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Speaker 1: Nuclear power is kind of a hallmark of the modern age. Finally,

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Speaker 1: all that nerding out to understand the nature of matter

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Speaker 1: and how the atom was put together led to some

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Speaker 1: real applications, and wow, did things get real. Nuclear physics

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Speaker 1: gave us nuclear weapons and the omnipresent threat of total annihilation,

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Speaker 1: but it also gave us nuclear energy an incredible way

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Speaker 1: to generate emission free energy from weird little rocks. Later

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Speaker 1: this week, we'll dig into the policies and politics of

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Speaker 1: all that, whether nuclear power is a net good or

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Speaker 1: bad for the environment, and talk to a journalist who

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Speaker 1: explored the new pro nuclear environmental movement. But today we're

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Speaker 1: going to dig into the science and make sure our

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Speaker 1: next conversation is well informed by the science. How does

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Speaker 1: it all work? What about salt reactors and pebble fuels?

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Speaker 1: What is the future of nuclear technology? Genium? Welcome to

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Speaker 1: Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Powerful Universe.

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Speaker 2: Hello. This is Kelly Waider Smith. I'm a parasitologist who

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Speaker 2: also studies space, and we are recording this episode on piden.

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Speaker 1: Hi. I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and I will

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Speaker 1: judge anyone who says nuclear instead of nuclear.

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Speaker 2: Oh, I mean that's fair. Yeah, or nuclear yeah? Ye,

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Speaker 2: Judge away, man, Judge Away.

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Speaker 1: I heard a lot of them Texas when I lived there.

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Speaker 1: Nuclear power.

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Speaker 2: Oh man, how long were you in Texas?

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Speaker 1: I went to Rice in Houston. Yeah, and that's where

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Speaker 1: you know one of our presidents came from, and he

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Speaker 1: said nuclear every single.

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Speaker 2: Time Bush went to Rice.

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Speaker 1: No, but he's from Texas.

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, got it? Okay, right, But one of.

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Speaker 1: The Bushes went to Rice with me? I think with

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Speaker 1: George P. Bush, son of Jeb Bush, was a Rice

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Speaker 1: with me. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Oh were you two BFFs?

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Speaker 3: No?

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Speaker 1: Definitely not. Oh all right, I mean just that he

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Speaker 1: was very political and I very much wasn't. I don't

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Speaker 1: know the guy at all.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, got it, got it. What is the most that

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Speaker 2: you've ever leaned in too? Celebrating a particularly nerdy holiday?

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Speaker 1: I don't know if it counts as celebrating a holiday.

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Speaker 1: But during the pandemic, some of our friends and neighbors

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Speaker 1: challenged us to a bake off competition who could make

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Speaker 1: the most interesting cake with movable parts, which was a

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Speaker 1: big engineering challenge. And when we showed up at their house,

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Speaker 1: we had to measure the width of their door to

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Speaker 1: see if our cake would fit. Because I made this

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Speaker 1: enormous landscape with a boat that would go down a

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Speaker 1: river and a windmill with pieces that turned. I think

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Speaker 1: I took like a week off of work and I

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Speaker 1: bought all the marsh mellows and all the rice crispies

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Speaker 1: at the grocery store to make this ridiculous landscape.

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Speaker 2: Yeah did you win?

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Speaker 1: Oh yes, we absolutely destroyed them just by sheer size.

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Speaker 1: You know, I was going for like, this thing has

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Speaker 1: got a pop. So yeah, it was pretty impressive. I

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Speaker 1: gotta say.

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Speaker 2: I mean, that's a good way to pass the pandemic.

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Speaker 2: Did you take a picture?

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Speaker 1: We have a picture somewhere. Absolutely. And then it had

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Speaker 1: other weird downstream consequences because nobody could eat that much

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Speaker 1: rice crispies, and so we ended up throwing a lot

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Speaker 1: of it away, which led to a huge explosion in

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Speaker 1: the neighborhood rat population. And then we ended up discovering

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Speaker 1: a rat's nest literally, like a mom and ten little

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Speaker 1: rat babies near our garbage can. And when you discover

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Speaker 1: a rat's nest, the mom will just abandon the babies.

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Speaker 1: So then we had like ten cute little rat babies

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Speaker 1: and they starved to death because the mom wouldn't come back.

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Speaker 1: And you can't feed rat babies. I don't know if

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Speaker 1: you know much about rats, but like they have to

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Speaker 1: be nursed, and also they can't poop on their own.

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Speaker 1: Like rat babies are a whole thing. And so then

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Speaker 1: we felt really bad about that, and that's why we

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Speaker 1: ended up adopting rats.

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Speaker 2: That story was a roller coaster ride, Daniel. There are

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Speaker 2: some real highs and real lows there, I know.

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Speaker 1: And because we had such a good experience with having

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Speaker 1: pet rats, the kids were able to convince me to

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Speaker 1: get a dog. So the reason and we now have

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Speaker 1: a dog who is an integral part of our family,

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Speaker 1: is because I went all out celebrating this crazy engineering challenge. Bakathon.

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Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, it is kind of incredible the way

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Speaker 2: small things in life can lead you down completely different paths. Well,

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Speaker 2: your story is way more wholesome than mine.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, what's yours?

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Speaker 2: I was born on Molday. So Avagadro's number is what

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Speaker 2: six point two three times sent to the twenty third

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Speaker 2: or something like that, but October twenty third, and so

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Speaker 2: for my junior and senior year of undergrad I had

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Speaker 2: chemistry themed birthday parties, and it would be like, uh, yeah, it.

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Speaker 1: Sounds really fun. Why didn't I get invited?

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Speaker 2: If I had known, you man, you would have been.

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Speaker 2: But it was, you know, like how many electrons are

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Speaker 2: in beryllium? Wrong drinks?

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Speaker 1: And it was.

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Speaker 2: Because you know, no one knows that.

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Speaker 1: Nobody knows that, because it's chemistry, it's all exceptions.

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Speaker 2: That's right, that's right. And you know, my friends didn't

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Speaker 2: know chemistry very well either, so it was we had

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Speaker 2: a really great time.

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Speaker 1: But this is high school, so you're what drinking soda

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Speaker 1: or punch or.

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Speaker 2: Something undergrad undergrad?

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Speaker 1: Undergrad. Oh, so these were fun parties.

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Speaker 2: These were fun parties. We were all of legal drinking age,

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Speaker 2: and we were careful, we watched out for each other,

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Speaker 2: but way less wholesome than a cake with a waterfall.

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Speaker 1: Well, it does sound like your parties are maybe the

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Speaker 1: only way to make chemistry fun.

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Speaker 2: Ah, we did have a good time. The Benzene ring

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Speaker 2: and I me and my five friends, six of us total,

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Speaker 2: because there's six carbons in a benzene ring.

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Speaker 1: And today on the podcast, we're going to be exploring

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Speaker 1: how small decisions can lead to big consequences that also

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Speaker 1: involve chemistry. Nuclear power is incredible because these tiny, little

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Speaker 1: weird rocks can lead to incredible influence on our economy.

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Speaker 2: I am always impressed by the way you bring our

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Speaker 2: tangents back to the topic.

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Speaker 1: Not always easy, but I'm like, wow, we could do

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Speaker 1: a whole episode on Kelly's Weird college Parties.

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Speaker 2: I think our listenership would go down pretty fast at

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Speaker 2: that point. But Okay, so today we're talking about nuclear power,

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Speaker 2: and I'm really excited to be talking about these sort

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Speaker 2: of advances in nuclear power technology now because when Zach

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Speaker 2: and I wrote Soonish, which came out in like twenty seventeen,

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Speaker 2: we did some research on advanced nuclear fission reactors. And

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Speaker 2: I always have to pause before I say fission and

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Speaker 2: fusion because I memorized it in the opposite way initially,

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Speaker 2: and so now I will always pause and have to

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Speaker 2: think through it.

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Speaker 1: But anyway, well, you've got nuclear right. At least you

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Speaker 1: didn't say nuclear fusion.

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Speaker 2: There you go, that's right now. I'm gonna avoid saying

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Speaker 2: that we're too out of a concern for messing it up.

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Speaker 2: But we had a chapter on fission and a chapter

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Speaker 2: on fusion, but I haven't thought about this in about

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Speaker 2: the decades since we researched the topic, and so I'm

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Speaker 2: looking forward to your coverage of what the new and

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Speaker 2: exciting things are in the world of advanced nuclear reactors.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, if we're going to talk about nuclear power, we

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Speaker 1: need to understand how it works and how it's changing,

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Speaker 1: because it's not a stagnant field, right. Nuclear reactors today

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Speaker 1: are not the same nuclear technology your grandparents grew up with,

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Speaker 1: and so there's lots of promising directions, some with more waste,

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Speaker 1: some with less waste, some with greater risks, some with

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Speaker 1: smaller risks, and so it's crucial to understand the whole

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Speaker 1: spectrum of possibilities in order to have an informed conversation

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Speaker 1: about nuclear politics, which we're going to have in the

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Speaker 1: next episode. So I was curious what listeners thought about

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Speaker 1: the future of nuclear technology. What have they heard about

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Speaker 1: in terms of advanced nuclear reactors. So I went out

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Speaker 1: there and I asked our group of volunteers what is

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Speaker 1: the most promising advancement in nuclear power technology. Here's what

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Speaker 1: they had to say. If you'd like to play for

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Speaker 1: a future episode of the podcast, we really really really

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Speaker 1: really wanted to hear your voice on the pod right

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Speaker 1: to us to questions at Danielankelly dot org. So think

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Speaker 1: about it for a minute before you hear these answers.

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Speaker 1: What do you think is the most promising advancement in

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Speaker 1: nuclear technology? Here's what our listeners have to say.

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Speaker 3: Just for Kelly, I've heard of biologists working on microbes

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Speaker 3: to solve our nuclear waste problem.

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Speaker 1: Somehow they eat the nuclear waste.

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Speaker 2: No idea how it works, but heyo biology.

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Speaker 1: There are a few promising advances, but the most promising

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Speaker 1: comes in the form of superpowers from what used to

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Speaker 1: be just ordinary bug bites.

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Speaker 2: But where I would like to see more study is

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Speaker 2: in medical applications such as radiation treatment for cancer.

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Speaker 4: Not running redundant systems through the same conduent.

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Speaker 1: I think the most promising advance is the potential to

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Speaker 1: use what used to be waste as fuel for a

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Speaker 1: whole new set of nuclear reactions, using or repurposing fuel

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Speaker 1: that has been expent. Reusing the nuclear waste as opposed

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Speaker 1: to story without a doubt, fusion decreasing the waste.

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Speaker 2: People have probably paid a lot of money in PI

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Speaker 2: to make me think of thorium, So I'm going to say.

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Speaker 4: Thorium SMRs, which are those small modular reactors micro nuclear

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Speaker 4: energy where they're able to go much smaller nuclear power stations.

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Speaker 3: I guess to me what seems most interesting is the

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Speaker 3: liquid thorium salt reactors, which kind of can use up

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Speaker 3: the material really well from what I understand, or have

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Speaker 3: beneficial byproducts, and are also seemed a lot safer.

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Speaker 5: The very teeny tiny amount of nuclear material that's necessary

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Speaker 5: now to create vast amounts of energy, which means it's

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Speaker 5: not as big of a risk of a meltdown and

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Speaker 5: things like that.

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Speaker 4: Perhaps the reactors are more efficient, more manageable, less likely

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Speaker 4: to melt down in the case of an earthquake or

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Speaker 4: tsunami or other natural disaster.

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Speaker 2: As usual, a lot of fantastic answers. We're not going

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Speaker 2: to be talking too much about fusion today, but if

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Speaker 2: you want to hear more about fusion, a little while back,

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Speaker 2: we recorded an episode on whether or not there would

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Speaker 2: be enough fuel available to run fusion plants, and we

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Speaker 2: go through the science of fusion reactors there as well and.

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Speaker 1: Throw cold water on that whole industry.

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Speaker 2: Well, I remember we were optimistic at the end that

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Speaker 2: you know, once we got fusion going, maybe we'd get

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Speaker 2: the technologies needed to make like deuterium and trinium more available,

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Speaker 2: but maybe maybe maybe, But all right, but now today

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Speaker 2: we're talking about fission reactors in particular.

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Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, and so let's dig in first and make

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Speaker 1: sure we killing everybody understands the difference between fission and aufusion,

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Speaker 1: because they're closely related but very very different. Right. So,

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Speaker 1: fusion is what powers the universe, it's what makes stars bright,

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Speaker 1: it's where all the energy on Earth comes from. It's

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Speaker 1: really almost ubiquitous in the universe. Fission is much more

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Speaker 1: more rare. A fusion is basically when you take light

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Speaker 1: elements hydrogen, helium, things lighter than iron, and turn them

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Speaker 1: into heavier elements, so you stick them together and energy

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Speaker 1: is released. So, for example, if you take hydrogen and

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Speaker 1: you stick it together to make helium, energy is released

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Speaker 1: and the mass of that helium is less than the

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Speaker 1: mass of the hydrogen's combined, so energy is released there

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Speaker 1: in fusion. So that's fusion is you take light elements,

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Speaker 1: you stick them together, and energy is.

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Speaker 2: Released, which sounds easy but requires super extreme conditions to

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Speaker 2: make happen, which is why it's been so hard to

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Speaker 2: make a fusion plant exactly.

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Speaker 1: Those nuclear i do not want to stick together. They

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Speaker 1: have coolombic repulsion. You need high density, high pressure, all

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Speaker 1: sorts of stuff to make that happen. If you make

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Speaker 1: it happen, it releases energy and that helps it happen.

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Speaker 1: So it's this cool ignition process where the energy released

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Speaker 1: from fusion helps make the next round of fusion happen.

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Speaker 1: And you have a sort of similar chain reaction going

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Speaker 1: on in fission. But fission is the other direction. Fission says,

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Speaker 1: take a heavy element, break it open to make it

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Speaker 1: a lighter element, and energy is released. In that case,

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Speaker 1: you might wonder a whole lot a second, didn't Daniel

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Speaker 1: just tell us that when you squeeze light elements together

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Speaker 1: to make them heavy, energy is released. Now he's saying,

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Speaker 1: if you break elements apart to make them lighter, energy

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Speaker 1: is released. And yeah, those do sound contradictory. And the

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Speaker 1: difference is whether you're starting with light or heavy elements. So,

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Speaker 1: if your elements are light like below iron, specifically, fusing

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Speaker 1: them together releases energy, making them heavier towards iron. If

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Speaker 1: your elements are heavy, like uranium, something heavier than iron,

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Speaker 1: breaking them apart, bringing them again towards iron releases energy.

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Speaker 1: So basically, anytime you're taking a step towards iron, which

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Speaker 1: is like the middle of the periodic table, you are

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Speaker 1: releasing energy.

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Speaker 2: Can you remind me? Inside of stars is that where

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Speaker 2: we get iron and everything up from that? What is

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Speaker 2: the breakof there?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's about iron. So inside stars you mostly have hydrogen.

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Speaker 1: Hydrogen fuses to me helium, and then that fuses to

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Speaker 1: make neon and carbon and oxygen and heavier stuff silicon, nickel,

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Speaker 1: all the way up to iron. And that whole process

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Speaker 1: keeps the star hot because every step along the way

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Speaker 1: releases energy. What happens when you start fusing iron. If

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Speaker 1: a star is really big and really hot and has

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Speaker 1: the high enough temperature tofuse iron, that cools the star.

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Speaker 1: It takes some energy because it costs energy to fuse

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Speaker 1: iron together into heavier stuff that cools the star and

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Speaker 1: kills it. So that's the end of a star's life

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Speaker 1: when it has enough iron in it that that iron

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Speaker 1: starts to fuse and cools the star. So you can't

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Speaker 1: really make stuff heavier than iron in any substantial quantities

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Speaker 1: inside a star. To make the stuff heavier than iron,

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Speaker 1: uranium platinum, gold, all that good sparkly stuff. You need

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Speaker 1: other kinds of events collisions of neutron stars and supernova

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Speaker 1: for example, very briefly have the conditions to make those.

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Speaker 1: It costs a lot of energy to make those very

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Speaker 1: heavy stuff.

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Speaker 2: Okay, interesting, all right, So fusion really hard to do

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Speaker 2: unless you're in the sun. Fission much easier to do

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Speaker 2: using big stuff.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. So find some uranium, shoot it with a neutron,

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Speaker 1: for example. The uranium will break apart and it will

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Speaker 1: release more neutrons, and those neutrons can hit more uranium atoms,

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Speaker 1: which can release more neutrons. So if you have it

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Speaker 1: set up correctly, like your fuel is dense enough so

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Speaker 1: there's a high enough chance for that neutron to hit

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Speaker 1: another uranium nucleus, and the neutrons are at the right

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Speaker 1: speed to make that happen, Like really fast neutrons are slow,

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Speaker 1: neutrons might be more or less likely to make the

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Speaker 1: uranium nucleus break up. We'll dig into that in a minute.

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Speaker 1: Then you can get a chain reaction. If it's a

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Speaker 1: runaway reaction, like the fuel is very very dense and

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Speaker 1: things are growing exponentially, you get a bomb that's a

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Speaker 1: nuclear bomb.

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Speaker 2: Don't do that, folks, not in your basement.

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Speaker 1: If you manage it so that the rates at which

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Speaker 1: one nucleus is spurring the fission of another nucleus, you

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Speaker 1: regulate it to be steady, then that's a reactor. It's

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Speaker 1: releasing energy, but it's not growing exponentially out of control.

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Speaker 2: And why is uranium the sweet spot on the periodic

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Speaker 2: table for stuff you want for your fission reactor.

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Speaker 1: It's not really that sweet. It's just something that's around

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Speaker 1: and for a while, is pretty cheap to mine. As

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Speaker 1: we'll hear about, there are lots of things that are fissile.

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Speaker 1: It's just a question of what's present in the Earth's crust,

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Speaker 1: what's cheap to mine, what's not already being used by

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Speaker 1: other industries. And so uranium is actually not a great

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Speaker 1: source for fuel because most of the uranium we find

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Speaker 1: in the Earth's crust is an isotope that's not great

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Speaker 1: for fission. It's uranium two thirty eight. Uranium two thirty

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Speaker 1: five is pretty good for fission, but most of what

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Speaker 1: we find in the ground is uranium two thirty eight.

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Speaker 1: Less than one percent of natural uranium is the kind

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Speaker 1: we want so as we'll talk about there are other

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Speaker 1: options like thorium that are maybe even better for nuclear fuel.

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Speaker 2: Let's dig in then to uranium a bit more. So

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Speaker 2: you said, we mostly find uranium two thirty eight, but

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Speaker 2: we need two thirty five. How do you get it

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Speaker 2: from two thirty eight to two thirty five?

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Speaker 1: So what you do is just enrich it. Like remember

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Speaker 1: chemistry lab when you have like a pilot goo and

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Speaker 1: you need to separate it out into the elements of

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Speaker 1: the goo. You can like boil it and one will

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Speaker 1: boil off, or you can, you know, try to make

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Speaker 1: them settle or something. There's lots of different tricks in chemistry,

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Speaker 1: and what they typically do, because one of them is

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Speaker 1: heavier than the others, they use a centrifuge. So if

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Speaker 1: you remember, like hearing about Iranian centrifuges as they're trying

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Speaker 1: to purify uranium, that's a typical strategy because they have

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Speaker 1: different masses, is use a centrifuge, and so you can

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Speaker 1: enrich your uranium. Run these centrifuges more and more and

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Speaker 1: filter out the two thirty eight you get a higher

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Speaker 1: and higher fraction of two thirty five.

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Speaker 2: I've always been unreasonably concerned about USB sticks after hearing

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Speaker 2: the story about how the virus that messed up the

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Speaker 2: Iranian centrifuges was brought in by somebody who just had

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Speaker 2: a USB stick that had the virus and then when

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Speaker 2: they stuck it into one of the computers, it spread,

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Speaker 2: which is like amazing, And I'm sure there's a lot

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Speaker 2: of other things I should be way more worried about,

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Speaker 2: and of course, like nobody really cares about what I've

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Speaker 2: got going on in my office. I remember thinking that

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Speaker 2: was just like such a cool story, and now every

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Speaker 2: time I see a USB stick, I think, h's on you.

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Speaker 1: It's a pretty cool story about engineering, like cyber espionage,

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Speaker 1: pretty cool stuff. But are you running a uranium centrifuge

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Speaker 1: and your science form?

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Speaker 2: Well, I mean, why would I admit something like that

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Speaker 2: to you, Daniel on air? That's ridiculous, But you wouldn't

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Speaker 2: be a good spy at all. But yeah, I mean

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Speaker 2: the story there is that like this virus messed up

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Speaker 2: their centrifuges because there was concerned that Iran was turning

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Speaker 2: two thirty eight into two thirty five so that they

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Speaker 2: could start making weapons, and by messing up that process,

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Speaker 2: by messing up all of their super expensive centrifuges, we

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Speaker 2: at least managed to slow them down.

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Speaker 1: And so you need to enrich uranium because you need

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Speaker 1: dense enough source of the good stuff uranium two thirty five.

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Speaker 1: If you don't have a dense enough then it makes

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Speaker 1: neutrons when it splits, but then those neutrons don't find

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Speaker 1: other two thirty five nuclei and it just peters out.

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Speaker 1: So you need to be dense enough. You need to

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Speaker 1: enrich it up to like two or five percent. Doesn't

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Speaker 1: have to be pure uranium two thirty five at all,

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Speaker 1: like two to five percent, But this is still kind

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Speaker 1: of a problem because you end up mostly just burning

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Speaker 1: the U two thirty five, and the U two thirty

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Speaker 1: eight is just sitting there, and it sits there and

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Speaker 1: makes heavy elements which are bad. So this is like

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Speaker 1: really not a great mixture. A lot of the waste

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Speaker 1: comes from U two thirty being in the reaction, not

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Speaker 1: being part of it, and then getting converted to toxic stuff,

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Speaker 1: so it's not like a great situation. But what you

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Speaker 1: need to do to make uranium fission happen is to

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Speaker 1: enrich your fuel. So you have like two to five percent.

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Speaker 1: Then you also have to engineer the speed of those

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Speaker 1: neutrons to make things work.

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Speaker 2: So if you want the neutrons to be going quickly

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Speaker 2: so that they're bumping into the two thirty five, why

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Speaker 2: would you want to slow them down. It seems like

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Speaker 2: more neutrons is you know, that's better, that's more energy.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems like fast neutrons are good, right, The

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Speaker 1: whole point is to get energy out. Well, the thing

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Speaker 1: is that you two thirty five is a little personicity,

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Speaker 1: Like if you shoot fast neutrons added sometimes they will

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Speaker 1: just go right through. They will not make it fizz.

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Speaker 1: What is the very many fission? They will not make

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Speaker 1: it fission. Can want atom fission? That seems weird.

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Speaker 2: They will not fission it. I don't know.

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Speaker 1: I will not stand for that anyway. YouTube thirty five

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Speaker 1: likes slower neutrons. YouTube thirty eight likes faster neutrons. But

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Speaker 1: uranium fission doesn't make enough fast neutrons to sustain fusion

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Speaker 1: with two thirty eight, So you got to use the

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Speaker 1: two thirty five, and you've got to slow down the

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Speaker 1: neutrons untill they're in the sweet spot for making other

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Speaker 1: uranium nuclei go. So you've got to moderate the temperature.

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Speaker 1: So you hear a lot about neutron moderation, and so

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Speaker 1: the way they do this is they use water. So

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Speaker 1: you have like these fuel rods and then you have

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Speaker 1: water around them, which is also good for cooling them

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Speaker 1: and extracting the energy, but it slows down the neutrons

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Speaker 1: to keep the reaction going. It's a little counterintuitive, but

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Speaker 1: this stuff is a little bit sensitive.

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Speaker 2: I thought the answer because my memory is great. I

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Speaker 2: know I wrote about this about a decade ago, but

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Speaker 2: I thought the answer was going to be you don't

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Speaker 2: want the neutrons to go too fast because you don't

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Speaker 2: want the reaction to go too fast and overheat. But

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Speaker 2: that's not the answer. Was misremembering. Okay, so you've got

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Speaker 2: the water. The water is heating up. How does this

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Speaker 2: create energy? Does the water turn into steam and turn

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Speaker 2: a turbine or is the energy being collected in some

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Speaker 2: other way?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so not directly. The most popular technology is called

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Speaker 1: a pressurized water reactor. You have uranium rods surrounded by water.

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Speaker 1: The water moderates the speed of the neutrons, also keeps

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Speaker 1: the core from overheating, and then you've got to extract

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Speaker 1: the energy from that water, so it heats up the water.

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Speaker 1: How do you get the energy out of the water,

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Speaker 1: typically a turbine. Right. Also, that water becomes radioactive, so

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Speaker 1: you want to buffer yourself from that. So typically there's

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Speaker 1: like a heat exchange or with that water well then

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Speaker 1: heat up other water. You have like these two corkscrews

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Speaker 1: that interwove with each other. It's sort of like electrical inductance,

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Speaker 1: but with heat or just basically a radiator. You have

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Speaker 1: this water pass near other water and the hot, nasty,

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Speaker 1: radioactive water heats up the clean cold water, which then

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Speaker 1: boils into steam and then turns a turbine. So that's

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Speaker 1: the most common steps, and this is called a light

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Speaker 1: water thermal reactor, sometimes known as a pressurized water.

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Speaker 2: Reactor if I'm remembering correctly. The reason that light water

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Speaker 2: thermal reactors are the most common kind of reactor out

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Speaker 2: there isn't because we were super careful and we looked

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Speaker 2: at all the possible reactor designs and there was definitely

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Speaker 2: none that could be better than this, but because we

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Speaker 2: sort of happened upon one design because it fit really

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Speaker 2: well in our submarines that we wanted to have nuclear

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Speaker 2: powered Is that story correct.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that story is correct. In the fifties that were

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Speaker 1: exploring lots of different technologies, some of which we're going

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Speaker 1: to talk about thorium and other technologies. But this was

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Speaker 1: a good fit for the military because one of the

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Speaker 1: waste products of this reactor is plutonium, which the military

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Speaker 1: wanted to produce anyway for their weapons. Also, if you're

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Speaker 1: on a ship or a submarine places that the military

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Speaker 1: wanted to put nuclear power, water is plentiful. It's not

438
00:21:54,760 --> 00:21:58,480
Speaker 1: so hard to find water. And so these light water

439
00:21:58,560 --> 00:22:02,320
Speaker 1: thermal reactors were explored for the military, and the government

440
00:22:02,320 --> 00:22:06,160
Speaker 1: basically stopped funding all these other directions. The government's decisions

441
00:22:06,160 --> 00:22:08,919
Speaker 1: early on determined like what was explored and what was

442
00:22:09,000 --> 00:22:12,639
Speaker 1: made economically feasible. No private industry was like involved in

443
00:22:12,720 --> 00:22:15,960
Speaker 1: developing nuclear technology. This is definitely like a public investment

444
00:22:15,960 --> 00:22:16,640
Speaker 1: by the government.

445
00:22:16,800 --> 00:22:18,240
Speaker 2: All Right, well, let's take a break, and when we

446
00:22:18,240 --> 00:22:20,080
Speaker 2: get back, we'll talk about some of the risks of

447
00:22:20,080 --> 00:22:39,440
Speaker 2: this particular kind of reactor. All Right, we just finished

448
00:22:39,480 --> 00:22:42,920
Speaker 2: talking about how light water thermal reactors work. Let's talk

449
00:22:42,920 --> 00:22:45,680
Speaker 2: about some of the risks of this particular kind of reactor.

450
00:22:45,800 --> 00:22:50,760
Speaker 2: Go for it, Daniel, You're turning to be the negative Nelly.

451
00:22:50,920 --> 00:22:52,560
Speaker 1: I don't know how to order them, but you know

452
00:22:52,600 --> 00:22:55,240
Speaker 1: it's called a pressurized water reactor. So let's start with

453
00:22:55,280 --> 00:22:58,040
Speaker 1: the pressurized water. You got this water that you want

454
00:22:58,040 --> 00:23:01,120
Speaker 1: to keep liquid because you want to keep flowing. It's

455
00:23:01,200 --> 00:23:03,920
Speaker 1: easiest to control if it's liquid, it's a more efficient

456
00:23:03,960 --> 00:23:06,720
Speaker 1: heat transfer. If it's liquid, you got other things like

457
00:23:06,800 --> 00:23:09,440
Speaker 1: control rods, graphite you want to dip in the liquid.

458
00:23:09,800 --> 00:23:11,440
Speaker 1: So basically, you want to keep this stuff liquid. But

459
00:23:11,480 --> 00:23:14,000
Speaker 1: it's also really hot. So how do you keep something

460
00:23:14,080 --> 00:23:16,880
Speaker 1: liquid if it's really hot. Chemistry tells us you need

461
00:23:16,920 --> 00:23:19,960
Speaker 1: to keep it at high pressure, right, Basically, build really

462
00:23:20,000 --> 00:23:22,719
Speaker 1: strong vessel and force the water to have high pressure

463
00:23:22,760 --> 00:23:25,280
Speaker 1: so it doesn't turn into steam. We're talking like one

464
00:23:25,359 --> 00:23:28,560
Speaker 1: hundred to one hundred and fifty atmospheres of pressure, so

465
00:23:28,800 --> 00:23:32,560
Speaker 1: really high pressure stuff. This is kind of dangerous because

466
00:23:32,840 --> 00:23:35,919
Speaker 1: very high pressure. Right, if you lose containment, you know,

467
00:23:35,960 --> 00:23:39,280
Speaker 1: you can imagine like a rivit pops and steam shoots out. Right,

468
00:23:39,320 --> 00:23:41,359
Speaker 1: it's super hot, it's super high pressure. It's going to

469
00:23:41,400 --> 00:23:45,520
Speaker 1: burn somebody. Also, as soon as you lose pressure, you're

470
00:23:45,560 --> 00:23:48,880
Speaker 1: losing your coolant. Right, This water is crucial to keep

471
00:23:48,880 --> 00:23:51,840
Speaker 1: in the core from overheating, right, we don't want the

472
00:23:51,840 --> 00:23:54,159
Speaker 1: core to turn into a bomb. We don't want the

473
00:23:54,520 --> 00:23:57,520
Speaker 1: energy from that thing to like melt the reactor itself.

474
00:23:57,880 --> 00:23:59,720
Speaker 1: So you've got to keep the temperature at a certain

475
00:23:59,800 --> 00:24:02,879
Speaker 1: level so it doesn't melt down. That's literally what melting

476
00:24:02,920 --> 00:24:05,800
Speaker 1: down happens. But as soon as you lose containment of

477
00:24:05,840 --> 00:24:08,520
Speaker 1: your water, then you're losing your coolant and boom you

478
00:24:08,560 --> 00:24:11,480
Speaker 1: have an overheating and a meltdown. This is what happened

479
00:24:11,520 --> 00:24:13,879
Speaker 1: a three mile island. Like one of the water hatches

480
00:24:13,960 --> 00:24:17,520
Speaker 1: jammed at Fukushima. One of the water pumps was knocked out,

481
00:24:18,160 --> 00:24:22,080
Speaker 1: and in Chernobyl the water boiled off. And so this

482
00:24:22,240 --> 00:24:24,720
Speaker 1: is really important to keeping this whole thing going is

483
00:24:24,800 --> 00:24:27,399
Speaker 1: keeping this very high water pressure and that's not easy

484
00:24:27,440 --> 00:24:30,399
Speaker 1: to do. And if it fails in any way, boom

485
00:24:30,440 --> 00:24:31,200
Speaker 1: you have a disaster.

486
00:24:31,720 --> 00:24:33,639
Speaker 2: So one, you have to worry about the boom, but

487
00:24:33,680 --> 00:24:35,879
Speaker 2: do you also have to worry about when the water

488
00:24:36,000 --> 00:24:38,640
Speaker 2: gets out it's a steam. Can that steam travel great

489
00:24:38,680 --> 00:24:41,400
Speaker 2: distances or does that tend to settle near the plant?

490
00:24:41,720 --> 00:24:44,199
Speaker 1: If you have any loss of containment, then the clouds

491
00:24:44,200 --> 00:24:46,680
Speaker 1: can travel great distances, like what happened at Chernobyl is

492
00:24:46,720 --> 00:24:49,800
Speaker 1: these clouds of radioactive dust and steam and all sorts

493
00:24:49,800 --> 00:24:54,000
Speaker 1: of stuff drifted over Europe and like caused cancers all

494
00:24:54,000 --> 00:24:57,160
Speaker 1: over Europe. It was really bad. Yes, it's terrible.

495
00:24:57,359 --> 00:25:00,840
Speaker 2: This pressurized containment problem. Is that only a problem for

496
00:25:01,640 --> 00:25:04,320
Speaker 2: light water thermal reactors or is this a problem for

497
00:25:04,359 --> 00:25:06,040
Speaker 2: some of the other reactor types we're gonna talk about

498
00:25:06,040 --> 00:25:06,360
Speaker 2: as well.

499
00:25:06,600 --> 00:25:08,960
Speaker 1: It's only a problem for light water thermal reactors. For

500
00:25:09,000 --> 00:25:12,480
Speaker 1: these pressurized water reactors, and there's lots of designs inspired

501
00:25:12,480 --> 00:25:16,640
Speaker 1: specifically by avoiding having high pressure liquid, and we'll talk

502
00:25:16,680 --> 00:25:18,960
Speaker 1: about some of those, but this is by far the

503
00:25:19,000 --> 00:25:21,640
Speaker 1: most common, Like something like eighty five percent of all

504
00:25:21,680 --> 00:25:24,760
Speaker 1: reactors in the world are pressurized water reactors.

505
00:25:25,200 --> 00:25:29,080
Speaker 2: All right, so the pressure part is not great. Let's

506
00:25:29,160 --> 00:25:30,640
Speaker 2: move on to another risk.

507
00:25:31,880 --> 00:25:34,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the U two thirty eight that's mostly what's

508
00:25:34,320 --> 00:25:37,840
Speaker 1: in your fuel rods, is not burning, it's not undergoing fission,

509
00:25:38,320 --> 00:25:40,400
Speaker 1: but it does get hit with a lot of neutrons

510
00:25:40,400 --> 00:25:42,800
Speaker 1: and it breaks down into other stuff. It can make

511
00:25:42,840 --> 00:25:46,800
Speaker 1: things like plutonium, right, plutonium two thirty nine, for example,

512
00:25:46,880 --> 00:25:49,960
Speaker 1: or plutonium two thirty eight. Two thirty eight is short

513
00:25:49,960 --> 00:25:52,360
Speaker 1: lived and very very toxic. It has a half life

514
00:25:52,400 --> 00:25:54,399
Speaker 1: of eighty eight years, but two thirty nine has a

515
00:25:54,400 --> 00:25:58,040
Speaker 1: half life of twenty four thousand years. So you got

516
00:25:58,160 --> 00:26:01,280
Speaker 1: sort of two different angles here. One is you're making

517
00:26:01,400 --> 00:26:06,200
Speaker 1: weapons fuel, right, Plutonium is excellent for making weapons, and

518
00:26:06,240 --> 00:26:09,399
Speaker 1: you're creating stuff that has like thousands of years or

519
00:26:09,560 --> 00:26:13,680
Speaker 1: sometimes millions of years, like neptunium two thirty seven has

520
00:26:13,720 --> 00:26:17,119
Speaker 1: a two point one million year half life. This stuff

521
00:26:17,119 --> 00:26:18,520
Speaker 1: is toxic for a long long time.

522
00:26:18,880 --> 00:26:22,160
Speaker 2: So how big is the weapons risk? If you run

523
00:26:22,200 --> 00:26:24,760
Speaker 2: one of these plants for a decade, does that give

524
00:26:24,800 --> 00:26:27,800
Speaker 2: you enough plutonium to make a big bomb or do

525
00:26:27,800 --> 00:26:30,359
Speaker 2: you need to run it for two hundred years or

526
00:26:30,440 --> 00:26:32,399
Speaker 2: does it depend on a lot of other factors. How

527
00:26:32,480 --> 00:26:35,000
Speaker 2: much weapons grade radioactive material is produced?

528
00:26:35,440 --> 00:26:37,359
Speaker 1: Not a lot, but you don't need a lot to

529
00:26:37,359 --> 00:26:40,000
Speaker 1: make a few bombs, right, And in order to have

530
00:26:40,080 --> 00:26:43,399
Speaker 1: like geopolitical deterrence, you don't need a huge number of bombs.

531
00:26:43,440 --> 00:26:45,840
Speaker 1: Like North Korea started out with like three, four or

532
00:26:45,840 --> 00:26:49,320
Speaker 1: five bombs, but that completely changed the politics are dealing

533
00:26:49,359 --> 00:26:52,879
Speaker 1: with North Korea. Right, one bomb dropped on Soul is

534
00:26:53,040 --> 00:26:56,320
Speaker 1: a huge impact. And so yeah, you can make a

535
00:26:56,359 --> 00:27:01,520
Speaker 1: weapons significant amount of plutonium without a huge industry. Absolutely.

536
00:27:02,000 --> 00:27:03,840
Speaker 2: This is one of the things that's so frustrating to

537
00:27:03,880 --> 00:27:07,840
Speaker 2: me about nuclear power is it's so clearly a technology

538
00:27:07,880 --> 00:27:09,520
Speaker 2: that would be you know, great in this world where

539
00:27:09,520 --> 00:27:13,040
Speaker 2: we're dealing with climate change, if only humans weren't so humany.

540
00:27:16,840 --> 00:27:18,840
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And you know, there's two sides to this,

541
00:27:18,880 --> 00:27:20,800
Speaker 1: as we'll dig in when we talked to Becca later

542
00:27:20,840 --> 00:27:24,000
Speaker 1: this week. Like most of the stuff, when you make it,

543
00:27:24,200 --> 00:27:26,439
Speaker 1: you just keep it on site at the reactor, you know,

544
00:27:26,600 --> 00:27:29,080
Speaker 1: drive it all around. But there's this question of like

545
00:27:29,080 --> 00:27:31,159
Speaker 1: where's it going to go long term? You know, like

546
00:27:31,400 --> 00:27:33,080
Speaker 1: can we just bury it in the ground, Can we

547
00:27:33,119 --> 00:27:35,840
Speaker 1: put it in Yaka Mountain? Should we launch it into space?

548
00:27:35,920 --> 00:27:38,520
Speaker 1: Isn't that a terrible idea? And you know a lot

549
00:27:38,520 --> 00:27:40,639
Speaker 1: of people are concerned about that, and the environmental is

550
00:27:40,720 --> 00:27:43,199
Speaker 1: very concerned about that. On the other hand, you have

551
00:27:43,280 --> 00:27:46,560
Speaker 1: to remember that this stuff has a finite lifetime, right,

552
00:27:46,840 --> 00:27:49,720
Speaker 1: This stuff will decay away into something non toxic after

553
00:27:49,840 --> 00:27:53,200
Speaker 1: hundreds or thousands of years. But if you're making really

554
00:27:53,280 --> 00:27:57,119
Speaker 1: terrible forever chemicals with fossil fuels, that stuff is poisoned forever.

555
00:27:57,400 --> 00:27:59,960
Speaker 1: Like literally you come back to Earth in five billion years,

556
00:28:00,280 --> 00:28:03,199
Speaker 1: it'll still kill you. And so we should remember that

557
00:28:03,359 --> 00:28:06,280
Speaker 1: a long lifetime is still shorter than an infinite lifetime.

558
00:28:06,840 --> 00:28:10,280
Speaker 2: Speaking of sending nuclear materials to space, once there was

559
00:28:10,600 --> 00:28:12,560
Speaker 2: a piece of I think it was polonium that was

560
00:28:12,600 --> 00:28:14,960
Speaker 2: being sent up, and the rocket blew up and the

561
00:28:15,080 --> 00:28:18,119
Speaker 2: radio active materials sort of scattered over the Soviet Union.

562
00:28:18,520 --> 00:28:21,280
Speaker 2: And then the Soviet Union also sent up a bunch

563
00:28:21,320 --> 00:28:24,639
Speaker 2: of tiny nuclear reactors to power some of their satellites,

564
00:28:24,960 --> 00:28:27,360
Speaker 2: and one of those satellites went rogue, and the nuclear

565
00:28:27,400 --> 00:28:31,600
Speaker 2: material that powered that reactor scattered over northern Canada. So,

566
00:28:32,040 --> 00:28:34,560
Speaker 2: you know, sending the stuff into space could go wrong

567
00:28:34,600 --> 00:28:36,639
Speaker 2: and scatter it over a big stretch of land if

568
00:28:36,640 --> 00:28:39,560
Speaker 2: anything happens to that rocket. These are complicated problems.

569
00:28:39,760 --> 00:28:41,840
Speaker 1: Basically, each time you do a launch, it's a potential

570
00:28:41,880 --> 00:28:43,280
Speaker 1: dirty bomb, right.

571
00:28:43,280 --> 00:28:45,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you gotta be really careful about this stuff.

572
00:28:45,800 --> 00:28:48,040
Speaker 1: Nobody wants dirty bombs. I don't want clean bombs or

573
00:28:48,080 --> 00:28:50,200
Speaker 1: dirty bombs, but I definitely don't want dirty bombs.

574
00:28:50,440 --> 00:28:52,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, thumbs down to dirty bombs. We both agree.

575
00:28:53,040 --> 00:28:55,719
Speaker 1: And there's another factor to this waste, which is the

576
00:28:55,760 --> 00:28:59,600
Speaker 1: waste produced in the actual reactions is not that large.

577
00:29:00,160 --> 00:29:03,360
Speaker 1: The total amount, the volume of waste produced worldwide in

578
00:29:03,400 --> 00:29:05,760
Speaker 1: the history of the industry is not huge. It's like

579
00:29:05,800 --> 00:29:08,880
Speaker 1: a football field size, But that's not all of the waste. Like,

580
00:29:08,920 --> 00:29:11,600
Speaker 1: in order to get uranium out of the ground, you

581
00:29:11,720 --> 00:29:13,480
Speaker 1: have to mine it, and there's a lot of waste

582
00:29:13,560 --> 00:29:16,680
Speaker 1: produced in that mining. Some of that is also radioactive

583
00:29:16,720 --> 00:29:20,240
Speaker 1: and toxic and much much higher volumes. So when you

584
00:29:20,280 --> 00:29:23,040
Speaker 1: hear people talk about the waste from nuclear power plants,

585
00:29:23,480 --> 00:29:26,840
Speaker 1: guess the actual waste from the reactions is quite small

586
00:29:26,880 --> 00:29:30,200
Speaker 1: and very toxic, But there's a much larger volume of

587
00:29:30,240 --> 00:29:33,360
Speaker 1: waste produced in the processing to get the fuel to

588
00:29:33,520 --> 00:29:36,640
Speaker 1: the plant. That's not always considered in those conversations.

589
00:29:36,880 --> 00:29:38,280
Speaker 2: And what do we do with that waste?

590
00:29:38,520 --> 00:29:40,959
Speaker 1: Yeah, that waste we store on site near the mines,

591
00:29:41,000 --> 00:29:43,960
Speaker 1: and like that's dangerous also when you're polluting water tables

592
00:29:44,040 --> 00:29:45,600
Speaker 1: and so yeah, oh.

593
00:29:45,560 --> 00:29:49,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no easy answers. Okay, all right, so let's

594
00:29:49,480 --> 00:29:52,000
Speaker 2: move on. We've now talked about the benefits and risks

595
00:29:52,040 --> 00:29:54,400
Speaker 2: of the light water thermal reactor. Let's move on to

596
00:29:54,480 --> 00:29:56,880
Speaker 2: some of the alternative designs that have sort of different

597
00:29:56,920 --> 00:30:00,600
Speaker 2: problems and different benefits. Let's start with the boiling water reactor.

598
00:30:01,280 --> 00:30:02,920
Speaker 1: So the most obvious things they do is to focus

599
00:30:02,960 --> 00:30:04,680
Speaker 1: on the pressure of the water. Can you make a

600
00:30:04,720 --> 00:30:08,160
Speaker 1: design for a nuclear reactor core that doesn't require high

601
00:30:08,160 --> 00:30:11,760
Speaker 1: pressure water. So there's a boiling water reactor that says, hey,

602
00:30:11,840 --> 00:30:14,600
Speaker 1: let's just let the water boil and turn into steam.

603
00:30:15,000 --> 00:30:17,040
Speaker 1: That makes the heat transfer less efficient, so you have

604
00:30:17,080 --> 00:30:19,240
Speaker 1: to build it larger so you can have like more

605
00:30:19,280 --> 00:30:22,040
Speaker 1: of this steam and the water of course is less

606
00:30:22,040 --> 00:30:24,960
Speaker 1: dense because now it's steam, but it lets you lower

607
00:30:25,040 --> 00:30:28,320
Speaker 1: the pressure down to like seventy five atmosphere because now

608
00:30:28,360 --> 00:30:30,360
Speaker 1: you can just have the water turn into steam and

609
00:30:30,360 --> 00:30:33,600
Speaker 1: then you use that steam directly to generate energy, basically

610
00:30:33,600 --> 00:30:35,440
Speaker 1: what you were saying earlier. So instead of having this

611
00:30:35,520 --> 00:30:39,720
Speaker 1: like weird heat exchanger system where the hot water boils

612
00:30:39,800 --> 00:30:43,440
Speaker 1: other clean water, you just use the dirty water directly

613
00:30:43,600 --> 00:30:44,960
Speaker 1: to make your steam.

614
00:30:45,400 --> 00:30:49,480
Speaker 2: So that seems clearly better than the other method. Is

615
00:30:49,520 --> 00:30:51,440
Speaker 2: there a downside to this reactor?

616
00:30:52,120 --> 00:30:55,440
Speaker 1: Downside is now you are using irradiated water and steam

617
00:30:55,560 --> 00:30:58,600
Speaker 1: to generate your energy, and so it's a little less

618
00:30:58,600 --> 00:31:02,719
Speaker 1: contained like now involved in these turbines and stuff like that,

619
00:31:02,800 --> 00:31:07,320
Speaker 1: So you haven't decoupled the energy production and the electricity production,

620
00:31:07,800 --> 00:31:10,600
Speaker 1: so there's some risks there. Also, it has to be larger,

621
00:31:11,000 --> 00:31:13,480
Speaker 1: and so for example we're talking about later the benefits

622
00:31:13,520 --> 00:31:17,720
Speaker 1: of small modular reactors. Those require technology that has very

623
00:31:17,760 --> 00:31:20,320
Speaker 1: dense fuel and very small reactor core, and you can't

624
00:31:20,360 --> 00:31:22,120
Speaker 1: do that with a boiling water reactor. You need a

625
00:31:22,240 --> 00:31:24,440
Speaker 1: large core because this steam isn't as dense and the

626
00:31:24,480 --> 00:31:25,880
Speaker 1: heat transfer is less efficient.

627
00:31:26,160 --> 00:31:28,680
Speaker 2: I think I'm still a little confused about the decoupling thing.

628
00:31:28,800 --> 00:31:31,400
Speaker 2: Is the point that you're going to at some point

629
00:31:31,560 --> 00:31:34,680
Speaker 2: also need to replace the turbine and now you have

630
00:31:34,760 --> 00:31:37,080
Speaker 2: a radioactive turbine and that's the problem.

631
00:31:37,360 --> 00:31:38,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.

632
00:31:38,520 --> 00:31:41,320
Speaker 2: Okay, so about what percent of our reactors right now

633
00:31:41,320 --> 00:31:42,640
Speaker 2: are boiling water reactors.

634
00:31:42,800 --> 00:31:45,360
Speaker 1: These are like fifteen percent, so a good number of

635
00:31:45,400 --> 00:31:47,600
Speaker 1: these and this has proven technology, right. I mentioned this

636
00:31:47,680 --> 00:31:49,360
Speaker 1: because some of the stuff we're talking about later is

637
00:31:49,360 --> 00:31:52,000
Speaker 1: like a little bit more speculative. But these are reactors

638
00:31:52,000 --> 00:31:53,880
Speaker 1: that are running, we know how they work. We have

639
00:31:53,920 --> 00:31:57,040
Speaker 1: people out there in the world with experience running these reactors.

640
00:31:57,120 --> 00:32:00,480
Speaker 1: It's not speculative, it's not experimental technology. This is like

641
00:32:00,600 --> 00:32:04,160
Speaker 1: it's been proven. And then the last piece are heavy

642
00:32:04,200 --> 00:32:07,360
Speaker 1: water reactors like five percent of the reactors out there,

643
00:32:07,400 --> 00:32:10,640
Speaker 1: say well, let's just take the pressurize water and replace

644
00:32:10,680 --> 00:32:13,680
Speaker 1: it with heavy water. So heavy water is not just

645
00:32:13,720 --> 00:32:16,640
Speaker 1: like water that feels heavier. It's water where some of

646
00:32:16,640 --> 00:32:19,640
Speaker 1: the hydrogen has been replaced by an isotope of hydrogen.

647
00:32:19,920 --> 00:32:22,560
Speaker 1: So instead of just having like a proton as for

648
00:32:22,600 --> 00:32:26,200
Speaker 1: the hygen, you have like a proton and a neutron together. Basically, deuterium,

649
00:32:26,480 --> 00:32:30,000
Speaker 1: one of the important fuels for fusion, can be used

650
00:32:30,040 --> 00:32:33,959
Speaker 1: as an alternative moderator in your reaction and a heavy

651
00:32:34,080 --> 00:32:35,120
Speaker 1: water reactor.

652
00:32:35,680 --> 00:32:38,560
Speaker 2: And you had told me in that fusion episode that

653
00:32:38,600 --> 00:32:40,960
Speaker 2: there's not a lot of deuterium. Is that right? Is

654
00:32:40,960 --> 00:32:44,280
Speaker 2: getting enough deuterium one of the difficult things of running these.

655
00:32:44,120 --> 00:32:48,239
Speaker 1: Reactors, Yeah, exactly. Deutarium is not free and it's not

656
00:32:48,320 --> 00:32:49,920
Speaker 1: that easy to filter out. I mean, there's a lot

657
00:32:49,960 --> 00:32:51,840
Speaker 1: of it out there, but it's a little bit rare.

658
00:32:52,080 --> 00:32:54,880
Speaker 1: And so heavy water is an excellent moderator because it

659
00:32:54,920 --> 00:32:57,240
Speaker 1: will slow the neutrons down to the speed that U

660
00:32:57,280 --> 00:33:00,640
Speaker 1: two thirty five needs it, but it never captures them right,

661
00:33:00,680 --> 00:33:03,600
Speaker 1: and so if lets them fly through. Basically it's perfect

662
00:33:03,640 --> 00:33:07,280
Speaker 1: at converting fast neutrons to slow neutrons without ever gobbling

663
00:33:07,360 --> 00:33:10,160
Speaker 1: up the neutrons, and so you can actually run a

664
00:33:10,200 --> 00:33:13,160
Speaker 1: heavy water reactor without using enrichment. You can have a

665
00:33:13,240 --> 00:33:16,240
Speaker 1: much lower density of you two thirty five in your

666
00:33:16,280 --> 00:33:19,080
Speaker 1: fuel for a heavy water reactor. So there's pros and

667
00:33:19,120 --> 00:33:19,760
Speaker 1: cons there.

668
00:33:20,040 --> 00:33:24,280
Speaker 2: Okay, so it's good to use more two thirty five.

669
00:33:24,200 --> 00:33:27,520
Speaker 1: Lets you use less two thirty five. Usually you need

670
00:33:27,560 --> 00:33:30,320
Speaker 1: more two thirty five so the neutrons can find other

671
00:33:30,320 --> 00:33:33,800
Speaker 1: two thirty five nuclei. But here heavy water converts all

672
00:33:33,800 --> 00:33:36,760
Speaker 1: the fast neutrons into exactly the right neutrons that U

673
00:33:36,840 --> 00:33:39,600
Speaker 1: two thirty five needs, so that even if you don't

674
00:33:39,600 --> 00:33:42,960
Speaker 1: have an enriched fuel, those neutrons will find enough two

675
00:33:43,000 --> 00:33:45,960
Speaker 1: thirty five nuclei to get the reaction to keep going.

676
00:33:46,320 --> 00:33:48,760
Speaker 2: But two thirty eight is the stuff that turns into

677
00:33:48,760 --> 00:33:52,320
Speaker 2: the nasty byproducts, right, yeah, exactly. So now you've got

678
00:33:52,400 --> 00:33:55,280
Speaker 2: the same kinds of waste and you have the same

679
00:33:56,040 --> 00:33:58,280
Speaker 2: confinement issues as the light water reactor.

680
00:33:59,000 --> 00:34:01,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, you still have to keep high pressure here because

681
00:34:01,840 --> 00:34:03,960
Speaker 1: you have the same issues. You want to keep the

682
00:34:03,960 --> 00:34:06,880
Speaker 1: water liquid, et cetera. So the heavy water reactor is

683
00:34:06,920 --> 00:34:10,160
Speaker 1: one variation on the pressurized water reactor. It's not a

684
00:34:10,200 --> 00:34:11,280
Speaker 1: boiling water reactor.

685
00:34:11,440 --> 00:34:13,320
Speaker 2: Okay, so you still have the same problems with waste

686
00:34:13,360 --> 00:34:16,080
Speaker 2: and the same problems with pressure, but you don't have

687
00:34:16,120 --> 00:34:20,560
Speaker 2: to start the process by enriching the uranium as much exactly. Okay,

688
00:34:21,160 --> 00:34:23,799
Speaker 2: all right, so we've gone through the main kinds of

689
00:34:23,920 --> 00:34:28,680
Speaker 2: currently existing nuclear fission reactors that are out there. Let's

690
00:34:28,680 --> 00:34:30,359
Speaker 2: take a break, and when we get back, let's talk

691
00:34:30,360 --> 00:34:32,560
Speaker 2: about some of the more advanced designs that are being

692
00:34:32,560 --> 00:34:52,000
Speaker 2: researched at the moment. And we're back, all right. So

693
00:34:52,040 --> 00:34:54,960
Speaker 2: we talked about the most common nuclear reactor designs that

694
00:34:55,000 --> 00:34:56,279
Speaker 2: we've got at the moment, and now we're going to

695
00:34:56,280 --> 00:34:58,720
Speaker 2: talk about some more advanced designs that are being researched.

696
00:34:58,800 --> 00:35:01,440
Speaker 2: So Daniel tell us about gas cooled reactors.

697
00:35:01,719 --> 00:35:05,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, so these are super cool ha haha. The idea

698
00:35:05,840 --> 00:35:09,120
Speaker 1: is to use something like helium to cool your reactor.

699
00:35:09,680 --> 00:35:13,040
Speaker 1: Helium is excellent because it's a noble gas. It hardly

700
00:35:13,080 --> 00:35:16,440
Speaker 1: ever reacts, It likes to ignore everything, so it's basically inert.

701
00:35:16,840 --> 00:35:19,520
Speaker 1: It's a very high heat capacity, so it will absorb

702
00:35:19,600 --> 00:35:22,040
Speaker 1: a lot of heat. So take your water out and

703
00:35:22,120 --> 00:35:25,120
Speaker 1: replace it with helium. But the water also is doing

704
00:35:25,200 --> 00:35:27,839
Speaker 1: two jobs. Right. The water was not just keeping your

705
00:35:27,880 --> 00:35:31,760
Speaker 1: reactor from overheating, it was also moderating the neutron speed.

706
00:35:31,800 --> 00:35:33,879
Speaker 1: So they were just right forgetting the U two thirty

707
00:35:33,880 --> 00:35:36,320
Speaker 1: five to do its thing. So now you need something

708
00:35:36,320 --> 00:35:39,560
Speaker 1: else to do that moderation, and so they use graphite,

709
00:35:39,560 --> 00:35:42,839
Speaker 1: either rods of graphite that you insert between the rods

710
00:35:42,880 --> 00:35:45,400
Speaker 1: of fuel, or you can take the uranium and code

711
00:35:45,440 --> 00:35:49,720
Speaker 1: it in graphite. Graphite is awesome because it will moderate

712
00:35:49,800 --> 00:35:53,960
Speaker 1: the temperature and it's like almost indestructible. You cannot get

713
00:35:54,000 --> 00:35:57,480
Speaker 1: a nuclear reactor up to high enough temperatures to melt

714
00:35:57,560 --> 00:36:01,640
Speaker 1: this graphite. So, for example, you cot your uranium in graphite.

715
00:36:01,719 --> 00:36:05,160
Speaker 1: It does the moderation and it's basically impossible to have

716
00:36:05,200 --> 00:36:08,239
Speaker 1: a leak or a meltdown or to lose containment because

717
00:36:08,280 --> 00:36:11,160
Speaker 1: the graphite is really going to wrap it up forever for.

718
00:36:11,160 --> 00:36:14,920
Speaker 2: This hot stuff that's happening. Do you have a container

719
00:36:15,000 --> 00:36:17,240
Speaker 2: of water that makes the steam that turns the turbine?

720
00:36:17,280 --> 00:36:18,680
Speaker 2: Is that where the power part happens.

721
00:36:19,120 --> 00:36:22,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the uranium is wrapped in graphite, that whole

722
00:36:22,200 --> 00:36:25,040
Speaker 1: thing is surrounded by helium. Then the helium has a

723
00:36:25,040 --> 00:36:28,000
Speaker 1: heat exchanger to water and then that water turns turbines.

724
00:36:28,120 --> 00:36:29,960
Speaker 1: We should do a whole episode about like why we

725
00:36:30,000 --> 00:36:33,719
Speaker 1: still use steam driven turbines, Like we have this incredible

726
00:36:33,920 --> 00:36:36,480
Speaker 1: modern age technology, and in the end it's basically a

727
00:36:36,480 --> 00:36:40,239
Speaker 1: steam engine. Yeah, I think that's super fascinating. But yeah,

728
00:36:40,320 --> 00:36:44,759
Speaker 1: so uranium surrounded in graphite covered in helium, and then

729
00:36:44,800 --> 00:36:47,520
Speaker 1: the helium heats water, which turns the turbine, which generates

730
00:36:47,560 --> 00:36:49,360
Speaker 1: electricity which powers your phone.

731
00:36:49,560 --> 00:36:51,919
Speaker 2: Okay, so I've got graphite in my pencil, and when

732
00:36:51,960 --> 00:36:54,080
Speaker 2: I go and I draw something and I shade it in,

733
00:36:54,120 --> 00:36:56,520
Speaker 2: I always have to like brush away the graphite because

734
00:36:56,560 --> 00:36:59,000
Speaker 2: it's all like dusty and stuff. Do you have a

735
00:36:59,040 --> 00:37:02,040
Speaker 2: similar problem with like the uranium pebbles rubbing up against

736
00:37:02,080 --> 00:37:04,200
Speaker 2: each other and graphite becomes a powder. Do you have

737
00:37:04,239 --> 00:37:05,200
Speaker 2: to worry about that powder?

738
00:37:05,400 --> 00:37:08,360
Speaker 1: Graphite is really complex stuff and there's lots of different

739
00:37:08,440 --> 00:37:10,719
Speaker 1: forms of it, and so the kind that's in your

740
00:37:10,760 --> 00:37:13,000
Speaker 1: pencil is like a very very soft kind of graphite.

741
00:37:13,080 --> 00:37:16,120
Speaker 1: You can also make a very very durable, very hard graphite,

742
00:37:16,160 --> 00:37:18,600
Speaker 1: and that's the kind they use. So nobody is like

743
00:37:18,880 --> 00:37:22,040
Speaker 1: going to be drawing portraits of people with graphite pebble fuel.

744
00:37:22,320 --> 00:37:24,960
Speaker 1: But you're right, there is some graphite dust produced, and

745
00:37:25,040 --> 00:37:27,160
Speaker 1: we do have to worry about that. But this is

746
00:37:27,280 --> 00:37:30,520
Speaker 1: very cool technology. They call it pebble fuel. Basically, there's

747
00:37:30,600 --> 00:37:34,120
Speaker 1: no meltdown risk here at all. It's really amazing.

748
00:37:34,320 --> 00:37:35,440
Speaker 2: So why don't we have these yet?

749
00:37:35,480 --> 00:37:37,640
Speaker 1: Then, so we do have some of these. There are

750
00:37:37,840 --> 00:37:39,560
Speaker 1: seven of them that have been ever made. It's sort

751
00:37:39,560 --> 00:37:42,480
Speaker 1: of experimental. It's a little tricky because in order for

752
00:37:42,520 --> 00:37:45,320
Speaker 1: it to work, you have to have very highly enriched fuels.

753
00:37:45,440 --> 00:37:49,319
Speaker 1: They call these h al EU highly enriched fuels, and

754
00:37:49,360 --> 00:37:53,480
Speaker 1: that's like five to twenty percent enrichment, and so this

755
00:37:53,560 --> 00:37:56,600
Speaker 1: is much more enriched than the typical stuff. But it

756
00:37:56,640 --> 00:38:01,600
Speaker 1: allows for very small, very dense reactor core, and it

757
00:38:01,640 --> 00:38:06,040
Speaker 1: allows for small, modular reactors. The idea is like, don't

758
00:38:06,080 --> 00:38:09,280
Speaker 1: build this like huge plant that takes an enormous amount

759
00:38:09,280 --> 00:38:12,520
Speaker 1: of space and produces energy for like half of California.

760
00:38:13,080 --> 00:38:15,719
Speaker 1: Shrink the reactors, make them like the size of a

761
00:38:15,760 --> 00:38:19,360
Speaker 1: shipping container, and then you can produce them at scale,

762
00:38:19,719 --> 00:38:22,880
Speaker 1: so now they become modular. Every reactor we've ever built

763
00:38:22,960 --> 00:38:25,960
Speaker 1: is basically a one off bispoke design, which is one

764
00:38:26,040 --> 00:38:29,640
Speaker 1: reason why they take like twenty years to build and

765
00:38:29,760 --> 00:38:32,839
Speaker 1: to regulate and to check and to verify that it's

766
00:38:32,840 --> 00:38:35,880
Speaker 1: actually going to work. Right, if you had a plant

767
00:38:35,920 --> 00:38:38,040
Speaker 1: to pump these things out, and you knew every single

768
00:38:38,040 --> 00:38:41,279
Speaker 1: one was the same, you could develop once the technology

769
00:38:41,680 --> 00:38:44,120
Speaker 1: and then pump them out. And the idea is that

770
00:38:44,160 --> 00:38:46,680
Speaker 1: you could distribute them to lots of places where otherwise

771
00:38:46,719 --> 00:38:50,799
Speaker 1: there isn't the market for nuclear energy remote places, rural places,

772
00:38:51,320 --> 00:38:54,520
Speaker 1: so you'd have fewer bigger plants and more small plants.

773
00:38:54,840 --> 00:38:58,160
Speaker 1: That's enabled four technologies to have a very small core.

774
00:38:58,400 --> 00:39:03,879
Speaker 2: Okay, awesome, you've got these cheaper modular reactors. You still

775
00:39:03,920 --> 00:39:07,600
Speaker 2: have to worry about bad byproducts being made with those

776
00:39:07,719 --> 00:39:10,040
Speaker 2: uranium pebbles eventually, right you do.

777
00:39:10,200 --> 00:39:12,719
Speaker 1: The pebble fuel itself is fascinating because you can use

778
00:39:12,760 --> 00:39:14,960
Speaker 1: it over and over again. It doesn't use up all

779
00:39:15,000 --> 00:39:17,680
Speaker 1: the fuel immediately, so the pebble remains in the core

780
00:39:17,760 --> 00:39:20,560
Speaker 1: for like three years, and then they circulate it in

781
00:39:20,600 --> 00:39:22,560
Speaker 1: and out several times to burn it up, so like

782
00:39:22,600 --> 00:39:25,600
Speaker 1: a single pebble, you can use it for decades and

783
00:39:25,640 --> 00:39:27,880
Speaker 1: then in the end, all the fuel is still encased

784
00:39:27,920 --> 00:39:30,560
Speaker 1: in your graphite, right, so all the bad stuff is

785
00:39:30,600 --> 00:39:34,280
Speaker 1: also inside the graphite, so basically it comes out already sealed.

786
00:39:34,719 --> 00:39:36,520
Speaker 2: That's amazing. Do you not have to worry about the

787
00:39:36,560 --> 00:39:38,879
Speaker 2: helium because it doesn't get radioactive the same way water

788
00:39:38,920 --> 00:39:40,160
Speaker 2: does because it doesn't react.

789
00:39:39,960 --> 00:39:41,960
Speaker 1: To stuff exactly, it's inert.

790
00:39:42,280 --> 00:39:45,920
Speaker 2: Awesome, Okay, so it makes less bad waste that's also

791
00:39:46,000 --> 00:39:49,040
Speaker 2: easier to clean up while not having this explosion risk.

792
00:39:49,440 --> 00:39:52,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. And so this is very promising and there's

793
00:39:52,040 --> 00:39:55,040
Speaker 1: a bunch of private industry developing this technology. It's like

794
00:39:55,120 --> 00:39:57,880
Speaker 1: exploding right now. And I talked to a nuclear chemist

795
00:39:57,920 --> 00:40:01,040
Speaker 1: here ECI and asked, like, is this real or is

796
00:40:01,160 --> 00:40:04,400
Speaker 1: just just like private industry hype? And she said, no,

797
00:40:04,480 --> 00:40:07,400
Speaker 1: it's real. The tech has been demonstrated. We know this works.

798
00:40:07,840 --> 00:40:10,640
Speaker 1: It's really just a question of getting it regulated and

799
00:40:10,640 --> 00:40:12,080
Speaker 1: getting the economics to work.

800
00:40:12,280 --> 00:40:15,080
Speaker 2: All right, So it sounds like it's all upsides for

801
00:40:15,160 --> 00:40:17,440
Speaker 2: this particular reactor. Are there any downsides?

802
00:40:18,080 --> 00:40:20,399
Speaker 1: So you know, this is a newish technology. There's still

803
00:40:20,440 --> 00:40:23,040
Speaker 1: developing it. There's only seven that have ever been made.

804
00:40:23,080 --> 00:40:26,040
Speaker 1: Two of them are operating now in China. And in

805
00:40:26,080 --> 00:40:28,440
Speaker 1: some cases there were issues, like there's a reactor in

806
00:40:28,480 --> 00:40:31,200
Speaker 1: Germany where they had exactly the problem that you were

807
00:40:31,200 --> 00:40:34,200
Speaker 1: talking about. The graphite pebbles were rubbing against each other

808
00:40:34,480 --> 00:40:36,920
Speaker 1: and they made dust, and the dust is radioactive. It

809
00:40:36,960 --> 00:40:40,719
Speaker 1: has caesium, has strontium. It's not good, and so there's

810
00:40:40,719 --> 00:40:43,040
Speaker 1: always risks there. But you know, people are working on

811
00:40:43,040 --> 00:40:46,120
Speaker 1: this technology. It's new, it's promising, it's definitely not perfect.

812
00:40:46,440 --> 00:40:49,439
Speaker 2: Okay, awesome, So let's move on to the last kind

813
00:40:49,440 --> 00:40:51,520
Speaker 2: of new reactor that we're going to be talking about today,

814
00:40:51,560 --> 00:40:54,800
Speaker 2: which is liquid metal salt, which is definitely the most

815
00:40:54,920 --> 00:40:57,480
Speaker 2: awesome sounding of the reactors.

816
00:40:57,920 --> 00:41:00,200
Speaker 1: I know, it's super cool and it sound that is

817
00:41:00,280 --> 00:41:03,760
Speaker 1: much more dangerous. And the idea is, let's avoid again

818
00:41:03,840 --> 00:41:07,399
Speaker 1: having very high pressure water. That seems bad, so let's

819
00:41:07,440 --> 00:41:10,759
Speaker 1: replace the water with something else that doesn't need to

820
00:41:10,800 --> 00:41:14,840
Speaker 1: be super high pressure in order to stay liquid. So metal,

821
00:41:14,880 --> 00:41:17,680
Speaker 1: for example, metal is a very high heat capacity. It

822
00:41:17,680 --> 00:41:20,880
Speaker 1: can remove heat very quickly, and it doesn't need to

823
00:41:20,920 --> 00:41:23,319
Speaker 1: be a super high pressure to stay a liquid. Right,

824
00:41:23,360 --> 00:41:26,120
Speaker 1: It's not going to want to turn into gas because

825
00:41:26,160 --> 00:41:28,840
Speaker 1: this boiling point is much much higher, and so you

826
00:41:28,880 --> 00:41:33,120
Speaker 1: can have, for example, liquid metal flowing through your reactor

827
00:41:33,200 --> 00:41:37,000
Speaker 1: at basically one atmosphere. It's still super duper hot, but

828
00:41:37,080 --> 00:41:40,080
Speaker 1: now it's liquid metal instead of liquid water, which you're

829
00:41:40,120 --> 00:41:42,680
Speaker 1: forcing to stay liquid. It's like very happy to stay

830
00:41:42,719 --> 00:41:43,200
Speaker 1: a liquid.

831
00:41:43,520 --> 00:41:47,719
Speaker 2: Wow. So if the reactor cools off, is it hard

832
00:41:47,760 --> 00:41:50,160
Speaker 2: to get that metal to be liquid again or no,

833
00:41:50,280 --> 00:41:52,360
Speaker 2: you just get the reaction going and it melts happily.

834
00:41:52,560 --> 00:41:55,080
Speaker 1: That's actually one of the safety mechanisms, right, is they

835
00:41:55,120 --> 00:41:57,520
Speaker 1: have a plug at the bottom made of metal that

836
00:41:57,719 --> 00:41:59,919
Speaker 1: melts at a slightly higher temperature, and if the core

837
00:42:00,080 --> 00:42:02,759
Speaker 1: or ever overheat past a certain temperature, it melts the

838
00:42:02,800 --> 00:42:05,719
Speaker 1: plug and all the metal just drips out and then

839
00:42:05,760 --> 00:42:07,840
Speaker 1: it cools, and now you have this big solid so

840
00:42:07,880 --> 00:42:12,480
Speaker 1: it's not like exploding everywhere. It can't melt down anymore, right,

841
00:42:12,480 --> 00:42:16,520
Speaker 1: because the fuel also is dissolved into the metal. In

842
00:42:16,560 --> 00:42:18,000
Speaker 1: the case of the water, you have like the water

843
00:42:18,080 --> 00:42:21,000
Speaker 1: flowing around the fuel rods. Here, you take the uranium

844
00:42:21,040 --> 00:42:24,160
Speaker 1: directly into your liquid metal. The reaction is happening within

845
00:42:24,280 --> 00:42:27,640
Speaker 1: the metal, but if it ever overheats, it breaks the

846
00:42:27,640 --> 00:42:30,279
Speaker 1: containment and just drips out and then cools, and so

847
00:42:30,680 --> 00:42:32,960
Speaker 1: it's all good. So it's much safer.

848
00:42:33,160 --> 00:42:35,879
Speaker 2: That's such a cool passive solution. Like if something catastrophic

849
00:42:35,920 --> 00:42:38,480
Speaker 2: happens and all the humans need to leave it sounds

850
00:42:38,480 --> 00:42:40,520
Speaker 2: like it solves the problem on its own with no

851
00:42:40,640 --> 00:42:42,880
Speaker 2: humans there to help. That's fantastic exactly.

852
00:42:42,960 --> 00:42:47,120
Speaker 1: So the pressurized water reactor needs active containment, and this one,

853
00:42:47,239 --> 00:42:49,799
Speaker 1: if it fails, it just basically cools itself down, so

854
00:42:49,960 --> 00:42:54,000
Speaker 1: no risk of overheating or melt down. And it's liquid

855
00:42:54,040 --> 00:42:56,120
Speaker 1: metal or salt, because you can do the same thing

856
00:42:56,160 --> 00:42:58,719
Speaker 1: with what we call salts in the periodic table, you

857
00:42:58,719 --> 00:43:01,360
Speaker 1: know whatever. It's just another l element which, if you

858
00:43:01,400 --> 00:43:03,719
Speaker 1: heat it enough, turns into a liquid and has all

859
00:43:03,719 --> 00:43:06,440
Speaker 1: the right chemical properties you can dissolve uranium into it,

860
00:43:06,440 --> 00:43:08,920
Speaker 1: has the right boiling and melting points, et cetera, et cetera.

861
00:43:09,480 --> 00:43:13,000
Speaker 1: So they have these experimental reactors using liquid metal or salt,

862
00:43:13,080 --> 00:43:15,440
Speaker 1: and this is one of the designs that was explored

863
00:43:15,480 --> 00:43:18,560
Speaker 1: early on in the history of nuclear power and then

864
00:43:18,600 --> 00:43:22,320
Speaker 1: ignored because the military wanted to use pressurized water reactors.

865
00:43:22,840 --> 00:43:26,120
Speaker 2: Oh boo. Okay, so we've talked about the benefits here.

866
00:43:26,160 --> 00:43:27,719
Speaker 2: Does it have downsides?

867
00:43:28,200 --> 00:43:30,800
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's mostly upsides. The only downside

868
00:43:30,840 --> 00:43:33,040
Speaker 1: here is that we don't have as much experience, so

869
00:43:33,080 --> 00:43:35,879
Speaker 1: it's not as proven like we've been using pressurized water

870
00:43:35,920 --> 00:43:38,440
Speaker 1: reactors for decades we know how they work, we know

871
00:43:38,480 --> 00:43:41,319
Speaker 1: how they fail. Liquid metal and salt reactors are just

872
00:43:41,400 --> 00:43:44,080
Speaker 1: much more experimental, but they have a lot of other

873
00:43:44,160 --> 00:43:47,839
Speaker 1: potential upsides. For example, you can use other fuels than

874
00:43:47,960 --> 00:43:51,400
Speaker 1: just uranium. You can use for example, thorium. Thorium is

875
00:43:51,440 --> 00:43:55,799
Speaker 1: awesome because it's not fissile on its own right. You

876
00:43:55,960 --> 00:44:00,000
Speaker 1: need to start off with some neutrons to hit the thorium,

877
00:44:00,120 --> 00:44:03,040
Speaker 1: and then the thorium will convert into uranium two thirty three.

878
00:44:03,719 --> 00:44:07,120
Speaker 1: Urinium two thirty three is another isotopic uranium. It's much

879
00:44:07,160 --> 00:44:09,680
Speaker 1: better for these reactions, and then you don't produce any

880
00:44:09,719 --> 00:44:13,480
Speaker 1: weapons half life. You can also use thorium reactor to

881
00:44:13,640 --> 00:44:16,600
Speaker 1: burn fuel from other reactors. So you take like the

882
00:44:16,640 --> 00:44:19,680
Speaker 1: byproducts of a light water reactor, you can put it

883
00:44:19,719 --> 00:44:22,920
Speaker 1: into your thorium reactor and it will burn it. It

884
00:44:22,920 --> 00:44:25,440
Speaker 1: will use up some of that fuel. Remember that we

885
00:44:25,480 --> 00:44:29,080
Speaker 1: talked about light water reactors mostly burn the uranium two

886
00:44:29,120 --> 00:44:31,279
Speaker 1: thirty five. The two thirty eight turns into all this

887
00:44:31,400 --> 00:44:33,560
Speaker 1: other stuff. You can take all that stuff and put

888
00:44:33,640 --> 00:44:36,120
Speaker 1: it into a thorium reactor and it will burn it.

889
00:44:36,440 --> 00:44:38,720
Speaker 2: It will burn the nasty stuff and turn it into

890
00:44:39,160 --> 00:44:40,160
Speaker 2: not nasty stuff.

891
00:44:40,480 --> 00:44:42,840
Speaker 1: It turns it into less nasty stuff. Exactly. The waste

892
00:44:42,840 --> 00:44:45,239
Speaker 1: here has much shorter half lives, so you can take

893
00:44:45,239 --> 00:44:47,960
Speaker 1: stuff that starts out with millions or thousands of years

894
00:44:48,000 --> 00:44:50,240
Speaker 1: of half life and turn it into stuff with tens

895
00:44:50,360 --> 00:44:53,120
Speaker 1: or hundreds of years of half life. So that's really good.

896
00:44:53,360 --> 00:44:57,080
Speaker 1: And it can't make plutonium, so there's no weapons byproduct.

897
00:44:57,880 --> 00:45:02,000
Speaker 1: And thorium already is a product of rare earth mining,

898
00:45:02,320 --> 00:45:04,680
Speaker 1: like you're digging for a zinc and cadmium and all

899
00:45:04,719 --> 00:45:08,160
Speaker 1: sorts of other stuff you need for fancy technologies. Thorium

900
00:45:08,280 --> 00:45:11,239
Speaker 1: is a waste product. We're already producing huge amounts of

901
00:45:11,280 --> 00:45:14,600
Speaker 1: thorium in our industry, so thorium is a really an

902
00:45:14,640 --> 00:45:16,840
Speaker 1: excellent direction for nuclear technology.

903
00:45:17,080 --> 00:45:18,759
Speaker 2: You said it's a waste product, so it's stuff we're

904
00:45:18,760 --> 00:45:20,200
Speaker 2: currently just throwing out.

905
00:45:20,480 --> 00:45:23,839
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, and with huge deposits of it. India has

906
00:45:23,920 --> 00:45:27,239
Speaker 1: massive access to thorium, for example, and so a lot

907
00:45:27,239 --> 00:45:29,760
Speaker 1: of it. Countries around the world, China, India are developing

908
00:45:29,760 --> 00:45:33,080
Speaker 1: these thorium reactors, again more experimental, so there could be

909
00:45:33,120 --> 00:45:35,480
Speaker 1: things we don't understand about them yet because we just

910
00:45:35,520 --> 00:45:38,880
Speaker 1: haven't spent thirty years watching them fail, but it's definitely

911
00:45:38,920 --> 00:45:39,600
Speaker 1: a good direction.

912
00:45:40,160 --> 00:45:42,640
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, So we've talked about some new designs,

913
00:45:42,640 --> 00:45:45,040
Speaker 2: we've talked about the old designs. Let's back out and

914
00:45:45,120 --> 00:45:48,040
Speaker 2: take a big broader picture. I feel like I'm hearing

915
00:45:48,080 --> 00:45:51,160
Speaker 2: more about nuclear reactors as the impacts of global climate

916
00:45:51,200 --> 00:45:53,320
Speaker 2: change are sort of becoming more day to day and

917
00:45:53,360 --> 00:45:56,520
Speaker 2: bearing down upon us. And so what do you think, Daniel,

918
00:45:56,560 --> 00:45:59,560
Speaker 2: do we need advanced nuclear reactors to deal with global

919
00:45:59,560 --> 00:46:00,000
Speaker 2: climate chain.

920
00:46:00,400 --> 00:46:01,920
Speaker 1: I think it's going to be part of the future.

921
00:46:02,160 --> 00:46:04,960
Speaker 1: I mean, currently nuclear power provides like five to ten

922
00:46:05,000 --> 00:46:07,440
Speaker 1: percent of the worldwide energy use. It's like twenty ish

923
00:46:07,520 --> 00:46:10,399
Speaker 1: percent in the United States. Some countries like France, it's

924
00:46:10,400 --> 00:46:13,520
Speaker 1: a much much higher fraction. A lot of those reactors

925
00:46:13,560 --> 00:46:16,560
Speaker 1: are really decades old, like the United States has really

926
00:46:16,640 --> 00:46:19,360
Speaker 1: old reactors, as our rate of turning on new reactors

927
00:46:19,440 --> 00:46:23,040
Speaker 1: is dropped basically to zero. But nuclear power is also

928
00:46:23,120 --> 00:46:25,600
Speaker 1: very attractive for lots of reasons, like it's very constant.

929
00:46:25,840 --> 00:46:27,959
Speaker 1: You turn on nuclear power plant, it's going to pump

930
00:46:28,000 --> 00:46:31,319
Speaker 1: out energy day and night, rain or shine, wind or

931
00:46:31,360 --> 00:46:35,520
Speaker 1: no wind doesn't really matter. And so on one hand,

932
00:46:35,719 --> 00:46:38,879
Speaker 1: that's great to supplement things like wind and solar, which

933
00:46:38,920 --> 00:46:41,760
Speaker 1: do fluctuate obviously day to night and windy to not windy.

934
00:46:42,120 --> 00:46:45,239
Speaker 1: What you actually want, though, to supplement renewables is not

935
00:46:45,360 --> 00:46:48,000
Speaker 1: something like nuclear that's hard to turn on and off,

936
00:46:48,000 --> 00:46:49,960
Speaker 1: but something you can turn on and off very quickly,

937
00:46:50,320 --> 00:46:52,080
Speaker 1: because you don't want to be running a nuclear power

938
00:46:52,080 --> 00:46:54,440
Speaker 1: plant when you already have too much energy on the

939
00:46:54,480 --> 00:46:56,440
Speaker 1: grid from solar. You want to shut it down then

940
00:46:56,480 --> 00:46:58,799
Speaker 1: and then turn it back on during the night. But

941
00:46:58,920 --> 00:47:01,000
Speaker 1: nuclear power plants are hard just to turn on and

942
00:47:01,080 --> 00:47:03,160
Speaker 1: hard to turn off, so they're very constant.

943
00:47:03,440 --> 00:47:05,480
Speaker 2: One of the things I really loved about atomic Dreams,

944
00:47:05,480 --> 00:47:06,840
Speaker 2: and one of the things that we don't end up

945
00:47:06,840 --> 00:47:09,880
Speaker 2: getting into in our interview with Becca, is that you

946
00:47:10,040 --> 00:47:12,400
Speaker 2: can take those times when you don't necessarily need the

947
00:47:12,440 --> 00:47:14,680
Speaker 2: nuclear power and you can do things like run a

948
00:47:14,760 --> 00:47:18,200
Speaker 2: desalination plant, which would be very helpful in California that's

949
00:47:18,200 --> 00:47:20,560
Speaker 2: having all these issues with fresh water. So there's things

950
00:47:20,560 --> 00:47:22,279
Speaker 2: that you can do to make up for the fact

951
00:47:22,320 --> 00:47:24,480
Speaker 2: that nuclear power is not easy to turn on or

952
00:47:24,520 --> 00:47:26,400
Speaker 2: off to you know, still make it beneficial.

953
00:47:27,000 --> 00:47:30,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, And it seems like definitely part of our

954
00:47:30,160 --> 00:47:32,920
Speaker 1: portfolio in the future. The UN has all these different

955
00:47:32,960 --> 00:47:35,719
Speaker 1: pathways to limiting the warming of the planet to one

956
00:47:35,719 --> 00:47:39,440
Speaker 1: point five degrees, and every single one of those pathways

957
00:47:39,440 --> 00:47:43,000
Speaker 1: includes nuclear power and expanded nuclear power on top of

958
00:47:43,040 --> 00:47:45,640
Speaker 1: what we already have. So I think it's an important

959
00:47:45,719 --> 00:47:48,320
Speaker 1: quiverent in our arsenal. It's definitely not perfect and the

960
00:47:48,440 --> 00:47:50,480
Speaker 1: definitely issues with it, And boy do I wish we

961
00:47:50,640 --> 00:47:52,000
Speaker 1: just had fusion around the corner.

962
00:47:52,800 --> 00:47:53,680
Speaker 2: That's the man.

963
00:47:53,840 --> 00:47:55,680
Speaker 1: But you know, we're in an imperfect situation. We have

964
00:47:55,719 --> 00:47:58,920
Speaker 1: imperfect options. And next time we'll talk all about the

965
00:47:59,000 --> 00:48:02,400
Speaker 1: pluses and minus and whether nuclear power is good or

966
00:48:02,440 --> 00:48:04,080
Speaker 1: bad for the environment on the whole.

967
00:48:04,560 --> 00:48:06,600
Speaker 2: All Right, So in the next episode we're going to

968
00:48:06,600 --> 00:48:08,759
Speaker 2: be talking to Becca, and in particular, we're going to

969
00:48:08,800 --> 00:48:12,360
Speaker 2: be talking about how public perception is impacting the rollout

970
00:48:12,400 --> 00:48:16,400
Speaker 2: of nuclear power, things like fear from the reactor meltdowns,

971
00:48:16,440 --> 00:48:19,439
Speaker 2: what to do with the waste, problems with licensing, etc.

972
00:48:19,880 --> 00:48:22,200
Speaker 2: So we look forward to seeing you on Thursday for

973
00:48:22,239 --> 00:48:33,200
Speaker 2: that conversation. Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced by

974
00:48:33,200 --> 00:48:35,840
Speaker 2: iHeart Reading. We would love to hear from you, we

975
00:48:36,080 --> 00:48:36,760
Speaker 2: really would.

976
00:48:36,920 --> 00:48:39,640
Speaker 1: We want to know what questions you have about this

977
00:48:39,840 --> 00:48:41,520
Speaker 1: Extraordinary Universe.

978
00:48:41,719 --> 00:48:44,680
Speaker 2: Want to know your thoughts on recent shows, suggestions for

979
00:48:44,760 --> 00:48:47,839
Speaker 2: future shows. If you contact us, we will get back

980
00:48:47,880 --> 00:48:48,040
Speaker 2: to you.

981
00:48:48,280 --> 00:48:51,799
Speaker 1: We really mean it. We answer every message. Email us

982
00:48:51,840 --> 00:48:54,680
Speaker 1: at Questions at Danielandkelly dot org.

983
00:48:54,880 --> 00:48:57,000
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984
00:48:57,120 --> 00:49:01,080
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985
00:49:01,080 --> 00:49:03,080
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986
00:49:03,600 --> 00:49:05,680
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