Great news

Absolutely incredible announcement!

Romania made a wise decision

The Cernavoda reactor has run very well, I believe

Vai de capul nostru

Great to see a fellow CANDU lover checking out the content! Thank you for your years of service Mike!

Thank you so much for your kind words!

Safety systems are so interesting! It would be awesome if you did a video series on them. I also seem to recall you saying your video on the most common reactor types was very simplified - an in-depth series about that would also be great! If you don't already have a video on your channel about them a video about molten fuel reactors would also be very interesting.

Just discovered this awesome channel! I would love to see content on Canada's medical isotope production, and fast reactors, and fuel cycle possibilities with CANDUs. I heard CANDUs can run as breeders and burn a variety of fuels? Would love to hear more about fuel possibilities and fuel life cycles in general(like reprocessing capabilities etc). Thanks!

No idea, just found you tonight. Fantastic work, very informative. Heh. Back in the early Eighties we sent a mechanic to the Pickering NGS to repair a forklift. During the radiation check on the way out they found radioactive traces on his pants. He was terrified they were going to send him back to his truck wearing his underwear at one point…

Truly appreciate your heart warming message, especially coming from you Craige who have been one of my favorite instructors at Ontario tech!

Glad you love the CANDU attitude as well!

Hahaha yessss, that would be hilarious Robert

Yess I highly encourage that. Training instructors at Nuclear utilities and vendors are all encouraged to use this content. Its free, its high quality and it can provide a lot of value to those that are onboarding in the industry

Hi Andrew, U also work at OPG Pickering? Do you work there for a long time? I am in background checking now and still waiting for the final Job offer. Do you have any experience with how they were going to train the fresh gays? Would you mind giving me some advice also? Thanks so much :)

Nice! Great to know you have such valuable experiences

Thanks Superstrik9, happy you found value in the video!

In operations there is a clear distinction between control rods, which are adjusters and absorbers. However, this video is not aimed toward operations training. Its a introductory video for those new to the nuclear industry or interested in learning about concepts relevant to CANDU. "The Essential CANDU" by UNENE also uses these phrases interchangeably (shutdown & control rods) to help simplify concepts (Section 2.7, point#3: unene.ca/essentialcandu/pdf/13%20-%20Reactor%20Safety%20Design%20and%20Safety%20Analysis.pdf). Whether it be solely industry or general public, in order to understand complex topics you need to be introduced to terms one by one. Happy to make another video solely on the topic of control rods/adjusters/absorbers/shutdown rods if you wish. Are you a representative from the Romanian Nuclear industry? Maybe we can connect via email and see how we can build these resources together. My email is osama.baig@ontariotechu.net

Thanks so much!

Very much appreciate that Tariq! Why I love video platforms is because it increases accessibility to a larger group. It makes learning Nuclear science easier (all you need is an internet connection). However, a book is definitely on my bucket list!

Yes Peter, I believe that is the secret to keeping the public engaged and informed on a platform like KZfaq. Simplification is such a powerful force, and I'm happy you've recognized that. Thanks!

Shadi, its my absolute pleasure. Grateful you got the chance to check out the video. Any thoughts on top topics that are relevant to CANDU that people would be interested in checking out?

Its my absolute pleasure Doug, really appreciate you checking it out!

That's great to know Khurrum! Share my channel with him, it might motivate him to become a KZfaqr when he grows up :) appreciate you keeping up with the content!

Using spent fuel from CANDU reactors is definitely a remarkable project!

Definitely an exceptional design, the safety, performance and flexibility of fuel usage. Glad you feel the same way Tgspartnership

Thanks so much Nadir! I think high quality video content on Nuclear science and especially reactor technologies is a gap we need to fill. Looking forward to pumping out more high quality content to promote education in this field

Congrats on the job at Pickering NPP! I think some really good resources would be to review CNSC regulatory documents online, they are all available in public. Also check out 1) CANTECH 2) Essential CANDU textbook. Those are my top recommendations for CANDU and Canadian industry learning ! Also my other videos those will help as well

@@OsamaBaig Thanks again：）

Appreciate you checking out the video!

Indeed you can. However since CANDU uses non-enriched uranium there isn't as much reactor grade plutonium remaining in the spent fuel. Enriched uranium on the other hand has a LOT more plutonium remaining, thus it can more easily be turned into MOX. You can recover the plutonium from CANDU, however it is an additional processing cost (not as cost beneficial as recycling spent PWR/BWR fuel). You would need to do an entire cost benefit analysis of the recycling and compare it against other alternatives.

Thanks for clearing that up. By the way, thanks for the channel. And thanks in continuing the education of the public about a very misunderstood topic.

​@@hankrearden20bro here in India we are also reprocessing the spend natural fuels

250 000 L.

If I'm allowed, I'll promote some cross-pollination between Osama's YT channel and Chris Keefer's Decouple channel by directing you here to this video which gives the reality-check on the fear-porn: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/d9mpgqphnLuqYZ8.html

Look up the Decouple Podcast episode concerning the hydride cracking.

No way Viperswhip! I didn't know that. If only we can mine it and use it locally in BC, that would be a great way to scale up the electric capacity in that region

It's my absolute pleasure thank you so much

Generously given to me by camcoe!

The reason why deals don't go through at times is due to a few reasons 1) Development of a regulatory body (You need a nuclear regulator that follows IAEA guidelines) 2) Cost (Many developing nations may want a reactor but have difficulties with financing it) 3) The country already has an unstable grid (no reliable electricity sources), thus the entire grid running on a unit or several units is not the best idea 4) The country simply doesn't have the domestic expertise to run a nuclear power reactor. It takes years for a workforce to develop this expertise (it doesnt happen overnight). It takes both investment and time. However, CANDU Reactors had been built in Romania, and may still have new prospects to build more units there. The story of Nuclear reactors not selling is not only unique to CANDU but also to the other designs. Only two countries had joined the "Nuclear Club" after Chernobyl, Romania and most recently UAE. In the recent decade you seem many other countries joining, such as Egypt and Bangladesh.

At the end of the day, many people would rather enrich uranium as it provides a simple pathway to bombs. 'Enriching,' water, to heavy water is a similar process but is no use at all for bombs. In short if you go the CANDU path you a relinquishing the possibility of using nuclear power technology to make nuclear bombs as a by product. This scenario has played out in recent decades in the ME.

That's a great question, any thorium experts watching this video know the answer to the question?

Yes that sounds like a great topic. I wonder what type of modifications would need to be made to a CANDU reactor for it to use thorium blends. Maybe starting with a higher neutron source or other modifications to reactor control mechanisms

@@OsamaBaig Thorium is not uranium. Liquid source versus solid source. Liquid moderator versus solid moderator. All the crap risk of uranium are significantly reduced.

@@OsamaBaig Here is the coles notes on this. During the early days of nuclear reactor development, two major sources of materials were tried. Thorium and Uranium. Uranium was selected because it was able to generate lots of weapon's grade plutonium. The US and other military establishment then supported uranium reactors. The US actually built a Thorium reactor. So why do I bring it up. Thorium has these advantages over uranium. (BTW, I'm not a scientist but everyone can research this themselves in case I'm incorrect here). 1. Uranium is a limited resource vs Thorium is quite abundant. 2. Thorium has a much higher energy density compared to Uranium. 3. Thorium does NOT generated tons of long term radioactive waste. 4. Thorium cannot have a meltdown. Let me repeat. Cannot have a meltdown. 5. It does not require a giant expensive chamber to contain the radio active steam if things rupture because thorium is a self limiting reaction. If all the fail safes are turned off and it just runs, there is no chain reaction without feeding it, it will just cool off. The reactions slows down and stops. No china syndrome. 6. Highly scalable to create small modular reactors. 7. Can use existing old reactors and convert to safer thorium. 8. A very poor generator of weapons grade plutonium so no need to check if someone is using it for nefarious purposes. For planetary travel, we cannot bring a long a uranium processing plant to feed a nuclear reactor and energy sourcing is critical to survival. Solar will NOT work because all the planets beyond venus and mercury have very little usable Sun compare to earth. You would have to bring multiple times the amount of solar panels just to get the same energy. They will die. And forget wind, they will die. Thorium is abundant on the moon and mars. We will never run out. I would encourage everyone to just check out Thorium at least once. KZfaq Thorium vs Uranium.

Same logic as why energy isn't harnessed from a cars exhaust (it's not worth harnessing). Also, there might be ways to divert the extra heat toward heating other areas in the plant, however that would be an additional plant application. Also, spent fuel is removed from a reactor after its spent, since it's reached a point where its not effective at producing sufficient amount of energy (fissile amount is depleted)

@@OsamaBaig Thanks I guess that is all obvious though having you say it does drive home the reality. Seems like a great amount of wasted energy though small compared to the reactor at an operational level.

Good question Project B. Nuclear power reactor fuel has a very low amount of fission product (The stuff that's active), the fuel is only 3-5% enriched, whereas nuclear weapons are 85% or more enriched. Its designed to slowly release energy overtime, rather than all at once (weapon). Also, reactor vessel and fuel assemblies are designed so that they don't "explode", rather the physics and safety analysis are design features built in to make sure it operates safely. However, when it comes to Cherrnobyl it was a "Steam explosion (only released 5% of the reactor core)" whereas a majority of the fuel stayed inside the reactor. This is considering that Chernobyl RBMK's didn't have concrete containment (which all other reactors have). Moreover, Nuclear reactors don't blow up technically like a nuclear weapon. Hope that makes sense

@@OsamaBaig Thank you for explaining! I'm currently only 15 with a large interest for energy politics and nuclear energy while dreaming of becoming a nuclear engineer in the future. So learning anything and everything about it enjoys me a lot 😄

Chernobyl and Fukushima Daichi diasters were all hydrogen explosion. As Osama pointed out the enrichment level of nuclear fuel in reactors cannot create bomb like explosion. The culprit is zirconium. Zirconium is used in the nuclear fuel rod casing. When exposed to high temperature steam, zirconium reacts with hot steam and give out hydrogen. It is those hydrogen caused the two explosions.

@@catchnkill Thank you for explaining it even more for me!

Edisoned, I believe the best way is to get a co-op or internship, especially if your a student. Alternatively, you can try to apply directly for full time jobs after you get your masters degree or another qualification. What are you studying specifically, and what types of jobs are you interested in? Maybe I can help guide you better

You can reprocess all you want, however you need permanent disposal for ILW and HLW. Deep geological repositories are built based on the burn up of fuel's, thus the more you utilize them the smaller footprint a DGR will have. However, it is a solution that is needed

@@OsamaBaig deeply (sorry) disagree that they're needed. Once you're actually recycling fuel and have either patience or fast neutron reactors, there is no "waste," just fuel and neutron absorbers.

They may perform for longer periods of time, but its an entire life cycle cost and resource availability. You need to do extensive feasibility studies on whether its worth 1) Building specialized manufacturing facilities for the blended fuels 2) Supply chain cost for thorium and fissile material (how easy is it to transport in and availability) 3) Is is advantageous for the country to get access to this resource (for a country like Canada which has ample amounts of uranium it may not make sense) 4) Design changes required for reactors (you need to make adjustments to the reactor to burn different fuel sources)

@@OsamaBaig If I may point you to CleanCore/ANEEL (Advanced Nuclear Energy-Enriched Life) Thorium+HALEU fuel that you just load'n'go into a CANDU. No design changes needed, just changes to operations procedures. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/pKeFd9iS1ta6h2w.html A little bit of HALEU and a lot of thorium carefully distributed in the existing CANDU fuel bundle form-factor, and carefully distributed in and around the core, that potentially yields a 7-fold reduction in daily loading consumption (and thus SNF/HLW unloading). Proposed commercialisation in 2025 if supply chain for thorium & HALEU has been settled. Since most HALEU these days is ex Russia, here's hoping for some stabilising 'regime change' in that country before 2025!

hi from Russia, Yekaterinburg. I think that mr. Putin will not use nuclear weapons, which we have abot 3000. But if it happens it'll be a terrible crime against all planet. Today our and Ukrainian guys kill each other for stupid political ambitions. That war already start killing Ukrainian and Russian peaceful nuclear projects and will delay some NP in europe and everywhere. Its wery ashame. In may "Rosatom" planned to organize IYNC-2022 and i know that Osama planned to visit Sochi and i to planned. But war broke our plans (that is nothing in compare with life of young guys, who died and who will die soon). Sorry for my Eng.

Ojasv, in all honesty the situation is changing very quick. Its also a political topic which my channel is not focused toward, thus I choose not to comment on this topic on public platforms. However, I'm sure others have opinions which they are welcome to share

I do belive that people will develop more "hete" towards nuclear related topics since it already is a really misunderstood topic. I do think most people currently and will be; scared of nuclear powerplants being used as "weapons" or for extortion.

The Calandria and "Calandria tube" are completely different components. The Calandria is the large non-pressurized shell that houses all of the fuel channels. The Calandria tube and pressure tube is part of the fuel channel assembly. There are hundreds of fuel channels in the reactor. Hope that makes sense

@@OsamaBaig that clarifies a lot better. thanks

PWHR's use natural uranium and also produce radiomedical isotopes which operating. I wonder if there is a complete breakdown for life cycle cost of CANDU versus PWR. There are next generation of CANDU designs such as the ACR-1000 or EC6 (Enhanced CANDU 6) , it has a lot of unique benefits, have you done research into that one?

@@OsamaBaig Yes, they use unenriched uranium but they also need more fuel given the low concentration of fissile material. The only think I know about Enhanced CANDU is that China is interested in building a couple of them to explore the possibility of using thorium and DUPIC. What I think is that our best hope to revive the nuclear industry worldwide is to "forget" futuristic IV gen. reactors and bet on existing technology: PWRs, BWRs ad PHWRs. Each of these three technologies has its own benefits and they all have room for improvements, it is much easier to improve an existing and well established technology than to bet on completely new designs. PWRs are the industry's workhorse, almost all of the reactors under construction are PWRs. But PWRs don't have a lot to be improved, perhaps they could be build with supercritical water but that is pretty much it. BWRs are simple and they have great room for improvement: they can be built relatively easily with supercritical water (to increase the thermal efficiency thereby reducing the fuel consumption) and/or they can be build with a reduced moderation configuration. Reduced moderation BWRs would increase the breeding ratio (they could get close to breeder reactors and the burn-up would increase) with uranium fuels or they could be use for thorium fuels (PWRs are not very good for thorium). I think that reduced moderation is a very interesting thing because it would produce great advantages from a well-known and well-established design. PHWRs have amazing features among which the possibility of using spent fuel from LWRs (HWRs are more expensive to build but the spent fuel from LWRs would be free thus improving the economics of the power plant) and capability of using thorium so that you would be able to differentiate the suppliers of fuel. Extremely interesting is the Indian Advanced Heavy Water Reactor, which is a heavy water moderated and light boiling water reactor designed specifically to use thorium-plutonium fuels. Using plutonium-MOX fuels in LWRs with a relatively low neutron economy does not make much sense. Using the recovered plutonium in thorium fuels in HWRs is probably smarter. In my humble opinion, to revive the nuclear industry we should bet on existing technologies based on water reactors (with room for improvement). In the mean time it is a good idea, off course, to support R&D on IV gen. but these designs are a not even remotely close to be commercially available. If we really want to build 5000 GWe of nuclear energy across the globe in the next three decades (which is what we would need) there is little hope to do so with unproven technologies.

I believe it's all about how you sell the reactor. The world of commercial management, relationship building, sales and other agreements. But it would definitely be nice to see a CANDU operating in the UK morrolandlawrence

Very true, its a phenomenal reactor type

Sabine Hossenfelder has a great video on it. Short answer, the calculations vary a lot, but the while lifetime co2 is similar to things like wind power and solar. Potentially lower.

Absolutely! CANDU's have liquid zone control, reactor buildings (a strong concrete containment), vaccum buildings, thermosyphoning capabilities and many other safety features

Sorrry about that Andreas, its normal for educationalish youtubers like myself. Also, I like to speak with my hands, its fun!

@@OsamaBaig is it some kind of cutting effect ?

@@kasel1979krettnach It could be, I'm thinking of uploading these videos into a podcast style that might be helpful if your more comfortable with audio only

China's two CANDU are actual CANDU reactors. The ones in India are all expect one of them PWHR's hence why India wasn't mentioned as much as the other nations

It honestly is Angelica! Would love to see more of these built across Canada

Like Don Rickles used to say “having trouble keeping up? Am I going too fast for you”. lol Just pause it or double click back etc. I do it all the time, maybe cause I’m so friggin old.

Simplifying concepts really does help those new to the industry or those that are generally interested in concepts learn a lot!

@@OsamaBaig That is true for analogies that actually explain something because the math that governs the behavior of both phenomena uses the same operators and configuration just with different scalar constants. But making poor analogies just causes people to model things incorrectly in their mind. To draw conclusions that are false.