I had no idea but we apparently do have a centrifuge plant operating. For some reason I thought we were still only had ancient gaseous diffusion plants.

lol "nucular"

​@@jjohn662 I was rather wondering if it's normal naming for reactor starting up, and my "what blew up?" reacion was derivative of popculture and it's portrayal of nuclear energy.

Oops, yeah in hind sight perhaps I should have said "initial criticality", but yes, "critical" is the correct terminology for what a reactor does

Last I heard your electricity cost 28 cents per kWh. Nuclear is almost certainly viable there. At those prices you could probably make money burning Faberge eggs to generate electricity.

yes! it's massive

that's awesome! I'm jealous

If you care about Climate change then only nuke power will do. Most carbon negative energy possible.

"Going critical" must be one of the most misunderstood phrases ever. Thanks to certain TV shows we all used to watch. A reactor can be in three states: Subcritical - this means the chain reaction is slowing down. There are less and less neutrons to do the atom splitting, and the chain reaction will eventually stop. The reactor will shut down at that point. This can happen slowly through inserting the control rods a bit more (and/or putting some extra boron in your water if you're running a PWR) when you want less power, or fast when the control rods are inserted all at once through a scram (a scram is like an emergency brake on the reactor). Critical - This means the chain reaction isn't going up, it isn't going down, everything is stable. Only one neutron out of the three being born from each splitting atom will continue the chain reaction. Power reactors will be in this critical state most of the time, it is the state where useful work gets done. Supercritical - This is the state to watch out for. This is the state where things are speeding up. More and more neutrons will be available for the chain reaction, making it go faster and faster. If not very closely controlled, it can get wildly out of control very quick due to the neutron growth being exponential, rather than linear. But you will need a little of the supercritical state, or else you would never get your reactor to full power. Hope this very simplified explanation clarifies it a little😄

yes, that is a good point. Until first criticality, it's just a bunch of structure with fuel sitting in water

you got it! a water tank for cooling. Reprocessing has actually been legal in the US since the 80s but it's just more expensive than mining uranium, so that's the main reason it's not done

@@TheAtomicAgeCM I see. For quite some time I've only heard the argument it was banned and that was it. I decided to do a deep dive and you're right, the ban was lifted by Raegan in 1981.

Ah yes, fusion is always some years away haha I have no doubt humanity will one day harness fusion for electricity but I think it will be some time more - probably after the climate change crisis has been solved (managed is a better word?). So, yes, they finally got some net energy out of a fusion reaction in the lab. The fusion they do in this lab is shooting amazingly powerful lasers at a fuel target to super-compress and super-heat it to start fusion. The experiments are mainly for nuclear weapons research. I'm not sure how feasible their setup would be for electricity production. For that, look to the Tokamak reactor at ITER in France. That design is the leading candidate for energy production from fusion. The problem with fusion is that you need these horrifically high pressures and temperatures to do it - fission (current nuclear plants) is much easier and happens at much more reasonable temperatures and pressures. But the experiment shows that fusion can be done (it is already done in the sun and in thermonuclear weapons, but we don't want to blow up the reactor). This video has some great details: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/gNuio891y7bNY4k.html

Fusion power was demonstrated in Greenhouse George in 1951. The concept was nailed down with Ivy Mike in 1954, 10 megaton yield. Fusion works. The problem is one of scaling. We would not have all of these idiotic wars over oil if we have sufficient fusion and fission power plants.

Hi, Jake. Thank you! Yes, they are on the list. Not sure when I'll get to them, though.

Thanks so much, Ramirez! These reactors are each in the 1.1 gigawatts of electricity range. There's Vogtle Unit 3 and also Unit 4 that will come online sometime next year, I believe, and together can power 1.5+ million homes

@@TheAtomicAgeCM Wow, these are big. That's a ridiculous amount of clean energy. It reminds me of the twin RBMK-1500s at the Ignalina station. Those two reactors basically powered the entire country of Lithuania, with room to spare. Pretty amazing when you stop to think about it. If only people weren't so afraid of nuclear power. It really is the way to go if we want to drastically cut back our emissions. Thanks for all the good info!

that's a good one, I like that. My mind has been thinking a lot in the past few days about apt car analogies. So, yeah, uncontrolled supercriticality in a reacto is like saying it blew a headgasket or a cylinder ring, maybe even snapped a rod