Debate: Does the world need nuclear energy?
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- čas přidán 9. 06. 2010
- www.ted.com Nuclear power: the energy crisis has even die-hard environmentalists reconsidering it. In this first-ever TED debate, Stewart Brand and Mark Z. Jacobson square off over the pros and cons. A discussion that'll make you think -- and might even change your mind.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the "Sixth Sense" wearable tech, and "Lost" producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at www.ted.com/translate. Watch a highlight reel of the Top 10 TEDTalks at www.ted.com/index.php/talks/top10 - Věda a technologie
19:47 "5 years from now we'll blow you away." I'm still waiting.
+epicman004 They need to edit the audio to ''5 years from now we''ll blow you''
+1GTX1
Still waiting.
+epicman004 5 years later and we have just yesterday managed to fire up the first nuclear fusion reactor for a tenth of a second. give this reactor 10-20 years and we will never hear of energy problems again. to be clear, this is a hydrogen fusion reactor. it 100% clean energy. so actually this guy is kinda right, though i think he probably thought in the wrong direction.
There are a numbers of fusion reactors that have been working for years, like the NIF, the IETR, and a couple others, and we've been waiting for decades for them to do anything useful.
kokofan50 i know that there are allready fusion reactors out there. but those could hold plasma for a maximum of about 7 minutes. the problem with that is that you can't harvest enough energy in that short time, so that you have a negative energy balance in the end.
the exciting thing about wendelstein is, that it is a completely new approach to holding onto the plasma. this reactor has the capability to hold plasma for more then 30 minutes, which would mean that you have high POSITIVE energy balance at the end! :)
the recent test was only done, to prove that the new concept works and it does.
with this new technology a functional fusionreactor with a big positive energy output is finally possible. and THAT is why this is not your "every day" fusion reactor. :)
19:47 "5 years from now we'll blow you away"... Its almost 2017... the world has yet to have been blown away by "renewables" lol.
France is making amazing amounts of power from Nuclear, 80% of their power comes from Nuclear and they are selling to Germany who have implemented large amounts of renewable sources of energy.
it is almost 2019 now lol
2018, cheapest energy on earth, without subsidy, fully commercial, is solar. 1.79 cents/kwh. no commercial nuclear without subsidy can achieve this
@pabem In the middle of the day, yes. Try using solar at night
@pabem In California we use solar and have batteries to use it, but we end up relying on natural gas which is dirty. Nuclear power is the best option until fusion is available.
That's a hardcore twist on that graph. "We have to find something where nuclear will have the highest bar, and lets use length of construction." Never mentions that the long construction time is a direct result of government delay.
It really seems like you're using the classic libertarian "just deregulate it" argument.
if the Terapower type truck in units were added to the existing power plants it would slash construction times and leave the grid in it's current configuration
@@hawkeyepierce9794 yea the point is if you use standardised design then I don't really understand why should this design wait several years for approval every time - if each and every one of this reactors would be the same.
As for localisation approval let the government find suitable locations. And this process really is no different to finding suitable locations for wind or solar farms, and even more so, for hydro.
He actually says why it takes forever, actual construction was 4 to 9 years. So by smoothing up the process we can decrease build time by 10 to 15 years. The anti-nuclear guy is actually helping the pro-nuclear case.
France got their reactor build time down to 4 years. We could have built dozens since this debate occurred. But no, we have to wait for battery technology that is never going to happen and a renewable revolution that isn't possible for another century. We're all going to die, and it's because of public ignorance and fear.
"In 5 years you'll be blown away at what these renewable energy supplies can do over nuclear energy"
I'm here 11 years later, yet to be impressed 😅
⚛️⚛️⚛️
nowadays renewable energy sources such as wind or solar are much cheaper than nuclear. ofc there's the energy storage issue but renewables have come a far way.
@@cringelord7542 i hope u realize that 1 single nuclear power plant produces much more energy than energy sources such as wind or solar. ask urself, how many solar panels/wind turbines is it gonna take to reach the output of a single nuclear plant? and how much space is it gonna take? not to mention, nuclear energy is the most reliable energy source - operates 92% of the time during the period of a year. while solar is only operating 24% of the time, and wind 35% of the time in a year.
@@cringelord7542 if goverment invested more in nuclear just like all the renewable the cost of it would decrease by lot since we have a fuel which is not being used which is thorium , seriously we are getting fed nonsense , thorium solves everything
The Nuclear side didn't make the counterpoint that the same will be true of Nuclear power. There is some incredible reactor designs that will be coming out in the next 5-6 years.
The Renewables guy only put forward data from California to support his argument that combining renewables can provide a reliable baseload. It just doesn't work out for allot of places in the world, like the UK, which doesn't have the solar and hydro resources that America does. Nuclear works the same anywhere in the world.
Also, the Nuclear guy didn't have time to elaborate on Thorium, molten salt reactors, recycling nuclear waste, etc, which would take away most of the concerns about safety and nuclear weapons.
Dan Ward He should have definitely talked about safety but even old uranium LWR technology is safer per kwh energy than fossil fuels and even solar
+Dan Ward As a matter of documented fact, if you go to the trouble to analyse it, the Natural Resources Defense Council data on emissions for 2012 shows that my supplier in Virginia provides energy at about the lowest rate of emissions per kWh than any but purely hydroelectric or nuclear companies. That's Dominion Power, with 48% of its energy produced by nuclear.
California's air quality dropped sharply in 2012.
2012 was the year that Barbara Boxer harangued the NRC not to relicense the San Onofre reactors, which had one leak in the heat exchanger.
"Radioactive water" from the enclosed reactor circuit was released to the enclosed secondary, the power circuit. The radioactivity came from the very briefly very radioactive isotope 16 of nitrogen. It is created from ordinary isotope 16 of oxygen, in H2O, by neutrons that being uncharged can pass between the atoms of the steel piping. 14.26 billion atoms of N-16, in 7.13 seconds, create 7.13 billion radioactive emissions (beta particles) and become oxygen again. In just less than 3.6 minutes, there might be 14 of those nitrogen atoms left.
Note the relationship between lifetime and radioactivity. It starts off at a billion becquerels, one GBq, and drops to single figures (Bq) in a very few minutes. A beta particle is a superfast electron. It does not get very far.
The American National Academy of Sciences has demonstrated that Jacobson's 'study' is a flat out lie. He overestimated the hydro backup potential by a factor of 100! His WWS (wind water solar) study is WWS (wrong wrong stupid).
www.environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/6/22/the-case-for-100-percent-renewables-rested-on-a-lie-heres-what-it-teaches-us-about-energy-and-the-environment
Actual study here
www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/06/16/1610381114.full
Are Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo (The Hulk) and other celebrities that have given Jacobson celebrity endorsement now going to retract that? Are they honest enough to admit, as Dr James Hansen says, that for *most* countries the choice is nuclear power or climate change? eclipsenow.wordpress.com/refuel/
@@albertrogers8537 San Onofre was a lot more problematic than a leak. There were resonance and vibration issues with an UNLICENSED modification to the heat exchanger system that would have broken the whole system in due time. Fromthe NRCthe problem was "the failure to verify the adequacy of the thermal-hydraulic and flow-induced vibration design of the San Onofre replacement steam generators, resulting in excessive and unexpected steam generator tube wear." It was a Wall St. /bean counter driven decision and it failed spectacularly. www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/watchdog/sdut-san-onofre-anniversary-2016jan30-htmlstory.html
Because, like it or not, thorium molten salt reactors are still decades away.
This is completely new tech. Which means on every step they would have to go through certification process. It's gonna take forever.
They made this a debate between renewable and nuclear. The only debate is between nuclear and coal. Everyone agrees that renewables are good but realistically they aren't 100% feasible. Something needs to fill the gap and there are two choices, nuclear and coal. In my opinion nuclear is the clear clean choice.
killax7 everyone that is informed knows that renewables aren't feasible to take over but the general public doesn't agree
This! The future is always going to be a mix, the current mission is to reduce coal/gas use and reliance as fast as possible. Nuclear is not a perfect solution but is absolutely necessary to fill the gap while improvements are made and other alternatives are found.
Everyone agrees? Not that guy in the video
Since fossil fuels are causing immense damage, even beside the civilization-and-nature-ending thing of GHGs, they're not a choice at all except for insane people.
And since nuclear reactors are deadly in several ways, link to nuclear weapons in several ways, are more expensive (don't talk to me about technologies that don't exist) & there will inevitably be more and worse accidents, nuclear is an insane choice, too. Especially since clean safe renewable energy in the forms of solar PV; solar CSP; clothesline paradox solar like passive & active solar water & space heating & cooling; onshore and offshore wind; geothermal; hydro; micro-hydro; some tidal; and eventually wave and OTEC; and tiny amounts of biomass if needed, can supply all the energy humanity needs. Indeed, either solar alone, or wind alone, or geothermal alone could provide all we need, so it's absurd to deny that all of them together plus efficiency, wiser lives, and demand response can.
And dozens of countries & dozens of studies show so.
The only uncertainty in that equation is price, and it's also clear from an overwhelming preponderance of information that clean safe renewable energies, even with batteries, even without including the enormous externalities and other subsidies, are already cheaper than any other source (except efficiency and wiser lives) and are still getting cheaper. Projections of 70% more of a drop are credible, although every projection by every mainstream entity has been woefully linear & pessimistic, failing to project the relentless, astounding price drops in solar, wind, batteries, and to some extent now, geothermal. And improvements in software and techniques of use and integration are also helping. There's no excuse any longer for being ignorant or dishonest about this.
@@J4Zonian 7 years later I have gained enough cynicism that I know the error in my words. The ignorance about nuclear energy is insurmountable. Governments refuse to invest in long term infrastructure that will help future generations. Wish your kids good luck.
2019, still waiting for renewables to blow me away.
In the mean time, we could've built a bunch of nuclear power plants.
Whoops.
so true.
Hail storm: hello!
This is both sad and true. Back in the early nineties we started to focus on CO2 emissions. Had we also started to build nuclear power back then using already available technology the Western world would have been running on 100% CO2 free electricity by now. Instead it was prevented by the very same people today complaining the most over our use of fossil fuel.
Anti-nuclear guy resorts to heavily massaged data and bad science to try and crowbar his ill-informed ideology into the realm of fact, with little success. Embarrassing to watch.
Datashat It just goes to show that ivy league credentials don't buy intellectual honesty.
Datashat - He keeps saying there's no need for nuclear power.....how about we keep the nuclear power, which has killed almost nobody, and get rid of coal, which is killing hundreds of thousands of people a year?
+datashad Agreed
+J Lockerius How do you say nuclear has killed no one - this isn't true when power plants have "issues". And there is no data regarding others
+Datashat Funny how when one doesn't agree, the "heavily massaged or heavily edited" message comes out
"We've analysed the hour-by-hour energy demand IN CALIFORNIA"... I'm pretty sure that California is not a representative sample of the ENTIRE PLANET...
California also imports plenty of it's energy from coal plants surrounding the state's borders. He forgot to mention that!
That guy followed "Be aware of the propaganda" right up with his own propaganda. "Poisonous for hundreds of thousands of years" -> It's pretty bad when TED posts a debate when so many people have no clue about the topic.. But yeah, obviously there just are some words that affect the audience's mind in a certain way, and "poison" definitely is one of them.
Yeah man, its typical trial by facebook.
Oh yeah, that "beware of propaganda" statement was a wild show of irony. Organizations like Greenpeace are the lords of using misleading propaganda to make people unreasonably fear nuclear.
+Okana Adonis I was thinking same thing. He could have been talking about his own position just as easily
Hundreds of thousands of years, eh? I wonder, how long do the non-radioactive components of coal ash and the toxics in semiconductors and the wastes from their production remain poisonous?
@@benjaminmyers5299 Also remember, that the longer a material is radioactive, the less radioactive it is. It can release only so many particles and the discussion is then on the timeframe of it.
It was stated that it takes a long time to build a nuclear power plant. 90% of the time he stated it takes was the result of having to get and wait for permits. It has been made artificially expensive to build and maintain a nuclear power generator because of having to pay huge fees just for the paperwork. Its the same reason why I can't generate my own power for my house. In my city it will cost more than $8,000 in legal fees and permits to set up my own solar panels and power storage. This is an artificial cost created to keep me connected to city utilities and shelling out more money every month. You can't complain that something costs too much when you're the reason for the problem in the first place. Thats a logical fallacy.
+Verdigo Also, the Anti-Nuke failed to disclose that these permitting time-frames are based on the custom bespoke and outdated approaches to building reactors. Today, Generation 4 designs would be optimized, standardized and modularized. That's how the US Navy does it today...with the USS Virginia Class SSN's.
It's 2021 and we're still waiting to be blown away by renewables. These people are selling fantasies and jeopardising our futures. We need nuclear for medical isotopes, fuel for the voyager probes, energy, fire alarms, and numerous other things. The future is nuclear, no matter how you slice it.
His argument about nuclear weapons is also disingenuous. Any country that is willing to spend a portion of their GDP into nuclear weapons can build nuclear weapons without even touching reactors. Take Uranium out of the ground, enrich it, and then presto--Nuclear bombs. But people seriously buy this nonsense that proliferation is going to get worse by building reactors.
@@infini_ryu9461 I am amazed at USA - fights nuclear, yet allows school shootings. Enforces long-waiting time permits, and still you can buy a gun freely.
Mindblowing
@@shmadmanuts I mean it doesn't allow school shootings, but they have a serious mental health problem. Their young boys are living in a country hostile to them.
@Verdigo
Everything there is deceptive. Nuclear reactors take a long time to build for many reasons; the need for safety measures for a potentially catastrophic technology is one completely justifiable one. That has nothing to do with the excess permitting, fees, and laws against solar that are being created by states ruled by fossil fuel money and designed, set up and passed by Republicans (and right wing Democrats) funded and lead by the nose by Koch, Exxon, ALEC, et al. (But 8k is highly suspect. I wonder if that's true.)
People who don't want nuclear built because it remains unsafe no matter what precautions are taken are correct, so there's no fallacy. Opposing a dangerous technology at every step is the only rational course to take. And since it takes longer for reactors to be built for other reasons, too, nuclear is useless in meeting the current dire crisis. Understanding that is also rational, especially since we have perfectly able technologies that are infinitely safer as well as cheaper and involve less corrupt industry-government collaboration.
I feel a whole lotta projection goin on here. The fallacy (actually more of a weaponized projective identification bind) you mention is constantly used against renewables by ARFs (anti-renewable fanatics) and is infinitely less sensible and more fallacitic used against RE, since the assertions are true about nuclear, absolutely not true about clean safe renewable energy.
Nuclear guy: "facts numbers facts numbers facts"
Other guy: "WHAT ABOUT EXPLOSHUNS"
GulDukatDidNothingWrong wring.
Audience: what about the thousands of years of nuclear waste?
Radiation elderly: silence, because he’s gonna die soon and it’s not his concern
@@gilbertopereira7795 you can store all our nuclear waste for the next several hundred years inside yucca mountain, and unlike with CO2 emissions, it's contained and can't harm anyone who doesn't get within spitting-distance of it.
@@gilbertopereira7795 You are aware that the "thousand year waste" has really low radioactivity right? Longer half lives mean the less likely an isotope will decay, means the less likely one will receive a dose. That is why the waste scientists are concerned about are the waste of the first 30 years (Strontium 90 and Caesium 137)
@@gilbertopereira7795 You have no idea about even the basics of the topic. If something is radioactive for thousands of years it means quite a low radioactive level waste.
A 2GWe NPP produces about 6m2 of high level waste / year.
Pls. enlighten us you genius what will happen about 4500 2MWe composites and other waste of windmills following 20-25 years...? About 4500 2MWe windmill produces the same amount of electricity as a single 2GWe nuclear plant...
So let's do some calculations:
Thorium nuclear power:
Income: 525 000 000 $
Capital: 1 000 000 000 $
Fuel cost: 2 900 000 $ (30$ per kg, 99t/y used)
Startfuel: 700kg per 5000$ per kg = 3 500 000$
Time: 2y
Interest: 3% (60 000 000$/2y)
Payment: 25y
Profit: 458 500 000$ in second year
*THIS IS A GOLDMINE!!!*
I would absolutely love to hear his explanation for the rolling blackouts in California in 2020 (ten years later) if there is enough renewable energy
They had a 1,700 megawatt shortfall during the recent California blackouts. They closed San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station which had a capacity of 2,200 megawatts. 🙄
"Beware propaganda", proceeds to spread propaganda of his own.
+Toveri Juri Fear sells.
he was just warning us of his propaganda what a nice guy. Most anti nuclear people just spread things that at best can be classified as half truths with no warning what so ever.
The radiation that will be emited from the catastrophe at Fukushima Daiichi will be happening for tens of thousands of years. It will change the DNA of almost every living thing on this planet, eventually. Humanity will cease to exist as you knew it, but not in your life time. Is that why you could care less, about what we do to this planet?
@@vwfanatic2390 I direct your attention to the comments of the soft-spoken man warning us about propaganda (who in the next sentence drops the words "poisonous" and "terrorism..."
@@vwfanatic2390 Norway has higher background radiation than the area around Fukushima. That's a fact. Just sayin'..
This is a stupid debate. It's not nuclear against solar and wind power. It's both things against coal and oil. In 1985 in Denmark the parliament stopped all talk of nuclear power in Denmark, as huge demonstrations were against nuclear power and for wind and solar energy. What do we see today? We buy as much nuclear power from other countries as we ourselves produce in wind power. So, nearly 30 years have passed and wind power is still a very small part of our energy consumption even though we have the greatest wind power fleet in the world compared to country size. So, 2 nuclear power plants could have supplied cheap power for the whole of Denmark during these 30 years (after being build) leading to much less CO2 pollution. People don't understand the problem. Wind energy is one of the biggest investments in this country and still it is very small scale and very expensive. I am all for wind power, but we need 2000 wind turbines to cover 1 nuclear power plant, and Denmark is way to small for all these wind turbines, not even taking the cost into account.
No it is, Green Parties around the world specifically oppose nuclear
Our Civilisation’s rejection of Nuclear power was a massive mistake, and the environment has payed dearly for it as we continue to rely on fossil fuels for our electricity
Meanwhile we still haven't implemented either of these ideas. The infighting here is disasterous. I personally am all for nuclear, but every minute we spend saying, solar is better, no nuclear is better, no wind, no tidal, etc. is another minute coal laborers die, communities near coal plants suffocate, and the earth bakes. do them all! if we find we can power down nuclear plants later in favor of better solar, AWESOME, but we need a HUGE source of power NOW.
Indeed
David Haakonsen Its actually both
There are those on the left that are against nuclear energy as well. For example green peace is very much against nuclear energy.
David Haakonsen It was just an example
SMART GRIDS mean we DONT need a HUGE source of POWER NOW. This is a very controversial issue!
None of the pro-nuclear environmentalists are against the expansion of renewables. The problem is with their opponents who religiously believe absurd things (like the fact that the world is gonna be using half the energy it is today 50 years from now) and are against nuclear because they consider it as threat to their pet energy source.
Now lets kick it up a notch. Both debaters need to now give their recommendations to their opponent on what their opponent can do to make his solution better. Plug the holes in each others ideas.
The American National Academy of Sciences has demonstrated that Jacobson's 'study' is a flat out lie. He overestimated the hydro backup potential by a factor of 100! His WWS (wind water solar) study is WWS (wrong wrong stupid).
www.environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/6/22/the-case-for-100-percent-renewables-rested-on-a-lie-heres-what-it-teaches-us-about-energy-and-the-environment
Actual study here
www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/06/16/1610381114.full
Are Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo (The Hulk) and other celebrities that have given Jacobson celebrity endorsement now going to retract that? Are they honest enough to admit, as Dr James Hansen says, that for *most* countries the choice is nuclear power or climate change? eclipsenow.wordpress.com/refuel/
I love these arguments. "renewable energy is not stagnant! 10 years from now we are going to have technologies that will blow everyone away!" "no, 4th generation nuclear power is uncertain. all the proposed technologies have not been tested and cannot be considered!" right. intellectual dishonesty at its worst.
The American National Academy of Sciences has demonstrated that Jacobson's 'study' is a flat out lie. He overestimated the hydro backup potential by a factor of 100! His WWS (wind water solar) study is WWS (wrong wrong stupid).
www.environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/6/22/the-case-for-100-percent-renewables-rested-on-a-lie-heres-what-it-teaches-us-about-energy-and-the-environment
Actual study here
www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/06/16/1610381114.full
Are Leonardo DiCaprio and Mark Ruffalo (The Hulk) and other celebrities that have given Jacobson celebrity endorsement now going to retract that? Are they honest enough to admit, as Dr James Hansen says, that for *most* countries the choice is nuclear power or climate change? eclipsenow.wordpress.com/refuel/
Oh he's done it many times... Consider footprint only for wind? Yea, but explicitly include the exclusion zone for nukes in the next sentence.
The thing is. There’s a much more realistic projection in advancements with nuclear. From the nature of it. Improvements in the systems we use are inevitable like with all machinery. Solar and wind are limited by the extremely simplistic nature. They can only advance to such a point before they max out
I am all for nuclear energy. For me it seems like, why would you be against it, it produces way more energy and takes up way less space, and with a few easy innovations, the waste problem wouldn't be a big issue, and the disasters are nothing compared to the benefits provided by a nuclear plant. But then again, I am a piece of toast.
+Andrew Abner Yes/No
+Andrew Abner There are some legitimate reasons to be a little wary of nuclear, such as the whole problem with cost. I don't think that issue can be easily addressed until you start mass-producing small modular reactors like the LFTR concept.
The sheer *amount* of electricity that can be generated with nuclear is extremely exciting though, if the cost is within a factor of two of traditional sources then other high-temp processing applications can be viable like the Haber-Bosch process and metals.
Just curious, do you have tourettes or some other mental disorder that causes you to have excessive outbursts online? Traumatic brain injury as an infant perhaps?
+
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That you could run on renewables in places like California seems plausible because of the combination of sun, wind and hydro that you get naturally. In Denmark, where I live, it seems a bit more difficult. This january we only had 17 hours of sunshine, in total. We don't really have any geothermal and the country is flat, so there's no hydro. We're really only left with wind. If it doesn't blow, then there's simply no renewable sources available. In this case nuclear seems a better option than relying on coal and oil.
Agree, I live in Denmark too. The nuclear program talk was shut down in 1985 and never taken up again. We need 2000 wind turbines for 1 single nuclear power plant. Where are they going to put them? And who will pay for this very expensive energy source?
+Jurij Fedorov no one, it would take longer to construct, cost more overall, and need more maintenance.
superskiier50 ? Nuclear is cheaper than windmills at sea. Furthermore windmills is not base energy. That's why you have to, once in awhile, pay countries to take your wind power. Solar, wind and nuclear are all 3 green energies but solar and wind are not base powers and cannot power a modern society.
Jurij Fedorov yeah, and if it weren't for people's irrational fearm of current nuclear power, we might have started using nuclear more already
@Thetarget1 And yet Denmark runs on 66% renewable electricity already, (47% wind) after only about a decade of solar and wind being cheap enough to be considered worth using by our psychopathic economic system.
Coal, gas and oil are of course not options at all, since they're rapidly destroying civilization and nature. Nuclear is nearly as insane so shouldn't be considered at all either.
Only a cave has no sun, the truth is Denmark had relatively little time of 100% sun, which means a fair amount of its energy can come from solar, a good deal more can come from offshore wind, and the rest can be gotten from the countries around it, like the Nordic grid, Germany, Iberia, etc. with net exports from Denmark if they want that.
This is exactly the kind of informative and reasonable debate that this issue needs.
Why is no one mentioned the amount of radio active elements which are released into the atmosphere when coal is burned? Or the fact that coal ash left over from burning coal has radio active elements in it?
Then how many people have died as the result of coal mining accidents or have heath problems from pollutants from the burning of coal.
One does need to ask about the propaganda aspect. The Koch brothers have spent just shy of 1 billion dollars to spread doubt about whether or not climate change is occurring and if it's man caused or not.
Interestingly the Koch brothers funded the best climate research study to date which was conducted by respected UC Berkeley physicist Dr. Muller. What Dr. Muller found surprised everyone including Dr. Muller who didn't think the data supported climate change. Dr. Muller's study found climate change is occurring and it is correlated with man's burning of fossil fuel.
everyone is on the same page about coal... It's horrible.
Kehnin Dyer The burning of coal also releases the radioactive isotopes contained in the coal. Every year we release millions of tons of radioactive isotopes into the atmosphere.
Coal has an advantage, it's cheap.
Did you read Dr. Muller's report? It does not say what you claim.
skepticalscience.com/skeptic_Richard_Muller.htm
Climate has always been changing as a function of the Sun and planetary motions and phenomena that man doesn't control. There's no way to determine how much is man-made and how much is normal natural cyclic changes in climate. There's no way to predict the climate a hundred years from now or a thousand years. The models we see are woefully exaggerated. You say this one report shows that climate change is man-made. That is a lie. There's a lot more detail. Your conclusion that you're proposing is bull.
Someone forgot to mention an LFTR will be about 54,000 times safer than a coal-fired power plant.
It's 2020 still no cheap solution energy storage for renewables.
Because it will never exist. These guys think new batteries just fall out of the sky. Lithium-Ion was the last real battery innovation and barring a few improvements to this concept, it's going to be the last. These guys don't understand that it's not simply energy density and retention, but safety.
Imagine you had a battery with the energy density of gasoline, 40x the density of current batteries, in your pocket and something malfunctions--It's goodbye leg. This is why we stuck with Lithium-Ion and will do so unless something verging on the miraculous happens. So should we wait for these mythical batteries? Do we have that time? How many reactors we could have built in the last 10 or so years?
I went into a career as a nuclear inspector from a life as a Merchant Marine Engineer, with the attitude of honest curiosity as to whether or not nuclear plants were safely operated and maintained. After 13 years as a nuclear inspector at a plant built long ago in 1968, I am convinced that nuclear plants can be built and operated in a very safe manner. The fear that nuclear power generation is dangerously hazardous compared to other forms of energy is largely born from fear out of ignorance.
Right. Chernobyl and Fukushima?
@@Car_Uma That you even hold those plant as examples shows how little you have research why they both suffered catastrophes. You haven't thought of comparing the environmental damage and loss of life of other power sources such as coal, wind, or solar? I wish you would. It may change your perspective totally (which many people these days fear worse than radiation).
@@DARIVSARCHITECTVS ...right. And how many exclusion zones have renewables created?
Yeah, whoever thought enriched uranium with wildly active and destructive isotopes was dangerous..must have been living in fear and ignorance. Ok buddy.
@@Car_Uma Have you ever seen the lake of arsenic rich ash at a coal plant stored there because there isn't enough need to use it all for cement filler? Which exclusion zone are you referring to? Chernobyl? Those Russians did that top themselves because they violated their own procedures. It's not representative of the the rest of the industry worldwide. The only reason each nuclear plant has a fence around it is security to keep it safe from militant extremist who WANT to damage the plant. If you cannot understand that, then there's no hope for you.
We are Still waiting to have our minds blow away,
Wow! It isnt just some TED talk, everyone in the audience actually came here knowing something! That was an awesome crowd!
“5 years from now you’ll be blown away by the renewable options available” well that didn’t age well
Im totally gobsmacked at the bronze age logic used by the "anti nuclear guy", and even more so that people dont call him on it. Double standards are a plenty. I dont really want to explain it because it will take a while for a complete rebutle. If you cant see then look again, look at the grand points made from absolutely nothing. Look at the double standards.
Prof. Jacobson needs to remember that India is trying to use thorium as a fuel for nuclear energy. Thorium is cleaner, less likely to be used for weapons and is more abundant in India. India is helping innovation in the field, trying to make it safer.
Also, small modular reactors are going to make nuclear power safer and help other developing countries meet their development needs without destroying the environment.
American opponents of nuclear energy are quick to bring up India or China to talk about the dangers of nuclear power and insinuate that these countries will blow up the world, while conveniently forgetting that their own country was the only one that has used nuclear weapons in war! Just because your generals are trigger happy, it does not mean that developing countries which need to ensure energy access to their poor citizens should give up on nuclear energy. Jacobson's view is a typical white-supremacist outlook, which sees other countries as villains while reveling in their own misplaced heroism.
China actually has the first 4th gen nuclear reactor.
pizza rio im not sure you understand nuclear fission.
pizza rio enough to know why small reactors don't exist.when they say small, they mean smallER. maybe the size of a small mansion rather than a large complex. but no one is going to invent portable nuclear power if thats what you envision.
pizza rio i think if you googled it you'd see why you can't make portable nuclear reactors. first off you need 2 feet of concrete between you and the plutonium to be even remotely safe. so minimum a 2 foot block of concrete in your pocket. maybe some crazy meta material could completely block the radiation in less distance, but at the moment, and for the foreseeable future, you'd need a hazmat suit and a geiger counter plus some reinforced pockets if you wanted to add a nuclear power plant to your cell phone.
Be aware that the Thorium cycle is not by any means "less likely to be used for weapons." By necessity most designs require separating the bred Protactinium from the breeder salt in order to avoid further neutron capture leading to undesirable side-chains in the production and decay cycle. That high purity Protactinium will then, by definition, decay into very high purity Uranium 233, which is actually an *excellent* bomb material, intermediate between U-235 and Plutonium in it's critical mass. I agree that we need to get on a Thorium cycle like yesterday, but we should be honest about the challenges that it presents.
is he really a prof from standford? he doesnt sound the part
the 100 milion dollar funding Stanford received to produce his findings, comes from the good folks at Gas, Oil and Coal. Oh and he falsified data too, oops!
@@TheWhoFanGuyDude
Yo, as people who care about falsified data know, it's very much not cash money to claim someone falsified data without offering proof, or even an explanation!
That picture of the wind farm is ridiculous. Anyone who has seen one know how huge they are and how often they break. Not to mention the animal displacement of solar fields, wind farms, and hydro dams
1) Diluteness: to replace one 1600 MW nuclear reactor, we would need around 75 million 300 W solar panels or around 5,500 3 MW wind turbines in its lifetime.
2) Intermittency: solar&wind need a lot of energy storage or backup power plants (e.g. natural gas), nuclear needs none (it can follow load).
3) Nuclear power vs. nuclear weapons: You can't produce weapons-grade material from PWR and BWR reactors (90 % of all reactors by rated power) because you can't take Pu out of the reactor during operation and there is not a lot of it in spent fuel because it "burns up" during operation.
4) Safety: nuclear is the safest source of electricity (getting safer year by year), it's just scary to think about radiation. The same reason why we fear flying more than travelling by car.
5) Waste: nuclear waste problems are often exaggerated by the media and activist groups, there is a lot of toxic waste from say solar panels too. Concrete and steel usage per MWh produced for wind turbines is many times higher than for nuclear power plants. Mining materials for rare-earth magnets (used for wind turbines) and producing them is a toxic process...
According to Environmental Progress, Germany (a leader in renewable energy in Europe) could have basically carbon-free electricity production by 2025 if they redirected cash flow from wind&solar&energy storage projects to nuclear projects. If they weren't closing the existing nuclear power plants, they would have enough electricity for 100 % electromobility for personal vehicles and they could even export around 100 TWh yearly. They would have a stable power grid and reliable electricity supply. Also they wouldn't need to have wind turbines all over the country and near the shore and there is no need to cover all roofs with solar panels.
The effectiveness of the varying renewables depends upon where each is implemented. In southern Ontario (my home), hydro is clearly the most effective due to the Niagara Falls with wind perhaps having the most potential to grow next. Solar isn't as practical because of the work in maintaining the panels as well as the lack of sun here but that might change as the technology improves. It all comes down to treating each area uniquely.
Thank you for the reference. I'm still skeptical however, especially in terms of transportation now that it made mention of it. The improvements they are aiming for will necessitate some impressive improvements in battery and hydrogen storage development which I'm not as optimistic about.
Another issue with renewables is the poor energy returned on energy invested. Solar is a factor of 7 which doesn't leave much room for aluminum recycling or actually powering your home. Wind is a factor of 16 EROI, not bad. Nuclear is a factor of 75.
The dual fluid reactor (molten salt breeder) is estimated to have a EROI factor of 2000! That's because you burn all of the fuel and you don't need to enrich it.
Germany has installed almost 40 GW of solar power as of december 2015. This number is equivalent to more than 20 % of German installed capacity. However, this only produced 6 % of electric demand in 2015. The total cost incurred was at the very least 80 billion Euros, or about 100 billion dollars. These figures paint a bleak picture; ten times as much solar power would in theory generate 60 % of electricity, but the enormous peak generation in midday summertime would be impossible to accommodate into the grid. It is for that reason the German installation rate has declined. Simultaneously, the German civilian is expected to pay 23 billion euros per year. Relying only on renewables for power generation is not possible. Nuclear is then the sole option. (e.g. thorium molten salt reactors would generate CHEAP electricity with a fraction of the waste generated from PWR's or BWR's.) Remember that we will have to generate MUCH MORE electricity than today's demand to displace other fossil fuel uses!
I do disagree with one point: small modular reactors are inherently more inefficient than larger facilities. e.g. Steam turbines become more efficient with size.
+FDS The efficiencies are actually a function of temperature in the Carnot cycle. The mathematical expression is 1 - (your return fluid temperature divided by your working fluid temperature) x 100%. Since the LFTR is much hotter (coolant is atmospheric pressure with high melting/boiling point) than PWRs/LWRs, it can reach much better efficiencies (>50% theoretical)
+FDS Germany also exports most if it's renewable energy. What happens if it's neighbors wanted to export just as much? It's a giant pyramid scheme, but I can't call it that because there is an actual product being sold.
I know this is old but i'm gonna continue anyway, MSRs are great because with the 700 degree temps of the coolant salt you dont have to boil water and turn a steam generator which is massive, instead you can supercritically heat C02 and use a gas turbine (much smaller) with 45% efficiency (thermal to kinetic) and the "waste" heat is still high enough to actually run a thermal desalination plant
It's sad to see so many otherwise intellectually sound people clearly unwilling to reexamine preconceptions about this subject. What exactly do people mean by renewables? Solar and wind? Sure, that could be safer and cleaner than nuclear. Biomass and Hydropower- which make up the bulk currently? Not so much.
Renewables are very promising, and already functional to an extent. However, to say that they are all set to take over 100% of our power supply when we've barely made a dent in fossil fuels is premature. Let's phase out fossil fuels first, then we can discuss going 100% renewable. Anyone who wants to phase out nuclear while we still have tons of fossil fuels, especially coal burning needs to reexamine their priorities.
+Tory Parmer Tired of people getting sick and dying due to fossil fuels and them taking away from all of us. The generation of electric power produces more pollution than any other single industry in the US. And 41% of our fresh water goes toward the production of that electricity - after which, it is unable to use. But we shove it in the earth so it can destroy the water table and affect all of us.
A year after this, Molten Salt Reactor startup companies started to skyrocket. That 100,000 years waste problem got shrunk to 300 years, with ZERO nuclear weapons enrichment. Oh yeah, and they can build them on an assembly line and fit the entire reactor in a shipping container.
Pro-renewables got it backwards. In 5 years it wasn't advancements in renewables that would blow us away, it was advancements in nuclear.
This video didn't age well. That being said, I'm really glad Ted did this. This is a great meeting of the minds and very professionally done!
19:47 "5 years from now we'll blow you away."
11 years passed.
we are still waiting.
I don't know which field of engineering u r in....if u r engaged in renewable engineering or environmental Sciences fields..... u should have noticed a change.
Guy at 18:00 says it will put materials into the environment that are poisonous for hundreds of thousands of years. This is not quite true. Although the material would be there decaying for thousands of years, it would only be dangerous in the short term. Nuclear decay is an exponential decay process, meaning that most of the decay happens early on. Even the areas around Chernobyl are being resettled, and Hiroshima has been totally rebuilt and repopulated.
Agreed! Burying nuclear waste for 200,000 years is like digging up your best sweet crude, refining it into A-grade jet fuel, and then burying it again. It's madness! Most people just don't realise that we can BURN NUCLEAR WASTE! Nuclear waste only stays radioactive for 200,000 years because there is so much energy left in it (called actinides). Breeder reactors eat nuclear "waste" (actinides). Think hasn't happened yet? This is not theoretical. We actually have dozens of breeder reactors around the planet, and about 400 reactor-years experience with breeders. (Reactor years = reactors * years of operation)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor
Dr James Hansen's "Science Council for Global Initiatives" says breeder reactors will eat the nuclear waste.
www.thesciencecouncil.com/index.php/about-us/our-mission
Nuclear ‘waste’ in America alone is said to be worth about $30 TRILLION dollars, because it could power America for 1000 years. As the poster says, "Nuclear waste is not the problem, it's the solution!"
eclipsenow.wordpress.com/nuclear-posters/
Once breeder reactors eat all the extra energy in the used fuel rods, there are easy answers for the final waste (called fission products). They are so radioactive they burn themselves out in just 500 years. We can store them safely if we melt them down into ceramic blocks that are waterproof. Bury them in a concrete bunker under the reactor park. Uranium goes into the reactor park, and never comes out again! All the waste is contained. The only reason we don't vitrify waste today is because it is expensive and dry cask storage is cheaper. But once breeder reactors take over and extract another 90 times the energy *and money* out of the uranium we've *already mined*, the cost of vitrifying the waste into ceramic blocks is trivial. Here’s a 4 minute video that explains it all.
czcams.com/video/MlMDDhQ9-pE/video.html
Finally, abundant nuclear power could recharge all the electric cars and trucks and rip seawater apart and put it back together to manufacture all the synthetic diesel and aviation fuel we could ever need.
eclipsenow.wordpress.com/synthetic-diesel/
@@eclipsenow5431 If public opinion and education would have been less anti-nuclear, the tech would have advanced faster as well. We are getting diminishing returns on photovoltaic cells but have plenty of room to improve nuclear generation.
The reason why nuclear is so expensive is because they are not mass produced like wind or solar, or even SpaceX's rockets. SpaceX knows how cheap things get if you make everything under 1 roof.
Its partly true, but its not the whole troth. A other part is that the legitimization is really complicated and expensive. For wind and solar, its even less expensive than just building a normal house.
I think the new Nuclear plant in Britain the developers needs to put down £2bilions just for the legislation.
Here is the problem for smal reactors. You have to apply for every single reactor, so the builders like to have them as large as posible. But the makers like them as smal as posible. So its really a compromise.
If we cluster like 180MW reactor 10 a bunch for every single application the price would probably drop to about half.
A reactor for a nuclear aircraft carrier is actually MW for MW cheeper than a nuclear power station by quite a margine
matsv201
Ya, the bureaucracy in government is very inefficient, but that goes without saying. Regulations are suppose to protect the environment, not just stall until more coal plants are built.
leerman22 I guess, in brittan just as Sweden where i live, where the government just raise the fee for nuclear power plats as high as they can just to generate more money to spend on there pet projects.
£2bilion in administrative fees, that is just stupid. They also have to pay a ongoing fee when the plants is operated and also when its closed down.
matsv201
In Ontario we have a private-public contract with our reactors (not sure with all of them). ~60% of our power is nuclear of the CANDU design. Dalington had serious cost overruns and delays because of the government change among other things.
At least we managed to kick coal in Ontario. If we didn't export electricity we could shut down all of our gas plants for extended periods making our electricity carbon free.
leerman22 Yea, back in 1985 Sedan had about 60% of all the power from nuclear energy. And Sweden is a heavily electric power consuming country with several aluminum plats and paper mil (well similar to Canada)...
In 1972 the amount of nuclear power in Sweden was 0%... And 1967 they start the build of the first reactor.
Yea that's 18 years from no nuclear power at all to 60%. More was not needed because we actually hade about 50% water power at the time supplying about 30% of Denmark with exports.
1990 the start the windpower project, in 2013 they successfully for the first time produce the same amount of power as one single nuclear reactor.
In sweden at least its 15 times faster building nuclear power than wind power.
@16:12 "I can travel to California to Virginia by walking, if you really put your mind to it. There's no need for cars".
One big thing the nuclear guy should’ve mentioned was the cost to the consumer and longevity. The power bills are significantly higher in regions with wind power. And the only reason the bill isn’t 100 times more is because of the subsidies paid for by tax payers and then “granted” by the time government. I currently live in Palm Springs which is has a HUGE amount of windmills. And longevity, these windmills just DON’T last! 20 years max and many are being disassembled after 12-14 years. There’s no way to recycle the huge blades. 8,000 blades per year in the U.S. alone will be buried in landfills. The amount of resources used to make these blades is mind boggling. That renewable energy guy’s pollution chart was way off and biased.
Well those 5 years didn't turn out so great did they. It's been 9 years and not only does renewable energy still look hopeless, we also found out Iran wasn't developing nuclear weapons at all
And North Korea wasn't developing nuclear power plants, but still managed to get nukes. Funny how that works.
At 13:20 Jacobson says baseload is irrelevant. That irrelevancy of baseload proved catastrophic in 2020 during our fire season, with hundreds of thousands of people losing power during the hottest days of the year, and millions more put on alert that they needed to cut power consumption because our grid was struggling to provide, and if they didn't, everyone would lose power. What kind of crap is that? They scrapped San Onofre (the nuclear power station that looks like concrete DD boobs) because environmentalists said it was polluting the environment, but as it turns out, the amount of electricity that California needed last year when the blackouts were occurring was almost exactly the amount of electricity that San Onofre would have been generating.
Yep. Left wing environmentalists making our world better yet again 😂
It seemed to me that there is a stark disagreement in the availability of renewables between these two arguments. And for me I think availability is really the deciding factor between Nuclear and Renewables. As a physicist I have done my own calculations and read sources suggesting that renewables do lack in availability and I found it hugely interesting for someone to suggest the contrary. However, I was hugely dissapointed to see that no source was cited with those claims, so now even though I want to go and examine them myself I'm unable to. If anyone can cite anything to back up those claims I would appreciate it
Interesting how no one ever brings up the "enertia" needed for a stable power grid. Neither solar, wind or wave can provide that since they lack a "spinning mass" that could act as a dampener for frequency variations.
It was mentioned that solar and wind will improve technologically. What is glossed over is that nuclear HAS progressed greatly in safety, efficiency, and everything else. Fuel can be re-processed and re-used, etc. Yet these improvements have not been incorporated into our economy for political reasons. There is no real obstacle to nuclear providing the majority of our needs except 1950's thinking on the part of the uneducated public.
Still waiting for renewables to blow me away
You've got a lot more waiting to do.
Since you seem fairly knowledgeable about energy, what's your opinion of the various traditional renewable sources like solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, etcetera? Is there any one that stands out whether it be for good or for bad or would you just say that all should be utilized to their fullest potential? I ask because of the varying maintenance of each source as well as other associated costs which might make some less worthwhile than others.
Nice discussion and they argued like gentleman. The world needs more rational, logical thinking people like these.
YES PLEASE ;W;
Dude on the right sadly passed away. Dude on the left tried to due other scientists for critiquing his research
It is intellectually dishonest to count uranium mining in the nuclear footprint but to ignore the materials footprint for wind turbines and PVs, as Jacobson did. The steel, aluminum, carbon fiber, rare earths, cadmium, tellurium, etc., used to make them do not grow on organic hemp farms- they are mined. Cadmium and Tellurium, used in PVs, are significantly scarcer than Uranium, and at least as toxic gram for gram, and are comparable to many long-lived fission products in their toxicity. Cd is a known carcinogen and tellurium is a cumulative poison, so the idea that covering the landscape with CdTe (cadmium telluride, not to mention arsenides and other toxics) to protect us from a much smaller quantity of spent nuclear fuel is an absurdity.
No it is not intellectually dishonest. One is for fuel and the other is for one time building materials. But, if you want to look at building materials for nuclear power plants, the materials for the storage of the waste, and the constant energy required to run the pumps to keep the used fuel cool we can open that can of nuclear worms.
I showed it in my diagram. That was real data... the dude in white does not know how to science like the guy with the teal tie.
We forget that renewables run on nuclear- solar panels on the Suns radiation and wind on weather patterns generated by atmospheric pressure... From the sun... Which is a nuclear reactor...
I know this video is old, but in all honesty I'm surprised anyone switched from pro to anti-nuclear. The anti-nuclear guy's arguments were really weak, whilst the pro-nuclear guy actually addressed some of my concerns regarding nuclear, and I was already pro nuclear. I've worked in solar and know from experience that the sun only shines when it shines, and molten salt storage only works for a small time.
Second point: The main problem with the solar, hydro and wind ( I love solar and hydro btw) is that the demand grows exponentially. The guy in the audience doesn't understand that thermodynamically there is a limit to how much energy you can extract from a given energy source. Unless you have 0K reservoir, which is impossible, you are limited.
I'm late to your comment, but fear-mongering generally works wonders at swaying populations. His points primarily focused on Hiroshima and Nagasaki without addressing the 65 years since that incident without anything further even resembling them, certainly none that could be attributed to nuclear power generation.
I'm late as well, and I have a question. What do you mean by the demand growing exponentially, and the guy in the audience not understanding the thermodynamic limit? Can someone explain to me dumdum
@@meltingzero3853
Demand for electricity grows exponentially.
I'm in favor of all ways to produce the energy needed globally. Some areas have enough wind and sun, others don't. New ways of doing nuclear appears to eliminate most of the problems associated with it. Far as I can see there are bugs to be worked out with any of the forms of energy production. Good debate.
“Enough” to set up a station there, but that is nowhere near “enough”
Anti nuclear energy people are not being honest, or they are stupid
"With climate, those that know the most are the most worried. With nuclear, those that know the most are the least worried" - Stewart Brand
13:20 As Steward Brand points out, Jacobson puts up a wishful thinking "it all balances out" slide at 13:20. Wind actually blows more in the daytime due to the ramifications of the earth's surface cooling at night and warming in the daytime and the effect that has on the air.
It's been almost 10 years since this debate and renewables haven't gotten us anywhere...
Still waiting to be blown away by wind and solar...
Also please look up the study by the WHO that estimates little to zero cancer deaths from radiation, and none from the actual reactor accidents themselves. Even though they are using the very conservative outdated LNT radiation exposure model, which really doesn't factor in background radiation, they STILL estimate little to no deaths from the radiation exposure from the accident
We are closing in on 2020, when are we going to get blown away?
the second speaker is completely disingenuous.
What facts are you basing your opinion on?
One fact to base your opinion on is that he lied on his largest paper and was denounced by a hundred scientists
Specifically his paper that allegedly proved that the gaps in wind and solar could be filled by hydro, but his hydro numbers were off by an order of magnitude
Rather than a debate, it can be taken as a joint effort for the energy, both source of energy are independently contributing so both can be given priorities.
Thorium Modular reactors are the future. I’m looking to invest in it.
19:48 here we are 10 years later and without doing any real research I'm pretty sure there haven't been any innovations that have "blown us away"
no , we don't need nuclear energy, but we need an army of greenactivists, that they can crank generators.. by their hand... I could imagine a 3-4 activist on our backyard.. I would yake them coffe every hour
so we will get green energy :-)
That's silly- we all know that green activists run on recreational marijuana and organic bath salts...
I think it has to consider about which country you live in.
I am Taiwanese,just a sensior high school student,I think in our country the first thing we should do now is to refuse any power's waste.
Is that David Byrne front left at 18:30?
The "renewable's guy" is a little liar ... Just to match the current US production (4127 TWh), with one of the best offshore Wind farm in the world (England), it would takes more than the surface of the Kansas (about 242 000 vs 210 00 km²). With a more realistic average onshore wind farm (10 vs 17 GWh/km²/year ) it's more in the lines of the entire California ! For the Best Solar power plant (in India) it's like the Vermont State and for average ones (70 vs 135 GWh/km²/year) it's more in the lines of the West-Virginia ... Far bigger than he stated ! For the nuclear you will ask ! Nuclear Power plant produce about 8 TWh per square km a year. With that in mind the surface is like the Winnebago Lake, barelly visible on Google Maps ... Not so accurate from a great Stanford profesor. I wonder why ? I bet that a lot of his talk isn't that "accurate" either ...
It's embarrassing to call this a debate.
+Arno Meijnen I think it's because the audience - even the TED audience - is probably too stupid to understand some of the harder concepts in physics to "get" why nuclear is better. Proliferation risks only meaningfully exist with U-235, P-239, and H-3. If you have a fuel cycle without those products, there is no proliferation risk.
Nuclear waste? I see no talk on vitrification or breeder technology or geostorage. And what level of waste, high/intermediate/low? What quantity of waste, is it comparable to the NORMs from burning coal? Brand is probably aware of a lot of the arguments, it's just hard to convince the public if the public is stupid.
I noticed that the guy talking about renewable said that it take seven years and fuel to build nuclear plants, no time, work goes into building materials or toxic materials go into wind power and solar collection.
The dude talking about propaganda was spewing propaganda
TL;DW
Yes, the world needs nuclear energy.
Well, time to go get my mechanical engineering degree and go work at a plant in several years!
Any progress?
.
in what world is this a debate? debates should not be in a 'sound bite' 1 min format.
do an update please TED!
You're right we haven't mastered fusion yet, but we'll get it eventually. In the meantime, we definitely need to use fission energy.
Nuclear power + large scale use of renewable energy sources like solar panels and wind turbines. That should do it.
Tuppoo94 the trouble is that there is only so much money available, so you want to be investing it as wisely as possible. I personally believe that nuclear power is pretty unambiguously a better investment than solar or wind power.
Funny. Because there'd be no need for anything else if you build out nuclear. France tried to use wind and it was a disaster. Macron was all in on Germany's Energiewende but back tracked very smartly. Nuclear is the way forward.
Four words: Molten Salt Nuclear Reactor
+thefw190fan Four more words: Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor.
Maybe 50 to 100 years from now depending on research: Fusion Reactors
Maybe 150 to 200 years from now : Antimatter Reactor
There are two problems with Jacobson's chart showing how renewables overlap in power generation. First, he used unspecified length for his "average", which basically says that in general, yes, wind blows at night and solar happens during the day. But what happens when, for a day or a week, this perfect combination does not work? Which is the second problem: hydroelectric will not be able to cover for both because it already is at capacity in the US. Therefore we would have to use COAL or GAS.
I am guessing that these high carbon dioxide emissions for nuclear are due to the large amount of cement used in construction. There is about a ton of carbon released for each ton of cement produced, so the containment building represents a huge amount of carbon emissions. LFTR does not require a containment building, so those numbers would be much lower than for conventional nuclear technology.
Oh yeah, renewables are such a "significant" source. Solar is a tenth of 1 percent annual U.S. electricity production ( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_the_United_States ). At least wind is something, about 3.5%, half of hydro. How much is nuclear? 19%. The only thing that holds a candle to coal and nat gas. Think renewables are enough for the growing populations and increasing energy demand in poor countries all over the world? Wanna bet the planet on it?
Isn't the U.S. energy setup more dedicated to nuclear than renewables so far? If so, I think it's only natural that renewables aren't giving that much energy in comparison. The guy who argued for renewables was pushing for a dedicated amount of space upon which to place these setups, which implies that level of commitment to renewable setups hasn't been reached yet.
BariBariKawa: actually, investment into renewables in the USA is picking up, right now. There's a push from the nuclear industry (backed by Bill Gates) to develop small "portable" plants, closed pebblebed design. The big nuclear plants are just too expensive. It's impossible to make these safe and profitable. The pebblebed was presented as faultless, but that's science fiction: Even the german pebblebed reactor had a serious accident and it was closed inmediately.
The descision about energy for our species needs is taken in the next few years. That's why it's important to really look into it, and not inmediately trust every promise. (like mr. Brand seems to do, in the video)
Best! R.
***** I was responding to the first commenter's twisting of information. He took what Jacobson said about renewables being a significant source of energy in some other countries, and construed it to be in reference to the U.S. when the whole point of the pro renewables idea was to bring the renewable energy percentage of the U.S. up from what it is, not to prove that it is already running a high percentage of it.
I'm actually for renewables and clean energy (and have been since well before this video) since I see nothing but holes in the widespread nuclear power ideas.
BariBariKawa ah ok thanks for the clarification. I'm new to this google plus thing, so didn't see what post you referred to. :-)
best, from a quiet Holland, R.
A few seconds after 8:50, the graph visually explains that nuclear requires more energy input to build than all the parts for an equal amount of wind and various different forms of solar. That graph is mathematically incorrect by a factor of about 3 to 300, depending on type of reactor used. This is because the energy inputs sited for mining of uranium ore is off by many factors (not like he'd use the most conservative).
The closed cycle, if developed would NO LONGER require ANY energy inputs other than a little lab work and the fossil fuels required to power employee transpo (unless that same nuclear electricity was used to charge electric cars "at night ;).
Seriously, the entire future of humanity could be powered by the already "spent" fuel from today's light water reactors... FOR CENTURIES !
Why even bother with the concepts of EROEI and ESOI so desperately important for wind, solar, and fossil fuels (which also have to BACK the renewables) if the source would no longer require any meaningful energy inputs for such a long time!
Of course, there's that little bit of input every 50 years or so, depending on how long the reactor lasts. But so what! As long as it is reliable and has the very positive EROEI, then we could "energy afford" to make Giga EV batteries (which have a rather low ESOI energy stored on investment).
The pro-nuclear (and official) site suggests a whopping 74 (and even 80! for one brand of wind, see, they're not biased!).
www.world-nuclear.org/info/Energy-and-Environment/Energy-Analysis-of-Power-Systems/
The excuse of npp requiring more time to build is VASTLY offset by how much longer they last. They are an investment for the next generation.
His argument of China "taking so long" is proof that they are being prudent, or safe (!@#).
How does he say that nuclear causes more deaths from "air pollution" at 10:01 upon conversion to all electric vehicle fleet??? Seriously, I will blast a hole through this myth... Which source needs to be backed by fossil fuels! (notice how he quickly changes the subject to "weapons proliferation").
Civilian nuclear power programs can NOT be used to make weapons unless that site is just a cover for a weapons program (in which case it WILL be completed against international law in secrecy, so that horrible extra death toll from a would be war would happen anyways).
Since that IS happening, we need the power of our own VAST nuclear buildup to power the means necessary for the western military to "control" it from the sky (and stop most all fossil fuels combustion, as well).
The footprint for wind is a about a 1,000x that of "just the pole" when you add up all the roads and... fences (but so what, still rather minimal, just saying only a few square km ain't powering that many cars!). 140,000 x 5 MW = 700 GW, which I would think is supposed to cover the inverse of its capacity factor required for its storage as well. However, it definitely does not cover the energy required to build that storage and the energy LOST to inefficiency of that storage.
The bottom line is the one that requires the least amount of fossil fuels in the source's backup requirements.
How much land do you need to mine all the steel and other goods for the wind (doesn't show).
That utility load matching image is pure wishful fantasizing (they can not and do not ALWAYS match... More editing later!
The The Columbia Generating Station got moved? It used to be on that land at Hanford and has one GE reactor, I think a mark 1 same as fukushima with it's spent fuel in the containment building. I wish I was around to see that move.
18:28 Is that David Byrne in the audience?
all for rad :D
“I love being around the big wind generators”
Bird choppers, you mean. If any other industry was as destructive to bird life as wind and solar is, these same people would be screaming bloody murder.
Not quite as bad as you make it out to be, but the real problem is actually how much space wind turbines take up, and they often cut down acres of forest to put these things up, you can't have trees obstructing the wind flow.
Cats and buildings kill far more birds than windmills. You simply need to paint one blade black to solve the problem.
@@Cspacecat cats and windows kill small birds that aren’t threatened or endangered. If a sparrow crashes into my windshield, it’s a minor tragedy. Happens all the time.
@@M0rmagil About 1 billion migratory birds are killed by buildings and about 2.4 billion birds are killed by cats. That's not an insignificant number. Again, painting one of the windmill blades black fixes the problem.
@@infini_ryu9461 Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, and Texas have very few trees to disrupt wind. This is the midwest wind belt.
How do you deal with leaking cases???
The anti-nuclear folks always neglect that making all electricity by renewables solves only 1/4 of the problem. With nuclear we can sequester CO2 from the air or oceans, which is very energy intensive, and generate fuel for the sectors where it is difficult or impossible to use electricity instead of gas or oil. One such sector is production of concrete. And btw all those wind farms also require a lot of concrete. What is also often neglected is that the mass production of solar panels is an extremely polluting industry.
17:43 This guys second point is kind of irrelevant (in my opinion at least). This is because in America, there is currently around 160 nuclear power stations. And seen that they are only going to get more efficient and some more of these plants will be constructed - making a rough estimate of there being 300 nuclear power stations to fuel most of America. This means there is no-where near thousands of trucks full of nuclear waste per day if the general daily waste from nuclear plants is the size of a can of Coke. It will takes multiple years for a single plant to produce a decent amount of waste to be transported.
Furthermore, during transportation, there must obviously be extreme safety precautions such as 4" thick steel barrels or whatever.
In addition to that, if a terrorist group was to try and target one of these trucks, would it not be more effective to just bomb it with a real nuclear bomb?
Sylvia isgod I checked on Google, that's what it said.
Thorium is the future
Super_Slav absolutely, but uranium would be the present if we were smart
+Everett Sass uranium, depleted, natural, recovered and the like can be used in heavy water reactors, as well as plutonium and thorium under some circumstances. anything that is fissile and produces heat.
superskiier50 To my knowledge no heavy water reactor with his capability currently exists in production. Uranium does, and we should be using it.
Everett Sass
better than coal, until we figure out how to work with thorium.
Super_Slav Commercial scale thorium is years away. We should be using uranium now as it is the best thing we have available to us.
December 2020. France wasted 120.000.000.000 euros in wind and solar. It just doesn't work
One of my favorite Ted Talks
"It takes many years to build a nuke plant because people like me make it so."
Very good debate. Even though I am pro for nuclear power the guy against it as well as the audience made some very good points.
Transmission lines and wind turbine effective capacity (basically, the elecricity actually produced on average, rather than what can be maximally produced on a perfectly windy day) will heighten the number of wind turbines you'll actually need by several folds. Covering capacity alone will require at least 3-4 times more turbines. Transmission line losses will also require surplus turbines, not to mention there isn't going to be enough neodymium for all those turbines.
Both were perfect arguments i am using this video for my International Security Studies class
i would take nuclear because less environmental destruction less space and disabling nuclear weapons.Also those wind generators or "poles stuck to the ground." They do take up a lot of space cuz most of the land is grass a big damage to natural habitat..
Thorium!!...Thorium!!...Thorium!!!
they should remake this video but everytime he says this dosnt count for the foot print of the ground
It was mentioned towards the start, but it sadly wasn't expanded upon.