Hey friends! In our last video about green energy, (wood pellets: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/l92ckpeWtq-zqH0.html) many of you pointed out the clear benefits of nuclear energy. So we took a deep dive into it and tried to find out why it is so complicated. Why haven't we gone full nuclear yet? What do you think?

A lot of Lithuanians were upset that the EU forced us to close down our perfectly operational nuclear plant prematurely to be eligible to join the EU. It was a huge loss to an already struggling economy.

Chernobyl is a very early first generation reactor comparing it to modern reactors is deceptive. Modern reactors are very safe and have multiple level redundancies.

What I'd love to see as a follow-up is on the topic of "We shouldn't ever go full X; no matter what it is" Whether it's any of the food production systems, energy sources, carbon mitigation systems, carbon reduction systems, interstellar travel systems, the economic, social and ecological value are infinitely greater in the long-term when we work to have balance between different methods. I struggle to find any solid argument in favor of 100% X that isn't short-sighted. It's been 100-ish years of short-term gains and band-aid solutions across various sectors that have put us where we are.

One fast moving exposé. Top marks! That train passing transition was usefully inspired.

I'm pretty much a pro-nuclear guy but I agree with the point that most western countries have outdated technologies and still have the negative stigma regarding nuclear power, and very restrictive laws that make investing in nuclear power more costly than what it's worth, hence the reluctance and making a new nuclear power plant. However, innovation requires a lot of failures before success happens, which is why countries like China are building reactors like crazy... as doing the same thing over and over again may give people some insight in making something more efficient and more cheap than it usually is, thus they inevitably innovate in terms of creating cheaper nuclear reactors compared to western builds... they're basically training their engineers to be really good at their craft by having a lot of hands-on experience by the sheer amount of projects with similar design and purpose(nuclear power). And the future iterations of power plants and next generations of engineers will have past knowledge to utilize and further improve and improve, like an endless positive feedback loop of innovation. This may be one of the reasons why investment in nuclear power on western countries is expensive because of the lack of experienced specialists in that field due to lack of concrete reason(I say concrete as in, a literal project they can actually apply said knowledge) for improving the skill. Training our engineers with the necessary knowledge will cost money. Well, we can invest more in small-scale nuclear projects first to further increase our understanding of the technology and improve upon it, eventually giving us enough ideas to make the actual thing better, cheaper and safer than the outdated ones. Easier said than done, of course... but we have to start somewhere. We had to let the snowball of innovation roll into an avalanche. Dang... makes me wish I should've taken my 2nd course into something specialized for nuclear power plants instead of IT. One of the main drawbacks is the lack of specialists in that field as to why we haven't progressed much in nuclear power.

it's not a matter of production it's a matter of consumption. we must literally consume less to make it through, not simply produce more.

I think nuclear energy is a great thing. It is Def a better choice than coal or natural gas. Thanks for another great video Terra Mater. It feels like forever since u posted anything but shorts. It was worth the wait.

Thank you so much for making this video and shedding some light about nuclear energy, it is a great alternative to FF but it isn't a silver bullet, and a good implenentation required to address its flaws.

As usual when comparing LCOE between solar and nuclear, energy storage for solar is not included in the cost.

I grew up 4 miles away from a coal mine. As a kid I always thought it was nuclear. That was nearly 20 years ago. I went to check it out after this video on Google street view and it turns out it was demolished several years ago.

good to see that there are still rationally thinking environmentalists out there

Why no one talks about geo thermal energy

The winter is getting hotter by the Year

I was so happy that you uploaded today! Really been missing your videos. This is a very interesting topic and thanks for the wonderful insight as usual!

Okay still not a friend of nuclear but we need to get our energy from somewhere I guess. Hope the countries can make progress deciding where to store the radioactive waste.

damned if you do, damned if you don't.

production value goes crazy !!

Great Video, as always!

The music was too loud.

The world's ignorant run from nuclear is the biggest environmental blunder we have ever made. If someone claims nuclear as a more dangerous form of energy than any other kind they are simply ignorant and wrong. This isn't opinionated, this is a simple truth.

Be careful when comparing nuclear and renewable costs : Leverage Cost Of Energy is not the appropriate metric from an economic standpoint, you must assess all the costs at the system level. The fluctuating and distributed nature of the renewable production requires to create large storage, interconnexion solutions as well as long distance high power lines. These elements are costly, take time and are faced with significant public opposition. Also the high power high volume storage solution (other than hydro - e.g hydrogen or static batteries) lack maturity. When you take all these elements into account, nuclear production has costs on par with renewables. Also, the less nuclear in the mix the more you will need storage solutions and the more renewable production will be costly. In addition, taking HPC is not a good example as it leverages private finance. Building reactors from public interests rates enables to largely decrease the production costs. Also, I am not sure about the UK but in many countries the cost of wastes management is included in the nuclear energy prices. To finish, when comparing nuclear and renewable production prices you must take into consideration that nuclear energy has major benefits : you do not need a large land footprint, you have limited reliance towards China, you have a steady production. About your statement regarding the scarcity of uranium, first every country has Uranium (just not always economicaly interesting to exploit). You don't need large volumes of uranium and unlike gaz or oil, you can store it easily. Also you can follow China and develop 4th generations of reactors to limit the Uranium consumption or even use substitutes (Thorium). You can also do as France and recycle the used fuel. Generally speaking, when analyzing the scarcity of a refined fuel, you should not focus only on the extraction phase but also look at who controls the refining, purification, enrichment and fuel manufacturing phases and this show that this is where lies the real issue : only 2 to 3 countries control the fuel chain (Russia, France and China).

4:32 never thought I'd see Söder in a Terra Mater video 😂 Sadly he's not exactly cooperative when it comes to both nuclear or other renewable energy. We could tap into geothermal energy here in Bavaria and I hope we will in the next few years...

"the equivalent of taking 4.8 million cars off the road" so uh... why aren't we just taking 4.8 million cars off the road then?

We have had 50 years since the first BIG windmill was produced in Denmark, and had the World turned to wind and solar back then, this World would have been a much better place. And the producs would have been MUCH better than today. Oil, gas, uranium …. If you have to dig up what you “burn”- drop it. Just my opinion. …. Hello from Denmark 🇩🇰 Europe 🇪🇺

I remember when this channel used to do nature documentaries

And what’s your take on nuclear fusion and molten salt reactors?

Nuclear power has its problems but at this point we don’t have a choice as other clean energy sources like solar and wind can’t produce the amount of power needed to sustain the lifestyle that we all are used to

5 times more electricity in a no CO2 world. Fossil fuels are high density energy and the infrastructure exists.

SMRs, Small modular reactors, for Australia means 100 are needed but Australia will need 500 if no fossil fuels used. The world will need 150,000. I assume that 3 shifts of operators daily 365 days a year. I assume that the quality of the operators will be extremely high, and expensive and want to live in a city. I assume that the skills will be way beyond the skills of solar panels installers.

The best time to build a nuclear reactor is 10 years ago. The second best time is today.

5 times more electricity is needed to replace fossil fuels and if central power plants then the national electrical power grid will be 5 times bigger. So let's also talk about the fossil fuels needed to mine raw materials and refine and smelt and fabricate all the transmission grid components and the construction implementation on manpower and financing. The existing national grid is just big enough now and took 100years to build. So a national grid capacity 5 times bigger seems to be a good talking point. Hello, hello anyone home, hello anyone hello 👋

I think human error is really the only flaw of nuclear power... thankfully there's AI

Background music is soo noisy 🙏🙏

I can’t of another clean source of firm energy. Emphasis on firm.

Nuclear proliferation to stop CO2 proliferation. ?????????

Modern nuclear, current technology, is very expensive to build. And it takes a long, long time to start producing power. It enhances nuclear proliferation among nations, which is super destabilizing to the current world order and very dangerous.

So we're just going to ignore that countries have already done it like France? Build times and costs are the result of stagnancy. A country that goes balls to the wall with nuclear can reduce these incredibly quickly, within 2-3 decades. It also doesn't change the fact that renewables aren't doing what they were said to be able to do. France reduced it's emissions in 2 decades without trying using nuclear. Germany has not reduced it's emissions in 2 decades while trying to do so with renewables. Those are the facts. Whether people like it or not. Nuclear works, Renewables don't. It doesn't matter how much slave/cheap labour you use to build cheap solar panels that will never change.

Thanks for the valuable content as always! I’m very pro-nuclear but I really think there are clear infrastructure problems with scaling up that have gone unsolved.

Nuclear power might take long time to build, but so takes all other low carbon energy sources as well. Just look at statistics and do the math. So the title of this video, Why We Can't Go Full Nuclear Yet, can be said of wind and solar power too.

Thanks for excellent summary

Why would we go nuclear still ?

I wonder if with the new Brazilian government, they would go on with building the third nuclear energy plant of the country. But based on this video, I'm not sure if we have the money to do it.

No fossil fuels means 5times more electricity. 5times more electricity transmission. Transmission is the killer cost to ALL CENTRAL POWER GENERATION. Do a video on the cost of transmission construction costs. $Money $Financing Raw materials Labour Mining and refining Manufacturing towers and poles and wires and transformers and ... New land acquisition Do a video on this humongous cost. Then, do a video on rooftop generation with an EV big battery plugged in like a home robotic vacuum cleaner does. The EV cleans the environment The robotic vacuum cleaner cleans the house.

You did not discuss that the USA military defence budgets will explode. So does the world pay the USA for nuclear security.??????????????? Mr Putin is a strong argument to pay the USA.

France got big problems with nuclear reactors because of rare water in rivers to cool down the reactor. This problem will get bigger in future so, i thing we might have get out of coal earlier, but it isn't the right answer to get in nuclear comeback now. We dont have the time. We have to act now!

The COP28 in the UAE will continue the inactivity of the world, close their eyes and pray. Are we doomed?

So transmission of massive new electricity to billions of users maybe the real problem and may need a youtube video. Infact it may need many videos because the first video will be on track, but wrong. Hahaha Hahaha 😆 "Do have the balls punk, do you ??" To quote Dirty Harry.

nuclear has to be part of our energy mix, better than coal. but our focus has to stay on renewables.

SMR's are the future, locations can be easier to choose due to their water consumption being much much lower than big boi ones.

build more nucelar build more renewable diversify energy where you can

Thank you! Nuclear is definitely not a short-term power source, we can't rely on it. Things you didn't mention: Nuclear power is cooling--nuclear needs cool water, can not be built in places without access to water, that is of course a whole lot of the world's lands. Another complication: Heatwaves can shut nuclear down. There was a point during a heatwave in France where they had to shut down their nuclear because they couldn't cool it well enough. SO! Given we're facing a warming planet, is it really the best idea for our energy source, which we will increasingly need to cool us during deadly heatwaves, to be vulnerable to those very heatwaves?

I don’t think nuclear will save us now but I still think we need to be building them . We will continue to need more energy. Building nuclear now will help the future.

Nuclear power is the only option in the short, medium and long term, whether the issue is climate change or fossil fuels running out. It provides a great amount of power at a constant rate, which is a requirement not only for running a modern industrial society, but also for powering other green initiatives, like hydrogen synthesis and recycling processes. Many of it's disadvantages, including those mentioned in this video, stem from a lack of focus on this technology. Too few people are educated in the field, and nuclear power plants are built too infrequently to standardise production and make it actually affordable to build then in greater numbers. Nuclear power is the quintessential long term stategy for energy generation. Nuclear waste needs to be stored for 200 years tops, after which we likely posess the technology to permanently dispose of it. All the while, more nuclear energy options are developed, from passively safe reactors to thorium reactor and nuclear fusion. Any society or country that for whatever reason steers away from nuclear energy risks de-industrialisation at best, utter poverty at its worst, as high density energy applications (also for environmental use) are rolled out, determining the winners and losers of the 21st century.

Too much vocal fry.

Greenwash.

First

Q: Where does the waste go for over 100'000 years? Should we even care about that?

I think this video is overemphasizing the logistical difficulties of nuclear. The politics and the finances will work themselves out if countries decided to go all-in, that's how government and business work, that's what capitalists do best. Don't let perfect be the enemy of better. No matter how slow and expensive nuclear is, it's still better than fossil fuels. Yeah it gets held back by politics and time, but if that's the whole scary dark side, this video could have covered that in one minute and spent the rest explaining a plan for what we should fight for in the short-term and how.

What do you mean costly??? We print money

Where are you hearing anyone say nuclear is the only solution? No, the problem is the clean energy movement is too stubborn to even include nuclear in the conversation. Don’t get it twisted.

This guy conveniently manages to make only a passing mention of SMR power generation. This form of generation is in fact ready now. It avoids the extremely high cost of traditional giant nuclear plants and the extremely slow construction times. His point of view is a very subtle anti nuclear message and his information is dated and inaccurate.

Coal Power Stations are the best and the only way coal will be used for decades to come

Every cent spent on Nuclear is a cent wasted. It takes too long to design, too long to build, cannot be flexible, requires a lot of maintenance and downtime, is a security risk, cannot be insured and requires specialist guards, has no long term plan for waste … In the time taken to build one reactor (over 10 years), we could have had 100s of wind turbines, solar parks, tidal energy and geothermal for the same price and much earlier, generating and tackling the problem of climate chaos.

should have commented about thorium reactors

We should develop Thorium Reactors, like China!

I'm sorry, the pace, the way this dude talks (stRessing Every wOrd..), the over-production... Reminds me of 90's kids commercials. Sorry I .. just can't deal with this.

Video sponsored by Gazprom.

I’m sorry, but by what metric is it more expensive to implement nuclear than solar energy? That’s a very bold claim

Too many sound effects and background music can't even watch

Im sick of people saying "its complicated". Moneeyyyyyy thats why this is happening. Its very fkn simple. Tax the rich into oblivion. Let them eat cake. Heads will need to start rolling soon.

Thorium is future