What about the nuclear waste though?

@@shiakas storing it underground is not the only way of dealing with it the real question to ask is the cost per kWh - is it cheaper than natural gas?

It's not developed yet.

@@shiakas it is TRISO so although nuclear waste you could throw it in the reservoir and there’d be no danger.

@@shiakas Excellent question/concern. Is this really the "Life Cycle" if it does not close that loop? The waste is right where it was made. Short of the irradiated graphite and steel, all the bad nasty stuff is trapped in the TRISO coating. We can take to a hot cell and extract for things like Medical Isotopes or Satellite Batteries. Worst case scenario, the government (US has weird waste laws) vitrifies it into glass for disposal.

pretty sure this is animated using cities:skyline game

Just been playing SimCity today...

The "return to a green field" is not difficult. The waste storage facility, though...

Finland started his geological storage facility not too long ago.

Geological waste storage isn't a problem. It's called deep borehole. You drill using same tech and bury waste 3-4 kilometers deep, and refill. Because fracking has innovated cheaper horizontal drilling the waste can be entombed forever without fear of reintroduction into the environment.

they will come around eventually but do realize we're talking about new nuclear technologies - and there is an unimaginable amount of redtape involved with introducing new nuclear technologies. there are a number of designs that should enter demo test stage in the next 5-7 years. hopes are to see the first commercial waste burner reactors in 2030.

@George Mann Politicians. Same as criminals, if you ask me.

@George Mann link isnt working ?

Go to 1:27 of the video for an explanation. Bury waste or GHG emission is the obvious trade off.

Lmao, armchair scientists.

Yes

The problem with LFTR is it's untested tech. Sure, in maybe two to three decades we should all switch to it assuming it works as well as it looks, but in the mean time small modular reactors should get going as fast as possible. I'm sure they know the value of thorium, but there isn't even a single thorium reactor that's functional right now

@@0candlestick0 I know what your saying, but SMFRs are actually further behind LFTRs in development, SMFRs are still in planning phase where as LFTR prototypes are currently being built. Really looking forward to these becoming mainstream tho, and even paid up to help reduce waste output. It's my small ray of sunshine in this crazy crazy world.

@@0candlestick0 soviets tested it on a attack submarine in the 70s

@@Therealprinceofcobh Those were solid-fueled reactors with lead-bismuth coolant.

@@caav56 commonly thought so in the west. They where actually Molten salt reactors

With control rods (like France) or by redirecting coolant to heat up the molten salt heat storage/using pre-heated molten salt to increase heat output to turbogenerators, while reactor adjusts power.

@@caav56 I'll look into the molten salt solution incorporated into nukes - definitely sounds interesting. I know of a number of solar thermal generators in Spain and one in the US that use this technology, but it has proved to be extremely problematic due to the shut downs and amount of energy input it takes if the nitrate salts "freeze" somewhere in the system. The steady heat available from a nuclear station may mitigate some of these problems. France also pays the Swiss to take nuke generated power at night when load is low; the Swiss use this electricity, which they are paid to take, to run hydro generators backwards thereby pumping water up in altitude in the Alps, then gets paid again to load follow when demand is higher in the day by dropping that water. This requires both unique geography and political will. A pump storage facility in SoCal has been under development for decades and will likely never get built due to CEQA permitting issues. For what it's worth, I'm a HUGE fan of nuclear power, but like other air emission free sources of electricity it requires some mechanism to meet fluctuating demand. Big difference with nukes is that they can run around the clock regardless of environmental conditions such as wind or sun. Perfect for base load power and combined with load following technology can be a significant contributor to lowering air emissions from human activity.

@@brentlanyon4654 I see. I've also seen a project of NPP, with reactor cooled by supercritical steam, that could produce hydrogen during the lowered demand hours and burn it in cogenerating gas turbine power unit for peaking purposes. The name of this article was "Performance analysis of a supercritical water-cooled nuclear reactor integrated with a combined cycle, a Cu-Cl thermochemical cycle and a hydrogen compression system"

@@caav56 Very cool tech! Obviously requires abundant water for hydrolysis. Would also require some modifications to the gas turbine burning that hydrogen; I worked on a cogeneration project in Texas whose steam host had excess hydrogen that was sent back to the power plant to be mixed with NG and burned in the gas turbines. Operators had to be very careful not to blend too much hydrogen into the mix or it would cause problems with the engine. It was a long time ago, and can't remember if it was accelerated wear on the combustion buckets or the blades/vanes. Nice to meet up with other random energy geeks on the internetz!

@@brentlanyon4654 I see. GE claims their turbines can run on up to 100% H2, but those claims... not sure, if it's for future turbines or if it'll lower the lifetime of a turbine. Also, I've seen hydrogen combustion can generate high levels of NOx emissions, if combusted with atmospheric air, which might've spiked the emissions beyond what's allowed. Aside from that, it can also cause flashbacks, blowoffs and combustion instabilities, so... I guess combustion buckets, in your case. And true, nice to meet you too! On a side note, I wonder, what kind of esoteric metallurgy would be required for the supercritical steam-cooled fast reactor... neutron flux, combined with supercritical steam, was known to wreck most of the nuclear alloys known, but Soviets actually managed to get oxygen-rich staged combustion running, so... this might be within the bounds of possibility.

you prevent a meltdown in the first place - with passive cooling. it's very easy to stop nuclear reaction - it happens only in the most suitable conditions, so as soon as you take away these conditions it stops itself. then you have a decay heat to deal with (that's where the problems came from in 3 mile and Fukushima) - but you can calculate exactly how much thermal energy is there going to be, and design passive systems accordingly. that's why small reactors are way safer than huge ones - simply because you can build a passive cooling system capable of cooling down this reactor in literally any circumstances.

@@mikez2779 So this produces power by creating steam generated by heat in the reactor which spins a turbine? Or some other way?

@@daviddickey9832 not familiar with this design but I would imagine so. I mean.. even fusion reactors are in the end just a super fancy way of boiling water... It's just the easiest, the cheapest and the most proven way of turning heat into electricity - even if you end up wasting heck of a lot of energy in the process.

Well, its not a debunk. But i think molten salt reactors are hundreds of times better, produces more energy, cleaner and safer. Search for Thorium Reactors.

@@brianfhunter yes but also no, there aren't any functioning right now, and most leading scientists have pointed out a handful of issues that need to be figured out first. Yes they are better, but in the mean time it's not worth shutting down or preventing systems like this from becoming a thing

@@0candlestick0 - There are not any COMERCIALY functioning right now, but are many prototypes on the last stages of testing, The problem is, governments regulates and prohibits 99% of private research and production, at the same time give close to zero money for they own research... to put in perspective, US gives more money to foreign countries for LGBTQ+ programs than MSR projects. . Governments have priorities, solving Real Problems is not even on the list.

@@brianfhunter TRISO fuels are ver safe cheap easy to build and already in the perfect form for ultimate disposal.

There is no such thing as an absolute propability of zero accidents and anybody that tells you there is a swindler or a politician.

@George Mann And all those examples were not accidents?

@George Mann My post was making the point that a zero accident propability is impossible because a zero error projection is also impossible. What makes the difference is the level of regulation and enforcement. Unlike most of those examples you sited the nuclear power industry in the western world is by far the most heavily regulated. So it all comes down to reducing the propability of accidents because a zero accident projection is impossible.

Any powerplant will have problems. They wanted to tell you how they made serious problems not very stressful with their technology.

It literally cannot meltdown, did you not hear that ?

Hitachi joined the project recently.

33% efficiency, up to 30 MWth on full power. You can see it on their site.

When your fuel is cheap and millions more times more dense than gasoline efficiency isn't as important as safety.

there is a limit of how much info can you pass in 2 min video clip, you know...

Because common knowledge says so? A modern reactor has never had a meltdown. And the issue of waste was explained, what’s your problem with the solution?

Why not?

@@anxiousearth680 cause it's simply the substance that every plant breath

@@zaloarg And we breathe oxygen but pure oxygen will make you sick. Too much of a good thing. Plants already rely on a natural carbon cycle. They don't need on our industry for co2. It takes millions of years for oil to form. We're releasing carbon that's supposed to stay buried.

Well, start naming them.

Yeah, name 1 million things that could go wrong.

Nuclear has been around long enough to make it clear that the cancer risk for even workers is very low. It's only in disasters where the effects are terrible. With proper regulation you end up with very clean reliable energy.

@@edgrrr2012 "With proper regulation" ... If something can go wrong, or if there is even the tiniest possibility of incorrect operation, then it will go wrong. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, maybe five years from now. But it will go wrong. And with hardly any other technology than nuclear fission, the tiniest errors have such serious consequences. Windscale, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima. Everything was state of the art, everything was considered as safe, everything avoidable accidents and yet everything went wrong. Went catastrophically wrong. Thousands of people dead, tens of thousands of people sick, facing a slow, painful death. For what? For just bring water to boil, to drive an antiquated generator with the steam and to generate electricity so that you can boil the water for your coffee at home. And in the end, tens of thousands of tons of highly toxic waste remain, highly radioactive for millions of years. Very complicated and expensive to dispose of. Highly dangerous for a period longer than the mankind has ever existed. Is that really cheap, reliable energy? Are you really that stupid? O.k. Come, order your reactor and build it in your basement. Live on it, every day. And pray every day that the technician who controls it slept well last night and is not too tired to react properly at a crucial moment. People make mistakes. Everywhere, every day. Every people. But nuclear reactors are not forgiving any mistakes. There are a few things in the universe of that man should keep his hands off. Nuclear fission is one of them. We speculate where atoms come from, what they are made of and what they might look like. But we haven't seen a single atom to date. Seen correctly, like we see a vidus under a microscope. And yet we play around with them and tell ourselves that we understand them. We build bombs out of them to kill other people because their imaginary friend has a different name. We are destroying the planet, all life on it and ultimately ourselves. The so far only planet in the entire universe of which we know for sure that life is possible on it and exists there. And all that pnly for our convenience. So that the electricity continues to come out of the socket in the wall. And if possible, costs nothing.

@@ASRvw so should we shut down everything with risk? There are industrial accidents every year killing people. You're absolutely right that more nuclear accidents may eventually happen but with proper learning from past accidents there can be more mitigation. Nuclear at least can go decades with nothing but with one accident people lose it. We haven't had another Chernobyl for example, because industry has learned from it. I really do not believe nuclear is as bad as some people think.

@@edgrrr2012 You measure with two different measures. If an oil refinery explodes or another chemical plant such as Pepcon, it usually costs the life of a few to a few hundred employees and maybe a few civilians who live in the immediate vicinity of the plant. The released chemicals contaminate the soil for ten, twenty years, maybe a hundred, in the worst case a thousand years - but everything is usually localized. Nuclear accidents like Chernobyl cost the lives of a few to a few hundred employees. BUT beyond that, in the long term, thousands to hundreds of thousands of civilians, some of whom do not even live in the same country. Even more, sometimes even worldwide. The radioactive cloud from Fukushima was measurable around the whole planet. Maybe I'll die of cancer at 60. But maybe I would never have got this cancer without Chernobyl and Fukushima and would live to be 100 years old. I dont know. What I do know, however, is that as a result of the dropping of the two atomic bombs, which are tiny by today's standards, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, now 75 years and three generations later, people are still dying of and children are being born with the most severe deformities. In contrast to chemicals that were released after a refinery explosion and have almost completely disappeared from the surrounding nature after a hundred years, the most harmless uranium isotope U234 has a half-life of 254,000 years, uranium 238, which also occurs in nuclear facilities and is released in the event of accidents has a half-life of 4.46 billion years. Nuclear fission reactors do not produce vital chemicals that cannot be produced otherwise. They only bring water to a boil in order to generate electricity with the resulting steam so that electric light works in households. Electricity that can also be produced using at least 20 other methods that are not so risky. Photovoltaics, solar thermal energy, wind energy, hydropower, tidal energy, geothermal energy, hydrogen fuel cells, all of these technologies generate the same electrical energy for the same electrical light without heating the climate, BUT above all without making entire cities uninhabitable. And the next generation of nuclear energy, clean and safe nuclear fusion, a nuclear energy, which has been making our sun shine for 4.5 billion years and for another 4 billion years, is currently being intensively researched. The only argument that advocates of nuclear fission can use in their favor is that the electricity produced is cheap for the end user. But it is only because indirect victims of accidents do not have to be compensated and the follow-up costs for the disposal of the fuel are not included. In short, there is nothing than an artificially embellished, economic argument that speaks in favor of generating electricity with this potentially dangerous technology. There are enough safe alternatives. And it can also be expected of an American to pay a price twice as high for his electricity.

@@ASRvw ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy