Forget Small ... What About Micro Nuclear Energy?

Revisiting Small Modular Reactors - The Future of Nuclear Energy? Get Surfshark VPN at surfshark.deals/undecided and enter promo code UNDECIDED for 83% off and 3 extra months for free! Although nuclear energy is reliable and a sustainable energy source, the nuclear energy debate rages on. It's not considered the go-to solution in the renewable energy transition. Solar, wind, and hydro are getting all the attention. Nuclear reactors are big, expensive, and take a long time to build, but what if we could make them smaller, portable, cheaper, and safer. Small modular reactors are getting a lot of interest with the first versions coming online in China and new locations popping up in Canada. As well as former SpaceX engineers that have made things even smaller … to a micro reactor scale. Could this be the future of nuclear energy?
Correction on NuScale: "A single NuScale Power Module (NPM) provides 77 megawatts electric (MWe), with a 12-module design resulting in a total gross output of 924 MWe."
Watch Revisiting Thorium Energy - The Future of Nuclear Power?: • Revisiting Thorium Ene...
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[@ARepublicIfYouCanKeepIt]

I served aboard USS Will Rogers, SSBN 659, as a Nuclear Machinist's Mate and Engineering Laboratory Technician. That means I cared for the nuclear reactor and all associated systems, while monitoring for anomalies, as well as radiation exposure of the crew. Naval Nuclear Reactors are incredibly compact, yet incredibly powerful. The S3G reactor was about the size of Radiant's design that's capable of 1MW. However, due in part to much higher enrichment levels, S3G cores *far* surpassed this level of energy output. While working for DuPont after the Navy, I worked on Naval Fuels, and Defense Nuclear Waste. We were perfecting vitrification of high-level nuclear waste over 35 years ago! That 90 MT of spent fuel languish in onsite storage all across the country is a travesty. As for the SMR or MSR question, that's an "and-both" issue, not an "either-or" one. There is no "Silver Bullet". Only silver buckshot. So, in addition to the first-off-the-tongue renewables of solar, wind and hydro, *we must quickly expand production capacity, while investing heavily in geothermal and wave/tidal.* Geothermal and wave/tidal are akin to stable, baseload generated by natural gas, coal and nuclear, and we've barely scratched the surface of what these energy sources can deliver to humanity and the planet. SMRs have their place. Designs are approved and projects are already underway. No, they don't have all of the benefits of MSRs, but we urgently need the capacity. It's a bit like the tortoise and the hare, where MSRs are the former. Working down the existing spent fuel inventory, while generating a fraction of the waste of traditional reactors designs, that's also toxic for a far shorter period of time. That's the promise that we should work towards. In addition to all this, there are EVs, ground source heat pumps and hybrid water heaters. There are biomass, carbon capture and synthetic fuels. There are smart grids, distributed grids and vehicle-to-home. Hell, there's even white paint. We need it all. And we need it now!

[@zber9043]

great post. Have you looked at Quaise energy? They have a great concept and it makes me think geothermal will really happen.

[@scottslotterbeck3796]

Thanks for a great response!

[@ARepublicIfYouCanKeepIt]

@@zber9043 Quaise's approach has merit. But theirs is a large, centralized implementation. It's not necessary to drill miles/kilometers deep to gain significant advantages. Heating and cooling buildings is a significant contributor of global greenhouse gas emissions. Conditioning the built environment is all about the "Delta-T", that is the temperature differential represented by source and desired temperature. The smaller the gap, the lesser the energy needed to get to the desired temperature. We only need bury relatively small loops between 6 and 10 feet down to reach stable temperatures year round. Horizontal ground loops can be used to as a heat sink when cooling, and a preheater when heating. The same goes for heating water. As I said in my original comment, "silver buckshot." We need every solution. Like yesterday.

[@scratchy996]

Politicians :" Meh, coal and gas are cheaper, and those huge corporations are sponsoring us. People will vote for the other team if their living standards get a 3% decrease, so why bother. "

[@nb9361]

Very interesting & informative post. Hopefully it won't be long before people realise wind & solar are a waste of time, promoted by politicians who want to look good. Nuclear & tidal seem to be the obvious choice.

[@edreusser4741]

It is worth pointing out that the reason for the difference between the longevity of the waste from uranium-based fission reactors is the presence of higher atomic number actinides. This isn't the only difference between the thorium and uranium decay paths, they can be separated fairly easily and most of them have medical or other industrial uses. It is a political decision not to allow the reprocessing of nuclear waste. Things have changed since Carter made that decision, it might be time to take another look at reprocessing all of the waste. The remaining lot has the same shorter lifetime for thorium wastes.

[@JGBecknell]

I am 100% onboard with this! 👏

[@dr.vanhellsing]

Environmentalists would fight you tooth and nail to prevent the use of burning nuclear waste as energy. Not only that but they would also prevent you from reproducing.

[@jaffacalling53]

@@dr.vanhellsing Modern environmentalist groups are enemies of humanity. Their ultimate goal is the reduction of the human race to nothing more than hunter gatherer/subsistence societies, they view mankind as a plague that needs to be contained or eradicated.

[@vitalijslebedevs1629]

@@jaffacalling53 Seems that all coments here, apart from @Jesus saves are talking about US. There is world out there, where these statements are not true, as they're generalizations of how things or *'environmentalists'*, whatever that means for you,* are in US. None of the green parties un EU opposes nuclear power or human civilization. Another matter, if and how they're 'green.' I'm not talking about extremists or animal rights nuts, i haven't met them. Unfortunately majority of poor countries will not have resources or political power to go nuclear. Those opposing nuclear, unless they champion for Thorium-only, have no clue of nuclear physics, biology or geology. No point of giving them any platform, not even critically.

[@jaffacalling53]

@@vitalijslebedevs1629 Pretty sure every major green party in Europe opposes nuclear power, some of those idiots are so far gone that they even protested funding ITER. The Green morons even managed to infect the more center parties in Germany, which is why their reactors are all shut down even though the Greens aren't even the majority party there.

[@larrycox6614]

I like the idea of mircoreators. The world's rate of changing resource requirements (need more, need more), change in technology (knowledge increase), micros would fit the bill of small, flexible for varying installations. After installation, if a more efficient microreactor was found, it could possibly replace the current reactor; hard to do with a full size nuclear reactor.

[@volkerkoenigsbuescher2394]

Just to mention: It's not only the end of the "nuclear chain" (the final waste), it is also the beginning and the middle. You need to dig out the raw uranium in the first place, and that generates already huge heaps of radioactive mining overburden (OK, in South Africa, so who bothers (that was irony)). Then you have to process that in chemical plants with all the environmental problems those have (and constant spill-offs of radioactivity). Then you need to enrich and concentrate it in gas centrifuges, generating another sort of waste as a byproduct. Then you have to process it to create fuel elements (again: waste). After the fuel elements are used, you have the "middle circle" where you have to wait for the worst radioactivity abates, then break them up, and again do all the chemical and fabrication processes to build new elements, this time handling also plutonium, not just uranium, and again generate waste, even more active than in the first round. This is true for SMRs also, only a bit slowed down. Then you distribute these materials everywhere into thousands(?), or hundreds of thousands(?) mini-reactors everywhere, in the best case under some quality control and maintenance comparable to, let's say, civil aircraft (in the best case, if there would be better control it would cost much more, and civil aviation needed a long time and many deaths to develop their standards). So these machines with their inventory are lying around everywhere, in varying states of maintenance and probably some state of rot. Hey, everybody should have one in their garage, right? Shiny animations just don't show the reality that is coming up. In advertisements, all cars are shiny but look in the streets for a reality check. Not to forget: For all that SMR business to start we would need decades only to replace only a fraction of fossil energy, but we don't have that time.

[@aimee-lynndonovan6077]

Great points!🧐😬😅

[@Spacedog79]

You answered the waste question in the video already. Fast reactors use waste from thermal reactors as their fuel, cutting the time needed for storage to about 500 years just like the thorium reactors. Fast reactors are also highly efficient in their burnup, meaning that the existing waste represents a tremendous amount of fuel waiting to be used.

[@madshorn5826]

Even if that was true, which I doubt, micro reactors are a _spectacularly_ stupid idea when you factor in just how hard they would be to secure against ignorance and malice. Making a dirty bomb out of one of these things is horrifyingly easy: Just place a sturdy water tank near one, wire up a water heater inside, bolt the tank shut and run like hell. No explosives or skills required at all. Going postal would be going to a whole new level.

[@Spacedog79]

@@madshorn5826 What are you talking about? Micro reactors would be placed underground and hardened against attacks. No such thing would be possible.

[@madshorn5826]

@@Spacedog79 A gigawatt of nuclear power with small 1 MW reactors will require 1000 reactors. That's a lot. And a GW isn't that much. Burying and hardening reactors will be prohibitively expensive and still not protect against determined nutters. You underestimate the dogged stupidity and creativity of idiots. And we have to plan for irrational behavior as Putin has just demonstrated.

[@davidk7544]

let's implement renewables to their limit then bring up nuclear.

[@Spacedog79]

@@davidk7544 Look at Germany, we've already seen that we don't have a solution to the intermittency apart from more fossil fuels. France on the other hand is sitting pretty with all their Nuclear, that is the way to do it.

[@Kylem6875]

As someone involved in the Nuclear Industry, I've always maintained that micro reactors, the size of your home boiler one-day can eventually be safe enough to be installed in households. Clean, limitless energy and a modular design that allows fuel to be easily changed after it's spent. A whole cycle and industry can be made on reprocessing existing spent rods and redelivery back to households, with the only upfront cost of energy simply being to pay for the reactor itself and the refuelling. Annual inspection and monitoring can be done via cellular or internet, and of course plenty of safety systems to shut itself off during the event of failure. Generating excess power? Just feed it back into the grid. It's really as simple as that. Power cut or your reactor stops working? Use batteries installed in your home to work in conjunction with any solar panels you may have.

[@Veldtian1]

Say it brother. I'm a LFTR Kirk Sorensen FLIBE Energy fanatic myself though, he's got a vision.

[@pulesjet]

I bet we have the technology to do that today. People have been brain washed to think Nuclear Energy is a dooms day machine.. It's just not so.

[@KRYMauL]

I think it would be better to put one central reactor in a neighborhood, so as to not have more culs-de-sac.

[@WobblycogsUk]

I wonder what the calculations would say about this scenario. SMRs work due to economy of scale but that doesn't mean it would continue to scale down to reactors small enough to power a single home. I suspect the smallest it would be feasible to go is around a megawatt.

[@Soletestament]

At that point though there's no need for a grid..... Why expend tax money or pay a monthly service fee to maintain a grid when every building / home is already adequately powered for years if not decades at a time? It really doesn't make a lot of sense at that point.

[@nevernether3368]

I personally like airships but don't like blimps so the smaller plants like this excite me cause we're getting closer and closer to something usable for a electric airship. Thank you for the video this is exciting.

[@tbas8741]

Airships still to slow now to make it properly viable would only be for tourism stuff. (joyrides) Fastest airships are still slower than cars average trip speed (which is most countries with decent roads is around 45-50mph Average speed) And in larger countries where average trip speeds are 60-65mph as might only go past 1 town within 100 miles.

[@nevernether3368]

@@tbas8741 the point isn't speed. Its luxury. If you wanna cross the ocean you wouldn't buy a yacht.

[@YourCapyBruv_do_u_rmbr_3Dpipes]

Airships are pretty sweet. Maybe we will have them again.

[@nevernether3368]

@@YourCapyBruv_do_u_rmbr_3Dpipes we kinda do. The good year blimp is a airship. Tho I prefer the pretty ones. Pirates of the Caribbean style ships going through the clouds.

[@informationcollectionpost3257]

Well, I am not an expert but have spent a brief period of my life working in the nuclear industry as a draftsman mostly on ultrasonic test blocks for welds. I don't like molten metal reactors because they exhibited a lot of technical problems that could result in plant fires and loss of coolent accident s. I also became disillusioned with the long storage times needed for uranium plutonium cycle reactor wastes and the extreme toxic nature of plutonium. All of this was unknown until the industry tried developing uranium to plutonium reactors. ( As you can see this was a job early in my career and I am nearing retirement now) The cost of the huge plants of that era, long construction times, & technical difficulties at that period of history indicated costs higher than solar & wind energy with a legacy of extremely toxic wastes for thousands of years to come. Over the years, it was determined that breeding fuel from Thorium, a very abundant substance, could produce much shorter lived wastes with easy in plant reprocessing of nuclear fuels provided that a molten salt reactor was used. ( solid reprocessing is very difficult) It is also very difficult and hazardous to make bomb grade fuel from thorium breeders with the results of a poor performing nuclear bomb. ( found out through research that the USA performed a nuclear test with a U233 bomb) Molten salt Thorium reactors and pebble bed reactors ( probably a non-breeding reactor for the latter) lend themselves well to modular/factory made/ smaller units. When using a helium or CO2 generation loop with a closed loop bryton cycle turbine the trend of the slow passage of slightly radioactivity is not only slowed but re generation loop can take full advantage of the higher core temperatures of the reactor core for a higher efficiency plant. In short, we have learned a lot about making nuclear plants over the years and perhaps it is time for the USA and other nations to at to work at creating a cost effective and far safer nuclear industry. An international and joint effort should not over burden anyone's economy for the remaining research needed to accomplish this.

[@DCMAKER133]

we have known 50-70 years ago how to create safer and better reactors except the US nuclear committee killed it because it couldn't make nukes out of the waste and spent decades propagandizing people into believing those weren't feasible or an option. This should be common knowledge now but the more I learn and the more I see...the more I am amazed at how well propaganda works because people don't bother to question anything they are told.

[@jazzthedinosaur2183]

I don't have any experience working with nuclear reactors or anything but from what I have heard and seen from people like you and videos like this, I think nuclear needs to be a much bigger component to tackling the climate crisis then it already is. From my experience, the main issue with nuclear and renewable energy (actually nearly any energy source) is mining. I think if we can find a non toxic method of mining uranium, thorium and other nuclear elements we could safely and cleanly power the world off of them. Like I said I have no experience working with nuclear reactors but I have some second hand experience with mining (my dad worked in a nickel mine/acid plant) and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

[@informationcollectionpost3257]

@@jazzthedinosaur2183 On mining I can only go by what I read and view on videos. Mining thorium results in a very low amount of mine tailings. ( left over removed and piled up mine materials) As most of the material mined is usable to breed the thorium into U-233, the fissionable material that is used in the reactor to make heat and power. Uranium mining on the other hand, produces large amounts of low level radioactive mine tailings that can become airborne dust. This is a huge environmental problem in parts of Australia and in the state of Nebraska, USA. Whether the mining is performed by open pit ( strip mining) or from tunneling; I really can't comment on. I do know that strip mining often releases a lot of harmful materials into the water table from coal strip mines near where I grew up. To get a better answer you will need to talk to a mining engineer or a knowledgeable miner.

[@thebojinator1]

@@jazzthedinosaur2183 Check out anything by Dr. James Conca, or any of his appearances in videos or podcasts. He has decades of knowledge on everything from mining, to splitting, to the disposal of nuclear fuel. The crazy thing about nuclear fuel and waste, is that there is so much potential energy in so little material. Not to mention, unlike every other industry, the toxic waste quickly (much quicker than you would expect) degrades back into harmless materials. Not only do we already have access to more Uranium than we currently need, there is technology on the horizon to extract more than we would ever need, safely from sea water. Over 7 decades of nuclear power has resulted in fewer deaths than literally any other source of power generation. More people in the world (especially emerging countries) die from the inhalation of smoke from wood/coal annually, than have ever died from anything related to nuclear energy.

[@DaveE99]

@@jazzthedinosaur2183 wasnt the issue he pointed out to me the most was that except for that one type of reactor, that the rest of them were like double the cost per MW that solar and wind offer. thats what really caught my eye. also I did learn that we could litteraly build like a shit ton of panels and wind out in the dessert. the way you transport it around the country is instead of using our normal AC power lines. You would have to build Dedicated DC power lines that would disperse this energy around the country. China is already doing this and building this and they ahve about 29 of these DC lines in place already. when i heard this it just seemed like "WHY ARENT WE DOING THIS?" another aspect of solar that I like better, is I would much rather the goverment give me a giant tax credit and maybe financing to help me buy my own panels? why? it increases my ability to own my own life better. have more security and in a sense freedom in a country that dosent really create it for many except about 10% of the population. To me, efforts like that, do more than just create power, the empower us to live better lives.

[@TheMeganusspli]

Obviously there are lots of details to work out, but micro reactors in concept allow for loads of options toward the goal of decentralizing electricity generation. It is interesting that many people are alarmed about the management of nuclear waste. Clearly, it is an important part of the process, but If only we had been storing the toxic biproducts of our means of energy production in the last 100 or so years instead of letting it float away into the atmosphere (and accumulate) we would be dealing with a very different type of challenge to keeping the planet able to sustain life.

[@ccibinel]

Nuclear waste is only waste if its useless. Check out the candu reactor and new research on SMR variants. We can fuel the SMR reactors for 100+ years with the junk we cant figure our what to do with (or use unenriched uranium which is cheaper and reduces proliferation risk)

[@Dirtyharry70585]

Elon’s rocket to the sun, let it on convert the nuclear waste

[@connorrosekrans7348]

@@Dirtyharry70585 what. no.

[@nameless1016]

any steps away from oil addiction, are good for future generations.

[@nagualdesign]

@@Dirtyharry70585 It's extremely difficult to reach the Sun with existing rocket technologies, although you can get pretty close. If you're just going to dump nuclear waste it's far easier and cheaper to place them on the Earth's ocean beds in subduction zones.

[@mikefochtman7164]

As you point out, there are some regulatory issues. SMR's are still working with regulators to figure out how many staff are needed at multiple-reactor SMR sites for example. Current law requires a certain staff per reactor but when you have 8 or 12 identical reactors, Nuscale proposes a given operator can handle several reactors at once. I know this is a small issue, but staffing and security traditionally based on 'per reactor' needs to be reviewed and worked out. (one of the 'regulatory issues' you mention). With current nuclear plants, staffing is a significant part of O&M costs, so it is important to address.

[@protorhinocerator142]

Good point. There would be economies of scale at the power plant as well, by having a reactor farm and not just one reactor. Power plants are a 24/7 operation, so you need to staff for 24/7 and not just Mon-Fri 8 hours a day. This doesn't seem like much, but a full week ends up being around 4 times the man-hours of just Mon-Fri 8-5. You'd need a minimum crew/shift, in case someone's sick or Jeff needs to use the bathroom. Making a reactor farm with 8 or 12 reactors makes a lot of sense.

[@srinivasraokaruturi9777]

I've wondered about this myself past several years... I'm well aware of the arguments that are against nuclear energy. I just wish we could start on this micro and modular reactors on a trial basis and see it grow gradually. Simultaneously reducing dependence on Fossil fuels. Especially with the EV boom, that's happening and going to grow exponentially, we need these power packed modular reactors urgently... everywhere. Icing on this would be using these for hydrogen powered fuel cell EVs. Can't wait to get to that future... quality of life will be better especially in developing countries like India etc , where i am. Great video... please keep them coming on this topic. 🙏

[@dbf1dware]

Exactly! Approve some small-ish pilot programs. Get these things out in the field (isolated and safe) to put them through their paces, shake out bugs, etc. I feel certain that nuclear HAS to be a part of our energy future. I am a huge fan of solar, hydro, and even wind (although I have reservations about wind). But nuclear MUST be part of our solution. The intermittency of renewables is a big problem. Nuclear does not have that problem. The more I learn about small and micro nuclear reactors, the better I like the idea. Think of them sort of like washing machines. Factory production has made washing machines completely ubiquitous, cheap, reliable. If you have more laundry that needs washing, you get another machine, and add more as needed. You don't have to predict how much laundry you "might" be washing in 10-20 years. Start with what you need, and scale up as you go. With the new designs coming, that is exactly what we can do with energy. It also helps the energy grid remain flexible enough to respond to changes in population and energy consumption that is NOT predicted. Some areas suddenly grow, some areas don't or even shrink. Small and micro nuclear can easily respond to those changes. Initially a bit higher $/mWh cost, but the flexibility is worth it. Even more, as designs get refined, the manufacturing becomes more refined, and price will drop. Again, think of them like washing machines.

[@dodaexploda]

We are building them in Canada. We got the GE Hitachi and the ultra safe nuclear reactor mentioned in the video being built in Ontario. New Brunswick is building the Moltex reactor. But that might take longer as it's still being designed.

[@aulcamedia]

It is hilarious how every time anyone in media wants to show a nuclear power station, they show a picture of cooling towers. Cooling towers are of course vast and imposing structures, but they are basically empty and contain nothing more threatening than water and water vapour. Their function is to cool water from a steam generator, being coal fired or nuclear. The white clouds emanating from them is water vapour. Their characteristic shape is the result of a mathematical computation to find the design that requires the least amount of material to construct them.

[@cazza358]

I work in renewables but honestly believe more in nuclear. When it comes to cost and meeting net zero, something that is often overlooked is that renewables are not dispatchable (as in you can't decide when they generate) and there is not current technology for storing energy between seasons, meaning that it is very expensive to run a reliable net zero system off them, whereas nuclear solves this, also without turning the countryside into industrial wasteland. If those LCOE's were adjusted for firm power, solar would be near infinite as it produces nothing in winter evenings.

[@jimj2683]

South Chile has very constant strong winds in one direction. Best way to export the energy is as E-fuels.

[@RyanWilliams222]

@@jimj2683 Maybe southern Chile has a source of constant renewable energy, but most places don’t. I’m with Cameron; unless we get a revolution in energy storage, we’re going to need nuclear to get off fossil fuels.

[@jimj2683]

@@RyanWilliams222 Are you dumb? I was talking about exporting the energy from a country with low cost green energy to countries with high cost green energy.

[@romualdaskuzborskis]

@@jimj2683 exporting means spending extra energy to actually move it. So in reault you will make it expensive. That is the reason why "the world" does not use sachara desert as world wide solar generator. The transport loses are humongous.

[@matsv201]

Those LCOE looks like they are from the Lazard paper that is pure propaganda. It have been debunked a large number of times. Those number is even higher than the strike price for HPC that did include a sort of kick back system to the UK government. Pretty much the grid pays HPC £92.50 minimum, then it kicks back about £20 to the grid via installation and also about £4 directly to the government. In Finland the strike price was €50.

[@michahalczuk9071]

I've studied electrical engineering and my engineering thesis was also on plasma reactors, which touched a little the subject of fusion. I was interested in energy market for at least a decade now and I can honestly say - *SMR ain't gonna happen, or at least not on the large scale.* Electricity is a universal commodity, which means that lowest price wins, with rare exceptions. Microreactors ro SMRs having theoretical LCOE higher than PV and wind before they're even mass produces is already market loss, and this is without following trends of those sources. Photovoltaics are getting cheaper every year, with theoretical costs in orders of magnitude lower than now. Battery costs will drop below 50$/kWh on pack level before end of this decade, which would make even gigantic home supplies cheap. Both of the above are near no-maintenance, with maybe exception of cleaning your PV once in a while, while any reactor will require maintenance as well as refueling and fuel regeneration. Microreactors might come in handy on freighters and similar applications, but only if they provide enough power at low cost. Entire nuclear sector exist pretty much as a sideproduct of atom bomb production, and it never was cheap or affordable as people often stated. To even be remotely viable in near future, we must be talking about LCOE around 40$/MWh or cheaper, which is closest to thorium, which doesn't yet *work.* Possible applications I might see would be large cruise ships and freighters, and possibly larger trains if reactors were small enough. It's a cool concept, but people won't overpay for electricity to have it from cool source.

[@bencoad8492]

lol people are over paying for a cool source already, aka solar/wind :/

[@michahalczuk9071]

@Jesus Saves PV + battery installation doesn't need to be hooked up to grid either, and the cost of such installation is already lower than estimate cost for SMR at mass production, which doesn't exist. And both PV and battery installations are still dropping in cost sharply, where nuclear has seen no progress in last 20-30 years.

[@michahalczuk9071]

@@bencoad8492 Both solar and wind are cheapest sources of electricity next to hydro, which has extremely limited availability anyway. Lack of grid batteries, which have never been necessary before is completely different thing, which will be solved separately in next decade or so. Cheapest li-ion is already at 65$ per kWh and other chemistries aim at

[@michahalczuk9071]

@Jesus Saves 2017 was 5 years ago, so half a decade. Making excellent progress doesn't really matter, if overall energy cost is higher than PV and wind. 3rd world doesn't have any infrastructure to deal with nuclear waste nor facilities to recycle such waste. This would literally make them fully dependent on more advanced countries draining them from money. Water purification and waste treatment can be run with just PV, and even without batteries for much cheaper than you'll ever get with SMRs. Especially for 3rd world, electricity cost is the most important, and solar needing no maintenance as well is just a big winner here.

[@daetslovactmandcarry6999]

I really like this _concept,_ I hope execution can be as good as promise. On a related note, ¿why can’t we make the reactor itself the disposal vsl? Build the reactor far far underground- roughly 1,ØØØ feet below ground (placing it below even global average for ground water). When the facilities are deactivated permanently, remove that which must be removed, then fill the remaining cavities with either water or concrete, or some combination thereof, or even something else entirely.

[@colinpoo5]

That sounds like a tremendous amount of work excavating not to mention costwise when you could just work on making the facilities safer and/or smaller

[@alexforce9]

Coz thats removes the positive side of having a small modules in the first place - the ability to build them almost everywhere. So instead of having one dump for the waste - on one location, you have thousands of them all over the place.

[@aimee-lynndonovan6077]

Because the drilling is insanely expensive and laborious.

[@mgabrysSF]

Radiant's design is interesting - but I'll be curious how they handle helium migration as helium REALLY permeates through a lot of systems. That was one challenge in Colorado that used helium cooled reactors. You're either going to have to top-off such a system regularly or have some very fancy re-cap methods.

[@EA-tc6kb]

The most important factor moving forward is the decentralization of the grid, it's the only way we can keep aging grids alive without the complete overhaul of transmission systems.

[@nunocarmona]

But don't forget economies of scale. Bigger generating units tend to achieve lower cost/MWh compared to smaller ones (I was a bit surprised with these SMR numbers, I must say). If (big generation + grid) costs are lower than micro-generation units then there's no economic rationale to switch. The first electric systems were quite decentralized but, as technology improved, it became the way it is now. Maybe technological progress makes it turn around again...

[@bencoad8492]

@@nunocarmona its coz big plants can't be built in factories/shipyard this makes then cost way more, Modular Reactors can be standardized and built in factories/shipyards massive lowering the cost, as an example ThorCons ones they are building in shipyards which is probably the biggest at 0.5 Gigawatts

[@andrewsmith1735]

@@nunocarmona one of the costs of nuclear people don't understand is government. The larger sites are more cost effective due to fees government has on the sites. The fees and charges don't scale so larger sites are more cost effective. If the government wasn't trying to kill the industry quietly it would make more financial sense for smaller modular units prefabricated then distributed.

[@mike-rayner-videos]

you make boiling water for a steam engine sound real fancy.. but sounds good to me.. more safer

[@CountryLifestyle2023]

That is the essence of every reactor ever built. Steam.

[@andrasbiro3007]

Actually steam is pretty dangerous. It had key role in every major nuclear accident. It's fine to use steam for the energy generation part, but water shouldn't be inside the reactor core.

[@CountryLifestyle2023]

@@andrasbiro3007 Why

[@zorroinhell5549]

@@andrasbiro3007 Does this process produce any kind of toxic waste? Also, what is done with the waste?

[@KRYMauL]

@@zorroinhell5549 All nuclear disasters have been a problem with the pressure containment unit of the water. Water under eminence heat and pressures creates a ton of steam that can seriously injure people, just look at a kettle with a stout.

[@mackcullison6316]

Hi, Mack here. Nuclear Engineer by education, radiation shield manufacturer by trade. I went to school where NuScale was born out of, Oregon State University and there was a 1 MW TRIGA reactor operating there. In fact, you could walk on top of it while it pulsed to over 2000 MW and see the blue Cherenkov radiation glow. Fact checker, tidbits of information, and personal opinions. Each NuScale module is rated for 77 MW, they would be up to 200 MW with a water pump, however, natural buoyancy and gravity allow passive safety, ie the core can cool off without pumps. A NuScale 12 Module pack is 924 MW. On the thermal/fast reactor talk: Thermal neutrons are neutrons with the same temperature as their medium. Ie, 2200 m/s at room temperature* faster at higher temperatures, which means lower cross section, which means inherent safety. This is also known as negative reactivity temperature coefficient. Helium is also non corrosive making it very simple from a materials prospective. Helium does not interact chemically with reactor materials. However, due to its low density, it cannot be as energy dense. A LWR, or HWR has a power density of about 100 W/cm3. Low power density and low pressure are required to make reactors safer, this is why we build containment vessels around big water reactors. Beware of liquid sodium cooled reactors, they are low pressure, however, very high power density. If sodium contacts water it will explode, which is undesirable from a safety prospective. A lot of new designs will push for higher performance, however, safety should be considered first. But not to a point that it crippled the nuclear industry. Rickover always asked others if they would be comfortable putting their kids into a nuclear submarine while the core was failing, that attitude has lead to the safest operator of nuclear reactors in the world. Ultra safe nuclear also has micro reactors, their materials engineer also came from SpaceX. I was kind of sad not to see any mention of them here because their reactors are going to space! The moon, Mars, and beyond! On SMR technology, It will be a part of the future, heck, it’s already a part of the US Navy giving the US a major tactical advantage. Micro fission/fusion reactors in the form of 700 lb missiles already exist too. This technology would be great if we figure out how to get highly enriched fuel into reactors without any risk of people getting weapons from it. Even in the large reactors we have today the fuel is only 5% enriched. If we had 50% enriched fuel the fuel lifetime would go from 4.5-6 years to 45-60 years with very high capacity factor. The idea that we use fossil fuels in the face of collapse is ridiculous. People argue we should hold out until fusion energy, my take is (evidenced by my logo), fusion energy has been around for 4.5 billion years and will remain for another 5 billion years. It is present on 1/2 of the earth at all times, with a 25% capacity factor. We really are just sitting around a fusion campfire we call the sun. Anybody who puts up a solar panel is exploiting nuclear fusions. Anybody who relies on seeing using sunlight relies on fusion power. Any plant based life is fusion powered. Any oil is still fusion powered. If we want serious nuclear fission reactors, we should vertically monopolize the supply chain and just go for it. Pick a spot in the desert (I would recommend where all the nukes were tested) and test innovative cores in a nuclear bunker underground. We test them all until they safely fail 1000 times in an accelerated timeline. From there, we decide which ones are acceptable, and which ones are not. Any resource needed, included cooling, should just be provided. Pick another spot in the desert (or ocean), maybe Hanford (maybe the pacific), and build a massive complex that has plenty of cooling water, cooling air, build massive manufacturing and transportation capabilities, and crank out large reactor after reactor with special attention on minimizing human labor consumption. We should make enough energy for the entire world to live up to American standards, and boost American living standards to space age energy standards. Including full access to RTG technology for space exploration/exploitation. From there, we figure out how to make a 1 Gigavolt world distribution. 1 Megavolt country distribution. 1 Kilovolt Underground town distribution. 1 volt home distribution (avoiding fires). Or, whatever works best, I am not an electrical engineer and I am okay with saying that. Whatever is safest. Allow experts to maintain the safety of the power source for the entire world in one place. The jobs would be one month at sea, and the rest of the year at home. This model would work well because power spikes around the world in different times would levelize the power consumption to some extent. If there are demand spikes, the nuclear site should have a giant thermal battery which is hooked up to supplement the steam turbines, or sCO2 turbines. This thermal battery could be a large molten pool of lava for all I care, and should probably be managed by mechanical engineers, but that’s how it should be done. All nuclear waste should be packaged up and thrown into the thermal battery to keep heating it. Why waste precious nuclear heat? It’s not waste if we still use it. Extract all uranium and transuranic elements from waste and repackage it for fuel. Isotopes get packaged for space exploration. Any gamma emitters sunk in a pool of water for heat extraction. Also! There should be a large desert covered in aluminum foil nearby to offset the waste heat emitted from the power plants. It’d be huge, but that would bring balance back to the world. We ditch gas powered and electric cars and use pressurized superheated water or hydrogen powered cars. I am a nuclear engineer and I believe that nuclear power is too cheap to meter. However, that should not come at the expense of wasted life and failed dreams when we are tasked with making new reactors and licensing them. It should not come at the expense of displaced humans when reactors fail. Reactor failures should not be exploited for press propaganda. Reactors should be able to completely fail safely, and if they cannot fail (ships and cities for instance), then they should not be built, or, they should operate in a manner where there is 0 (or very near 0 such as NuScale) chance of radioisotope release. We should have a place where if a reactor does go wrong, it can be quickly and appropriately handled. I would be a large proponent for a central place where we can selectively make it rain, and collect the radioactive waste on the ground without having to dig it up. This place would have very little population, and no risk of anybody being displaced in case of emergency. It could technically be a large nature reserve as nothing would hopefully not go wrong for hundreds of years, but when it does go wrong, we can take care of it “promptly” and efficiently. This place would have all enrichment facilities, waste disposal, weapons disposal, power generation, fissile material breeding, and mining if possible. Regulatory professionals, IAEA inspectors, and resources would be available for any innovator to come and innovate successfully in 1 year, start to finish, housing and appropriate stipend provided. Enough resources would exist for a power plant to be built in one year start to finish rather than a decade. Enough capital would exist for reactors to go online at any moment. 7900 GW base power would allow for every human to have 1 kW freely. Beyond this, money would come from people consuming more than 1 kW at any moment. This would incentivize people to store energy in their home air, water tanks, etc. which I also have ideas for. My facility would even have a large pool of heavy water with neutron fluency to burnup the little last bit of u235 in fuel waste, and have various pits with different energy neutron fluxes to breed new fuel and isotopes. Nobody would ever have to worry about energy again and we could live happily ever after. If a future human wanted to have a campfire, they would not have to worry about the carbon emissions because we took care of the carbon problem in the 21st century. In my theoretical facility, it would be perfectly inspected at all times allowing anybody access to the information resulting in surety of the safe operation of the facilities at a quick glance. Technically a site like this could exist in the ocean where nobody lives, winds are reliable. It’d be a lot of effort, but that would be taking care of the generations of humans after us investing in their success. Also, there is a push for fuel to maintain its waste completely. But why not capture it and remove it constantly so that in the abnormal case of a failure, there are no harmful isotopes to mess up humans? I know this is what will happen in molten salt reactors, but I imagine that solid fueled reactors could benefit as well?

[@boazila]

I love your videos. Although I must say, I was disappointed that a video about micro nuclear reactors never once mentions their actual size. That’s like doing a video on the worlds richest man without talking about his actual net worth.

[@juanmacias4854]

From the video, they are smaller than a semi trailer.

[@whotknots]

Hi matt. I was interested to see that some of the imagery you employed for illustration was provided by GE* which I believe is a major producer of fuel rod dependent nuclear reactors as well as fuel elements. As I understand the matter nuclear fuel rods are particularly wasteful of nuclear fuel due to formation of Radon gas pockets within the pellets they contain and that cavitation necessitates such diminished efficiency that premature replacement is necessary well before all the fuel in a pellet is depleted. The pellets can be and are recycled, but the whole process is exceptionally inefficient and unnecessarily expensive and produces waste by products with a phenomenally long half life. The obvious implication is that companies producing pelletized fuel for reactors dependent upon a core employing fuel rods derive lucrative income from doing so. Those companies therefore have a substantial vested interest in perpetuating less desirable and essentially obsolete reactor designs. In addition to these considerations responsibility for decommissioning fuel rod production and recycling facilities undoubtedly rests with those companies. The cost of the latter process will be substantial to say the least and may well result in some exceptionally fragrant bones being brought to light which a such vested interests might be extremely anxious to keep as secure as possible from political and public scrutiny. In terms of potential for creation of jobs and income from construction and operation of such reactors, when it comes to potential for having to store intensely hazardous, long-lived pollutants resulting from nuclear waste resulting from their operation surely economic factors should be resolutely minor considerations? On the other hand Liquid Flouride cooled Thorium Fueled reactors use the majority of their fuel, can produce more of all elements requisite to their function, produce relatively small quantities of waste with a short half life and are particularly safe and resilient to factors such as natural disasters.

[@vitalijslebedevs1629]

True, just MSTR's are in their infancy design and development wise. There is finally some public interest due to some champions of the technology, while it's confined to few small companies and not much backing from any goverment. My guess is that MSTR's, or anything fuelled by Thorium, needs to be proved to be viable and reliable on a scale not reached yet. Where to find enough funding to design, make and prove anything considered small or modular, if the first designs are not commercialised yet? After all, nations using and producing nuclear fuels are roughly tge same having nuclear arsenal. So the defense ministries allways prefer enriched Uranium or Plutonium over Thorium, far too weak to make a viable nuclear weapon. Latest developments with Russia with their few apparent nuclear allies are not making decomissioning of Uranium infrastructure to make place for the elusive, albeit abundant Thorium implementation. It's like switching from AC to DC or ICE to EV's. It can be done only if there is enough demand to invest in infrastructure to make that switch. Big old things change hard, but should happen, if the global politics don't escalate that crisis on EU border into WW3. In the powder-keg worthy times like these, all nuclear plants reminds tge public opinion of risks not present at times of peace.✌

[@bradmason4706]

@@vitalijslebedevs1629 All of this is people dependent. And if humans can't control themselves then power from any and all means must be used. We don't want to see people starving because the system broke down.

[@sonnyshaw3962]

Yes I following the thorium reactor designs and I'm hoping they are building some soon for evolution prior to going into mass production. If Thorium reactors are what they say they are we are gong to be much better off with Thorium than wind and solar.

[@vitalijslebedevs1629]

@@sonnyshaw3962 IMO it can't be simple this or that in energy production. We need both and all viable options. Energy is literal power in all senses, that's why now cancelling of one country will make everything, not only oil and gas, more expensive. And to @Brad Manson, no, people shouldn't starve because of the loss of control by some big idiots in charge. I'm afraid - some will though, as allways, but let's hope not all of us.

[@Getoffmycloud53]

Helps to explain why this feels like an infomercial…

[@hightechredneck8587]

I work in High Voltage Transmission in Canada. In all honesty the two things holding back nuclear development the most is irrational fears specifically of the older generations and regulations. The rate of energy emergencies is growing every year due to population increase yet other than wind, no new plants are being built. Additionally due to environmental crusading many of the baseload plants have been shut down or converted and derated (Coal plants converted to Nat Gas generate about 10% less power). combine that with the intermittency of wind it just creates a nightmare for those trying to keep the power on. All of this puts tremendous strain on the grid all in the name of virtue signaling. For example we cannot burn coal anymore for "carbon goals" but it is perfectly fine to load it on a train car, transfer it to a boat and let China burn it in their super inefficient setups instead of our highly regulated systems with scrubbers and CCS systems... which were all shut down doubling the price of power in 3 years.

[@ccibinel]

Great to see industry expert feedback. Nuclear is critical and PR is a mess. Everyone seems to think we just need renewables but mass transmission, and storage (especially seasonal) is a pipe dream for reaching 100%. Replacing nuclear with solar and natural gas is a lateral move at best. Biomass is also a big loophole in climate agreements.

[@philosuhrapptorh1284]

It's almost like the collapse was planned

[@hightechredneck8587]

@@ccibinel There is also one very important thing they do not talk about regarding renewables that is more known in the industry but not know outside. There is a subtype of electricity that helps support stability and is required for powerful mechanical devices called "Reactive Power" . The thing about Reactive Power is it is required for many things but is primarily created as a by product of spinning mass generation (non-Inverted AKA Thermal plants) Renewables do not produce enough MVar or inertial properties to maintain grid stability nor large mechanical loads. (ie industrial settings like refineries or grain elevators). In my opinion it is absolutely a pipe dream, renewables are great for a supplement to reduce fossil fuel consumption... but nothing more, and once it gets to be 30% of a grid's total net generation problems start to occur.

[@gordonlawrence1448]

@@ccibinel Actually the real issue with renewables in some areas is the politics of storage. For example in the UK the cost of electricity actually goes negative at points. If you had a 100kWh battery bank and even a 3kW solar PV roof you could most likely draw from the grid when prices go negative and sell when they peak. When solid state Sodium Ion cells are in production then the 100kWh battery banks will be no bigger than current 30kWh battery banks. However the cost of battery banks is outrageous compared to what they should be. It's about £1000 per kWh including installation. The LG INR18650-F1L in one off pricing if you go to somewhere like NKON (In the Nether Lands) works out £0.2 per Wh so £200 per kWh or £3000 for a capacity the same as a Tesla 15kWh power wall which costs upwards of £12,000 installed. The electronics and casing are not expensive either £1000 for both would be over the top. So my conclusion is the shareholders just don't want domestic level storage as it would affect profits. There are also flow batteries that would fit under the stairs (just) in many houses that have a capacity of 1MWh. IE enough for a small industrial unit. Again that would affect profits. The only solution being pushed is gridscale. I wonder why LOL.

[@franklinrussell4750]

we should just put the radioactive waste in your basement San Onofre has a lot do you want some?

[@dragrace4fun]

Just wow...a lot of thought and R&D into this already, provided we PROPERLY maintain facilities and such. Great idea... I'm impressed.

[@jwestphal1978]

Hello, enjoying the video. I have worked in the nuclear industry in the USA and would love to see out country stream line the entire process where generators and components can be easily replaced and readily available. I worked for BWXT and know that they are always on the forefront of this technology.

[@LFTRnow]

Regarding the "waste" concern, modern reactors such as molten-salt based could easily separate out the useful materials for medical isotopes, xenon gas, etc - all valuable. We don't do this today because solid fuel randomly traps these valuable things all mixed up, it's like tossing your entire pantry on the floor - a worthless mess - but do it while the reactor runs, and you have value-added and less waste.

[@RavensEagle]

Ok is a molten salt reactor already built and how many and where? If not then what you are saying is basically just allot of hot air.

[@davidk7544]

"Easily" separated? Only for truly bizarre versions of interpretation of "easily". I'm seeing a lot of misinformation about nuclear, and unless you're willing to store the waste in your own basement (which you could never assure for the life of the waste), you shouldn't be advocating.

[@jopalo31675]

How do I find more information on this? Books, resources?

[@wermagst]

There's not a single working MSR in the world, only prototypes, which means we're at least 20 years away from any meaningful energy supply from this reactor type. And that is generously assuming they actually work and the break-through will be in the next few years. By that time it will already be too late to mitigate the climate catastrophy we're heading for. Massive and immediate build up of renewables (wind, solar etc.) is the *only* way forward, that can actually save us..

[@jsn1252]

@@RavensEagle Oak ridge ran a test reactor back in the 60s and as I understand it, "communist" occupied China finally has their prototype reactors, based on the Oak ridge research by the way, up and running.

[@Armystrong996]

It doesn't sound to me like were going to get everything we want out of any type of energy production but I feel SMRs and nuclear in general are better then what we currently have.

[@raven4k998]

wait think about it do you seriously want regular morons controlling these things when professionals can allow existing plants to meltdown that could be a bad thing just saying safe does not take stupidity into consideration people will find ways to make these thing melt down that happened with Chernobyl after all

[@WayneBraack]

@@raven4k998 you take a look at the history of nuclear power the number of incidents is extremely minimal. Like well under 1%. So though yes you can say that that's a concern it's not a huge one and the death and injury rate with nuclear is lower than any current form of energy production and use type we use now. It's also technically the cleanest form of energy we have. Yeah I hear what you say when you say stupid, including yourself and myself, the average intelligence of we the human race is not all that great. But I think that could be mitigating if we actually had education systems that taught us how to be critical thinking intelligent human beings instead of just stuffing a lot of facts into our heads that we really don't ever use. Also we would probably have to retool the communication systems that we have so that we're not broadcasting a lot of stupid into people's lives which is the current state of radio and television. But maybe if we grew smarter people people would be less interested in all the stupid on the internet and television that there is.

[@raven4k998]

@@WayneBraack yeah but how many power plants right now is 1% over how many with those smaller plants think about it 1% becomes more often when you have more plants silly goose after all the same thing is with covid 19 which kills 1% why fear covid 19 and not smaller more abundant nuclear power plants all over the place vs larger ones that are not as abundant?

[@PureAmericanPatriot]

@@raven4k998 , care to put that in terms of accidents or deaths per KWH? I'd be willing to wager that, all in all, nuclear is orders of magnitude more safe and in addition to it already being orders of magnitude less expensive. You want the next gen of clean energy? We have to be suffiently prosperous to afford the development of better forms of power. To afford it we HAVE to use nuclear as the cheapest. Prosperity + necessity = high-tech solutions

[@raven4k998]

@@PureAmericanPatriot Nuclear is the new pandemic kid it's as deadly as covid 19 with deaths don't believe me we can irradiate you for you to find out lol

[@Dylfunkle]

I honestly think these are the coolest thing, I desperately want to know how small we can physically push designs.

[@stickynorth]

Ditto! I think personally the idea of a Ford Nucleon is both terrifying and cool! I think technically it's probably quite feasible especially if it used a closed fuel system like an eVinci-style reactor that is only designed to be refueled after being dismantle. I suspect if we ever see nuclear-powered transport it would use similar technology to prevent leaking and terrorism...

[@mikepond8898]

A couple of arguments: It remains to be seen how economical it will be to add additional reactors when more power generation is needed. You mentioned Thorium reactors as having less waiste. That only occurs when "fuel reprocessing" is used, and that also requires hugh regulatory licensing and red tape, and not to mention the political and other misinformation generated by anti-nukes. Also, maybe in future videos on nuclear, can you not use the images of 55 gallon drums as how we currently store unspent nuclear fuel? But I agree that the best option to get "generation 4" nuclear started is to use solid fueled reactors that use TRISO fuel (a few of reactors you showed use TRISO). I'm not too keen on using water though as I wonder if large containment domes are needed to contain a steam explosion.

[@JGZimmerle]

Fast neutron reactors don’t have to use liquid metals for cooling, there are several designs is being developed that use molten salts, either as a cooling medium for solid fuel elements, or as carrier liquid for dissolved fuel. Elysium and Moltex Energy both use the latter approach.

[@regulate.artificer_g23.mdctlsk]

Well I guess salts kind of technically counts as molten metal. What is a salt anyway if not a metal ion bonded to a nonmetal ion...

[@karl0ssus1]

The engineering challenges associated with MSRs are massive though. The corrosive properties of salts and the elevated operating temperatures mean longevity is a real issue. There's also the operational requirement to keep the primary loop hot at all times, or the salts will solidify and functionally destroy the the reactor.

[@MervynPartin]

Although I have now retired from the nuclear power industry after 20 years on a twin gas cooled reactor site, I am completely in favour of Small Modular Reactors, but successive governments in UK have relied on political dogma and dithered over energy policy for so long that we are now deep in the mire. We had an efficient electricity grid with a balance of coal, oil, hydro and nuclear generation with a steady flow of orders to our manufacturing industry. Then it was all privatised into smaller companies, most taken over by foreign companies pursuing their own quick profits and getting cheap equipment from abroad instead of supporting home industry. A lot of the supply companies have now gone bankrupt, and the cost to the consumer has rocketed. Many small gas fired power stations rapidly used up our gas reserves, wind turbines were built in vast numbers, generating nothing on cold frosty days or when the wind is too strong. As for solar, large areas of arable land are being lost to generate a minimal amount of electricity. We have natural gas that could be accessed by fracking, but that has been stopped to placate the protesters. Nuclear is the only option, as far as I am concerned, but government dithering has struck again, with delay after delay and ever rising costs. At least we have one good company very experienced in small reactor manufacture, Rolls-Royce, who have proposed building SMRs, but with our useless government, I expect nothing in my lifetime.

[@Razius33Officiel]

It's terrifying to see that the same thing happened here in France too, even when we were able to built nuclear to reach 80% of electricity consumption within 20-30 years. And now everything has been privatised, and no one want to pay the bill to maintain, or develop next power generation.

[@krashd]

Our Magnox and AGR plants were some of the best and safest in the world and it infuriates me that the Tories sold them off like everything else of value so that we now need to rely on foreign companies.

[@SireBab]

Fracking has non negligible deletarious effects on ground water near the pumping, as well as disruptive seismic activity. I wouldn't discount the protests as being foolish.

[@ChaoticNeutralMatt]

Thanks for sharing!

[@philippezevenberg1332]

Have hope buddy, continue providing value with your expertise like you just did.

[@toppy83]

In Norway about 70% of total power consumption is taken from the grid direct to factories and industry, I can see micro reactors helping a lot with that. In times of little rain and warm dry summers, having micro reactors to run the factories and leaving a lot more power for the private marked would help the people ALOT, we have INSANE power bills lately, since like October of 2021 the price of power has just been of the charts here. In my area it is 8 to 10 times as expensive as last the last 5 years for me, putting me back around 350 to 450$ pr month just in power, and I have a tiny house and barely use power lol.- Having micro reactors in combination with huge battery "banks" in mountains and such should be a thing, but they have wind on their brain the once running Norway, and to be honest, is sucks, WAY to much downtown and not enough production when on. Also our nature takes a huge beating and well birds like eagles are dying in a rate never seen before, they crash into them. All in all, bad for Norway and not many want them here, they look bad, sound bad, do bad for nature and all in all ARE just a bad product. We have around 70-80% water based power plants here, combining it with coolant for smaller micro reactors should be a easy job, they already have the huge halls and "buildings" in the mountains of Norway, a switch or even combo could be a perfect combo. And when it comes to waste disposal, Longyearbyen (Svalbard) the island of coal production WAY up north that is part of Norway is laying down the coal mines over the next years, why not make them into permafrost controlled storage areas? It is cold, DEEP, low population area on a island WAYS away from anyone or anything. Also one micro reactors could run all of Longyearbyen easy.

[@scottviola8021]

Neat. The viability of nuclear vs. battery-bank renewables will definitely depend on the location. For example, in Bocas del Toro, Panama (where I'm from), you can only hope for an average of around 4 hours of sun per day for much of the year, and you can easily get three weeks straight of overcast. This makes the battery requirements insane. So, like with all these technologies, they will fill in their niches!

[@dougg1075]

Freeman Dyson did an interview about how he and others designed small reactors for hospitals and the like that are fail safe. He said they demonstrated one and tried to make it melt down and couldn’t do it. Anyway it was cool

[@exosproudmamabear558]

It would be life-saving to do this for hospitals. Hospitals always need backup energy anyway

[@idebski]

Hey Matt, did the LCOE numbers take into account the 60% cost reduction through commercialization mentioned earlier in the video? And thanks for yet another awesome video!

[@OzixiThrill]

I'm fairly confident that the LCoE calculations are done after the fact, not as a future estimation. That is, the numbers that you see are essentially what each power generation source has cost per what it has produced. Granted, this is the first time I've seen any LCoE that takes batteries into account for renewables, even though they are a vital element of it.

[@DanskeCrimeRiderTV]

LCOE is really flawed. It doesn't take a lot into account. A newer study by the UN concluded that nuclear is actually significantly cheaper than wind, solar, and hydro. Also, construction times and costs of nuclear power plants are also much lower than that of wind, solar, and hydro.

[@jsn1252]

@@DanskeCrimeRiderTV That really isn't remotely surprising. A mere 24 hours of storage already makes them cost-prohibitive. Energy collectors would have to be able to cover for dips in collectible energy over YEARS to equal dispatchable generators.

[@nomars4827]

Solar is unstable. They has quiet low over-the-year production in mild climate. And very low production during winters. So in winter you'll get less than 1/20 of summer production. Moreover there could be weeks without sun and massive snowfalls when you'll get nearly nothing. How to compensate those winter drops? To build x20 more power and storages capable for storing for weeks. It would be economical disaster. Of course there are climate zones where solar energy is profitable.

[@svenweihusen57]

@@DanskeCrimeRiderTV Tiny reactors are suffering from scaling problems. You will inevitably contaminat more material when using smaller reactors per MWh. Second problem is insurance. Today normal reactors are highly underinsured because insurances including a meltdown would make them uneconomic. There are security problems. You can protect a dozen of nuclear reactors from terrorists but would this work for thousands spread all over the country? And would they keep up the training standards for the operators? And the last part is: the amount of uranium is simply limited. It was calculated that we had enough Uranium for 200 years worldwide if we keep on going. If we step up the use we will run into problems very soon.

[@hollismccray3297]

You might check out the Dual Fluid Reactor. If the hype can be believed, it can run on uranium, thorium, or even nuclear waste. Plus the design uses molten lead (yes, lead!) for coolant, so that gives them the benefits of metal cooled reactors.

[@johnslugger]

*I am all for going Nuclear. After 55 Years of fail safe testing FRANCE has proven running 76 reactors is safe and makes the cheapest power out of ALL other Ideas and is 6000% cheaper than the BEST renewables. If we are serious about putting 50,000,000 electric cars on the road in the next 12 years lets NOT power them with coal fired electric power plants which is what we are quickly heading for.*

[@SeeNickView]

I think modular reactors are absolutely the way to go. As we've seen with Elysium Industries, modular reactors have the potential to build up to medium- to large-scale plants. Having scalable units means that zoning for nuclear doesn't have to be so widespread, which potentially opens up more land area for deployment given the smaller footprints. And as Matt explained, modularity allows for utilization of the global transportation system, which can cut down costs and avoid other red tape of moving such large equipment. Renewables work so well because they're so modular/distributed. Different locations can adopt the technology at different times, and owners can supplement their installations as cash flow or other reasons allow it. Modularity also allows for greater manufacturing flexibility. Different ratings for products can be allowed depending on customer needs, and supply chains can be better relied upon since the sheer scale of components is smaller (more manufacturers can accompany the tech, which means more competition and all of the benefits of capitalism). Storage and containment are definitely an issue here. Nuclear plants are centralized and away from the public to prevent radiation leakage/exposure given plant failure (even though there are plenty of protections to prevent this). Distributing more radiative material means that the risk of public contamination goes up, so the risk analysis is definitely complex. But again as Matt showed, Nuclear is the 3rd or 4th least deathly of all of the energy sources. Lots of things in life are relatively radiative too, like flying, so the risk might not seem as great as what some people believe. It all comes down to climate change. We can implement renewables + storage waaaay faster than centralized thermal plants, so I'd be more on board with nuclear if commercial demonstrations of SMRs existed. In the meantime, society can get so much more bang for its buck by deploying more wind & solar + storage. The IPCC AR6 confirms this

[@richardcheek2432]

We should have electricity generation at the zip code level of granularity totally minimizing power lost through transmission; a huge savings.

[@philipyoung7034]

If 1 MW is a microreactor, then 5 kW must be a nanoreactor. When I was in university back in the 1980s, there was a SLOWPOKE facility right at the entrance to campus. It was a nuclear reactor that was walk-away safe in the downtown of a city of 2 million. There is another one just like it currently in downtown Montreal, also 2 million population. When Canada was looking into getting submarines in the 1990s, SLOWPOKE was floated as their power plant.

[@mrspeigle1]

I just want to point out that the Soviet nuclear submarine program had a vessel which was powered by a reactor cooled with a lead bismith mix, If I remember correctly the downside of this design was that if the reactor ever stopped being critical the metal inside would solidifyTurning the entire thing into a very expensive brick of radioactive metal.

[@Ichi.Capeta]

yikes

[@aimee-lynndonovan6077]

😳

[@JHuffPhoto]

10,000 years is a long time to have to store a hazardous material. The amount of waste would pile up over time and I think we would just be asking for trouble. I like the idea of Thorium reactors since the fuel is plentiful and they can help dispose of conventional nuclear waste. Definitely need more research on the issue.

[@dandavis4469]

There is a lot of research and knowledge on Thorium see you tube searches

[@BaronVonQuiply]

I read about a concept for a micro fusion reactor that used stacked X-Ray solar panels to turn radiation directly into electricity, and the panels themselves were the shielding.

[@diegoantoniorosariopalomin2206]

those panels would be photovolataic, but not solar, since they are not getting energy from the sun ( or any star )

[@BaronVonQuiply]

@@diegoantoniorosariopalomin2206 That brings up the point that PV panels on a planet around any other star would also not be Solar Panels as they are not processing photons from Sol.

[@Kevin_Street]

Thank you for this video! I love it when you revisit topics after some progress has occurred. Hopefully small modular reactors will have a place in our decarbonized future. We could really use a power source that's constant and dependable to back up the more intermittent sources.

[@FullVertical]

Your videos are always so well put together and educational. Much appriciated, Matt.

[@coreyham3753]

Agreed .... very useful information

[@katmaz7741]

Matt, love your channel from day one. Regular watch for me. However, being a pacific northwesterner, I feel obligated to offer my insights your way on this, the pronunciation of the word Oregon. Phonetically it would be spelled; OR-EE-GUN. Oregon. Or Ee Gun. Oregon. Thanking you from the Home of Nike, Intel, Boing, Hewlitt/Packard's global R&D center, and all the rest here in the "silicone forest" keep making awesome non-bias videos for the masses :-)

[@GraemePayne1967Marine]

All very interesting, but I'm not holding my breath, largely because of one missing process that would reduce overall costs much more. That process is reprocessing and reusing the "used" nuclear fuel material. One company used to do that in the US, until they closed because of financially impossible demands from the NRC. (My wife used to work for that company.) France used to do nuclear fuel reprocessing as well, but I haven't checked on that recently and I don't know about any other countries. There is still a huge amount of energy potential in used nuclear fuel, but the output is reduced over time due to reaction byproducts that slowly "poison" the system. Reprocessing removes those byproducts, adds some fresh fissionable material, and it's just like new again. I believe that getting reprocessing started again would speed the way to more, safer and lower-cost nuclear-generated electric power. Of course, there is also the unspoken-of elephant in the room. A vast, gloomy shadow. The totally INcorrect public perception that Three Mile Island was a "disaster". TMI was an incident, yes, but it did more to show that the safety systems worked, even when they were improperly operated. Case in point: during the Congressional hearings on TMI, it was demonstrated to the committee that the average DAILY radiation dose inside the committee room was several times HIGHER than the TOTAL release from the TMI facility over the 7+ days of the incident. (The US Capitol building, as well as many other buildings around the world, is largely made of granite. I am sure that you know that granite contains a number of naturally ocurring radioactive minerals that are, as a practical matter, impossible to remove.)

[@jeffhyche9839]

The main problem with nuclear waste is it is being wasted. Even after its is called waste it still has close to 90% of its fuel. This fuel could be recovered by reprocessing it and reused in the reactor. This reprocessing can be done on site which would reduce the over all waste problem.

[@flinch622]

I think "spent" comes down to a minimum watts per square cm seconds output? The power generation side is a steam cycle, and failure to superheat correctly means turbines may not survive the onslaugt of vapor.

[@matthewstoumbaugh7956]

@@flinch622 "spent" fuel can be reprocessed and reused. The point is it can be reused and if done correctly this process could possibly be done onsite or next door to the power plant without issue. Making the fuel last 10x longer or more and drastically reducing waste

[@zxuiji]

I'd like them to go small enough to install in my home as a localised power source instead of from who knows how far away a plant, better yet small enough to plug individual appliances into.

[@kobked-x]

no.

[@scottslotterbeck3796]

Yes

[@wiseconqueror533]

I don't think its a good idea to be allowing radioactive material to be sold to individuals. Most people would use it properly, but then terrorists and other illegal crime would use it in dangerous ways. IE building bombs.

[@zxuiji]

@@wiseconqueror533 I don't mean for individuals to transport, maintain or use directly, what I mean is it would be installed & startes by the company selling them and repairs etc would be handled by them under their warranty, after which it will cost the home owner for each instance of maintenance, like with boiler systems, it's also fine if those services are handled by the electric companies, the point is to reduce reliance on the grid

[@OgdenM]

I was doing some research into Nuclear power a few years ago and found some people making the following claims: 1) That we now have technology that puts fuel through at least 3 stages of power generation. That those 3 stages make the half life 300-600 years. It could have been thorium, I'm not sure. 2) That we have storage technology that ensures there will never be a leak of the vessel. 3) That people are constantly working on ways to figure out how to take what we currently consider "nuclear waste" and put it through yet another power generation process which will again lower the half-life. So, 100 years from now, we take that waste that was gonna be around for 600 years and knock it down to 300 and get more power from it.. and so on and so on. Really also, renewables (or at least renewable only) is a HORRIBLE idea. You yourself have mentioned how ineffective Solar is. Wind isn't any better. On top of that, the LOCAL devastation and pollution caused by mining quartz and other rocks to get silicone, lithium and other "rare earth" materials and the processing there of is absolutely horrible. I'm pretty sure that it the water used in the processing is polluted for at least 1000 years. KZbin and the internet in general is happily now full of videos and other content talking about how horrible renewable energy is for the environment... but, we're still running head long into it. It's as bad if not worse then Fracking... and no one likes fracking. (Well, except that it gives us cheap natural gas which we like when we pay the bill) It's really odd. It points to an ugly truth that the whole reason Nuclear isn't widely used and why there is so much resistance to up-scaling it being down to perception. As for the cost of Nuclear being so expensive, that's like you said just because it isn't commercialized.. yet. The more it is, the cheaper it gets.

[@louf7178]

This complements the idea of a residential central plant for heating and cooling (including hot water); I believe I read it from Carrier. Maybe electrical power with battery storage could be implemented.

[@johndaisley6168]

Also I did my senior project on a particular micro reactor design from INL. Microreactors won't replace large-scale power plants or likely even compete with SMRs. They really make financial sense for off-grid communities like logging/mining towns, military bases, or fast deployment for disaster relief. They could see some commercial thermal production too. Basically it's a lot cheaper than trucking in diesel fuel every week, but not even close to competitive with a power line to a larger nearby generating station. They're super F-ing cool, but most of society's electricity will come from more concentrated sources because we tend to live in concentrated areas.

[@SaveMoneySavethePlanet]

Awesome. Thanks for clarifying!

[@mmmdazzagoodmemeayzzz7264]

Super cool comment

[@shanefiddle]

The only good place for micro-reactors is in outer space, off of earth. There, you eject the waste products on a trajectory towards the sun, and you are done. Here on earth we have yet to find a safe way to deal with the waste products, and they last a million years. Our children's child will curse our name if we keep using nuclear.

[@catgynt9148]

What ever happened to the CANDU reactors that were being built in Canada? I thought they were designed to use spent fuel rods from “traditional “ reactors and able to utilize up to 95% of the remaining fuel in the rods. Will the micro reactors be able to power container ships, thus eliminating their need of bunker fuel and its massive carbon emissions? Thanks for sharing this insightful video series. Wishing you and your team a great week.

[@thejuggernautofspades9453]

Not a bad idea to use them as a power source for our ships in the oceans, but will we enforce bringing them back to port instead of dumping the old fuel over

[@joaopinto415]

Pressurized Heavy Water Reactors like the ones you have in Canada are not really seen anymore as the future of nuclear energy. They actually produce more waste than conventional PWRs and also the core design needs to be more robust, since the power density is lower than in PWRs. Canada and Argentina have both already discarded the possibility of building more of these reactors, with only India remaining as the one willing to build more of them (because they already developed their indigenous tech based on them). And as to nuclear waste recycling, that's on fast reactors, which are the next big thing in the nuclear industry. They are able to recover the remaining energy from spent fuel used in PWRs while at the same time transmutating the actinides into much less of a problem, since they decay faster.

[@joaopinto415]

Micro reactors and SMRs are both able to provide marine propulsion for container ships. This issue is being discussed in a much more political debate than technical, since many ports refuse to accept nuclear-powered vessels, although they have safety systems much more reliable and trustworthy than current diesel-powered ones. There is a high expectation that Molten Salt Reactors will be the ideal solution for naval applications due to their enhanced properties in proliferarion resistance and inherent safety. The first ones are expected to come online by 2030, with ThornCon and Terrestrial Energy being the expected market leaders in the West. China has a very mature and well developed program on Molten Salt Reactors and should have the first one up and running by the end of this decade.

[@philipyoung7034]

The main benefit of CANDU and PHWR is that they operate on unenriched uranium. At the time of design, Canada didn't have any enrichment facilities. Natural uranium was the only option. The secondary benefit of CANDU is that they don't have to be shutdown to refuel or shuffle the fuel rods. PWR burns up to 5% of the U-235. CANDU burns up to 7%. It burns a little more, but not much more and not 95%.

[@DrMJT]

The one thing that could make a significant difference to household kitchen food hygiene would be a small unit about the size of a microwave to irradiate food before consuming. It would eliminate pathogens, bacteria, viruses, etc etc... Gamma radiation is used routinely to sterilize medical, dental, and household products. Food irradiation is the process of exposing food and food packaging to ionizing radiation, such as from gamma rays, x-rays, or electron beams.

[@user-xs2ss8jr9v]

Hi Matt, great subject, have you looked at the Pebble Bed Modular Reactors(PBMR) developed by Professor Rudolf Schulten of Aachen University in Germany in the late 1950’s. It was later picked up by South African who made further developments and could generate 400MW. It seems safer than other small modular reactors. I look forward to an Undecided on PBMRs.

[@fclopez1]

Hello Matt Have you studied the SL1 accident? Who would own small reactors and therefore the waste? What is to keep a SMR owner from, at the end of reactor life, just filing bankruptcy and walking away? This is a common practice in the mining industry.

[@MrArtist7777]

And the coal and gas industries as there are numerous vacant coal mines that sit with exposed coal deposits and other harmful water and chemicals and thousands of abandoned gas pipes still emitting small amounts of gas into the atmosphere. It's pretty insane.

[@andrasbiro3007]

Most likely you wouldn't own, but lease the reactors. At the end of life you just return it to the manufacturer, who deals with the waste. And of course there should be a backup plan in case the manufacturer goes bankrupt. Or, I saw concepts where you can just leave the reactor in the ground, as it functions as a waste repository too. These would run for decades, so you wouldn't run out of space any time soon.

[@mikeshafer]

Fantastic video, thanks Matt. I'm very much excited for the future of micro nuclear reactors. Massive centralized plants are far too expensive, and we need 24/7 power to supplement solar/wind. The future is decentralized - not just crypto, but also power.

[@WilliamEhrendreich]

One point to add that maybe I missed in your video. There is an enherant limit as a target for prolification of storage material with things like molten salt reactors and the same is true with fast reactors. Some high grade material is required at start up but after that it sort of sustains itself. Though some chemical processing is required. So in a world gone mad it makes nuke material much safer

[@paulmain2635]

One point I think is overlooked here and that is the cost of wind and solar when there is no wind and no sun. That costs is very very high and should be factored in to the unit coast based on averaged generating performance, say over a year. Nuclear would then look more respectable. The benefits of base load can not be dismissed when considering security of supply.

[@mercerconsulting9728]

Good explanation; not too simple, not too complex, so well balanced.

[@UndecidedMF]

👍

[@OnlineAdjunct]

When I think of small nuclear reactors, the first thing that comes to mind is the nuclear reactors that power ships and submarines of the U.S. Navy. Can they provide ideas that can be used for civilian applications, or is everything about them a military secret? What does the U.S. government do with the radio waste from those reactors, or is that something that I would rather not know?

[@Kiuizy]

I don'th think size is really the limiting faction, it's production methods and mass production to allow them to be way more afforable. Navies usually don't have the same interests as a commercial company so I doubt naval reactors are a good blueprint.

[@TomJones-tx7pb]

The waste gets removed from the submarines at night in Bremerton and transported down the freeways to Hanford is my guess.

[@smokefentanyl]

They cook the waste into high potency radioactive fentanyl and smoke it. Hence why Biden is so fucked up. Brains rotting quickly, all that nuclear energy is spent

[@justifiably_stupid4998]

Uranium cores are changed up every few years.

[@krashd]

From what I read a while ago they do not remove the fuel from US submarines like what happens at decommissioned power plants, instead the entire reactor compartment of the submarine is cut out, filled with cement and then buried. There is a site in the US where 30 or so are buried, a sort of mass grave for reactor compartments. This is still marginally better than what we Brits and the Russians do as both of our countries just anchor old subs in port with a plan to process the reactors at a time when technology allows, though we Brits at least tend to our dead subs annually to make sure they aren't leaking or sinking while the Russians completely neglect theirs. I have no idea what the French do with their retired subs but I would imagine they park them somewhere like we do.

[@xShadowDarkX]

When I was still working for vestas they were working first with Tesla and later with north lot to develop better long term, high storage grid batteries. Having learned about this and what the plans were regarding them I really believe THAT is the endgame for energy production both on the field and building to building but HOW we generate the electricity after that point is something that should be universally accepted. Gas, wind, solar, nuclear.. doesn’t matter. We could spend the next 20 years phasing out petroleum and nuclear going this way as we could utilize their speed of generation to bulk up our storage, use their grounds to increase the size of the batter farm and gracefully transition into full time wind, solar and hydro to keep the generation of electricity going for years to come. Most wind farms are estimated for 20 years with some that haven’t been replaced since the 80s! This could mean with batter storage that we could replace anything needed without feeling a hiccup ideally. We should try to focus on our long term storage more than trying to make some of these other means of generation permanent. Let’s make this planet a lot cleaner and a little quieter

[@PorpoiseSeeker]

Well done. It is important to understand that LCOE was developed during the era of regulated utilities to evaluate different sources of electricity that were always under the control of the grid operator--that is, the sources are dispatchable to match the demand. Variable Renewable Energy (VRE) is NOT under the control of grid operators but come and goes at the whim of the weather or time of day. In order to match generation with demand, VREs must be combined with dispatchable sources. Accordingly, LCOE is not an entirely helpful metric for VREs because the total cost of useful electricity is a weighted sum of the VRE plus some dispatchable source(s). California is using lots of natural gas for this job plus some pumped hydro, imported energy, and minor other sources. Last year, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) funded three independent studies by Standford, Princeton, and E3 to evaluate if California could reach its clean energy goals with VREs. All three agreed that the goal is achievable if Clean Firm Power is available to meet demand when the VREs are low or non-existent. Clean Firm Power includes nuclear, geothermal, pumped hydro, and batteries with caveat that batteries are expensive and limited to a few hours storage time. Here is the study. This would make a great episode. issues.org/california-decarbonizing-power-wind-solar-nuclear-gas/ Thanks Gary Nelson

[@Honkious5824]

i'm just waiting for that piston fusion reactor you talked about a while back cuz from what i've heard three fusion reactors can power the usa which sounds a little to good to be true but i know for a fact it's better than fission

[@SethLooks]

On the list of things holding development back you could have listed oil and coal companies doing everything they can to stomp out any option that isn’t them.

[@bowez9]

Guess you don't use synthetic fabrics, plastic containers of asphalt roads?

[@claws61821]

@@bowez9 That's a bit of a facetious retort. The video and Seth's comment are about energy generation, where oil and coal magnates do indeed have a long established record of using their industry presence and economic power to bully, bribe, and lobby other technologies out of business or at least out of significant competition, among other things. There's no real relevance of conversation between that and the other industries and fields that oil and coal are heavily involved in.

[@bowez9]

@@claws61821 then why does the oil companies need to lobby given the amount of Natural Gas plant being built thanks to the Wind and Solar lobby. Last time I checked Fuchs is also a oil company not just ExxonMobil.

[@Galopo]

@@bowez9 exactly, oil & gas companies lobby for the adoption of renewables because, as shown in Germany, they depend heavily on gas.

[@bowez9]

@@Galopo one issue with that is Germany was anti nuclear even be before accidents like Chernobyl, saw this first hand in the early 80s.

[@isadoradoug]

I'm an engineer retired from 30+ years with GE nuclear (now GE-Hitachi). My engineer friends and I have been investigating how the world can meet our electrical needs without generating more CO2. Bottom line -- we don't know enough to predict how it will work out. So -- try everything. Solar and wind don't work without batteries and large scale battery storage is just developing, so do more advanced battery development. There are many designs for nuclear reactors, we don't know which will work out in practice, so build several of the best looking designs. And just a note about nuclear waste disposal -- Yucca mountain is an acceptable disposal site and it is right next to Yucca flats, which is already contaminated from underground bomb testing.

[@khmnc]

SMRs do actually use a moderator. they are small molten salt reactors that use the thermal expansion properties of the salts to moderate the nuclear reaction.

[@theproffessional9]

SMRs and micro reactors also provide fail-safes, if one fails out of 10 it's fine, but if 1 big nuclear generator fails, it'll take ages to get it back online instead of just temporarily reduced power production.

[@aimee-lynndonovan6077]

Actually it’s not fine. 😐☠️

[@spoonsmith9506]

I hope someday we all can have tiny reactors in our homes.

[@davidmccarthy6061]

Still need to solve decommissioning and entombment. Once it gets cost competitive to use.

[@cedriceric9730]

@@davidmccarthy6061 That problem will never get solved , it's just inherent to fission to have unacceptable fuel processing cost

[@thomasplower367]

@@davidmccarthy6061 better than putting the waste in the atmosphere.

[@Bloated_Tony_Danza]

@@cedriceric9730 when you encase your quasai-inert, solid ceramic fuel… in high strength, corrosion resistant alloys, yeah it’s pretty expensive to reprocess. But the ability to dissolve an actinide salt into either water or another molten salt would seriously make reprocessing cheaper. Fluids are superior to solids in this regard, and a fluid fueled reactor would make it much more affordable

[@scottslotterbeck3796]

Nuclear diamond batteries, if they can be scaled up, can last 10,000 years, uses waste from nuclear power plants, and is totally safe.

[@synapticaxon9303]

I've had this idea too but forget fission or fusion, how about house-scale anti-matter? Positron-Electron annihilation making gamma rays absorbed by steel, positrons from q-switched lasers shone through gold microfoils, maybe capture positrons in penning traps for controlled annihilation reactions. How about a 1-5kw module and made stackable?

[@DrownedInExile]

I hope this works out. We need clean energy solutions now, not 10+ years from now. But solar/wind isn't going to be feasible everywhere.

[@timennis3456]

Solar isn't feasible 12 hours out of every 24.

[@worldcomicsreview354]

@@timennis3456 If only most households were not at home during the day, most days, eh?

[@TheAnnoyingBoss]

@@worldcomicsreview354 I was thinking about how we could get sunlight photos to solar panels on the dark side of earth but all I can think of is Lazer beams. Problem is I bet there's a bunch of power loss from bouncing Lazer beams from space solar panels to mirrors all the way to the dark side into the solar powerplants .I was thinking maybe fiberoptic but it's so dumb to rub fiber optic to the other side of earth. Just not feasible

[@qbg63]

Getting energy from your neighbor is fine until they decide to use it as leverage against you. SMRs and micro nuclear give you the ability to be independent with years worth of stored energy. With nuclear you don't need to overbuild or spread out to minimize the impact of a cloudier or less windy month/year.

[@sarkhori]

I think that micro reactors show promise while the human species works out fusion Anna renewables in a global scale. The other thing that micro reactors bring to the table is a long term power source for space flight… they are small enough to take components to space and assemble them, and once the technology is better known and standardized, could more easily be manufactured and produced in space and/or on other planets/moons/asteroids/etc… I’m not a physicist. I don’t know what minimum power production would do in terms of extending useful life from 5-6 years out to longer periods, but I imagine that designs can be made to meet the power budget of a space station, a Mars mission, or a Moon or Mars base for relatively long periods of time, which will be a game changer for survivability… with sufficient power, oxygen reclamation or production is much simpler, “grow lights” become possible, etc…

[@ShieTar_]

Generating power isn't really a major concern for space colonization. The main point is that 99.999% of all people may think it is a good Idea when considering it superficially, but tend to quickly realise that there minor component of "adventure" doesn't really outweigh the massive drawbacks of the having to live in very hostile environments. Basically, not having the protection of Earths magnetic field means you need to live the majority of your live in very robust housing containers, with very small windows (if any). So going to Mars or to an asteroid will basically be identical to spending extended periods of time in a Submarine, or spend the Antarctic Winter in a research station. Or, to be honest, to being in a prison. You'll never take extensive walks outside of your station just in a space suit, not unless you want to get a extensive collection of cancers within the first year. Plus: Living on any other planet in our solar system, or on an asteroid or in a space-station, already requires you to have a close-to-perfect sustainable lifestyle. Even the guys on the ISS are not allowed to constantly order new stuff from Amazon, since just transporting something 400 km up is massively expensive. So once you have the technology to go to space for extended periods of time, in a way that the people going won't consider an extreme restriction to their quality of life, you basically also ran out of all reasons to go. You don't need any backup planets because we figured out how to not ruin the one we have; and you don't need to find new sources of raw materials, because you figured out almost perfect recycling. The only justification to go to space at that point is scientific entertainment, and it's much more cost-efficient to do this with radiation-resistant robots than with easily perishable humans. And the robots are getting better all the time, wile the humans havn't changed all that much in the last 100 000 years (just from the biological perspective).

[@thamiordragonheart8682]

the simplest way to extend the lifetime is to use weapons-grade uranium like the US navy reactors, which can go 25 years without refueling. a breeder reactor has a similar lifetime for the similar reason of being able to use more of the fuel mass, though the very low quantity of excess neutrons makes very small breeder reactors less practical because smaller reactors are going to loose a higher fraction of nutrons out the sides.

[@Layarion]

You listed the cost of solar beating out nuclear, but does that cost include the price of proper disposal of the windmill parts and battery parts? or does it get thrown in a waste yard? did you include the cost of the entire chain in those prices?

[@mnfchen]

If we want to include end2end costs, what about costs to dispose nuclear waste? What about costs of national security over nuclear fuel?

[@KuariThunderclaw]

In short, thanks to what @@mnfchen said... the answer to that, Layarion, is absolutely yes. It does include those things. It's sort of like how people try to use wind turbines killing birds as an argument against them. Sure, they have that problem, but to a lesser extent as what they're replacing.

[@StreamingF1ydave]

That said, what happens to the cost of solar/wind when you remove the $6.6 billion in subsidies?

[@KuariThunderclaw]

@@StreamingF1ydave You'd have to remove the $5.9 TRILLION (yes, trillion, not billion, though to be fair this is worldwide from 2020) from the fossil fuel to have a fair comparison if you're going in that direction.

[@StreamingF1ydave]

@@KuariThunderclaw fossil isn't subsidized

[@nighthawkviper6791]

Attended the NRC Conference last March and got to see them work. Promising for sure.

[@madisonbrigman8186]

You should do Fast Breeder reactors next! I've been a big fan of Oklo inc.'s development; and although they didn't pass their first NRC evaluation - Fast Breeders (using higher actinides as fuel - like plutonium) in concert with uranium and thorium sources can reduce most all waste to the 500-200 year danger zone. Overall, I think small nuclear (and hopefully eventually geothermal) can provide baseload to variable wind and solar sources. It's just a good anchor to have just in case wind isnt consistent and the sun's hiding behind the clouds. Loving the content!

[@cheesepuffs62]

Just wrote a paper on hybrid fusion-fission nuclear reactors that would transmute waste into more stable compounds during operation. I probably didn't do a great job, but would be interested in hearing you talk about it

[@CaioLGon]

Interesting

[@kushmandey6880]

Interested to learn more about it.

[@cheesepuffs62]

It's definitely more academic papers, but with recent breakthroughs in fusion maybe it's closer to being explored in a real world example

[@Real_MisterSir]

I think in general the topic of reactors that are built to neutralize or recycle nuclear waste, is a topic that deserves more recognition in general, also to act as a balance to the ever-old argument of "what about the waste" when discussing anything nuclear related.

[@jman6178]

When I lived in Oak Ridge Tennessee in the 1980s 'I had the opportunity to see drawings of a small nuclear power plant the size of a t.v

[@CDWCAULDRON]

We no longer need Large Nuclear breeder reactors, when small Nuclear reactors are safer is to replace , and maintain. Their is a lot of Positive reasons to have small Nuclear reactors and you do not have to have them in one area for coverage and supply with SMR.

[@tysi2011]

Great job, Matt! I always thought that uranium based reactors need to be of a certain size as the statistics of neutron production require a certain critical mass to keep nuclear fission up, which is also an important safety measure to control the process. Reducing the size now to SMR or even micro reactors requires a much higher enrichment of U235. Is this not extremely costly and also quite dangerous in handling? Just wondering.....

[@JuanCLeal]

A more optimized design allows for less coolant used, less enrichment, more safety and less fuel overall, than conventional huge power plants, at a lower power rating.

[@dodaexploda]

There is definitely a dance on moderation, size, and the chain reaction. But in the past I think the size is based on a output vs fuel situation. The bigger and more fuel you put into it the more efficient that fuel is used and more power output. Reactors would be designed for like 1GW instead of 300MW. This made more sense when reactors were thrown together with much less regulation, and easier to build a big thing on site. Now the need is to get a reactor built on an assembly line, and don't change the reactor design. Just add more of them. Get them operating safely, cleanly and cheaply.

[@thebojinator1]

@@dodaexploda I would just like to politely point out that you just described existing nuclear tech. There is nothing slapdash about existing reactor design or facilities. Not to say no need to innovate, the CanDu reactors (still decades old, modular, and operating to-date without an accident) offer the ability to refuel without taking the reactor offline. All of the things that make SMRs attractive (other than the fantasy that they are better because they don't exist yet) can already be found in just about any existing or under construction nuclear facility. Were SMRs to bring to light any innovation that didn't already exist, the next logical step would be to scale it up.

[@dodaexploda]

@@thebojinator1 I think you're making a mistake when referencing the Candu reactor. I do believe it's properly referred to as the "Mighty CANDU reactor". :D I really love those reactors. I'm not sure I agree with you in regards that SMRs don't have anything to bring to the table. The smaller size alone can be worthwhile especially in more remote locations where you don't need GWs of power. I just recently learned of a propsed steel plant that will run on electrcity alone and use 300 Mw of power. Perfect for a dedicated SMR. Also the smaller size might make it easier for the economics of scale. It's likely easier and cheaper to build more smaller parts then fewer larger parts. A comparison could be SpaceX Raptor rocket engine at $1 million vs SLS's RS-25 engine at $40 million. Starship's booster has 33 engines bringing the total cost to $33 million. SLS has 4 engines which brings the cost to $120 million. There is obviously differences in how they are made and contracts, etc. But something to ponder either way.

[@thebojinator1]

@Doda Exploda Clearly I would be preaching to the choir, as evidenced by your proper correction of my misuse of CanDu without the associated qualifiers! I guess the only thing I wanted to dispell is the misnomer that existing reactors can't/aren't already modular and able to be factory built. I fully agree, and have stated in other comments on this video, SMRs and advanced nuclear tech definitely have their place. I just want to quantify (as I feel was not well addressed in the video, not nec. your comment) that SMRs don't necessarily compensate for deficiencies with existing tech, rather offer a low carbon, energy dense, alternative to the fossils that are currently being used in remote and hyper-industrial locations. It's one small nuance, I know, but sadly we all face an uphill battle on changing the perception of existing nuclear power!

[@Cee64E]

Honestly, I'm not sure these "micro" reactors are small enough. Take a look at radioisotope thermoelectric generator, or RTGs, and Kilopower Reactor Using Stirling Technology (KRUSTY). Because I'm still waiting for the 2.5 meter cubed, 15 Mw, self contained reactor from the video game "Space Engineers". The building I live in houses two apartments and could run rather nicely on 10-15 Kw, even during an Ohio winter. If I could get that with an operational life of 50 years, it could be sunk into the foundations.

[@cappuccino-1721]

Problem is, RTG's only generated a relatively small amount of power with a short lifespan.

[@AaronSchwarz42]

@@cappuccino-1721 The thermoelectric material PTZ materials degrade from fast neutron & high energy gamma bombardment & from thermal gradients varying.

[@Debbiebabe69]

You aint getting 15Mw from a RTG. 15Mw is 15,000,000 watts. The RTG mounted on the Mars rovers gives 110 watts. The 3 massive RTGs on the Voyager space probe each provide..... 160 watts. A typical home needs 6000 watts (6kW). So yes, the 'Space Engineers' reactor could run one house, as long as you are prepared to, several times a week, fly into outer space to a nearby asteroid to gather the necessary feul to keep it running ;)

[@philipyoung7034]

@@Debbiebabe69 The Top-ROCC and SEEK IGLOO radar systems in Alaska use RTGs. Five kilograms of strontium-90 generates 240W electrical using thermocouples. Sterling engines triple the electrical output over thermal couples.

[@tgmct]

I can't imagine how micro reactors could have widespread deployment from a security perspective. There maybe some individual use cases, but they would need to scale the security hurdle too. Having hundreds at a particular location doesn't make sense either. SMR's are just a better alternative when you consider all the operational aspects.

[@Andreas-gh6is]

Even widespread use of SMRs means they got to be deployed everywhere around the world, including where the "regulatory framework" can just evaporate (revolutions etc), people start shooting at them or terrorists take out the fuel and make dirty bombs.Nothing like that has ever happened, which makes the risk impossible to calculate, but again, in order to make a dent in climate change those reactors would need to be almost everywhere...

[@AaronCMounts]

The security comes from the lack of risk they pose. Micro reactors use low grade nuclear fuel, which is useless for weapons or even improvised "dirty bombs". As small as they are, they can be effectively protected by the same security measures and levels, your local bank uses.

[@tgmct]

@@AaronCMounts ANY nuclear fuel can be used in a dirty bomb! I was a nuclear plant supervisor in the Navy and worked at several nuclear utility plants afterward. I know a lot more than your average bear. Bank security is nowhere near adequate for any nuclear facility.

[@Andreas-gh6is]

@@AaronCMounts That is highly dubious. Any radioactive material, even that used for medical purposes can be abused for dirty nuclear bombs. And none of that technology or the infrastructure for it has been developed so far. It's pie in the sky thinking.

[@AaronCMounts]

@@tgmct Can you show me how radioactive these micro-reactors are expected to be? As the video clearly said, they use low-grade fuel. Can you show where they're at serious risk of releasing hazardous levels of radiation if tampered with?

[@dportass]

When Matt says the modules use Helium for cooling as it has much more cooling potential than water, is it a sealed system so there is no need to replenish/add more helium? I only ask as I thought there was a shortage in helium. Is the shortage just in supply of currently extracted helium or the amount remaining to be extracted as my understanding we can't create it.

[@keenanmckirgan5095]

Im super stoked to see more videos like this and it gives me hope for a more independent energy future for everyone, but especially independence for areas like rural alaska, that could utilize energy systems that dont require regular/large shipments of liquid or solid fuels for energy generation. I fancy the SMRs and micro reactors for distant areas and MSRs for metropolitan areas as they are relatively safe and can make use of waste from other reactors, assuming someone can/would take on the task of refining those materials into useable metal salts.... its also worth noting for Molten salt reactors that the waste mass is very significantly reduced compared to conventional LWRs if im not mistaken.

[@thecraggrat]

Plus the "waste" is short lived too. Whilst it is very radioactive, it decays to background in 300 years vs 100k+ years for the "waste" from a LWR that is really just fuel for a breeder reactor...Additionally, the conversion of the waste to fuel salt is relatively easy & does not require to material to be put through the normal reprocessing steps. My preferred reactor design is the Moltex reactor for multiple reasons (MSR/no pumped fuel salts/versions for wasteburner/thermal/Thorium reactor), with the design focus being use what works repurposed for MSR use, minimise costs for the reactor, ensure safety is designed in as passive systems, so it is walkaway safe.

[@skjenco]

Great video. Something else to consider is Security. What level of security will these Micro Nuclear Pants require? My guess is it will be proportional to level of damage that could occur if people were to enact wreckage to the plant. Nuclear Power Plants are secured with arm guards. Will smaller plants be worth that level of security? Or will they require that level of security?

[@DespotMaximovic]

@@none--other ???

[@SC-yy4sw]

NPPs are only secured with armed guards in the US...

[@MrChancebozey]

The downside to big centralized power sources is that the electricity has to travel over an expansive infrastructure with a loss of power by pushing electricity through lines over great distances. Having many separate localized power sources would eliminate many of the pitfalls of large long distance networks. These are long lasting heat sources for steam generators so water is always an issue regardless of the method of temperature regulation of the reactors.

[@Shadow_Hawk_Streaming]

the real advantage of SMRs being built in a factory is they could in theory replace a power grid by building small reactors near what used to be transformer sub-stations de-centralising the grid into independent cells that could in theory be liked together to help account for brownouts

[@The1MkII]

Phenomenal video, this channel has become my definitive source for nuclear energy developments. Thanks Matt!

[@UndecidedMF]

👍 Really appreciate that. Thanks!

[@samuelforsyth6374]

questionable intentions/intrests, for clear information on all reactor types go here kzbin.info

[@madshorn5826]

Except Matt forgot to mention that micro reactors are a _spectacularly_ stupid idea when you factor in just how hard they would be to secure against ignorance and malice. Making a dirty bomb out of one of these things is horrifyingly easy: Just place a sturdy water tank near one, wire up a water heater inside, bolt the tank shut and run like hell. No explosives or skills required at all. Going postal would be going to a whole new level.

[@grn1]

@@madshorn5826 Pretty sure they have safeties that prevent this approach not to mention how hard it would be to get a sturdy water tank and such into a nuclear power facility for malicious purposes. It's also scarily easy to make dirty bombs or worse without needing to break into a nuclear power facility, the hard part for nuclear stuff is getting the materials but there are plenty of other options if you're goal is to just kill everyone/commit suicide (because if these things can make such big and powerful bombs there's no way you're escaping unscathed). Nuclear has it's issues and limitations but I think you've fallen for some negative propaganda.

[@SepticFuddy]

@@madshorn5826 Just imagine how scary it would be if most citizens had access to operating self-propelled, multi-ton metal death machines and operated them with little regard for themselves or others! Oh wait...

[@jackcoats4146]

All power sources are reasonable in their own 'wheelhouse'. I would like to see SMRs and Thorium reactors commercialized, and work alongside solar and wind and battery 'peaker' facilities. But that could just be my perspective. Using SMRs and Thorium for lower solar intensity space missions could also be a long-term winner. Thorium to use the 'waste' from old nuke reactors and manufacturing I see as a long-term win/win solution for much of our nuke waste.

[@kiwibonsai2355]

With Thorium wasn't that due to that it couldn't be weaponized the main reason no further research was done?

[@jackcoats4146]

@@kiwibonsai2355 That was one of the main reasons that research did not go 'full bore' during WWII. Afterward, the Thorium demonstration reactor was run for over a decade, typically turned off on Friday evening, and the safety plug was heated back up on Monday morning to restart the reaction. Pretty safe even as their demonstrator. But that is just showing my geeky minimal historical knowledge of the project and era. Yea, DOD was focused on getting a bigger better boom boom rather than energy for power. History has a way of changing perspectives over time.

[@kiwibonsai2355]

@@jackcoats4146 thanks for the reply Jack.

[@bencoad8492]

@@kiwibonsai2355 but also thorium works better as a thermal liquid fueled molten salt reactor design then Uranium.

[@protorhinocerator142]

My main issue is efficiency. Suppose you could scale an SMR down to the size of a can of Coke. But now the reactor is only 3% as efficient as one the size of a semi truck. A Coke can reactor might make sense for a satellite or something, but it's not particularly useful on Earth. But now suppose you can scale it down from a semi truck to a washing machine and it's still 60% as efficient. That's a lot more acceptable. Washing machine reactors could power small boats and even medium-sized yachts. They could power trains. I don't think the semi truck ones could power a train because that's horizontal and they need to be vertical. But if you could get one to operate vertically then we've really done something. Modern trains are diesel-electric hybrids. Very efficient. Simply remove the diesel engine and replace it with a horizontal SMR. The train will run for years and not burn a drop of oil, other than lubricant. It would be about the easiest one-for-one power swap there is. The question is, can reactors be made to operate horizontally? And if so, this has major implications for ships. A vertical SMR would be hard to fit into something like a PT boat (McHale's Navy) but a horizontal one might fit just right. I don't know how big their engines and fuel tanks were. Simply changing the orientation by 90 degrees would open up the door to replacing nearly all the diesel power for all ocean-going vessels. So is a horizontal SMR possible/practical? Or am I just engaging in wishful thinking and unicorn farts here?

[@ts9114]

please do a show on the statistics and possibilities of terrorist using these, as well as statistics and the hope of current and Future spent fuel being properly stored or neutralized. thank you for your show, I enjoy your thoroughness and presentation. good work.

[@banyek1969]

I'm happy as long as we keep working on perfecting nuclear energy along with the other stuff.... what i hate is when people want to simply discard it as dangerous and useless when it clearly has a bright future with many uses. We just have to invest into it, just like we did it with solar and wind power, which was quite inefficient and bad just a few decades ago. Who says we can't do that with nuclear as well?!

[@rey_nemaattori]

I mostly hate it being described as dangerous whereas in practice it's not at all, as shown by the death count tables...even in you include the deathtool of the bombings of nagasaki and hiroshima, they're still tens of times safer than fossil sources. It's just misinformation green lobby groups keep propagating to keep their govt. grant coming in, seeping taxes _and_ raising energy prices in one fell swoop.

[@RawandCookedVegan]

@@rey_nemaattori What about the waste?

[@rey_nemaattori]

@@RawandCookedVegan There's plenty abandoned mines that can be used to store the waste. It's a lot safer than just blowing it up in the air like fossil plants do 😂

[@RawandCookedVegan]

@@rey_nemaattori Ok, but you have to agree it isn't an elegant solution. 500 years is a long time.

[@petermulders1501]

@@RawandCookedVegan What wasn't mentioned in the video is the option of recycling or reprocessing nuclear waste. Storage is the barbaric way of dealing with nuclear waste.

[@oldbloke135]

The quote that a 1MW plant could "power one thousand homes" made me smile. Obviously those "former SpaceX employees" have no idea how much power it takes to charge up a Tesla!

[@mitchjames9350]

That’s just one Tesla add more on to that with at least two or more to every household.

[@somacoma2219]

There is pleanty to be skeptical of in this list of random nuclear technologies. The Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) is not practical. It never reached technological maturity, because the Oak Ridge test reactor proved it was impractical. Every part of a MSR (not related to SMR) needs to be heated to 1000 C just to keep it from siezing up. It uses highly toxic chemistry, and is no panacea. The Oak Ridge test reactor never produced enough yield excede it's energy input requirements, and the actual yeild produced was 50 percent less then anticiptated, was offline nearly as often as it was running, and The Oak Ridge Test reactor was the only MSR to be tested in the free world. the MSR got dropped from funding for a reason. Thorium Reactors exist only on paper, and have all the same problems as the MSR, plus additional. Small Module Reactors, SMRs, are not related to MSRs. A SMR is a light water reactor designed to be submerged in a pool of water, about the size of a swimming pool, with passive cooling structures. No actual SMR has yet been proven as a power generation station, but many of the componenants have been built. SMR is the most practical hope. Micro generation with helium coolant? That sounds a bit out in left field. Consider that the main source of helium is natural gas deposits. All of these systems are designs. They are not built and fully functional. NuScale has had a rough start when their main backer was caught runing a ponzi scheme. Be careful with your money. There are a lot of promises with nuclear energy, but it seems like the best designs are always 10 years away from being built.

[@BobSmith-oo7ei]

Ok. Layman here. 2 questions. 1. How feesable and safe could it be to Mount one of these micro reactors into a home or building (Store, office structure, workshop, gym, these sorts of things.) as part of the structure and make the structure completely energy independent? 2. Same question, but replace home or building with car, plane, helicopter, boat or motorcycle? Thus making is so they never need batteries or fuel?

[@JBothell_KF0IVQ]

I've always been curious if there would be a day where there is a small 'neighborhood' reactor that would be distributed across cities and in the basements of large buildings... Would be really cool

[@SaveMoneySavethePlanet]

Yea, neighborhood grids are definitely going to be completely different in 10 years. It’ll be interesting to see what tech gets deployed where.

[@KearnuPhoenix]

The only reason we don't already have that is that there are powers that be who want energy centralized.

[@TallTexasGMan]

@Kearnu Phoenix And "environmentalists" who don't want any new nuclear.

[@krashd]

And terrorists who would love it if cities had dozens or hundreds of potential dirty bombs they could blow up.

[@rob14]

They would not be “really cool” nuclear reactors are very hot, like really hot 🥵 ☢️

[@joaopinto415]

Micro reactors are ideal for off-grid remote locations. I hope more investment is put into them! Also, I would like to raise a point I really don't see being often discussed: Replacing existing coal-fired plants with SMRs is a competitive and realistic way of achieving significantly cheaper nuclear energy while also maintaining jobs for the local community. It is important to note that, while renewables do create new job opportunities, they are mostly during the construction phase (since you don't need to operate a wind turbine or a solar panel) and don't really require high-level of education, so people might end up getting paid lower. Another very important topic is land occupation. Nuclear power is able to generate a great deal of energy using a very small area of land when compared to renewables, so for countries with not so much land available, nuclear power should be really considered as a competitive energy solution. One last thing: current nuclear waste is able to be reprocessed in especialized facilities and then used as both MOX fuel or recycled in fast reactors. That's partially the reason why so many countries are not willing to bury their nuclear waste stockpile deep underground. Because they are still a considerable source of energy in advanced reactors. This matter involving nuclear waste recycling is much more political than technical, really! There are technical solutions ready, but political affairs continue to delay their deployment!

[@theo949]

@matt , could you shed more light on the 85-158 costs per MWH of solar plus storage? What type of storage is that ? Is that solution viable for large installations? My understanding is that the storage technology simply isn't there yet. NYC requires 10GW hours of energy for 24 hour. We simply don't have such large storage solutions.

[@jasonlib1996]

SMR's are probably less likely to supply grid scale energy, where the massive 1-3GW reactors are just more effective. I certainly see SMR's particularly if they can make thorium SMR's practical. The best steps to getting things like cargo ships off burning diesel. whilst the Micro scale reactors may be ideal or humanitarian efforts, just imagine being able to just ship a cargo container sized reactor to power temporary accommodations, field hospitals, evacuation centres ect. without the logistics of maintaining a continuous diesel supply like with current large generators.

[@Bloated_Tony_Danza]

I imagine a micro reactor, say the size of a car engine, would probably run best on an ultra low critical mass fuel like Curium-247. Which is basically unobtainium :/ Something like that would need massive amounts of other reactors to produce such a fuel in quantity. Also, I feel like in general, a true micro reactor would need a fuel that’s so high quality, and purity, that it’s indistinguishable from weapons grade fuel. Or a subcritical mass that’s exposed to some sort of neutron generator, Californium-252 maybe? Also unobtainium Idk, I feel like the actinides further down the series would be really good for this kind of application

[@narmale]

dont forget factcheckerium-34, or sjworium-117... those are highly energetic and easy to consume with no one being worried about using them up

[@philipyoung7034]

Sorry to be back on the soapbox. The SLOWPOKE (acronym for Safe LOW-POwer Kritical Experiment) uses 93% highly-enriched uranium-235 (I wonder about U-233) and beryllium-9 as consumables. So, yeah, Rusty nailed it.

[@ducntq]

Hey Matt, love your videos. What about helium-3? We've heard a lot about helium-3 in the last decade, but the idea hasn't really taken off. And now, China is trying to mine helium-3 from the moon. Will helium-3 solve our hunger for energy?

[@alexv3357]

It won't. We can't even sustain a deuterium-tritium fusion reaction for long, let alone derive any power from it, and we're decades away from being able to. Helium-3 fusion is _much_ harder to ignite and sustain, and so is at best a next-century-at-the-earliest speculative power source

[@aimee-lynndonovan6077]

From the Moon !?😵‍💫did I miss something? Have to look that up…

[@bak194]

Matt! Native Oregonian here. Oregon is pronounced like "Organ". Love your videos!

[@TRWnan]

This video perhaps should be re-scripted and re-shot. The author treats SMR, Thorium, fast or slow, and Molten Salt as if they are separate categories where they are orthogonal to eachother. The difference between Conventional, Small, Micro, and Nano (10~100 KWth) are distinctions of scale (of power, core, and site size). The difference between (not Modular) and Modular is whether it is designed to be one-off production of each core or factory production of cores. Conventional cores are too big to ship after assembly (excluding naval reactors), most other designs are modular. The difference between Enriched Uranium, Natural Uranium (Candu), Thorium, and Fast Breeder are distinctions of fuel cycle. - Enriched Uranium uses mostly U235 as fuel - There are conventional, SMR, Micro, and Nano designs, - Natural Uranium breeds Pu from U238 (but can-do thorium and other cycles) - There are conventional and SMR designs, - Thorium reactors breed U233 from Th232. There are Conventional and SMR designs, - Fast breeders can use a wide range of heavy elements. I only know of conventional designs. Gas cooled, Liquid metal cooled, water cooled, heatpipe conduction, or liquid salt cooled is a distinction of what is used as primary coolant. I think there are extant, planned, or historical examples of each at each scale except heatpipe conduction which is only Nano and the only Nano (NASA Kilopower project). Pebble bed, conventional bundle, solid mass, and liquid salt are distinctions of the shape and state of the fuel in the core. I think there are extant, planned, or historical examples of each at each scale except solid mass which is only Nano and the only Nano.