Energy Transition Crisis - Episode 6: Advanced Nuclear Energy Technology

Chapters:

00:00 Episode 6: Advanced Nuclear Energy Technology
03:14 Generation III+
05:00 Molten Salt Reactors
16:04 Breeder Reactors
19:04 Benefits of Breeder Reactors
21:04 Thorium Fueled Nuclear Reactors
26:07 Molten Salt and Thorium Today
34:03 Nuclear Waste Recycling
36:25 Waste Burning Reactors
37:48 Nuclear Fusion
39:32 Solving all the Objections to Nuclear Power

Nuclear already offers the safest form of baseload power generation in existence. But I for one don’t care how statistically safe it already is. The 2011 meltdown accident at Fukushima Daiichi left all of us with a very real memory of what can go wrong in a nuclear powerplant. I don’t care that it caused less death and disease than routinely occurs in coal mines. I still don’t want something like that to ever be allowed to happen, ever again. So as I began researching this subject, at first my attitude was look, we need to design some new technology to make such accidents impossible.
I was mistaken: The advanced nuclear technology needed to prevent accidents like Fukushima and Three Mile Island doesn’t need to be invented; it was already invented before I was even born! Nuclear engineers recognized the need for new technology that makes meltdowns and hydrogen explosions completely impossible decades ago, and they already invented that technology decades ago. Not only did they invent the technology that could have completely prevented the Fukushima disaster long before the disaster occurred… They invented that technology before the Fukushima Daiichi plant was even built. In fact, they invented the technology that could completely eliminate meltdown risk six full decades ago!
Yet to this day, that game-changing technology, which my parents’ tax dollars paid for, has never been commercialized and put to work. The story of how badly government corruption and political favoritism has compromised public safety and allowed accidents to occur that should have been prevented will knock your socks off! And I’m going to show you the whole story in this episode of Energy Transition Crisis.
As I explained in the prior episode, many of the worst things that can go wrong in a nuclear powerplant result from the choice of pressurized water as the coolant in the reactor core. So I strongly favor building new reactors with superior coolants that don’t require pressurization and which can’t cause hydrogen explosions.
But in fairness, the Pressurized Water Reactor has come a long way since 1967 when the boiling water reactors that melted down in Fukushima were built. Today’s state of the art in Pressurized Water Reactor technology is known as Generation III+. The most important advances have been in the areas of automation and passive safety systems, and these advances make Generation III+ powerplants much safer than the reactors of yesteryear.

Automation is critically important because it eliminates human error, which has been the primary cause of all the serious accidents. Passive Safety is a buzzword that means safety systems are designed to rely on things like gravity, which always work no matter what, as opposed to things like backup generators that sometimes don’t work as expected.

Even before these advances, Nuclear Power was already the safest baseload energy source in existence, and Generation III+ nuclear plants will be much safer, so there’s no reason to hesitate to build new nuclear powerplants based on the latest Generation III+ reactor designs such as the Westinghouse AP1000. But we can still do much better, and the first thing to improve should be getting rid of water as the reactor core coolant.

As I showed you in the last episode, reactor core depressurizations, steam flashing, core meltdowns, and hydrogen explosions like the ones that blew the roofs off the reactor buildings in Fukushima all result from the choice of water as the coolant used to transfer heat from the reactor core to the heat exchanger that puts the heat energy to work making electricity.

Another shortcoming of water as a reactor coolant is that the need for pressurization puts a limit on how hot the water can get. This directly translates to more of the energy released from the nuclear chain reaction going to waste, and less of it being turned into electricity.

A far superior coolant is molten salt, which can operate at temperatures over 700C without pressurization. This makes molten salt cooled nuclear reactors far safer and far more efficient than water cooled reactors.

And here’s the really exciting part: Molten salt reactors can be designed to dissolve the uranium fuel in the coolant mixture, completely eliminating the fuel rods, and thus completely eliminating the risk of core meltdown. In a liquid fueled molten salt reactor, if the coolant pumps stop, the nuclear fission chain reaction stops, and the coolant drains by gravity into an emergency reservoir.

[TotalIgnition]

Erik, I can’t thank you enough for a terrific episode

[Wartrace]

I've shared the link to this video series everywhere I could on various internet forums and Facebook. We need to get people behind SOLVING this transition instead of just pretending that the transition will work without having a replacement in place. I hope your video efforts pay off Erik.

[SD-zgky]

Really great Erik, thanks for opening my eyes a lot more to different types of nuclear tech 👍

[carlosmartins]

How bad informed or misinformed we are by our media. Congrats and thanks for sharing.

[MariaSantos-uubk]

A video that takes us on a journey into the intricate landscape of nuclear energy, focusing on the critical element of nuclear waste. Erik Townsend skillfully addresses the concerns and challenges surrounding nuclear waste disposal, offering insights into advanced technologies that could revolutionize this aspect of nuclear power. The episode dives deep into the complexities of managing nuclear waste and presents a compelling case for the advancements needed to make nuclear energy a sustainable and responsible choice.

[padraigdevitt]

Doing my best to share this series. It’s brilliant work. Well done 👍

[laed]

I am really enjoying this series Erik. I've been following Kirk's journey trying to get MSRs in production for years and the Chinese effort to bring their 1st MSR online. The biggest hurdle that I am aware of is the need for specialized high tech materials that come in contact with the radioactive molten salts. They are so corrosive that even Weinberg mentions that this was a limiting factor in commercialization of the MSRs back in his day. I haven't heard yet if the Chinese engineers have conquered this problem yet. I guess we will know in a few years if their plant goes down prematurely.
I'm confident that North American engineering would have solved the corrosion problem by now if resources had been made available. The vast financial engine of the CCP has taken 10 years to accomplish this feat (if indeed they have??).
I'm Canadian and I was happy to hear that a few of the best and brightest nuclear engineers are flocking to Canada, where the political environment is more favorable to nuclear power innovation (especially in Ontario) but without the vast quantities of investment capital required, these efforts will be stalled.
I have my doubts that the CCP will allow the free flow of technological information outside of China if and when they truly overcome all of the hurdles around MSRs. My only consolation is with me and my family living on Canada's west coast, I would be happy knowing that the Chinese may be able to shut down all of their Coal fired Power plants in my Granddaughters lifetime to help reduce emissions. Maybe when the CCP builds the 1st MSR on the moon (China's Sputnik moment), the USA may get it's act together and get behind MSRs. The amount of political corruption in all Western Governments towards private interests and not the interests of the little guy like me, is truly disheartening. I fear I see little hope for our future.
I spent 6 Canadian winters motorcycling around New Zealand and I saw many of the gates leading up to the Ultra Rich's bunkers and I feel that New Zealand offers little protection to these Ultra Rich Refugees. If a nuclear armed nation felt threatened by these oligarch capitalists, if and when North America and Europe were to implode on themselves due to the impending energy crisis, then a few well placed ICBMs would turn their sanctuaries into death traps.
The poor quality of leadership in the West is very frustrating. I truly hope your message in this series reaches people who can bring about change in our current collisions course. We the People do NOT control our Governments. (ps I don't know that we ever did)
Thanks Erik, for all of your efforts to bring this to peoples attention. You have an amazing following and maybe, just maybe someone in your community has the ear of someone who can get this Titanic turned away from disaster. 🙏🙏

[ninefox]

Should we be researching and developing breeder/MSR reactors? Absolutely 100% yes. It WILL be necessary if we want to utilize nuclear energy at scale, globally.

Should we wait until these new reactors are ready to start the next nuclear build out? 100% no no no! As Eric himself said, we can't afford to waste any more time. We simply cannot wait the 10+ years it will take for this stuff to mature and be accepted by regulators. It's likely true that breeder/MSR reactors will eventually be superior to Gen III+ reactors but that doesn't mean Gen III+ isn't good enough for today and we can't build these things fast enough as it is. We simply can't wait. The US should commission 10 new AP1000s ASAP. We already paid the First-Of-A-Kind cost, it's time to reap the Nth-of-a-kind rewards.

[mithadis]

very interesting, hope we can see those technologies applied commercially in near future

[patrickweldon]

Nobel prize worthy content! Erik thank you for your work on this topic.

[Georgepeck-gp]

The elephant in the room is that humans are exceeding their ecological footprint, so abundant energy for everyone begs the question of maintaining the biosphere’s commodities that we completely depend on - fresh water, fresh air, crops from the soil, fish from the sea. To avoid burning our ecosystems to the ground - and thus ourselves - we must go to an economic system not based on growth and externalising nature, but on an economy based on balanced resource use.

[mkb]

Absolutely love this series. I listened to the original version on macrovoices back when Erik released it. I like the improved, great job Erik!

[alexanderkozlov]

Advanced nuclear, such as molten salt reactors also have their own challenges, such as corrosion and nuclear waste separation from salt (chemical kidney). But with all things considered it seems quite a waste not to explore these reactors further.

[kevincolwell]

As a side note, U-233 is actually a better fissile material for weapons due to its higher neutron yield per fission in the fast spectrum. What makes it unsuitable for weapons use is the U-232 daughter products that include hard gamma emitters. This makes it impossible to handle it to assemble and transport.

[Mouldhead]

It's great work Erik. So informative

[Dishsoapdirt]

Well done explanation for the laymen of nuclear energy options and history development!!

[tristan]

This is becoming my favorite show. I thought LFTR was cancelled because it wouldn't generate plutonium, but I just heard other ppl saying that. I don't think proliferation concerns should dictate reactor choices, North Korea built nuclear bombs with rocks, sticks, and old car parts. If some country really wants a bomb they'll get it. Terrorists won't be able to enrich whatever they steal to weapons grade, so it's basically a non problem.

[doidoiize]

Amazing job Erik, thanks for your work (from Brazil)!

[markdavis]

Mr Atomic, Rep Chet Holifield, was selected to head the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy even though he never graduated from high school and admitted that he did not understand the science of nuclear power. Milton Shaw, AEC director of reactor development, fired Dr Weinberg and ordered the stop work on the MSR. He was the right hand man of Rickover since he was project manager for the Nautilus and Shipping Port, and he also became a close friend of Rep Holifield. The Shaws and Holifields played bridge regularly and went on vacations together. Milton Shaw cultivated that relationship the same as Rickover with Congress. Mr Atomic had no idea about the science of reactor choice and was only following Shaw's opinion which was most likely that of Rickover. They were all played by the fossil fuel industry.

[RobertSavard-sb]

this is eye opening stuff. I was aware of the various technologies from a big picture standpoint but found the history fascinating. I find it fundamentally ironic that man's need for security against it's perceived enemies (and a supply of plutonium) may have been the very cause of the failure to develop safe secure nuclear reactors. this is military industrial complex kinda stuff. Yup: you got me pissed off. Well done. LOL