How bad is it really? Nuclear technology -- facts and feelings: Sunniva Rose at TEDxOslo 2013

Sunniva Rose is a Norwegian physicist and has her own blog. She doing a PhD in nuclear energy at the University of Oslo, where she is currently focusing on the use of Thorium in nuclear power stations. In her spare time she is blogging about nuclear energy, research, fashion, interior design and her daughter. This year she also was representing the student candidate for the Presidents office at the University of Oslo. We are proud to invite her on stage. The topic she will be talking to us about is how media´s coverage of the risk of nuclear energy is wrong.

[homerilias]

In Germany there is a "Bundesamt für Strahlenschutz", the "Federal Bureau of Radiation Protection". They calculatet, that the highest amount of radiation to the average German comes from burning coal.

[SolarGranulation]

Her final remark is highly relevant. Indeed, climate change is why I'm pro-nuclear.

[damonm]

Fission until fusion. It’s the best way forward 100%

[PhillMagGamerDad]

I would love a personal lesson from Sunniva Rose, about anything she's willing to teach. What a natural speaker, seems unrehearsed but heart-felt. Really enjoyed

[tigerlilly]

The more I hear about nuclear energy, the better it sounds. It has less environmental problems than even wind and solar. I liked the point you made about the earthquake and tsunami doing the majority of the devastation in Japan. People tend to forget about that. They focus on the nuclear plant only.

[Rikard_Nilsson]

12:47 it was discovered in Norway but it was a Swedish Chemist named Jöns Jacob Berzelius who identified it and named it.

[LifeResolved]

I want someone to love me as much as she loves to talk about nuclear energy xD

[squamish]

Nuclear energy has been supported for decades by James Lovelock, the originator of the Gaia hypothesis and father of modern environmentalism.

[MissilemanIII]

Nice how she sweetly skirts around the real dangers of nuclear waste.

[danielrrikardo]

How is it possible to worry about global warming and not be pro nuclear? Because they are delusional...

[bryanturnbow]

From what I’ve learned about nuclear power so far, I assume dealing with a bunch of canisters of nuclear waste is perhaps easier than trying to pull a mess of CO2 from the air. Although I’ve also learned that nuclear power, despite gathering more earnings over time, is a risky business venture due to the high cost of instillation.

[albertrogers]

Dear Sunniva, don't be so dismissive of thorium gas mantles. One of the more distinct memories of my eight -year-old self was the Tilley lamp. For a short period, my family was living in a small house un-equipped with electricity, overlooking the coal mining town of Milngavie, with very sooty skies.
We had candles, oil wick lamps, and two Tilley lamps. The Tilley was wonderful. Paraffin (kerosene to Americans) was forced by stored air pressure, refreshed at intervals not inconveniently short, through a fine jet, and burned to make the thorium oxide mantle incandescent. It was much the brightest light we had, and it could reliably by taken outside, there being a glass cylinder around the mantle that protected its light from the wind.

[clnelson]

I hope that I will see thorium MSRs in my lifetime. An endless amount of nearly free energy that could be scaled to need would change humanity like no other event in human history. Imagine being able to live almost anywhere on earth or in space with the ability to grow, heat, cool, manufacture, create water and oxygen as needed.

[Banzay]

Thorium molten salt reactors, a really interesting nuclear alternative.. look it up!

[theallseeingeye]

For those who believe nuclear power is the best way to go if we are to reduce our carbon emissions or have come across social media experts throwing numbers and facts that is based on scientific terms not familiar to you, than please refer to " Plainly Difficult ".

Its a youtube channel that has a comprehensive list of accidents and mishaps

[PedroReisR]

Hi there
First to say I am a physicist, and, despite I do not work on the nuclear subjects till a long time Ithink I may express a reasonably informed point of view.
That said i take the words of Sunniva Rose in the presentation Why science should be more pink "Chernobil accident was, and accidents in general are, a multidisciplinar subject event involving politics, economy, psychology, sociology, biology, medicine and of course physics..." as a good expression of the complexity of the nuclear subject, but not restricted to it. In fact, there are not the nuclear accidents alone that present that complexity. Every human activity and the respective impacts are equally complex and multidisciplinar, including nuclear plant construction, operation and maintenance, in particular when it is viewed as a business. So, the problem is not the physics involved, all this have to do with the human nature and the way we do things in general. Again this is a very complex subject since things are done with more or less care in in different parts of the world, but, on average, we do many things wrong.
Seeing in a bit more detail our capacity to do it wrong:
- Overpopulation is the main, but not the exclusive, source of most of the problems that people like Sunniva Rose are trying to solve by using nuclear. It is important to notice that overpopulation is not a natural incident, it results instead from a chain of cumulative mistakes, many of them originated from colonial interferences on the population dynamics of the, now, overpopulated territories. We have done it wrong.
- Industrialization. Industrialization is not a bad thing on itself. It is possible to build things and not destroing the sorrounding ecosystems. But the common practice is a complete mess. We have done it wrong. It is possible to build things without massive wastes of energy. Industry consummes insane amounts of energy to build and sell products to replace fully functional ones because they are "outdated". We have done it wrong.
-Monoculture farming. Polluted lands, lakes, rivers and oceans. Systematic and increasing events of extinction. Ecological disasters caused by the use of toxic agrochemicals and expected to increase as the GMO disperse in the ecosystems. We have done it wrong.
etc.
etc.
We have done it wrong with all those things and I see a tremendous resistence to admit that. Even more resistence is put on trying to solve the problems from the root. Have you heard from any politician that we need to decrease the population (decreasing the birth rate of course). How many times you see a mainstream campain to lower the use of gadgets because of their ecological footprint. How many times have you seen people worried about the fruit they are buying travelled 10000 km?
Anyone expects that we will do it right with something so critically exigent to be managed in a secure manner like nuclear. I sincerely dont.

[leerman]

After I'm done my electrical engineering course in college I'm going to work at a nuclear power plant. No one has ever died in a nuclear accident in Canada. Next best thing is hydroelectric (in deaths per GW/h).
Also I would love to have all those coal ash pits in America mined for their uranium and that is a massive amount of power they just throw away.

[midi]

That's one perfectly fitted Countryman mic. It follows the contour of her face so well.

[fungames]

If you think that nuclear accidents are nothing to worry about why would billions be spent on clean up? Why wouldn't the power company just say no there is no need for clean up and just fix the reactor and get back to making money? Why did Russia spend billions building a huge metal enclosure? Most companies will avoid spending thousands of dollars even when it is the right thing to do why would anyone believe they are spending billions on cleanup if it was not dangerous. The amount spent on waste cleanup should tell you how dangerous it is not only to the biosphere but to the tax payer. When we say very few deaths from nuclear accidents lets not forget many thousands of people had to be evacuated from their homes, work and schools and turned into homeless refugees. If they had not been evacuated the death toll would have been much higher.

[thulgrum]

Why is nuclear waste such a big issue?
- you take a radioactive element out of the ground, use it, then put a radioactive element back into the same patch of ground at the same density etc

What am i missing?