November Video: Nuclear Power and Climate Change
Thanks for being here.
When I started this channel I said I would do a "bonus 15-20 minute video per month" and this is nearly an hour. I just though a lot of things were interesting.
I am spiraling over here. Everyone vote please!
Comments (103)
So many comments. *Safe Long Term Storage Solutions Do Not Exist. Even After Decades Of Trying To Find At Least One."* This is the only argument needed. I don't care how convenient everything else is. We don't know if the containers would be leak-proof over a million years. It's ridiculous to claim that we have that tech. We don't know how the geological strata will change and move or break, so: the layers of rock or clay or salt or underground water bodies. Geology teaches us that everything is on the move, eventually. There are already temporary underground storage sites with leaked barrels and no one knows how to safely retrieve and repack them. It's not a theoretical future problem, it's already been a problem for some years. And how do your current experiences with the Trump #45 administration shutting down all kinds of vital government branches and oversight institutions influence the confidence that, in your judgement, we can have that nuclear power plants and incidents and waste disposal will always be handled safely? Like, like responsible adults? Can we trust that governments will accept scientific counsel? The answer, of course, is obvious. No. Nuclear power could be safe, in theory. But that's not what we need to be asking. Can we be certain that it would, in actual practice, be safe enough? I don't see how anyone can arrive at a yes. The "Normal Accident" theory of Charles Perrov that you showed led him to a different conclusion: he said that TMI demonstrated that if a system is so complex, not only will there be accidents, but we can also not really foresee the magnitude of accidents that can result of complex interactions of a large number of contributing factors or systems. And that in his opinion, we should therefore either completely redesign or completely forego such technologies with such a complex risk structure. Everyone who says it's cheap ignores the fact that the greatest cost (dealing with the waste) is funded by the governments. The public pays with health and money to make the nuclear power plant owners rich. Does anyone want to try and convince me why we should agree to this? I know that you are also critical, but I find your disaster summary ... I might not find the right words, but it sure was quite cold-hearted towards all the people whose lives were broken after chernobyl. Several hundred thousands of "Chernobyl Liquidators". Safe numbers about actual fatalities are not as massive as in wars, but at the time, the Soviets did everything they could to shush any negative reports and we have to assume that the real figures could be much higher. And Chernobyl also taught us that it just needs the right kind of incident and you are immediately faced with a nuclear fallout cloud that *literally* washed over a whole continent, Europe. And an accident that immediately goes beyond any "professional containment procedures" you can praise the operators for after the incident. I had to avoid mushrooms and hazelnuts for a decade or so? Cs139. Chernobyl lead to Germany deciding to quit nuclear power, in 2002 initially, after decades of campaigning for this by the green party & citizen movements, with a winding-down plan for like 10-15 years I think. That was under a Green-Socialdemocratic coalition government. A few years later, a conservattive coalition government pulled back, but after Fukushima even they decided to go through with shutting down everything. Which was finalized in 2023. The reactors will have to be in wind-down mode for years or decades. And we're currently (in Germany) at about 50 % of energy from renewables, still increasing, and there's still a lot of headroom. And funnily enough, even the conservatives start to like the renewables because it's actually cheaper than everything else ... After finishing the video, I see that you think alike on several of these points. I somehow had the urge to write this down for the "actually, ..." crowd. I enjoy long videos! The longer the better. If it takes hours to explain something, we'd be honoured to get that from you. Don't hold back with political opinions. Life is political. The first indoctrination that people in power would like to instill in people is to stigmatize conversation on political or societal topics. The first column in the exposure table has a death probability of 0-5 %, so actually really low. But I am not defending nuclear power.
Growing up in the 80s and 90s I feel like "3 Mile Island" was synonymous with disaster, like people on sitcoms would say "That date last night was a regular 3 Mile Island!". So weird!
this was great! don't know if you ever ran into David Mackay, ( I love his information theory textbook) but he gave a talk on renewables https://youtu.be/E0W1ZZYIV8o, (appears solar panels are about 10x more efficient than when he gave the talk in 2015, from 20 watt/m² to 200, theoretical ideal for this tech is 337 watt/m² https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shockley%E2%80%93Queisser_limit) so just using his back of envelopes calc it would be like 5% of Britain covered in solar (though Britain is cloudy) instead of 50% of so that good. Anyway, he basically also says we need to clamp energy usage down on the demand side. guillotine are very very dangerous - revolutions are chaotic - there is no guarantee that what you get on the other side is better even if you think it's bad now. eg (Washington, Napoleon, Lenin, Mao) anyway, I love your videos and I think education is how things change, (USSR ended without bloodshed, (it's not great now, but Stalin was worse)) “The Arc of the Moral Universe is Long, But it Bends Toward Justice.”; (unless late stage capitalism happens) happy new year?! it's fine
I know I'm late and Alexander below (above?) already covered it but at the time of the Chernobyl explosion it was part of USSR. It wasn't until 5 years later or so when Soviet Union collapsed and with the new borders Chernobyl ended up part of Ukrainian close to its border with Belarus. As a fun (?) fact it's worth mentioning that Chernobyl catastrophe has its own article in the Constitution of Ukraine. In essence state is tasked with nuclear safety and making sure that Ukrainians aren't annihilated by a nuclear disaster or attack. The way it's worded, however, was used against Ukrainians by pro-Russian trolls in US.
I think I should also add that in general it's frowned upon when everything that was Soviet is called Russian. The fact of the matter is that the existence of Russia was put in motion by Kievan Rus - an East Slavic state centered around Kyiv, current capital of Ukraine. Moscow was developed by Kievan Rus before it was burned to the ground by Mongols and later rebuilt as Principality of Moscow under Mongols. Russia likes to claim ownership of many things, including the victory over Hitler. But most of the hostilities took place over what is known as Ukraine, Belarus, and Baltic States and majority of dead soldiers were ethnic Ukrainians, Belarusians, and so on. And victory was only possible thanks to a massive support from Allies. Calling non-Russian things "Russian" goes to show how successful Russian imperialism is in the information space.
30 years ago I was a huge fan of nuclear power. I did IT contract work at plants, was a fanboy, and enjoyed every tour they offered. They are VERY safe. Back then the facilities had temporary above ground warehouses to store the waste until the underground facilities were built. Unfortunately the waste is all still in the warehouses 30 years later. And the warehouses are more full now. No new plants should be built in the US until the storage facilities are funded, complete, and ready to receive the waste. As it stands the power companies that own these plants probably will not even exist in the hypothetical future when we finally build the underground storage facilities, and it’s not fair to our kids to not budget storage as part of the cost of these plants on day one. Also, now solar/battery is so much cheaper and faster to build; it makes little sense to focus on nuclear. That said, I would be a huge fan again if there was a plan and budget for the long term waste storage as part of any plant budget. It’s a political problem (hi Yucca Nevada); but it’s a big problem.
Great video. And yeah, guillotine is definitely a potential solution.
Amazing video, as usual! Love these deep-dives. Might be uninteresting but just adding a small bite of info: Ukraine at the time of Chernobyl disaster was part of the Soviet Union, it gained independence in 1991, 5 years after the nuclear disaster. Also another random info bit: there is this sexy reactor concept called Small Modular Reactors (SMR), which is even safer than the older reactors, look it up, super cool stuff. Okay nuclear energy complementing renewables fanboy switching off ^^
Yeah, surprised she didn't know Chernobyl is on the border of BELArus & Ukraine, not Russia (which is not all that close to it), all three being republics within the USSR.
I never studied physics, but my father's a nuclear physicist and I had this stuff explained to me & was fascinated by it since I was nine. I then did assistant (desk) work in radiation protection for years. Right now I have a lot going on so have major trouble falling asleep. I put on this video every couple of days and am gone three minutes in. This has been going on for weeks. I will never know. Great first three minutes, though! love it. I will never regret following. Also, so sorry about the worries being warranted. I hope you're ok.
I don't think people who are terrified of nuclear waste have any concept how how dangerous coal ash is, and how poorly we manage that already. At least nuclear waste gets a real containment plan and isn't just dumped in ponds next to rivers.
Kyle Hill also made an excellent documentary about what actually happened at Three Mile Island. At least in his video, it seemed that the reaction by the reactor workers was mostly "oh shit, that's not right. Let's try this... hmmm, how about this? Ok we're good" and that was that. In addition, Hill stresses that the government and workers' responses to the press were handled extremely poorly. We love Jimmy Carter, but I think the biggest mistake of his presidency was fumbling this situation in terms of public opinion. Him visiting Three Mile Island and keeping his distance from the press was not a good look. If he had reassured everyone that everything was under control, I think public opinion on nuclear energy would not have been anywhere nearly as bad as it is now.
I lived near Three Mile Island. It was almost much much worse. They did the exact wrong things to contain the event and the core almost went dry which would have led to it breaching the reactor and contaminating the Susquehanna River. Possibly in the worse case the core would have gotten direct access to the river water creating an ongoing enormous radioactive steam plume. The operators were found to be undertrained in the overall systemic effects of their individual stations and actions. Worth also mentioning in passing the plant is practically in sight of downtown Harrisburg. Until 9/11 my college was allowed to go onto TMI’s ground and take samples to look for any traces or effect of radiation. They never found any so it kind of just morphed into a field trip to a nuclear plant for the engineer and science majors.
Thanks for mentioning that.
As a truck driver I would also love if I could use a radioisotope heater to stay warm in the sleeper bunk during winter, instead of idling the engine to run the air conditioning
i come from the future and i have some bad news. i absolutely love your content btw been following since your crackpots video
Stay cozy! Sharpen those guillotines!
Great video thank you!
Weeellll time to reinstall classic wow and numb all the feeling parts of my brain for a while.
Most depressing video ever. I always regarded myself as being a man in his prime but a mere 20 seconds in I got knocked out of the skies. I don't have a sticker attached but I was made in East Germany. So, yeah...
Don't hesitate to voice your political commentary! Everyone else seems to feel they can, and they don't have facts and research informing their opinions!
this was a fascinating video. Well done!!
It wasn't lost on me that you began the video by talking about the intense stress you (and most of us) are under, and your takehome message was clear—the most dangerous part of nuclear disasters is the *stress* it places on the survivors.
Does the coal power plant exhaust gas have to go into atmosphere...cant it be filtered somehow or chemically broken before it goes out?
Scrubbers are used on many (most?) modern coal plants to remove the sulfur compounds from the exhaust gas, but they don't remove particulate matter or CO2. Particulate filters do exist for things like heavy duty trucks and construction equipment, but nothing on nearly a large enough scale for a coal plant. Carbon capture technology is just at the point of becoming economically viable, but there's nowhere to put the CO2 yet, it mostly goes into tanker trucks and gets sold off for industrial use currently. So there are some mitigating technologies, but it's much better not to create the pollution in the first place than to create it then try to manage it.
Trains. Bikes. Walkable communities. Getting people to do the sensible unshiny things that aren’t going to make any money for anyone. It’s almost heartbreaking to hear this lone voice suggesting sanity
Do you think the stress of worrying about what Trump might do is worse than what he actually does?
Based on 2015-20, no—as bad as the lead-up to the election was, we're still suffering from the direct effects of the Drumpf presidency (SCOTUS and federal courts; the gutting of the State Department; an inhuman border policy; a lack of any disaster preparedness...) to this day.
I always like to point out that just a few years before the Chernobyl disaster there was an accidental release of methyl isocyanate at a chemical plant at Bhopal India, that absolutely dwarfed Chernobyl. Of course it wasn’t nuclear, and it didn’t affect many people of European descent, so we hardly ever hear about it. Immediate deaths were estimated at nearly 3000, and it is not clear how many died from lingering effects.
We used to talk about it. Where'd that go?
Reciprocating and gas turbine IC engines don't use steam as a working fluid, though a single genset only goes up to about 20MW for recip and 40MW for turbines so the capital cost scales poorly. Something that flies under the radar to folks outside of industry is that natural gas has come to dominate fossil fuel power generation in the US (https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/electricity/electricity-in-the-us.php), completely driving diesel out of even emergency standby power and pushing coal into a steep 20-year decline. Natural gas is still a fossil fuel (anyone remember T Boone Pickens?), but it puts out 30% less CO2 than diesel and 45% less than coal per unit energy (https://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/co2_vol_mass.php) with the added benefit of almost no particulate or SOx emissions. Just changing to natural gas isn't enough, but it's a half step that fits in existing form factors and uses cheap fuel, so industry has ACTUALLY been adopting it instead of studying it for 30 years.
Remind me: aren't there issues with natural gas in cold weather? Like, you need some sort of secondary power source to prime the plants and keep them warm?
You say nuclear right. I hear “new clee ar”. Some people say “new clear”. GW Bush said “new cue lar”. He swapped the “l” sound around. I used to say it that way, and now I say it like you do. I'm also self conscious about it. I can't get into the “new clear” camp though.
Stay cozy and vote: the two things we can somewhat control for ourselves this week
Voting is a depressing gesture.
Also thank you for pushing through the voice that tells you to not continue to talk about a seemingly boring topic. This is exactly what I'm here for! The metaphorical hour long concrete video.
If you want to get rid of the glare, you could try a circular polarizer filter on whatever you're filming on.
I think the invisible part of radiation also plays a role that increases the stress. It makes it feel even less quantifiable. You can see and smell coal smoke, it feels more quantifiable. With radiation your brain can make it as bad or harmless as it "wants" to. I think its very easy to get carried away by butwhatifs that are impossible to prove or disprove.
the slides absolutely radiated fall vibes!
Slides were so cute! I'm totally here for some cozy science-y time, ESPECIALLY once the guillotines come out ;)
Oh, and the fall aesthetics were wonderful!
I think you are underselling the effects of Chernobyl a bit. Here in Sweden for example there are still areas where you are not supposed to eat Wild Boar because they muck about in dirt that was contaminated by Chernobyl fallout so their meat far exceeds what is considered safe radiation levels. It is not like it is causing a lot of deaths and radiation regulations are very strict. But it is still something to think and worry about and adds to the stress of the dangers of nuclear power. 40 years after an accident several countries away we are still dealing with the consequences.
And just to clarify, I would also live next to a nuclear power plant.
I'm surprised you didn't mention Karen Silkwood, whose radioactive contamination, whistleblowing, and death inspired The China Syndrome.
Always love a good nuclear power video (and you are pronouncing it correctly, at least as far as I've ever learned). Chernobyl has always been a huge fascination point for me for probably more than 20 years now, and is probably why I got a masters degree in international affairs. Such a complex and interesting event crossing all kinds of disciplines, it's one of those things you can basically learn about forever. And god does the point of the cost of stress strike home so hard right now. I don't think I've ever been as stressed in my life as I have this year.
You mentioned the Los Alamos radiation exposure: there was another notable incident in 1999 when Japanese nuclear technician Hisashi Ouchi and two others were exposed to extremely high doses of radiation after they caused a reaction while preparing nuclear fuel. Ouchi got the worst of it and died 83 days later. The radiation did a lot to his body, none of it was great. Another tech who was exposed died about six months later. This accident was the result of multiple failures in their safety process. I've only heard this mentioned twice, once on a podcast and once during the time blogs were a thing, so I'm not sure how well-known it is.
I hadn't heard of this one, thanks for the reference!
you said earthquakes are affected by climate change. how is that?
Give her a bit of grace. It was obviously an accidental slip from a stressed presenter.
Another great video. I love "boring" policy videos! I only have one small disagreement. The guillotine policy might not work out long term (even though it is just). I think the history of the French and Russian revolutions bear that out. Stay the course on reason combined with human rights, equality, dignity. I feel this will see us through in the long run.
Look around. It's still needed.
It's kind of crazy how safe nuclear energy is when compared to the death toll of 7 million people per year from air pollution.
About whether or not this video is "boring" One day my mom asked me what I was reading. After telling her, she asked, "Are you ever going to read anything ... interesting?" The answer was no then and its no now. Bring on the "boring" videos!
I would suggest hydroelectric generation isn't steam although, I guess it can be converted to steam . Some coal is radioactive.
"Fun" related fact: there is more external radioactivity release from coal fired power plants than from commercial nuclear reactors due to the trace radioactive elements in coal going up the smoke stack.
It's November and I watched every minute of this video. Brilliant, quite brilliant. It convinced me, and I was a sceptic Yes, please vote if you're in the USA. The rest of us will suffer the consequences of the Orangeman. On risk of nuclear power: one would feel there is more to say on the very long-term. Perhaps, there could be a model a century-long operation of the world nuclear plants with and without strong regulation.
It’s too bad my Dad isn’t still around. He would have a lot to say about this video (mostly “yeah! Exactly!”). He was a nuclear submariner, health physicist and power plant safety inspector. Among other things, I think he’d agree that nuclear power isn’t a magic spell but OMFG it’s better than coal!
A fun video (as always), thanks! Although it's disconcerting to see you (DrAC) so stressed. (Um, did you at one point attribute an increase in earthquakes to climate change in that video? Timestamp 50:47.) Also, the irony if the election goes the way most sciencey-types want is that the main harm you will have suffered is stress and worry. As you explained, fearing disasters is bad for you. Also, I can't help thinking that working through these sorts of topics is great practice for when you end up as a leader of some sort somewhere down the line. And as I've commented before, lots of people (like me) seek out thinkers whose opinions we value and then we listen to what they have to say on a variety of topics. Now I know what you think about nuclear power and I'm glad that I do.
There are reasons to think that there is at least some causal connection between first- and second-order climate change effects and more and/or stronger earthquakes.Here's a summary of a paper on sea level/storm intensity (https://www.gfz-potsdam.de/en/press/news/details/mehr-erdbeben-durch-menschengemachten-klimawandel) but there are other possible drivers, like changes in water use and drought patterns.
I would vote if I could, but "they" won't let me. Great video.
lovely chat and video - agree, thank you!
Thanks for the great video! One thing you didn't touch on is reactor location & modern conflict. If Russia used a nuclear bomb in Ukraine it would be obvious it was them (Ukraine doesn't have nuclear weapons), and have extreme consequences. However it's much safer for them to sabotage the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) and blame it on Ukraine. Russia has controlled the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) in Ukraine since March 2022. The power plant has already been hit by drone attacks, but thankfully is built to withstand these impacts from above. But since Russia has control of the entire facility, they also control all the nuclear material The location unfortunately gives them a scorched earth option if they leave. The power plant is on the Dnipro River that feeds into the Black Sea. If Russia blows up the dams on the river (territory in their control) & releases the nuclear material, it would destroy settlements along the river & be an ecological disaster for the Black Sea Now sure they could also just dump say a ton of oil barrels into the Black Sea to pollute it, but the nuclear material provides a unique set of problems Unfortunately this is a concern in the modern day
Thanks for this comment.
Great video with a perfect ending. Thank you. Pity there's no guillotine emoji. Forgive me if you mentioned this in the other video, I don't think I've seen it--have you heard the Emperor X raycat song? https://emperorx.bandcamp.com/album/10000-year-earworm-to-discourage-settlement-near-nuclear-waste-repositories
Thanks for the video. I’m also very tepid on nuclear energy. I voted for Kamala. We need a sain government if we’re going to solve the climate problem.
Where do you plan on finding a sane government? Not in the USA, surely. 😁
Thanks for the cozy fall Halloween chat.
Hehe this was delightful. As always thanks for sharing your honest thoughts and opinions. I love the powerpoint slides. It’s cool and fun to listen to people speak about random topics they’re interested in! I too am praying everyone in my state (Florida :( ) turns out. Younger voters are missing in the vote, according to polling data. :(
Forgot this. Metapollster Nate Silver touts odds as optimal. Delong demurs. DM to a friend: "Here's a nugget of clarity, from Brad. Note that I do not so stipulate, thus it's futile to watch the horserace." And the link: https://substack.com/@delongonsubstack/note/c-73042511
Ineligible to vote bc a Contranarian. Joke, early voter I yam. I watch other science blogs but it's you I'm cheering for. You're the best thing since sliced spacetime. Where I am (California) I have a choice of electric providers. One key is provider's sources. Of course I like renewables. But I also like nuclear. We could have a ton more of that. Advanced reactors could mitigate the downsides muchly. Thorium, molten salts already mentioned in a comment. Yeah, tally me in that column. Unfortunately the public DNA. Does Not Agree.
Both pronunciations of nuclear are correct and widely used. From Kory Stamper’s “Word by Word”: “Though disapproved of by many, pronunciations ending in \-kyə-lər\ have been found in widespread use among educated speakers including scientists, lawyers, professors, congressmen, United States cabinet members, and at least two United States presidents and one vice president. While most common in the United States, these pronunciations have also been heard from British and Canadian speakers.”
How's the oscilloscope collecting going?
Donnie Darko is the best Halloween movie. This is empirically true. Everyone go vote.
I love the second half of this video so much! Community supported local energy everywhere and old school Energy Con$ervation ("what I can't have a 2.5gigawatt halloween laser display at my house ? But 'MERICA!" -> "Yeah dumba$$ you're a part of the problem") !!
During this video i suddenly realised that the Angela Collier and Well There's Your Problem Podcast crossover would make my life complete
Hmm, that's probably why she got suggested to me, after I watched one video of that other channel.
I don't remember whether I voted for this but I thought it was good! I've been tepidly pro-more nuclear and this confirmed my tepidity. One thing: as far as I know earthquakes aren't climate change-related, right?
Oh also I thought that was a really good point that building a nuclear plant is gambling on competent oversight for the life of the plant, which seems like less of a safe bet all the time...
I like your slide presentation. I must say your slide rules. 😉
My opinion changed on a few things through the years, and one of these is how I think about excellence. When I was younger I definitely thought it's about owning secret ninja knowledge that turns one into a starfighter and some people born with midichlorians in their blood and all the bullshit like that. But now I rather think most people have incredible internal resources and they actually collect a vast amount of knowledge during a lifetime and almost everybody knows everything or could know everything and failure is situational, it's mostly about psychological factors and luck and about the inhuman system that constantly tries to cripple the individual. Everybody works with the same material, there are always hundreds of people out there who are thinking the exact same things and if they write they produce very similar texts, the differences are tiny and subtle, although some authors are cooler and more energetic than the others indeed. When they perform the same banal beats like everyone else they still sound fresh and interesting somehow. So never ever be shy about even a banal topic like concrete or nuclear energy - your representation is still your representation, and that's the place where the trick lies.
"The next one is chernobyl, which um, is in ukraine...where is the ukraine border. It was considered russia when it happened but it's right next to ukraine so I got to learn more history" It neighbors belarus(Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic at the time), not russia, and during the soviet union was part of the ukrainian ssr.
Yes, thanks for spelling that out. People of Belarus are still tested annually for the after-effects too.
Yes, this is what I wanted. Thank you Angela
Didn't expect this to relate to French revolution podcasts I've been listening to.
Angela, every video: "I'm not sure if that was the video you were expecting? But it's what I thought of when I saw the poll" Everyone: [happily watching video]
Hi Angela, thank you so much for the video! One thing you didn't touch on (you can easily spend another hour on this) is the practicality of building nuclear power plants (Puts on engineer hat). These plants take ten years or longer to build and are already way more expensive than renewables. So even if all other concerns weren't a thing, they still won't help us lower CO2 emissions right now. We (the world) should just invest in a TON of solar and wind power, add A LOT of batteries, improve the grids and maybe pumped hydro or hydrogen plants if we're feeling fancy. Also, ban AI ;)
I would submit that the large scale development of those other technologies will take longer than just starting to build nuclear plants now. So I say do both. We understand the science so well. The main thing stopping the shift to nuclear isn’t even the building times; it’s under informed people driving bad policy. Germany’s energy policy, for instance.
Voted!
🍁🍂I liked the cosy sides. Very autumnal 🍂🍁
Some spacecraft use thorium molten salt reactors for power generation. I believe thorium reactors are also viable for power generation on earth, and more efficient than uranium reactors.
France is the country to look at with nuclear power. They have 58 nuclear plants that produce over 70% of their electricity. Because they have no coal, oil, or gas, they've taken nuclear power very seriously. Every plant in France has the same design. If they come up with a safety improvement at once, it's implemented in all the others as well. American plants are all different. They recycle all their nuclear fuel to re-enrich it, whereas the US industry usually throws it away. There are still risks, but most of them came about because our nuclear power industry was developed so as to create plutonium for nuclear weapons. Thorium as a nuclear fuel was dropped before WWII because it can't go boom, so the whole Manhattan Project massive effort ignored making thorium generate power. We have nuclear plants because the military essentially donated $2 billion in research to the power industry to do all the basic research to make them work. It's possible to do the work on thorium, which we have much more of than uranium, which can't make nuclear weapons, and 99% of which is nuclear fuel, vs 0.5% of uranium.
Also France: most of the operating nuclear plants are nearing the end of their life expectancy and, due to the long pause in building new ones, the expertise to build them is currently lacking to build replacements at a reasonable rate.
I think the Fukushima accident was caused by a tsunami. I remember watching the news and seeing a house on fire being carried by a flood toward the nuclear power plant. I thought, man, that family is having a really bad day,.
I saw The China Syndrome at the theater when it first came out, just before the Three Mile Island accident. Spoiler alert. IIRC, in the movie there was some kind of conspiracy to cover up known flaws in the power plant. The name "China Syndrome" referred to the idea that a nuclear meltdown could burn all the way to China. Let's not talk about antipodes :)
One of my favourite movies, and probably one of Jane Fonda’s best performances. I’ve admired her ever since.
They say fusion is 20 years away and always will be.
I like longer videos. More listening and less searching, yo.
Excited to watch this!!
“nuclear” is nu as in ‘new’, “clear” as in ‘clear’ bush always said “new”, “c” as in ‘cue’, “lear” as in ‘lure’
which is to say, if you don’t say the letter “q” as in ‘cue/queue’ you’re doing great
Your delivery on "That's only 10yrs away" 😵
It’s down the stack.
Looking forward to watching.