WEBVTT - Nuclear Energy: The Past, Present, and Future – Lab 060 0:00:00.560 --> 0:00:02.880 Have you seen the gas prices in California? Have you 0:00:02.920 --> 0:00:05.120 seen the gas prices down the street? 0:00:06.960 --> 0:00:07.880 Girl? They high. 0:00:07.960 --> 0:00:09.000 If it's up, then it's up. 0:00:09.039 --> 0:00:13.400 If it's up, then it's stuck. It's been pretty wild. 0:00:13.560 --> 0:00:15.680 I guess I'm gonna have to start biking everywhere. 0:00:16.640 --> 0:00:18.480 Come on over to the biking community. 0:00:18.720 --> 0:00:20.280 I know that's your favorite thing to do. I don't 0:00:20.320 --> 0:00:21.280 want to get on that bike. 0:00:23.079 --> 0:00:26.080 You know, when gas prices start to go up, politicians 0:00:26.239 --> 0:00:30.320 and policymakers start talking about alternative forms of energy, which 0:00:30.560 --> 0:00:33.440 low key they should have been talking about anyway. 0:00:33.200 --> 0:00:37.199 Right, huh huh. Because fossil fuels are a limited supply. 0:00:38.159 --> 0:00:41.160 We will eventually run out of fossil fuels, so we 0:00:41.200 --> 0:00:43.360 need some alternatives asap. 0:00:43.600 --> 0:00:46.559 And one of those alternatives that often comes up is 0:00:46.920 --> 0:00:47.920 nuclear energy. 0:00:48.120 --> 0:00:49.680 H I love it. 0:00:49.800 --> 0:00:51.159 I know that's right in your wheelhouse. 0:00:51.240 --> 0:00:52.239 It absolutely is. 0:00:52.680 --> 0:00:55.720 But I'm always like I think, I know, I'm not 0:00:55.800 --> 0:00:56.320 quite sure. 0:00:57.920 --> 0:00:59.520 You know a lot more than you think. 0:00:59.680 --> 0:01:00.560 Well, prove it to me. 0:01:03.400 --> 0:01:07.240 Okay, that's my mission for today. I'm TT and I'm 0:01:07.319 --> 0:01:20.400 Zachiah and from Spotify. This is Dope Labs. 0:01:35.880 --> 0:01:38.600 Welcome to Dope Labs, a weekly podcast that makes us, 0:01:38.600 --> 0:01:41.679 hardcore science, pop culture, and a healthy dosa friendship. 0:01:42.040 --> 0:01:45.399 This week, we're talking about nuclear energy, and there's a 0:01:45.440 --> 0:01:48.160 lot of things about nuclear energy that I think people 0:01:48.240 --> 0:01:51.760 don't know. We generally know that it's very powerful, but 0:01:51.880 --> 0:01:54.720 we wanted to know specifically why it's so important, how 0:01:54.760 --> 0:01:56.960 it's regulated, and more of the applications. 0:01:57.280 --> 0:02:10.280 Let's get into the recitation, all right, Listen, I'm gonna 0:02:10.280 --> 0:02:11.919 ahead and tell you most of the things I know 0:02:12.000 --> 0:02:14.320 about nuclear energy. I know a little bit from history, 0:02:14.400 --> 0:02:16.760 but mostly for call of duty. Okay. 0:02:18.480 --> 0:02:20.799 My friend is a gamer okay. 0:02:20.560 --> 0:02:24.280 And then second is from Marvel and we've already talked 0:02:24.280 --> 0:02:26.400 about this on Wakanda forever. Some of that stuff is 0:02:26.440 --> 0:02:28.919 not real, so I'm gonna really need you to separate 0:02:29.120 --> 0:02:31.800 back from fiction. For me, Tony Stark taught me a lot, 0:02:31.919 --> 0:02:33.480 but how much of it is really true? 0:02:35.040 --> 0:02:37.480 Yes? So because of that episode, we know a little 0:02:37.520 --> 0:02:41.040 bit of the basics about nuclear energy. Where it comes from. 0:02:41.160 --> 0:02:43.520 You know it comes from the nucleus of an atom, 0:02:43.840 --> 0:02:46.079 but we really want to know a lot more, right, 0:02:46.120 --> 0:02:48.679 And I think that is a great segue into what 0:02:48.840 --> 0:02:49.960 do we want to know. 0:02:50.320 --> 0:02:53.280 I know you're saying, yes, it comes from the nucleus 0:02:53.280 --> 0:02:55.080 of an atom, But how do we get to it 0:02:56.200 --> 0:02:59.040 a who's holding it? One atom? Multiple atoms at the 0:02:59.040 --> 0:03:01.320 same time sequentially? I have a questions. And then what 0:03:01.360 --> 0:03:02.880 about those halves if you're splitting them? 0:03:03.120 --> 0:03:05.440 I think that's a very good question. I think I 0:03:05.480 --> 0:03:09.400 want to know more about the history of nuclear energy. 0:03:09.480 --> 0:03:11.160 I think I know a little bit of why we 0:03:11.240 --> 0:03:14.320 first started looking into it, but I really want to 0:03:14.360 --> 0:03:16.480 know why and what problem we were trying to solve 0:03:16.560 --> 0:03:18.760 and how we got to where we are today. 0:03:18.919 --> 0:03:22.160 And like so many things, what's the potential, what's next? 0:03:22.480 --> 0:03:24.960 How is this being regulated? How do we ensure that 0:03:25.520 --> 0:03:28.040 it's equitable access to something if it has all the 0:03:28.040 --> 0:03:30.760 potential folks are saying it has. Okay, let's jump into 0:03:30.800 --> 0:03:46.440 the dissection. Our guest for today's lab is doctor Marina 0:03:46.600 --> 0:03:47.760 Robinson Snowden. 0:03:48.040 --> 0:03:50.200 My name is doctor Marina Robinson Snowden. 0:03:50.280 --> 0:03:54.200 I'm a senior engineer at the Johns Hopkins Applyve Physics Laboratory. 0:03:54.640 --> 0:03:56.880 Like we said, we talked about the basics of nuclear 0:03:56.960 --> 0:04:00.280 energy in our episode Wakonda Forever, but we act doctor 0:04:00.280 --> 0:04:02.840 Snowden to take us back to high school physics class 0:04:02.840 --> 0:04:05.400 and explain to us the anatomy of an atom. 0:04:05.640 --> 0:04:09.280 So you have protons and neutrons that are in the nucleus, right, 0:04:09.760 --> 0:04:12.960 and then outside of that nucleus you have electrons and 0:04:13.200 --> 0:04:16.200 inside of that atom, it takes a lot of energy 0:04:16.240 --> 0:04:18.360 to keep all of those different pieces together. 0:04:18.600 --> 0:04:22.919 That's right. Atoms are the building blocks of all things. 0:04:23.000 --> 0:04:26.000 And just like doctor Snowden said, you have your nucleus 0:04:26.040 --> 0:04:30.400 of your atom, and that has neutrons and protons and 0:04:30.440 --> 0:04:34.160 they're all packed together really tightly, and then spinning around 0:04:34.320 --> 0:04:36.560 that nucleus is all of these electrons. 0:04:36.839 --> 0:04:39.320 If you think about how all of that energy is 0:04:39.360 --> 0:04:42.359 holding those things together, the vibes are definitely right. We 0:04:42.480 --> 0:04:44.560 want to start thinking about how to capture and use 0:04:44.600 --> 0:04:47.920 that energy. Doctor Snowden says, there are a couple different ways. 0:04:48.200 --> 0:04:50.280 So the first is something that I think we're all 0:04:50.440 --> 0:04:53.479 familiar with, which is kind of chemical reactions. So a 0:04:53.560 --> 0:04:57.279 chemical reaction is something where you are trying to remove 0:04:57.520 --> 0:05:00.800 an electron from an electron shell, right, So you're trying 0:05:00.800 --> 0:05:03.279 to kick off an electron from that atom package. 0:05:03.360 --> 0:05:04.880 Right, that's chemical. 0:05:05.160 --> 0:05:07.920 So think of fossil fuels. Burning fossil fuels is a 0:05:08.000 --> 0:05:12.120 chemical reaction, and so you take that fuel and igniting 0:05:12.160 --> 0:05:15.480 it kicks off the chemical reaction. That's what's happening in 0:05:15.480 --> 0:05:18.679 our cars that aren't electric, you know, they're using gas 0:05:18.680 --> 0:05:21.720 from the pump. Those are fossil fuels, and when you 0:05:21.800 --> 0:05:25.880 turn your key, there's an ignition and that sets that 0:05:25.920 --> 0:05:27.920 fuel on fire. And what it does is produce a 0:05:27.960 --> 0:05:31.359 lot of heat, and that heat is the energy that 0:05:31.480 --> 0:05:32.920 is released from this reaction. 0:05:33.320 --> 0:05:36.400 The byproduct of these reactions where we're burning that fuel 0:05:36.800 --> 0:05:43.640 are carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, hydrocarbons, nitric oxide, microparticles, 0:05:43.800 --> 0:05:47.440 a whole bunch of other environmentally unsafe compounds just you 0:05:47.520 --> 0:05:50.040 name it. Okay, the list goes on, and this is 0:05:50.080 --> 0:05:53.240 where we kind of get into greenhouse gas emissions and 0:05:53.279 --> 0:05:54.240 climate change. 0:05:54.320 --> 0:05:57.320 So in some scenarios you can access chemical energy through 0:05:57.400 --> 0:06:01.400 combustion or burning things. And another way is by leveraging 0:06:01.520 --> 0:06:06.400 all that energy that's holding the nucleus together, aka nuclear energy. 0:06:06.640 --> 0:06:10.679 So some really smart people decades and decades ago, thought 0:06:10.880 --> 0:06:14.120 how can we leverage the energy that's inside of the 0:06:14.200 --> 0:06:17.320 nucleus and also inside of the atom itself. When you're 0:06:17.360 --> 0:06:20.120 thinking about nuclear we're not talking about electrons now, we're 0:06:20.160 --> 0:06:23.520 down in the nucleus, right, nuclear nucleus, that's what it means. 0:06:23.560 --> 0:06:26.719 So you're dealing with reactions that are happening inside of 0:06:26.760 --> 0:06:29.920 that central package in the atom. And the thing that's 0:06:29.920 --> 0:06:32.840 important to know is the energy levels when you compare 0:06:32.920 --> 0:06:36.919 chemical reactions to nuclear reactions, are like a million times stronger. 0:06:37.080 --> 0:06:39.760 The amount of energy that it takes to keep those 0:06:39.800 --> 0:06:42.960 protons together is a million times stronger than it takes 0:06:42.960 --> 0:06:44.480 to keep the electron in the atom. 0:06:44.680 --> 0:06:47.560 And because chemical reactions are not as strong, we need 0:06:47.600 --> 0:06:49.120 a lot more fuel to burn. 0:06:49.240 --> 0:06:52.000 So that's why nuclear energy is so promising because if 0:06:52.080 --> 0:06:55.760 you can find a way to break those nuclei apart 0:06:56.000 --> 0:06:59.800 and harness that energy, you can do things like create electricity, 0:07:00.080 --> 0:07:00.440 and you. 0:07:00.360 --> 0:07:02.599 Can do it by using way less fuel. So that 0:07:02.720 --> 0:07:07.200 sounds really promising, right, But how is nuclear energy access? 0:07:07.600 --> 0:07:10.600 Doctor Snowden talked to us about the two ways this happens, 0:07:10.880 --> 0:07:12.760 fission and fusion. 0:07:12.640 --> 0:07:14.520 And fission is exactly as it sounds. 0:07:14.520 --> 0:07:17.200 You are trying to take a nucleus and break it apart, 0:07:17.400 --> 0:07:19.960 and when you rip it apart or break it apart, 0:07:20.200 --> 0:07:23.200 there's an energy release that's associated with that. That's what 0:07:23.280 --> 0:07:27.400 happens inside of nuclear reactors. So we're taking uranium or 0:07:27.440 --> 0:07:32.400 plutonium fuel, which are radioactive materials. We're doing a nuclear 0:07:32.440 --> 0:07:35.520 process on them to force those nuclei to break apart 0:07:35.600 --> 0:07:38.000 and give us that energy because we need that energy 0:07:38.040 --> 0:07:40.920 to create the heat to create the electricity downstream. 0:07:41.040 --> 0:07:44.200 So what's happening in a nuclear reactor this fission process 0:07:44.560 --> 0:07:47.760 is it's a pretty simple process, but it's complex because 0:07:47.760 --> 0:07:51.560 it takes a lot of energy. So a neutron hits 0:07:51.560 --> 0:07:55.480 a uranium atom and that neutron causes the nucleus of 0:07:55.560 --> 0:07:59.080 the uranium atom to split. So when that fission happens, 0:07:59.320 --> 0:08:02.920 that split that nucleus, it releases a large amount of 0:08:03.080 --> 0:08:06.920 energy as heat. And as it's splitting, you remember we 0:08:06.960 --> 0:08:10.400 said that there are neutrons in the nucleus. As it splits, 0:08:10.480 --> 0:08:14.160 more neutrons are also coming off and then going and 0:08:14.200 --> 0:08:17.360 hitting another uranium atom and causing fission with that atom. 0:08:17.920 --> 0:08:22.480 So it's a chain reaction. All of these reactions produce energy, 0:08:22.520 --> 0:08:25.120 and that energy it produces is heat. Once the heat 0:08:25.200 --> 0:08:27.400 is generated, it turns the water that is in the 0:08:27.480 --> 0:08:31.080 nuclear reactor system into steam, and then that steam starts 0:08:31.120 --> 0:08:36.200 spinning turbines, and those turbines generate electricity all carbon free. 0:08:36.320 --> 0:08:39.000 The United States gets something like twenty percent of our 0:08:39.000 --> 0:08:42.640 electricity from reactors. Globally it is something like eleven percent. 0:08:42.800 --> 0:08:45.000 That's a really big percentage, and it feels really important. 0:08:45.040 --> 0:08:46.560 And those are a lot of moving parts you just 0:08:46.559 --> 0:08:51.200 describe TT. Yeah, and doctor Snowden is driving home just 0:08:51.280 --> 0:08:54.760 how important those reactors are. H and all is making 0:08:54.760 --> 0:08:57.160 me think is that Osha or somebody should have come 0:08:57.160 --> 0:08:59.360 and stepped in in the town of Springfield because Homer 0:08:59.400 --> 0:09:03.680 symptom was reckless at his reactions. This is all such 0:09:03.720 --> 0:09:06.920 an intricate process. And that's just fission. Right when the 0:09:07.000 --> 0:09:10.880 nucleus is being pulled apart. What about fusion? What's happening there? 0:09:11.040 --> 0:09:14.600 The second approach, though, is fusion where instead of trying 0:09:14.640 --> 0:09:17.960 to break the nuclei apart, you're actually trying to smash 0:09:18.040 --> 0:09:21.240 them together. And in that same way, to take lighter 0:09:21.360 --> 0:09:24.840 nuclei and smash them together, there's an associated energy release. 0:09:24.880 --> 0:09:27.320 In order to get them to actually bind, they have 0:09:27.360 --> 0:09:28.240 to give up energy. 0:09:28.800 --> 0:09:31.559 So that energy that's given up is the same thing 0:09:31.600 --> 0:09:34.480 that we're after. We're always after the energy release, whether 0:09:34.480 --> 0:09:39.520 we're talking about burning fuel, fissioning fuel, or fusing fuel. 0:09:39.440 --> 0:09:41.600 And I'd love to do a detailed example of how 0:09:41.720 --> 0:09:45.000 fusion works, but we haven't quite messed with that yet. 0:09:45.120 --> 0:09:49.040 Fusion is still an experimental technology. Scientists and researchers are 0:09:49.040 --> 0:09:51.480 still trying to figure it out. But it seems like 0:09:51.840 --> 0:09:55.079 fission and fusion are both viable from a climate change 0:09:55.120 --> 0:09:58.400 perspective because they eliminate a lot of those greenhouse gas 0:09:58.440 --> 0:10:02.000 emissions we see with kimo cool energy and combustion and burning. 0:10:02.320 --> 0:10:06.120 Yes, in the US we have ninety three nuclear reactors 0:10:06.280 --> 0:10:08.280 up and running right now, which is the most in 0:10:08.320 --> 0:10:10.920 the world. France is in second place with fifty six. 0:10:11.120 --> 0:10:15.719 They can't compete where they don't compas or whatever that's 0:10:15.760 --> 0:10:16.360 saying is. 0:10:24.880 --> 0:10:24.960 So. 0:10:25.080 --> 0:10:28.000 Doctor Snowden said that the United States gets about twenty 0:10:28.040 --> 0:10:31.600 percent of our energy from reactors. But what does that mean? 0:10:31.760 --> 0:10:34.560 How much energy is that twenty percent of? 0:10:34.640 --> 0:10:34.720 What? 0:10:35.400 --> 0:10:35.600 You know? 0:10:35.960 --> 0:10:37.200 How is it measured? Right? 0:10:37.240 --> 0:10:40.480 So that twenty percent of electricity generated that she told 0:10:40.559 --> 0:10:45.200 us about is about seven hundred and ninety thousand gigawatt hours? 0:10:45.360 --> 0:10:46.920 That doesn't really mean much. 0:10:47.600 --> 0:10:50.400 Okay, when I'm typically looking at a light build that's 0:10:50.440 --> 0:10:55.080 in like killowatt hours, and I think we can start 0:10:55.080 --> 0:10:58.000 with the prefixes, right, Yeah, killo just means a thousand, 0:10:58.080 --> 0:11:02.280 So a kilowatt is one thousand watts, and that's a 0:11:02.320 --> 0:11:05.840 measure of power. But a kilowatt hour is a measurement 0:11:05.840 --> 0:11:09.400 of energy. So that's how much energy something that takes 0:11:09.400 --> 0:11:12.120 one thousand watts needs in order to rent for an hour. 0:11:12.200 --> 0:11:13.600 So it's like a rate almost. 0:11:13.360 --> 0:11:17.200 Absolutely, that's the difference between power and energy. Energy is 0:11:17.320 --> 0:11:19.559 power and then a unit of time. 0:11:20.160 --> 0:11:22.960 So that's like miles versus miles per hour. 0:11:23.280 --> 0:11:27.480 Yes, so you go from a distance to a distance 0:11:27.600 --> 0:11:30.360 per time, and that gives you a speed. 0:11:30.760 --> 0:11:33.160 Okay, So now I understand the unit and the measure, 0:11:33.200 --> 0:11:34.200 give me something to anchor it to. 0:11:34.480 --> 0:11:38.880 So for example, a typical electric dishwasher uses about two 0:11:38.960 --> 0:11:40.800 kilowat hours per load. 0:11:42.000 --> 0:11:44.760 Okay, so I got that a Nissan. 0:11:44.400 --> 0:11:49.800 Leaf electric car uses forty kilo why hours when fully charged. 0:11:49.960 --> 0:11:52.080 But you told us that doctor Snowden was telling us 0:11:52.080 --> 0:11:56.160 about seven hundred and ninety thousand gigaway hours. So a 0:11:56.240 --> 0:11:59.520 kilo why hour is one thousand watts of power over 0:11:59.559 --> 0:12:05.760 an hour. A gigawatt hour is one million killowat hours. 0:12:05.440 --> 0:12:08.920 So we go from kilowatts. So that's one thousand, there's megawats, 0:12:08.920 --> 0:12:11.000 so we're gonna skip over that. That's in the millions. 0:12:11.600 --> 0:12:16.800 Now we're at gigawatts. That's in the billions of watts 0:12:16.800 --> 0:12:17.240 per hour. 0:12:17.640 --> 0:12:21.560 And so for those billion watts per hour, so that's 0:12:21.840 --> 0:12:24.640 gigawatt per hour, there are seven hundred and ninety thousand 0:12:24.920 --> 0:12:25.760 of those. 0:12:25.960 --> 0:12:29.240 Seven hundred and ninety thousand of those billions. 0:12:32.520 --> 0:12:33.920 Turn everything off. 0:12:33.800 --> 0:12:39.640 Right, I'm turning off my computer right now, goodbye. But 0:12:39.880 --> 0:12:43.800 that still only makes up a fraction of US consumption. 0:12:43.880 --> 0:12:47.840 Remember that's only twenty percent, So I'm not gonna do 0:12:47.840 --> 0:12:50.959 the multiplication. I'm gonna let y'all do the multiplication because 0:12:50.960 --> 0:12:55.800 now we're getting into numbers that I cannot say. A 0:12:55.800 --> 0:12:58.320 gigawatt hour is a unit of energy that is one 0:12:58.640 --> 0:13:03.480 billion kilowatts of power sustained for one hour. In twenty twenty, 0:13:03.520 --> 0:13:09.760 the US consumed trillions. That's t r trillions of gigawatt hours. 0:13:09.840 --> 0:13:13.080 We produce nuclear energy in the billions of kilowatt hours, 0:13:13.240 --> 0:13:22.200 but we consume electricity in the trillions of kilowatt hours. 0:13:23.360 --> 0:13:25.840 All of this sounds great, right. It's a way to 0:13:25.880 --> 0:13:29.320 generate electricity that doesn't give us the negative effects of 0:13:29.400 --> 0:13:33.320 greenhouse gases, but I just noticed it not so fast. 0:13:33.480 --> 0:13:35.640 There are some other things that we need to be worried. 0:13:35.360 --> 0:13:37.680 About, but that doesn't mean that this is free lunch, 0:13:37.920 --> 0:13:41.360 right There are risks associated with nuclear technology, and one 0:13:41.400 --> 0:13:45.120 of the big risks is the waste that's produced at 0:13:45.160 --> 0:13:46.959 the end of the day. So when you split a 0:13:47.040 --> 0:13:51.200 nucleus apart, you create these things called fission products, daughter products, 0:13:51.200 --> 0:13:52.560 those are some of the names that they're use. So 0:13:52.559 --> 0:13:56.640 that's like the waste, and these things are highly radioactive. 0:13:55.960 --> 0:13:57.520 For a long time. 0:13:58.200 --> 0:14:01.640 So there's questions about what is the long term disposal 0:14:01.679 --> 0:14:04.960 strategy for this waste, because there's a couple of different options. 0:14:05.040 --> 0:14:07.440 You can bury it deep inside of a hole right 0:14:07.520 --> 0:14:09.920 right now. We store it kind of in these spent 0:14:10.000 --> 0:14:13.440 fuel storage pools outside of reactors, but that's not a 0:14:13.440 --> 0:14:17.200 long term solution. But the politics of nuclear waste and 0:14:17.280 --> 0:14:20.000 spent fuel are non trivial. We've been battling them for 0:14:20.120 --> 0:14:22.840 decades and that's one of the key obstacles. And the 0:14:22.920 --> 0:14:25.640 second risk with nuclear fuel that people really think about 0:14:25.720 --> 0:14:28.360 kind of kitchen table issue is you know the risk 0:14:28.400 --> 0:14:30.040 of a catastrophic accident. 0:14:29.760 --> 0:14:33.240 And we've seen catastrophic accidents occur a few times, one 0:14:33.280 --> 0:14:37.080 in Fukushima in twenty eleven, after an earthquake three Mile 0:14:37.120 --> 0:14:39.920 Island in nineteen seventy nine, which happened right here in 0:14:39.960 --> 0:14:43.160 the United States, an Chernobyl in nineteen eighty six because 0:14:43.200 --> 0:14:46.080 of a flawed reactor and errors in the actions of 0:14:46.120 --> 0:14:49.160 the technicians, and the event in Chernobyl was so long 0:14:49.520 --> 0:14:54.280 it was releasing radioactive material into the atmosphere for ten days, 0:14:54.560 --> 0:14:57.080 and it made it so that to this day, about 0:14:57.160 --> 0:15:00.560 one thy six hundred square miles surrounding that that nuclear 0:15:00.560 --> 0:15:04.000 reactor where the accident happened is still not allowed to 0:15:04.040 --> 0:15:07.960 be inhabited. Sixteen hundred square miles is about three times 0:15:08.040 --> 0:15:09.680 the size of Los Angeles. 0:15:09.920 --> 0:15:12.600 And that's what I remember from Call of Duty. They 0:15:12.680 --> 0:15:15.640 drop you into that zone, they put you in Chernobyl. Yeah, 0:15:15.720 --> 0:15:18.400 there's all these abandoned buildings and things in the grass 0:15:18.400 --> 0:15:20.800 has overgrown on this stuff because it hasn't been inhabited 0:15:20.840 --> 0:15:21.360 for so long. 0:15:21.440 --> 0:15:22.240 Y'all gotta chill. 0:15:24.040 --> 0:15:26.480 Children should not be playing. That should not only the guns, 0:15:26.520 --> 0:15:28.080 but also the atmosphere. 0:15:28.160 --> 0:15:36.400 Cheeze. OK, that's crazy. 0:15:36.480 --> 0:15:38.440 So, even though there are a lot of these potential 0:15:38.520 --> 0:15:41.600 upsides with nuclear energy, Like TT mentioned, there are some 0:15:41.720 --> 0:15:42.560 risks involved too. 0:15:42.840 --> 0:15:45.360 Risks, they say, is the probability of the event, the 0:15:45.440 --> 0:15:48.320 consequences of the event, and the vulnerability of the asset. 0:15:48.560 --> 0:15:51.960 So even though the probability is very low, the consequences 0:15:52.000 --> 0:15:58.000 are so high. Radioactive fallout contaminating large swaths of areas, 0:15:58.080 --> 0:16:02.200 you have families displaced. There can be like generational impacts 0:16:02.360 --> 0:16:04.520 if there is a catas graphic accident. So those are 0:16:04.520 --> 0:16:09.560 some of the things that policymakers communities that are thinking about. 0:16:09.320 --> 0:16:11.840 Hosting these facilities. 0:16:11.200 --> 0:16:14.480 Right, whether we're talking about the reactor itself or the 0:16:14.760 --> 0:16:17.400 repository for the spent fuel, these are the things that 0:16:17.440 --> 0:16:19.520 they have to think about in terms of kind of 0:16:19.560 --> 0:16:22.320 the near term and long term benefits of the technology 0:16:22.680 --> 0:16:24.120 balance that with the risk. 0:16:24.400 --> 0:16:27.920 When we talk about nuclear energy and splitting an atom 0:16:28.040 --> 0:16:32.160 and uranium plutonium. I think about radiation in the way 0:16:32.200 --> 0:16:36.200 I learned about it in the lab, and I remember 0:16:36.400 --> 0:16:40.320 when I first was going through training to work with radiation, 0:16:40.400 --> 0:16:42.080 I was like, oh, so worried and so you know, 0:16:42.400 --> 0:16:44.240 but I think it's important for people to understand that 0:16:44.320 --> 0:16:46.680 not all radiation is the same. There's a spectrum. 0:16:46.760 --> 0:16:50.720 Yeah, So we're surrounded by radiation every day. You know, microwaves, 0:16:50.840 --> 0:16:55.960 radio waves, everything, But there are big differences between a 0:16:56.120 --> 0:17:01.640 microwave from your microwave and radiation that is potentially harmful 0:17:01.680 --> 0:17:03.600 to you. And I think once you have a grasp 0:17:03.680 --> 0:17:07.000 of that, then you can understand, Okay, what does this 0:17:07.119 --> 0:17:11.000 mean for nuclear energy? What does this mean for the 0:17:11.400 --> 0:17:14.919 byproducts and offshoots of these processes, and what's harmful and 0:17:14.920 --> 0:17:17.120 what's not. Could you tell us a little bit more 0:17:17.119 --> 0:17:20.760 about the harmful factors to consider. So, the difference between 0:17:20.760 --> 0:17:25.679 a microwave and radiation, which is called ionizing radiation, so 0:17:25.720 --> 0:17:29.080 that's the type of radiation that is potentially dangerous, is 0:17:29.440 --> 0:17:34.080 the wavelength. So when you're talking about microwaves, radio waves 0:17:34.080 --> 0:17:37.800 and things like that, these are literal waves that are 0:17:37.880 --> 0:17:40.879 so long, So that means that they're really tall and 0:17:41.200 --> 0:17:45.280 really deep, and the distance from one peak wave to 0:17:45.359 --> 0:17:47.840 the next peak wave is really long. So when you 0:17:47.840 --> 0:17:49.919 think about it, it's too big to be able to 0:17:50.080 --> 0:17:53.520 really interact with atoms or your cells. 0:17:53.280 --> 0:17:56.840 Because the energy the wavelength is so large relative to 0:17:56.880 --> 0:17:58.120 the size of your cells. 0:17:58.520 --> 0:17:59.840 You good, you, goujie. 0:18:00.080 --> 0:18:04.160 But when we start talking about ionizing radiation, those waves 0:18:04.200 --> 0:18:07.800 are really tight and tiny. So they're so small, so 0:18:07.960 --> 0:18:11.280 tight and so tiny that they have the ability to 0:18:11.440 --> 0:18:14.040 really get up close and personal with the cells in 0:18:14.040 --> 0:18:17.760 your body. They just touching all over them, and they 0:18:17.800 --> 0:18:19.200 can do a lot of damage. 0:18:19.280 --> 0:18:23.560 And so exposure to that harmful ionizing radiation is what 0:18:23.760 --> 0:18:27.159 happened when we saw these accidents at nuclear reactors, so 0:18:27.280 --> 0:18:31.199 at three mile, at Chernobyl, at Fukushima. This is not 0:18:31.320 --> 0:18:35.920 the same as microwave waves. This is not the same. 0:18:35.960 --> 0:18:37.960 Okay, so heat up to your hot pocket, You'll be 0:18:38.000 --> 0:18:38.440 all right. 0:18:38.480 --> 0:18:40.440 But I think it's so important for people to understand 0:18:40.520 --> 0:18:43.480 like where we are on this scale, both in size 0:18:43.520 --> 0:18:47.199 of wave and in potential harm yep. And so I 0:18:47.200 --> 0:18:49.120 think that's a great way to think about risk, right, 0:18:49.520 --> 0:18:51.760 not just oh, a thing could happen, but how likely 0:18:51.840 --> 0:18:54.080 is it to happen, and if it happens, how devastating 0:18:54.160 --> 0:18:57.120 are the events? But also if we remove this from 0:18:57.119 --> 0:19:00.520 the equation overall, what does this mean for our electricity grid? 0:19:00.560 --> 0:19:03.040 What does that mean for day to day life in America? 0:19:03.160 --> 0:19:05.560 That's a really good point because in twenty twenty, forty 0:19:05.560 --> 0:19:09.960 percent of the US's electricity came from natural gas twenty 0:19:10.000 --> 0:19:15.400 one percent came from renewables, so that's when hydrosolar, biomass, geothermal, 0:19:15.960 --> 0:19:19.480 and twenty percent came from nuclear and nineteen percent came 0:19:19.520 --> 0:19:19.960 from call. 0:19:20.240 --> 0:19:23.679 You need kind of a constant energy source, something that 0:19:23.720 --> 0:19:27.120 can always run. There's these kind of classic lines about 0:19:27.119 --> 0:19:30.080 the wind doesn't always blow, the sun doesn't always shine. 0:19:30.200 --> 0:19:34.400 So those renewable sources there is a temporal component to them, 0:19:34.440 --> 0:19:36.960 whereas with a reactor, once you've built it and you've 0:19:36.960 --> 0:19:39.880 gotten the core up and running, it can go for 0:19:40.119 --> 0:19:41.760 you know, a long time, and that. 0:19:41.720 --> 0:19:44.280 Can be kind of your assured energy. 0:19:44.000 --> 0:19:46.080 Source and tc. This is on something that we say 0:19:46.080 --> 0:19:48.360 all the time, yep, Right, A lot of problems are 0:19:48.359 --> 0:19:51.320 not solved by one single solution, but there are multiple 0:19:51.359 --> 0:19:55.000 things working in lockstep to give you a reinforced solution. 0:19:55.080 --> 0:19:57.119 So even if one fails, you have some backups. 0:19:57.160 --> 0:19:59.840 So I think the idea is to have a diverse 0:20:00.080 --> 0:20:04.000 fire portfolio with the lowest carbon footprint possible and being 0:20:04.040 --> 0:20:07.080 able to balance these near term and long term risk 0:20:07.119 --> 0:20:11.040 and benefits with the you know, global society in a 0:20:11.080 --> 0:20:14.400 way that mirrors our values today. Right, So you think 0:20:14.440 --> 0:20:19.320 about nuclear energy now versus then we have very vibrant 0:20:19.359 --> 0:20:22.040 conversations around equity and justice. 0:20:22.119 --> 0:20:23.400 So if we're talking. 0:20:23.080 --> 0:20:26.760 About where is this fuel being mined, where is this 0:20:26.800 --> 0:20:30.359 spent fuel being deposited, we have to think about whose 0:20:30.400 --> 0:20:33.560 communities are these, what seat do they have at the table. 0:20:33.680 --> 0:20:36.679 So you're seeing administration starting to adopt a lot of 0:20:36.720 --> 0:20:39.240 this language and this perspective on the way that we 0:20:39.320 --> 0:20:42.640 need to make energy policy. And it's different than kind 0:20:42.680 --> 0:20:45.240 of the nature of the conversations in the sixties and 0:20:45.280 --> 0:20:48.160 the seventies and the eighties. So it's about a balanced approach, 0:20:48.200 --> 0:20:50.320 but you can see there's changes to the conversation. 0:20:50.640 --> 0:20:53.080 Okay, so we've talked about nuclear energy and how it 0:20:53.080 --> 0:20:56.320 can be used to possibly replace some more harmful forms 0:20:56.320 --> 0:21:00.000 of fuel, but that's not why this form of energy 0:21:00.240 --> 0:21:02.359 harvesting was originally looked into. 0:21:02.600 --> 0:21:05.560 The origin of our nuclear story really starts in World 0:21:05.560 --> 0:21:09.600 War Two, when the international community was trying to grapple 0:21:09.640 --> 0:21:11.880 with a rising Nazi power. 0:21:12.000 --> 0:21:13.240 You had Adolf Hitler. 0:21:13.720 --> 0:21:17.560 You saw the expansion and the genocide that he was 0:21:17.600 --> 0:21:21.119 inflicting on Europe, and at that time, you know, the 0:21:21.240 --> 0:21:24.840 nineteen thirties was a really active time from a nuclear perspective. 0:21:24.880 --> 0:21:29.879 We were discovering stuff, y'all. We discovered fission. We discovered 0:21:29.880 --> 0:21:31.600 the chain reaction, which. 0:21:31.400 --> 0:21:34.760 Means like you could sustain fission, you could have sustained 0:21:34.880 --> 0:21:35.640 energy output. 0:21:35.680 --> 0:21:38.320 It wasn't just the one and done right. At the same. 0:21:38.080 --> 0:21:42.320 Time, there was a significant worry that the Nazis were 0:21:42.600 --> 0:21:48.040