost of capital. NPP are inherently large projects, and investors need a larger return to justify financing the enormously expensive (and lengthy) construction period.
More broadly, nuclear isn't competitive because each 1 billion in investment goes (roughly) into producing 1 GW of power, whereas the same investment in renewables yields a factory which produces a continuous supply of individual units in perpetuity. If we invest the same amount in nuclear and renewables year after year, nuclear will grow linearly, and renewables exponentially. This is what we are currently seeing.
^Why couldn't both regulation and investment cost be true?
Nuclear energy isn't the only solution, but it's still a key technology to combat climate change. Even areas that can currently use renewables still need a diversified grid to reduce vulnerability to natural disasters, or are limited by space or other factors. It's within everyone's interest to make it as safe and cheap as possible.
@@bagfootbandit8745 Lookup Eash-Gates et al.'s 2020 article in Joule, it's easy to find. Safety regulation explains only about 1/3 of the construction cost increase, the rest is materials and labor productivity. All these factors contribute to larger construction costs, which are amplified by the cost of that capital.
In other words, safety and labor add cost, but what makes those costs so punishing is the extra profit investors need from the energy to make those investments worth pursuing. You might be able to mitigate some of those costs by reducing safety standards (which is risky), but the real problem is construction time caused by lower labor productivity, which adds direct costs and increases the discount rate.
Yup. I'm all for nuclear yet it is expensive as hell, and the projects always go over the quoted amount by billions.
It is all about cost per MW.
Nuclear proponents talk about SMR and all these other technologies like they are already proven to be actually cheaper. Yet I see no evidence of this.
What's your point? So the regulations are the problem? The one's the soviet union ignored --> Chernobyl? Do you think the regulations have been put in place for fun? Guess why power plants haven't started blowing up in the west yet. Because we have regulations that make everything more expensive. Either you get expensive, regulated, but save nuclear power, like in the west, or you get cheaper, "turn a blind eye" regulated nuclear power like in the soviet union. This argument is so stupid. Like nuclear is dangerous as hell, so we have to be super careful, which makes it expensive, so now nuclear is super-safe and since nuclear is super safe, the problem is just that it is so expensive because there are so many stupid regulations, let's get rid of those. You get where your logic falls apart, do you?
This is well done - I'm a Radiation Safety Officer at a hospital and the biggest problem I face day-to-day is Risk versus Perception of Risk.
However, some major points you didn't cover: uranium mining has a checkered past with ruining land, and medical imaging uses reactor byproducts that simply have no alternative.
There are several important points that weren't covered - for example environmental impact of fuel recycling facilities (spoiler: they leek a lot of radiation)
I think we should also talk about where the batteries and materials for wind and solar come from and how its waste is handled. I am not sure they are as safe or environment friendly
Where are conclusive medical findings reported that anything nuclear has even possibly medical benefits. Necessarily including any medical 'quality of life' loss risks, near instant deaths due to radiation etc. Asked AMA but no answers. Read medical journals but no proven benefit concluded, only possibly following surgical removal and combined with other natural health therapies.
@@idnwiw Still much more clean than any alternatives capable of outputting that much power. Also, leek =/= leak.
Uranium mines are so much less invasive compared to our current amount of coal mines and oil drilling. Are they still invasive? Yes, but it's unquestionably the better of two evils when it comes to how much land is ruined for our power generation.
All mining has a checkered past - coal, oil, lithium, gold, rare earth metals etc.
Nuclear has some big advantages that weren't touched on in the video. One of them is that nuclear uses way less land than renewables while the other is nuclear is a consistent amount of energy, unlike solar which stops producing power around the time where power usage peaks. To properly compare nuclear to renewables the cost of energy storage needs to be added to the cost.
Yes! The main draw of nuclear, is that reliable amounts of power are generated... with wind and solar - it tends to de-stabilize the power grid - too much or too little is often produced - during cloudy days, other weather events and we simply do not have the battery technology yet to store the power, at scale.
@@drx1xym154 Plus energy storage becomes a problem.
Solar and wind are potentially dangerous for power grid without energy storage. If you don't have enough conventional or nuclear power plants to support it, there is short way to shutting down some areas and even for blackouts.
(I'm not sure but) I think the TH-camrs name is Ordinal, he has a series on Nuclear all the pros and cons explained well he did an easy graphical representation of the renewable vs nuclear debate too, solar wind hydro pumped hydro (for storage) vs nuclear.
Would be great for people who wanna do a deeper dive
Although you are correct about the land use, land is often not in short supply so it depends on the location. But you are wrong about the consistent output. Solar has a daily and seasonal cycle yes, but nuclear must be taken offline for maintenance from time to time. (I know full well as I live in South Africa where we get increased load shedding when the nuclear plant is on maintenance). Similarly our coal plants break down frequently. Every power plant has a capacity factor ie how much time it is actually running. Solar and wind on the other hand almost never have complete outages outside their daily /seasonal cycles. But I agree, to compare renewables to nuclear on cost you do need to know what balance of resources you are putting on the grid and whether or not you need storage/ over capacity etc. But to pretend that nuclear is never offline is just nonsense.
I think one thing about Chernobyl that played a very big role in why specifically Europe got really weary of nuclear power generation going forward is that eventho the amount of people that died was relatively speaking not that big, the toxic particles carried by the wind blew all over Europe, to the point that even here in the Netherlands, Iodine pills were distributed because of potential nuclear particles that fell out of the sky and onto farmer's crops. The idea that being literally thousand of miles away you could still be affected was absolutely terrifying to many people in my mother's generation.
And also to this day there regions in Europe, for example southern Germany with higher background radiation because of Chernobyl. You still cannot eat mushrooms from this region because they accumulate the radiation.
So what's the Alternative? You don't see the way fossil fuel pollution slowly kills people every day but Smog is real. Water contamination is real. Yes you usually have to live in a big city to actually visibly see the effects of politics but it still affects everybody today in a VERY negative way.
@@jkjk946 and the air all around stuttgart literally kills people for many years already. fuck the mushrooms lol
That's why I disagree with Cleo's point about comparing deaths relative to fossil fuels. It's such a different beast. Coal plants have a predictable risk, you can look at the past decade, plot a line and reliably estimate the next. With nuclear, the fear is not about the points already on the graph, it's about the magnitude of the outlier that is not there, but can't ever be completely dismissed.
@@Gundamguy-py3ir Yep, humans have gotten used to putting up with the more dangerous and abundant byproducts of coal and fossil fuel consumption.
The nuclear scare simply stems from ignorance on the topic. Fossil fuels are harming you just as much from thousands of miles away. The average person just doesn't realize it.
A thing that's quite important but often overlooked is that even though a particular piece of material may remain radioactive for thousands or even millions of years that doesn't mean it will stay as dangerous for all that time.
Radiation is dangerous when you get hit with many energetic particles but the type of particles that a source can emit will vary greatly over time. Typically the really dangerous stuff is really short lived so most of the danger won't be there anymore in a much much shorter time span.
Another important thing is concentration, especially with fluids. If you can treat the material and dilute it it's simply not dangerous anymore
I know you touched on it just briefly, but I wanted to address to the concern about a "bad guy" getting into a nuclear power plant. I work in nuclear background investigations. If someone wishes to have unescorted access into a plant (meaning they can walk around without two armed military with them) they have to go through an extensive background check. We call everyone, your old jobs, your family, your references, references from your references, your schooling, all of it. My entire company and job is about keeping those bad guys out of those plants.
This is reassuring! I know that the security in Canada is also very high around NPPs.
depends on country
Even that vetting process is irrelevant. There are multiple layers of security between the outside and anything important. Even then, the only real mayhem anybody could do is deprive people of power by disabling the plant. Which isn't any different than disabling any kind of power plant.
Nobody is carrying anything of significant danger away from a nuke plant. Dirty bombs are a fantasy; nothing is paradoxically both radiologically potent and stable enough to fashion into such a device. It takes weeks, if not months to shut down a reactor and let it cool enough to open up the core and remove fuel rods which, again, cannot really be used for anything nefarious. The same is true of spent fuel rods.
@@kizmiaz513 So what? Reactor containment buildings are bunkers, built strong enough to withstand anything short of literal bunker busting munitions. Then there are all the built-in safety measures inside the containment building. Another Chernobyl cannot happen anywhere because only the soviets were incompetent enough to design, build, and operate a reactor so poorly, and nobody has been dumb enough to do it again.
No one ever worries about bad actors igniting an oil rig and causing an eco disaster in the ocean. It's sad how much we misunderstand nuclear energy and the system in place for it.
Quick correction: casks aren't "good for just 40 years". They're licenced for that amount of time, meaning the manufacturer can prove it will hold up for that time. This doesn't mean that after that they will break, in fact, they are so over engineered they would probably be safe for a few centuries.
What's the difference between 40 years divided by a million, and 400 years divided by a million? 0.00004 vs 0.0004, in other words, on the scale of a million years, nothing.
Radioactive material which has a half life of a million years is actually the safest radioactive material. You're in more danger of cancer from ingesting potassium from a banana than you are if you ingested radioactive spent fuel with a million year half life.
@@Anttys_WeyTua_CTa_Eu986 they're not meant to be permanent, but having 100 years to get a permanent solution is far better than having 40 years for it.
@@Anttys_WeyTua_CTa_Eu986 Technically difference is you and everyone you could possibly know will already be dead.
@@diegosanchez894 except if you don't actually find a solution... because physics. What I'm saying is the science is tough on this one; it's better to find the solution first. And who's to say we couldn't if we diverted some real energy into it...
I m not the kind to think about youtubers more than just watch them , but the first time i was like "these two youtubers would fit extremely well if they made a video together " was you both , and oh man did you deliver
They worked together at Vox. Johnny left first and I think he may have been the inspiration for Cleo to go out on her own too.
They have similar styles likely due to the fact that they both previously worked at Voxx.
Do you have a hard time articulating your thoughts?
They were 'co-workers'
@@frostycometh5822lul wut?
Thanks so much for this video. Growing up with a Nuclear Physicist as a father you heard amazing cool and completely confusing things every night, but the majority of the talk was over budgets being low. My dad has over 100 patents from developing Nuclear technology since 87. His job title of Health Physicist did not even exist until Churnobyl. The harsh truth is that the public is scared, the politicians are bribed, and the money is not in unlimited clean power. We live in a world where Fusion COULD have been, but may NEVER be.
Really? I was a Health Physics Technician in the Health Physics Department with Health Physicist as our manager at the Shippingport Atomic Power station in 1974. Maybe everything your dad told you is not true
As a nuclear engineer, I thank you for this video.
As a fellow nuclear engineer, hello!
10:50 but Chernobyl destroy soviet union economy. Is Made 30% debt of gdp. For cost for cleaning. You don't think that. In poor nation have Nuclear
How far off is fusion energy in your opinion?
@@Zero-oh8vm Always 20 years
thank dee'z nuts
Amazing how much impressions play a role in our perception. Nuclear went from being a promise of an energy savior to a societal terror. Getting over that negative bias isn't easy and one accident like Fukushima can cause public opinion to backslide. Great collab!
Lmao. They miss a lot of things. For example solar uses children mining in Africa who will definitely die and for Nuclear if something does happen a ton of people die over a long period of time.
Nuclear is horrible and this idea that capitalism wont cause issues with maintenance you are fooling yourself. Nuclear meltdowns will happen and tons of land space will be lost
That's because people are uninformed idiots.
they left out two important factors in nuclear power that arte total game killers... the environmental damage it causes to mine Uranium ore (mostly in open mines like a lot of coal) and the limited supply of nuclear "fuel". You do not WANT to set everything on NPP only to have nothing to run them with in 100 years or less.
@@Ugly_German_Truths Uranium is incredibly abundant, mining for renewables is just as bad if not worse.
@@cupcakke1294 @Ugly_German_Truths And drilling and fracking for oil and natural gas not too mention coal is on a whole other level we just ignore. Isn't the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico still ongoing despite being the largest oil spill of all time in 2010?
As a student in engineering looking to become a nuclear engineer, I thank you for reporting on this subject.
Are you considering to work on Fusion, Small Modular Reactors (still fission but very scalable and safely self-contained), or traditional fission reactor sites?
@@handlemoniumI hope so too lol
Go to Purdue University. They do tours of their Nuclear Reactor. One of the biggest privately owned ones. Its pretty cool
@@DougieFresh765 Reed College here in Oregon has a research reactor as well. NuScale is based here as well 😎
me to
The overhead projector was a neat touch
One point I think y'all missed was just how energy dense nuclear is and how little waste it produces on an individual level compared to how much power it really yields.
Exactly. 50 gallon barrel of uranium can power a city for over 40 years. The only waste is 50 gallon barrel of depleted uranium, and steam. In a 40 year operation, the lunch room where the workers eat, would accumulate more waste than the actual nuclear reaction.
@@bradleysmith9431 precisely! I saw something one time that said you could store all the waste it would take to power everything you'd need or use your whole life, in a coffee can
@@collinherold8047 still a coffee can per person. And there are a lot of people.
Also calculate the rent of storing that coffee can in a safe designated facility for 100000 years and you realize that you aren't paying for the entire cost of that energy. Kind of like fossil oil but less immediate.
My Dad (who works on refueling nuclear subs and aircraft carriers) and I always conversations about nuclear energy and the main thing he always mentions is how frustrated he is that nuclear has a dangerous stigma when in reality now days it’s crazy safe and reliable. He says that the new reactors have multiple computer and mechanical failsafes so if anything ever goes wrong it can automatically shut down in about 20 seconds. In the past all the incidents (besides Fukushima) have all been from human error. I don’t think back then we as a world were ready for nuclear but now that we have a much better understanding and technology we should give it another shot. (Plus electric cars would actually be carbon free)
"In the past all the incidents (besides Fukushima) have all been from human error."
And that's why I'm no fan of nuclear power.
All major accidents (including Fukushima in my opinion) and a fair few minor incidents, have been down to human error. Either related to the design or the operation.
No matter how smart we design a nuclear power plant... No matter how many safety precautions we build into it... It's still designed, build, and operated by humans. And humans are flawed.
In the immortal words of Terry Pratchett:
“Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry.”
Actually no, electric car isn't carbon free. All the body plastics are made of carbon, the steel for chassis and springs and engines are made of steel which is made by burning iron in coal. Wheels are made of a special plastic that is extremely toxic when disposed (burn, put in wheel dumps yards, etc,etc)
And if you think about itthe majority of energy nowadays comes from fossil fuels. So the electricity that powers your car is just fossil fuels that instead of burning in your car engine, is burning in some thermal energy plant somewhere else. (Energy is constant, you can create more energy efficient vehicle, but energy's fuel and it's waste must always exist).
The same logic applies to solar and wind energy. Except the waste and fuel isn't on Earth. It's on the Sun (the Sun create wind too btw). With Hydrogen being fuel and Helium being waste. Basically it's just proxy nuclear energy.
A good comparision is having a nuclear plant, but instead of harvesting energy directly from the nuclear reaction, we put a solar panel and wind turbine behind a layer of lead protection and almost vacuum.
And that's why solar and wind turbine is so inefficient, it's a proxy harvesting of energy of an energy we can already produce with more efficient method of harvesting.
Yes! I was disappointed he didn't mention this. We use nuclear in !@#$% submarines! If "living next to a nuclear plant" was dangerous, all our submariners would be dead. We use nuclear ALL the time and rarely, rarely have accidents.
Fukushima IS a human incident
The French Atomic Energy and
Alternative Energy Commission sent warning to Fukushima attendant about the fact that the central was not tsunami proof and that simple adaptation could easily solve the issue.
They just decide to brush it off.
Fukushima sparked fear but, to date, ONE person has died as a result.
You should probably look into the reactor types that were in use for those accidents, and contrast that with modern reactor options.
indeed,its like comparing a 1900's byplane to a Modern day passenger plane,one would crash much more freaquently than the other...
I was about to mention this until I saw your comment. This would probably be the most important thing to discuss if you want to convey confidence in nuclear energy.
This right here, the RBMK(soviet design from Chernobyl) is an extremely sketchy reactor where candu ( I work at one) is very safe in comparison.
It’s not just the risks but also the public trust in the government is decreasing. How can we trust that our government wouldn’t also mismanage, downplay, and lie about a nuclear catastrophe when they did exactly that during the pandemic (and other events)? Also how can we trust that they’ll build it well when our own roads are so easily damaged?
The images of Hiroshima & Nagasaki were also etched into the minds of Boomers and The Greatest Generation (their parents). These are the people who have ruled the world from the 50s through 2020. Seeing pictures of shadows on the wall where the blast darked the wall, leaving an outline of a vaporized human body, is very chilling. Godzilla and much of modern Japanese fiction is the direct result of being the only nation to be on the receiving end of a nuclear attack. The rise of Japan in the 1980s, and the introduction of Japanese culture into the US also had an effect.
Yeah, I hadn't considered the cultural effect of the bombs until my dad pointed out why all of their cartoons have overpowered humanoids that can launch energy beams/balls capable of causing massive destruction.
Great content! As a Japanese experienced the earthquake, the big push back for me is not the accident or trust in technology but it’s lack of trust towards monopolizing corporation and long history of doubtful government corruption nature.
💯
Hey there. I know that feeling about corporations but from different experiences. However, I can't really blame 100% the company on that case as it was a huge earthquake that led to a tsunami which by itself alone killed tens of thousands of people. Deaths related directly to the accident at the plant (caused by water damage from the tsunami) were just two operators as far as I remember. Nonetheless I recognize the company's fault in not building a higher coast wall as it had been recommended to them to do years before the tragedy.
Mostly the damage resulting from the accident was local contamination and according to numbers taken on the aftermath, it's not that bad in the sense that it wouldn't kill you and is highly unlikely to cause sickness.
I'm sorry about rambling here in the comments but it just pisses me off that this accident has been blown out of proportion, that the real cause of the tragedy is forgotten and therefore the deaths disrespected, and that it has been weaponized to attack the field as a whole with terrible results;just look at Germany.
I hope we see eye to eye.
@@kevinkarlwurzelgaruti458 Germany is truly awful. They dispose of nuclear reactors to buy nuclear generated power from france and burn coal and gas. Eco-friendliness, i guess.
@@alexturnbackthearmy1907 Yeah, the Green party took a 12 gauge to Germany's foot when they shutdown the last plant.
Me, too. They mess up too many critical things, because their goal is too often to be voted into power, over and over.
Thank you for making this. Nuclear isn’t scary if it’s done right! Our world needs this if we want to keep going the way we are.
Depends where you live though. I live right on the Ring of Fire close to active volcanoes (and home to some of the largest recorded eruptions in history) and reasonably frequent earthquakes. With that in mind, I would not feel comfortable with a nuclear power station nearby. If I lived in other parts of the world... I'd probably feel quite differently about it.
@@nzwj in your case, geothermal would be more suitable. But in geographically stable regions, nuclear could be a real contender!
@@nzwj Modern nuclear reactors arent in danger of earthquakes, even the fukushima ones and the two nuclear plants next to it survived the earthquake with no damage, the problem was one plant had ignored the rules about their sea water wall and had damage due to that... and even still Japan is going big into nuclear now feeling safe with it.
tell that to the communities poisoned by the mining process, especially Diné communities.
Johnny and Cleo are amazing! Love your videos! Thanks for the information on nuclear, in Brazil we had an awful accident in Goiás because the government didn't took the security measures seriously.
these videos have such a homemade but professional feeling to it and it's just my favorite type of mini documentaries on these platforms
i think its psychological . even with planes as they are so safe if any accidents occur it becomes a big news. but car and bus accidents are quite common so they don't become news . Its the same with energy
Except that it is permanent. A plane crash kills today only. Cherynobl is still killing people... Kiwajalien is still killing people...
White Sands is still killing people...
Fukashima is still killing people...
Tsar Bomba is still killing people...
Three Mile Island is still killing people...
The list goes on.
Also, air travel is safe, until it isn't. Espousing stats obscures reality. When a plane hits a mountain, it is almost always fatal to all passengers and crew, just like a nuclear meltdown. Whereas a bus hits a car, and very, very few people die burning and screaming in anguish before they are liquified.
It is entirely different.
Exactly! Don't be the For-profit MSM sheeple they depend on for survival! Turn off the Idiotbox and touch grass!
Not to mention the news stations are basically giant echo chambers which focuses and high lights the accidents a bit too much.
Johnny and Cleo in this video are like the cool young history teacher and the cool young science teacher getting together to teach a lesson in some underfunded high school.
You had no right to be this accurate
As a 6th grader, I remember going to Maine Yankee, which was Maine's nuclear power plant in the 80's. I actually remember them showing us films, taking us on a tour, and giving us a nuclear pellet in plastic on a postcard type of paper. I wish I had kept it!
You're a 6th grader that remembers the 80s? Dang they're making the 6th grade so difficult to pass nowadays
As someone who has known this for a decade, but is unable to share and articulate as well as you, Thank You! Johnny this was a Grandslam!
What they completely ignored is that nuclear is a stable source of base-load energy. While solar and wind can be highly variable, this requires some sort of large scale energy storage (which was not factored into the cost comparison)
The comment I was looking for.
exactly, for being a 30 minutes video they really stretched their points a bit too much and didn't go in detail enough in my opinion
In addition that renewables are just not sustainable in many places.
It’s not all or nothing, it’s a combination of many elements.
Or it instead of energy storage, it requires energy sources that can quickly kick in when there is no solar or wind. Which are not the "cleanest".
Yea, renewables are great, but they aren't yet sufficient enough to rely on for world-scale energy needs. And honestly, probably wont ever be, as fusion(which is arguably a 'renewable' in a sense) will likely take over at some point and keep renewables as more of a supplementary and localized energy source.
When I was in middle school, our state opened a nuclear power plant. Before it went online, there were experts that came to our school to give us the pros and cons. One of the "it's safe" experts discussed how the plant was built to handle a head on collision from a jet crashing into it.
That was the first thing I thought back to on 9/11
Nuclear energy is a heavily regulated industry, and many public fear will force companies and corps to keep it safe as possible
I've got the same briefing from the experts, that were on the payroll of the nuclear power plant. All those plants were build with safety in mind and they were all constructed to be safe at the current situation. So they thought also about Fukushima, which we now know it wasn't prepared for the higly unlikely event that occured.
The problem is not that it's unsafe, the problem is that it will never be 100% safe.
But they will cut corners as much as possible and with thorium , salt cool reactors , …….
@@JonasSalen remind me how many people died due to the nuclear accident at fukushima please. Oh and if you could remind me how many people die in coal mines each year that would be amazing.
@@crusader8102 Wiki says one died after the accident in 2018 from radiation. The tsunami (tidal wave)killed 15,500. Not that many people die in the mines in USA these recent years, but the black lung thing can get you later.
Apart from the awesome conversations and insights that the video give me, I couldn't take my eyes off of how well this video was made. It's so well shot, so well edited. It's brilliant.
I love that TH-camrs making explainers are using OHPs for explaining.
It's just so nostalgic. My botany lecturer used these inorder to explain complex tissue structures and anatomy concepts in the most simplest manner. She used to have a whole box of them divided according to the topic and she used to use markers inorder colour them and highlight important things. I terribly miss them.😢
Professors liked overhead projectors since they can't lock up like Windows running PowerPoint...
this video mainly felt very lecture like in some university but homemade in some small house at the same time
Another little tid bit I love about nuclear vs coal. A lot of coal power plants cannot be converted to nuclear because the coal power plant produced too much radiation for it to be in regulation once it is considered a nuclear power plant.
Oh, interesting. Ironic.
I love it when these two Vox siblings get together to bring news to us.
"news"
It never fails to astound me how little most people know about the facts of nuclear energy. I’m a nerd, I looked into this issue as a kid, so I’ve grown up knowing nuclear is a lot safer than most people think, I’m surprised Johnny didn’t know very much prior to doing this video though
I performed subcontractor work on two nuclear power stations for over year. Safety was always, always, always of the utmost importance
It doesn't help that Fukushima happeend in Japan, a country people assume was running things as up to code as one could. "If it happened to them why wouldn't it happen to anyone else" is a thought i can see people having.
@@Pontif11 positive stereotype about a country being “up to code” in all aspects of society can be dangerous. IAEA investigators concluded japanese authorities were acting as both regulators and industry promoters, had suppressed any gov criticism out of a culture obsessed with “saving face”, and had not thoroughly examined earthquake/tsunami response plans…despite living on one of the worlds most active fault lines. It is worth noting Fukashima was an epic disaster not from verifiable radiation exposure (which scientists to this day still haven’t linked to negative population health effects), but from bureaucratic arrogance that thought relocating sick and elderly patients was a good idea, resulting in significantly more death, injury, and trauma than was probably warranted.
@@adamboey4132 i don't know why you are telling me this. People stereotype anyway. I'm just mentioning it might be an exacerbating factor.
@@adamboey4132 The fact that the failures of nuclear are largely human failures is not terribly comforting, because we haven’t yet made a better human.
@@adamboey4132 you and I both know that FUKUSHIMA destroyed the ecology of the pacific… the reason the salmon don’t return, the fires, skyrocketing cancer rates… we know it’s your job to claim otherwise.
I wish there were more TH-camrs and people like you, wanting to reveal the truth in things and show people history, as most have forgotten it.
Their is so many things people cant carr about every fucking thing.
Their are many youtuber check sabina hossenfelder , arvin ash, history of universe,vertasium, sean caroll, and many more
As a cancer survivor who used to get CT chest scans on the regular, I'm surprised my pee doesn't glow in the dark by now. After my all-clear, my doctor eventually said, "The CTs are probably doing more damage than any potential for the reemergence of your particular cancer."
And yet, for some reason, your doctor prescribed it...
@@Simboiss because it was medically necessary. Sometimes life only lets you choose between bad and catastrophic, doctors have to make decisions like this all the time; the point you’re trying to make is inane at best
The one and only reason why the West is abolishing its nuclear powerplats and that is POLITICS. Russia produces most of the Uranium, most of the nuclear reactors and the West rather shoots itself in both legs just to cut away from Russia. The leadership is so screwed they are waling the Europe into a massive energy crisis, stealing all of the savings from majority of its citizens in order to cover high energy costs.. This is a hit job on the highest scale, thats how corrupt or demented the politicians are..
@@Simboiss The alternative is eventual death.
@@metamodern409 "The CTs are probably doing more damage than any potential for the reemergence of your particular cancer."
Maybe you can't read. This sentence means the CT scans do more harm than good.
amazing video, they way you break down difficult difficult concepts is just perfect. I definitely learned a lot. question tho; have you heard of powerpoint?
I had to look into the morality behind the usage of Nuclear energy in junior year of high school (last year) for an hour presentation and 15 page paper. I pretty much used all the same sources and got to a similar conclusion haha, glad to see i didn't do horrible at least lol.
Sounds like you should have gotten an A
@@stevemattero1471 i think i did haha, been a while
Nuclear Energy is actually a good alternative to Coal power plants, obviously ideally 100% energy generation should be green in future, but we can get rid of coal quick with relatively less polluting nuclear energy.
Agree. For transition nuclear is very viable for short term usage.
"quick"?
@@sirmiles1820 I dont know, but at least 10 years doesnt sound "quick" to me...
but nuclear is 100% green
The collab we didnt deserve, but needed
10:53 its crazy to think when you hear nuclear, you generally think of danger and the graph shows its safe energy source
The problem I have with this graph is that it only counts deaths. Yet low-dose radiation is rather unlikely to kill a person, but will negatively impact their lives in a severe way, for instance through poisoning the thyroid (Thats why people get iodine pills after nuclear accidents).
I have searched and not found a research paper that evaluates the amount of people impacted, and severity of impacts of nuclear energy on human health.
My motivation for this inquiry is, that many people in Germany, 1500km away from Chernobyl, many people got thyroid cancer, directly correlating to the accident, yet these people are not accounted for when talking about the safety of nuclear.
Now don't get me wrong, I am not trying to say that nuclear is as bad or worse of a health risk than fossil energy, but I feel the equivalence to renewables being a bit too nice.
@@tedzards509 interesting, I've always been a nuclear supporter, chernobyl specifically was mismanaged.
@@tedzards509
Very well said
A very nuanced way of looking at this material that it’s not black/white but people should consider health risks as I think you mentioned especially if food and water is contaminated or health risks pregnant women would face
It's like a plane crash. Everyone remembers the most horrible plane crashes and some people are scared to take a plane because of them while no one talks about car crashes that happen all the time and most people aren't scared of cars while they cause more deaths per year than planes
@@ouroboros6666 Cancer in general has many causes, thats why I specifically noted thyroid cancer as it is caused by the ionization through radiation of iodine, which the thyroid needs to function. And the ionized iodine doesnt work as it should (Im no medical professional so the mechanism could be completely wrong, but there is a correlation). But thyroid cancer is not the only impact that higher radiation has on the human body.
I certainly don’t want to “scaremonger” anyone. We just need to be frank and honest about this discussion.
I grew up in southern Nevada near the Nuclear Weapons Test Site and, as a boy, I was enthusiastic about nuclear energy. I knew people whose parents worked at the site and I went on tours of the Nuclear Rocket Development Station there. I was steeped in the propaganda being distributed by the nuclear industry and looked towards a future of planes that could fly for months without landing, suitcase-sized nuclear generators that could be taken on camping trips, interplanetary and even stellar travel, and much more. The promises were abundant and often absurd as we look back.
Eventually I learned that the nuclear industry was, to say the least, not being truthful. They would consistently paint any cautions about nuclear energy as a product of pure ignorance. Anyone who did not work in the nuclear industry was, in their view, unqualified to even talk about the magic of nuclear energy. The public was, in their view, hopelessly uninformed and stupid.
The nuclear industry has evolved and changed somewhat over the years but one thing is absolutely still the case:
The nuclear industry is NOT in the business of making energy to fuel our society. That is a lie. The nuclear industry is actually in the business of making profits, lots of profits. And those profits are channeled almost entirely into the pockets of the top decision-makers in the company. And those decision-makers are deeply steeped in the industry’s own propaganda.
Just something to keep in mind as you produce content about nuclear power.
The nuclear profiteers are, of course, delighted to see content like this video because it distracts the public from the most important aspect of climate change. The profiteers want the public to think about how to solve our “energy problem” by using nuclear energy. The really important questions, however like: How much energy do we really need? What are we doing with the energy we already produce? How can we reduce our energy consumption?…must NEVER be discussed!
The fact is that by conserving energy we could make the “energy transition” in a much shorter time, much less expensively, and with much fewer hazards and pollutants. The energy profiteers are absolutely terrified of a public discussion about these questions.
These are the questions you should make your next video about.
Cleo's data gathering and presentation skills are impressive
right!!
Seems like she pretty much did all the work and then he just put it on his channel…
simp
What i find interesting is how you explain why radiation sounds scary. Its very similar to the fear of those who wont use microwaves because microwaves (the actual waves) can be terrifying. Like radiation, microwaves are invisible, and like radiation, microwaves can kill us in horrifying ways. Yet almost everyone living in a 1st world country have microwave ovens in their kitchen, but we're all afraid of even living remotely close to a nuclear power plant.
I think a better example would be with transportation. Airplanes are the safest way of transportation but if a plane crash happens it will be all over the news and the whole world will know aboit it. Compare that to car/road accidents which are the leading cause of deaths and injuries from transportation and technically the most dangerous, but is still the most accepted and normalized. People know car accidents happen but there is something that makes a plane crash way scarier than a road accident because it touches that primal fear of heights and hopelessness if something happens to a plane mid air and cause it to crash. Even tho the microwave thing is still valid point in a way, I think it's much less of a problem for people and more like a conspiracy amoung some rather than a direct parallel with Nuclear.
But I'm glad Nuclear energy gets attention recently and clearing a lot of misconceptions and myths about how dangerous it is. I applaud France for actually sticking with Nuclear when almost every other country tries to get away from it.
Well microwave ovens make use of radiation but that's a different kind of radiation, non-ionising, RF. With every microwave quarter cycle, the inherent dipoles of water molecules in the food flip orietation and generate what could be inaccurately described as frictive heating. But by and large i don't see what's terrifying about that at all. Other than if you had a hole in the shielding larger than 30mm, the microwaves would start falling out and heat you, they need a correctly built containment device.
I mean obviously people should be cognisant of normal causes of death. Heart attack, pneumonia, stroke, car crash, an odd suicide, cancer and diabetes thrown in. That's pretty much it. That's a laundry list of problems you can't put enough effort into solving isn't it. But politically solving fake problems that don't affect anybody is THAT much more convenient isn't it, because you can "solve" them by doing nothing. 100% success rate.
I lived a couple miles away from one in Florida, never bothered me especially hearing that coal plants release more radiation than nuclear in normal operation.
Now I'm living a 10-minute drive from a particle accelerator in Illinois 😅
I worked in a hotel restaurant kitchen that had a cheap microwave for the wait staff to heat desserts in, When cleaning it I found 2 small holes burnt through the door. Thrown out immediatly but how long was it shooting out waves at staff.
my place/house hasn't had a working microwave in 5+ years and im happy without it, at first it broke down/accident but after awhile its something i/90's-millennial-generation found i prefer to live with out one for now
As a nuclear engineer, I really appreciated this video. I was taught this information at university and I think Johhny and Cleo have done an excellent job. I believe that the US should absolutely move to a closed fuel cycle. Humanity must build far more reactors to replace fossil fuels faster than we could using wind and solar alone.
Wind and solar will never work in a large scale. Nuclear is the only option to produce what we need.
Just because nobody died from nuclear wastes accidents doesn't mean it's safe if accidents like "humans affected from radiation" and "moving out from vicinity" aren't taken into account (which are contributing factor that was caused from powerplants that is extremely difficult to calculate), that means that's one less town or geographical area we can't use because of the radiation surrounding it (which is sad) and that's also apart of the problem EVEN if Nuclear powerplant is safer in amounts of "death accidents" compared to other energy sources.
What we should be focused on is how can we make nuclear powerplants safer and how efficient are the safety repercussions if all of the things inside the power plants fails which of course is VERY COSTLY but OVERLOOKED and needs some attention.
The Japanese nuclear incident leaves very clear that the only things nuclear energy cannot solve are negligence and covering glaring faults (on a country where earthquakes and large tsunamis are a thing) rather that fixing them to save face/reputation.
And unfortunately human nature will always be a factor in the potential safety of nuclear power.
Exactly. I’m fully on board with the idea of nuclear energy. We have the tech to make it safe and byproducts seem negligible when compared to other sources.
My main concern with it is the human aspect of it. Unfortunately, the decision makers are often the least qualified and know nothing of the subject.
For this reason, I still can’t trust this energy source 100%.
The local atomic plant here in southern ohio shut down decades ago. There is still hundreds of people working there dealing with the waste. The nearest school literally shut down because of insane rates of cancer within staff and students. Ive been offered more than double what I make to work there mutiple times. But 100% of everyone I know that has worked there has had cancer. You cant pay me enough to go get that cancer.
The glaring faults you mentioned were record breaking and weren't even the primary causes. If it wasn't for the design flaw of putting the backup generators in the basement, the disaster would've been avoided.
@@JayPkneehonestly event with a serious accident nuclear energy as a much better impact on the environment than the simple use of fossil fuels and renewable
A Johnny and Cleo collaboration??? We're being spoilt and I'm all for it
This is a really impressive video and I think it settled a new standard in how videos about any topic should be approached. That's what we need, facts, context and easy to understand visualizations. All that backed by scientific papers.
Was nice. But could have gone a little deeper in how the data was collected and what uncertentys come with it.
I think something not taken seriously here is the influence of human error in nuclear accidents, which ends up having more deterministic 'power' in these situations than failsafes put in place to prevent meltdowns. Humans will always make mistakes, cut corners, skimp on funding, etc, and that cannot be completely engineered away with technology advances and security measures. These accidents were all supposed to be impossible before they happened.
The the use of a transparency projector in this discussion is brilliant. It really ties the shots of Johnny and Cleo speaking with the digital slides of data together very well
Johnny, you and Cleo and your respective teams are all global treasures. Thank you so much for putting so much time into these important subjects and providing your sources. We need more of this.
Do you know what is her channel? She's seems like a smart cookie, would like to watch her other videos
@@monostorizsolt2472 Her channel is in the video _and_ the video description.
Great video but I am kind of upset that you did not mention the radiation burning coal set free. The effects of using coal are really scary if you just choose to look into them
Also, I don't see why a power plant can't be built in between cities or towns for maximum safety. Instead, just a few kilometers distance?
@@Mtl-zf9om there are some universities that have reactors near or on campus, or even in the middle of town like MIT.
@@Mtl-zf9om well most of them are build near rivers for water access for their secondary cooling loop. Citiies are unfortunately build close to rivers too
I came to this video because of Cleo's video that she did on the subject. I think it's amazing if the 2 of you have done these together because it's important to know what's the cause of your fears if you want to overcome them and her addition to the story of how it could be even better if so amazing
I think why the public are more worried about nuclear danger, is because when there is a death or accident, it could effect them, where as if wind/solar has an accident it really only effects people working there. You don't have to worry about wind or water carrying radiation further. Nuclear has a much larger splash damage if you will, and much harder to clean up after.
Good point.
Nuclear is scary for everyone, solar/wind only for the workers.
Basically, it's a bunch of nimbys blocking this.
Potential splash damage, even the worst estimate of death caused by Chernobyl are in the thousand (3k) because of radiation, Fulushima only killed because of the quarantine enforced and stress it caused. Now compare those possible deaths to accidents to the very real millions of people that die each year from pollutions. Add it to the thousand that die to get those fossil fuels. Nuclear is safe and extremely regulated
thats a good point
i feel like most people have a "out of site out of mind" mentality when it comes to things like this. if there is no chance that a death or accident could/would directly effect them. nuclear power can likely directly effect the life's of people who have nothing to do with it so thats what can make it scary
@@l.s.11 If we keep letting fear govern our lives we will walk ourselves straight into extinction.
Thank you for addressing this Johnny. As a high schooler who has been fully invested in nuclear for a few years now, I'm glad somebody is finally openly giving nuclear power a fair chance. I even made a Breakthrough Junior Challenge video myself about nuclear power, because its just something I truly believe should be invested more in. If people/politicians really cared about deaths and/or the planet, nuclear would be significantly larger. Cheers! 🥂
Props to you both. This is really high quality content
Regarding Chernobyl. I am from the region and so is my wife. Lots of birth defects and cancers in that area have devastating consequences that no one talk about.
I really enjoyed the format of having a casual conversation with Cleo and both presenting different perspectives. What a great collaboration! Now to go watch her video.
Not much of a different perspective. He just rolls out the field for her to make her arguements.
Would have been much preferable to have someone actually critical of nuclear energy on the other side of the conversation.
Instead of such a fake conversation.
@@SamsonGuest She was mainly on there because she's hotter than other guests would be.
Cleo was so awkward in this. It seemed fake. Her other videos are much better
I think Johnny forgot to present a perspective other than “I dunno, seems scary”.
@@scaredyfish the dynamic between those two was very highschool. Dorky guy agreeing with hot girl - over-acknowledging her opinion, not venturing his own thoughts because he wants it to go really well. Girl enjoying guy hanging on her every word. Johnny's wife is probably pissed about how this came off. It didn't seem like Johnny wanted to take on this issue with his usual zeal. I'd prefer not to see them collaborate again.
Besides many other things that I love about this video, one of them is how the information is represented! The projector slides have that Johnny Harris, "somewhere between very modern and old-school analog" aesthetic. The conversation is personal but focused. Great production values here!
Oh right, and also please god let us save the planet. Almost forgot about that but ... yes.
The way I see it, the problem is NOT with concept of nuclear and the technology behind it, the problem IS us, humans. If nuclear is properly/safely maintained, we continue to further R&D, and we make sure money is never an issue - then nuclear is a no brainer. A lot of problems we experience with nuclear (and essentially all forms of energy) is that we get cheap and try to cut corners where we shouldn't. The benefits to nuclear are absolutely insanely high and ultimately cheaper in the long run than any non renewable (and renewables until we can scale what we have with those) especially now that it's not just fission but there is a foreseeable future with fusion, we are stupid not to harness it. Almost every problem we've had with nuclear was due to cost cutting, aging infrastructure, lack of R&D, and dumb decisions we made that were totally preventable.
Thanks for the video!
But is humanity going to change and become totally reliable?
Not trying to save a penny, not starting wars, not getting bored by routine, not making stupid mistakes?
Sorry, can't see it. As long as you do not completely trust any country or government or cooperation... nuclear is not safe, even if it is in theory.
Very sensible take, I agree, I dont trust companies to not eventually cut costs at these facilities, thus creating unsafe working conditions for the the staff or somehow reduce the safety measures of the nuclear plants
Thanks god people base decisions on economic sense. Wind and solar generated energy is far cheaper than any other technology out there.
The only reason countries are so keen on having nuclear reactors is: they want to have atomic bombs.
Yes. My high school science teacher frequently said if we put the money and resources that we did into the Manhattan project and applied them to dealing with the waste issue, it would be solved by now.
Fusion is a whole different ballgame than fission. I dont see much fearmongering over fusion cuz it's still seen as a sort of far off 'sci fi' concept(which to be fair, isn't an invalid perception in many ways), and I think once fusion does arrive, it's going to pass through skepticism a bit better once it's made quite clear that there's little fear of 'meltdowns' or anything like that and it doesn't produce the same kinds of waste and everything. Fusion is genuinely the holy grail of energy, and will be the thing that opens the door to civilization becoming something that will be totally unrecognizable from today.
1. The video never addressed that nuclear energy is finite and it requires mining, which will bring similar environmental issues as coal.
2. It is not mainly political that we are not storing the waste in Yucca Mt. We also don't have ways to transport the waste safely from the rest of the county to NV, a state that doesn't really generate its own nuclear waste. The risk of nefarious people attacking us during transport is much easier than within the nuclear power plant onsite storage.
3. The historical concentrating and refining process of nuclear fuel also showed that it contaminates a large area, usually to people who are disenfranchised, like the indigenous Americans.
4. We have ways to decontaminate many of the pollution, but we currently still don't have a way to decontaminate radiation polluted area.
the first critical comment I read here…. like everything sounds soo positive in the video but it’s not all good with nuclear.
I really hope Nuclear energy makes a proper comeback. Or significant improvements in cold fusion, because I have always believed that because of the irrational fear of many people, the world has been strangled of a great source of energy
me too
Me too unless we not over used it. Limit should be their
Cold fusion is practically an impossibly. It would require elements to undergo nuclear fusion at room temperature as opposed to the high temperatures of stars.
Not fear. Profit. How much it would cost too produce and to maintain and what the big fish elites could get out of it. They gain very little so why would they do this
@@Dark_Magnus Look into muon catalyzed fusion. It's basically cold fusion, it's just not energy positive right now. So it uses more energy than it produces right now
Nuclear energy IS the future for humanity. Pound for pound, nuclear produces the most, highest quality energy than any other source we have right now, and propably will ever have. I love how you covered this, diving deep into the safety of energy and showing how nuclear is actually one of the safest forms of energy we have. I urge people to do their own research and find out more about this amazing feat of physics and engineering that we as humans have accomplished. If only more people knew the benefits of nuclear compared to its downsides a couple of decades ago, we'd most likely already be at the point where nuclear waste just isn't a problem whatsoever. But unfortunately, like many other things, It comes down to politics.
"highest quality energy"? What does this even mean?
@@TimmiCat Most power for least amount of risk. Nothing else compares. It's the greenest of the green.
@@CharliMorganMusic The least amount of risk is a false statement. What is the risk of solar or wind power? The risk of nuclear power is a second fukushima or tschernobyl.
@@TimmiCat Negligible.
@@jasonhaven7170 I think not, since it happened twice already...
All this time I thought Nuclear waste was liquid. Not to mention you can recycle such radioactive waste. Great presentation Johnny and Cleo, more power for the both of you and God Bless. Looking forward to learn more as we look into the future.
The smaller rock doesn’t crack the bigger rock, it merges with the bigger rock, making it one step too big, and it cracks under its own weight.
I would have liked to hear more about current issues some countries face with their nuclear power plants. France for example is using mostly nuclear energy, but last year a lot of their power plants were not in active operation because of maintenance and lack of cooling water in the dry summer, so they had to rely on their neighbours who provided electricity from other sources.
Planned maintenance is not a power plant failure
Well, in 2022 France had to make some ordinary maintenance that was postponed because of the pandemic. Furthermore they are trying to extend the commercial life of some of their reactors (that on average are 35-40 years old, close to the end of their life): in order to do so they have to be carefully inspected in every single part and some components have to be replaced, in order to lengthen their life up to 60 years.
Yes. There is also to mention that states don't subsidies nuclear reactors that much anymore, because they always turned out to be way more cost and time intensive than initially planned. I'm talking about the newest ones build. Apart from that, it doesn't seem they are considering energy cost itself, which is the highest with nuclear energy. If we are talking about nuclear, it would make more sense to invest in nuclear fission, it's a topic for the future anyway, since even if we invest in nuclear reactors today, it would take around 15 years until they are build and produce energy, as we have seen from the latest ones build, and that isn't fast enough to fight climate change. It's time so seriously consider efficiency and post-growth scenarios for now, focusing on human wellbeing and sustainability instead of growth for it's own sake.
@@lielakoma Sorry, I corrected the sentence. Hope it is more accurate now.
When talking about electricity production in France, we also have to mention that, unlike Germany or Italy for example, they have been running on a low carbon source since the 80s and that this was the first year in decades in which they were a net energy importer (for a 4% of their year consumption), while normally they are a big net exporter of electricity. Here in Italy have been importing ~10/20% of our electricity consumption from France for decades.
The collaboration we needed and they delivered! I knew nuclear power was fascinating but this just shows how much we didn't know about it.
That's just being ignorant on purpose. Aka being an American.
@@jbmp1390 First off, I'm not American. Secondly, this was in regards to the statistics nuclear radiation poses. Thrid, people usually know a lot about certain fields over others, this video was made to inform about the "others" in *my* case at least.
You can either cry about being "ignorant on purpose" or just be happy with the spread of information. Good day :)
Everything in this video is already well known.
@@jbmp1390 Around 20% of US energy is produced by nuclear power. If anyone is ignorant about these issues, it’s countries like Germany and Japan that are too afraid of nuclear accidents to implement nuclear power. The French bail out the Germans every winter because are they’ve relied far too much on solar plants and Russian oil. Why you felt the need to lash out at Americans is beyond me
Thank you so much for this rational conversation about nuclear's most feared aspects. I hope it gets one of yours most viewed videos! I also hope that people understand that a world powered up with 100% renewable energy isn't viable with the technologies we have today (we can't store such huge amounts of energy for months), that's why nuclear has to play an important role for still many decade: the role that fossil fuels played until today (with the effects we all know). Thanks again!
Agreed. A lot of nuclear critics also don't realize that many reactors now have the ability to adjust their output based on demand. This makes them a lot more viable as a base load.
@@GeoMeridium that needs to become known on a larger scale, because that is great
Storage: yes we can: Look up "Hydrogen energy storage"
That collaboration montage at the beginning was the most wholesome thing I have ever seen
As someone who grew up nearby the nuclear reactors in Finland and always heard about the safe plan to just put all the waste underground, it's a fun game to play bingo with these videos and see how often it gets mentioned lol. Because of this I never experienced any fear of nuclear power either tbh.
Sadly Finland is the only country that has even started building storage. I do not think any other country has even been able to agree on a place where to build. If you do not have a problem, can we send our stuff over, please?
Waste can be sent to space.
@@Caesar91 Not yet. Really expensive and then there is always the risk of sth.
going wrong and the whole thing exploding while still in the atmosphere. Also international agreements would probably be necessary... good luck with that. Oh, and the carbon footprint of those rockets!! We were trying to avoid that!
@@Caesar91 im not recommend it to send to space since space itself already have much radioactive wave, but..... If you wanted to make expeditionary space craft, sure it's probably gonna need it, but then again, sending materials to space is expensive at the start.
@@cringe_lord5762 indeed expensive. But as explained we could have years of waste in a reasonable volume. So potentially we could send a rocket per year of waste.
A rocket per year adding on the cost of the energy is nothing...
I dont wanna fuel any conspiracy theory... but nuclear power related accidents appears more often in the media compared with the VW Dieselgate (for example) :)))
The argument in Australia (the country with the worlds largest uranium reserves) is that the cost of nuclear power on the consumer would be more than building the equivalent amount of power generation through solar, wind and battery.
Yes solar would be much cheaper, also the domestic users can stay off the grid and get all the electricity they need.
Johnny x Cleo = dynamic duo of TH-cam journalism 👍🏼😊
Liberals
I know Johnny has a wife and kids and all, but nothing can convince me cleo and johnny haven't fucked
I wonder who really sponsored this video.
@@GarrettDevitt don't go there. speculation may run wild, but we actually ought to have this tech everywhere.
I think she kind of annoying..
As a former submariner and nuclear operator. We receive less exposure in the middle of the ocean, than we would on land.
Water makes a heck of a shield
Johnnys editor kills it every time, always a smooth perfect video
The safety factor between nuclear and coal, oil, etc. made me think of airplanes vs cars. There are exponentially more car deaths than airplane deaths but psychologically, airplanes seem to be much bigger in scale.
P.S. I think we can also consider the long-term effects of radiation exposure though after nuclear accidents..
In regards to transport tho, the perception is actually closer to what I'd consider the actual safety factor. Planes are considered safe because the stats being used is the death per km/miles, which is skewed in favor of that transportation that goes at 1000km/h and is used for long distance.
If you care about the danger of dying each time you enter a plan, then it is about the same as each time you take a car (which factors in drunk-drivers btw). And way way higher than other transports, especially trains
my dad works in asia's oldest commercial plant. according to him nuclear power is at least a stepping stone if not an important reform required to reach the stage where all of the world is powered by green energy great video explaining the curious backstory of modern day power plants.
Coming from someone who is heavily invested in fossil fuels and has solar power on his house: nuclear is an amazing energy source. Yes it has its problems like any other fuel source. But if we are trying to go carbon free, nuclear is the key.
I’ve lived next to a nuclear power plant my whole life. The only concern I’ve ever had is that a tornado might hit it. Other than that, it brings in soo much money. I don’t ever even think about it.
I'm gonna bet that thing would be good if a tornado hit. The containment building is designed to take a hit from a commercial airliner.
The control room might suffer slight damage, causing the reactors to shut down automatically. The reactors themselves are encased in a pressure vessel and contained in a concrete containment building that is designed to resist things like explosions and tsunamis. Fukushima blew up not because of the earthquake or tsunami destroying the reactor, but because the emergency cooling systems had failed, which eventually led to the meltdowns in the following days.
Epic Collab! Love it! Hope you and Cleo work together more often :D
Shit I'm trying to work with Cleo
How come nobody addresses the real issue here: What a brilliant usage of this old overhead projector as "special effect" to create an atmosphere of detective flick, suspenseful lighting on the peoples faces and a nice way to seemingly naturally build in the (animated!) content from the slides. Bravo!
Thank you to everyone involved in producing, editing and developing the content of this informative video, congratulations... Johnny and Cleo Abram, you are brave to put your face in a world where big oil and gas companies still play a not so clean role 🧡🕸
My two favourite journalists working together, I love it! Its always great to see Cleo getting excited about being able to nerd out about a subject. Love the dialogue format as well!
Not gonna lie…it’s gonna take me multiple viewings of both of you guys’ videos in order to understand the enormous quality of this densely beneficial information.😄💡
I really love the use of the overhead and slides rather than fancy graphics………takes me back to my youth and a lot of fond memories
Great vid, as always. I grew up (in the 90s and early 2000s - I'm 35) in a town along the Susquehanna River in PA literally right in sight of Three Mile Island. I went over a bridge nearly every day to school with the steam rising from the towers, always thinking how crazy it was. We'd get iodine pills every year from the Health Department, and our schools would have them in stock plus escape routes and plans for if the reactor went critical - a further reminder about this whole "fear". It got to the point where it was "normal" to us. But nuclear energy is one of the ways forward...we need to stop closing them down. We have the tech to make it safe - but do we have the political will?
PS I was SO HAPPY to see both these vids pop up in my subs right next to each other! This is how I know I am subscribed to the right peeps!
Side note on solar, cost of solar must always be calculated as solar + storage since we need energy by night and during winter. And most of the time the cost of storage is ignored.
Not mention, solar panels are not recycled and leach toxic chemicals when put into a landfill.
Another thing with storage is you will need additional solar capacity to charge up the batteries AND meet daytime demand.
@@jonathantan2469 that's why it's better to do solar on individual homes instead of big solar farms. During the night you use the grid and transportation related costs are reduced.
Calculating the cost of solar and wind, including storage, also brings up the cost of lithium mining, which produces radioactive earth dumps, poisoned groundwater, and displaced indigenous and rural populations, and long term toxicity and death to miners.
This mostly happens in Chile, China, and countries in Africa such as Congo. Because we don't see it, it's less scary.
@@PhillipMelanchthon Thank you for bringing the lithium problems! There is an island in my country that is being used right now as a lithium production facility and lithium mine because it is one of the largest reserve in the country. The health of the local population is decreased hundreds of percent, their foods (they're mostly fisherman) are becoming poisonous, etc and more importantly they don't get any compensation from either the government or the company that use their island to mine and process lithium.
When raised this problem, most people from the 1st world country that benefits solar energy the most (like the USA) doesn't care and choose to blame it on the indigenous and local populations
I think that you put so much emphasis about the number of people that would die per energy unit for different sources, but you didn't mention how these were calculated. I know that some data sources in case of e.g. deal not only with accidents, but also pollution-related deaths. It would be good to know what you were touching on with your research!
If you’re genuinely curious, the source is cited, so you can read precisely how the numbers were calculated.
I wish you guys were in charge of the media. Imagine how informed people would actually be. Our mainstream media is a mess. You guys make things SOOO much clearer and balanced.