What If The United States Was Powered Entirely By Nuclear Energy?

Nuclear energy was all the rage back in the 1960s and 1970s. But after the near disaster at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant in the United States and the complete disaster at Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union, global interest in nuclear energy soured. But aside from these highly visible disasters, and a pesky (though relatively small) radioactive waste problem, nuclear energy delivers an abundant amount of electricity without any climate change inducing emissions. So what happened?

This video explores what if the United States had converted all of its power plants to nuclear power, as opposed to leaning even more heavily on coal and fossil fuels. How much would it cost? Would it have an impact on climate change? What would be needed to supply that much nuclear energy? And just how do we treat, store and manage nuclear waste?

Read more about nuclear energy here:

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[Mars-evqg]

The French government has approved a new nuclear fuel for existing nuclear reactors. Instead of using enriched uranium this fuel uses 90% unenriched uranium and 10% plutonium extracted from nuclear waste. The French government estimates this new fuel will eliminate 97% of high level nuclear waste.

[HBSurferHO]

I've worked in the Nuclear Energy Industry for over a decade in North America. You won't find a more safety driven work force than the professionals in nuclear power.

[cursed_multicel]

Fun fact: coal ash and fly ash, much of which is exhausted directly into the atmosphere, is radioactive AF...and much more voluminous than nuclear waste.

[Jim-pqpm]

I used to be anti nuclear, until I did a report on nuclear power in my physics class. My teacher encouraged me to consider the other perspective. I did, and found it agreeable .

[karlmiller]

Why is everyone still afraid of going nuclear? Nuclear should be utilised WAY more frequently!

[matthewhuszarik]

Nuclear waste isn’t an engineering problem it is a political problem. With reprocessing the long half life transuranics can be recycled as fuel. The remaining waste is mostly very short lived and is benign after a few hundred years. This waste can also be processed to make useful radioactive products like nuclear batteries. Can you imagine a BEV that you never need to charge?

[ericnox]

Thorium reactors are also looking good for greatly reducing waste. There is a device that is still being tested that turns the nuclear waste from the semi-liquid state into a solid state so it can be better recycled. Small Modular Reactors are also looking amazing. I'm recently in the nuclear field, having just started my degree on it, but it is amazing the sheer power of it.

The rods are made of small pellets, each about the size of the top half of a person's thumb. That one pellet has more energy in it than 17, 000 cubic feet of natural gas, or more than a ton of coal, or more than 100 barrels of oil. Nuclear power is amazing. Just so many people have fear mongered it for so long.

[leomarrah]

I used to be a submariner, and literally slept a stones throw away from a nuclear reactor. They are incredibly safe and the best chance to not kill our planet. Unfortunately until we get better battery tech, clean and abundant energy is meaningless unless you can use it for powering transportation. Which is the largest contributor to carbon emissions.

[barryward]

I am very pro nuclear. I am an Electrical Engineer raised by a Mechanical Engineer, and one of my brothers-in-law works at a nuclear plant. After Brown's Ferry and Three Mile Island I turned anti nuclear until I realized that, even with very stupid designs and operation, both plants basically failed SAFE! This is the desired result for anything, particularly a nuclear reactor. Chernobyl and Japan - the USSR was stupid, didn't talk, and didn't care; Japan only had one problem, but it really bit them. Do we need a new style of reactor (not BWR or PWR or similar) - yes, but the learning curve will start over again. We appear to know how to manage a plant and to keep it safe. What more do people want? If the average person wasn't so ignorant they might listen to all the opinions and make up their own mind. IMHO.

[Spacedog]

High level waste is even even more misunderstood than you say. We can recycle it in fast reactors to extract the remaining 90+ % of the energy content and cut the time needed to store it to about 300 years.

Not only does this make storage much easier, but it also means we can address the sustainability of nuclear because at that level of fuel efficiency we have practically unlimited fuel on this planet.

[PMCJohn]

The past like 10-20 years of nuclear system development is astonishing and I’m a major advocate for it.

[jeffisgayeva]

Nuclear energy: less waste, more reliable power than wind and solar, also cheaper and more efficient.

[kevinbryer]

The nuclear waste is radioactive because there is still fuel in it. If reprocessed, that useable fuel can be extracted and used.

Nuclear power is also the best way to build a hydrogen fuel transportation infrastructure.

[anubis]

nuclear power is like air travel, exponentially safer than carbon fuels or driving but has much bigger impacts when it goes bad. No one mentions the fact that coal pumps more radioactive material into the air or fracking creates radioactive waste water, but people fear nuclea

[williammiller]

In Illinois, surrounded by Nuke plants. Never lived in fear, even knowing that the nuclear waste is stored on sight. I feel as if knowledge is skewed and misinterpreted to people and that causes fear. I'm hopeful for nuclear fusion. But fission still seems like the route to go now.

[Quetzalcoatl_Feathered_Serpent]

In my view. Nuclear power is still far safer than traditional energy methods. If properly maintained (and not built with a budget) You could run nuclear power and give extraordinary amounts of power to homes and business. It could also help with the increase of electric vehicles and other sources.

Yes there is a extreme danger with nuclear power, however humanity has reached the technological capacity to minimize nuclear waste due to more efficient means of extracting nuclear power. You'll still have it but in much less quantities. I believe some reactors are capable of still using some waste for energy use now.

The issue with Nuclear power is that people has grown to fear it. Both due the inherit dangers, and thanks to nuclear weapons and disasters. Politics and culture runs on a knee-jerk reaction without trying to sit down and think things through.

What the US should do is continue research and development of nuclear reactors especially with gen IIIs that literally are physically impossible to go into meltdown or run into dangerous risk. Especially as energy requirements for the nation only will increase over time.

Yes green energy should and needs to be researched into, however nuclear plants should be also researched and improved more. You could literally have a near endless energy source

[jdlessl]

The cost of building nuclear plants is also an artifact of the not-terribly-bright way we go about it. In the US, every plant is a one-off design, different from every other plant already in existence. France settled on a handful of designs and then just spammed identical copies of them across the country. The benefits from doing that, in terms of cost, reliability, and safety are staggering. That's why the small modular reactors being designed are so promising; they'd literally come off an assembly line and get shipped to where they are needed.

[Gene]

Nuclear power does not go explody, Chernobl was a steam explosion not a nuclear explosion.

[Zeke]

The problems you mentioned with nuclear waste aren’t really problems.

Chernobyl ONLY exploded because of intentional mismanagement. The guy in charge ordered a test when the reactor clearly wasn’t ready to handle it. And at Fukushima they KNEW a tsunami-earthquake combo could cause problems in that specific area and they STILL chose to build it there and didn’t install any safety measures that could have stopped this

[altaccount]

The two nuclear plants in my state produced 26% of the state's electricity. Monticello is a 630ish MW plant and Prairie Island is a bit over 1000MW, so not even monstrously huge plants. I feel that nuclear power has become somewhat of a boogeyman.