After watching Kyle Hill's channel I have a very hard time having anything bad to say about nuclear energy. Do it. Any potential danger is miniscule, it being one of the safest forms of energy production while fossil fuels are leading to hundreds of deaths per year.

2:23 Keep in mind, only 29,000 cubic meters of high level nuclear waste have been created _ever, in the history of nuclear energy._

As somebody that's has been pro Nuclear for decades it really does seem like a no brainer. Spent fuel reactors are a pretty cool thing, The more people learn about this stuff the better.

In France, despite having 70 % of our electrical energy being produced out of fission, there is a strong developing anti-nuclear movement which is absurdly irrational, to say the least, and doesn't want to hear any argument, thinking we can replace all nuclear power plant with renewable in less than a decade even though we know it won't be enough for some of the reasons this video explained at the beginning. Those people really need to understand we can't have anything with no downside, including their renewable technology they take a great care at ignoring the bad side that contradicts their own principle. We need nuclear, it's undeniable but it's not by shouting that the nuclear power plants will all explode like the only examples they can give (caused by human negligence btw) which are Chernobyl and Fukushima, even though they wouldn't be able to describe what happened exactly as they don't know anything about the subject, instead of trying to make everything so they don't explode under any circumstance, that they will win an argument against fission.

One of the best videos I have seen on the subject -- well done! I would like you also to explore the question of whether Plutonium really _is_ dangerous. The often-quoted figures that (traditional) spent nuclear fuel must be stored safely for tens of thousands of years (some people go as high as millions of years) is really based on the concern that Plutonium will get out into the environment. Here's a breakdown of relevant half-lives: * Thorium-232: 14 bn years * Uranium-238: 4 bn years * Uranium-235: 0.7 bn years * Plutonium-239: 24,500 years * Caesium-137 and Strontium-90: 30 years Most people will see this and recoil in angst from the long half-lives of the top-most isotopes because _big number=scary_ but the scientific reality is that the longer the half-life, the less intense the radiation. To wit: Stable isotopes have infinite half-lives. (As an aside, I think this video's classification of high-level, intermediate and low-level waste also needs to be discussed in more detail, since the thing that makes low-level waste _low-level_ is not the short half-lives themselves -- which actually contribute to making it _more_ radioactive -- but that we are talking about very small amounts that may be sprinkled lightly across used gloves, shoe covers, sampling equipment, etc. So what we really need when talking about waste are two axes, one for half-lives and one for concentration of material, which together can describe how intensely some material will radiate, graphed over time.) There is a rule of thumb that can be applied to radioactive material: After ten half-lives, the material will basically have decayed to nothing. So ten times the half-life of Plutonium-239 equals roughly a quarter of a million years. The longer-lived, milder materials like Uranium are naturally occuring. Most people will accept the premise that "I dig it out of the ground, I can put it back in the ground later". Plutonium-239, on the other hand, is the longest-lived of the materials that are only created in decent amounts as a byproduct of nuclear fission. Since it still is shorter-lived than the Uranium isotopes, it still has more intense radioactivity than either of those, meaning that any escape into the environment would cause an increase in background radiation levels. This makes it stand out when nuclear regulators want to plan for permanent storage. They apply the "precautionary principle" in a very rigid way: We don't _know_ how much harm Plutonium-239 in the environment might cause, so we need to make sure this can never happen This is the crux of the problem: We _do_ have a fairly good idea how much harm Plutonium-239 can cause, and unless you basically eat it in substantial quantities, it's negligable. You can handle it with your bare hands, no shielding needed. Should you build your bedstead of Plutonium? Probably not, but if it ever _were_ to leach into the environment from storage sites, it would be in dilute form, and would make for a very small increase in background radiation. The idea that we don't know enough about the harm from radiation in general, stems from the model of radiation damage called _LNT_ which stands for "linear, no threshold". It basically says that all radiation is harmful, and the amount of harm is proportional with the amount of radiation, or in other words that there is no threshold for radiation, which would allow you to be safe be remaining under it. This is basically the premise behind every comparison you may come across between radiation and some number of "chest x-rays". This was a natural idea to have in the development of nuclear science and radiomedicine. But at this point, LNT has been falsified. It is simply not true. There _are_ thresholds for safe radiation levels. However, regulators are still using LNT. I hope a future video from this channel will explore the topic of LNT further. There is a terrible paradox -- humans have no senses that can detect radioactivity, but it is easy to build instruments to detect it with extreme precision! It is scary because it is so invisible, and we can feed that fear by looking at every little uptick on our Geiger counters. So, yes, escaped Plutonium may become detectable, but there is a huge step up from that to where it becomes physically harmful. Biology has evolved around radiation. We eat radioactive bananas, due to the presence of natural Potassium-40. We are struck by cosmic rays. Pilots and cabin crew receive the greatest amount of radiation of any professions. The _real_ substances to worry about are Caesium-137 and Strontium-90. These are the longest-lived isotopes that are created, next after Plutonium-239. Applying the rule of thumb, after 300 years, these will have decayed to nothingness. So in summary, traditional spent nuclear fuel needs to be shielded for 300 years. We have built cathedrals that took longer, so I'm sure that's something humans can pull off.

Well done and informative video! However, I think it would have been better if you quickly mentioned how nuclear is statistically the safest form of energy in deaths/kWH. This would have put the fears of many relating to the safety to rest.

Nuclear energy vs fossil fuels is like airplane vs car. Currently, airplanes are the safest method of travel, because there are so many regulations and background checks done before you get in the plane that there's hardly any risk of failure. Nuclear power plants are the same, they're heavily regulated and protected

This was the most "newcomer" friendly nuclear energy video I have ever seen. Kudos for a very good product. It's exceedingly difficult, in my opinion, to delve into this subject, with it's complicated science, convoluted history and substantial social conflicts and, do it in a way that is understandable, or as nearly so as possible, to someone encountering it for the first time or with very limited prior awareness. It wasn't perfect but it was about as close to the mark as I have seen. I'm now a new subscriber and will be looking at all your content and hoping it will all be of the same quality. Thanks for the hard work. P.S. the Thorium Energy Alliance Conference is coming up in Oct in Albuquerque and will certainly be an update on many facets of the cutting edge of research and development in this field and may be of particular interest to the producers of this channel.

Always great to see another one of your uploads. I thoroughly enjoy your videos man.

Please do a video on string theory! I've had a hard time learning about dark matter and dark energy, but thanks to your channel now I understand almost everything about their misteries! Also a video about plasma would be awesome too!!

Such a great video! Really appreciate your hardwork in the video! 👏🏼 Excited for the next video! 👌🏼

Loved this video. I haven't watched one of your videos in a while and I missed your content so I searched you out. Your energy and voice is different, more charming, in this video. I love it. Keep it up, sir, as you always have!

I am super excited for every video! Quality guaranteed!

Great video. But are FR and DE mixed up at 1:33?

I love this channel. Even if the videos have 2 months of waiting between them, the videos are surprisingly calming to listen to, and informing on top of that.

Love your videos, very concise and the graphics are well done and easy to understand!

Many countries including the UK proposed a geological waste disposal facility to be made for high level waste. This will lower the cost of maintenance and monitoring and it’s very spacious.

Thanks for the video! Will it ever be safe to create a commercial fast reactor when the risk of the plutonium being stolen likely outweighs the benefits?

I wish we relied on this energy source more frequently. Since I was young there has always been superstition and misunderstandings around nuclear reactors. Primarily because of the nuclear scares leading up to the 90’s.

Excellent video, as always great presentation of more complex topic but it's still easy to understand. I love this topic and can't wait for more of your videos about it.

The amount already spent on solar and wind subsidies and extra consumer price would have paid for a fleet of fast breeders or thorium thermal breeders to replace all closing generation and keep up with new demand.

I really enjoyed this! As somebody with some interest in nuclear energy and a casual knowledge of the basics of nuclear physics, I found this to be a really accessible introduction to get me a bit deeper into it. The only suggestion I could think of would be if you had used the term “proliferation” to describe Evildoers™ getting hold of high-level fissile material, since it’s what somebody would want to search for to learn more.

Thank you very much for your channel. the videos are extremely interesting and helpful!

Excellent program. Thank you for sharing.

Every time I consume a well-informed piece of media about nuclear energy I despair of human short-sightedness. Fearing nuclear waste over carbon emissions is like fearing a plane crash but not thinking about the orders of magnitude times higher chance of dying in a car crash on the way to the airport.

Solid depiction of nuclear energy, and truly great introduction to the topic of fast nuclear reactors. As a Nuclear Engineer working towards developing advanced reactors, the biggest hurdle in a lot of these reactor concepts is proving that they are proliferation resistant. Ironically, the technological safety is many year ahead of our operations safety. How do we guarantee that enriched fuel from old reactor cores, Plutonium-239 and other transuranic elements, isn't going to be harvested for malicious use? Unfortunately, this may be the question which puts fast reactor development to a halt until the safeguards exist to prohibit these scenarios from occurring. That being said, I have high hopes for nuclear energy in the future. The depiction of what it is, how energy is generated from "burning" fuel, and what it looks like on the social level are all key factors to demystifying nuclear energy and revealing how smart of an idea it is to mitigate and reverse effects of climate change and the carbon footprint of humanity!

Been waiting for your video. Gotta get some snacks to watch it now.

Awesome vid, learnt a lot. More Nuclear vids please!

I love nuclear power and always love learning about it. Thank you!

This was well presented, thanks~

Man, the quality of your videos keeps increasing!

Intersting video. I was surprised how positive you talked about CCS. Maybe you do a deprive on that, because as of now, most CCS facilities fail on different levels, sometimes even releasing more CO2. Its also greenwashing if the CO2 escape rate is higher than expected

Great video. I'd like to point out that reactors often last longer than 30 years. There are some SMRs that are designed to only last that long but there's no rule why they can't last longer. Indeed there are reactors today that are licensed until they're 80. I'd also like to point out that some kinds of fast reactor can actually consume nuclear weapons. A pool type Molten Salt reactor has it's fuel and coolant mixed together and you can basically just toss in your weapon's material which is downblended to non-weapons grade in the reactor and is fissioned. Another thing to talk about with those few Fast Reactors is they were really experimental or test reactors that were trying out a variety of things like new coolants. However there are incoming fast reactors right now like Natrium in Wyoming so they're much closer than you might think.

Excellent presentation. I'm an old nuclear operator in thermal reactor plants. Here in Canada we are beginning to seriously consider a wasteburner reactor. This presentation gave me a good basic understanding of how that will work. Well done Kyle!

Amazing new Intro!

Molten salt fast reactors are even more efficient and harder to divert to weapons.

1:31 you have france and germany mixed up

Overall quite good, but worth noting that as U238 gets bred to Pu239, there are a lot of excess neutrons around in most cases. That means the Pu (particularly in "spent fuel" today, is a mixture of isotopes and those absorb too many neutrons to give you a bomb, even if you chemically separate it. In a fast reactor, you get a lot more fissions (destroying the Pu isotopes as you mentioned) but any Pu left behind will be a mix when running it as a normal power reactor.

Keep up the awesome work!!! :D

Great video! Thanks for making! Where does this "ideal future will be powered by renewables and nuclear fusion" comes from? It is being repeated in places like a mantra but no justification if this is the future to hope for. I would like to see the future with plentiful and cheap energy, with minimum impact on environment and this is possible with energy dense fuel and methods. Renewables are diluted, unpredictable and resources intense (space and materials) and to be sustainable these require storage (because backup from fossil fuel is expensive and poluting). Large scale storage doesn't exist (in real world). As for fusion- there is no guarantee that it will ever work as practical source of power and just from the fact of how difficult it is to make proof of concept reactor I learn that it may never be even remotely affordable. Nuclear fission in its many forms may be the best solution for now and maybe also in 1000years, with minimal impact on environment, plentiful and sustainable fuel supply (with breeding in few forms for Uranium, Thorium). And the waste material can be kept simply away from biosphere for as long as needed.

1:33 I don't get it how such mistakes go unnoticed throughout production

Awesome new intro!

I love your content, I really hope you reach a point where your views and subscribers reflect the quality of your videos. Stay strong and dont give up

Most people who are anti nuclears just came from watching/reading chernobyl documentaries

One thing mentioned in this video but I think not pointed out hard enough is the economics: Nukes are talked horribly for extremely wrong reasons, the non-issue of waste and the nonsensical safety stuff that mostly shows complete lack of rellevant knowledge, and to be honest" *trying to argue against it is like telling somebody afraid of flying that planes are pretty much perfectly safe...* Yet nobody, neither advocates nor detractors; neither reasonable people nor folks pushing an agenda; seem to talk about the true great probkem of nuclear power: It is damn costly, expensive, pricey; and very risky politically and economically. You simply take way too long to recoup the high initial costs, specially with so much red tape, tho that depends on the country... Fast reactors are simply more expensive than thermal ones, they need to operate hotter (which is good for efficiency, but pricey), have way more red tape, and generally more complicated safety systems that drive cost up (for a slow reactor, you only really need a mod-coolant and adequate enough air cooling for the decay heat). Being like two magnitudes more efficient with fuel (counting waste in enrichment, as fast ones dont need) is nice and all, but fuel is only a small fraction of a NPP's cost, even not that signifficant in the operating cost, *so it just doesnt make sense economically.* A bit of the same issue with thorium reactors, you are just trying to solve a fuel scarcity problem that doesnt exist... The industry should be (and has been for decades) focused on cutting on capital cost instead of all that fuel changing nonsense, altho I cant deny that having some ability to burn fuel can save a lot of money for the country in disposal, which isnt huge (why do you think its almost if not the only industry that boxes its waste to be pretty much safer than the rock it came from) but still signifficant enough to contribute to that cost issue so hard on the technology (overkilling less is an option too, tho Id rather have all industries adopt that standard first ;P) Another point you should note is that fission products are way more dangerous than actinides. You can (if shouldnt!) hug a plutonium bar with just clothes, but you get ARS if you do it to a Cs137 one with a lead suit! Talking about half lives and comparing them is very common and *extremely misleading,* by that logic, normal lead is nigh infinitely dangerous with a half life so large no decay has ever been recorded, so it should be stored ro be kept beyond a shadow of a doubt until the last black hole flashes out ;P Also mentioning the numbers like that (without context) is musleading too. If you say that arsenic poison stays literally forever, along with most inorganic chemicals, 20ky to half doesnt seem that bad, but saying that it will last 20ky gives the impression that it is "particularly" long lived, heck, even "90% is gone in a century" as for many fission products (if we ignore the supermajority of radioactivity that dies in days and months) would be pretty good by many standards, even better than many plastic wastes for example, yef still sounds like a horrible threat that will stick around for generations... *It is again like telling someone afraid of flying that planes are safe*

Thx for explaining the difference between fizzle and fertle. Great video.

Had to watch that new intro a couple times:)

Call me pessimistic but I think fusion will always be the power of the future and is more of a money hole than a practical energy source...however there's so much untapped potential in fission that we know can work. Between this and thorium and MSRs and everything we should be jumping on nuclear like crazy, it's such a no brainier and it's such a good source of energy I really feel like society messed up by letting a few bad accidents scare us off of it. I honestly cannot overstate how hyped I am for this next video, I love nuclear topics

You got a bit too preachy and emotional near the end when talking about "Putting a cost to your children's lives". It's something we all do every day for more than just children. Fact of the matter is that the economic argument is the only one that matters.

Nice intro. Videos looking better and better

Nice ... i last saw a vid 2 months ago, with like 30k subs...now 180k? Amazing, congrats and well deserved

Every argument falls down when you have to say 'we did it so they can do it to'. First world countries destroyed the ecosystem and owned slaves, therefore third world countries can destroy the ecosystem and own slaves? Slavery in Arab nations and India isn't driving those countries to prospering, and destroying the ecosystem in Indonesia and Brazil isn't helping Indonesia and Brazil either. India said at cop26 that will burn coal till 2070, and around 60-70% of their energy is from coal. If you think that's OK just because you happened to be born in the UK or USA, then you're part of the global warming problem.

Hi! I love you and your videos so much! Would you mind sharing how you do your research (if there are any specific sources you regularly refer to, resources you'd recommend, etc...)? Thank you!

one of if not the best scientific channel on yt fr

genius! and applicable right now

there are also byproducts we dont want to throw away, some are very useful medical isotopes eg. for chemo therapy.

Really great video, only some slight changes issues here and there (a little bit of clipping, weird topology, lack of shade smooth, and odd textures) but those are really small and the rest is awesome! (Is this done in blender and/or eevee?)

Awesome video

Thank you!

Another banger, keep up the dubs

Great video, I love the visualisations, but just a couple of corrections! You point out that one of the largest arguments against wide spread fast reactor implementation is that it would be easy to produce plutonium-239 for use in nuclear weapons. It's only partially true - although it's easier to chemically separate plutonium from uranium - it's actually far easier AND quicker for countries to use centrifuges/gaseous diffusion to isotopically enrich natural uranium to whatever level they want. Look at North Korea for example. And while some U-238 is inevitably bred in the core where neutron speeds are the fastest, most of it is produced in the outer 'blanket' regions surrounding the core. Fast-breeder reactors take advantage of all these excess neutrons and try to minimise neutron leakage by completely blanketing the core with natural or depleted uranium.

I'm glad i was already somewhat knowledgeable about this topic beforehand, because i wouldn't have been able to follow it otherwise.

Very informative video, I have been a nuclear power proponent for a long while now. But this helped me understand the difference in slow neutron and fast neutron reactions. I really think we need to replace the 80 plus percent fossil fuel power plants with nuclear. Other renewables can make a difference but they have other environmental and economic issues. Fast neutron reactors and types that can use thorium like LFTR’s need to be explored and used to the fullest extent.

Some numbers regarding carbon capture here in Saskatchewan. The Boundary Dam coal power plant produces 531MW of power. Only Unit 3 which is only about 1/4 of the total plant captures any CO2. Of that 1/4, 90% is temporarily captured, and then half of that CO2 is lost back to the atmosphere after it is used to help extract crude oil. So instead of the 90% carbon capture rates claimed by proponents it's more like 10-12%. And even then unit 3 is more likely to be offline than the other units because it is more expensive to use and maintain. So even the 10-12% capture rates is optimistic. And this is a successful carbon capture installation. Most have failed much more spectacularly.

The only reason we don't have the future we envisioned almost a hundred years ago is because people are too scared of a threat that doesn't even exist. With the amount of funding these guys put into military, nuclear waste would not even be a thing the general population would ever think about.

The one data point everyone forgets is the amount of people affected from weather events . Is higher than they were before. We need to stop building in places that are in the hot zones.

Great video and extremely informative - the all round overview has enlightened my perspective on this ongoing and important issue. However, with current technologies available, CO2 does not need to be sequestered and can be refueled. That is to say, we have no need to pump the captured CO2 into the ground as we can create new fuel from the capture, allowing us to make energy from the captured byproduct, much like the reuse of the cores and with far less risk. For more info on the capture and refueling of CO2, check out Carbon Engineering on this, the most informative of social media outlets. I am sure you will be as pleased as I am that there are more cost effective and lower risk solutions to our misfortunate status quo 😉 Keep up the great work and looking forward to part 2. 🙃

Uranium-238 lookin real fertile and breedable lately

We should use hot nuclear waste as a heat source. Instead of burying it in remote areas you could put it in a buried container with a heat exchanger and build an industrial park around it, most industrial applications need low level heat that is usually generated with natural gas or electricity. For example you use the heat from a buried waste pile to distill alcohol for fuel turning making the process actually carbon neutral.

Sick intro

I wonder if you could do a video explaining which elements resposible to produce which kind of photon at which energy amount. And their interactions when absorbed or reflect said emw. I still kinda cloudy on how the interactions works

In your graphic at 1:33 either the icons or the labels for France and Germany are swapped I am curious which is which, my guess would be the labels?

You just gave me tons of hope for nuclear waste at around 9:10.

thank you for this articulate video about nuclear energy

I vaguely recall that, early on, one of the reasons thermal won over fast breeder reactors was that the former were very effective at producing by-products that could be processed for the nuclear armaments industry, while the latter were very effective at disposing of (consuming) those same materials. So there was advantage during the arms race to thermal. I’m curious whether there are any videos that look directly at this issue.

11:45 there is quite a few more.. SAy we set the limit at 50MW. then it would be. Fermi 1 (60MW) FR (D) 250MW, Phenix (250MW), Superphenix (1240ishMW), PFBR (500MW), Munju (280MW), BN350 (135MW), BN600 (600MW), BN800 (864MW), CFR600 (600MW) Brest (400MW), Joyo (Thermal only 140MW)

I disagree about both nuclear fusion and the sun,wind,water kind of renewable energy. But you have in fact described the best solution. I was working for the FERC at the time when the "Pacific NW" didn't get enough rain and snow for California's hydropower, so the standard defense for sharp demand increases was "spinning reserve" gas turbines. A 60 Hz AC system, necessary for the working of transformers, demands a very prompt response to a load increase, which slows down generators that are overloaded, and if some slow down faster than others, they supply the grid bus with different voltages, because it goes from zero to max in one quarter of a 60th of a second then zero, negative max, zero. If the voltage difference is high enough to endanger the bus, the offending supplier will be dropped, so "spinning reserve" can charge ransom level fees. "VRE" is quite hopelessly Varying (it isn't "variable" like gas) so it worsens the problem. Nuclear fusion on Earth depends upon the deuterium+tritium reaction that provides a huge amount of energy per unit mass, but not nearly as attractive per unit volume. The equation creates just high energy helium nuclei, and furiously higher energy neutrons. These are both high energy radiation, so no radioactive isotopes isn't such a great bargain. Any neutrons that our fusion reactor doesn't capture can make the machine itself radioactive.

I think "little boy" was U235. "Fat man" was Plutonium.

every school should play a video of your channel every day.

This is what I've been trying to communicate to people for the longest time. Nuclear waste is valuable. It's full of useful stuff and we're finding ways to use it instead of shove it in a mountain for 10,000 years. It'll eventually be as valuable as any other heavy elements. Proliferation will never be stopped. There's literally no way to do it. You can make the world a prison like police state and make it less likely but less likely is still a fraction of likely. What would be really cool with the stuff, especially mox is finding a way to induce targeted fission with super heavy intermediaries so the output products are even more useful. Who wouldn't want to find a way to generate Niobium or Indium at scale from heavier elements?

Ignoring existence of BN600 and BN800 is not a good thing.

You assume a solid fuel core. In a molten salt core, you could syphon off fission products in real time. Also, you could use a thermal spectrum reactor to also transmute u238 into plutonium (or Thorium into u233) and keep burning it that way. The main advantage to thermal spectrum vs. fast spectrum reactors are that the fissile inventory required is much smaller, the control of the reaction is easier as it is a slower reaction, and the overall capital costs and safety could be much improved in a thermal spectrum reactor. There's a reason fast reactors have been tried by all major powers for decades and yet it hasn't gotten anywhere. Additionally, any solid reprocessing of spent cores, especially those containing plutonium, can lead to proliferation concerns, meaning only nuclear powers and trusted democracies can do this part of the fuel cycle. The developing world, however, is where most carbon emissions will come from in the future.

Huge omission. You refer to all the isotopes of Plutonium produced by a power reactor as just Plutonium. In reality, the isotopic ratios of reactor grade Plutonium make it physically impossible to make into a weapon.

I need a nuclear physics refresher apparently.

The name of the game should be energy density and reliability (nuclear), not dilute harnesses of intermittent weather (pv and turbines).

i'm subscribing no question about it

France had a failure at doing a first prototype of this technology due to costs, but recently planned another wave of second generations EPR reactors which should replace all aging reactors by 2050

03:53 How is that second cube 10% of the one beside it? I even rewound the video. It appears more like 1/3.

I grew up in a town, that has been using the BN-350 reactor for several decades to desalinate the sea water. Built by the Soviet engineers, and once visited by an American astronaut with the nuclear physics diploma in his pocket. As I recall, he even left a record in the Visitors Book. And now Russia is building the BREST reactor.

So capture bad, fission good, in order to be more efficient with resources?(waste vs fuel) And fast neutrons increase fission and decrease capture/absorption?

First Guy: “So if it solves the spent nuclear waste issue, why not start building them now?” Second Guy: Because they don’t really work like that.” First Guy: “Oh well , that’s too bad.”

Sick

Those pannels are scary to watch for Intel Personel acquainted with Quantum Mechanics

Probably before watching the video: When I thought about the high level waste thing, I was like: That stuff's like less intense fuel, why not use it?

Fast reactors need to become mainstream knowledge

3:27 "We'll increase the volume 150%", but actually increases it to 338%

Well meltdowns isn't really a problem since no one builds Chornobyl level powerplants and Fukushima was badly designed and was struck by one of worst combination of events possible

That's a pretty sick looking new intro but I miss the drip, man. Where's the awesome shirt??

Tell the greens about this and they will just dismiss it.

I think at 1:31 France and Germany need to be switched