All of the Lightning in One Spot? - Nuclear Engineer Reacts to XKCD

Original Video ‪@xkcd_whatif‬ • What if all the lightn...
Styropyro pulse laser: • Dangerous tattoo remov...
Back to the Future Clip: • Back to the Future 1 L...

[@BelgorathTheSorcerer]

Lightning struck a tree next to me once. It was so close I was able to feel the heat from it. It was terrifying, but pretty cool. Everything got really calm right before, and I could actually feel the charge build up. It was the same sensation as a charged balloon lifting your hair up, but over my entire body. Then I felt a huge spike in temperature momentarily, and I was blinded by the flash for a few seconds, so the next thing I saw was tree embers raining down around me. A huge chunk of the tree just exploded, and there were some good size pieces that probably could have impaled me. All of that wasn't really that bad though. The thunderclap sucked. I felt it ripple through me, it hurt my ears enough that they wouldn't stop ringing for weeks, and it literally scared the crap out of me. My undies were unsalvageable. Despite the thunderclap being unpleasant, it was an exhilarating experience, and I kind of want to know what actually getting hit by a strike would feel like. Definitely a less powerful one though.

[@oxydoxxo]

Ah, the old almost-struck-by-lightning thundercrap. Classic.

[@MySerpentine]

I had lightning hit my apartment building a floor above me one time, I couldn't even hear myself scream for a bit.

[@aneasteregg8171]

It's a fun thing to me how almost every major power source on Earth is, ultimately, derived from sunlight.

[@MarsJenkar]

And virtually all the rest are ultimately geothermal in nature.

[@WallaWaller]

​@@MarsJenkar Fun fact: all geothermal power is nuclear power, as decaying uranium heats the core to melting temperature.

[@avovk1852]

well, that's nearest large scale source of "free" "long term" power source for whole solar system - so yea, expected that sunlight somehow got involved into that, be than from Sun or other stars, dead or alive as of right now

[@Arel368]

Low entropy source

[@Locedamius]

@@WallaWaller Actually, nuclear decay only amounts for about half the geothermal heat that reaches the surface of the Earth. The other half is residual heat from the formation of the planet. The outer core isn't liquid because of uranium. It's liquid because the whole planet used to be liquid and only part of the Earth's core has had time to become solid so far.

[@Shoomer1988]

I will not hear a bad word about 'Back to the Future', it's one of the finest documentaries ever made.

[@niyablake]

Jigga is the right pronunciation.

[@jairo8746]

Your insights usually make the original video even more interesting. These are the best kinds of reaction videos, thank you.

[@edwardbell4928]

[Power levels at 400 percent] Well...how about that.

[@earlpettey]

I understood that reference!

[@edwardbell4928]

😂

[@MasonJBean]

Screw this one fish in particular

[@destructive.kiwi_]

im a fish

[@kornsuwin]

i'm not sure if i like where this is going

[@MasonJBean]

@@kornsuwin you ever seen the image of 3 lightning strikes on the ocean with the caption "f these 3 fish in particular" that's the joke I'm making

[@YICHEN-k8h]

‘Lighting struck here last week,we should be safe’. Also the people: get struck by lightning.

[@piotrek5s170]

Ironically, lightning usually strikes the same place twice

[@ccoder4953]

Glad somebody finally pointed out that the 1.21 Gigawatts in BTTF isn't necessary all that impressive since they never specify the amount of time. Apparently it's a fairly short period of time, so they didn't need the Mr. Fusion, the plutonium, or the lightning. They just needed a system to slowly charge a bank of capacitors from the alternator, then discharge it rapidly. Not easy, but not really extraordinary either. Especially if it only needed that power for just a few microseconds or less.

[@Mr.Sparks.173]

It could be that packing that many capacitors into a car is very unfeasible, thanks to a whole host of reasons. Like capacitors hold a pretty small charge in most cases, so the capacitor bank would need to be massive, probably bigger and heavier than most vehicles, let alone a DeLorean. Second, given the high power requirements, cooling and preventing shorts and arcs becomes increasingly important. So either you'll need to make the bank even bigger to allow for air cooling and enough isolation to prevent a short, or you'll need to have it all sitting in a dielectric oil that's then circulated to keep it cool. You won't necessarily need active cooling (meaning you probably won't need a chiller or AC unit) but you'll need to make sure the oil keeps moving through a radiator or something to keep it cool. That adds a lot of weight and adds a lot of volatility to the energy system. So while a nuclear reactor (either plutonium or SciFi fusion reactors) would first appear as overkill, it could be that slow charging a bank of capacitors is impractical for a vehicle that has to also maintain 88 mph. The upshot is that because it uses a ton of power very briefly, the fuel used should be relatively low, so you should be able to get hundreds or even thousands of time travel trips on a single plutonium fuel rod or a filled Mr Fusion reactor. All that said, it's also probably incredibly impractical to shove even a tiny nuclear reactor into a car and nuclear reactors - as far as we understand them, do not deliver instantaneous power, well not immediately anyway, they need some time to heat up and stablize before they can generate the power needed. So I put the DeLorean's energy system in the same camp as the Flux Capacitor - movie magic you're not supposed to think too deeply about how it all works, just nod along so that the story can play out.

[@ccoder4953]

@@Mr.Sparks.173 You're right it's just movie magic. But its fun to still talk about the real world numbers. To give you an idea of how feasible this is, let's assume you only need a 1us pulse. Say the flux capacitor needs 100V. That's 12.1x10^6 A. Since i=c dv/dt, c = i dt / dv. That's only 6.05 F if you allow the capacitor voltage to change by 2V during the discharge. That's pretty reasonable, even in the 1980's, an array of capacitors to do that would have been feasible. A 100mf cap rated for those sorts of voltages (something that would have definitely been available in the 1980s) is roughly the size of a soda can. In modern times, we have reasonably sized super caps that can do that. They're available commercially on DigiKey. Charging is also quite reasonable. To charge it in 10 minutes, only takes about 1A. Oh and for pulsed circuits like this, the average power is so low, you basically don't need cooling (except maybe for the charging circuit). Most cooling solutions can't really deal with very short pulses anyway - the heat just doesn't even have time to get out. Worst case, you strap it to a chunk of aluminum or copper and use thermal mass alone. And all the nuclear stuff is actually worse. Real world commercial power plants are 33-37% efficient. That means you're getting rid of ~2.42 GW of heat. That's essentially impossible in a car sized device. At least on a continuous basis. If its pulsed, you can deal with it just fine because you can spread it out, so the continuous power is quite low. Oh and a major issue with nuclear (can't talk about the Mr Fusion since we don't actually know how that works) is that you can't just pull that power out briefly and be one and done. Once you start a nuclear reaction like that, it takes quite some time to cool back down. That's cooling you have to deal with. And even the 88MPH thing doesn't really matter (neglecting the fact that an unmodified real world DeLorean can't or has a very difficult time actually getting to that speed). You charge everything up before you actually need the speed. The engine can sit there idling for hours, if it needs to do that. Then once everything's charged, you disconnect the charging circuitry and GO.

[@ICountFrom0]

Given that he eventually was just grabbing tech from the future, possibly things he "invented" latter, he could have gotten supercapsitors, or upgraded to an electric engine, but that wouldn't have made as amusing a movie because there wouldn't be as many ways for things to go wrong. Take movie science as lessons on what NOT to do, and what lessons to learn to fix things and do it better... before it breaks.

[@WJS774]

@@ccoder4953 You're assuming a _very_ short pulse duration, if it was 1ms instead that's a thousand times as much energy, and for all we know it could have been a lot longer than that too.

[@ccoder4953]

@@WJS774 Yes, that's quite possible. Although, given the fact that a lightning bolt was enough, that's probably not likely. A lightning bolt is ~7GJ. That's about as much energy as in 38 gallons of gasoline and we don't know how much of that lightning bolt the car captured or used. A lightning bolt also only lasts microseconds, so it seems that the flux capacitor didn't need very high power for very long. But anyway, my point was saying power is useless if you don't specify time. The reason is quite simple: systems that generate very high amounts of power for short periods of time might not be easy, but they're very possible. In the end, what makes things actually hard is large amounts of energy.

[@Zaash1]

Hoping Randall does a reading of the "lethal dose of neutrino radiation" what-if at some point, definitely one of my faves.

[@smob0]

In Ocarina of Time, when you play the song of storms, it will reset if there is lightning or not, so that won't work. However, if you go the shadow temple part of the graveyard, there are stairs that lead down to the temple. Traveling up and down these stairs will duplicate the actor that handles rain and lightning. If you do it the correct amount of times you start despawning gravestones from the graveyard.

[@kg4wwn]

The traditional pronunciation of Giga was with a "J" sound (it is the same word we get "Giant" from which we still pronounce with the "J" sound. We pronounce it the way we do not because when gigabytes first were being used frequently in computers, the people who were using them were not scientists who knew to use the proper scientific pronunciation. When Back to the Future was made, if Doc Brown had pronounced it the way we do now, he would have been unquestionably wrong.

[@robinkelly1770]

It actually originates from the Greek word "gigas" which may mean gian but is pronounced with a hard g

[@matthewwilkes6162]

Soft G for Giga is acceptable. We use that prefix a lot more in day-to-day use now, and hard G has become much more common, but that wasn't the case 40 years ago when Back to the Future was being made.

[@petoperceptum]

When I was a UG my department head (and a couple of other older lecturers) used the soft G. In English the general rule that it is soft before e or i vowels, though like all rules for English, there are exceptions.

[@ivanborsuk1110]

40 years already? omg

[@jairo8746]

You can choose to accept it, but it doesn't make it right.

[@robinkelly1770]

Not when l was at school 50 years ago

[@Yotanido]

@@petoperceptum For the same i sound you find in giga, I think there are more exceptions than words that follow your rule... gib(s), gift, gig, guild/gild, gill, guilt, git, give gin, gist, gym, ... that's all I can think of

[@The_Angry_Medic]

People also underestimate how much static charge can build up on windy days

[@jamcdonald120]

That feeling you get every time someone says jigawatts instead of Gigawatts is the same feeling I get every time you say Turban instead of Turbine

[@oxydoxxo]

Me finding out carbine rhymes with bean instead of wine

[@robinkelly1770]

Electrician here. Your understanding of lightning rods is correct. In fact the empire state building was struck 7 times in one storm - all on the lightning rod...

[@beyondwx]

For clarity, “Tornado Food” is warm moist air, not mobile homes.

[@friendlypunk8975]

I love the tie in to the Song of Storms while talking about lightning.

[@migmit]

I've heard that while "jigawatt" isn't a common pronunciation, it's common enough to be considered a variation of norm, rather than a mistake.

[@John-ir2zf]

Lighting rods do release a positive ion trail, as does everything. It's that positive ion "tail" that gets drawn up towards the negative charge field of the cloud. When the positive ion "tail" contacts the negative field charge, the stored energy is dumped down that positive ion tail, down to whatever was releasing it. That's why lightning is so random. The ion tail of the tree next to the tall building may contact the negative field in the cloud and the lightning hits the tree, not the tall building.

[@AJarOfYams]

0:57 Lightning, you're going to Brazil 🇧🇷

[@emperormegaman3856]

Seems like it's going to Venezuela instead.

[@teamcoltra]

You're just the xkcd response guy now. When these videos come out I get excited to know your follow up is coming. Maybe you could respond to some of the comics?

[@jdechko]

I’m eagerly awaiting the collaboration.

[@rykehuss3435]

3:12 well the whole ordeal lasts for up to a few hundred milliseconds. There are many phases to a lightning strike, and if the whole thing took only some microseconds we would never be able to observe them with our own eyes

[@admdubya2107]

There’s such a thing as upward lightning that originates from the ground…and tall buildings. They’ve caught the little feeler bolt reaching up to greet a downward one on high speed camera. They can be positive or negatively charged and tend to occur where lightning struck recently. Ex: nearby Positive cloud to ground causes the surrounding field to go negative, leading to an upward positive leader from your office building. It’s spectacular to see in person.

[@michaelrenouf9173]

When I was a kid I heard what sounded like a bomb went off. Lighting hit my dads aluminum ladder against the house. It must have have split the lighting, because it hit and a tree demolished it and arced inside and hit a mirror and burned it. The burn spot is still there. Absolutely crazy how electricity works lol.

[@jjohansen86]

4:27: Taking this up to 11, in my undergraduate research I worked in a group doing high intensity lasers. How high intensity? Well, my advisor liked to say that it was equivalent to focusing all the light from the sun that hits the entire earth down to a postage stamp. However, we achieved this by amplifying femtosecond pulses (20-50 fs is typical in the field) up to roughly the range 0.1-5 Joules (different labs would have different pulse energies), then focusing that extremely high power (up to about 100 TW) down to a tiny spot, where the intensity was so high (I don't remember the exact number, but it's 10^twenty-something W/m^2) that it would rip electrons off of atoms even though the laser was nowhere near an atomic resonance, causing sparks in mid-air. We had a 10 Hz rep rate system with about 200 mJ pulses, so maybe 2 W average power, but 10s of TW peak power, and that's not even the biggest of these, which, as I said, could get up to about 100 TW peak power with average powers of maybe 10 W.

[@orchdork775]

How is that even possible???

[@jjohansen86]

It's actually really clever! You start out with a pretty low energy, but very fast pulse. Then you use some things called diffraction gratings in a particular layout to stretch the pulse out to be thousands of times longer in time than it started out as so that you can amplify it without burning the crystal that you're amplifying it inside of. The trick is that, if you're careful, you can set things up so that the stretching is reversible, so at the end you compress your pulse back down to being 10s of fs. The limitation here is still burning the crystal that you use to amplify it, so the more you can stretch out the pulse, the better, and the way that you really get maximum power for an experiment is that you slowly turn up the power that you're using to amplify inside your crystal until you burn a hole in the crystal, back off the power slightly, and then move the crystal over to an unburned spot.

[@ianmathwiz7]

Video suggestion: Scott Manley's new video on nuclear propulsion for space vehicles.

[@spvillano]

I'm annoyed, my tornado food is on backorder. As for all of the lightning in the world hitting in one place at one moment, that much gamma radiation would turn me very seriously green. Yeah, folks, lightning typically will emit some x-rays, strong strikes, typically positive strokes, do emit gamma radiation. Brief, but it did confuse the folks that were monitoring the old Vela satellites at first. Gamma ray bursts from supernovae, well, that really blew their minds and it was so odd that they immediately declassified the detections. The day before I deployed to the Persian Gulf, my unit had a line company on the rifle range. Sitting under covered bleachers, lightning struck the cover, arced to the bleachers and well, lit up pretty much an entire infantry line company of 200 men. Two got the greatest charge and were hospitalized, the rest had varying effects that were largely mild and quite a few had Lichtenberg figures that eventually faded. The hospitalized men were released from hospital after a day of observation. I did read a fascinating case study of a Saudi youth that had an implanted cardiac monitor and was struck by lightning. Initially, he experienced asystole (complete cardiac arrest), followed by a few seconds of ventricular fibrillation, then he jumped straight back to normal sinus rhythm. His two friends unfortunately died from that same strike. When it's time to go, it's time to go. I'll still be kicking and screaming, but I doubt my vote will count in that instance... Needless to say, when the clouds are biting, I stay inside.

[@Gedof]

There's actually a glitch in Ocarina of Time where you can load multiple "lightnings" at the same time. It's not with the Song of Storms though. You need to pass multiple times through the loading zone on the stairs from the Graveyard to the Shadow Temple (each time loads an extra lightning effect), and then play Zelda's Lullaby in front of the Royal Family grave to activate them (they're just overlaid on top of each other, so nothing too spectacular). If you do it enough times you can unload the grave itself and enter without having to play the song at all.

[@TrimutiusToo]

Lightning once stroke in the backyard of my house snd EMPed our house...

[@DrIzixs]

Radiation monitoring near nuclear plants was one of the earliest indications that lightning produced high energy radiation. The research into the phenomena has come a long way since. As for the lightning rods, the design of the rod tip can alter the general means of which it provides protection. A blunter tip tends to get struck directly while a sharp point provides a slow corona discharge during thunderstorm conditions. This results in the local electric field being weaker. It isn't a 100% deterrent, and is best used either in an array or with a blunt tip rod nearby to act as the preferred path.

[@astronut3830]

that "sillyness" for back to the future hit hard😿💔

[@norbert099]

I wish I ever recorded such a lightning... that would be so cool and scary at the same time. I probably wouldn't record with a phone tho... I heard it makes it more likely for a Lightning to strike you.

[@jamielonsdale3018]

I was able to convert someone to be pro-nuclear, today. I was talking about wanting to become a Nuclear Reactor Operator, and they were asking "isnt that a high-risk job?" My reply was something to the effect of news is only news when its rare, right? Name a single coal-powered powerplant to experience a major accident... They couldn't. I bet if I said the names of the 5 most severe accidents at power plants, youll have heard of 4 of them, and possibly the 5th one too. In order of their fame and notoriety: Chernobyl Three Mile Island Fukushima-Daiichi Windscale SL-1 SL-1 and Windscale, by design standards, were far more obsolete than Chernobyl. Fukushima-Daiichi was struck by the rapidly compounding effects of a Major Earthquake and Moderately-Severe Tsunami, which disrupted off-site power supply and on-site backup power supply. Following the principles of 3rd and 4th Generation Nuclear Power Generation, nothing short of a widespread disaster which itself will prove to be far more destructive and dangerous than any powerplant of any type caught up within it will disrupt the safe operation of a nuclear power plant. Nuclear did not freeze during the Great Texan Freeze. Coal, gas, hydro, solar and wind all suffered outages for various reasons, many of them cascading into each other. Not a single nuclear powerplant was effected in a way that limited generative capacity. The most dangerous job in a nuclear power plant is typically much safer than the AVERAGE job in a non-nuclear plant, because the spectre of public opinion still haunts the nuclear industry. If a single fuel assembly ruptures in 3rd Generation NPP in 2024, that's probably going to receive comparable levels of attention to Taylor Swift getting breast implants. Meanwhile coal can start up, shut down abruptly, have a moderately severe incident and within 3 days nobody can even remember the name of the plant that blew up. Even when those are refineries targeted in a war, we pay more attention to who targeted them, than we pay to what they target. I cant actually name a single one of the dozens of refineries Ukraine has struck, because nobody outside of the gasoline industry or the Russo-Ukranian war's peripheries gives a single fuck. Long story short, working at a modern NPP is far safer than the alternatives, largely because of the spectre of public opinion hanging over NPP operators in a way it doesn't over the alternatives. There will always be 10x as many briefings for a given task's risk factor, 5x as many staff to oversee it, and at least 3x as many redundancies. Every event that has occurred within an NPP in the last year was heavily templated over a decade ago, and even plant-specific were likely templated more than a year before they were performed. Yes, this even includes the 'unpredictable' things that occur like a spill in Room 117, a sticky hinge on Door 31,596, and Valve Control Solenoid 3,974 shorting out while the plant is at peak load. If something breaking can/will break something else, that has been planned for multiple times by multiple teams of Subject Matter Experts because the safety culture in the Nuclear Power Industry is designed to be a pervasive indoctrination into a safety-oriented operating culture - including teaching NPP operators how to use firearms for home defense and defensive driving to mitigate risk of vehicular collisions, as well as non-cooperative defensive driving in case they should become a target of a terror plot. The only industry I'd consider as a candidate to uphold a more stringent safety culture would be the Space Industry. This, however, is for the exact same reason - public scrutiny surrounding previous accidents during operations utilizing 1st and 2nd Generation designs. We're loooong past the days of manipulating prompt-criticality tests with a screwdriver or filling manned capsules with pure oxygen, standard-pressure atmospheres. The idea of a NPP or Space Agency cutting corners to save money at the risk of major incidents which will result in public backlash is almost ludicrous, despite that being exactly how the rest of the industro-commercial world works - including non-NPPs.

[@FlorisEuss]

a great vidio as always, great to see how much you have grown sinds i stated waching

[@BeastyJay1234]

He’s saying that nuclear energy is better than solar energy, but the sun will be here for four to five billion years, but almost all uranium has been mined.

[@josh-gu6zi]

"silliness" when the back to the future clip was unnecessary

[@kstricl]

I figured I would look at the math for catching lightning strikes to use for the ultimate renewable power source, and I can see why it's not being done. With the capability to capture energy Helion is building for their fusion reactor, I see possibilities, but definitely a huge number of hurtles to overcome still.

[@pencilpauli9442]

Jigawatts. The Power of the Dance!

[@AmaroqStarwind]

If we pronounced other words the way Tyler pronounces turbine... "Hey, how is that gaming magazihn?" "Hey, I need somebody to fix my combihn harvester."

[@thou_dog]

What do you call a short-barrelled firearm, carb(eye)n or car(bean)? It goes out to lots of our French loan words, at a minimum.

[@NeilBFormy]

That mobile homes line was gold.

[@seanspartan2023]

1.21 Gigawatts!

[@buensomeritano1755]

If you could choose any electricity generation system, to build by hand from scratch, including collecting all the raw materials, and doing it as cheaply as possible, for powering a single-family home add one vehicle, what system would you build?

[@gettingkilt]

Loving your videos! I bet Randall does too. BTW I just noticed your accent/idiolect is really reminiscent of comedian Paul Lynde. He's from Ohio, how about you?

[@resurgam_b7]

Ooh, I can't wait for Randal to do the What If: "Lethal Neutrinos" and for you to then react to that one 😂

[@Malroth00Returns]

I've worked on reactors designed in the 1950s in my time in the navy, how much better are modern reactors at maintaining coolant flow in the absence of external power?

[@nsr-ints]

This is like a star trek level plasma torpedo.

[@LoisoPondohva]

1:25 How did you do that calculation that fast? Do you use a system of some kind, do you happen to remember a close enough calculation you already did or are you just that fast naturally? Genuinely curious.

[@glennmcgurrin8397]

Consider this a request for reaction videos on every video from this series.

[@zachrodan7543]

15:57 how many bananas of radiation are we talking here?

[@Travminer123]

10:45 LMAO

[@meander112]

Might I recommend a reaction to Scott Manley's recent video on nuclear thermal rocket engines?

[@wolfbushcraft3369]

full version yes

[@CarlosManuela-vk9qg]

My question is why don't RV's have Tornado straps Like Mobile homes?

[@JacobWilcox-07]

Could a bolt like this cause nuclear fission or even fusion in the air?

[@pazsion]

how much less power would we use if every appliance was 12v vs 220volts? no transformers dc to ac converters etc just 12v from source to application. no transmission lines... just an onsite genorator and storage of power.

[@jamcdonald120]

5:45 and lightning is just second hand wind power. which its self is second hand solar power

[@cosminxxx5287]

10-12 years ago in my area were i live 4 sheppards were with their sheep up on the higher hills when a storm came and they tried their best to gather all sheep around and in an orchard they found so they can protect as much as they can. as they were sitting under a big tree lightningh hit 10 meters near one of their horses and they go scared so one of the sheppards run to calm the horse. as he reached one horse lightning hit again within 2-3 meters, knoicking down the horse and the sheppard. the shepard got his legs under the falling horse, his friends pulled him from under the horse that died actually, and as they rushed back to the tree, another lightning struck in the tree killing that sheppard and puting one other into a coma. now, i know a 10 meters radius doesnt count as "same spot" but so much lightning in such a small area , for me, is already way into the "same spot" idea. it's almost like somewere up there said to that sheppard "you will die today, i can 100% guarantee you will , hold my beer" .

[@LordMarcus]

So long as it's 1.21 gigajoules, I'm good.

[@Approved_Rain]

I love eating light

[@InstrucTube]

To be fair, while it's a good thing you agree with him, it's not really surprising. Almost all of it's math, and numbers are hard to have an opinion on, honestly. :)

[@DougPaulley]

"Silliness"

[@ShadowWasntHere8433]

Wouldn’t the key to harnessing the free power of lightning be being able to store the mass of energy for long term use? A-la batteries?

[@GeorgeDCowley]

1:35 Does the number of strikes per day vary much?

[@TheSpookiestSkeleton]

You wanna talk about solar's impressiveness compared to lightning, you gotta play things fair and give solar its big guns. I'm talking about those heliostat solar plants that redirect a ton of sunlight towards a tower to melt salt and generate steam, now that is impressive. That's a death ray.

[@spinalobifida]

I guess that people who say lightning doesn't strike twice haven't seen a lightning one after the other in the exact same spot and shape within a second.

[@wombatillo]

Technically that's the same ionization channel getting multiple discharges until the cloud-ground potential difference eases off sufficiently to prevent further zaps. I just saw a triple hit a couple days ago but I'd say it's actually just the same lighting strike because it happened in under a single second.

[@spinalobifida]

That's what my thinking was too about the ion channels. It's like a misfire in the lightning to get the charge to the ground haha

[@Cuppa_Doc]

Have you reacted to the movie "K19 Widowmaker?" Be great to see!

[@thewoodweldingfabricator9300]

Remember to get your daily dose of ionized free radicals

[@bartroberts1514]

Let's compare a lightning bolt to a nuclear power plant, dimensionally, in terms of energy density. A lightning stroke lasts 30-50 microseconds, in clusters per strike lasting 5-10 milliseconds compared to a stretch of less than one second to less than 10 seconds before the air regenerates the ability to deliver another lightning strike in a supercell. A fission reactor equivalent to a supercell comparatively lasts maybe 80 years (if the license is extended past the original safe usage life; less if there's a tsunami or accident or war, etc.). And while that nuclear fuel never regenerates, it seems more reasonable to compare 80 years to the time the area and materials are safe for other uses.. U238 has a half life of 4.5 billion years, and 'safe' for the 'supercell' reactor would be 0.000,000,001% of the original quantity say? So, 4.5 billion years times 30? Now, I'm not much at math, but how does 7.5 milliseconds out of 5.5 seconds compare to 80 years out of 135 billion years? That's a win to lightning. Okay, but what about dimensions in space? A lightning strike with enough power to equal the output of a nuclear reactor might have a footprint the size of a solar panel, say, but it's tall, going all the way up to the clouds. Then again, all those materials that go into building and fueling the reactor come from pretty deep underground, and they themselves spread out over several states' area, but then we'd be comparing supercell storm size to global mining and refining size for all the steel and copper and concrete and whatnot, which seems a bit contrived. Let's just stick to the set-aside for a reactor complex instead.. Take Kashiwazaki-Kariwa for example, at 4.2 km^2, or just over .5 km^2/GW at just under 8 GW total power generation. Lightning still wins. And solar and wind both, we've seen in the video, beat lightning. Of course, enhanced geothermal comes up on the inside, edging out dark horse hydro, FTW!

[@TJK50014]

What about greased lightning?

[@Phyde4ux]

9:44 Fundamentally, All energy on Earth is derived from solar energy, even the energy we convert within our own bodies. The argument could be made that the radioactive elements used in nuclear power plants were created from the novae of previous generation stars, therefore not our Sol, but hard to deny those very particles are literally "solar" in origin.

[@rea1m_]

Some of the heaviest elements came from neutron star collisions

[@lXlDarKSuoLlXl]

​@@rea1m_and neutron stars are just the core of stars not massive enough to become black holes, so even that came from good ol' plain stars 😅

[@rea1m_]

@@lXlDarKSuoLlXl true

[@joshuah9059]

1.21 gigawhatts

[@IceSpeed]

Cool Thumbnail

[@LendriMujina]

Pretty sure the saying is just an example of the gambler's fallacy.

[@crsmith6226]

I think you’ll really like the video the Science of MiniNukes by ShoddyCast!

[@larslindgren3846]

You are wrong at 5:50. Wind and solar produces more energy than Nuclear power. Wind and solar power produced 3900 TWh in 2023 while Nuclear power globaly only was 2700 TWh. According to Our World In Data.

[@scribblesofwateveryoudo3856]

Omg sir sir please please 😱 please do a review of Terrance Howard’s appearance on Joe Rogan. Please please please, I know the laughter will become so intense it’ll be hard to breathe. Ppplllleeeaaaaassseee

[@trevorjrooney]

Great thumbnail!

[@tfolsenuclear]

Thanks! My wife designs them ❤️

[@NeckbeardPr1me]

How come you pronounce turbine as turban?

[@ThePrillmeister]

He could be playing Pokémon stadium using Pikachu

[@FINXainarskrastins]

Well, then what would happen if I spawned a lightning strike that would somehow reach a nuclear power plants core (don't question how) Like would the material blow up in such a surge of energy or watt(ez dad joke lol)

[@davidpichardo6240]

I'm sorry, but I really want to type this. _turban._

[@DergPH]

nice vid

[@tgraymk]

We use the Hiroshima bomb unit of measurement because it's not metric. 😉

[@I_Am_Transcendentem]

Thumbnail design!!!!!

[@_Squiggle_]

Yeah, Ocarina of Time 😎

[@Agarwaen]

impressive looking but doesn't last very long? hey.. I can do half of that!

[@VilemJackel-pp5kg]

Hello

[@usnva5638]

Lightning is not powered by sunlight. Volcanic eruptions also produce static discharges. Place a Van de Graaff generator in a dark room, turn it on and voila - you will be generating small lightning bolts.

[@Goose_Bomb]

But where does the friction for the lightning come from? Wind? Where does wind come from? Sunlight

[@usnva5638]

@@Goose_Bomb Static charge comes from dissimilar materials in friction colliding against one another. In other words, dry ice crystals in the upper atmosphere collide with more moist composites in the lower atmosphere. All these materials contain electrons. Anyways, when enough collisions collide due to strong turbulence, electrons separate from an element and a buildup of electrostatic charge is generated. A thunder cloud and earth are like the positive and negative sides of a capacitor with the air as the dielectric separating the two. Air does not have a high dielectric value and therefore, step leaders (AKA corona) will try finding a path in all directions until the it connects with the first opposing positive ion streamer. Once there's a connection you get lightning. It's a very basic description, but that's the best I can provide right now with an active house full of gremlins. I hope something in this helped you understand more.

[@thou_dog]

​@@usnva5638Right, but most of the movement of particulates in the air (or the air itself) that we experience on a daily basis is caused by sunlight

[@AoriDeAof]

Just a funny thing, nothing to do with video topic. Never heard of comparing anything to a Hiroshima-bomb, but everyone goes with this thing kinda nicely considering that bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is a war crime, the unnecesarry nuclear bombing not just of military bases, but two fucking civillian cities. But everyone start acting up when you talk about jews and slavic nations in general being burnt in ovens or gassed. And hey, for todays standarts i can talk about such thing as of being an representative of said group. Double standarts everywhere - it is bad but if i talk about it - its ok. Bad thing is a bad thing, no jastifying can be done.

[@petterlarsson7257]

its pronounced tur-bein, not tur-ban

[@Melechtna]

Keeping in mind it's pronounced turbine, not turban.

[@DougNoOnions]

You have to make original content, no more no effort reacts. unsub.

[@variable1]

How are these no effort reacts

[@adam-dn3hi]

0:38 no actually the most powerful nuklear weapon was 100 50 was the largest ever used however the strongest one was 100 megatons but it was too dangerous so they limited it to 50 megatons

[@Razorcarl]

Tsar bomba was planned to have 100 Megatons, but they reverted it to 50 Megatons. The 100 Megaton bomb never existed.

[@adam-dn3hi]

not sure how accurate this is but using google 7 gigajoules in a lightning bolt(some say 1 gigajoules but I am using 7 to highball it) 8.6 million lightning bolts hit the earth every day 7 X 8,600,000 = 60,200,000 gigajoules 60,200,000 gigajoules converted into megatons = 14.388145315487572 megatons awasome but less than I expected

[@SurlockGnomez]

Thanks for another video. Please consider this for something to react to: "Why Nuclear Rockets Are Going To Change Spaceflight" by Scott Manley.

[@WJS774]

Trying to generate power from lightning being like trying to generate power from tornadoes, yeah, or from tidal wave flooding instead of normal daily tidal changes or wave power from regular sized waves.

[@CarlosManuela-vk9qg]

Ponders & Wonders if Lightning Energy harvesting will ever be a thing? LoL imagine the system that could absorb a lightning bolt & keep it's energy as fast as lightning ⚡🌩️

[@sansventura7199]

What I learned from this video is that Zeus could probably throw around the same power as a nuke No wonder he’s king

[@adequatemii4006]

A KZbinr called spike95ist has a video of a strike with an audible EMP and shockwave.

[@Azyraasr]

Why does he always know?