What if We Replaced Nuclear With Potatoes

This video was made in partnership with Gates Ventures.
Energy use can be confusing – I mean, how do you compare gasoline in your car to electricity piped to your house? That's why we made these things spud-tacularly simple.

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To learn more about this topic, start your googling with these keywords:
- Calorie: the energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water through 1°C (now usually defined as 4.1868 joules).
- Energy: power derived from the utilization of physical or chemical resources, especially to provide light and heat or to work machines.
- Joule: the SI unit of work or energy, equal to the work done by a force of one newton when its point of application moves one meter in the direction of action of the force, equivalent to one 3600th of a watt-hour.
- Watt: the SI unit of power, equivalent to one joule per second, corresponding to the power in an electric circuit in which the potential difference is one volt and the current one ampere.
- Watt-hour: a measure of electrical energy equivalent to a power consumption of one watt for one hour.

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CREDITS
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Cameron Duke | Script Writer, Narrator and Director
Lizah Van der Aart | Illustration, Video Editing and Animation
Nathaniel Schroeder | Music

MinuteEarth is produced by Neptune Studios LLC

OUR STAFF
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Lizah van der Aart • Sarah Berman • Cameron Duke
Arcadi Garcia i Rius • David Goldenberg • Melissa Hayes
Alex Reich • Henry Reich • Peter Reich
Ever Salazar • Leonardo Souza • Kate Yoshida

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[generalZee]

I'm not gonna lie, after he said the potatoes would be deep enough to cover Idaho and started the next sentence with "85% of those potatoes..." I thought he was gonna end the sentence with "Are already IN Idaho."

[appa]

"How much power does a nuclear reactor make?"
"About 800 MW"
"No I mean... in potatoes"

[cerosis]

I dunno if I trust that guy in red, I've seen too many impostors

[HisameArtwork]

radioactive potato is mighty.
ppl don't realize how efficient and safe it is compared to the alternatives.

[HanyaAngulooke]

Everyone's talking about the among us reference but not how efficient chainsaw man aki is at living a low potato life

[alexrvolt]

Many things aren't good in this video, especially around 2:30, where they mix up primary energy, final energy and useful energy.
If the authors intended to consider the whole primary-to-useful energy chain, starting with 85% (for fossil fuels), removing 2/3 of this to obtain 28%, and then comparing it to 2% nuclear energy is wrong, because to end-up with 2% energy for nuclear, you also need to start with 6% nuclear in the initial energy balance.
Of course, if you do that, the initial balance doesn't add-up to 100%.
And I don't expand here on the renewable part, for which the primary-to-final energy conversion ratio is more tricky and depends on the meaning we expect from the percentage.

Or maybe the authors meant to talk specifically about the final-to-useful energy conversion? Then there's still an inconsistency in the fact that they use a yield of 1/3 for fossil fuel.
This yield would correspond to the final-to-useful energy conversion when the useful energy is under the form of movement.
But movement is far from being the only useful energy in the mix, heat represents more or less half of the useful energy, and is not subject to the 1/3 yield.
The authors seem to believe that the 1/3 yield is due to the energy resource supply chain (primary > final energy), which is absolutely not the correct order of magnitude. They disregard the second law of thermodynamics (this is corroborated by 1:00, where they essentially attribute the engine yield to... friction!?)

Finally, call me picky but "13% come from renewable like solar panels, wind turbines, or hydroelectric dams"... Although not wrong, it gives the impression that solar panels and wind turbine are the main renewable sources. At world scale, they are marginal. The main renewable sources are biomass (for heat - yes, again), and hydroelectric, by far.

The idea of the video, namely, to provide orders of magnitude, is great. Too bad this passage gives an incorrect representation of said orders of magnitude in the energy mix.

[Tbird]

For the record, it should be kWh instead of KW/h. The former is the product of a rate (kW) and time (hours). The latter doesn't make any sort of sense.

[wallcouldtalk]

I like how this was sponsored by Bill Gates and therefore called out Apple for their energy use and not Microsoft.

[solisruben]

The second I saw that among us in the thumbnail I nearly had a heart attack, thanks minute earth!

After seeing the video, I can say that that is a lot of potatoes.
Looks like adventure communist was onto something making you gather billions of potatoes, maybe they were planning on taking over the world? Who knows?

[JonWaterfall]

A friend asks: If we can measure fuel usage in potatoes, how much energy would we get in a potato serving of uranium?

[testtest]

Friction is only one part of the reason for ICEs low efficiency. The laws of thermodynamics make up a large portion of it as well. IIRC it's not practically possible for an ICE to be more than ~50% efficient due to the laws of thermodynamics alone.

[MateusSFigueiredo]

Idaho has an area of 216, 632 km². That's a bit larger than Belarus' 207, 500 km² and Guiana's 214, 970 km². Just converting the measurement to a more global audience.

[robchr]

The reasons your car loses 80% of it's fuel to heat is because that's that maximum efficiency of gas powered engines. I took a class on thermodynamics where we calculated the maximum efficiency of engines based on their properties. Diesel engines are much more efficient because they have higher compression.

[stefansauvageonwhat-a-twis]

Ya know, the Apple computer example seemed kinda weird until you mentioned the sponsor lol

[thechair]

Looks like Aki has both of his arms in the MinuteEarth universe.

[stevenschiro]

As Michael Schellenberger says --- your entire energy needs for your whole life, can be contained in one coffee mug of Uranium. The energy density of Uranium and with Nuclear (vs chemical) energy is just off the charts for people to grasp

[OwenWatt]

0:21 I think you mean KWh. KW/h is kilowatt per hour, which is kilojoule per second per hour. KWh is an amount of energy: 1 KW delivered for 1 hour. KW is the rate of energy, it is energy per time or in SI Units: 1000 (cuz Kilo) joules per second. Multiply this with a unit of time (like hour😉) and you get energy, hense KiloWattHour, not KiloWatt per Hour.

[MadSpacePig]

I can't believe you did electric cars like that. What a sweeping generalisation.

[jigyansudash]

Break down that is done is remarkable, and much more relatable than kcals, joules

[Mic_Glow]

In winter that "waste heat" actually becomes useful.