I'm so glad those things get shut down finally! But fossil energy is a step backwards, the future lays in sustainable energy sources in combination with less energy loss in total. I still can't understand why we should produce nuclear junk with no where to store it, and much worse: Taking the risk of lossing a great chunk of terrain if something goes wrong. And something WILL go wrong, even if we humans try to make it as safe as we can, we can't forsee and prevent everything. It's just a matter of time.
also I forgot: Nuclear energy isn't even really renewable, so if we push this form in 100 years we stay in front of the same problem: Everywhere nuclear waste and no uranium to use anymore.
Operating outdated reactors in a risky zone is like having an oil refinery near an active volcano. It's basically begging for an accident to happen. The Chernobyl reactor was an old model that should have been modernized, blame the politics, not the scientists.
The reactors at Chernobyl were just a flat out bad design. Calling them out dated is being over kind. However, the Soviets built them anyway. Thank god th Soviets are no longer around.
Exactly, not only was the reactor extremely old as it was one of the early RBMK Gen II models built in 1950, but it had design flaws and many safety issues since it prioritized power output over stability. All nuclear disasters always come from human error, not from faulty science.
Yeah, I wish he had spent 25% on why the current trajectory isn't right, and the remaining 75% going into details about his preferred approach. It was more like 85% of the former.
AquaPhoenix Productions it's a sales tactic. Spend lots of time on the problem so people get fear then provide a solution. When u start going deeper into it people find objections.
That's because Nuclear Power is a disaster ! Before you understand the truth about it ,he was only trying to sell more of it... Because there is no future in it it kills all living things ! It's also someone calls productive all forms of alternative energies can out do it as far as cost and safety goes ! So he was probably hired to do this, or has some stock / act... In something Nuclear? Or would not be lying about it, like he was doing !?
The reason he spent most of his time talking about future energy requirements was to show that Renewables aren't an option for developing countries, so the only way they will reduce Fossil Fuel usage is if they switch to Nuclear. USA and Europe spent the last century getting rich via Fossil Fuels, so it's up to them to lead the way by investing in Renewables to make them more efficient so their cost comes down and they become an option for less developed countries. However, it will take decades for this to happen, during which time C02 emissions from LDCs will continue increasing, so these countries should switch to using Nuclear in the meantime.
+JP Maniscalco Fusion Energy is still being tested and STILL hasn't been able to be reliably and cheaply produced. It's something they'll have to work on in the future.
With all the uranium & thorium on the planet, we can get power for near 10,000 years from nuclear. If we haven't come up with something better (fusion) by then, I don't think we deserve to have power anymore.
Nuclear power is one of the few carbon neutral sources of energy that can form base level power generation. One issue with wind and solar is they're inconsistent and you start to run into problems when they form more than 20 to 40% of the total power in the grid. But the new power plants need to be the safer generation III and IV designs.
We are walking towards a more de-centralized management of the energy; not every country and land can afford the cost of power plants (being those nuclear or fossil) and anyway doesn't matter due in some countries the cost of 1Kw/h with solar is already below the performance fron natural gas (less than 6c x Kw/h in Dubai). Since solar and wind are technologies and those will anly fall in price and rise in performance the battle is over. Renewables won.
Batteries are also very expensive, as well as a power grid that can move that much energy around. Weather pattern can be quite large, up to continent sized, and can last for days, so to be safe you have to be able to move terawatts electricity thousands of miles and/or store enough power for several days. And also solar panels are cheap, because they are made in china where they don't care much about the environment, or the workers. Solar panel manufacturing creates a lot of toxic waste, that has to be treated. www.greenbiz.com/blog/2014/10/08/dark-side-solar-waste-concerns-abound They also have to be recycled, which also adds to their cost. They are also often heavily subsidized, so the price you pay for them isn't necessarily their true cost. Same is true for wind. The wind energy is an ancient technology, has been perfected, so no major breakthrough can be expected, while solar is relatively new and there is plenty of room for improvement. It has a future, especially in space, but it's not ready yet. Nuclear energy on the other hand has been ready for over 50 years. Some reactors are reaching their 60th year in service. Nuclear energy is reliable, over 90% capacity factor is the industry norm, and almost all outages are planned. It scales up well, France generates over 80% of it's electricity from nuclear energy. Despite the insane over-engineering due to regulations, it's still one of the cheapest energy sources. With reasonable regulations, modern mass produced gen. IV rectors could be at least 10x and may be 100x cheaper. It's also one of the safest technologies. With over 400 reactors operating for decades, providing 10% of the worlds power, there was only one accident that killed anyone (Chernobyl). And that was an ancient soviet design, built to be cheap, not safe (no containment building for example), and the little safety system they had was disabled to run a dangerous experiment by an inexperienced crew. According to a very thorough WHO investigation the number of casualties were somewhere between 60 and 4000, probably closer to the lower end. In contrast fossil energy kill millions every year. Even wind and some types of solar (rooftop for example) are more dangerous, because of the risk of falling during maintenance. Fukushima was over 40 years old, a gen II design, and still didn't kill anyone. According to experts the evacuation was unnecessary, because the leaked radiation wasn't enough to be a significant enough health risk. The evacuation on the other hand caused around 1000 deaths. And nuclear waste isn't a big problem. Fast breeder reactors can burn 99% of the existing waste, and the remaining stuff decays away in a few hundred years. The ancient Egyptians were able to keep fragile mummies and their treasures safe for over 3000 years, so we should be able to manage 300.
@@kohlcooke8789 You need to cover with PV less than the 4% of the surface of the United States to power the elctricity consumption of the entire world in 2017, your numbers are way wrong. Also, even if you plan to make a nuclear power plant today, it won't be on line before 2030-32, so they won't come to solve any problem in the next decade (and won't happen anyway since they can't compete in cost).
There are many forms of renewable energy that are not intermittent: tidal, hydro, geothermal for example. Combined with wind and solar, you have cheaper solution than nuclear. By all means keep existing nuclear plants open, but new nuclear is neither cost-effective or a fast enough solution to meet climate targets that are due in about 8 years.
I don't get it. People are giving the video dislikes and writing comments to something they have not yet watched. What's the point in that? Does it not only make sense if you have actually made up your mind in the first place?
I does not have to make sense, the internet is a magical place like that, where everyone can say wathever they want for whatever reason they might have. User discretion is advised. :)
Ikr? So weird. But then again after I watch the whole thing all I feel like commenting on is how awesome the phrase "write your leaders" when used aloud. You don't hear it such a plain form.
Umm because some people have actually been to Hiroshima and don't get swayed like you do right off the bat because TedTalk tries to make nuclear look "edgy and hipster."
Nuclear power gen 4 reactors are safe. the reactors that overloaded before were gen 2. We have learnt so much but most reactors are ancient compared to the gen4 reactors. Literally its like comparing the planes today to the planes they made a 100 years ago. Nuclear waste comes up alot... nearly all of the waste can be used in the reactors themselves, and the stuff that cant would barely fill your house if everyone country in the world used the reactors for 30 years. Because the public has their "issues" with nuclear power and they are scared of it, because of what we have done and the mistakes in the passed, it wont happen rename it then it might.
Charles Inman We were told Hanford plant was safe. It wasn't. We were told Chernobyl was safe. It wasn't. We were told Fukushima was safe. It wasn't. Now we are told that this generation of reactors is safe. Based on the previous experience I call bullshit on this one.
What is Gen 4 Reactors? MSR? LFTR? If it is the liquid sodium type, I wouldn't poke it with a stick.. Fucking mental to put something that explodes when it comes in contact with water, in a reactor, cooled with water..
rapinjohn1 Look.. The Exxon Valdez oil spill, have had, and will continue to have a greater environmental impact than Fukushima have. The amount of toxic heavy metals and long term stable oil compounds that are deposited in that environment is immense. There is a reason why even us humans are getting allergies and birth-deformities by handling crude oil products in our daily lives. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exxon_Valdez_oil_spill There is a good reason why they have protective suits on.. Ant that oil is still there.. Maybe under a foot of sand or stone.. But it's still there.. Just like radioactivity can stay and do damage for a long time. But it will dissipate. That's how the universe works. It will dissipate, but not disappear. The thing is.. that coal power-plant, that is just next door, or not that far away... It is releasing the same fucking toxic compounds thats causing mutations in every fucking oil-spill victim. Animal or human. The difference is, it just dissipates faster in air. But remember.. It dissipates, it doesn't disappear. It dissipates until the whole climate changes, then we will all be fucked. SO WOULD YOU BE SO FUCKING KIND AND SUPPORT NUCLEAR POWER, SO I DON'T HAVE TO BREATHE YOUR FUCKING COCKTAIL OF VOLATILE AND TOXIC COMPUNDS, EVERY FUCKING DAY?! I'd rather put my faith in science for the answer, rather than some emotional fear over a completely natural phenomenon that is Radioactivity. Grow up.. Best regards A citizen of Earth
Society’s rejection of Nuclear power was a massive mistake, and the environment has payed dearly for it as we continue to rely on fossil fuels for our electricity
Yes, we do, and I believe this fear of waste that is a product of nuclear energy is unreasonable, because oil and coal has caused just as much of a problem.
The fear is similar to car crash vs plane crash. One is well documented and well known, while to other rare and hard to document. Same for CO2 emmision vs radioactive waste. We know that CO2 is horrible for the environment, but we know very little about radioactive waste, and the few incidents that did happen are biasing the opinions of millions of people around the world.
Considering coal is about 350 times as deadly if looking at actually deaths related to coal vs nuclear. So to say that they causes equally as much problems is actually a ridiculous statement to make.
Whil I am pro nuclear you need to be very careful with using statistics like just comparing total deaths. There are far more people working on fossil fuel plants that nuclear. Talk about deaths per unit power.
Here are some links to articles that show how safe nuclear is in comparison to other energy alternatives. climate.nasa.gov/news/903/coal-and-gas-are-far-more-harmful-than-nuclear-power/ www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#4e88a8b649d2 www.theenergycollective.com/willem-post/191326/deaths-nuclear-energy-compared-other-causes
Beebs Muhgoo Because its clean, cheap and won't kill anyone. Fossil fuel companies can't argue against it. So they ignore it and pollute the conversation instead as well as the world
MillionFoul People have been saying fusion is just around the corner for decades. Also, does it really matter if it's billions of years (fusion) or millions of years (thorium).
kokofan50 Sure, but Lockheed got government money for it, which means they're very confident in it. They don't want to piss off their primary source of income by lying.
13:37 "Tell them to give YOU the choice" Sounds like a terrible idea. The public is uneducated about energy. I still have no idea whether new nuclear plants can be safe enough, and I don't want the public to decide that either
Seriously? So you'd rather have a government or a company decide, with all their agendas and biases? I'd rather have even a reasonably informed citizenry deciding than those with bias.
Solar just is not a viable solution in every part of the world. Parts of Europe and North America just do not see enough sun throughout the year. Solar is a part of the answer, but not the total answer.
Gitsum Yea. Any knowledgeable person in the field will say that we need a mix of everything, adapted to the geography. Here in Sweden for example we have a lot of hydro power available. In Africa the amount of sun hours beat every other part of the world, so solar is a good option. And in Iceland its geothermal and so on.
The biggest obstacle to clean energy is the energy provider to customer relationship. There's no profit in empowering people to generate their own energy. Here in the U.S., nationalizing our power grid and turning it into a market place for all, would help drive everyone to produce energy. Not just produce energy but, to produce more than they use for profit. Which for most regular folks and homeowners will be solar and wind. Storage is the real technology problem to solve.
The title includes nuclear and climate change. The problem of climate change is outlined - which is the continued dependence on coal potentially due to a lack of alternatives in developing nations coupled with old thinking. And the conclusion the speaker makes is nuclear. Speaker is good.
Awesome video, great message! I look forward to more implementation of this technology. But can Americans please stop saying 'nucular' as if it's a word? It's spelled and pronounced 'nuclear'... Why take after Bush?
Really wish Lassiter went into more detail about what differentiates new nuclear from old. Does anyone get that? Also, I feel like he sort of brushed off the whole outdoor air pollution thing in China. Isn't that a huge problem? I wouldn't want to live in a country where I have to cover my mouth when going outside, even in the midst of what he called a dramatic improvement in the "health and wealth of the Chinese people". I'm sort of skeptical.
New nuclear would be Thorium and fusion reactors. His point with pollution was that even with the horrific smog in China, more damage is directly done to people by dirty fuels used indoors. Even if it is still pretty bad by our standards, it's better than what they used to have.
Josh Shuman well, you sure you wouldnt like to live there? I'd rather have to cover my mouth outdoors than live in extreme poverty. China's choice seems logical
idontcare80 You can, but as pointed out in the video, China does not have the same opportunities for clean energy. They are using what they can not the only thing that can be used anywhere else.
I don't support fossil fuels but nuclear power should not even be considered a solution for the problem of climate change because the possible negative consequences of accidents with nuclear power is to be taken way more seriously than the climate change consequences. And I am not saying one should not do something against the climate change, it's the worst and we need to take responsibility but without using even more dangerous sources of energy. *Better try and tell the people how to effectively save energy!*
Nuclear power is the safest way to produce energy. nuclear-economics.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/12-deaths-per-TWh-e1439383898100.jpg google it if you want
No matter how much everyone "saves energy" it won't be enough if that energy is still supplied by fossil fuels. Saving energy is a moot point. Nuclear does have the capacity to be very destructive however that is under very extreme circumstances. France has 59 nuclear reactors and zero deaths due to nuclear power. Fukushima was hit by an earthquake *and* a tsunami and it was 50 years old. Modern reactors are ridiculously safe.
The Chernobyl exclution zone is a de facto wildlife preserve. Also, being anti-nuclear means you either don't want electricity or want fossil fuels, and the 25% reduction from power savings isn't going to cut it.
All technology include nuclear should be on the table. The decision should be based on long term cost and environmental impact. If Nuclear wind so be it.
the long description of the "disaster" of co2 emission is utterly wrong and decieving, it was never proven scientifically, only modeled by men who are politically motivated... though Nuclear reactors are indeed the best option for energy regardless!
You can prove yourself that CO2 heats up the atmosphere. And also that heating up the planet is bad. Also that the current rise in temperature is due to CO2 and methane primarily. All of this you can easily proof yourself. The only question is does mankind cause the CO2. That's the only thing where doubts are just remotely understandable
it's an appropriate bridge we need to be pragmatic about this and the needs of poorer nations. countries are not going to just switch due to being constructed by resources. also we need a way to store renewable energy.
Sadly in Sweden there is limitations to nuclear power, i belive that security has gotten far better scince the last disaster in Ukrane. It is the best we got avalible right now. It is cheap and produces alot of power.
You'd have to cut them down and bury them after they grow. Bury them in coal pits so their CO2 is out of the cycle. A forrest can burn down, you got to get it out of the carbon cycle, and makes new oil and coal ironically for the next civilizations if ours fall.
great talk, i agree with him, we should have more nuclear power, and work to advance the technology a lot more to make it more effective and cheaper. right now nuclear powerplants are way to expensive and people are to ignorant towards fission nuclear energy because of what happened in the past, and thats a shame. that is just my opinion :)
The nuclear waste issue is so small compared to the carbon emissions issue. What's wrong with renewables, he already explained. It's not cost effective and the vast majority of the Earth's population is not going to go for it because of that. Poor countries don't have the luxury of choice.
"not cost effective" is a economic problem. If there was enough demand, you can make a huge profit from renewable energy. In fact this is exactly what China is doing (so I thought), the next generation of renewables will be sold to you "made in China"
Starving and freezing to death are also economic problems, and with enough demand, you can make a huge profit from providing food and shelter. Wow, world hunger and homelessness solved.
Fukushima is on a fault line, clearly not a suit suitable place for a power plant (coal, gas or nuclear). Even with that said, modern plants are even safer and would even be resistant to earthquakes (Australia's research reactor - OPAL, is designed to withstand a direct plane impact without endangering the reactor).
Fukushima is on a fault line, clearly not a suit suitable place for a power plant (coal, gas or nuclear). Even with that said, modern plants are even safer and would even be resistant to earthquakes (Australia's research reactor - OPAL, is designed to withstand a direct plane impact without endangering the reactor).
if these people lived near a brand new reactor that was built to ALL of their specifications to make them safe lol they would STILL be defending it even in a melt down or to be more specific EARTHQUAKE .The elite would hire the survivors to do commercials proclaiming nuclear to be safe all the while ignoring the GREED ISSUE that is keeping FREE energy from us all
There are a lot of thorium babies but nobody says about breeders. Only breeder reactor can solve waste problem and make uranium working for 6000 years. P.S molten salt reactors can't work because of corrosion. There are two breeder reactors in the world now folks, only 2.
there is a brilliant movie called "the Pandora" (2016) it's a korean movie, and i believe it would be sufficient enough to prove that nuclear power is not okay under ANY circumstances
long tran all the uranium used in the reactor had to come from the ground. Also new reactor designs and procedures can reuse spent nuclear fuel to run.
I know everything you might have thought while writing that comment except for the source of your anger. Yes, it has little in common with any modern nuclear plant. But the general public just isn't smart enough to understand the difference (besides, Fukushima is a commonly used counterpoint). My idea was to demonstrate that even the worst case scenario for nuclear is far better than that for fossil fuels. Maybe that's not a good idea itself, but whatever.
Nuclear is really safe when energy produced is taken into account. Even when talking about old reactors like Chernobyl the ratio: energy/life lost is really good.. Mentioning Fukushima is pretty ridiculous, because the accident didn't kill many people.
Luckily, what happened at Chernobyl couldn't happen in the western world. Not only was that reactor design not used anywhere outside of the Soviet Union, but most western countries actually build heavy containment vessels around their reactors in order to prevent something like the Chernobyl disaster from happening. The Chernobyl reactor was basically housed in a Walmart building, many reactors in the west are housed in enormous concrete bunkers.
Actually solar is almost the cheaper way to produce electricity. The cheaper power supply contract in the world, is solar, last october. Chile or Mexico solar energy offers about 3 c/$ kwh in a recent auction. It's known, that in a few years solar energy will be the most economic way to get electricity. The development of this technology in the last years, allow that. Other technologies are needed to equialize production and demand in every moment, but solar could be a cheap, safe, susteinable and practic part of the energy production problem.
Yes, but it will be a temporary problem. In the future fision will be replaced for fusion, and the ammount of nuclear waste will be not very important. Probably, some technologies could process some of them too. We need energy, more and more. In terms of reality, in the next decades, how we want to produce electricity?. Burning oil, gas and coal?. Renovables aren't the complete solution. Hydraulic isn't easy to use in all the world. I think nuclear is a good way to give energy in combination with solar, eolic and others, until fusion will be developed.
I do not think so. A meltdown of 100 nuclear reactors in case of either an EMP attack, or solar coronal mass ejection is an evil beyond anything you can ever imagine.
Cornelis Boekhouder The Molten Salt Reactor: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor They are 100% safe (that sounds biased but It's true). Nobody build them because they are useless for the millitary.
I wish the people liking and commenting this video positively would be the people who would be sent to clean up nuclear waste like Fukushima in the first place ! That would be far less hypocritical than playing clever in the comments.
how many accidents because of nuclear energy? 2, only 2 in the entire history. Now compare the death toll of these 2 accidents with the amount of people dying because of the results of coal plant emissions and tell me nuclear energy is deadlier than coal plants
That would work for me. Meanwhile we are finding ways to do more with less, more efficient lighting and such. Cell phones that bring internet access, things are getting better despite the common dismal narrative.
Nuclear Waste disposal is not even an issue. The earth is enormous. We could generate trillions lf tons of waste and fit it all in a neat area in some desert. Yes it costs money to store it properly but t's not really a lot.
Despite what many people seem to think, and what the odd economist and "futurist" will occasionally tell you, China isn't "going down" or failing. There's a reason they're the oldest continuous civilization on the planet. They can play the long game, and they're very good at it. Today China is expanding it's nuclear power faster than any other nation, by far. They're doing what we should all be doing.
He is essentially saying: Nuclear power is not ready yet. Do our lobby work and give us tons of money so nuclear power may become the miracle we claim it might be.
In Canada Bill C22 limited nuclear installations liability to 1 Billion. If there is a disaster near Toronto at least 1 Million people will be displaced. So the liability is limited to $1000 per person. If nuclear is so safe then why is their liability limited?
I heard the other day that the reason Australia's power bills were going up was because of the efficiency of air conditioners and people going off the grid with solar these days.The electrical power companies invested billions into a grid system that is not being utilized to it's capacity so the remaining users are footing the bill. The longer you stay connected to the grid ,the more you will be paying at an exponential rate with fewer and fewer people connected to it .
the three Hopi prophecies stated at the end of the film Koyaanisqatsi: "If we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster.""Near the day of Purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky.""A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky, which could burn the land and boil the oceans." We have proven to be poor stewards Earth. Clean safe nuclear does nothing but gives us a brief extension of time to continue our suicidal ways.
This video is from 2016, but is still very valid. I defend nuclear power from Thorium. The new technology of the Molten Salt Reactors is a reliable for cutting CO2 emissions and tackle the Paris agreement.
How many earthquakes vs how many accidents? How many deaths/injuries from those accidents? Additionally, the most well known incident (Fukushima) was using a plant with a near 60 year old design, and it was 40 years old itself, well past its shut down due to an inability to replace it thanks in part to the anti-nuclear movement. Newer reactors (like the ones hit at the same time as Daiichi) survived that event with no adverse effects and are fully functional now.
I see your point, but even with latest technology, nuclear power is always at risk. Think about the terrorist attacks, natural disasters, etc. Once it corrupts, humans can no longer handle it. As for the Fukushima nuclear disaster, there are thousands of people who are still evacuating today; their original homes are lost. Yes, technology is improving, so why not turn the direction and use the technology for other renewable energy sources? I think it is very important for Japan, a country which experienced two nuclear bombs and one deadly nuclear accident, to show the world that humans can manage to survive without nuclear power. It is challenging, considering the lack of natural resources we have in Japan, but it is definitely worth it.
Mentioning the evacuations in Fukushima is rather dishonest. They have been confirmed by many safety reviews and committees to have been a complete overreaction to public panic over nuclear power. Also dragging nuclear bombs into the discussion is not a good move, newer reactors don't proliferate. Other alternative energy sources are not viable or economic yet, they rely on large subsidies and have lots of waste issues that are not being discussed. For instance, solar power in the US accounts for roughly 2% of all power, whereas nuclear is 30%, yet the production of those solar farms generates more waste than all of the nuclear plants by volume. The nuclear waste will decay, the heavy metals and waste from solar panel production won't. Fear of nuclear power is the greatest risk to our future energy security.
Mentioning about the evacuation and the history of two nuclear bombs are not dishonest at all. But yeah, I get you are completely convinced about the necessity of nuclear power. Thanks for your reply, this discussion was informative.
Nuclear bombs are off topic for nuclear power, two very different things with very different types of plants to make them. The evacuation just reveals the public overreaction to nuclear incidents, I only said dishonest as you had tried to use them to justify an antinuclear stand point which they don't support. Didn't mean any offense. Cheers!
You're right, since the other reactor right next to Fukushima didn't go nuclear, and nuclear energy produces less waste (even radioactive waste), more energy, and kills less people annually than any other type of energy. www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#5c4ae95549d2 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents It's like with airplanes. Sensational when something goes wrong; still the safest method of travel, period. Also: instituteforenergyresearch.org/analysis/big-winds-dirty-little-secret-rare-earth-minerals/ _" It also means that between 4.9 million and 6.1 million pounds of radioactive waste were created to make these wind turbines."_ _"For perspective, America’s nuclear industry produces between 4.4 million and 5 million pounds of spent nuclear fuel each year. That means the U.S. wind industry may well have created more radioactive waste last year than our entire nuclear industry produced in spent fuel. In this sense, the nuclear industry seems to be doing more with less: nuclear energy comprised about one-fifth of America’s electrical generation in 2012, while wind accounted for just 3.5 percent of all electricity generated in the United States."_ Do some research please.
Alex Bloedow Eh made.. No.. Look.. It's an outdated design. And in hindsight, then yes. Terrible reactor, yes.. BUT! Science get better and better. In engineering there's a term, called, "Walk away safe".. It means, the system is inherently safe.. If anything goes wrong, the system will shut down on its own.. Just like if your car breaks down. You don't have to do anything for it to just stop. Well.. Unless some freak accident happens.. And your car runs on a 30 fuel-tank with a highly flammable liquid with a lot of energy.. (46.4 MJ/kg).. So not even a car is totally "Walk away safe". But you take the risk every day. You trust the engineering behind the safety equipment, brakes, fuel-system and so on. My friend. You are criticizing a 50 year old design like it was invented yesterday. We've come FAR from the traditional Light Water Reactors (The 1950´s design), that are still the most common reactor type in use today. Pease support Nuclear
This discussion is pretty irrelevant, because if you take Fukushima and even Chernobyl into account, nuclear power has been really safe in terms of (energy produced)/(lives lost). It would be a safe option even if we used decades old technology.
So tell me about Nuclear decay? Tell me how we can deal with creating a waste that still produces radio activity for 100,000 years. It's immensely selfish to even consider this.
Hear me out. I'm even pro-nuclear, but I can see why and how it actually could help us. It's not a long term solution, I know. But in the situation the world is in right now nuclear could actually help. Once we have the economy and technology to replace it with a better method then go on. It's just that at the moment solar is not efficient or cost effective enough to take over, not to mentione that we don't have batteries good enough to store all the energy over night. If graphene technology does what it promises I can actually see solar replacing most, if not all coal, nuclear and hydro power plants if solar cells are cheap enough by that time.
This has not aged well. In 2023, 5 countries get around 100% of their electricity from renewables, 8 get 97% or more, 12 get 90% or more, 18 get 75% or more, and a whopping 47 get 50% or more. And this is a mix of European, African, Asian, and American nations. AND wind and solar are being installed at a breakneck pace. Not only would it be 4x more expensive to install and run Nuclear, it would also TAKE LONGER, and create the same foreign fuel, captial dependencies that have historically been the pretense for WAR. YOU WERE WRONG. YOU ARE WRONG. We don't _NEED_ nuclear AT ALL.
Fusion is a dream and even if we knew how to build them, there is not much time left until 2050 to install the needed number of big fusion reactors. Don't wait for a breakthrough until it's to late.
I don't see Thermoelectrics, enhanced conductors, & liquid thorium reactors mentioned what does he mean by "safe" nuclear & is he including the cost of decommissioning into account which governments didn't when they told us how cheap nuclear would be?
I agree with the talk, the only solution that we can catch today is nuclear power. For me, one of the facts that is needed to explain to citizens is which nuclear energy want to boost. The society linked nuclear energy with nuclear desastres like Chernobyl or Fukushima, the only important accidents that pass with this energy. The other types of energy at the same time are important, but our necesity to consume energy it has been solved in the nearly years unless we don't see more energy global conflicts.
Solar energy will be the cheapest energysource and even is renewable. When he said we need to change, he wants to get others to have nuclear power instead of coal. There is more we can and should do.
Nuclear power is in my opinion the best power solution. The energy released by fission is a million times greater than that released in chemical reactions. But I belive that fission isnt the best and we should try to put alot of effort into Nuclear Fusion because the energy released by fusion is three to four times greater than the energy released by fission. From what I can find out the only by product of Nuclear Fusion is Helium. I think we should be trying to fund this as much as we can untill it becomes perfected
Thomas Wilson I'm guessing because the big fossil guys have half the world brainwashed so they can keep raking it in until there's none left or we've gone extinct xD
Plants can use 100x the concentration of CO2 that currently exists. And horticulturalists still deliberately add it to their grow facilities. That was well established back in the 70's and there are mountains of corroborating studies. Sorta leaves you with only 1 conclusion.
Strange, he does not introduce himself, I had to google his name. He spends 12 minutes about what the climate and social problems are; 1.5 minutes on nuclear power, but only on the government regulations & ‘out dated mindset’, but NOT on what so new about it or how much safer it is to the old nuclear power if I remember right we still have find a permanent burial site and safely transport the radioactive waste that we currently have.
Modern coal plans are however much more efficient than older ones, and in many areas the carbon-neutral or negative alternatives are not ready. Preventing the construction of new coal plants may make global warming worse, not better.
We're at the point where we're actually going to have to pull carbon out of the atmosphere in order to avoid catastrophic climate change, so any kind of carbon emitting energy source is out of the question. The fact of the matter is that we're just completely fucked, nuclear energy or not. Nuclear energy could, however, provide the energy we would need to pull carbon from the atmosphere and either store it, or use it to produce carbon neutral fuels.
yes that too... but thats far from being the gravest concern. Though important, it hardly weighs as an argument in the question of using nuclear or not.
Actually it is still very cheap compared to wind and solar. Do you know how little energy they produce? Also they don't produce power reliably and if you have to use batteries, you are making a lot of more waste than nuclear plants would. Solar panels produce a lot of waste themselves compared to the energy produced. The main thing making nuclear expensive are the unreasonable safety standards. Even when taking 1980s reactors and Chernobyl into account it is still safer than wind, coal, gas.
But when it fails it totals a whole region. And I prefer the wind mills in sight more than a nuclear power plant. (we have both here). I guess nuclear power would be more acceptable if the nuclear industry would not only asset the income from the energy creation and make the government and the tax payers pay for the nuclear waste disposal, which is still not decided where to put this stuff at all.
Tax payers still end up paying a lot more if you are going for wind. Also you are going to get hundreds of those wind turbines for every nuclear plant. Third, why do you think it's better to kill 1000 people all over the country, than 1000 people in a single place? Nuclear energy doesn't kill more people than renewables.
we have thousands of wind mills around here. I highly doubt the death toll is that high on the renewable energy side. Destroyed land marks are real. And we had the fallout here in Germany from Chernobyl, I can still remember the news. Thumbs up for this civilized conversation with you, thanks!
If you doubt nuclear is as safe as other energy forms or even safer, read about it. There is lots of research on the subject available. The reason people feel nuclear is dangerous is the same as the feeling that an airplane trip is more dangerous than driving a car. Actually airplanes are much safer, but when something bad happens, if happens to a lot of people at the same time and the media covers that. No-one cares if 1000 times more people get killed by cars every day. Renewables are good, but they are not good enough right now and adopting them causes the world to keep polluting the air. Nuclear is the good solution for the next 50-100 years until we can get efficient enough renewables and better battery technology. Thanks for the conversation!
IF he is talking about nuclear fusion I'm completely with him. If not I'm not. If you call you speech like that (is the video title his own decision), than you really should talk a little more about what exactly you mean with "new nuclear". When nuclear fusion is (hopefully) around the corner "new nuclear" ist just a little bit to generic. It could mean just a new generation of nuclear fission power plants or it could mean nuclear fusion power plants.
Yey, eventually clean air but also eventually large areas, even entire countries poisened for 100k years thanks to exploded reactors/plants attacked by terrorists/ human error or whatever. Sure, those things are pretty safe: But IF anything goes wron, were sooo fucked. And logic says at some point something WILL go wrong. A plant error will poisen a large area, if a plant explodes or is destroyed completely, you can pretty much evacuate the entire country.
This whole energy debate is amazing fossil fuels are cheap, reliable, scalable and store a lot of energy per volume (with reserves that last for centurys). But the CO2 produced by burning it is a greenhouse gas that is a factor (debatable how big or small) in global warming. The horrific scenarios about temperature rising seem to constantly be 30 years in the future (in 1970 predictions doomed humanity by the year 2000, in 1980 we were doomed in 2010, and so on) but everyone seems to forget about the countless past models that predicted the climate wrong. Why is the current prediction any more credible, it uses the exact same data? Industrialisation raised CO2 in the atmosphere from ~0.03% (280ppm) to ~0,04% (400ppm), however temperature got raised by ~1°C. Could it be that the formula to calculate these models has a small but decisive error in it? Nuclar Energy is obviously the best alternative to fossil fuels when looking at reliability and scalability. the downsides are obvious on the surface to everyone too, especially since they make remarkable single targets for an potential enemy. gravity in combination with weather seems like a nobrainer to use as in hydroelectric power, energy can not get much more like a figurative handout from nature, but you can not build a dam at every river and flooding a huge area is very controversial too. Solar and wind are the proclaimed future by our media, despite beeing not reliable at all and needing vast amounts of costly resources to produce in the first place (despite beeing mined and manufactured in the third world, the prices are still very high). They serve as a nice bonus to have, but without a insane leap in the means of storing energy they are not even a contestor for a replacing energy source. bio fuels compete for the lands they need for production, with our food or housing. So the more energy we produce the more expensive each o these fields will get. Each source of energy has up- and downsides, unfortunately most people seem to make up theyr mind based on a gut feeling or hearsay and without weighing the pros and cons against each other.
Nuclear power plants just create another issue. Which is waste that lats 100 000s of years. A massive example of that is Finland where they are building gigantic underground tunnels for waste, but even they are estimated to be too small. No, the key to human power consumption is fusion and its getting close.
Aaron MK You should drywall the sealing of your basement then and use it as a nuclear waste area. You could earn good money doing that. /sarcasm The aspect of long long long long long term storage doesnt mean you can just put it in a normal building that lasts up to 50 years. Then you have indirect ground water issues that can arise. Size of storage needed, security to prevent unwanted access to waste material in order to create dirty bombs etc... Your assessment is NOT that strait forward. Reuse might lower the storage issue, but we would still need large and secured storage areas for decades I think. DU ammunition was also stated to be "safe", which it isnt.
Lobos222 Or I could dunk some in my pool and not worry. Really, it's not as big of an issue and you can store nuclear waste in a building for fifty years. During this time the immediate worse of active waste is allowed to cool down as the more energetic particles go through their half lives to leave behind the rest less active particle. Afterwards the rest is already in the cost of nuclear power, it's not forgotten about and is willingly acknowledged. And your supposition that reuse doesn't address the storage issue also reads off like a hyperbolic under-estimation. It may not empty out all storage, but it can mitigate the demand for additional storage by using up what we have left and free of empty space by using new or old stock of fuel. And this is something that we're a lot closer to then addressing the net loss of energy in fusion reactions.
1. The Sun was weaker by 20%. 2. Earth was 7 degrees Celsius (~13F) warmer, and sea level was 90m higher than now. 3. Changes happened over thousand and millions of years, so plants and animals were able to adapt. 4. The excess CO2 came from volcanic activity over millions of years.
If nuclear industry is our last option it makes sense, but is it our last option? No. we have to find other energy options and evidence of these already exist out there. Like he said, rich countries use what they have and poor countries use what they must. When there is a movement that impliments cleaner energy to where it is what we have to use, nuclear will become obsolete. but then you have the problem, what if nuclear energy becomes cheaper than said cleaner resources? What we need to ask is how can we force countries to use cleaner energy sources?
Notes: 200 W of nucular? (11:11 and elsewhere) What's _nucular_? Did you mean _nuclear_ (new + clear)? And the concrete required gives off a substantial amount of CO2. A stagnant economy is what's required. You can't have exponential growth with no limits in a finite world. We can't get billions out of poverty without having billions more replace them; feed the poor and you get more poor. The only thing that keeps the population down (and hence keeps resource requirements down) is poverty or education. And the religious poor have already rejected education in favour of dogma. Natural gas still produces CO2. It's still a fossil fuel when taken out of the ground by fracking.
Rand Huso Not to get into some of your other assertions, but just on nuclear alone you are only considering current fast breeder and light water reactors, not the newer liquid fluoride thorium reactors that do not need anywhere near the same type of large scale containment structures that older designs need to contain the vapourization of it's cooling and generation fluid (water). It's a technology that is incredibly safe from traditional nuclear risk or harmful waste, a boundless fuel supply with existing unused stockpiles (orders of magnitude cheaper then traditional nuclear fuels), and incredibly hard if not impossible path to weaponization. All very important to address for a technology for nations that don't have existing nuclear technologies and there is any risk for weaponized use (though reduced weaponization capacity of the technology is an upside to countries that already have nuclear technologies as well).
Rand Huso Populations have risen on the back of oil and will decline when its eroie hits 1:1. Nuclear is static energy and not powerful enough when battery stored to be really useful in industry or long haul transport.
Admiralhall2000 The population will probably drop back to 250 million at that point, mostly because we seem to do things that will make money, and not really plan for the next decade. The figure in the 1956 presentation by Dr. Baxter of Bell Labs was 500 million, but the lifestyle he referenced was so low it would be rejected by nearly everyone - overshoot collapse won't be pleasant for anyone except those already below the poverty line.
As a German I can only agree. We shut all the nuclear plants just to invest in fossil energy.
Thats good
+ mihdd Is it really?
yep dumbest thing we did in a long time.
I'm so glad those things get shut down finally! But fossil energy is a step backwards, the future lays in sustainable energy sources in combination with less energy loss in total. I still can't understand why we should produce nuclear junk with no where to store it, and much worse: Taking the risk of lossing a great chunk of terrain if something goes wrong. And something WILL go wrong, even if we humans try to make it as safe as we can, we can't forsee and prevent everything. It's just a matter of time.
also I forgot: Nuclear energy isn't even really renewable, so if we push this form in 100 years we stay in front of the same problem: Everywhere nuclear waste and no uranium to use anymore.
How to know if someone has little knowledge or no science degree:
They are against nuclear power
Operating outdated reactors in a risky zone is like having an oil refinery near an active volcano. It's basically begging for an accident to happen. The Chernobyl reactor was an old model that should have been modernized, blame the politics, not the scientists.
The reactors at Chernobyl were just a flat out bad design. Calling them out dated is being over kind. However, the Soviets built them anyway. Thank god th Soviets are no longer around.
Exactly, not only was the reactor extremely old as it was one of the early RBMK Gen II models built in 1950, but it had design flaws and many safety issues since it prioritized power output over stability. All nuclear disasters always come from human error, not from faulty science.
A lot of scientists are against nuclear power, what are you talking about?
I have a science degree and am against nuclear power :)
Though I understand why, he spent way too much of his time talking about the energy problem rather than elaborating on how Nuclear solves it
Yeah, I wish he had spent 25% on why the current trajectory isn't right, and the remaining 75% going into details about his preferred approach. It was more like 85% of the former.
AquaPhoenix Productions it's a sales tactic. Spend lots of time on the problem so people get fear then provide a solution. When u start going deeper into it people find objections.
I really wanted him to address the nuclear residues problem, because it's the one that I'm more concern about.
That's because Nuclear Power is a disaster ! Before you understand the truth about it ,he was only trying to sell more of it... Because there is no future in it it kills all living things !
It's also someone calls productive all forms of alternative energies can out do it as far as cost and safety goes !
So he was probably hired to do this, or has some stock / act... In something Nuclear?
Or would not be lying about it, like he was doing !?
The reason he spent most of his time talking about future energy requirements was to show that Renewables aren't an option for developing countries, so the only way they will reduce Fossil Fuel usage is if they switch to Nuclear.
USA and Europe spent the last century getting rich via Fossil Fuels, so it's up to them to lead the way by investing in Renewables to make them more efficient so their cost comes down and they become an option for less developed countries.
However, it will take decades for this to happen, during which time C02 emissions from LDCs will continue increasing, so these countries should switch to using Nuclear in the meantime.
nuclear is essential for mankind's survival as an interplanetary species
+Black Powder fusion energy uses sea water and can be powered for 6 million years
+Black Powder What about thorium?
+JP Maniscalco Fusion Energy is still being tested and STILL hasn't been able to be reliably and cheaply produced. It's something they'll have to work on in the future.
1. Colonize other planets, planetoids, asteroids, and moons
2. Find more energy
3. Repeat
With all the uranium & thorium on the planet, we can get power for near 10,000 years from nuclear. If we haven't come up with something better (fusion) by then, I don't think we deserve to have power anymore.
Nuclear power is one of the few carbon neutral sources of energy that can form base level power generation.
One issue with wind and solar is they're inconsistent and you start to run into problems when they form more than 20 to 40% of the total power in the grid.
But the new power plants need to be the safer generation III and IV designs.
We are walking towards a more de-centralized management of the energy; not every country and land can afford the cost of power plants (being those nuclear or fossil) and anyway doesn't matter due in some countries the cost of 1Kw/h with solar is already below the performance fron natural gas (less than 6c x Kw/h in Dubai). Since solar and wind are technologies and those will anly fall in price and rise in performance the battle is over. Renewables won.
Batteries are also very expensive, as well as a power grid that can move that much energy around. Weather pattern can be quite large, up to continent sized, and can last for days, so to be safe you have to be able to move terawatts electricity thousands of miles and/or store enough power for several days. And also solar panels are cheap, because they are made in china where they don't care much about the environment, or the workers. Solar panel manufacturing creates a lot of toxic waste, that has to be treated.
www.greenbiz.com/blog/2014/10/08/dark-side-solar-waste-concerns-abound
They also have to be recycled, which also adds to their cost. They are also often heavily subsidized, so the price you pay for them isn't necessarily their true cost. Same is true for wind. The wind energy is an ancient technology, has been perfected, so no major breakthrough can be expected, while solar is relatively new and there is plenty of room for improvement. It has a future, especially in space, but it's not ready yet. Nuclear energy on the other hand has been ready for over 50 years. Some reactors are reaching their 60th year in service. Nuclear energy is reliable, over 90% capacity factor is the industry norm, and almost all outages are planned. It scales up well, France generates over 80% of it's electricity from nuclear energy. Despite the insane over-engineering due to regulations, it's still one of the cheapest energy sources. With reasonable regulations, modern mass produced gen. IV rectors could be at least 10x and may be 100x cheaper. It's also one of the safest technologies. With over 400 reactors operating for decades, providing 10% of the worlds power, there was only one accident that killed anyone (Chernobyl). And that was an ancient soviet design, built to be cheap, not safe (no containment building for example), and the little safety system they had was disabled to run a dangerous experiment by an inexperienced crew. According to a very thorough WHO investigation the number of casualties were somewhere between 60 and 4000, probably closer to the lower end. In contrast fossil energy kill millions every year. Even wind and some types of solar (rooftop for example) are more dangerous, because of the risk of falling during maintenance. Fukushima was over 40 years old, a gen II design, and still didn't kill anyone. According to experts the evacuation was unnecessary, because the leaked radiation wasn't enough to be a significant enough health risk. The evacuation on the other hand caused around 1000 deaths. And nuclear waste isn't a big problem. Fast breeder reactors can burn 99% of the existing waste, and the remaining stuff decays away in a few hundred years. The ancient Egyptians were able to keep fragile mummies and their treasures safe for over 3000 years, so we should be able to manage 300.
@@kohlcooke8789 You need to cover with PV less than the 4% of the surface of the United States to power the elctricity consumption of the entire world in 2017, your numbers are way wrong. Also, even if you plan to make a nuclear power plant today, it won't be on line before 2030-32, so they won't come to solve any problem in the next decade (and won't happen anyway since they can't compete in cost).
There are many forms of renewable energy that are not intermittent: tidal, hydro, geothermal for example. Combined with wind and solar, you have cheaper solution than nuclear. By all means keep existing nuclear plants open, but new nuclear is neither cost-effective or a fast enough solution to meet climate targets that are due in about 8 years.
I don't get it. People are giving the video dislikes and writing comments to something they have not yet watched. What's the point in that? Does it not only make sense if you have actually made up your mind in the first place?
I does not have to make sense, the internet is a magical place like that, where everyone can say wathever they want for whatever reason they might have.
User discretion is advised. :)
:^)
Ikr? So weird. But then again after I watch the whole thing all I feel like commenting on is how awesome the phrase "write your leaders" when used aloud. You don't hear it such a plain form.
Umm because some people have actually been to Hiroshima and don't get swayed like you do right off the bat because TedTalk tries to make nuclear look "edgy and hipster."
Like Evolution or Vaccination, Nuclear Power is considered dangerous by the ignorant and uneducated.
Nuclear power gen 4 reactors are safe.
the reactors that overloaded before were gen 2. We have learnt so much but most reactors are ancient compared to the gen4 reactors. Literally its like comparing the planes today to the planes they made a 100 years ago.
Nuclear waste comes up alot... nearly all of the waste can be used in the reactors themselves, and the stuff that cant would barely fill your house if everyone country in the world used the reactors for 30 years.
Because the public has their "issues" with nuclear power and they are scared of it, because of what we have done and the mistakes in the passed, it wont happen rename it then it might.
Charles Inman We were told Hanford plant was safe. It wasn't. We were told Chernobyl was safe. It wasn't. We were told Fukushima was safe. It wasn't. Now we are told that this generation of reactors is safe. Based on the previous experience I call bullshit on this one.
OhFishyFish Fukushima wasn't as bad as people make it out to be, considering an event like chernobyl.
What is Gen 4 Reactors? MSR? LFTR?
If it is the liquid sodium type, I wouldn't poke it with a stick.. Fucking mental to put something that explodes when it comes in contact with water, in a reactor, cooled with water..
John T , So Fukashima is handled? Nothing to see there?
rapinjohn1
Look.. The Exxon Valdez oil spill, have had, and will continue to have a greater environmental impact than Fukushima have.
The amount of toxic heavy metals and long term stable oil compounds that are deposited in that environment is immense. There is a reason why even us humans are getting allergies and birth-deformities by handling crude oil products in our daily lives.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exxon_Valdez_oil_spill
There is a good reason why they have protective suits on.. Ant that oil is still there.. Maybe under a foot of sand or stone.. But it's still there..
Just like radioactivity can stay and do damage
for a long time. But it will dissipate. That's how the universe works. It will dissipate, but not disappear.
The thing is.. that coal power-plant, that is just next door, or not that far away... It is releasing the same fucking toxic compounds thats causing mutations in every fucking oil-spill victim. Animal or human.
The difference is, it just dissipates faster in air. But remember.. It dissipates, it doesn't disappear. It dissipates until the whole climate changes, then we will all be fucked.
SO WOULD YOU BE SO FUCKING KIND AND SUPPORT NUCLEAR POWER, SO I DON'T HAVE TO BREATHE YOUR FUCKING COCKTAIL OF VOLATILE AND TOXIC COMPUNDS, EVERY FUCKING DAY?!
I'd rather put my faith in science for the answer, rather than some emotional fear over a completely natural phenomenon that is Radioactivity. Grow up..
Best regards
A citizen of Earth
Hey people ! Watch the video before to say anything !
Thank you :*
Nah, clicking andf disliking without watching is the trend now....
Hey video ! Watch the people to say anything before !
Yeah, I agree! It's not like the title was "We need feminism to solve climate change"
Society’s rejection of Nuclear power was a massive mistake, and the environment has payed dearly for it as we continue to rely on fossil fuels for our electricity
Yes, we do, and I believe this fear of waste that is a product of nuclear energy is unreasonable, because oil and coal has caused just as much of a problem.
The fear is similar to car crash vs plane crash. One is well documented and well known, while to other rare and hard to document. Same for CO2 emmision vs radioactive waste. We know that CO2 is horrible for the environment, but we know very little about radioactive waste, and the few incidents that did happen are biasing the opinions of millions of people around the world.
Considering coal is about 350 times as deadly if looking at actually deaths related to coal vs nuclear.
So to say that they causes equally as much problems is actually a ridiculous statement to make.
Whil I am pro nuclear you need to be very careful with using statistics like just comparing total deaths. There are far more people working on fossil fuel plants that nuclear. Talk about deaths per unit power.
I am talking about deaths per unit power. Coal is about 350 times more deadly.
Here are some links to articles that show how safe nuclear is in comparison to other energy alternatives.
climate.nasa.gov/news/903/coal-and-gas-are-far-more-harmful-than-nuclear-power/
www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#4e88a8b649d2
www.theenergycollective.com/willem-post/191326/deaths-nuclear-energy-compared-other-causes
This is exactly needs to happen YES YES YES
Wasn't China investing in a couple thorium reactors? Why don't we ever hear about thorium anymore?
Beebs Muhgoo Because its clean, cheap and won't kill anyone. Fossil fuel companies can't argue against it. So they ignore it and pollute the conversation instead as well as the world
Beebs Muhgoo it's all over this thread.
Alas, it's a very challenging technology, barely manageable by humans, especially in light of safety requirements.
excellent question!!!!
Adrian shouldn't give up. do more research on improving recent technology.
What about thorium molten salt reactors?
They fall in the category of new nuclear he was talking about.
And they are not fully functionnal yet, are they ?
Also not necessarily needed. I look forward more to sustained fusion reactors, which Lockheed is saying will exist by 2020.
MillionFoul People have been saying fusion is just around the corner for decades. Also, does it really matter if it's billions of years (fusion) or millions of years (thorium).
kokofan50 Sure, but Lockheed got government money for it, which means they're very confident in it. They don't want to piss off their primary source of income by lying.
No, I'll stick with sun, water, and wind.
Kevin Sarpei Why?
Id love to see your car.
then please don´t let the rest die off with ya...
+ ablanchi no offense but your nuclear power station car wouldn't look much better than a green, wind turnine and waterfall powered car.
no, electric car powered by the power we get from nuclear. Nuclear could kill off petrol.
13:37 "Tell them to give YOU the choice"
Sounds like a terrible idea. The public is uneducated about energy. I still have no idea whether new nuclear plants can be safe enough, and I don't want the public to decide that either
Seriously? So you'd rather have a government or a company decide, with all their agendas and biases? I'd rather have even a reasonably informed citizenry deciding than those with bias.
Really? I wonder what Elon Musk thinks about this. I thought his plan was that every single house generates its own power.
He knows its not enough. And he doesn't try to say otherwise.
Its just that in terms of quality, Solar is the best energy source.
Solar is not cost effective currently which is why it can't be a global solution.
JP Maniscalco
Its actually already cost effective in some parts of the world.
The problem is that we have old electric grids that cant store energy.
Solar just is not a viable solution in every part of the world. Parts of Europe and North America just do not see enough sun throughout the year. Solar is a part of the answer, but not the total answer.
Gitsum
Yea. Any knowledgeable person in the field will say that we need a mix of everything, adapted to the geography.
Here in Sweden for example we have a lot of hydro power available.
In Africa the amount of sun hours beat every other part of the world, so solar is a good option.
And in Iceland its geothermal and so on.
For all the dislikers, I'd like to hear your argument, what's so wrong with going nuclear?
The biggest obstacle to clean energy is the energy provider to customer relationship. There's no profit in empowering people to generate their own energy. Here in the U.S., nationalizing our power grid and turning it into a market place for all, would help drive everyone to produce energy. Not just produce energy but, to produce more than they use for profit. Which for most regular folks and homeowners will be solar and wind. Storage is the real technology problem to solve.
12:15
LOL, statement used to describe some people in the comments.
And the heads of all of the fans of TED just exploded like lots of little nuclear bombs.
title : about nuclear
content: 90% coal and energy 10% nuclear energy.
read the description lol....deep thinker and straight talker.
The title includes nuclear and climate change. The problem of climate change is outlined - which is the continued dependence on coal potentially due to a lack of alternatives in developing nations coupled with old thinking. And the conclusion the speaker makes is nuclear. Speaker is good.
Awesome video, great message! I look forward to more implementation of this technology.
But can Americans please stop saying 'nucular' as if it's a word? It's spelled and pronounced 'nuclear'... Why take after Bush?
Really wish Lassiter went into more detail about what differentiates new nuclear from old. Does anyone get that? Also, I feel like he sort of brushed off the whole outdoor air pollution thing in China. Isn't that a huge problem? I wouldn't want to live in a country where I have to cover my mouth when going outside, even in the midst of what he called a dramatic improvement in the "health and wealth of the Chinese people". I'm sort of skeptical.
New nuclear would be Thorium and fusion reactors. His point with pollution was that even with the horrific smog in China, more damage is directly done to people by dirty fuels used indoors. Even if it is still pretty bad by our standards, it's better than what they used to have.
Josh Shuman well, you sure you wouldnt like to live there? I'd rather have to cover my mouth outdoors than live in extreme poverty.
China's choice seems logical
You can eliminate poverty with clean energy, there's no reason that dirty energy has to be used to eliminate poverty.
David Bardvall But pollution kills. So that might be a poor choice. Nuclear power cannot outlast oil loss due to a 1:1 eroie mid c
idontcare80
You can, but as pointed out in the video, China does not have the same opportunities for clean energy. They are using what they can not the only thing that can be used anywhere else.
I don't support fossil fuels but nuclear power should not even be considered a solution for the problem of climate change because the possible negative consequences of accidents with nuclear power is to be taken way more seriously than the climate change consequences.
And I am not saying one should not do something against the climate change, it's the worst and we need to take responsibility but without using even more dangerous sources of energy.
*Better try and tell the people how to effectively save energy!*
Nuclear power is the safest way to produce energy.
nuclear-economics.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/12-deaths-per-TWh-e1439383898100.jpg
google it if you want
No matter how much everyone "saves energy" it won't be enough if that energy is still supplied by fossil fuels. Saving energy is a moot point. Nuclear does have the capacity to be very destructive however that is under very extreme circumstances. France has 59 nuclear reactors and zero deaths due to nuclear power. Fukushima was hit by an earthquake *and* a tsunami and it was 50 years old. Modern reactors are ridiculously safe.
The Chernobyl exclution zone is a de facto wildlife preserve. Also, being anti-nuclear means you either don't want electricity or want fossil fuels, and the 25% reduction from power savings isn't going to cut it.
can't you think of the possibility that some people are in favour of safe and reliable renwable energy, like solar, wind, hydro?
All technology include nuclear should be on the table. The decision should be based on long term cost and environmental impact. If Nuclear wind so be it.
the long description of the "disaster" of co2 emission is utterly wrong and decieving, it was never proven scientifically, only modeled by men who are politically motivated... though Nuclear reactors are indeed the best option for energy regardless!
You can prove yourself that CO2 heats up the atmosphere. And also that heating up the planet is bad. Also that the current rise in temperature is due to CO2 and methane primarily. All of this you can easily proof yourself. The only question is does mankind cause the CO2. That's the only thing where doubts are just remotely understandable
Alexander Schilcher particulate matter is a much more grave concern. It directly affects mortality rates. Either way, nuclear solves many issues.
Rational answer please: Where to go with the radioactive waste? Who pays for that?
it's an appropriate bridge we need to be pragmatic about this and the needs of poorer nations. countries are not going to just switch due to being constructed by resources. also we need a way to store renewable energy.
Sadly in Sweden there is limitations to nuclear power, i belive that security has gotten far better scince the last disaster in Ukrane. It is the best we got avalible right now. It is cheap and produces alot of power.
We can plant more trees and not cut them...
You'd have to cut them down and bury them after they grow. Bury them in coal pits so their CO2 is out of the cycle. A forrest can burn down, you got to get it out of the carbon cycle, and makes new oil and coal ironically for the next civilizations if ours fall.
great talk, i agree with him, we should have more nuclear power, and work to advance the technology a lot more to make it more effective and cheaper. right now nuclear powerplants are way to expensive and people are to ignorant towards fission nuclear energy because of what happened in the past, and thats a shame. that is just my opinion :)
I dont get this talk. Whats wrong with renewable energy?
Also we have yet to make plans how to solve the nuclear waste issue, why is he advocating it?
The nuclear waste issue is so small compared to the carbon emissions issue. What's wrong with renewables, he already explained. It's not cost effective and the vast majority of the Earth's population is not going to go for it because of that. Poor countries don't have the luxury of choice.
Nuclear reactors produce a tiny amount of waste compared to what most people think. (I'm studying Nuclear Science and have been to a nuclear plant)
"not cost effective" is a economic problem. If there was enough demand, you can make a huge profit from renewable energy.
In fact this is exactly what China is doing (so I thought), the next generation of renewables will be sold to you "made in China"
Starving and freezing to death are also economic problems, and with enough demand, you can make a huge profit from providing food and shelter. Wow, world hunger and homelessness solved.
We are doing that. What you're suggesting is making them eat dirt because its cheap
nuclear power can be really dang safe when you consider that the navy's aircraft carriers and submarines are run by nuclear power.
TIL that "Nucular" is a commonly used metathetic form of the word "nuclear"
yes. we can't just use wind power, we need other clean energies.
He needs to move to Fukushima then.
Fukushima is on a fault line, clearly not a suit suitable place for a power plant (coal, gas or nuclear). Even with that said, modern plants are even safer and would even be resistant to earthquakes (Australia's research reactor - OPAL, is designed to withstand a direct plane impact without endangering the reactor).
Fukushima is on a fault line, clearly not a suit suitable place for a power plant (coal, gas or nuclear). Even with that said, modern plants are even safer and would even be resistant to earthquakes (Australia's research reactor - OPAL, is designed to withstand a direct plane impact without endangering the reactor).
if these people lived near a brand new reactor that was built to ALL of their specifications to make them safe lol they would STILL be defending it even in a melt down or to be more specific EARTHQUAKE .The elite would hire the survivors to do commercials proclaiming nuclear to be safe all the while ignoring the GREED ISSUE that is keeping FREE energy from us all
There are a lot of thorium babies but nobody says about breeders. Only breeder reactor can solve waste problem and make uranium working for 6000 years. P.S molten salt reactors can't work because of corrosion. There are two breeder reactors in the world now folks, only 2.
there is a brilliant movie called "the Pandora" (2016)
it's a korean movie, and i believe it would be sufficient enough to prove that nuclear power is not okay under ANY circumstances
According to google there is no such movie, and after all, a movie is not a credible source unless it's a documentary based on reliable sources.
Is Fukushima's nuclear powerplant explosion a reliable reference?
Cuz that killed off a fxxk ton of things
Thorium reactors
Nearly came to exploding, didnt it?
He didn't talk about the cons of nuclear power, like the radioactive waste that's gonna last for a really long time.
long tran all the uranium used in the reactor had to come from the ground.
Also new reactor designs and procedures can reuse spent nuclear fuel to run.
8:06
Chernobyl really needs to develop a tourist infrastructure just to show how small of a problem it actually is
I know everything you might have thought while writing that comment except for the source of your anger.
Yes, it has little in common with any modern nuclear plant. But the general public just isn't smart enough to understand the difference (besides, Fukushima is a commonly used counterpoint). My idea was to demonstrate that even the worst case scenario for nuclear is far better than that for fossil fuels. Maybe that's not a good idea itself, but whatever.
Nuclear is really safe when energy produced is taken into account. Even when talking about old reactors like Chernobyl the ratio: energy/life lost is really good.. Mentioning Fukushima is pretty ridiculous, because the accident didn't kill many people.
Alex Bloedow Yap
Luckily, what happened at Chernobyl couldn't happen in the western world. Not only was that reactor design not used anywhere outside of the Soviet Union, but most western countries actually build heavy containment vessels around their reactors in order to prevent something like the Chernobyl disaster from happening. The Chernobyl reactor was basically housed in a Walmart building, many reactors in the west are housed in enormous concrete bunkers.
Ted ex is AWESOOOME by the way hi
Solar beats Nuclear.
In what way?
Actually solar is almost the cheaper way to produce electricity. The cheaper power supply contract in the world, is solar, last october. Chile or Mexico solar energy offers about 3 c/$ kwh in a recent auction.
It's known, that in a few years solar energy will be the most economic way to get electricity. The development of this technology in the last years, allow that.
Other technologies are needed to equialize production and demand in every moment, but solar could be a cheap, safe, susteinable and practic part of the energy production problem.
agreed but the biggest downside is the waiste..
Yes, but it will be a temporary problem. In the future fision will be replaced for fusion, and the ammount of nuclear waste will be not very important. Probably, some technologies could process some of them too.
We need energy, more and more. In terms of reality, in the next decades, how we want to produce electricity?. Burning oil, gas and coal?. Renovables aren't the complete solution. Hydraulic isn't easy to use in all the world.
I think nuclear is a good way to give energy in combination with solar, eolic and others, until fusion will be developed.
waste is barely an issue
solving one evil by applying another evil is not very logical.
No it's the lesser of evil
I do not think so. A meltdown of 100 nuclear reactors in case of either an EMP attack, or solar coronal mass ejection is an evil beyond anything you can ever imagine.
Cornelis Boekhouder The Molten Salt Reactor:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor
They are 100% safe (that sounds biased but It's true). Nobody build them because they are useless for the millitary.
I do not think they will replace 400 reactors anytime soon. www.whentechfails.com/400-chernobyls-solar-flares-emp-and-nuclear-armageddon/
whentechfails.com
Nobody watched the rest of the video, such shame,
I don't like this video solely for how he pronounced nuclear.
***** Hey George Bush, how is it going?
"Nucular" is a commonly used metathetic form of the word "nuclear". Wikipedia is your friend.
I dunno man that's not what Homer says
Nuclear is definitely the short/ medium term solution and we need to use the energy it produces to invest heavily in renewables in the long term
I wish the people liking and commenting this video positively would be the people who would be sent to clean up nuclear waste like Fukushima in the first place ! That would be far less hypocritical than playing clever in the comments.
New nuclear energy is safe man and we can also hope for fusion which should cover earths energy needs for years...
You know Hiroshima was hit by a bomb right? You know power plants ain't bombs right? I wish people would educate themselves before commenting.
bomb, not bomb, I don't care.... shtu your fucking mouth, take a shovel, put on your suit and go clean it up!!
how many accidents because of nuclear energy? 2, only 2 in the entire history. Now compare the death toll of these 2 accidents with the amount of people dying because of the results of coal plant emissions and tell me nuclear energy is deadlier than coal plants
Hiroshima was about 70 years ago. We've improved a tad in technology since then...
Wish Zambia can adapt to nuclear power, we now have 15 hrs loadshading everyday
That would work for me. Meanwhile we are finding ways to do more with less, more efficient lighting and such. Cell phones that bring internet access, things are getting better despite the common dismal narrative.
Props to the kindly grandpa who can also explain nuclear power to you in simple terms! 😊
Nuclear Waste disposal is not even an issue. The earth is enormous. We could generate trillions lf tons of waste and fit it all in a neat area in some desert.
Yes it costs money to store it properly but t's not really a lot.
One thing that might help perceptions is to pronounce the word "new-clear" instead of "nuke-you-lar"
I found this video to be helpful.
Despite what many people seem to think, and what the odd economist and "futurist" will occasionally tell you, China isn't "going down" or failing. There's a reason they're the oldest continuous civilization on the planet. They can play the long game, and they're very good at it. Today China is expanding it's nuclear power faster than any other nation, by far. They're doing what we should all be doing.
What???!!!!!!!!!! No nuclear ever is what we need
Ideally, but we don't live in an ideal world. We have to take what we can when we can.
He is essentially saying: Nuclear power is not ready yet. Do our lobby work and give us tons of money so nuclear power may become the miracle we claim it might be.
In Canada Bill C22 limited nuclear installations liability to 1 Billion. If there is a disaster near Toronto at least 1 Million people will be displaced. So the liability is limited to $1000 per person. If nuclear is so safe then why is their liability limited?
Captain Planet nuclear energy propaganda is still turning gears inside the minds of now adults.
I heard the other day that the reason Australia's power bills were going up was because of the efficiency of air conditioners and people going off the grid with solar these days.The electrical power companies invested billions into a grid system that is not being utilized to it's capacity so the remaining users are footing the bill.
The longer you stay connected to the grid ,the more you will be paying at an exponential rate with fewer and fewer people connected to it .
The title is very misleading. His conclusion is a very small part of the video.
the three Hopi prophecies stated at the end of the film Koyaanisqatsi:
"If we dig precious things from the land, we will invite disaster.""Near the day of Purification, there will be cobwebs spun back and forth in the sky.""A container of ashes might one day be thrown from the sky, which could burn the land and boil the oceans."
We have proven to be poor stewards Earth. Clean safe nuclear does nothing but gives us a brief extension of time to continue our suicidal ways.
Alan Alda sounds pretty convincing this time.
Ahahaha
This video is from 2016, but is still very valid.
I defend nuclear power from Thorium. The new technology of the Molten Salt Reactors is a reliable for cutting CO2 emissions and tackle the Paris agreement.
rich people/countries/corporations do what they choose and poor ones do what they must.
your point?
Hmmm in my opinion nuclear power doesn't work in Japan where earthquakes hit pretty much every day.
How many earthquakes vs how many accidents? How many deaths/injuries from those accidents?
Additionally, the most well known incident (Fukushima) was using a plant with a near 60 year old design, and it was 40 years old itself, well past its shut down due to an inability to replace it thanks in part to the anti-nuclear
movement.
Newer reactors (like the ones hit at the same time as Daiichi) survived that event with no adverse effects and are fully functional now.
I see your point, but even with latest technology, nuclear power is always at risk. Think about the terrorist attacks, natural disasters, etc. Once it corrupts, humans can no longer handle it. As for the Fukushima nuclear disaster, there are thousands of people who are still evacuating today; their original homes are lost.
Yes, technology is improving, so why not turn the direction and use the technology for other renewable energy sources?
I think it is very important for Japan, a country which experienced two nuclear bombs and one deadly nuclear accident, to show the world that humans can manage to survive without nuclear power. It is challenging, considering the lack of natural resources we have in Japan, but it is definitely worth it.
Mentioning the evacuations in Fukushima is rather dishonest. They have been confirmed by many safety reviews and committees to have been a complete overreaction to public panic over nuclear power.
Also dragging nuclear bombs into the discussion is not a good move, newer reactors don't proliferate.
Other alternative energy sources are not viable or economic yet, they rely on large subsidies and have lots of waste issues that are not being discussed. For instance, solar power in the US accounts for roughly 2% of all power, whereas nuclear is 30%, yet the production of those solar farms generates more waste than all of the nuclear plants by volume. The nuclear waste will decay, the heavy metals and waste from solar panel production won't.
Fear of nuclear power is the greatest risk to our future energy security.
Mentioning about the evacuation and the history of two nuclear bombs are not dishonest at all.
But yeah, I get you are completely convinced about the necessity of nuclear power. Thanks for your reply, this discussion was informative.
Nuclear bombs are off topic for nuclear power, two very different things with very different types of plants to make them.
The evacuation just reveals the public overreaction to nuclear incidents, I only said dishonest as you had tried to use them to justify an antinuclear stand point which they don't support.
Didn't mean any offense. Cheers!
when people forget they whether belong to developed world or developing world, and act as human being, we can solve our problems
It did wonders for Japan and the Pacific Ocean and the long term health for millions of people not just those in Japan
You're right, since the other reactor right next to Fukushima didn't go nuclear, and nuclear energy produces less waste (even radioactive waste), more energy, and kills less people annually than any other type of energy.
www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/#5c4ae95549d2
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents
It's like with airplanes. Sensational when something goes wrong; still the safest method of travel, period.
Also:
instituteforenergyresearch.org/analysis/big-winds-dirty-little-secret-rare-earth-minerals/
_" It also means that between 4.9 million and 6.1 million pounds of radioactive waste were created to make these wind turbines."_
_"For perspective, America’s nuclear industry produces between 4.4 million and 5 million pounds of spent nuclear fuel each year. That means the U.S. wind industry may well have created more radioactive waste last year than our entire nuclear industry produced in spent fuel. In this sense, the nuclear industry seems to be doing more with less: nuclear energy comprised about one-fifth of America’s electrical generation in 2012, while wind accounted for just 3.5 percent of all electricity generated in the United States."_
Do some research please.
Human error? Are you serious? Fukushima was human error? Ok I'm done I won't waste my time talking to you ...LMAO Human Error.....Geeeze
Alex Bloedow
Eh made.. No.. Look..
It's an outdated design. And in hindsight, then yes. Terrible reactor, yes.. BUT! Science get better and better.
In engineering there's a term, called, "Walk away safe".. It means, the system is inherently safe.. If anything goes wrong, the system will shut down on its own..
Just like if your car breaks down. You don't have to do anything for it to just stop. Well.. Unless some freak accident happens.. And your car runs on a 30 fuel-tank with a highly flammable liquid with a lot of energy.. (46.4 MJ/kg).. So not even a car is totally "Walk away safe". But you take the risk every day. You trust the engineering behind the safety equipment, brakes, fuel-system and so on.
My friend. You are criticizing a 50 year old design like it was invented yesterday. We've come FAR from the traditional Light Water Reactors (The 1950´s design), that are still the most common reactor type in use today.
Pease support Nuclear
This discussion is pretty irrelevant, because if you take Fukushima and even Chernobyl into account, nuclear power has been really safe in terms of (energy produced)/(lives lost). It would be a safe option even if we used decades old technology.
Alex Bloedow
My bad
We NEED this!
So tell me about Nuclear decay? Tell me how we can deal with creating a waste that still produces radio activity for 100,000 years. It's immensely selfish to even consider this.
I'd argue that fracking IS NOT a viable alternative to coal. Nuclear -> Noo-kleer not nuke-u-ler
Hear me out. I'm even pro-nuclear, but I can see why and how it actually could help us. It's not a long term solution, I know. But in the situation the world is in right now nuclear could actually help. Once we have the economy and technology to replace it with a better method then go on. It's just that at the moment solar is not efficient or cost effective enough to take over, not to mentione that we don't have batteries good enough to store all the energy over night. If graphene technology does what it promises I can actually see solar replacing most, if not all coal, nuclear and hydro power plants if solar cells are cheap enough by that time.
Nah, nuclear power is better.
This has not aged well. In 2023, 5 countries get around 100% of their electricity from renewables, 8 get 97% or more, 12 get 90% or more, 18 get 75% or more, and a whopping 47 get 50% or more. And this is a mix of European, African, Asian, and American nations.
AND wind and solar are being installed at a breakneck pace. Not only would it be 4x more expensive to install and run Nuclear, it would also TAKE LONGER, and create the same foreign fuel, captial dependencies that have historically been the pretense for WAR.
YOU WERE WRONG. YOU ARE WRONG. We don't _NEED_ nuclear AT ALL.
Fusion is a dream and even if we knew how to build them, there is not much time left until 2050 to install the needed number of big fusion reactors. Don't wait for a breakthrough until it's to late.
I don't see Thermoelectrics, enhanced conductors, & liquid thorium reactors mentioned what does he mean by "safe" nuclear & is he including the cost of decommissioning into account which governments didn't when they told us how cheap nuclear would be?
I agree with the talk, the only solution that we can catch today is nuclear power. For me, one of the facts that is needed to explain to citizens is which nuclear energy want to boost. The society linked nuclear energy with nuclear desastres like Chernobyl or Fukushima, the only important accidents that pass with this energy.
The other types of energy at the same time are important, but our necesity to consume energy it has been solved in the nearly years unless we don't see more energy global conflicts.
Solar energy will be the cheapest energysource and even is renewable. When he said we need to change, he wants to get others to have nuclear power instead of coal. There is more we can and should do.
Nuclear power is in my opinion the best power solution. The energy released by fission is a million times greater than that released in chemical reactions. But I belive that fission isnt the best and we should try to put alot of effort into Nuclear Fusion because the energy released by fusion is three to four times greater than the energy released by fission. From what I can find out the only by product of Nuclear Fusion is Helium. I think we should be trying to fund this as much as we can untill it becomes perfected
Why don't we use ventilation generators on toot refinery tubes, they bring out choking gas into the air?
Why is there so many dislikes I personally thought this was very interesting
Thomas Wilson I'm guessing because the big fossil guys have half the world brainwashed so they can keep raking it in until there's none left or we've gone extinct xD
Everyone so far have disliked and disagreed without even watching the video...
Why is CO2 accumulative if plants consume it? just curious.
Plants can use 100x the concentration of CO2 that currently exists. And horticulturalists still deliberately add it to their grow facilities. That was well established back in the 70's and there are mountains of corroborating studies. Sorta leaves you with only 1 conclusion.
we actually just need solar freaking roadways
I hope you're trolling
Lucas is a fellow thunderfoot viewer if im not mistaken
Excellent speech.
I like his ppt style
Strange, he does not introduce himself, I had to google his name. He spends 12 minutes about what the climate and social problems are; 1.5 minutes on nuclear power, but only on the government regulations & ‘out dated mindset’, but NOT on what so new about it or how much safer it is to the old nuclear power if I remember right we still have find a permanent burial site and safely transport the radioactive waste that we currently have.
Modern coal plans are however much more efficient than older ones, and in many areas the carbon-neutral or negative alternatives are not ready. Preventing the construction of new coal plants may make global warming worse, not better.
We're at the point where we're actually going to have to pull carbon out of the atmosphere in order to avoid catastrophic climate change, so any kind of carbon emitting energy source is out of the question. The fact of the matter is that we're just completely fucked, nuclear energy or not.
Nuclear energy could, however, provide the energy we would need to pull carbon from the atmosphere and either store it, or use it to produce carbon neutral fuels.
8:21 Atomic energy!
What about animal agriculture?
yes that too... but thats far from being the gravest concern. Though important, it hardly weighs as an argument in the question of using nuclear or not.
and here I am still hoping that they will come up with a sustained hydrogen fusion reactor in my lifetime, wouldn't that be great?
get lost dude,
India is planning renewable energy sources in gigawatts
it is only cheap if you don't asset the clean up costs after a failure and forget about the costs to store the used cores.
Actually it is still very cheap compared to wind and solar. Do you know how little energy they produce? Also they don't produce power reliably and if you have to use batteries, you are making a lot of more waste than nuclear plants would. Solar panels produce a lot of waste themselves compared to the energy produced. The main thing making nuclear expensive are the unreasonable safety standards. Even when taking 1980s reactors and Chernobyl into account it is still safer than wind, coal, gas.
But when it fails it totals a whole region. And I prefer the wind mills in sight more than a nuclear power plant. (we have both here). I guess nuclear power would be more acceptable if the nuclear industry would not only asset the income from the energy creation and make the government and the tax payers pay for the nuclear waste disposal, which is still not decided where to put this stuff at all.
Tax payers still end up paying a lot more if you are going for wind. Also you are going to get hundreds of those wind turbines for every nuclear plant. Third, why do you think it's better to kill 1000 people all over the country, than 1000 people in a single place? Nuclear energy doesn't kill more people than renewables.
we have thousands of wind mills around here. I highly doubt the death toll is that high on the renewable energy side. Destroyed land marks are real. And we had the fallout here in Germany from Chernobyl, I can still remember the news.
Thumbs up for this civilized conversation with you, thanks!
If you doubt nuclear is as safe as other energy forms or even safer, read about it. There is lots of research on the subject available.
The reason people feel nuclear is dangerous is the same as the feeling that an airplane trip is more dangerous than driving a car. Actually airplanes are much safer, but when something bad happens, if happens to a lot of people at the same time and the media covers that. No-one cares if 1000 times more people get killed by cars every day.
Renewables are good, but they are not good enough right now and adopting them causes the world to keep polluting the air. Nuclear is the good solution for the next 50-100 years until we can get efficient enough renewables and better battery technology.
Thanks for the conversation!
IF he is talking about nuclear fusion I'm completely with him. If not I'm not.
If you call you speech like that (is the video title his own decision), than you really should talk a little more about what exactly you mean with "new nuclear". When nuclear fusion is (hopefully) around the corner "new nuclear" ist just a little bit to generic. It could mean just a new generation of nuclear fission power plants or it could mean nuclear fusion power plants.
Did anyone see the title and think, "Lassie!"
Yey, eventually clean air but also eventually large areas, even entire countries poisened for 100k years thanks to exploded reactors/plants attacked by terrorists/ human error or whatever. Sure, those things are pretty safe: But IF anything goes wron, were sooo fucked. And logic says at some point something WILL go wrong. A plant error will poisen a large area, if a plant explodes or is destroyed completely, you can pretty much evacuate the entire country.
Galen Marek if you don't use thorium probably :)
We can't have nuclear cars, trucks and plains though.
This whole energy debate is amazing
fossil fuels are cheap, reliable, scalable and store a lot of energy per volume (with reserves that last for centurys).
But the CO2 produced by burning it is a greenhouse gas that is a factor (debatable how big or small) in global warming.
The horrific scenarios about temperature rising seem to constantly be 30 years in the future (in 1970 predictions doomed humanity by the year 2000, in 1980 we were doomed in 2010, and so on) but everyone seems to forget about the countless past models that predicted the climate wrong. Why is the current prediction any more credible, it uses the exact same data?
Industrialisation raised CO2 in the atmosphere from ~0.03% (280ppm) to ~0,04% (400ppm), however temperature got raised by ~1°C. Could it be that the formula to calculate these models has a small but decisive error in it?
Nuclar Energy is obviously the best alternative to fossil fuels when looking at reliability and scalability. the downsides are obvious on the surface to everyone too, especially since they make remarkable single targets for an potential enemy.
gravity in combination with weather seems like a nobrainer to use as in hydroelectric power, energy can not get much more like a figurative handout from nature, but you can not build a dam at every river and flooding a huge area is very controversial too.
Solar and wind are the proclaimed future by our media, despite beeing not reliable at all and needing vast amounts of costly resources to produce in the first place (despite beeing mined and manufactured in the third world, the prices are still very high). They serve as a nice bonus to have, but without a insane leap in the means of storing energy they are not even a contestor for a replacing energy source.
bio fuels compete for the lands they need for production, with our food or housing. So the more energy we produce the more expensive each o these fields will get.
Each source of energy has up- and downsides, unfortunately most people seem to make up theyr mind based on a gut feeling or hearsay and without weighing the pros and cons against each other.
Nuclear power plants just create another issue. Which is waste that lats 100 000s of years. A massive example of that is Finland where they are building gigantic underground tunnels for waste, but even they are estimated to be too small. No, the key to human power consumption is fusion and its getting close.
That's why you use Thorium for nuclear power.
Adam
You would need fusion to use thorium... Current day nuclear power is mostly fission I think and cant use thorium.
Lobos222
The Fast Breeder Test Reactor says hello.
Aaron MK
You should drywall the sealing of your basement then and use it as a nuclear waste area. You could earn good money doing that. /sarcasm
The aspect of long long long long long term storage doesnt mean you can just put it in a normal building that lasts up to 50 years. Then you have indirect ground water issues that can arise. Size of storage needed, security to prevent unwanted access to waste material in order to create dirty bombs etc...
Your assessment is NOT that strait forward.
Reuse might lower the storage issue, but we would still need large and secured storage areas for decades I think. DU ammunition was also stated to be "safe", which it isnt.
Lobos222
Or I could dunk some in my pool and not worry.
Really, it's not as big of an issue and you can store nuclear waste in a building for fifty years. During this time the immediate worse of active waste is allowed to cool down as the more energetic particles go through their half lives to leave behind the rest less active particle. Afterwards the rest is already in the cost of nuclear power, it's not forgotten about and is willingly acknowledged.
And your supposition that reuse doesn't address the storage issue also reads off like a hyperbolic under-estimation. It may not empty out all storage, but it can mitigate the demand for additional storage by using up what we have left and free of empty space by using new or old stock of fuel. And this is something that we're a lot closer to then addressing the net loss of energy in fusion reactions.
CO to zero? All plant life would die. ISS functions at 4,000. Submarines the same. We are now at 401. Ten time less.
CO2 *EMISSIONS* to zero. Of course CO2 will still be in the biosphere...
How life survived the Cambrian Explosion is beyond me since that era also was in excess of 4000. No humans at that time.
Please finish school
Should have know I replied to an adolescence.
1. The Sun was weaker by 20%.
2. Earth was 7 degrees Celsius (~13F) warmer, and sea level was 90m higher than now.
3. Changes happened over thousand and millions of years, so plants and animals were able to adapt.
4. The excess CO2 came from volcanic activity over millions of years.
If nuclear industry is our last option it makes sense, but is it our last option? No. we have to find other energy options and evidence of these already exist out there. Like he said, rich countries use what they have and poor countries use what they must. When there is a movement that impliments cleaner energy to where it is what we have to use, nuclear will become obsolete. but then you have the problem, what if nuclear energy becomes cheaper than said cleaner resources? What we need to ask is how can we force countries to use cleaner energy sources?
Emission of harmful gasses is drammatically growing. We need to be focussed on it
Notes:
200 W of nucular? (11:11 and elsewhere) What's _nucular_? Did you mean _nuclear_ (new + clear)? And the concrete required gives off a substantial amount of CO2.
A stagnant economy is what's required. You can't have exponential growth with no limits in a finite world.
We can't get billions out of poverty without having billions more replace them; feed the poor and you get more poor. The only thing that keeps the population down (and hence keeps resource requirements down) is poverty or education. And the religious poor have already rejected education in favour of dogma.
Natural gas still produces CO2. It's still a fossil fuel when taken out of the ground by fracking.
Rand Huso Not to get into some of your other assertions, but just on nuclear alone you are only considering current fast breeder and light water reactors, not the newer liquid fluoride thorium reactors that do not need anywhere near the same type of large scale containment structures that older designs need to contain the vapourization of it's cooling and generation fluid (water). It's a technology that is incredibly safe from traditional nuclear risk or harmful waste, a boundless fuel supply with existing unused stockpiles (orders of magnitude cheaper then traditional nuclear fuels), and incredibly hard if not impossible path to weaponization. All very important to address for a technology for nations that don't have existing nuclear technologies and there is any risk for weaponized use (though reduced weaponization capacity of the technology is an upside to countries that already have nuclear technologies as well).
TheTechnoPilot
Yea, I haven't studied it since the early '70s. But I've heard of thorium reactors - just not the details.
Rand Huso You should definitely look up the FLiBe reactor.
Rand Huso Populations have risen on the back of oil and will decline when its eroie hits 1:1. Nuclear is static energy and not powerful enough when battery stored to be really useful in industry or long haul transport.
Admiralhall2000
The population will probably drop back to 250 million at that point, mostly because we seem to do things that will make money, and not really plan for the next decade. The figure in the 1956 presentation by Dr. Baxter of Bell Labs was 500 million, but the lifestyle he referenced was so low it would be rejected by nearly everyone - overshoot collapse won't be pleasant for anyone except those already below the poverty line.