Why nuclear power will (and won't) stop climate change
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- čas přidán 8. 05. 2024
- Can nuclear power save us from climate change? Well, yes! And no. Get access to Nebula (link updated March 2023): go.nebula.tv/simonclark
Chapters:
0:00 Introduction
2:23 Is nuclear power safe?
5:22 Is nuclear the best way to generate low carbon electricity?
16:20 How do energy grids work in practice?
25:05 Spicy secret section
35:45 Bringing everything together
There were too many references to include in the description, so they are available in a blog post on my website! www.simonoxfphys.com/blog/nuc...
Thanks to @EllenWebborn for agreeing to talk to me! You can find her website here: www.ellenwebborn.com/
Thanks must also go to REN21, who made it possible for me to interview several energy experts for this video, including their president Arthouros Zervos. Also thank you to @ClimateAdam for his edits on the (considerable!) script.
In this video I discuss the relative role nuclear power will play in our future. If we want to lower our carbon emissions then we need to stop generating power using fossil fuels - that means choosing between nuclear power and renewable technologies like solar power and wind power. But which of these is better? I examine the carbon impact, the cost, and a variety of other metrics. However, we also need to discuss how energy grids work in practice, including the difference between baseload generation and flexible generation. By the end of this video/documentary, we have some firm answers about why nuclear power will and won't stop climate change. In short: it's complicated. But nuclear isn't essential, merely very useful.
You can support the channel by donating at / simonoxfphys
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"Wind turbines: Stealing power from the stooorm!"
*"Yes. Enslave the wind"*
Ah yes, enslaved wind. *sips tea*
@@davidlovesyeshua sun mak nrg with pew pew rays, us: takes energy with black panel. Ah yes, enslave the sun
Wind turbines. Brought to you by
Drum roll
The Koch brothers
Woohoo! Love those libertarians!
Is this a Xavier: Renegade Angel reference?
@@nickbudd5857 haha, build dyson sphere and enslave the sun.
Ver.2
Dyson Sphere: Stealing power from the sun.
*Yes. Enslave the Sun.*
Imagine supporting the green party and forcing your government to remove the nuclear reactors to install fossil-fuel generators.
We did it, Patrick. We save the world
don't the green party all eat moss and live in houses made out of twigs.
I'm not a supporter of the Greens, but I didn't hear them say such a thing. Sounds a bit out of character.
Unless it's the German Greens, those guys got super corporate a loooong time ago.
@@jayayerson8819 I meant the German Greens yeah.
We now produce more co2 at ten times the cost! We saved the planet!
Worth noting too that some of that list of "all renewable" includes biomass, which is literally burning wood
And darts sometimes.
But yer mulch stuff and all that is producing methane effectively
I think there's a serious problem in framing renewables as "decentralized people's energy", physically the points at which the power is generated might be dispersed and decentralized, but producing the panels and generators still requires huge factories and a globalized supply of materials, and have to be paid through the finance system, with the same old culprits benefiting.
Especially in the developed world where much of the countries are unlikely to get their own production going, with people too poor to straight up buy western tech for themselves it's extremely likely it will instantly get financialized, with people being made to pay a monthly electricity bill for solar panels on their own roof. Big moneybags might resist it because there's less profit to be had than fossil and nuclear at this moment, but the profit is still there.
There's no tech you can pick to escape that dynamic, people have to consciously make political changes if they actually don't want to be ruled by capital.
Well we are already seeing moves by politicians to block such things as affordability of the panels get them closer to becoming a mainstream high tech product. Mainly politicians targeting individuals right to actually give back to the grid by imposing that ONLY registered utilities may provide to the grid in an effort to reduce the consumer's to lower the need for fossil fuels.These utilities know that adding solar and wind alone to the grid destabilize it and increase their margins while still requiring just as much fossil fuels as before. Peaker plants gives them far better margins than base-load, hence while they are OK with solar and wind overall but as soon as batteries start getting mixed in that they absolutely lose their shit.
Why do you think providers of such dual package (like lets say Tesla energy) get absolutely mauled every step of the way? Same for nuclear reactors either made small enough to be reactive or using MSRs that would make reactive at any scale, every company making these things was pushed out of the west and most of the east and they have to make do signing contracts with smaller developing nations that do not have the already present infrastructure and corruption of the grid, but in turn progress is slow and public awareness is low.
I mean it's still kinda similar to buying power tools produced by Bosch or smth, and then being able to generate/build your own house. Not a perfect analogy but you get my point :)
My personal conclusion. We all hate coal, the worst energy source you can possibly imagine. Let's get rid of that no matter how.
Did you no that if there was no carbon in are atsmophere we would all die just a fact but I see a lot of people saying we don't need carbon in it those people piss me off
The best way to get rid of it wuld be to burn it 🔥 🔥 🔥
(Joust kidding)
Bring Thatcher back from the grave, problem solved.
@@tylermccandless925 when people say get rid of carbon, they mean decarbonize . So not generating more CO2, not getting rid of it altogether. It’s not even possible to get rid of all the carbon in the Atmosphere.
@@smartdinos2521 if we can manipulate the weather with carbon we could create a natural disasters free world that's all I'm saying
As someone currently working in the nuclear industry, I have never heard anyone say that we should only use nuclear power and not renewables. We pretty much all say it should be a mix somewhere between 20% to 60% nuclear.
I feel pretty misrepresented in the video as well.
Opinion of liquid salt reactors? 400 years of waste instead of 10,000? Non pressurized for no giant steam explosion? Is it true such a small and cheap amount of thorium can actually do all that. I feel like it's too good to be true
@Michael Wallace Molten salt and thorium reactors both could have been as popular as pressurized water uranium reactors, but the path of tech improvement didn't increase as fast. One big reason why molten salt never worked out is that the US Navy evaluated it wasn't good for submarines..... Sodium tends to explode in water. And thorium could be as researched as uranium by now but we just didn't research it because you it's hard to make bombs out of thorium. With more research in either it could definately be viable. This is all very simplified though.
@@Xambonii I appreciate your opinion. Thank you
@@michaelwallace9291 although the waste from thorium will be around for a shorter amount of time, the waste products are very strong gamma emitters, which makes it quite problematic to store for thier own reasons. Also molten salt reactors dont use the thorium as fuel directly (they are breeder reactors), it is first converted into uranium-233. Which basically just puts us back to step 1, but with extra steps
On your point about capacity, I think it's worth mentioning that solar pannels can be installed on rooftops, effectively taking up zero space (or at least significantly less space). I think solar could be a good way to supplement energy demands alongside nuclear power.
Industrial demand not mentioned.
I really think that's the main benefit of it. Honestly the standard idea of clearing forests to make a field of solar is a great example of the unsustainable lifestyle people tend to accept as normal. Solar's main benefit is when it doesn't take up extra land whether it be on building's roof's or over parking lots which are already wasted land.
But the issue is that while solar or wind on their own are cleaner than nuclear, the issue is that these added projects, the storage, etc end up making it not much better. Just look up how big a solar array is that's one megawatt and realize how absurd it is. For us to be fully renewable without any nuclear would require every home and more than that having solar on it, but that's up to the land owners and the vast majority of the population can't afford that.
The only things that could be done otherwise are allowing power companies to "rent your roof", the government to mandatory install solar on your home but still charge you for it, or just the basic rebates and incentives that already exist but don't nearly cover it. The end result is that the problem just can't be solved with a one answer solution.
The trouble with rooftop solar is that it is less efficient than solar power stations with rotating or at least optimal average solar panel angles, not to mention that currently used panels become toxic waste after the end of useful service life, and the well-known fact that most intensive power demand is the near evening when office people and students return home to use power less efficiently while others in energy-demanding industries are still working. This can be only partially solved if electric vehicle-to-grid technology becomes the standard for which participation will users be paid. So, solar is likely not a solution for many nations outside creating less strain on the grid from wealthy people looking for energy independence that may within a decade pay off depending on your location and power demand, though with a better interstate power-sharing network where you can be supplied from parts of the world that still have sunlight, it maybe will be viable one day even without that but the wind is generally better at providing power regardless of the clear visibility of sky especially with interstate power-sharing infrastructure that may be cheaper than investment into a large energy storage network needed for solar to cover for rainy days across multiple states, so you don't need 100% coverage from non-renewable energy sources as backup...
@@IonorReasSpamGenerator Last year we had solar panels installed on the roof of our house. They chose which side of the roof to put them on to get the best angle for sunlight. Obviously it's not as good as a dedicated solar plant could be, but they don't ignore sun angle. As part of getting the solar panels, we also got a battery setup. After sunset, the house continues to be powered by the battery. How many hours that is depends on how sunny the day was, but there isn't a sudden switch to grid demand as soon as the sun sets.
I would point out that storage technology has actually made some pretty big strides recently, it's just not the lithium-ion batteries that everyone is thinking about but rather much simpler technologies like thermal storage.
What about the lithium problem ?
This video was super well balanced so thanks for that nuanced view. I feel like we get so bogged down in "which one is better" when we just need to get everything and anything going NOW.
he did not talk about the biggest problem for nuklear, waste disposal... not realy well balanced. thats why we DONT want nuklear. sure, it has many positive aspects, but this one, big, negativ point disqualifies nukelear for full-scale use. as long as we have no solution for this problem there is no point in comparing it to anything but fosil, it leaves deadly waste for the generations to come, same as fosil, we just burry it underground...
Gorwo how is burying the material in the ground a problem when it comes from the ground to begin with?
@@Gorwo nuclear waste was not mentioned in the video because... we can simply create a waste storage facility under a mountain. Oh wait... but politics to the rescue XD
@@hucklo the problem is the stuff we burry is transmuted and concentrated, its nothing like the stuff we pull out of the ground. we mine uranium, enrich the u235-part and burn it into a molten pile of different radioaktiv materials, some hazardrous for 1 year, some for 50, some for thousends of years. we need to separate those (which ist an easy task at all) and somehow "get rid" of it. best we came up since like 70 years is to burry it all underground. now multiply the problem like 8x if you want to cover most of the energy need with nuklear
Gorwo you didn’t answer my question? I didn’t ask about the PUREX method or about half life. I wanna know what the problem is with e.g. KBS-3 method?
As an engineer at a nuclear power plant, and knowing many people that have worked at three mile island before the meltdown.
There is so many changes that happen even yearly to every plant to increase the safety of the plant. For example after both TMI and Fukushima, our plant went under massive changes do that the risk is minimized.
Another saying that that is in nuclear, "minimal risk is not no risk". So if something can go wrong, we take percussions and in some cases assume the incident will happen, allowing for minimization of risk to the public and its workers.
Update 9/25/2020:
Going to add another interesting comment to this, back before TMI some nuclear plants had the ability to load follow (mostly B&W plants).
For example, the plant I work at had the ability to go from 927 MWh to 476 MWh in less than 2.4 seconds. With any number between their taking about the same time. The inverse is also true on load up.
In the US, the NRC restricted this practice for 99% of nuclear plants, as they saw this practice as, "Non-Conservitive".
I am still wondering what the effects are from Fukushima. They said radioactive waste was dumped into the ocean? No disrespect, the Japenese really handled it well and condolence to all the people that died from the horrible earthquake. In this way I can see that nuclear power is still a much more safer alternative to fossile fuels. Burning of brown coal is more radioactive then actually using radioactive materials and a lot more deaths are contributed to it. So I think nuclear power was already quite safe, only it is the perception of the human brain that treats it as a bad thing because it is hard to grasp.
Burning stuff is simple for the mind. So I am curious how things will unfold. Also the rearing of animals contributes 16% of global greenhouse emissions (I think it was, too lazy to look it up), so that's also a big yikes and no no.
Fascinating comment!
THORIUM FIXES THIS
i do think the public was a bit to quick to give up on nuclear. chernobyl, 3 mile island, and even fukashima were to me simply the typical growing pains that usually comes with embracing a new technology. so many of the problems with fission have solutions.
i do think it seems to be to be a bit short sighted when they build a nuclear power plant in a known tsunami region like where fukashima was placed and there are quite a few other plants in places i find questionable. i know there is a need to place these power plants near water so that coolant is always available for operations and especially in emergencies. but i always questioned whether it would be possible to locate these plants on solid geography with low incident of natural disasters, even in locations where water is not readily available. so im kind of curious if alternate cooling methods are possible. like running a liquid metal secondary or tertiary loop directly to something like a thermal updraft tower. or perhaps use a molten salt heat sink to dump surplus thermal energy (and which can be used later or even for local emergency power generation for plant emergencies).
I'm a grid operator. No one in my area complains about nuke safety, most complaints were load following (in my case, lack thereof)
Interesting how decommissioning is always mentioned with nuclear, but rarely in case of the millions of panels and turbines we'll have to replace as wave 1 of EOL now approaches, which are not made with recycling in mind at all...
Well said. This young man obsessed with Simpson's and that WEF European ignore many factors. With 100's of submarines with nuclear generators we should mass produce them for rural areas. Photovoltaic should be only allowed for houses, also mini wind turbines. Wave and geothermal good.
Well actually they are now made with recycling in mind, quite less in the past but they will be soon gone anyway
@@XMarkxyz a lot of consumer products are made with recycling 'in mind', and yet they don't get recycled.
If the process of recycling those panels costs much more than building new ones using virgin material they'll end up in landfill anyway.
We'll see in 20-30 years how well we actually do.
It's a small thing, but I gotta say I appreciate the mention about the "esoteric" storage scheme by way of electric vehicle fleet. I'm an environmental engineer and knew most of this stuff already, but I enjoy the video anyway! A lot of creators might leave that mention out, but those little things really make the videos valuable and entertaining for a wider demographic! Looked into the idea and it was a great read, and I'm glad I saw this video now!
Hi, is distributed storage in EV batteries "esoteric" at all? If EVs get to 25% of the current fleet, that's a Hell of a lot of storage. A nice reserve in a substantial blackout...
@@aaroncosier735 Even just the ability to adjust charging to consume surplus production would go a long way towards dealing with both increased consumption from EVs as well as variable production.
@@subtlewolf It certainly would. I see no reason that EVs, and almost any "controllable demand" devices (the replacement of controlled supply) will have auto-negotiation protocols to keep their combined demand and/or output consistent with some grid-directed target. If my router can manage a thousand conflicting packets and prioritise them, then surely something similar can happen for local power.
@@aaroncosier735 Vermont University agrees with you. Check out packetized energy! Here's
Just Have a Think's explanation of it: czcams.com/video/NU3woCaFSZs/video.html
@@aaroncosier735 The concept might not be esoteric, but the scheme certainly is. It's no small feat to orchestrate the entire EV fleet's charging times so they can act as grid storage.
Overview - Renewable where we can, nuclear where we need. A hybrid system is the best.
This video is awesome, it needs more views.
Renewables contribute more co2 to the planet than natural gas. The answer is nuclear everywhere and natural gas where not available.
@@jwatson181 may I ask where you got the fact that you use to rationalize your opinion.
@@man75739 Apocalypse never. You can look at the data yourself as well. Germany for instance with more renewables releases ten times the CO2 of nuclear France at twice the cost. Not to mention, the devastating environmental impacts of industrial wind and solar from a land use perspective.
@@jwatson181 yea sure it has more renewables, but Germany USES COAL…
@@jwatson181 I agree that solar farms and wind farms generally mean deforesting large areas, but you can get around this if you incentivize in rural areas having decentralized solar power, and for urban areas using more centralized nuclear. What Germany is doing is absolutely brain dead by removing old but still working nuclear plants and replacing them with coal… the deadliest form of power their is. more people die per year to coal linked cancer than people have died from radiation linked cancer in all of human history.
I appreciate you using the civ graphic lmao
POTATO!
I'm preparing for an interview to be a nuclear physicist tomorrow morning and have watched this video about three times now, and I have ALSO just discovered you PotatoMcWhiskey last week and have watched more than 10 hours of you in the past two days haha. Thank you for providing the perfect mix of nuclear physics and Civilisation VI
P.S. Simon Clark you really should make an AI episode for Civ 6 like you did for 40K, god it is needed
@owl777 I actually managed to get it somehow haha, thanks for asking. Three weeks into the job and loving it, definitely grateful for these vids lool
@owl777 haha thank you, it feels a bit self obsessed saying that I don't know why so I usually say engineer or something. I'd been on government benefits for so many months I was just so happy to have something u know. Anyway thanks for brightening my day! Hope you have a lovely evening :))
Very good video! nice to see someone seeing things from both sides, you've gained a fan!
This is great stuff, i am a nuclear fanboy (in engineering...), but this does put some things into perspective.
Thanks for your sensible comment despite being a nuclear fanboy! We should move beyond these extremisms of "nuclear power will save the world" on the one side and "nuclear is totally evil" on the other
@@ecoideazventures6417 exactly, because (as stated in the video) the truth is a "well run nuclear plant" is the key to longevity. Not saying 100% one way or the other, but proper regulation in terms of technical skills, experience, waste management, construction standards, operating standards and the like are what defines good nuclear from evil nuclear. Chernobyl being the prime example of poor regulation, bad design and going for the cheaper option leading to a horrible disaster. Whereas the more expensive reactors that are in operation in places like France, UK, USA, Japan and the other few hundred are built properly without causing major catastrophe.
Thank you for mentioning the need for behaviour change in relation to how we use energy I feel it's often skipped in these types of discussions, the mindframe of someone/something will swoop in and save us so just keep on doing what your doing is what got us in the mess we're in today
I think his stance on it is utterly destructive. I follow many who believe in the by far most extreme stance on reforming society and most of them do believe in nuclear. I think he actually has it backwards, those who basically worship technology are the ones who more believe that renewables should replace everything. These are also the same people who believe we should just move to things like self driving cars vs change our cities for easy walking and biking as well as public rail. I think it's very clear which side of the stance he takes on this with how he openly gives the "there's no need for nuclear" people in the video.
His stance at the end claiming it's the divide between the left and right is patently absurd. You will rarely see anyone on the right supporting nuclear as most believe in sticking to fossil fuels. They're stable, work, and cutting back cut into the work force; at least that's what they claim. In reality this is an argument just on the left between the futurists and the realists. Just see how many times in the video he talks about the future with "at the moment" or "in the future". He says this about energy storage, the carbon emissions of building renewables, the future grid, etc.
I don't think it's a hard stance to say we should build things on what we have today, not what we can dream of. If we were doing that we would have been wasting billions on hyperloops and self driving cars over the solutions of today like public rail and nuclear. Just look at people like MKBHD or Out Of Spec Reviews. These are the more technophile types who praise the green future and don't see a purpose in nuclear. Why have nuclear when "in the future we'll have better batteries", "we'll have super conducting powerlines", etc.
No nuclear advocate I know says anything like "we only need nuclear".
Every nuclear advocate I know says, "nuclear will add stability to a carbon free grid."
I think this is an unfair criticism.
Also, all nuclear advocates I know are also pro rooftop solar.
We are also pro electric car, and our power grid isn't ready for that increased demand. Putting roof top solar and electric cars in homes Democratizes power,, but it also increases grid dependencies. We need to add capacity to our grid to meet this challenge. This includes supply from homes. It also includes supply from grid.
This is the lifestyle change we are trying to make.
Well, some of us do, like me, i'm for a 100% nuclear electricity (but only in low corrupt developed country)
I am for the sources of electricity that proved they can displace fossil fuels , currently this happens to be Hydropower ( even better than nuclear in my opinion ) and nuclear energy .
"
We are also pro electric cars, and our power grid isn't ready for that increased demand." Actually, once there are sufficient numbers, the car batteries can be used to replace the peeker plants while recharging the batteries when electric demand is low like the wee hours of the morning. No lifestyle change necessary.
"We need to add capacity to our grid to meet this challenge." No, we don't. We need an intelligent grid to flatline demand using batteries from cars and homes.
We might only need nuclear, it depends on how the tech goes. If SMR or fusion reactors are cheaper than wind and solar in the future, to a point where load following becomes economic, I see no point having those more expensive energy sources for the sake of it. Same for nuclear if we invent some amazing ultra-cheap super dense storage battery that solves all renewables intermittency issues (though we'd still have the issue of greater land use).
@@Croz89 EVs are better than hydrogen cars, so solar is a stop-gap for nuclear. Solar and wind are especially important in unindustrialized nations.
I NEED A CLIP OF JUST THE CO2 GRAPH WITH THE GAMECUBE MUSIC LMAO
czcams.com/video/lAQBRIiFB4M/video.html&ab_channel=peerlexe
You asked we delivered
Thank you for this video. I saw it a bit late, but it was a good watch both technically and philosophically. TL;DR - I agree with you that nuclear in and of itself isn't a silver bullet and needs to be combined with renewables in most places to actually generate the energy we need reliably enough to maintain a decent standard of living. You also helped shed light on my own recent change in pro-nuclear enthusiasm.
I used to be extremely enthusiastic about nuclear fission, but have found over the past year or so that enthusiasm has waned a bit. Especially with my time on Twitter, I see so much universal consensus about nuclear fission as a magic solution that has few downsides. Revisiting the technical arguments for/against fission and renewables, the merits that originally sold me on it are still there, which is why I've never been anti-nuclear.
That just led me to questioning what caused the recent waning of enthusiasm and other sorts of independent research. Then I saw the segment on this being a proxy for a clash of worldviews, which in many political spaces I've found to be accurate. The difference between seeing humanity as supreme heroes who will innovate our way out of problems vs humanity being a part of interconnected systems that needs to work within that and change behavior as needed was pretty compelling for me.
That's how I realized what changed. Even though I work in a STEM field, I have become less optimistic especially since 2020 that scientific advancement and technological innovations alone will help guide humanity into the future. To rely on technology like that is to enslave ourselves to technology. Our systems are fucked. Our incentives are fucked. We need to change and restructure those to produce better outcomes. That's how in conjunction with technology we'll actually unfuck ourselves. It will be painful, but in the end we'll be better off.
Hopefully this finds you, and sorry for the essay.
The thing is that we're already slaves to our technology. Without technology, most people would simply... not be alive. For example when it comes to agriculture.
@@solar0wind in a broad sense I can see where you're coming from, but when I say "enslaved to technology" I mean less in the sense that we as a society are largely dependent on it and more in the Frank Herbert sense of "letting technology control humanity's destiny without question." Modern agriculture doesn't inherently stop humanity from thinking outside its own limitations or us changing how we approach problems.
I hope that makes sense. When you use poetic language that leaves a lot of room for interpretation.
@@Botkilla2K12 Okay, I see. So basically you're referring to the people who always think new tech will save the day, so they don't have to change their ways.
@@solar0wind exactly!
I guess my problem with nuclear is how clunky it is. It is a big commitment with a big lead time.
If we need more power *next year*, nuclear can't help for ten years (ish). In ten years, that new nuclear faces ten years worth of renewables installation, and improvements. If a nation has a structural plan to use it, fine. But it keeps getting touted as a quick fix, as if a desperate salesman smells his last-ever customer, when it is anything but.
I did a talk in highschool about this, however I didnt really go into great detail regarding the economics. Nice to see in how much detail you tackle these topics.
40 minutes? im in for a treat.
Signed up! This video should be part of the geography curriculum in school take it to Downing Street and business . Jamie Oliver and Rashford did it with food.
I keep it short on my channel.
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Holy shit
Just realized it was 40 minutes by reading your comment...
Start of the video: Oh cool nuclear and renewable
End of the video: SEIZE THE MEANS OF ENERGY PRODUCTION
This was a very good balanced video, IMHO I'd say nuclear or renewables, just give me SOMETHING
collectivize the nuclear power plants!
"SEIZE THE MEANS OF ENERGY PRODUCTION"
Oh, great - now Kermit Peterson is going to start wobbling about cultural Marxism again.
So nuclear it is since renewables are nothing.
@@etherealsalad2698 Mayor Sam Liccardo of San Jose has been able to get other California mayors to agree to turn PG&E into a consumer owned co-operative. This needs massive follow up. I suggest using #SDG7 #SDG8 #SDG9 on Twitter as ways of grouping posts that can advance this idea.
Honestly that's not a bad idea. The research from nuclear was funded by tax payers and the sun and wind don't send us checks. Energy should be discusses as if it were a public commodity.
Wow this is hands-down the best video I've seen about nuclear power. Calm, fair, even-handed. This instantly earned my subscription...
Unfortunately, in my eyes, it was spoiled by the last quarter of the video, when he referred to supporters of nuclear energy as those who hold a radical position and use the whole topic as an attempt to find an excuse for "doing nothing".
And he threw in that "nuclear power is supported by the rich in an effort not to share the wealth" (paraphrase, not an exact quote).
However, otherwise - the video as a whole - was fine, unfortunately the ending ruined it.
@@Eristtx Yeah, apparently I'm right wing and want the few to consolidate more power because I like nuclear power?
@@antorseax9492 Could you please elaborate? I don't remember exactly what I was objecting to.
In general, trying to frame it through pointing to "the rich" is a problem - if you look, it's always the rich who can make the best use of opportunities. For example, in our country, most of the solar panels that are subsidized by taxes on the "poor" are owned by the rich.
Another reason why I don't like dividing the population by different groups like rich vs poor, white vs coloured, men vs women, young vs old... is that we are creating barriers. It's a mindset inherent in Marxism and its division by social class.
And so, instead of addressing the root of the problem, we must first determine what our class affiliation is and take a stance accordingly. Am I rich or poor? Within my own country I am upper middle class, but from the position of third world countries I could own an entire village.
I would simply resign myself to it. We are trying to find an enemy to blame and take responsibility for the solution, and we are missing the point that this is not how it works.
In other words, climate change is neither left-wing nor right-wing. And it is a mistake to try to force our ideology into the solution, as is happening in the EU, for example.
We have a problem here and we need to find the optimal energy mix to get us out of this problem. This energy mix will undoubtedly include renewables and some stable electricity sources - the question now is which source offers the best price/performance/national security ratio with the least pollution.
Note - National security plays an important role in the case of electricity (as well as food) - for example, in the EU we had the idea that Russia would supply us with gas and we would close down all the f***ing power stations as a result. Russia smiled, encouraged us to do so, and when they closed almost all the nuclear plants in Germany, they started blackmailing us with gas. So we must learn for the future and not repeat this mistake.
Now they have to burn coal in Germany... which is a big step forward ("not now"... in winter they had to).
Erm. It's possible I've just written A4 of text completely off topic. If so, then I apologize.
@@EristtxI get that climate protection is not really a left- vs. right-wing issue. But unfortunately it gets lumped together with other problems. For example some parties want to conserve the way we organise our economy and therefore our carbon emissions. These conservatives (in the sense of keeping the economy and social structure the same) are generally considered right-wing. So it kind of is an left vs. right issue. Also the more right wing parties like the AfD tend to ignore climate change as best as they can.
I really like this vid. You did really great job at talking about all pros and cons of both sources.
I couldn't agree more with the "mix" solution.
Completely ignoring the obvious benefits of EFFICIENT oil and gas and distorting and catastropizing the side effects is no solution.
I'm not in favor of any technology, I'm just against fossil fuels.
By extension I am extreme against the German government (my government) shutting down nuclear power plants instead of coal and gas, before we are carbon neutral.
>be german government
>shut down nuclear facilites to stop climate change
>can't plug the energy gap so switches to gas and dirty low-grade coal fossil fuels
>ukraine war hits. gas supplies may be cut at any moment
>"this is fine"
How are you now? I heard germany also reactivate the coal power plant instead shutting them off
I'll share this sentiment on the insane German energy policies. They're certainly getting their comeuppance now with Russia limiting exports of the natural gas they've had to rely on to fill the hole left by nuclear. It's horrible to see the German citizens have to deal with record high electricity prices and gas shortages coming into winter, but hopefully it'll be an eye opener for the rest of the world how poorly their 100% renewable approach has worked.
@Rafi Kusuma Daniswara well the genius "lets use natgas as intermediary while going all green" plan backfired. while scrambling for more natgas & extending build-out of renewables, coal gets a few more years of more intense use than intended.
@@Fusselwurmify really shows how irrational their fear of nuclear is that they’d rather go back to brown coal as a backup, which is actually directly damaging their climate efforts, the main reason for the energy transfer in the first place.
The idea that nuclear is giving POWER to the few elites (which are corporations) is so americano-capitalistic. In many countries nuclear energy production is owned by the state/government. France for example owns 85% of EDF. In Ukraine we have "Energoatom" which is controlled by government. So this company depends on democratic elections that take place every fer years and operates with crazy small margins to provide cheapest electricity possible, which in turn provides more socially stable society. Also in my country solar plants are mostly built by existing monopolist coal-based electricity producer or by foreign investors, so no power to local people. Pumped hydro already operates on industrial scale while Li-ion are nowhere to be seen. So event in these arguments not everything is so black and white.
exactly for people outside of the USA , the ''big nuclear'' is your state run utility company .
The best illustration of what you're saying is Macron attempting to privatize the Renewable part of EDF www.reuters.com/article/us-edf-restructuring-strike-idUSKBN1W21BP
I think that plays into political affiliation too, but on a two axes of the political compass. More statist people, both left and right, will probably support nuclear energy (it was very popular in the Soviet Union after all). Those of a more libertarian bent might differ, those on the right might favour privately owned nuclear if it is economically feasible, but left libertarians are probably more likely to oppose it altogether in favour of distributed renewable energy (not surprising since that's where most green parties mostly sit).
@@Croz89 it's not ''economically'' feasible , they are things about Nuclear industry that means it's only functioning as a state monopoly , Example Reprocessing , Long term storage ect , in the extreme case of nuclear accident , Guess who pays , all of us , and the company in question gets nationalized ( TEPCO )
If that's the case why the hell would we give the benefits of such money intensive industry to private individuals , when we are that needs to manage social costs
@@saddemgargouri In a completely fair market without the political machinations and excessive red tape, it could be, in theory. No country has a truly level playing field when it comes to energy generation, even within clean energy.
@@Croz89 there is so many issues with Nuclear from a ''capitalist'' stand point make them a terrible Market product , State support is needed whatever it's private or public , since any nuclear company by definition will be a massive corporation intertwined with local state .
I argue this is one of the reasons why all the well functioning nuclear systems i can think off are state run
This is possibly your best video to date in my opinion. Nuanced and detailed, really gets into the weeds on explaining why people have the positions they do on the topic. Nice work!
Very good in depth explanation. You are good at what you do!
This completely changed my mind about renewables. I was a total nuclear purist, believing nuclear fusion should take hold until fusion, but now I believe fusion is still the future, but won't come in time to solve our problems, and we need to change to integrated renewable-nuclear networks.
Also, my parents are currently using solar panels and a battery in my house, as Australia is doing very well in allowing people to sell their excess back into the grid.
I like nuclear energy as well but man in Australia renewables are so efficient wind turbines run 90% time and you could probably have a stable power grid on wind alone.
I came from the opposite side. I love renewables, especially solar. I understand it's many many issues, but photovoltaics just fascinate me. Coming back to this video has made realise I need to learn more about nuclear than the very basics of how it works.
@@gregorybeckett4657 And that's the problem with renewables. It's not like that everywhere. And also, solar panels destroy the environment by taking up so much space (and they have to be replaced every 20 years creating TONS of e-waste
@@a.rudesill yeah, I'd love to have solar on my roof. But powering the entire grid from them is just not realistic.
@@michakrzyzanowski8554 They don't have to be replaced every 20 years. Where do you get that from? Their efficiency drops around 20% after 20 years but they can still very much be used. Besides solar does not damage the environment with space use when they are placed space efficiently, such as on roofs of homes, industrial buildings, warehouses and parking lots.
You're right in solar isn't something the entire grid will be powered by.
One thing this video changed for me was the concept of needing a singular source for all energy generation, and diversification is actually a solid idea. Don't put all your eggs in one basket as it were.
Wow this one is super good, im in the first year of sustainable development and i think i have some friends that also will be interested in this one. I love that you are going into the hybrid solution and then also alot of the + and - sides from all the sources and also you are going into the not ready energy storage tech. This is a 100% sub. Would like to say that my point of view is the hybrid solutions and also putting the best things in the right place so no wind turbines in the Sahara But going as Ethiopia, focused solar.
Thanks again for an awesome episode.
There is no merit in demanding that renewable energy - especially renewable ONLY energy, runs before it can even crawl.
Most arguments outright ignore the seemingly obvious benefits of efficient energy use of oil and gas, such as not freezing to death, clean drinking water, etc. While catastrophizing the side effects.
I have found my new favourite channel. Someone who is very qualified and well-researched tackling very important issues such as climate change is very needed right now.
8:45 Renewables need decommissioning as well.
There's a carbon cost to this.
Not to mention the environmental impact if done irresponsibly.
Also kadmium in solar cells is extremely poisonous and doesn't lose it's effect like nuclear waste
@@tedarcher9120 there are numerous toxic substances created in producing and disposing of solar pv cells.
sciencing.com/toxic-chemicals-solar-panels-18393.html
It's a catastrophe that's being left up to future generations to clean-up. Ignorance is no excuse for making these bad decisions to "go green".
@@tedarcher9120 The amount of toxic materials is so low it is barely worth discussing. And solar panels can be rather easily recycled and the toxic materials can be dealt during this procedures. Comparing it to nuclear waste is ridiculous.
@@MDP1702 the amount of toxic material is low, but they make all cell waste a hazardous waste, and it can't be recycled in a usual way. There is currently no economical way to pull toxic materials like lead and cadmium out of solar cell waste
@@tedarcher9120 Yes, there are ways to separate toxic material from the rest during recycling. It is more expensive, but that is something you need to consider when choosing which panel technology to use.
And even if panels end up in a landfill (which is forbidden in the EU), these toxic materials still can't leak into the environment unless they are chipped in very tiny pieces or if they are burned.
Furthermore, toxic material free pv panels exist, they are just more expensive to produce and lack certain specifications (like being very thin), though if needed we could just use those. It probably would put the cost around the same as nuclear at that point.
Again toxic waste is not really any concern regarding solar panels and not anywhere in the same ballpark as nuclear waste (though we can deal with that too if we want, the cost however that is a ?).
The video in shot: Why not both.
I am happy that there is finaly a nuanced view here.
Cost. Nuclear power is hideously expensive. No one is building them and there are alternatives.
@@ahhmm5381 - As the video pointed out, relative to power generated, nuclear is actually really cheap. The problem is that the cost is all upfront, so it's not a politically sexy option since it involves a high bill and won't be done before your reelection. As for the time to build: "but it takes like, 9 years" has been the argument for the past 20 years. If we'd just started building them instead of making that argument, we'd have them up and running by now.
@@KingBobXVI Many other estimates of the cost show nuclear power is more expensive.
The French were happy to build Nuclear reactors for decades but even they are moving to renewables.
www.carbonbrief.org/wind-and-solar-are-30-50-cheaper-than-thought-admits-uk-government
@@ahhmm5381 And France really shouldn't move to renewables from nuclear.
Because that doesn't work. Germany shows that abandoning nuclear plant is a terrible solution.
Renewables are a "support" solution. They can't replace actual, working 24/7 plants.
@@ShinGetsu857 Just to maintain and operate the existing fleet of reactors in France will cost 100 billion euros by 2030, without including decommissioning costs.
France is also building a new European Pressurized Reactor at Flamanville, but it is hilariously far behind schedule and massively over budget. Nuclear reactors are not economical anymore. Nuclear power is dead.
www.ft.com/content/c7421fbe-f326-11e8-9623-d7f9881e729f
Renewables are cheaper and can now be integrated into most grids feasibly to around 50% penetration.
As for Germany, they screwed up by decommissioning Nuclear plants and replacing them with coal, an incredibly stupid move both for carbon emission and safety reasons.
Brilliantly made video that gave a balanced view on the issue! Learnt a lot from it,thank you!
I don't think so. It left out that nuclear energy is (and was) cheap because of massive government subsidies, and didn't discuss the problem of long-term storage of the nuclear waste.
Wow!! Fantastic video!!
The conversation IS layered, thank you for separating a few. Excellent work dissolving a debate that shouldn't be a debate, because we need everything that isn't carbon-based fuels.
I'm especially grateful for how you disassembled the messaging we've received via TV, news and ads.
Having said that, the conversation about renewables is missing a discussion of one particular grid-level battery storage solution. Flow batteries are not viable for vehicles, but they're great for structures. There's a company in Australia which sells a home-size flow battery. The tech is basic, and don't necessarily use rare earth metals.
GREAT video! I don't know if you have education training, but it's clear you're a knack for it.
Cheers from AZ, USA
Take care,
Joe
“..I implore you, consider this technology on its merits. Not how it fits into your world view or your politics but what it can and can’t do..”
The effort that you put in to give as honest of a discussion about nuclear as you could is evident and I appreciate that. I think, and certainly hope, that this video will help more people evaluate nuclear power based on facts over feelings.
How can it be 'honest' if it does not account for the nuclear waste. No, a nuclear power plant does not emit CO2, but it emits nuclear waste.
@@Robert-er5wq and your comment is why this "balanced" video was not what we needed.
@@Robert-er5wq You do understand that we have gotten a lot better when it comes to dealing with nuclear waste right?
All dictators get their own nuclear industry??????? Because it is the only way to stop the world from carbon build up??????? Brilliant, brilliant.
@@stephenbrickwood1602 You're a funny guy
"Live lifestyles that require less energy."
Goodbye internet.
you can keep the internet, wikipedia and mails are very energy efficient, but bye bye cat videos in 4k, streaming and porn.
We can make the choice of a cleaner internet, we must just assume no/less porn, no netflix and no dumb youtube/twitch.
@@etienne8110 You know, I have got this gut feeling you hate youtube.
@@etienne8110 CZcams uses a hell of a lot less energy than plane travel or shipping.
Maybe start with the big polluters, and use renewables for what it's good at.
@@etienne8110 Actually, just go vegan, it's by far the biggest reduction to personal carbon emissions the average person can realize.
... I mean, not literally *just* go vegan, but you don't have to give up watching CZcams or whatever. Buy solar if it makes sense in your area, maybe go for an EV, don't fly too much, etc.
This is what all greenies resort to in order to excuse their renewable future delusions. There is never going to be a time when energy consumption isn't going up. You can tell us to burn candles all you want(which actually produce CO2) but it's not going to happen. energy consumption is going to quadruple by the end of this century and no amount of finger wagging is going to change that. Their predictions actually rely on energy consumption going down, that's why they keep repeating it, even though it's impossible.
The only reason America has decreased their carbon emissions is because natural gas produces half as much CO2 as coal. Renewables have nowhere near even scratched the surface of their carbon emissions. So they've increased wind and solar by about 10-20x what they had a decade or two ago, but 10x not a lot is still not a lot. If they only tripled the energy from their nuclear grid they would have phased out nearly all coal emissions.
There is not a single example of Solar and Wind replacing an entire electrical grid of fossil fuels. But we have examples of nuclear doing so. France. Ontario VS The rest of Canada. Sweden. I don't know about you guys, but I'm staking my life on shit I know works.
Québec, a region in Canada, is already entirely powered by renewables. We have mountain ranges that cover the vast majority of the land, with lots of high debit rivers that allows our power plants to produce large amounts of electricity. We even produce a lot of surplus, that is sold to the US and other regions in Canada
Quebec benefits from a relatively low population and a high hydroelectric capacity. That is great, but isn't applicable to countries that don't have that many rivers to dam.
@@tomcat4195 at least it proves that entirely relying on renewables is possible
@@andromededp5316 Hydroelectric has much higher capacity factors than solar and wind. Yes, if you have a country with abundant hydroelectric capacity, it certainly is possible. Hydroelectric dams don't face the same intermittency issues that solar and wind do.
And look at neighboring Ontario, which draws the vast majority of its electricity from nuclear power. Much like France does.
@@andromededp5316 it's possible in quebec .
Can't believe it took me this long to watch this video! was easily the best 41 minutes of CZcams I have committed to in a Long time! Also threw some unexpected light on my personal prejudices (Solar Punk FTW) but made me more open the the Nuclear option (which I wasn't against but..) in context. Awesome stuff! Well done, Simon
this is the sort of stuff that needs to be shown in schools. before the world changes people need to be on the same level of understanding
but this stuff IS showed in schools, alllll the time, in mandatory science classes before and after sec 3, where you're legally allowed to drop out, so even if you do drop out you are still taught it. young people cant do anything about this problem anyways, the old people have all the money and power, you need to convince them to stop being greedy, and convince the old voters to stop being so stupid and falling for the same political tricks they've fallen for for decades.
@@Deltexterity idk which schools you go to because electric grids were not talked about this in detail in my school at all
@@iironhide6209 yeah no obviously not this in detail, but the general concepts are covered a ton. i went to a public, *outdated* canadian school, and even they had like an entire year focusing on absolutely everything climate related, including power potions to replace fossil fuels. this was covered during that time.
Thankfully young people do seem to be taking this knowledge on at a greater rate than most older age groups who are still emotionally scarred by Chernobyl and TMI. Young people are able to look at the situation with fresh eyes without being affected by the sensationalising media. But of course, these young people won't be in positions of power to do anything about it for a few decades at least.
@@some_doofus at the same time most young people don’t care enough to protect the environment
Do we really need New Mexico?
Asking the real questions
Also the Sahara is as big as the US.
@@sualtam9509 yeah,
but there is the problem of getting the energy to the place you need.
you cant simply build powerlines from the sahara to the EU for example.
we could produce hydrogen from the solar energy we produce in the sahara, and then ship the hyrogen in tankers over the mediteranean sea, where you then power gas turbines with the hyrdogen.
but that would be so much more expensive than simply building nuclear power plants.
@@koloblicin 1. You don't build all solar in one place this was just to show that the area neded is not that big on a global scale.
2. Nobody proposes a mono-source approach.
3. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current
@@sualtam9509 sounded like you did.
amazing, rich, and very satisfactorily in depth. Thank you for sharing
You can see that power-mechanism at work in Germany. The south, which has historically been economically stronger than the north, resisted and continues to resist many renewable initiatives (not only in favor of nuclear, but also fossil fuels) because most windparks etc. would need to be built in the north.
You grossly misreported and misrepresented construction times for nuclear vs wind and solar. Wind and solar can be constructed in months from a physical standpoint, but the multi-year time scale for nuclear includes planning, reviews, consultation etc etc etc, these also affect wind and solar installation (not so much domestic, but that's a separate conversation).
One of the reasons that nuclear plants take so long to build is public opposition and protest against them, the same is also true of renewable since a lot of NIMBYs campaign against wind installation.
The design and planning stage is multi-year for nuclear and renewables and while more should be done to speed up the process, this process is necessary.
"The design and planning stage is multi-year for nuclear and renewables and while more should be done to speed up the process, this process is necessary." Once France decided to pick the nuclear design, they built the same type of power plant over and over again.
@@Cspacecat Indeed they did and were able to produce them very rapidly and at low cost. There are now significantly more planning and regulatory hurdles and greater public opposition.
I don't disagree with the video's conclusion, a blend of power sources has always been the best way, but his reasoning was based on poor data.
@@Cspacecat Yeah, and now they have a massive decommissioning problem. Interestingly enough, they are also abandoning any new reactors and going with renewable energy. Cost does not lie. Nuclear energy was cheap to build at one point, but that time is long gone.
@@ahhmm5381 You can expect nuclear to drop between $0.02 to $0.03 per kilowatt-hour using MSRs.
@@Cspacecat When?
As an electrical engineer, I was so relieved to see you talk about base load. A critical problematic which I find it so hard to find new information on, when it comes to the future of our energy grid. Thank You! Excellent video also :)
The time to build for Nuclear could be emphasized more though. If we can't even build new Nuclear power plants in time to avoid climate change crucial tipping points. Then it becomes a muite point to even discuss Nuclear as an option.
This 10 year figure... why not 8 years, or 14 years? I'm sure nature will be flexible if we're a half a decade behind schedule.
@@DJRonnieG What 10 year figure?
I mention that we need change before the tipping points. By tipping points I refer to event such as the gulf stream stopping, the release of methane beneath the ice caps and such. We don't know if these will occur within 8 or 14 or 10 years. But the risk of those thing happening are tied to the level of increased temperature. So with current pollution levels we probably have nearer to 10 years than 50 I'd guess. But it's hard to put a number on, as you point out.
But it's important to prioritise because eg a release of buried methane will worsen global warming without us getting anything useful out of it.
The switch to 100% renewable would take far longer (~100 years, as a guess) than it takes to build some nuclear power plants (10 years)
@@noer0205 I'm just quoting the figure (presumably a rough estimate?) mentioned in the excellent video.
@@specialopsdave with expanded nuclear capacity we can run a lot for making solar panels and it certainly reduces carbon output per KWh.
Excellent video, well sourced.
However long you spent creating this video (which I assume was a lot)... congratulations! It was brilliant and worth every second. I guess lockdown did have an upside right?
Really interesting and eye opening. On a separate note, I'm English, and off to make a cup of tea after watching this :-)
Well done Simon. Keep going.
Agree with 90% of this video, quite a good breakdown; however, I disagree with your categorization of the two camps. I've probably discussed this with internet randoms far more than I should've but in all that time, I've never once come across someone arguing for either based on wealth redistribution explicitly. At best, it's framed as you have for the cases in the developing world. I don't doubt they exist, nor that there may be a correlation more between 'very left' and anti-nuclear, but that's not due to social equity explicitly IMO but more that there has historically been more of an overlap between environmental concerns and social concerns - i.e. despite the exaggeration of safety concerns with nuclear, it's still viewed as being too dangerous environmentally (as well as to humanity).
Also, I think the framing that you did between the two experts wasn't fair... the 'nuclear advocate' (Webborn) doesn't say that we don't need renewables, just that she doesn't think it's feasible to have it without nuclear. Compare that to the *president of the renewable energy group* (Zervos), who says we don't need nuclear at all - clearly with a bias for renewables.
Which brings me a bit to my point. Most (not all, obviously), nuclear proponents have nothing against renewables - we love what they bring to the table. The fights are not based on 'technocratic ideology', it's based on the economics of your inertia argument, with the very graph you show, even if you argue against base-load (which in your other graph... you still don't get rid of). The advocacy we champion is because we know that if you ignore it, you don't have a complete solution to tackle climate change, not because we believe *only* nuclear solves this. Of course, there are technocrats too but that's not the majority of those I've come across advocating for nuclear; whereas, the renewable champions typically do not see any energy profile with nuclear.
(As a side note, if the technocratic argument is really true, why wouldn't photovoltaics be the better argument as is? It's *solid state* electricity production. It's **far** more advanced than nuclear steampunk turbines . It's our only (scalable, except to some extent hydro) energy source where we don't have to do a ridiculous thermodynamic conversion in which to harness electricity - yes that's simplified, you don't escape thermodynamics. Further, it fits more of our energy demands too since it outputs to DC - why isn't the technocrat argument just to convert the whole grid to DC?)
And, so I'm not making the same stereotyping fallacy, not all are also on 100% anti-nuclear either, as I've still have had good conversations on net pros and cons. In fact, because of these discussions, I've far more 'bought in' to your final message: do both... but we've basically run out of time for nuclear. So, I'm still pro-nuclear, but in a zero-sum discussion, the focus *has* to be getting as much non-carbon sources as fast as possible, which inevitable has to be more renewables at present. However, less zero-sum, we should still be designing and constructing the nuclear plants now, concurrently.
My experience on the ideological camps mostly rests with the safety and waste concerns with nuclear, and capital and time costs. That's basically it (amongst those who do believe we need to decarbonize - the folks in denial are a whole other can of worms).
Great video otherwise though and I'm still liking it FWIW.
Yes !
"Compare that to the president of the renewable energy group (Zervos), who says we don't need nuclear at all - clearly with a bias for renewables.
" He must be heavily invested in fossil fuel stock.
" It's our only (scalable, except to some extent hydro) energy source where we don't have to do a ridiculous thermodynamic conversion in which to harness electricity." I see you weren't watching carefully. You can, but costs go through the roof. Not a good idea.
"but we've basically run out of time for nuclear." Not true. Mass-produced molten salt reactors could be going online in 5 years.
@@Cspacecat 5 years is still a fucking long time
@@0topon That idea all depends on how old you are.
@@Cspacecat I meant it as for a timescale on climate change
Thank you for a fair and well documented look at this.
I do however have one nitpick. At 26’09” you say there are nuclear advocates who think we need nothing but nuclear, and rentable advocates the opposite. In my personal experience I have read and heard renewables advocates say nuclear is not needed, but I’ve never heard a nuclear advocate say renewables are not needed.
Oh maaaan do I envy you I hear them all the time and it's super annoying
@@CrabExposedToDeltaP same :(
Literally every single video and article and political conference about renewables.
"Excuse me why are we debating this. Nuclear is a far better option."
@@tristanridley1601 well, that’s because it is. However, I’ve not heard any nuclear advocates say nuclear is the only way, and that there’s no point in any renewables. Having a range of power production is obviously a good option. Especially if they are not harmful to people. So coal is out at the start.
@@lachieechoecho I think you failed to read my comment at all.
Yours is undoubtably the best video covering this important issue. Very clearly argued and offers a balanced view of the options/challenges ahead.
part of the issue with renewables is some types don't have the best service lives and need to be replaced more often than other generators
I find the 'technology hero' argument interesting as it can just as equally be used for either case. In the video it is used in favour of renewables/power-to-the-people/etc, however I think it is even more applicable to the reverse argument: Nuclear power has existed for decades and (if you didn't have renewables destabilizing the grid) could be rolled out (and could have been rolled out 10 years ago) and the grid would be overwhelmingly low carbon - see France. Renewable on the other hand, to get around the grid stabilization issue, relies on technological leaps with energy storage and "technology superheroes" (Eg. Musk) to provide this capability. That said it's a great video and I strongly agree with the conclusions that both is the best path forward.
Unfortunately the real problem is money/economics and to counter that you need strong political pressure to increase nuclear usage or it'll continue to be cut out of grids and cause increases in carbon emissions from other sources to make up for the loss of energy generation (See germany where despite investing heavily in renewables over the last decade and transforming their energy generation, their CO2 emissions have been largely constant thanks to the shutting down of a large proportion of their nuclear power generation). The fundamental problem is that nuclear power plants, as stated in the video, are very expensive and take a long time to payback their investment. Because of this it's incredibly important that existing nuclear power plants are not shutdown, and government subsidies are very likely to be required to see significant construction of new facilities because no profit seeking private company will otherwise make such a large investment for a technology that in 20 years time may not be relevant (Eg. if renewable storage issues with battery technology are overcome and the price of renewable generated electricity plummets). The sad truth is that most politicians are pushing for nuclear plants to be closed, and are not even considering subsidising the opening of new ones - which is more than undoing gains that would be made from renewables adoption in some places (Again, see Germany with rising carbon emissions despite being one of the countries investing the most in renewables, all because of decomissioning nuclear and needing to use more coal/gas/etc to replace it's capacity).
What really NEEDS to happen so that we have some hope of having a low carbon grid within the 5-10year scale required to not go extinct is huge political pressure to keep all existing nuclear plants open, make government subsidies to expand nuclear energy as required and guaranteeing profits to any private ventures even if renewables make the plant unprofitable before it pays for itself AND continuing to invest heavily in grid scale battery storage technology and renewables. Overall a very good video but it would have been nice to see a section at the end about how the goal of a hybrid grid can be achieved, because left alone current trends are pushing us closer and closer to being dependent on a miracle technological solution to grid-scale energy storage that just does not currently exist. (Though don't get me wrong, if we can find a good enough solution to it and ASAP then heck yeah)
It's worth pointing out that though nuclear plants "are very expensive" the electricity they generate once constructed / running cost is actually very cheap (See france). It's just the big investment to start that is the huge issue since the plant then needs to run for of the order of 10 years to pay for itself
Beat me to a similar response by a couple of hours... ;)
thank you! I was quite confused when he made that argument. Solar is a newer technology, the batteries needed and the infra structure change is also newer. He later in the video say nuclear advocates want things to run as it always has and just continue as normal, isn't that going against the "technology hero" argument? He basically says nuclear advocates are both futurists and conservatists/back-to-the-past-ists.
Actually there are new advancements in nuclear. I live in Canada and the gov't recently announced plans to create SMRs or small modular reactors. Basically it is a miniaturized version of a traditional nuclear plant, but with the reactors being designed to be more like batteries - reactors that are built, and prefueled (with physical limitations placed on the rate of reaction) and shipped to the location that needs it. Once the fuel has run out (which usually takes years and years), the reactor is shipped back to the manufacturer and a new one is ordered. Its way safer than the current nuclear plants (which are already safe) because there is no on-site fueling.
Why does this myth persist about germany?! Their co2 emission has decreased steadily, along with fossil energy sources. Nuclear has been replaced by renewables.
www.energy-charts.de/energy.htm?source=all-sources&period=monthly&year=all
The problem with "listening to nature" is that it may wish to say: I am not going to support billions of people on this tiny planet! And then what?
We are where we are because of technological advances (easier food production, better health care) and the solutions presented here are of technological nature. Reliance on electric current is no way "natural" to humans (but try not to use it at all). Mass covering land with solar panels is not natural and planting concrete forests of wind turbines is not natural too as huge dams playing a role of energy accumulators.
We can try fool ourselves that we can come back to green days. But we just cannot. Instead, we must seek ways to minimise our impact on the environment.
handful of rich people disproportionately use more energy(=emit more carbon) than the bottom half of the entire global population. You don't need 3 earths to support the population, which if everybody lived like average US citizens it would, right now.
@@gitcat6671 So? Are you going to persuade them to stop? If the people supported climate protection, no serious politicians would vote to abolish Kyoto protocol. Still, that is what happened.
@@gitcat6671 if everyone lived like an american it would be more like 8-10 planets needed.
The around 1 ratio planetwide is for the living level of cuba, not everyone can accept that, thus there will be war.
War is a goo way to bring plague and famine which are good ways to reduce populations. I fear that instea of changing our way of life in "develloped" countries, we will choose to wage war to reduce global population.
I don't think anyone said it's natural it'd just more natural and that's such a stupid argument .
And we can so go back to "green days" I keep myself in touch with nature .
@@LiEnby Almost anything is sustainable on a local scale. We desparately need global solutions.
Great video lots of excellent facts and figures, now the question did you copy the setup behind you from Technology Connections (a youtube channel), or did he?
I absolutely adore this video. Just wanted to inform you that I began watching your videos back when I was a foundation student of Engineering, as part of my journey towards pursuing my PhD. Now, I'm nearing the completion of my master's degree in energy engineering and in the process of applying for a PhD in climate change. Your channel has been instrumental in my academic journey. Keep up the fantastic work!
Let's not forget one key fact, renewables are just nuclear power at a distance
True
I mean, so are fossil fuels, right?
Fossil fuel is nuclear power from the past
Ok, I thought of an exception......tidal energy
Do you mean, solar is passive collection of fusion power? sure. Geothermal is decay heat from Uranium and Thorium in the core, so yes there too.
The key phrase is "(renewables) technology just isn't ready yet". Contrast this to nuclear power, which has provided reliable, safe electricity for decades. Betting the planet on electricity storage miracles is insane, and so is the dogmatic refusal of nuclear power.
revisiting this video before starting on my electrical engineering degree. I'm planning on goin into Electrical power engineering so grid management etc
You should update this video with the small modular reactor ideal.. which can be prefabricated, reducing costs. Also, nuclear and renewables paired with a hydrogen backbone (using excess electricity to produces hydrogen). I don't think hydrogen cars are going to be a thing, but fuel cell mass transport could be as well as a backup energy source.
I'm somewhat sceptical of your "nuclear guys relying on technology rather than changing society" thesis. I mean, aren't renewables - which there has been way more progress in over the last decade - also a technological solution?
I mean, even if you're desperate for a worldwide reevaluation of the human condition - why wouldn't you want to also be using the cleanest tech available?
One step further, Nuclear is actually the OPPOSITE of that claim he made. Nuclear technology ALREADY exists and works, we dont need to rely on future technology at all, we figured this stuff out decades ago.
Nuclear is the current solution we have (when paired with renewables), and full on renewables are going to be the LONG term solution in a hundred years or so as we slowly phase out nuclear due to better renewables technology.
But the main priority right now is to phase out fossil fuels, and we already know nuclear energy can do that RIGHT NOW. no new technology or infrastructure needed. Just build new plants, turn em on, and thats it, you can easily hit 70%+ of global power production on nuclear if countries really wanted to.
Because it isn't a base energy source. For example look at our energy crisis rn. There's not much wind and not much sun, therefore solar panels and windmills aren't producing enough energy. So using nuclear energy as our base load energy would be the best thing,
@@eragon78 we can with the technology available right now transition entirely to renewable. Its also able to do that with nuclear. That's stated in the video. But I mean, just look at the comment section, "thorium reactor!" "Molten salt reactor!" "Fusion power!" Meanwhile all of those are either not available in any comercial capacity or have none built at all.
@@randommodnar7141 We cannot switch to full renewables right now.
The main issue is energy storage. Renewables are not reliable enough to consistently produce enough power for power needs 24/7. You have to have large energy storage to make up the difference when production is low and that technology isnt mature enough yet.
SOME countries can have 100% renewable, but thats usually because they have some special condition such as a lot of power from hydroelectric or something.
But most countries cannot have 100% renewables right now as energy storage technology is not yet ready for that.
That said, we could get a pretty large percentage to renewables, well over 50% in most places. So its still smart to build renewables. But for 100% production from renewables, we are going to need better energy storage technology and infrastructure.
Also, all the people talking about future nuclear reactors, yea, we dont need those. They are nice because they are better than current reactors, but they definitely arent required to use safe and effective nuclear power. Nuclear power in its current state is sufficient to eliminate fossil fuels in our power production. While new technology can make it better, its not required for Nuclear to fix the problem.
Of course as always though, a hybrid solution is best. The best solution is to fit as much renewables as we can into the grid, and then fill the rest with Nuclear. And over time slowly replace nuclear with renewables as renewables technology improves. But for the short term, the hybrid solution is best, but that will require nuclear power generation.
Honestly, never heard of any reputable source argue that 100% nuclear is a preferred or desirable solution.
Why would anyone argue for 100% nuclear when nuclear+renewable with more renewable as the grid is gradually upgraded is clearly the best solution.
@@Chestyfriend Renewable is a joke.
@@kavky good argument, buddy
Classic strawman technique, present your opponents as holding a position he doesn't really hold.
I would argue for 400% nuclear. We should be able to irrigate the Sahara desert using water from the ocean. Fusion would help this
Good summary of the topic. Actually didn't expect that goin in.
I think you did a fair job of talking about the base technologies. But no discussion of the material supply chain and who controls that for renewables. In general the huge increases in raw material cost and the availability for lithium and colbalt is a real problem for commercial battery systems to give even short term stability of minutes for renewable sources.
All Nuclear plants are flexible! The reason they are operated at full power all day is that it makes almost no difference to the cost of the plant if choose to not produce power. So as long as the price of electricity is above the 0.5 cents per kWh that the uranium costs you will produce it.
But if required you can load follow even with old nuclear plants see France.
basically yes. Practically no. Most nuclear plants a minimum load of around 40% of their max. Which is still a lot! The point that you said is important, construction costs are huge, operation costs are low. Thus, they really really really have to run 24/7 to be profitable. Adjusting the load often also means stress for the materials.... materials which cant be maintained in nuclear plants. Its a bit problem, most plants are not designed to adjust their load regularly .... designing them this way is possible, but makes them even less profitable.
So the short answer is: YES they can be flexible... BUT if they do its an economic nightmare.
Else Kling Fair enough. Yes load following does make the economics worse, which is why it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to integrate a lot of renewables. So if a country is serious about cutting emissions they should do what France has done and take a reactor design and build it over and over again with the same people all over the country. That way you can build them cheap and quick, which is why France holds the record for most clean capacity added within a Decade and enjoys some of the lowest electricity prices in Europe.
Just out of curiosity, have you read "The Wizard and the Prophet"? It's a Charles Mann book about the dichotomous world views you discussed near the end.
I haven't no - though funnily enough you're the second person today to mention it to me! That's once on the internet and once via a book.
Agreed. Charles Mann's two books "1493", "The Wizard and the Prophet", and his article "State of the Species" opened my eyes to how ecology has been, and is a bigger driving force behind human agency and history than one would think. (If that's sounds to much like prophets talk: And of course, how wizards saved us many times over without us knowing it.)
Thanks for this video, Simon!
The problem with solar power is that most of the supply generation happens during the morning to afternoon, yet most of the demand usage happens in the evening.
In order to solve for this problem, solar power invariably needs to be paired with battery backups or the grid in order to store the excess power for use later in the day.
Amazing video, I would just like to add some points to back this video, in the past 10 years Germany has increased the number of wind and solar massively but r still producing more CO2 than in 2009. Due to in 2019 poor wind and sunlight and due to closing of nuclear. In France in March 98% of our energy was non carbon thanks to the symbiotic nature of our energy production. I can understand why u don’t want to build new plants, but there r no valid reasons to tear down working power plant.
There are some plants that had legitimate reasons to be taken down, but overall I agree. Some of those plants should have never closed
Fiva De yes ofc there r but that’s not what green peace advocates for. They see nuclear as neutral negative just above gaz. It’s a shame people r so misinformed about nuclear
The german political debate is really weird. In the video it's said that usually the debate is renewables on the left vs. nuclear on the right with all unanimously agreeing that coal is bad.
Instead, what I see is renewables on the left and "let's just do what the coal lobby says" on the right and center, with everyone staying away from nuclear like it's the plague because of fear.
The large scale decommission was a kneejerk reaction to the events of Fukushima, specifically. Since then only a few parties have put it back on their program.
France has probably the most rational energy policy in the world. I've recently returned from a trip there and everywhere I went there were small arrays of 3 or 4 wind turbines; even saw a couple of convoys transporting new ones.
However, this is partly due to necessity due to France's lack of fossil fuel resources and the aging of existing Nuclear plants and ongoing issues with building next generation reactors in Flamanville.
The downsides are that it has to use foreign policy hard power options in order to secure its supplies of Uranium in countries like Niger and Chad.
Lunam yes that’s true however u need a tiny quantity of uranium comparetevly to other fossil fuels. And even solar panel are made with rare earth material from other countries.
to summarize with the words of a sage: don't put all your eggs in the same basket...
I fully agree with the reasoning and conclusion made in this video.
As usual and with many other things as well, working together has the best outcome for everyone.
And ofcourse keep investing in finding new technologies, improving knowing technologies within renewables and nucleair powerplants. I think both are needed.
A great example/analogy could be the size and energyrequirements of CPU's. Compared to the first computers there is a massive decrease of needed energy while getting a massssssive increase of processpower.
It really is about reimagining the way we do energy. With some storage like either a battery or supercap in your basement and some solar panels on your roof you basically don't need any outside power anymore (just speaking from my experience)
Also: people really need to start doing the math on how many resources we do have left for nuclear power and for how long it could satisfy our energy needs. That number is around the 100 year mark, not several hundreds or thousands of years at the current technological level.
While i agree with most of the points said in the video i must say that simply stating that nuclear is capitalistic and renewables are socialist is extremely flawed. For example in India a majority of plants (renewable, nuclear or fossil fuel) are owned either a) by the government or b) by public owned companies in which the government has a majority stake. The corporation-nuclear idea is very very first world centric. In almost all countries that are not first world have power plants that are owned by the government and hence the people.
Again this is not to say that the video was false or dishonest in anyway. The points you have made are very true for countries like the US (and i assume the UK as well), however they are not universal.
Totally agree. I live in Nordics and here nuclear and pretty much all major power plants(hydro,coal etc.) are state owned.
The whole last part of the video(political leaning stuff) and USA centric.
@@samuelsilver8077 but the argument wasn't really that, it was that your ideology at least to a large extent how you think we need to change our personal habits, instead of "just letting scientists" figure it out.
At least here in Denmark that is pretty evident
Whether something is state owned is really far less relevant than you'd think.
It just means the elites have to go through the politicians and the courts.
But that's not hard, at all.
Just look up what "electoral democracies" are if you want to know more. Hint: Norway does way better than that, but not every "democracy" does!
A state basically needs only one button to override the will of the people when it comes to nuclear power plants.
But it would be FAR more difficult for them to go to all sorts of rural places and have to physically tear the solar panels off people's rooftops.
So yeah, it's indeed not true that nuclear plants are necessary always "pro-capitalism," but it still *is* true that nuclear power is much less egalitarian than solar power...
@Sandcastle • what's the problem with energy hunger if it's 100% clean? Why make your life harder if you don't need to? That is kind of perverse martyr logic
There was no mention of capitalist or socialist, rather left leaning or right leaning tendencies, which is very much true, in terms of conservative/progressive leaning politics.
And for those saying that he's wrong because most energy in nordic countries and France are state owned, a capitalist state owning the means of energy production doesn't magically make it socialist. They are still a capitalist state, and the energy is still produced by a capitalist entity.
Amazing! 90% of all people would have called it after section 1 and it would have been a GOOD video! Really balanced, well explained but not oversimplifying. Yet you kept going on the actual loistics etc. extremly iportant factors and that elevated this video. Great stuff!
@13:10 ..What about the new modular reactors? They’re small, more affordable and you can connect more to augment power supply as needed
What about the maintenance and replacement of renewables? Last I checked, solar panels (at best) need to be replaced at least every 30 years. Whereas a nuclear power plant can last up to 80 years before needing to be replaced.
This is fantastic! I love how it takes a middle ground approach and presents arguments for both. This is journalism unlike what is seen on tv.
The conclusion is balanced and well put. Nuclear, solar, wind and hydro will all need to be used in the future grids. One thing you missed though is that while nuclear power plants' upfront cost and time investment is large, the changes required to modify the current grid infrastructure to accomodate large amounts of renewable power generation (solar and wind) are about as costly and time intensive as the investments required on nuclear power plants, meaning it's not really an either/or situation. Changing the worlds' power grids is going to be intensive no matter what we do.
The idea of decentralized power grids making electricity generation less of a monopolistic and capitalistic endeavour is also quite misguided. Solar panels and wind turbines require heavy industrial machinery to produce. As such, the new monopolies that will arise will not be through the direct power generation, but through the production of power generation assets if people start just buying them and generating their own power. All of that is also not considering the requirements of centralized power control over a grid. Given the current alternative current infrastructure we use, we need to precisely control frequency and phase for our grid, meaning you can't just change the power and load on the system without affecting the grid stability, making it impossible to have a true decentralized power grid with our current technology without a centralized control interface, otherwise the grid explodes. People who think of renewables as some political tool to make a utopian society where everything is decentralized are not engineers, they are ideologues.
I do not think it is as fraught as you think.
Grid upgrades need not be a matter of major modification, but of finer control of the distributed inputs. Every household inverter and obviously all of greater capacity can trivially have access to GPS and internet time references, allowing microsecond control of generated waveforms to generate smoother collective waveforms at the transformer and substation level. They need not get their frequency standard from the grid, but from a planned picture of the grid some micro or milliseconds into the future.
Nuclear has *huge* unprovisioned costs, including decommissioning, final waste disposal and insurances. These are all underwritten by host nations that have made no genuine provision beyond crossed fingers and litigation.
Panel and turbine production *are* bottlenecks and it behooves any responsible nation to incubate it's own industries in this regard, as once we did for motor vehicles. Some nations may prefer lower-tech solutions like dish-mounted Brayton, rather than high-tech PV, depending on their manufacturing and repair capabilities, but none can ignore this and be considered competent.
Frequency control is less of a bottleneck than you think. Large interconnects are increasingly HVDC, due to the superior efficiency and reduced losses. A network of HVDC links stabilised by grid-scale batteries at each end eliminates the need for grid-wide frequency control. This is not "gold-plating" as new interconnects are routinely adopting this technology regardless of generation. Longer interconnects will be exclusively HVDC, as with the three new long-distance ones in China linking western afternoon sun to eastern evening demand. Engineering facts, not ideology. Frequency control in some regions has *already* been taken over by grid-scale batteries, at a huge saving over fossil-burning price gougers. Again, just simple facts on record.
_"The conclusion is balanced and well put."_
Only by completely ignoring the problem of long-term-storage of the nuclear waste.
@@KlausJLinke I don't think you understand the real issues if you seriously think nuclear waste is a large scale issue...
@@Not.a.bird.Person Genuinely. Not only could it be used by breeder reactors, but it's a miniscule problem compared to the pollution we face.
@@KlausJLinke you don't long-term store an electricity grid... you do for your peak demands...did you forget that electric cars need huge batteries just like billions of machines and micro grid in isolated places.
For nuclear wastes, Simon has hinted that people like simple binary options to get passionate about...but, that life is usually more complicated. Many powerplants are quite old tech while slowly but surely modern ones get built, remember the big upfront $. Billions for the big ones but, Simon hasn't made much effort to look at SMR and (like others said) breather reactor...the first one can & is made in format smaller than a house and in shipping containers for ultra remote places.
You really should have said, Simon has forgot to say that unless the radioactive materials come from a state with civil rights like Canada, it may come from shame of the world Africa where you know it's easier to get people to work for less with less protection (I love efficient energy production but, the Africa problematic is nuclear's 99 Problems).
Oh and solar, is made from not so environmental responsible material for efficiency sake(at the moment) and wind turbines kills millions of birds each year and*apparently make too much noise for some... I'd research that more though.
Oh and wind turbines poles are made of steel... I'll let you search the astronomical amount of.water and energy it takes to make some...that in turns refers to the awesome comment made above about the other problematic of monopolies in the equipment production...just like batteries are made by 3-4 companies.
Before starting, let me say that this was a very well done video and shed even more light on both sides, which I appreciate. That said,
The great proponent of renewable energy sources is that it has low carbon emissions, but as the infrastructure issue shows, there are other problems to tackle, namely: what do you do when a solar panel, wind turbine, or battery reaches its useful lifetime? There are heavy metals prone to soil contamination in solar panels and batteries, so what do we do in 5-10 years when we have to deal with that?
Also, it should be pretty clear by now and the video also shows it, but most if not all renewables are depending on the location. You need great open areas for wind farms, high solar incidence across the year to make solar run on a net positive. Hydro, Geothermal and Ocean are strictly bound to the local geography, and living in Brazil, which is majorly powered by hydroelectrics, there's also the local fauna and flora to take into consideration, because sometimes the body of water will require some serious damming.
Now, I'm a reasonable person. I don't think Nuclear energy will save humanity's future, and am very aware of the risks, and is precisely because of this that the denial of it as a viable option baffles me. Maybe its the "fear" created by pop culture about radiation and nuclear reactors, and nuclear warheads, but people seem unreasonably averse to it.
Unfortunately, in the recent years it seems impossible to not turn any discussion into a political debate, which is really, really tiring. It should also be noted that carbon is emmited too in a lot of manufacturing processes, so we also gotta look upon reducing consumption. Say, not buying the newest smartphone in the market, perhaps?
As it has been said, climate change is a very sensitive and complex topic that has been overtaken by political discourse on all sides. There's no one solution, and no one person or entity to blame. It is also unreasonable to simply "unplug" everything. It took years of misguided actions from humanity to make a significant impact on the environment at global scale, why would it be different to go in the opposite direction?
Once again, awesome video. Will keep it around for reference
Hi! I'm from Uruguay. Great video! And thanks for mentioning us. I think it is a discussion that we see from afar to a region. With 3.5 million inhabitants, we have an economy that is still very dependent on agriculture. We have per capita 4 cows per inhabitants! Greetings.
Wind and solar plants have significant decommissioning costs too. They just can't be abandoned, as has been done so far.
"Wind and solar plants have significant decommissioning costs too"
Nothing compared to nuclear power plants
@@Dundoril But they're not being decommisioned. They're being abandonned.
@@jackee-is-silent2938 "ut they're not being decommisioned. They're being abandonned."
Not here in germany
@@Dundoril Hardly so. Remove the fuel from a NPP and you can virtually walk away from it. In fact, the first part of decommisioning requires just that. OK, some site security is needed but no more. Drain the coolant too of course ! The fuel's usually happy in dry or wet storage btw.
@@Dundoril Big mistake.
Good and pretty balanced video.
More or less the same answer, I’d give.
I’m an energy meteorologist, I find the argument against existence of base load a bit off.
You still consume power with negative consumption, you just consume less than your solar panels produce.
If you added up all solar power production, both private rooftop and large solar “parks” you end up with similar consumption profiles as we have classically seen.
It’s just that Transmission System Operators, National Grid in the UK, don’t know how much solar power people produces privately, so they just calculate on the net power they can see consumers need. Which is smart enough from their point of view, but not totally correct to talk about negative consumption.
As always, love your videos, the high scientific value and loads of research you out into this.
I’d probably be doing something like this myself, if I had the time. I really think atmospheric scientists should be heard more in then public debate about climate issues.
I agree. Baseload may go down, and be kind of hybridized by huge battery arrays, but I can't imagine it to go away. A windless night doesn't need a lot of power, but also produces none, without at least something that can work at all hours.
Smaller, modular reactors may help the mix of sources? Less cost efficient than the big plants, but quicker and more flexible to deploy? We are in a hurry here…thinking out loud.
Probably the best article I have seen on this very pressing issue.
Great video, there are however few things that I feel are over-looked / were not proven in the video / missed:
- Even with all the solutions together, its going to be a struggle, and the video did not address the de-commissioning of existing nuclear plants - which seems very illogical
- The "fact" that we only have a decade was treated as fact without proof (not saying its not true, but as someone less knowledgeable it would sure be helpful, as a-lot of the video relays on that)
- You said that the clear advantage of renewables is how fast you can get them going compared to nuclear, however you also mentioned earlier that there is going to be needed ALOT of infrastructure work and change for that to happen, especially on a large scale.
I think a nice time, cost comparison would be nice here, and you did kind of say that, but this suggests you need to build both, depending where and on the specific situation.
- Something I dont see alot of ppl talking about, is that in theory, if 95-100% of ur energy is produced with near zero carbon emmision, the the carbon cost of creating renewables / nuclear also go down to near zero, and the only impact is in the material consumption.
- Lastly I wanted to see some reference to battery tech, because that also increases cost, has logistical issues, and has its environmental impact.
Thats it, overall good vid, if you could respond to these questions it would be really good, and I do think its on a-lot of ppls minds.
I would like to take a moment to respond to one of your points, if you will.
Renewables will require additional infrastructure compared to nuclear. This is very true. One of the differences here is that with nuclear plants there's a limit to how fast they can be built. There definitely are (IMHO unnecessary) hurdles that can be reduced/removed but impregnating nine women won't create a child in a month.
There absolutely are going to be bottlenecks when it comes to expanding renewables (trivially there's only so many factories and, especially for wind, heavy load trucks), it is possible to distribute the load, no pun intended. While one company builds up a windfarm the utilities company can already work on infrastructure upgrades needed for handling this load.
I agree a comparison would have been useful.
_"if 95-100% of ur energy is produced with near zero carbon emmision, the the carbon cost of creating renewables / nuclear also go down to near zero, and the only impact is in the material consumption."_
If I understand this point correctly, the assumption you're making is that the majority of carbon emissions during creation of renewables / nuclear come from the energy input (i.e. the electricity) required to form, ship and assemble components.
I think people drastically underestimate the carbon cost of concrete, which currently accounts for something like 8% of global CO2 emissions alone. Unless this is what you meant by the "material consumption". It's well worth the carbon investment if it removes a few coal plants from operation, but it isn't quite "near zero" as you suggested.
_"Lastly I wanted to see some reference to battery tech, because that also increases cost, has logistical issues, and has its environmental impact."_
Oh, and to comment on this point: I agree battery tech (meaning cell batteries) is definitely far from being a silver-bullet solution at the scale of an energy grid, but certainly pumped hydro storage is an excellent means of storing excess electricity. The main issue is to do with its inertia, I think.
@@harrysmith3606 The problem with hydro storage however, is that some places are, regrettably, flat. It wouldn't be too practical per se for the netherlands to construct a large water reservoir with their flat plains and all, that's just stupid. But in most countries, with a good amount of geological diversity and great infrastructure to construct said dams and a decent supply of water would be a practical solution to the battery problem.
Thing is, I don't think we could have enough storage of that in most countries.
Sure places like the USA, UK, China, Russia, Germany, France, Italy (Maybe), most of eastern europe, Egypt, India, basically most of the large countries could probably have good-enough water storage for all of their people. But let's take places like Saudi Arabia... and then we come into a hundred problems with building a large artificial holding of water in the middle of the desert with 0 rivers or lakes to take water from. Now, we could do lithium ion for most of them, and the dozen other desert countries with little to no water reserves. That surely isn't too much people, right? They have solar for most of the day, they could probably do without having power occasionally at night.
Then we go onto another problem country, taiwan. Most places there are super developed, big cities on all the flat places... and then we go onto the rest of the island which is deadly-nature filled mountains, lots and lots of mountains. And I don't think they really have the space for a large water tank anywhere on the island that isn't filling up a tiny mountain valley with some water, then trying to flow it... through the mountains? I think the concrete that you'll spend on that would be about equal to a shitty nuclear plant in the mountains. But maybe you could create a giant lithium ion battery storage facility somewhere... but all the flat places are occupied by people filled metropolises, and I don't think they'd be open to living right next to what is a giant fire hazard, especially since a spy or two could set fire to one of the batteries and destroy the nation's nighttime power supply.
And how would the country even get solar there? Maybe they could just have a few hydroelectric dams, but industry there is very energy intensive so maybe that'll not be enough, and there doesn't seem to be any space for a wind farm unless you want to send a hundred or so of those in the mountains, which, I'll be honest, doesn't seem like a good idea without building hundreds of roads into the country.
So Taiwan would probably be nuclear, fine. Having nuclear also helps with typhoons ig, as you can shut it down and have it sort of survive the disaster, but wind turbines would probably get recked, and I don't think solar panels would have a very good time with all the debris that'll be flying around.
But let's go a bit south of taiwan, to the Philippines.
Let's see... they could go on full hydroelectric, plenty of rivers, maybe a few geothermal plants... they're probably fine with electricity?
But, it seems like the river water is getting a bit lower year by year, and climate change is drying up some of their rivers during the dry season. So maybe they'll need some solar... but where? The country has lots of sun, but it's a very rainy place and the cloud cover gets quite intense during the rainy season, so wind seems like the better option... until you realize that every two years they get a massive fucking super typhoon that wrecks half the country and that most turbines prolly won't survive unless we make them out of titanium. So we'll have to store the energy... but how?
They're running out of water, while not having much resources to purchase lithuim, as last I checked that country's economy was heading into the gutter after they elected a ... son of a dictator as their president?
So maybe we shouldn't give them nuclear, just let em be hydro-geothermal people, maybe a few more geothermal plants to remedy the water crisis and things should be fine...
Man this is pretty interesting to think about, most countries are probably fine with hydro storage, but the problem countries, man, they really have such shit conditions for any type of renewables. Glad nuclear exists for them.
Nuclear power: "the most complicated way to boil a pot of water."
Wait till we get fusion in about 20 to 30 years... Probably... Hopefully...
@@justaguy6216 and then matter/antimatter energy in twice that time
@@lupinthethird5784 Too easy.
@@lupinthethird5784 To create antimatter for an antimatter-matter reactor would take much more energy than the reactor could possibly provide; remember the laws of thermodynamics here. Unless we find natural sources of antimatter (not likely at all), antimatter can only be used as bombs or batteries at best. Who knows, maybe there is a cosmic spring of antimatter in deep space for us to use and we don't know- but that isn't feasible for us to use now. Is it an amazing sci-fi tech we should start academic research on? FUCK YEA, I'M INTO THAT!! But we also have to keep reality in mind.
@@sciencemanguy Oh trust me we'll have one soon enough then we can begin development of the first hypermatter annihilator.
Coming from eastern Washington State, one of the regions in the world richest in hydropower, this video has reinforced for me the idea that hydro, like nuclear, should be classed differently from renewables. Hydro has massive environmental impacts of its own, but they are localized to the area put underwater and the fish runs blocked by the dams. This video makes me think It's also in a third category in terms of social consequences. Hydro projects are an old style centralized source the way nuclear is, but they are almost always publicly owned and run since governments are uniquely able to do things like use eminent domain law to buy land that will be submerged. If nuclear defaults toward a sort of capitalist status quo and distributed technology default away from the status quo, than hydro defaults more to a socialist or social democratic status quo.
I agree with the notion of classifying them separately. China's recent string of hydroelectric dams have seriously harmed the Mekong, and significantly worsening food and environmental security downstream-- except this isn't just any river. The Mekong is highly important, and that downstream area is the majority of mainland Southeast Asia, which also exports and consumes many foodstuffs sourced from the rivers and their waters-- not to mention the economic impact for a country such as Vietnam. Historically much of their GDP and a great portion of their workforce's employment has been agriculture related, which is a trend which has only been decreasing recently. This is mainly due to the transition to a service economy, but also in part due to the sometimes severe weakening of the river affecting agriculture in the greater Mekong Basin area, as well as many communities in their tributary rivers. The problem is equally if not more severe for countries such as Laos and Cambodia, and some parts of Thailand as well.
All of this, however, has only been in relation to the effects of the damming of the Mekong specifically. Similar cross-border dammings have (and will in the future in cases such that of Egypt, the Sudans and Ethiopia's dam dispute) causes many issues in relation to food, water, environmental and biodiversity. From Turkish dams on the Euphrates, to Ethiopian dams on the Nile, this definitely isn't a new issue. However, it is a continuing one that must be adressed accordingly.
I think yet another interesting issue with hydroelectric damming is that of archeology. Countless historical and archeological sites, known and unknown, have been lost to reserviors over the past couple century especially, and many more will continue to be lost to the misguided waters of progress. Personally, one of the most interesting ones to me was that of Little Egypt in Georgia, an indigenous American Indian archeological site which was flooded as part of the construction of Carter's Dam, as well as Navajo Lake which flooded a spiritually/religiously sacred Navajo site whilst constructing the Navajo Dam in New Mexico, which has had its own slew of environmental issues related to it.
You can do hydro without going full Grand Coulee Dam. In norway about 90% of our power is hydro produced, but the focus have been on more and smaller magasines around the country. This protects us from droughts and saves the environment. As of today there are over 1700 hydro powerstations around the country.
@@klekowe have a similar situation in New Zealand with about 80% of electricity from renewable energy, primarily hydropower and geothermal power. Most of the hydro stations are much smaller than the Grand Coulee Dam or the ones in China, with the largest being about 800 MW.
Great video!
Mostly agree, but the "built faster" argument was not well thought through. If you compare constructing of one nuclear plant with thousands of wind turbines, which are needed to reach the same capacity, the picture is different. And building the power grids needed for renewables also takes a lot of time (as it is, at least in Germany, often met with local resistance because it requires cutting paths through forest and such)
There was a study comparing the time to build electric capacity over the last decades and nuclear was actually better than renewables. Countries like France managed to build many plants at once, reasonably quickly.
Additionally, how much of that "average" nine year process was regulatory hurdles placed by redundant safety and environmental checks and surveys (urged on repeatedly by those "anti-nuclear" groups we barely touched on) on pre-approved and previously utilized reactor plant designs that slowed construction to a crawl. Again, look at some of the countries that embraced nuclear, like France: how long was their construction process? Turns out those countries did it in 80 months on average, not 108 months, and Japan (yeah, yeah, Fukishima, because anyone can predict a natural disaster occurring miles underground under the ocean) did it in an average of 60 months by working on improving collaboration between utilities companies, local and regional governance, and constructors (inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/42/105/42105221.pdf). And it took two seconds on google to find that paper, btw. Try harder, Simon.
The difference is that you can build these wind turbines at the same time. Even with regulatory hurdles etc. it takes around 2-3 years to place a wind turbine. And well, actually using "a" is kind of wrong, since most often these projects include multiple wind turbines. And overall 1 person can handle at least 5 of these projects at the same time. With an average of 3 wind turbines per project, 5 projects per person, you can get 15 wind turbines up in 2-3 years by 1 person. You can scale this up by using more personnel, it is more difficult to speed up a nuclear powerplant build in a similar way.
You need around 330 wind turbines per nuclear powerplant. That means you'd need to have around 23 people working on building new wind turbines to place the equivalent of a nuclear powerplant in around 3 years. So yes, overall roll out of renewables can be done faster. And ofcourse solar panels can also quickly be placed, though you'd need a lot more of them. You need around 50 people placing 35 panels a day for 5 years to get the equivalent amount of power to a nuclear reactor.
Ofcourse there are different factors, like the size of the plant, etc. But on average you'd get something like this.
And I am using numbers from the US government department of energy if you want to know.
In the end the faster roll out of renewables is a fact. You can only build a new power plant that fast. And well, if you take into consideration regulatory hurdles for wind turbines (which usually is around 2-2,5 years, with 0,5 years construction), you should also do so for nuclear. 9 years seems about correct in that case in the west, if not more.
Greens pointing gun at Pro-Nuclear adv.: "Nuclear will never clean entire electrical grids of GHGs"
France: *shoots him in the back*
They will keep ignoring France because it completely debunks their entire argument. You can get nuclear power plants up in a short amount of time, France got their construction down to 4 years each.
Even with all of the regulations placed on nuclear to strangle it out of the economy, there has never been an example of Solar and Wind replacing majority of the electrical grid with clean energy, not a one. America increased their solar and wind by 10-15x in the last couple of decades(Which hasn't done jack), yet it is still peanuts to what would happen if they only triple their nuclear power.
@@ska042 Glad my response got your attention lol. While it was tragic, everything I have read about the designs at Fukushima said they built to more than government disaster requirements. Hindsight is usually 20/20, right? And I agree, everyone does seem to stick to their side, but if we can't have open discourse how will we ever find a solution, or God forbid, reach compromise and common ground?!?! I personally believe that wind and solar have their place in the industry, especially when used on an individual basis (and selling excess back to the grid), but I don't think that the large scale projects truly provide reliable long term solutions, especially taking the blade disposal or solar cell construction and waste problems into account. Nuclear is clean, reliable, and long term, which drives costs down. I would encourage you to please explain your ideas! Most of us on the "nuclear side" are open to exploring all options and weighing their impacts, not just blindly following what sounds "environmentally responsible" but in reality ends up being worse for the planet.
Could you share that study? seems pretty interesting!
The Construction problem for nuclear plants has recently been solved with the invention and design of small, modular reactors that are entirely self contained, are passively cooled and can be stacked like legos to form larger power plants when needed.
Why isn't this comment pinned jo nne is right
Well made video. I was not aware of any of the major problems with nuclear. Thanks for the succinct research.
I have a question why is hydro power so often left out of the renewable sources? (Solar and wind) Is it less stable, less powerful, or something else?
Hydropower is extremely disruptive to local ecosystems and disastrous for ecosystems downstream (the Colorado River is a perfect example). It's also pretty much built up to the maximum capacity in the United States. It's very much an issue that advocates of pumped hydro-storage don't talk about. Dams are also very susceptible to droughts.
The upside with hydro though is that it is much more efficient and reliable than solar and wind, and the only note-worthy carbon emissions come from the pouring of all the necessary concrete.
@@tomcat4195 cool, thanks.
It would be interesting if you did a follow up video in 5 years. And whilst doing so cover the SMR (Small Modular Reactors) that are being built in parts of the US and Europe. A great unbiased video awesome job!
Are *any* SMRs being built? as of August 2022 Rolls Royce hadn't even picked a site for the factory, and will not undertake *anything* without 50% up-front from the commonwealth. You can be sure that if that 50% doesn't give results that RR will not be spending a single penny of their own money on it.
NuScale is in a similar position but seeking investors.
As far as I know, *nothing* that would be regarded as modular or small is being "built" anywhere. Just drawings.
The factory projections have ten year lags. Even if each stage of the factory is built in order, don't expect to see one roll off the production line till 2035.
I think SMRs will have a guaranteed future in international shipping, and that might be a good fit as such shipping will be among the last forms of fossil use to change.
@@aaroncosier735
From what I understand there are currently only a handful of SMR being built. These have only been noted in Argentina, China and Russia. The projects are in their advanced stages.
Bear in mind there are over 50 companies with reactor designs so for investors it is quite alot riskier as it is more competitive, than a conventional power plant owned by big oil & gas.
Several key parts of the industry will need to be planned and setup ahead of time. This being the nuclear fuel itself, the chosen site, reactor design. Then more planning around transport of materials, licensing, public approval and the logistics chain.
So yes alot of work, but I firmly believe that by 2030 Europe will have at least 3 Small modular reactors. And from there it will grow to hundreds by the end of the century.
@@luke4916 I'm not even sure about the "handful". Recent articles on the topic have had to rope in US military submarine reactors (weapons grade fuel) and Russian Ice Breaker reactors (three storeys high, twenty to thirty meters long, decidedly *not* modular), as they flounder for examples.
The Toshiba ones seem to have fizzled out.
I see a future for SMRs in international shipping. I think they will be critical. But I don't see them being a realistic option by 2030. At very best the first prototypes will be under test in 2035, and needing considerable revision.
The Attenborough voice of quality energy documentaries. Nice production Simon!
This couldn’t have come at a better time. Start work in the renewables sector on Monday. A feast for my brain. Thank you :)
As a pro nuke, I salute you, and wish you the best. Give the world more photovoltaics. When you get a moment, look up "betavoltaics"
@@davidcampbell1420 Your opinion on Perovskite Solar ?
@@pasoundman I don't have a strong (educated) opinion. I had heard of it. Looking at it now it looks like its going to be useful for smaller devices? If you know more, please share.
Whatever the case may be, good. I'm glad to see any of this technology advance!
@@davidcampbell1420 It's new to me too. Since you mentioned betavoltaics I though you might know more. AIUI it offers 30% conversion efficiency but I don't know much else.
"Both are good, do both" was actually pretty easy to digest, especially because of the graphs.
Less than 200 people died at Chernobyl. The numbers that you are referencing come from linear no-threshold model (LNT) model. LNT is a dose-response model used in radiation protection to estimate stochastic health effects. It is regulatory not science model. So, the IAEA does not suggest the use of that for Chernobyl deaths affiliated with the accident. Also, the Chernobyl tissue bank only counts under 200 people.
Great video, however, you missed the important debate about the waste production and disposal of both nuclear and renewables.
Fantastic video, essentially followed what my own opinion already was, that a combination of efforts, hybrid grids, lower demand etc is the way forward. Either way though, we need more widespread action ASAP.
Not as soon as possible, but NOW
i think i favour cells of suburbs or something like that who power themselves through roof solar where the power is completely free and they contribute to a battery to power them through the night for free still. Then to accompany this there would be a hybrid nuclear renewable main grid connected to each smaller grid that would take in excess and contribute more if it is needed. The main power for industry and stuff like that would come from the larger grid but in the event of a big outage it would receive a contribution from each individual cell to a certain extent. This system would all but eliminate in most scenarios the worst power outages and the effects of main transition lines being cut would be significantly reduced.
Would be really interested in seeing how sea level rise, combined with nuclear power station location is going to change things over the coming situation.